Newsletter from LaBelleNote

**Christophe Mineau** · Jul 20, 2015, 05:38 AM

Hi,
If anyone possibly interested in seeing what I do, apart from tools,
I just released the last newsletter, from my Web site :
Newsletter - LaBelleNote.fr - 2015 June and July

You can also subscribe to this newsletter, see the Welcome page, at the bottom also.

Thanks for reading,
Christophe

**Paul Jones** · Jul 30, 2015, 09:39 AM

Christophe,
Thank you for the link and invitation to subscribe to your newsletter. You have created a very beautiful website with an enormous amount of useful information. Thank you for sharing your talent and insight. I am sure it will inspire others to follow and further improve on your ideas and projects.
Regards, Paul R Jones

**Christophe Mineau** · Jul 30, 2015, 12:14 PM

Thank you so much Paul !

**Jon** · Jul 30, 2015, 11:07 PM

I am a subscriber too; this is one of my favorite newsletters

**DIYer** · Jul 31, 2015, 08:20 PM

I noticed that you use Photofiltre too. Great little piece of editing software if all you need to do is crop, resize, and do some color adjustments. It's no Photoshop, but it loads in seconds and is portable.

**Christophe Mineau** · Aug 1, 2015, 02:53 AM

Thanks Jon and Dyier,

Yes Photofiltre is great, and can do much more than that !
I have the pro license, phorofiltre studio, (which is very inexpensive ~30€, that's not photoshop), and it enables lots of things, I do everything with it.
For usual photo job, but also for my designs, especially if I want to start from pictures or scanned plans.
It has a wonderful add-on that allows to measure accurately from one point to another on the picture, with any scale factor you want.
The layer management is great also, and it now feature vectorial drawing also, with Bezier and so on.
The automation and batch management is also very efficient.

I am usually a total supporter for open source solutions, I can't understand people who pay thousands of €/$ for commercial solutions when a community based , pretty equivalent solution exists.
I am also against any kind of piracy and honestly, most of the people I see using photoshop CSxx actually use a cracked version.

So my favourite open source suites are : LibreOffice, Audacity, Inkscape, Blender (don't use it often), and lately I discovered the great FreeCAD dor 3D modeling, and I probably forget several ...

But I have exceptions :
- Windows 7 : I professionally always use and support Linux for embedded solutions, but for desktop, thought I have it on a couple of PCs (there are 10 PC in the house ;-) ), I must admit I always come back to Windows, especially 7, and I am starting to like a little bit 8.1 with touch screens. But that's too expensive !
- Photofiltre, I don't really like the gimp, and Photofiltre is not expensive, I am ok with supporting the developer (French) who makes his living only with that and who is always active.
- QCAD , same thing. It is actually open source, but the main developer makes his living only with the commercial version he offers for a very small fee also, so I purchased the license, and I support him (very accessible for support through his FB page)
- MelodyAssistant for music writing, same thing, little company who offers a top quality soft for very few, I support them

I am too talkative ...

Maybe Ken it an idea for a new question topic,

Have all a good Week End !
Christophe

**DIYer** · Aug 4, 2015, 09:02 PM

Hi Christophe, I used to have a dual-boot Vista/Ubuntu laptop but now have a dedicated Ubuntu netbook and a Win 7 laptop. Never became enamored of Windows 8, but am looking at Windows 10 seriously. Maybe I'll keep running my desktop on 7 and go to 10 on my Windows laptop. Like you, I prefer open source, and portable, if it meets my needs.