blueMarine 0.9.RC1

blueMarine project is about an open source workflow for digital photography.

What does it mean?

Start thinking of an opensource application like Aperture or Lightroom that enables you to organize, develop, print and publish your photos. Pretty standard stuff nowadays. Opensource, at first sight, means that the application is free. Now think of an application written with the Java™ language: the application runs everywhere, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows. Now think of a community of people that adds code, plugins, crazy ideas, integrating some of the latest, cool technologies around, such as GPS positioning or geo-mapping.

Well, this is just the core concept of the blueMarine project.

Lets go on and lets think of the workflow. For the existing commercial applications the workflow starts just after shooting the photo and ends with a print on paper, the photo archived and maybe a web gallery published.

Just for a starter, we could do these things in innovative ways. For instance, trip reports could take advantage of GPS positioning data and Google Maps. Galleries could be presented in form of a virtual 3d gallery with walls and pictures hang on them.

Thinking of it twice, there are holes in workflows supported by current commercial applications. For instance, if you want to filter your images with a sophisticated noise reduction algorithm or if you want to create a bigger composite photo out of several shots, you likely have to use an external application. Some communities, such as amateur astrophotographers, need some very special processing that is usually performed by means of specific software. Wouldnt be better to have all of these facilities integrated in a single front end?

Now, lets broaden our workflow horizon. It can extend well beyond the print or the archival. For instance, an ornithologist usually manages field notes about the bird observed and photographed: directly binding them to photos and maybe GPS positioning data is much better than keeping a separate Excel sheet. It can also start much before shooting the photo. Think of trip planning: maybe you travel to nice places and spot interesting subjects, but not all the conditions are favorable: the weather, the light, the sun position, or the season (snow, blossomed flowers, foliage colors). Maybe you take some photos but at home you decide: hey, Im going to return there next Fall when the trees are reddish. Wouldnt be cool if a software application could allow you to easily manage all of these wanna-shoot-again photos, maybe providing assistance to guess which will be the sun position in a certain day and hour and integrating weather forecasts? And synthetising a trip program that can be uploaded on your palm gear?

Theres a further point with opensource photo workflow. Its related to the world of camera raw formats, that is the way professional DSLR cameras work. They provide you with the raw bits from the sensor that need to be extensively cooked, or developed, for getting a good image. This approach gives a tremendous amount of control to the photographers - too bad that most formats are proprietary and not documented. blueMarine supports the OpenRAW initiative and provide an opensource implementation of developing tools for camera raw formats from an ever increasing number of vendors.

Well, all of this and more is the aim of the blueMarine project.