I don’t know who you are, and I don’t need to know because I already love you. You have saved me two reasons for booting to XP to use PS, and you did it without my having to learn one goddamned thing. If I weren’t already married, I’d propose to you! 🙂

I love my little S3 IS; so much, in fact, that the last time I looked into buying a new camera, I decided that it wasn’t worth the money, at least not until I can afford to shell out around $1500 for a decent DSLR and the necessary lenses. The camera I have now is adequate for my current purposes, and I already know it so well that I can operate it (and have operated it) one-handed while standing on a steep, loose dirt and rock creek bank, clinging to a tree with one hand lest I fall, eyes trained on a damselfly perched on a branch, muttering, “Don’t you move, you little bastard.” I don’t lose sight of a butterfly because I stopped to change ISO settings or exposure settings because I don’t have to look–my thumb knows where the buttons are and how many times I need to press each one for the desired result. I already have an adapter that fits the S3 IS, a super macro lens that I love, a tele lens that I like (cost 3x as much as the lens I love, of course), and macro/polarising/UV filters that I actually use. I suppose I could get an S5 IS and they’d all fit, but the S5 isn’t enough of an improvement to warrant the extra cash for it. It has a couple more mpx, but I don’t print anything anyway, so I don’t care, and the sensor is no larger, so 800 ISO is as (largely) unusable as that of the S3 (S5 has 1600, too, but it’s terrible). Anyway, I’m not getting another camera until at least next spring; maybe not even then.

All that said, my Canon does have one problem that is common to all of the Canon super-zooms…chromatic aberration. Other super-zoom models have it, too (Kodak is awful for it), though some (like Panasonic) attempt to correct it with in-camera processing, with varying degrees of success. Not unique to Canon, but their super-zooms definitely do it. Since the vast majority of my photography (“photography”…like how I sound all professional?) is macro, I don’t even notice it, but in spring, when I can actually manage to shoot birds without the little fuckers flying off or hiding behind leaves, I really notice it. I love mallard ducks and Canada geese (geese from a distance–they’re bad-tempered creatures), but I know that when I shoot them, especially on the water with a tele lens, I will have to deal with fringing. I can fix, to a reasonable degree, even the worst chromatic aberration; supposing the edges between black (or a very dark colour) and white (or a very light colour) look like they’re lit up with pink neon, I can fix it in PS. Not hard to do, but can be rather time consuming, if, for instance, the shot happens to be a whole gaggle of Canada geese swimming in a pond. I can fix it…but only in PS. Haven’t a clue how to do it in GIMP, and hadn’t got round to learning. Now, I don’t have to learn because Darla rules. Darla made a GIMP script for the specific purpose of removing chromatic aberration. The script is so good that even if I don’t make any adjustments and just click “Ok” (or whatever it says–I forget) to the defaults, it fixes even severe CA, and all I have to do is sit there and watch it do its stuff. Yaaaaayyy! 😀

Mr. and Mrs. Mallard (I’ll assume they were married) on the small pond last April. Some nasty, nasty CA going on at the edges of his fevvers. Not irreparable, but time-consuming to do it, at least for me (even in PS).

Same photo, run through the lovely and talented Darla’s “Purple Fringe” GIMP script, using the defaults. All I did was start the script and click “Ok” or whatever it was.

Not perfect, of course, because there will always be blurring where once there was CA, but a damned sight better than screaming-jeezus pink neon trim on the poor duck’s butt, and with only the effort of two clicks from me, I’ll take it!

She’s even fixed one of my own mistakes. It’s no fault of the camera, it’s the fault of the dumbass who never remembers to put a goddamned polarising filter on when shooting “landscapes” where the sky is involved. I do it just about every time, primarily because landscapes aren’t my thing and if I’m not chasing bugs, it probably means I’m shooting some DG tournament, which is only marginally more fun than being poked repeatedly in the arse with a sharp stick. I do it, though, because other than D. I’m essentially the only one who knows how to operate anything more complicated than a camera phone, and D. is always playing, so he can’t be “official photographer”. I am, if somewhat grudgingly, and I always end up with washed-out skies. Anyway, Darla even fixed Goddamn I Forgot The Polariser Again And The Sky is Washed-Out because she created a script that adds…blue sky and clouds! There’s another for just plain blue sky, but I think I like the clouds better. Again, something I could do in PS, but this I can do without booting to XP, without waiting for PS to load, and without any actual effort on my part. Yaaayyy again!

Dumbass forgot the polariser again, sky that was actually light summer-blue that day is washed out to white:

Same photo after running Darla’s script with defaults. I could have changed options, but wanted to see what it did with no effort on my part. Still not a great photo, but it’s a script, not Annie Leibovitz, and I think the results of the default are acceptable. If I wanted more blue, or more clouds, or fewer clouds, all I’d have to do would be to make a few adjustments to the values. That’s not too much effort, even for me.

Just for the hell of it, I tested the blue sky-only script, again using defaults. Looks good to me!

No, I don’t remember who that guy is, but his form looks pretty good, and he’s not foot-faulting.

Darla, wherever (and whomever) you are, thank you–you rock! When I lose your page in my four-fucking-billion bookmarks, I can find you here. 🙂