GNU Image Manipulation Program

User Manual

September 29, 2016

GNU Image Manipulation Program

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 The
GIMP Documentation Team

Legal Notice

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is
included in the section enphrased GNU Free Documentation License.

ii
Contents

I Getting Started 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Welcome to GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.2 The GIMP Help system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 Features and Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 What’s New in GIMP 2.8? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Fire up the GIMP 11

2.1 Running GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.1 Known Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.2 Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.3 Command Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Starting GIMP the first time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.1 Finally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3 First Steps with Wilber 15

3.1 Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Main Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2.1 The Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2.2 Image Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.3 Dialogs and Docking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Undoing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.1 Things That Cannot be Undone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.4 Common Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.4.1 Intention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.4.2 Change the Size of an Image for the screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.4.3 Change the Size of an Image for print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.4.4 Compressing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4.5 Crop An Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.6 Find Info About Your Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4.7 Change the Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4.8 Flip An Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.4.9 Rotate An Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4.10 Separating an Object From Its Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5 How to Draw Straight Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.5.1 Intention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.5.2 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4 Getting Unstuck 53
4.1 Getting Unstuck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1.1 Stuck! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.1.2 Common Causes of GIMP Non-Responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

II How do I Become a GIMP Wizard? 57

5 Getting Images into GIMP 59
5.1 Image Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.2 Creating new Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3 Opening Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3.1 Open File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

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5.3.2 Open Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

5.3.3 Open Recent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.4 Using External Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.5 File Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.6 Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.7 Copy and Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.3.8 Image Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

6 Getting Images out of GIMP 65

6.1 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.1.1 Save / Export Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.1.2 File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.2 Preparing your Images for the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.2.1 Images with an Optimal Size/Quality Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.2.2 Reducing the File Size Even More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.2.3 Saving Images with Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

7 Painting with GIMP 77

7.1 The Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
7.1.1 Feathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
7.1.2 Making a Selection Partially Transparent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.2 Creating and Using Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.2.1 Moving a Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.2.2 Adding or subtracting selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.3 The QuickMask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
7.3.2 Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
7.4 Using QuickMask Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.5 Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.5.1 Path Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7.5.2 Path Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7.5.3 Paths and Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.5.4 Transforming Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.5.5 Stroking a Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
7.5.6 Paths and Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.5.7 Paths and SVG files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.6 Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.7 Adding New Brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
7.8 The GIH Dialog Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.9 Varying brush size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.9.1 How to vary the height of a brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.9.2 Creating a brush quickly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7.10 Gradients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
7.11 Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
7.12 Palettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
7.12.1 Colormap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
7.13 Presets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.14 Drawing Simple Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.14.1 Drawing a Straight Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
7.14.2 Creating a Basic Shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

8 Combining Images 107

8.1 Introduction to Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8.1.1 Layer Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
8.2 Layer Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8.3 Creating New Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
8.4 Layer Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

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9 Text Management 129

9.1 Text Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
9.1.1 Text Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
9.1.2 Managing Text Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
9.1.3 Text Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
9.1.4 Text Context Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
9.2 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
9.2.1 Embellishing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
9.2.2 Adding Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
9.2.3 Font Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

10 Enhancing Photographs 137

10.1 Working with Digital Camera Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
10.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
10.1.2 Improving Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
10.1.3 Improving Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
10.1.4 Adjusting Sharpness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
10.1.5 Removing Unwanted Objects from an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.1.6 Saving Your Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

11 Color Management with GIMP 145

11.1 Color Management in GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
11.1.1 Problems of a non Color Managed Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
11.1.2 Introduction to a Color Managed Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

12 Enrich my GIMP 149

12.1 Preferences Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
12.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
12.1.2 Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
12.1.3 Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
12.1.4 Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
12.1.5 Help System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
12.1.6 Tool Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
12.1.7 Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
12.1.8 Default Image Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
12.1.9 Default Image Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
12.1.10 Image Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
12.1.11 Image Window Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
12.1.12 Image Window Title and Statusbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
12.1.13 Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
12.1.14 Color Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
12.1.15 Input Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
12.1.16 Input Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
12.1.17 Window Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
12.1.18 Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
12.1.19 Data Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
12.2 Grids and Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
12.2.1 The Image Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
12.2.2 Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
12.3 Rendering a Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
12.4 How to Set Your Tile Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
12.5 Creating Shortcuts to Menu Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
12.6 Customize Splash-Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

