Monthly Meeting Summary - 12th August 2017
The meeting started with Gimp talk by Raghavendra Kamat. In fact
everyone wants to play with shapes and colors right from childhood days.
Apart from that, basic image processing is everyday need of Digital Age.
We often need to work with Image formats and their conversion. Uploading
i card size photos in applications, résumé etc.
Without appropriate tools and proper guidance this can be too difficult
or even impossible for avarage user.
Fortunately we had more student attendees. They certainly enjoyed the
expert's tips.
It is true that anyone can practice and teach elementary gimp usage. But
learning basics from a professional artist is really a different experience.
We felt this difference when Raghu started experimenting with sample images.
He showed how to colorize original black and white image with various
color tools. He finally gave a demonstration of masking, where he
changed the face of a person in image, keeping the same body. The
transformation was so homogeneous that it was impossible to suspect any
manipulation.
Of course he warned the students not to misuse this skill.
In the next session, Joe put a propsal of celebrating Software Freedom
Day (16 September). He suggested to arrange an install festival, a
hackathon and FOSS exhibition in DBIT. The idea was to invite students
and teachers of schools and colleges of Mumbai.
Although the idea was welcome by DBIT Profs and students, it could be
difficult to arrange everything in a short amount of time.
So we put the proposal to DBIT for further discussion.
In the last session, Nilesh showed the lab manuals that he has prepared
with the help of students. Nilesh and his students team have made a
wonderful job. The students had even gone to a few schools. But the
principals of junior colleges are not yet confident to migrate. As per
his teams feedback, the only problem they faced was Tally and .net. We
need to study alternatives to these softwares further.
As far as schools are concerned there seems no problem in State or CBSE
board.
- Milind