The GIMP Version 2.4 will be released end of 2005. We’ll likely be first to market a book about the new version. Other books are pre-Version 2.4 and very outdated Takes a project-based approach. Reader will be taught through real-world examples and projects immediately applicable for their own work GIMP is an emerging technology in Open Source that has been making big headlines. Was used to make the Scooby-Doo movie and the official mascot of Linux (Tux) GIMP works on Mac OSX, Linux, and Windows. This book shows how to install it on each platform. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author: Akkana Peck is a freelance software developer and writer who has been working with open source software for nearly 20 years. She has worked for a diverse collection of companies including Netscape, Silicon Graphics, Sun Technologies, Hewlett Packard, and Apple, and has written imaging software ranging from GIMP plug-ins, to cartography, to scientific visualization. Akkana is a longtime member of the GIMP community and enjoys giving GIMP courses and presentations, as well as filling up her hard drive with digital images. She lives in San Jose, California with her husband and a motley assortment of old computers.
You can find more of her musings at ShallowSky.com. Review: From the reviews: 'Peck’s textbook provides a thorough treatment of topics ranging from installation (on various platforms) and background on common graphic file formats, to drawing, photograph manipulation, filters/effects, and even scripting. In addition, a thorough treatment of the tools useful to experienced designers is provided. Peck’s book is effective in showing just how far GIMP has progressed in 12 years. Beginners may be surprised. With this free application, especially with the assistance of this clear, concise, and attractive textbook.'
(Ian van der Linde, ACM Computing Reviews, Vol. 49 (2), February, 2008) 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.
0 Comments Many DPS readers have requested more and more information about GIMP (sometimes referred to as The Gimp) photo editing software. As a freely licensed bit of photography software, the high interest is understandable. Before diving into some specific GIMP tips and tricks in future posts, I’d like to help bring those up to speed who may, after reading this far, still be thoroughly confused about what exactly I’m talking about. What this introduction will not be is a comparison between Photoshop and GIMP, but merely a stand alone introduction to the software you may find useful.
GIMP is a an attempt at answering the call for freely distributed image editing software. While Photoshop is widely regarded as the industry standard for all kinds of image manipulation, it’s costly and overblown for the average photographers use (ok, so I let in a.little.
comparison). Yes, Photoshop has a ton of useful tools, support and plugins available, but it was never available for Linux operating system users until the introduction of Wine. And it was those users of Linux who initially requested something to run on their operating system to manipulate photographs. GIMP’s, and can all be read on the official Gimp website, so I won’t get deep into where it came from.
It’s now available for Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX and Windows operating system. Not only that, but it’s lightweight enough to fit on a USB jumpdrive via.
GIMP’s program elements, or dialogs, can float anywhere on the screen. This gives the freedom to position, resize and customize the feel depending on the task at hand. The screen shot above (click to enlarge) shows some of the dialogs all spaced out on a desktop. You will notice there are two larger columns to the left and right of the main image, these are the docks. If you perfer to have your dialogs tabbed, they can be placed in the docks to help clear things up. Each dock comes with two panels each and the dialogs can be moved and arranged with drag and drop simplicity. A list of the available tabs/dialogs is always at hand in each of the docks (pictured at right).
GIMP has many useful photo editing tools such as the ability to make quick crops, rotation, and color adjustments. It also has more finite controls like curves, hue, saturation, channel mixing, layers, masking, sharpening, clone, heal and levels. It can handle a wide range of file types including JPEG, TIFF, PSD (Photoshops native file format), GIF and more. The program is also highly extendable and has a huge library of listed on the site. To get started, you will first need to download GIMP depending on your computer operating system.
The download page can be found. After the download and install process starting GIMP will bring up the main image window and the docks previously mentioned. If you are familiar with Windows or the general concept of windowed programs is familiar to you, GIMP may seem a bit odd at first, the way it just falls onto your screen without any kind of background to anchor it all together.
Depending on what you have going on, you may need to reduce the other programs on your computer to get a clear view. Opening an image is as simple as clicking on File and then Open, then selecting the file you wish to edit. You may also drag an image into the main window in GIMP or to the Dock in MacOSX to open it.
This includes images from a website or other program. Now it’s time to start playing!! First, take a look at the Toolbox pictured here at right. This is one of the main dialogs you’ll want to keep handy. For a quick run down of the buttons, left to right, top to bottom:.
