Krita and The Gimp

The title would probably make you think I'm going to write about cartoon characters. But no...

After recently moving over to Linux, I had to find a software replacement for Photo Glory, so I could clean up negative/slide scans. I had bought Photo Glory, but as this wouldn't install (it is a Win10 program) and the technical support were not helpful, I had to find something that would work on Linux.

After a search online, enter Krita. Which is actually better than Photo Glory was. The main thing is that it speeds up a long task, as each scratch, dust mark or blotch has to be cleaned manually. That is still the case, but the patch tool automatically matches with surrounding areas. When that doesn't do exactly what you want you always have the good old clone tool (although this tool took me a while to find).

Before doing all that, I use The Gimp (a sort of Photoshop) to sort out shadows, hilights and colour saturation.

So the posted pic is a before and after. A photo I took back in 1993, next to the Bull Ring bus station in Birmingham (now long gone). The image itself wasn't very good, but I feel the corrections I've done have made it more shareable.