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13 Scripting 177
13.1 Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
13.1.2 Using Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
13.1.3 Installing New Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
13.1.4 Writing Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
13.2 Using Script-Fu Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.2.1 Script-Fu? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.2.2 Installing Script-Fus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.2.3 Do’s and Don’ts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.2.4 Different Kinds Of Script-Fus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
13.2.5 Standalone Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
13.2.6 Image-Dependent Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
13.3 A Script-Fu Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
13.3.1 Getting Acquainted With Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
13.3.2 Variables And Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13.3.3 Lists, Lists And More Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
13.3.4 Your First Script-Fu Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
13.3.5 Giving Our Script Some Guts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
13.3.6 Extending The Text Box Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
13.3.7 Your script and its working . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

III Function Reference 203

14 Tools 205
14.1 The Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
14.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
14.1.2 Tool Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
14.1.3 Color and Indicator Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
14.1.4 Tool Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
14.2 Selection Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
14.2.1 Common Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
14.2.2 Rectangle Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
14.2.3 Ellipse Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
14.2.4 Free Selection (Lasso) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
14.2.5 Fuzzy selection (Magic wand) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
14.2.6 Select By Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
14.2.7 Intelligent Scissors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
14.2.8 Foreground Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
14.3 Paint Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
14.3.1 Common Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
14.3.2 Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
14.3.3 Brush Tools (Pencil, Paintbrush, Airbrush) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
14.3.4 Bucket Fill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
14.3.5 Blend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
14.3.6 Pencil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
14.3.7 Paintbrush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
14.3.8 Eraser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
14.3.9 Airbrush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
14.3.10 Ink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
14.3.11 Clone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
14.3.12 Heal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
14.3.13 Perspective Clone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
14.3.14 Blur/Sharpen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
14.3.15 Smudge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
14.3.16 Dodge/Burn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
14.4 Transform Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
14.4.1 Common Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

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14.4.2 Align . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

14.4.3 Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
14.4.4 Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
14.4.5 Rotate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
14.4.6 Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
14.4.7 Shear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
14.4.8 Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
14.4.9 Flip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
14.4.10 The Cage Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
14.5 Color Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
14.5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
14.5.2 Color Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
14.5.3 Hue-Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
14.5.4 Colorize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
14.5.5 Brightness-Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
14.5.6 Threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
14.5.7 Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
14.5.8 Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
14.5.9 Posterize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
14.5.10 Desaturate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
14.6 Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
14.6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
14.6.2 Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
14.6.3 Color Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
14.6.4 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
14.6.5 Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
14.6.6 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
14.6.7 GEGL Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

15 Dialogs 329
15.1 Dialog Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
15.2 Image Structure Related Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
15.2.1 Layers Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
15.2.2 Channels Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
15.2.3 Paths Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
15.2.4 Colormap Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
15.2.5 Histogram dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
15.2.6 Navigation Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
15.2.7 Undo History Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
15.3 Image-content Related Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
15.3.1 FG/BG Color Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
15.3.2 Brushes Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
15.3.3 Patterns Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
15.3.4 Gradients Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
15.3.5 Palettes Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
15.3.6 Tagging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
15.3.7 Fonts Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
15.4 Image Management Related Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
15.4.1 Buffers Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
15.4.2 Images Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
15.4.3 Document History Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
15.4.4 Templates Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
15.5 Misc. Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
15.5.1 Tool Presets Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
15.5.2 Tool Preset Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
15.5.3 Device Status Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
15.5.4 Error Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
15.5.5 Save File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
15.5.6 Export File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

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15.5.7 Sample Points Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

15.5.8 Pointer Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

16 Menus 397
16.1 Introduction to Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
16.1.1 The Image Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
16.1.2 Context Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
16.1.3 Tear-off menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
16.1.4 Tab menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
16.2 The “File” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
16.2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
16.2.2 New… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
16.2.3 Create . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
16.2.4 Open… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
16.2.5 Open as Layers… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
16.2.6 Open Location… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
16.2.7 Open Recent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
16.2.8 Save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
16.2.9 Save as… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
16.2.10 Save a Copy… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
16.2.11 Revert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
16.2.12 Export… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
16.2.13 Export As… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
16.2.14 Create Template… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
16.2.15 Print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
16.2.16 Close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
16.2.17 Close all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
16.2.18 Quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
16.3 The “Edit” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
16.3.1 “Edit” Menu Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
16.3.2 Undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
16.3.3 Redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
16.3.4 Fade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
16.3.5 Undo History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
16.3.6 Cut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
16.3.7 Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
16.3.8 Copy Visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
16.3.9 Paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
16.3.10 Paste Into . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
16.3.11 Paste as . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
16.3.12 Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
16.3.13 Clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
16.3.14 Fill with FG Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
16.3.15 Fill with BG Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
16.3.16 Fill with Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
16.3.17 Stroke Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
16.3.18 Stroke Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
16.3.19 The “Preferences” Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
16.3.20 Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
16.3.21 Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
16.3.22 Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
16.4 The “Select” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
16.4.1 Introduction to the “Select” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
16.4.2 Select All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
16.4.3 None . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
16.4.4 Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
16.4.5 Float . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
16.4.6 By Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
16.4.7 From Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

