When clicking Download the latest version at BerliOS instead of a downloading page you will see this warning notice:

«Secure Connection Failed

developer.berlios.de uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)»

Click the link labelled Or you can add an exception...

Click the Add Exception... button.

A dialog will open, showing https://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9877 as location. Press the Get Certificate button.

The Certificate Status label will say: This site attempts to identify itself with invalid information. Press the View button.

This is the source of the warning. The certificate is issued to the OU called BerliOS and it's issued by the OU BerliOS. This is, it's a self signed certificate. This is OK for testing scenarios, and cannot be considered a serious issue as far as no money is involved in transactions with this site. Communication will be ciphered nevertheless. So go for it and create the exception so you can downolad software.

Press the Close button.

In the Add Security Exception dialog, press the Confirm Security Exception button.

The download page will open. Enjoy!

Some people have reported an error while trying to download Lomo-Gimp from BerliOS. In this case, «error» is such a big word. This is not the case.

When clicking the download link, a warning dialog could open telling that the website at *.berlios.de is certified by an unknown authority. This only means that the public key used to establish the SSL communication is not signed by a CA known to your browser, or that that signature has expired. In any case SSL will work and you will be able to download the software simply telling the dialog to accept the certificate, temporarly or permanently.

That kind of error surely could be a problem when money is involved, i.e. at an online store or at a bank website. Never tell your financial data to a web site which public key's certificate is not valid. Simply for downloading software, everything is correct.

Lomo-Gimp is a Photoshop quality script that tries to give your digital pictures the warmth of those taken by an old rangefinder analog camera. Think of it as a Kodak Instamatic or a Lomo Holga faking effect. It enhances contrast and saturation, and applies a light and a dark overlay, trying to emulate incorrectness in exposition. Please note this does nothing —still it does!— to emulate the chromatic aberration peculiar in pictures taken using a real Lomo.

Lomo-Gimp is distributed under a HESSLA license. Copy it, modify it, pass it to others as if it was GPL in most cases. Simply don't use it to do anything against fundamental Human Rights or the license will be revoked.

If you find this useful, consider donating.

How to install it

Download the latest version at BerliOS. If having problems downloading from BerliOS using Firefox 3, read here. Or use this alternate download location. Unzip it to a temporal directory of your choice.

If running Linux, use the gimptool command:

  $ gimptool --install-script lomo-gimp.scm
    

Or look under the ~/.gimp/scripts folder. If running Windows, look under %HOME%\.gimp\scripts, or under %USERPROFILE%\.gimp\scripts if %HOME% is not defined. Put the lomo-gimp.scm file there. Then restart the GIMP or do a refresh by using Xtns, Script-Fu, Refresh Scripts from the toolbox. The script will now appear in the Script-Fu, Alchemy menu.

Find more scripts at the GIMP Plugin Registry.

How to use it

Launch the script. Select the desired enhancement level for contrast and saturation. The default 20 is nice in most cases but feel free to select a higher or lower value. Select also the opacity of the bright and shadow layer. The higher the opacity, the more present the effect of incorrectness in exposition. If result image is too dark, unselect duplication of the shadow layer. Flattening image after processing and working on copy is the default and works in most cases. Please note:

• If levels have already been tweaked so as to expand colors, lower values of enhancement in saturation and contrast will be needed. If these values are too large, the result will be a nasty pixelation effect. This can be nice if used as a special effect, but don't count on anybody thinking of it as the real thing!
  
  
• Make several attempts with different parameters and choose the most interesting result. Can't be guessed in advance which one it will be!
  

Please tell the author if you find the script useful, if you find the effect convincing enough, or how to improve it!

A bit of before/after

Thanks Rai for the picture. She's our friend América and looks lovely.

Links

Faking Lomo, by Thijs van der Vossen, the article that started it all.
The Lomo Fakers League and the faux lomo group at Flickr.
The Lomographic Society International.
My pictures tagged arte at Flickr, where the effect is used extensively.