Rectangle Select Tool – Select a rectangular region. Elipse Select Tool – Select circular regions. Free Select Tool – Lets you draw around objects. Fuzzy Select Tool – Selects areas based on like colors.
Select By Color – Pick a color, any color! SO thankful you are taking up this subject!! I downloaded Gimp a year ago, but did not have the slightest idea what all the different features and tools was, being a Picasa user, and gave up on using it. So I erased it and felt stupid: ) But now I see light at the end of the tunnel, and will download it right away and use your support to get me started – I´m really exited about this as I have all sorts of wild ideas of what to do with my shots 😀 DPS is my favourite website to learn from, I recommend you all the time, THANK YOU! I’ve worked on Linux for 4 years and GIMP was natural choose of photo editing software.
In my opinion this is great software and there are a lot of add-ons for it. I’ve realized that many techniques describing in “photoshop language” can be translate into GIMP. I hope here we will be able to find a lot of usefull information about postproduction.
The second great opensource program is digiKam. This is wonefull photo mangment aplication with ratings, tag, makig slideshows, exporing galleries to flickr, gallery, flash etc. And what is wonderfull there is very easy to use photo editor (kipi plugins). Davids Says: July 3rd, 2009 at 3:35 am I tried it quite some time ago. It immediately overwrote EVERY image (thousands) in my computer so that whatever image I opened, it opened in GIMP as opposed to the format in which it was saved. As a result, I couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough!!! What you saw was a windows file type association which you can change yourself.
It has nothing to do with the image files and The Gimp hasn’t touched a single one of them. Windows associates file types with applications to perform different tasks.
It was this association that changed, nothing more, nothing less. You would normally see something in the installation procedure asking whether you wish to associate certain file types “with this application”. I have been using The GIMP since version 1.2! There is nothing that I have found that PS can do that I cannot do in the GIMP. Some things in PS are automated but I have found that even then, I rather the manual result (as often PS over/under corrects) so the lack of built-in automation is not a problem.
For those for who it is, you can probably get a plug-in to make GIMP equally capable (or possibly better). The only other software I liked (before Corel bought them from Jasc) was Paint Shop Pro (PSP). It was worth the money.
I find that PS is a great product but it is overpriced even for all that it does. (I had used PS up to CS3 –along side The GIMP– at a marketing firm I worked at).
I am glad to see a respectable Photography group giving it the attention it deserves. Karim August 18, 2009 04:22 pm I have been using The GIMP since version 1.2!
There is nothing that I have found that PS can do that I cannot do in the GIMP. Some things in PS are automated but I have found that even then, I rather the manual result (as often PS over/under corrects) so the lack of built-in automation is not a problem. For those for who it is, you can probably get a plug-in to make GIMP equally capable (or possibly better). The only other software I liked (before Corel bought them from Jasc) was Paint Shop Pro (PSP). It was worth the money. I find that PS is a great product but it is overpriced even for all that it does. (I had used PS up to CS3 -along side The GIMP- at a marketing firm I worked at).
Akane Peck Gimp For Mac Free
I am glad to see a respectable Photography group giving it the attention it deserves. Mark July 5, 2009 02:11 pm R. Davids Says: July 3rd, 2009 at 3:35 am I tried it quite some time ago.
It immediately overwrote EVERY image (thousands) in my computer so that whatever image I opened, it opened in GIMP as opposed to the format in which it was saved. As a result, I couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough!!! What you saw was a windows file type association which you can change yourself. It has nothing to do with the image files and The Gimp hasn't touched a single one of them. Windows associates file types with applications to perform different tasks.
It was this association that changed, nothing more, nothing less. You would normally see something in the installation procedure asking whether you wish to associate certain file types 'with this application'. Kosmo2076 July 4, 2009 08:01 am I've worked on Linux for 4 years and GIMP was natural choose of photo editing software.
In my opinion this is great software and there are a lot of add-ons for it. I've realized that many techniques describing in 'photoshop language' can be translate into GIMP. I hope here we will be able to find a lot of usefull information about postproduction. The second great opensource program is digiKam. This is wonefull photo mangment aplication with ratings, tag, makig slideshows, exporing galleries to flickr, gallery, flash etc.