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16.4.8 Selection Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

16.4.9 Feather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
16.4.10 Sharpen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
16.4.11 Shrink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
16.4.12 Grow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
16.4.13 Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
16.4.14 Distort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
16.4.15 Rounded Rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
16.4.16 Toggle QuickMask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
16.4.17 Save to Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
16.4.18 To Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
16.5 The “View” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
16.5.1 Introduction to the “View” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
16.5.2 New View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
16.5.3 Dot for Dot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
16.5.4 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
16.5.5 Shrink Wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
16.5.6 Full Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
16.5.7 Navigation Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
16.5.8 Display Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
16.5.9 Show Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
16.5.10 Show Layer Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
16.5.11 Show Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
16.5.12 Show Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
16.5.13 Show Sample Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
16.5.14 Snap to Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
16.5.15 Snap to Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
16.5.16 Snap to Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
16.5.17 Snap to Active Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
16.5.18 Padding Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
16.5.19 Show Menubar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
16.5.20 Show Rulers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
16.5.21 Show Scrollbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
16.5.22 Show Statusbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
16.6 The “Image” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
16.6.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
16.6.2 Duplicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
16.6.3 Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
16.6.4 RGB mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
16.6.5 Grayscale mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
16.6.6 Indexed mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
16.6.7 Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
16.6.8 Flip Horizontally; Flip Vertically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
16.6.9 Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
16.6.10 Guillotine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
16.6.11 Canvas Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
16.6.12 Fit Canvas to Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
16.6.13 Fit Canvas to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
16.6.14 Print Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
16.6.15 Scale Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
16.6.16 Crop to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
16.6.17 Autocrop Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
16.6.18 Zealous Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
16.6.19 Merge Visible Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
16.6.20 Flatten Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
16.6.21 Align Visible Layers… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
16.6.22 Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
16.6.23 New Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
16.6.24 New Guide (by Percent) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

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16.6.25 New Guides from Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

16.6.26 Remove all guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
16.6.27 Configure Grid… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
16.6.28 Image Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
16.7 The “Layer” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
16.7.1 Introduction to the “Layer” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
16.7.2 New Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
16.7.3 New Layer Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
16.7.4 New From Visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
16.7.5 Duplicate layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
16.7.6 Anchor layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
16.7.7 Merge Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
16.7.8 Delete Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
16.7.9 The Text Commands of the Layer Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
16.7.10 Discard Text Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
16.7.11 “Stack” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
16.7.12 Select Previous Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
16.7.13 Select Next Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
16.7.14 Select Top Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
16.7.15 Select Bottom Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
16.7.16 Raise Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
16.7.17 Lower Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
16.7.18 Layer to Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
16.7.19 Layer to Bottom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
16.7.20 The “Reverse Layer Order” command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
16.7.21 The “Mask” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
16.7.22 Add Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
16.7.23 Apply Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
16.7.24 Delete Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
16.7.25 Show Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
16.7.26 Edit Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
16.7.27 Disable Layer Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
16.7.28 Mask to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
16.7.29 Add Layer Mask to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
16.7.30 Subtract Layer Mask from Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
16.7.31 Intersect Layer Mask with Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
16.7.32 The “Transparency” Submenu of the “Layer” menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
16.7.33 Add Alpha Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
16.7.34 Remove Alpha Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
16.7.35 Color to Alpha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
16.7.36 Semi-flatten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
16.7.37 Threshold Alpha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
16.7.38 Alpha to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
16.7.39 Add Alpha channel to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
16.7.40 Subtract from Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
16.7.41 Intersect Alpha channel with Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
16.7.42 The “Transform” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
16.7.43 Flip Horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
16.7.44 Flip Vertically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
16.7.45 Rotate 90° clockwise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
16.7.46 Rotate 90° counter-clockwise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
16.7.47 Rotate 180° . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
16.7.48 Arbitrary Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
16.7.49 Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
16.7.50 Layer Boundary Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
16.7.51 Layer to Image Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
16.7.52 Scale Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
16.7.53 Crop to Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
16.7.54 Autocrop Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500

