Latest news with #Gimp
Time Out
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
A Simple Accident
It's a suitably arresting set-up for Jafar Panahi' s politically charged and darkly hilarious abduction movie – especially when it becomes clear what's going on: impulsive mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) believes he's caught the brutal interrogator who once tortured him for three months and left him scarred – a man given the epithets 'Peg Leg' and 'the Gimp' by his victims. The guy in cuffs has a prosthetic leg, just like the Gimp, who lost his fighting in Syria. It scans. But like so much else in this blackly brilliant film, a question mark hangs over this Blood Simple- style scenario. Is this man, played by Ebrahim Azizi, really the author of his suffering or is he just a family man called Eghbal, as he claims? All the Gimp's victims were blindfolded, so how can anyone be sure? Panahi is a formidably courageous filmmaker who has spent time in jail at the hands of his country's repressive regime. Here, he brings deep feeling to a movie that often plays closer to a straight comedy than a fiercer indictment of the state or a Munich -like morality tale about justice and vengeance. You can definitely sense the directorial wish-fulfilment in the carnivalesque that follows as Vahid drags the drugged Eghbal around Tehran in his beat-up transit van, gathering a small band of fellow victims to help him identify the man and decide what to do with him. Joining this increasingly hapless quest are wedding snapper Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a soon-to-be newlywed couple (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi), and the relentlessly impulsive Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr). All have traumatic personal connects to the torturer. Farhadi has a whale of a time taking the piss out of his country's corruption The director is clearly having a whale of a time taking the piss out of the corruption, cruelty and bribery rife in his country. One police officer even fishes out a card reader to take a bribe when the gang don't have cash to hand to get out of a tight spot. Panahi holds this tonal range expertly as laughs give away to a probing, philosophical third act that upends expectations in quietly thrilling style. And there's deep seriousness, and a streak of real darkness, beneath the big laughs. The fact that a soon-to-be-married couple, dressed in their wedding finery for a photoshoot that Vahid has interrupted, join the revenge mission is not just the punchline for some great jokes, it feels symbolic too. A Simple Accident is a journey through a county whose trauma still needs healing before healthy new bonds can begin to form. The question of how to achieve that lies at the heart of this masterful movie.
WIRED
07-02-2025
- WIRED
Photopea Is a Free Photoshop Alternative That Runs in the Browser
When you need to edit photos, you don't have to download expensive or complicated software. Photopea is free to use, easy to grasp, and does most of what you need. Sometimes you need to quickly edit a photo but don't want to bother paying for Photoshop or installing an unfamiliar desktop image editor. Photopea is a free, ad-supported application that runs entirely in the web browser. It offers many of the same features as the marquee photo-editing applications but does not require you to download anything or pay for an expensive user license. Photoshop needs no introduction among photographers and other creative professionals. And there's a pretty great free alternative to Photoshop already: Gimp, an open-source photo editor that's very powerful. Why bother with Photopea in a world where that application exists? Well, for one thing, Photopea runs inside a browser tab, meaning you can use it on devices you'd rather not install software on. For example: if you're helping a family member organize their photos and need to quickly edit a couple of them, it's easier to open a website than it is to install an entire tool they're never going to use again. The same thing goes at work: you might not want to, or have permission to, install software on a work device, particularly if editing photos isn't normally part of your job. Chromebooks are another example. Photopea is perfect for all of them. Adding Files to Photopea To get starting using the app just head to that simple. You don't need to make an account to use it. Just drag any photo you want to edit from your file browser and drop it into the browser window. Any image format is supported, including RAW files. You can also upload PDF files, though when I tested those, the results were mixed. Just drag and drop your image files onto the workspace to get started. Courtesy of Justin Pot Photopea also, notably, supports Adobe's native file formats including .PSD (Photoshop), .AI (Illustrator) and .XD (XD) files alongside .FIG (Figma) files. This means you can edit files created in those applications. There's even support for importing .ATN files, which are automations you can create in Photoshop to adjust multiple image parameters with one click. Photopea supports saving any image as a PSD file and preserving the file's image layers, meaning you could in theory use it to collaborate with someone working in Photoshop. It can also export to common image filetypes like JPEG and PNG. It's worth noting that Photopea, despite running in your web browser, runs entirely on your device. This means you don't need to upload your photos to the internet in order to use it. It also means you can disconnect from the internet and continue editing—just don't close the tab or you'll lose your work. If you'd rather store files online, the web app supports saving files in Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive. Editing Files in Photopea Photopea, like Photoshop, would be hard to fully explain in a single article—there are just too many features to list here. I recommend checking out Photopea's documentation, which is quite thorough. To put it simply, most everything you can do in Photoshop you can do in Photopea. The tools won't always be identical, granted, but they come surprisingly close. And the user interface of Photopea very closely resembles that of Photoshop. I used Photoshop a lot back when I worked at a weekly newspaper, and everything in Photopea is exactly where I expected it to be. This means you can do things like adjust the levels or apply filters by using the menu bar. It also means the left side panel, full of icons for things like selecting tools, drawing, and adding text are right where you'd expect to find them. On the left side you will find the history and layer drawers. Basically, if you know your way around Photoshop, you're not going to have a hard time adjusting. And the features all work quite well. I'm not a Photoshop expert, and I'm sure a true expert will find many shortcomings. But for just about anyone who needs to do some photo editing or collaborate with somebody using Adobe's tools, Photopea is a capable replacement that can step in to serve in a pinch. It's a common saying among photographers: the best camera is the one you have with you. Photopea is the photo editing software that you always have with you, provided you have a web browser. The Downsides There are a few limitations to consider. For one thing if you close the tab where you have Photopea open, your work is basically gone. I wish there was a pop-up warning. The biggest drawback for me is the gigantic wall of ads taking up the right side of the screen. These ads change frequently, making for a visually distracting experience. Ad blockers don't help much; the big empty void next to your workspace remains and you're constantly seeing pop-ups asking you to turn off the ad blockers. The only way to get rid of the ads is to pay Photopea a $5 monthly subscription fee that also adds AI features and 5 GB of online storage. Whether that's worth the price is probably going to come down to how often you use the application. It's a great deal cheaper than Photoshop in any case; paid subscriptions for that app start at $23 per month.
