> 1- Where is it in the Pliant directory
/pliant/appli/photo/
> 2- what is the main goal of this application
High quality photos (ouput from a digital camera) editing and printing.
In other words, a Photoshop (tm) replacement, more targetted to high quality
editing and printing personal photos.
If you have a digital camera and want to print your photos yourself, there is
currently no tool (free or closed) that can compete with this one (will provide
better end result without requiring you to be a professional).
The key advantages are:
. any correction you apply to a photo will be stored as a JPEG comment, so
you can reverse it, or adjust it at any time and it will not lower the
signal/noise as if you apply each correction one after the other using a
standard tool.
. no new application specific file format introduced.
. the correction tools offered are much higher level than the ones provided
in Photoshop (more advanced mathematics)
. printing works much better due to the Pliant drivers that are higher
quality than anything bellow 10000$ on the market.
The disadvantages are:
. you need a fast computer (1 Ghz or more) because the correction is always
applied on the fly.
. needs to install Pliant, and using a web browser as the user interface
(not as smart as native GUI based tools)
. the tool is currently more limited than Gimp or Photoshop (tm) because it
offsers only global color correction.
On the 'still to do' side, there is the ability to print a set of photos
all at once. Currently, it enables to easily print a photo at any size, at
any place on the sheet of paper, but one after the other, and you will have
to reintroduce the sheet in the printer if you want to print another photo
on the same sheet.
The reason is that I want to use Pliant browser as the graphical engine for
complex pages layout (several photos + text), so it's not ready yet. I don't
want a dirty specific hack for the photos editing and printing tool.
> 3- what is the necessary system configuration (e.g., where the images have to be
located)
The photos need to be encoded in JPEG format, because I need to know the
details about the format in order to be abble to change the comment in a photo
file without reencoding it (no quality loss).
You need a printer supported by Pliant printer driver.
The Epson 2100 is recommended (800$ euro, so price compatible with the price
of a high end prosumer digital camera) because it will bring highest color
accuracy (pigmented inks, with a grey one), and resonable color stability over
time (pigmented inks).
The high end 7600 or 9600 (very expensive) will bring the same quality for
large format.
Most Inkjet Epsons should be supported, but I have no time and not one of each
at home to make a color profile for it, so the end result will be less
accurate.
The C82 is probably the right cheap solution because it also has pigmented inks,
but dark will be limited because on glossy or semiglossy paper, one cannot use
the black ink.
Even more printers can be supported through the Pliant PCL driver, Gimp-print
and IJS interface in Pliant, but then the end result will probably be
not that satisfying because getting high end result result requires to
properly deal with all details.
If you run on Windows, the printer must be connected through parallel port,
not USB, because USB is not properly supported on Windows.
You also need to download the color.pdb printers profile database from
http://pliant.cx/pliant/browse/file/archive/
Configuration of the photo editing tool is done through:
http://localhost/pliant/appli/photo/configure.html
Configuration of the printer is done through:
http://localhost/pliant/protocol/lpr/spooler.html
Images can be anywhere on your disk.
Please ask what fields in the configuration page need more explainations.
Now, the huge part not specified here is how to adjust various parameters
in order to get perfect result (adjust screen color temperature, ajust
parameter to minimise printer or paper limits, etc) |