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16.8 The “Colors” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

16.8.1 Introduction to the “Colors” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
16.8.2 Colors Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
16.8.3 Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
16.8.4 Value Invert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
16.8.5 Use GEGL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
16.8.6 The “Auto” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
16.8.7 Equalize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
16.8.8 White Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
16.8.9 Color Enhance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
16.8.10 Normalize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
16.8.11 Stretch Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
16.8.12 Stretch HSV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
16.8.13 The “Components” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
16.8.14 Channel Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
16.8.15 Compose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
16.8.16 Decompose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
16.8.17 Recompose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
16.8.18 The “Map” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
16.8.19 Rearrange Colormap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
16.8.20 Set Colormap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
16.8.21 Alien Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
16.8.22 Color Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
16.8.23 Gradient Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
16.8.24 Palette Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
16.8.25 Rotate Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
16.8.26 Sample Colorize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
16.8.27 The “Info” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
16.8.28 Histogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
16.8.29 Border Average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
16.8.30 Colorcube Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
16.8.31 Smooth Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
16.8.32 The Color Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
16.8.33 Colorify… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
16.8.34 Color to Alpha… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
16.8.35 Filter Pack… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
16.8.36 Hot… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
16.8.37 Maximum RGB… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
16.8.38 Retinex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
16.9 The “Tools” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
16.9.1 Introduction to the “Tools” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
16.10The “Filters” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
16.10.1 Introduction to the “Filters” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
16.10.2 Repeat Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
16.10.3 Re-show Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
16.10.4 Reset All Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
16.10.5 The “Python-Fu” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
16.10.6 The “Script-Fu” Submenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
16.11“Windows” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
16.12The “Help” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
16.12.1 Introduction to the “Help” Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
16.12.2 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
16.12.3 Context Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
16.12.4 Tip of the Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
16.12.5 About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
16.12.6 Plug-In Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
16.12.7 The Procedure Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
16.12.8 GIMP online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554

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CONTENTS

17 Filters 555
17.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
17.1.1 Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
17.2 Blur Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
17.2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
17.2.2 Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
17.2.3 Gaussian Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
17.2.4 Selective Gaussian Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
17.2.5 Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
17.2.6 Pixelise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
17.2.7 Tileable Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564
17.3 Enhance Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
17.3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
17.3.2 Antialias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
17.3.3 Deinterlace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
17.3.4 Despeckle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
17.3.5 Destripe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
17.3.6 NL Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
17.3.7 Red Eye Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
17.3.8 Sharpen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
17.3.9 Unsharp Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
17.4 Distort Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
17.4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
17.4.2 Blinds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
17.4.3 Curve Bend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
17.4.4 Emboss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
17.4.5 Engrave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
17.4.6 Erase Every Other Row . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
17.4.7 IWarp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
17.4.8 Lens Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
17.4.9 Mosaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
17.4.10 Newsprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
17.4.11 Page Curl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
17.4.12 Polar Coords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
17.4.13 Ripple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
17.4.14 Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
17.4.15 Value Propagate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
17.4.16 Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
17.4.17 Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
17.4.18 Whirl and Pinch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
17.4.19 Wind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
17.4.20 Apply Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
17.5 Light and Shadow Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
17.5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
17.5.2 Gradient Flare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
17.5.3 Lens Flare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
17.5.4 Lighting Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616
17.5.5 Sparkle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
17.5.6 Supernova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622
17.5.7 Drop Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
17.5.8 Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
17.5.9 Xach-Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
17.5.10 Glass Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
17.6 Noise Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
17.6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
17.6.2 HSV Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
17.6.3 Hurl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
17.6.4 Pick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
17.6.5 RGB Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635

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17.6.6 Slur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637

