Black Five Imaging

New header images

Today I'm nursing a cold, and know from past experience that coding whilst unwell is not a good idea! Therefore, I've whiled away an idle hour by adding some new images to the header image pool. Hope you like them!

CMYKTool Tutorial Screencast

Since CMYKTool's purpose and operation are a bit arcane, I figured it was time to make a tutorial video, outlining its basic operation. This video covers most features, but not the new DeviceLink functionality - that deserves a video to itself, which I hope I'll find time to make in due course. I hope you find it useful!

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CMYKTool 0.1.4a bug fix release

A major bug crept into yesteday's CMYKTool release, which prevented custom-shaped black generation curves from being passed correctly to ArgyllCMS's collink utility. The preset curve shapes worked OK, it was just custom curves - and this bug is now fixed. The Win32 build was unaffected, so I've only re-rolled the source tarball here. An updated package is currently building in my PPA.

Source code - .tar.gz

CMYKTool 0.1.4 Released

I'm pleased to announce a new release of CMYKTool, featuring a few bug fixes, better international support on Windows, and - the big news for this release - support for black generation curves, using ArgyllCMS's DeviceLink capability.

Source code - .tar.gz

Windows Binary - .zip

Please note: the Windows build requires an existing GTK+ installation - the easiest way to get that is to install GIMP.

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PPA Updated

Today I've found the time to update my PPAs - you will now find CMYKTool 0.1.3 and GIMP classic packages for Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) at

ppa:amr/blackfiveimaging and

ppa:amr/gimp-classic

Packages of my other software will hopefully follow in due course.

CMYKTool 0.1.3 Released

After way too long a break, I've finally made new release of CMYKTool. I've not been able to put nearly as much time into this as I would have liked, so there aren't many changes this time around.

(Update 2010-06-02 - the tarball has been respun to include an updated Russian translation - thanks, as always, to Alexandre Prokoudine for this.)

Source code - .tar.gz

Windows Binary - .zip

Please note: the Windows build requires an existing GTK+ installation - the easiest way to get that is to install GIMP.

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PhotoPrint 0.4.2-Pre2 Released

After another lengthy break, another pre-release of PhotoPrint. Apologies for the delay - I don't have nearly as much time for coding as I would like these days. Many thanks to everyone who's suggested features - If I had time to implement them all I would do!

Source code - .tar.gz

Windows Binary - .zip

*EXPERIMENTAL* Windows Installer - .exe (Created using InstallJammer)

Please note: the Windows build is experimential. It requires an existing GTK+ installation - the easiest way to get that is to install GIMP. Note also that Photoprint cannot print using native drivers - instead it comes equipped with a Win32 build of Gutenprint.

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Lets Hear It For Choice - Part 2!

I wrote previously about the user-interface changes in GIMP 2.6 and the gimp-classic patch which Peter Hartshorn released for the benefit of those of us who dislike the changes. However, compiling a project as large as The GIMP from source to apply a patch is quite an undertaking, so I've created a PPA for Ubuntu, containing a ready-patched version of GIMP 2.6.8.

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I now have a PPA!

Something I've been meaning to do for a long time is set up an Ubuntu PPA with packages of some of my software. Today I finally found time to get my head around the arcana involved in building and testing packages, and my first trepidatious steps into the world of Ubuntu packaging are now available for those brave enough to try them!

A PPA for my own software can be found at https://launchpad.net/~amr/+archive/blackfiveimaging. At the time of writing it only contains Ubuntu Karmic packages for CMYKTool, but others will follow in due course.

I shall also add others containing patched versions of other packages as and when the need arises. The first such is for the "GIMP Classic" patch, and can be found here: https://launchpad.net/~amr/+archive/gimp-classic

CMYKTool 0.1.2 Released

Since my coding time is currently very limited, here's a stopgap release with a few improvements until I can put more time in!

Source code - .tar.gz

Windows Binary - .zip

Please note: the Windows build requires an existing GTK+ installation - the easiest way to get that is to install GIMP.

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The Eternal Problem of Backups - Trayless SATA Bay

Anyone who uses a computer in a creative capacity will no doubt know what I mean when I say that backups are a problem.

Over recent years the sheer volume of data that we keep on our computers has exploded, what with the huge popularity (and megapixel-inflation) of digital cameras, cellphones capable of recording video clips, the accessibility and affordability of digital recorders and music-making software. It all adds up, and finding an affordable and hassle-free media for backing up such a huge amount of data is difficult – consequently, all too often it doesn't get done at all!

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