And what is wonderfull there is very easy to use photo editor (kipi plugins). Pigon July 4, 2009 02:15 am Thanks Peter for starting the series of tips on Gimp. I'm using Gimp on my windows machine where I don't have access to Photoshop. I'm very happy with it. It's really great free piece of software. It's not so intuitive to use as Photoshop and works slower, but you don't get the Ferrari for free either, right? I use Gimp mostly for cropping, adjusting curves and sharpening of my images.
Take a look here for recent example on how good these effects can be:. Pernille Winton July 3, 2009 03:30 am SO thankful you are taking up this subject!! I downloaded Gimp a year ago, but did not have the slightest idea what all the different features and tools was, being a Picasa user, and gave up on using it. So I erased it and felt stupid: ) But now I see light at the end of the tunnel, and will download it right away and use your support to get me started - I´m really exited about this as I have all sorts of wild ideas of what to do with my shots:D DPS is my favourite website to learn from, I recommend you all the time, THANK YOU! Elizabeth June 28, 2009 04:28 am I've been using GIMP for photo-manipulation and web design for about 2 years now, and absolutely love it. I just recently started using it for post-processing. However, I don't think it rates on quite the same scale as PS, having used both.
I had no trouble figuring out how to use GIMP or PS, but I like PS better. The tools are better refined, have more options, and is geared more toward a professional designer. I've found the blending capabilities and text options to also be far superior in PS. However, this is not to say that GIMP doesn't work, as it does, and it is the best free editing software that I've come across. Particularly with a tablet, GIMP can work just as well as PS. Richard Bott June 27, 2009 02:17 pm I've been using GIMP for about three years, and appreciate it, greatly.
(Not having used Photoshop in any of its incarnations, I didn't find it difficult to learn (The) GIMP. My friends who have tried to switch over have found more difficulties.) About the 16-bit thing - on the Linux 2.6 version (and perhaps on the Windows, too, I don't know) - there are the beginnings of 16-bit implementation using GEGL. At the moment, this is more along the lines of 'beta' or 'play with it', but I'm hopeful we'll see full implementation in 2.8. Please!!!) Peace - rb. Jenny June 26, 2009 11:14 pm I have been using GIMP for a while now and am delighted with it and with all the add-ons you can have fun 'playing' with your images or with more serious post-production adjustments. I also use another 'free' tool called faststone (www.faststone.org) to view my images before opening them with Gimp ( it also has some very useful editing tools). It acts like bridge, allowing you to view, rename, move.
Your images and it works for many image types including raw and then lets you edit it them with the selected external package of your choice. the two work very well together. UFRaw works brilliantly as a RAW-format import. Any and all tutorials for GIMP will be much appreciated Thanks for all your hard work. Bruce Simmons June 26, 2009 11:12 pm How do I say this? Thank you, thank you thank you!! Ever since ACDSee has been screwing me over with their bloated purchasing processes and then crashing software that they can't seem to find the time to answer my questions about, I've been desperately searching for a viable alternative.
There are some good ones out there like PhotoScape or InfranView, but I need power to put some punch into the process. That and a decent screenshot utility! I've downloaded and installed GIMP, but dang, it's like looking at the cockpit of an airliner! All those knobs and buttons and which the heck one to use first! This will be refreshing to be able to learn about the software I've had on my system for over a year now! Did I say thank you?
Shane June 26, 2009 07:26 am Woot! It is always nice to see (non-Adobe) software being recognized.
Just making the switch from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) and have been using Gimp (Windows version) for some time to help the switch be smoother. Like they said, Photoshop/Lightroom/etc do not have Linux versions. I'm just starting out in photography and I only use a fraction of Gimp's potential, I know Lightroom, etc would be wasted on me so far. More powerful than Picasa, more than good enough now. GET DAILY free tips, news and reviews via our RSS Feed Sign up to the free DPS PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE Subscribe. Guaranteed for 2 full months. Pay by PayPal or Credit Card.
Instant Digital Download GET DAILY free tips, news and reviews via our Sign up to the free DPS PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE Subscribe. Guaranteed for 2 full months.
Pay by PayPal or Credit Card. Instant Digital Download GET DAILY free tips, news and reviews via our Sign up to the free DPS PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE Subscribe. Guaranteed for 2 full months.
Pay by PayPal or Credit Card. Instant Digital Download.