17.6.7 Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638
17.7 Edge-Detect Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
17.7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
17.7.2 Difference of Gaussians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
17.7.3 Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642
17.7.4 Laplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644
17.7.5 Neon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644
17.7.6 Sobel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645
17.8 Generic Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
17.8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
17.8.2 Convolution Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 646
17.8.3 Dilate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
17.8.4 Erode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
17.9 Combine Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
17.9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
17.9.2 Depth Merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
17.9.3 Filmstrip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655
17.10Artistic Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
17.10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
17.10.2 Apply Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657
17.10.3 Cartoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
17.10.4 Clothify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660
17.10.5 Cubism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661
17.10.6 GIMPressionist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
17.10.7 Oilify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
17.10.8 Photocopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
17.10.9 Predator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676
17.10.10Softglow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678
17.10.11Van Gogh (LIC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
17.10.12Weave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
17.11Decor Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
17.11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683
17.11.2 Add Bevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
17.11.3 Add Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
17.11.4 Coffee Stain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686
17.11.5 Fuzzy Border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
17.11.6 Old Photo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
17.11.7 Round Corners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
17.11.8 Slide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 693
17.11.9 Stencil Carve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
17.11.10Stencil Chrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696
17.12Map Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
17.12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
17.12.2 Bump Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
17.12.3 Displace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 701
17.12.4 Fractal Trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705
17.12.5 Illusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
17.12.6 Make Seamless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
17.12.7 Map Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708
17.12.8 Paper Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712
17.12.9 Small Tiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
17.12.10Tile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715
17.12.11Warp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 716
17.13Rendering Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
17.13.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
17.13.2 Difference Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
17.13.3 Fog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720
17.13.4 Plasma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721

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17.13.5 Solid Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 722

17.13.6 Flame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723
17.13.7 IFS Fractal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 726
17.13.8 Checkerboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731
17.13.9 CML Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732
17.13.10Diffraction Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737
17.13.11Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738
17.13.12Jigsaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
17.13.13Maze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
17.13.14Qbist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
17.13.15Sinus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 744
17.13.16Circuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 746
17.13.17Fractal Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 747
17.13.18Gfig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752
17.13.19Lava . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754
17.13.20Line Nova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755
17.13.21Sphere Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 757
17.13.22Spyrogimp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
17.14 Web Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761
17.14.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761
17.14.2 ImageMap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 761
17.14.3 Semi-Flatten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 766
17.14.4 Slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
17.15Animation Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
17.15.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
17.15.2 Blend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
17.15.3 Burn-In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771
17.15.4 Rippling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
17.15.5 Spinning Globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
17.15.6 Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775
17.15.7 Optimize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776
17.15.8 Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
17.16Alpha to Logo Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
17.16.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
17.16.2 3D Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778
17.16.3 Alien Glow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781
17.16.4 Alien Neon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 782
17.16.5 Basic I & II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783
17.16.6 Blended . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784
17.16.7 Bovination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 785
17.16.8 Chalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
17.16.9 Chip Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
17.16.10Chrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 790
17.16.11Comic Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
17.16.12Cool Metal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
17.16.13Frosty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
17.16.14Glossy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 794
17.16.15Glowing Hot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 796
17.16.16Gradient Bevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 798
17.16.17Neon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799
17.16.18Particle Trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
17.16.19Textured . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 802

xiv
CONTENTS

18 Keys and Mouse Reference 805

18.1 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
18.2 Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
18.3 File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806
18.4 Dialogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807
18.5 View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808
18.6 Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
18.7 Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
18.8 Select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
18.9 Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810
18.10Zoom tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 810

IV Glossary 811

V Bibliography 829
18.11Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
18.12Online resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831

VI GIMP History 835

.1 The Very Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837
.2 The Early Days of GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 837
.3 The One to Change the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 838
.4 Version 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 838
.5 What’s New in GIMP 2.2? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 841
.6 What’s New in GIMP 2.4? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 842
.7 What’s New in GIMP 2.6? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 844

VII Reporting Bugs and Requesting Enhancements 849

.8 Making sure it’s a Bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851
.8.1 Find a Specific Bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852
.8.2 The Advanced Bug Search Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852
.9 Reporting the Bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853
.10 What Happens to a Bug Report after you Submit it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 855

VIII GNU Free Documentation License 857

.11 PREAMBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 859
.12 APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 859
.13 VERBATIM COPYING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860
.14 COPYING IN QUANTITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860
.15 MODIFICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 861
.16 COMBINING DOCUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
.17 COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
.18 AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
.19 TRANSLATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
.20 TERMINATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863
.21 FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863
.22 ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863

