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#proprietarysoftware like #adobe #photoshop helps the #surveillance state ... like proprietary printing drivers that add yellow, pale dots that are secretly designed for spies; use #freesw instead. No source-catching traps.

@Shelenn Ayres I have nothing bad to say about gimp in general. It's OSS and I greatly appreciate its existence. That said, it does seem to be having a hard time progressing significantly in recent years. Personally I really think Krita is showing more promise, especially if it continues gaining momentum with development. Right now it isn't where gimp is, but it has a slick UI and works pretty well for what it attempts to implement.

I hate to give any props to proprietary software, but PS does have some killer features, and a much better workflow, when compared to gimp. I don't want to see gimp mirror PS, I'm fine with a different workflow, but really it feels very patchwork in it's implimentation with little cohesive workflow at all. It's just stagnated for so long now and I worry the project has just reached a point where it's too difficult to impliment many modern features using the current code base. There's been improvements with CMYK support and some other things that are... show more

@Adam Gaskins honestly I have never used Krita - it looks interesting. Since I spend more time scripting and modeling than creating graphics, I am able to use Gimp2 to meet my needs which do not include a lot of hand painting style creations. I might check out Krita though and compare it to other painting tools.

On video editing, I doubt most users engage in frame level editing. I found Adobe Premiere to be a waste of money for me. When I edit videos for myself or for clients, my primary needs are: adding captions, adding music, adding clips, adding credits, and providing transitions for all of those to meet the style requested. Replacing the popular Movie Maker application, Story Remix code was added to the latest Microsoft Photos app allowing most users to meet basic requirements on their own without spending money. I have not tried it yet but am curious about the make someone a star feature.
Shotcut is a FOSS alternative that meets most needs. For other more complex... show more

Great info here @Shelenn Ayres ! Thanks for sharing. At some point i've tried most (if not all) of the video editors you've mentioned and always found one key element missing that I guess I had always been spoilt by in Adobe Premier/AE & Sony Vegas back in my Windows days... namely, envelope control of various parameters. I got so used to this that I find it very hard to edit confortably with any of these tools. Maybe there is some other paradigm for automating parameters that I have simply not yet grok'd. I'm sure Blender could probably do this, but I've barely scratched the surface in that app, and nothing involving video editing. I get the impression that it can do some of the things I might be missing from AE, like scripting parameters, motion tracking, etc.. But the real killer feature for me is simple envelope control of params in an otherwise fairly basic video editor. Have you came across an app that might do this? It's entirely possible that it's been right under my nose... show more

I have, but I do see a few I don't recall since the last time I checked! I guess it's been quite some time now. Thanks @Shelenn Ayres !

Reg. the yellow dots - I always assumed that they got added in hardware and have heard of software that adds additional dots to make them unreadable. Would be interested to learn if they actually get added by the driver as that would be a big plus for using free software.

@elrido I don't know for sure, but I can tell you that I once had a need to scan & print some money (it was for a movie prop where the money needed to be burned... seriously! haha) and M$ Windows, where I worked, would not allow this to work. Every time I tried to scan it would get thru the scan and give an error (I wish I remembered the error or had a screen shot, it was interesting to say the least). So, suspecting the Windows driver being the issue, I tried my laptop with GNU/Linux, used OS drivers and it worked without a hitch! Printing also worked fine, but I didn't try that in Windows (iirc). I figured the printer/scanner combo is pretty basic and 'dumb' hardware. The drivers are typically where the magic happens, and I think this case was no exception.

This isn't a particularly unreasonable scenario on it's own, I guess. But I do highly doubt that the manufacturer took the time to code this proceedure that can detect money of their own volition (time being money, and all); I'... show more

@elrido Just to be clear, this was a very low end budget all-in-one printer - not some sophisticated device that could actually even print money that looked remotely real! So this is why I highly doubt the manufacter would have programmed such things in to the drivers on their own.

thank you for sharing the details