IX Eeek! There is Missing Help 865

Index 869

xv
List of Examples

16.1 Crop marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516

17.1 Simple “Slice” filter example output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
17.2 With separate image folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
17.3 Space between table elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
17.4 JavaScript code snippet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769
17.5 Skipped animation for table caps (simplified HTML code) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769

xvii
Preface

GIMP User Manual Authors and Contributors

Content Writers Alex Muñoz (Spanish) , Alexandre Franke (French) , Alexandre Prokoudine (Russian) ,
Angelo Córdoba Inunza (Spanish) , Christian Kirbach (German) , Daniel Francis (Spanish) , Daniel
Mustieles (Spanish) , Daniel Winzen (German) , Delin Chang (Chinese) , Dimitris Spingos (Greek)
, Djavan Fagundes (Brasilian) , Enrico Nicoletto (Brasilian) , Felipe Ribeiro (Brasilian) , Guiu Ro-
cafort (Spanish) , Jiro Matsuzawa (Japanese) , Joe Hansen (Danish) , João S. O. Bueno (Brasilian)
, Julien Hardelin (French, English) , Kenneth Nielsen (Danish) , Kolbjørn Stuestøl (Norwegian)
, Marco Ciampa (Italian) , María Majadas (Spanish) , Milagros Infante Montero (Spanish) , Milo
Casagrande (Italian) , Piotr Drąg (Polish) , Rafael Ferreira (Brasilian) , Róman Joost (German, En-
glish) , Seong-ho Cho (Korean) , SimaMoto,RyōTa ( ) (Japanese) , Sven Claussner (German, En-
glish) , Timo Jyrinki (Finnish) , Ulf-D. Ehlert (German) , Vitaly Lomov (Russian) , Willer Gomes
Junior (Brasilian) , Yuri Myasoedov (Russian)
Proof Reading Stéphane Poumaer (French) , Axel Wernicke (German, English) , Alessandro Falappa (Italian)
, Manuel Quiñones (Spanish) , Ignacio AntI (Spanish) , Choi Ji-Hui( ) (Korean) , Nickolay V.
Shmyrev (Russian) , Albin Bernharsson (Swedish) , Daniel Nylander (Swedish) , Patrycja Staw-
iarska (Polish) , Andrew Pitonyak (English) , Jakub Friedl (Czech, English) , Hans De Jonge (Dutch)
, Raymon Van Wanrooij (Dutch) , Semka Kuloviæ-Debals (Croatian) , Sally C. Barry (English) ,
Daniel Egger (English) , Sven Neumann (English, German) , Domingo Stephan (German) , Thomas
Lotze (German) , Thomas Güttler (German) , Zhong Yaotang (Chinese) , Calum Mackay (English)
, Thomas S Lendo (German) , Mel Boyce (syngin) (English) , Oliver Ellis (Red Haze) (English) ,
Markus Reinhardt (German) , Alexander Weiher (German) , Michael Hölzen (German) , Raymond
Ostertag (French) , Cédric Gémy (French) , Sébastien Barre (French) , Niklas Mattison (Swedish) ,
Daryl Lee (English) , William Skaggs (English) , Cai Qian ( ) (Chinese) , Yang Hong ( ) (Chinese)
, Xceals (Chinese) , Eric Lamarque (Chinese) , Robert van Drunen (Dutch) , Marco Marega (Italian) ,
Mike Vargas (Italian) , Andrea Zito (Italian) , Karine Delvare (French) , David ’Ilicz’ Klementa (Czech)
, Jan Smith (English) , Adolf Gerold (German) , Roxana Chernogolova (Russian) , Grigory Bakunov (Russian)
, Oleg Fritz (Russian) , Mick Curtis (English) , Vitaly Lomov (Russian) , Pierre PERRIER (French)
, Oliver Heesakke (Dutch) , Susanne Schmidt (English, German) , Ben (German) , Daniel Hor-
nung (English) , Sven Claussner (English, German)

Graphics, Stylesheets Jakub Steiner , Øyvind Kolås

Build System, Technical Contributions Kenneth Nielsen , Róman Joost , Axel Wernicke , Nickolay V.
Shmyrev , Daniel Egger , Sven Neumann , Michael Natterer (mitch) , Henrik Brix Andersen (brix)
, Thomas Schraitle , Chris Hübsch , Anne Schneider , Peter Volkov , Daniel Richard

xix
 Part I

Getting Started

1
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Welcome to GIMP

GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation
Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching,
image composition, and image construction.
GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo
retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image
format converter, etc.
GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to
do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the
most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
One of The GIMP’s strengths is its free availability from many sources for many operating systems.
Most GNU/Linux distributions include The GIMP as a standard application. The GIMP is also available
for other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Apple’s Mac OS X (Darwin). The GIMP is a
Free Software application covered by the General Public License [GPL]. The GPL provides users with
the freedom to access and alter the source code that makes up computer programs.

1.1.1 Authors
The first version of the GIMP was written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball. Many other developers
have contributed more recently, and thousands have provided support and testing. GIMP releases are
currently being orchestrated by Sven Neumann and Mitch Natterer and the other members of the GIMP-
Team.

1.1.2 The GIMP Help system

The GIMP Documentation Team and other users have provided you with the information necessary to
understand how to use GIMP. The User Manual is an important part of this help. The current version is
on the web site of the Documentation Team [GIMP-DOCS] in HTML format. The HTML version is also
available as context sensitive help (if you installed it) while using GIMP by pressing the F1 key. Help on
specific menu items can be accessed by pressing the F1 key while the mouse pointer is focused on the
menu item. Read on to begin your GIMP journey.

1.1.3 Features and Capabilities

The following list is a short overview of some of the features and capabilities which GIMP offers you:

• A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, cloning, etc.

• Tile-based memory management, so image size is limited only by available disk space

• Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality anti-aliasing

• Full Alpha channel support for working with transparency

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

• Layers and channels

• A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-
Fu

• Advanced scripting capabilities

• Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space)

• Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip

• Support for a wide range of file formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS,
PDF, PCX, BMP and many others

• Selection tools, including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent scissors

• Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.

1.2 What’s New in GIMP 2.8?

GIMP 2.8 is another important release from a development point of view, even more that it was for 2.6.
It features a big change to the user interface addressing one of the most often received complaints: the
lack of a single window mode. Moreover the integration effort of GEGL library had taken a big step
forward, reaching more than 90% of the GIMP core, a new powerful transformation tool, layer groups,
new common options, new brushes, improved text tool, and more.
User Interface

New single window mode With this new feature it will be possible to work with all the GIMP dialogs
inside one big window, usually with the image(s) centered inside. No more floating panels or tool-
box but the dialogs could be arranged inside this single window. This mode could be enabled or
disabled all the time, even while working, and the option will be remembered through the sessions.

Figure 1.1 The new look of the single window mode

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

New file save workflow Now Save and Save as work only with xcf formats. If you want to export
an image in another format, say jpg or png, you have to explicitly Export it. This enhances the
workflow and lets you simply overwrite the original file or export to various other formats.

Figure 1.2 The new image workflow

New image bar A new useful image bar comes with the single window mode, which lets you switch
easily between open images through the means of a tab bar with image thumbnails.

Figure 1.3 The new image bar

New arrangement options GIMP will make users working with two screens (one for dialogs, the other
for images) happy: now it is possible to arrange the dialogs one over the other, in tabs and in
columns too.

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

Figure 1.4 Multi column docks

New resources tags GIMP Brushes, Gradients, Pattern and Palettes can be filtered and searched via
tags. Tags are text labels that the user can assign to resources. With Tags the user can easily find
the resources by means of an input text box. Tags can be manually assigned by the user with the
same input box used for searching tags, or they can be automatically tagged using the directory
name of the imported items.

Figure 1.5 Resource tags

Simple math in size entries Enhancements have also been made to the size entry widget, which is used
for inputting most of the x, y, width, height parameters. For example, in the scale dialog it is now
possible to write “50%” in the Width field to scale the image to 50% of the width. Expressions such
as “30in + 40px” and “4 * 5.4in” work, too.

Figure 1.6 Math size entries

Minor changes
• The new “Lock Pixels” option in the layers dialog can avoid undesired painting on a layer
when working with several layers.

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

Figure 1.7 The new Lock Pixels option

• Now you can move between images in single and multi window mode using the shortcuts
Ctrl-PageUp/PageDown or Alt-Number.
• Add support for F2 to rename items in lists.
• You can now Alt-Click on layers in the Layers dialog to create a selection from it. Add, sub-
tract and intersect modifiers Click, Shift and Ctrl-Shift keys work too. This makes it easy to
compose contents of a layer based on the contents of other layers, without detours.
• Since the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-E and Ctrl-Shift-E have been redirected to image export
mechanisms, new keyboard shortcuts have been setup for “Shrink Wrap” and “Fit Image in
Window”, namely Ctrl-J and Ctrl-Shift-J respectively.
• Added Windows → Hide docks menu item that does what “Tab” does and also displays its
state, which is now persistent across sessions, too.
• The layer modes have been rearranged into more logical and useful groups based on the effect
they have on layers. Layer modes that make the layer lighter are in one group, layer modes
that make the layer darker in another group, and so forth.
• In multi-window mode, you can now close the Toolbox without quitting GIMP.
• Allow binding arbitrary actions to extra mouse buttons.
• Now it is possible to change the application language directly from the preference menu.

Tools, Filters and Plug-ins

A new tool: Cage Transform With this new tool is now possible to create custom bending of a selection
just moving control points. This is the result of one of our Google Summer of Code 2010 students.

Figure 1.8 Cage Transform

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

Improved Text Tool The text tool has been enhanced to support on canvas text writing and make pos-
sible changing the attributes of a single char.

Figure 1.9 Improved text tool

New layer groups It is now possible to group set of layers and treat them like an entity. It is possible
to switch a group on or off and to move the group in the layers dialog. It is easy to add / remove
existing layers to a group or to create / delete a layer inside the group and it is even possible to
create embedded groups of groups. It is possible to apply a layer mode to a group as you do with a
single layer. All this greatly improves the workflow with complex multilayer images making them
easier to manage.

Figure 1.10 New layer groups

Rotating brushes Brushes can now be rotated at will, acting on the brush option “Angle”.

8
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

Figure 1.11 Rotating brushes

Minor changes

• The default Quick Mask color is now configurable.

• The RTL mode (right to left writing) has been improved in the Text tool.
• You can specify the written language in the Text Tool. This helps choosing an appropriate
font, or appropriate glyphs for the selected language.
• Added optional diagonal guides to the crop tool.
• Added “Rule of fifths” crop guide overlay.
• A Cairo based PDF exporter has been implemented. Although being somewhat simplistic, the
exporter saves text, embedding fonts into the final PDF file, and attempts to convert bitmaps
to vector objects.
• Brush dynamics improved.
• Added plug-in for loading JPEG2000 images.
• Added plug-ins for X11 Mouse Cursor import and export support.
• Added fundamental OpenRaster (.ora) import and export support.
• Added RGB565 support to the csource plug-in.
• Added a new “Create” command that allows loading a Web page directly into GIMP using
Webkit.

Under the Hood

GEGL The porting of the GIMP core towards the new high bit-depth and non-destructive editing GEGL
[GEGL] library has taken big steps and now more than 90% of the task is already finished.
In addition to porting color operations to GEGL, an experimental GEGL Operation tool has been
added, found in the Tools menu. It enables applying GEGL operations to an image and it gives
on-canvas previews of the results. The screenshot below shows this for a Gaussian Blur.

Figure 1.12 GEGL operation

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. WHAT’S NEW IN GIMP 2.8?

Cairo porting Started with GIMP version 2.6, all tools rendering on canvas is now completely ported to
[CAIRO]. It provides smooth antialiased graphics and improves GIMP look. Some plug-ins have
been upgraded to Cairo as well. Additionally all tools now use an on-canvas progress indicator
instead of the one in the statusbar.

Figure 1.13 Progress indicator

Miscellaneous
License change The GIMP license has been changed to (L)GPLv3+.
New script API

• A lot of GIMP APIs have been rebuilt to simplify developing new scripts.
• To further enhances scripting abilities, API changes to support layer groups have been made.
Backwards Compatibility To allow migrating from the old tools presets system to the new one, there
is a Python script, which you can download from the GIMP wiki site. However, the old tools
presets are not 100% convertible to the new tool presets. For instance, brush scale from 2.6 can’t be
converted to brush size in 2.8.
Known Problems Working with graphics tablets could be problematic due to the GTK+2 library in use.
If in this case either use the older version 2.6 or wait for the up coming version 3.0 for the full
GTK+3 support.

10
Chapter 2

Fire up the GIMP

2.1 Running GIMP

Most often, you start GIMP either by clicking on an icon (if your system is set up to provide you with
one), or by typing gimp on a command line. If you have multiple versions of GIMP installed, you may
need to type gimp-2.8 to get the latest version. You can, if you want, give a list of image files on the
command line after the program name, and they will automatically be opened by GIMP as it starts. It is
also possible, though, to open files from within GIMP once it is running.
Most operating systems support file associations, which associates a class of files (as determined by
their filename extension, such as .jpg) with a corresponding application (such as GIMP). When image
files are properly “associated” to GIMP, you can double click on an image to open it in GIMP.

2.1.1 Known Platforms

The GIMP is the most widely supported image manipulation available today. The platforms on which
GIMP is known to work include:
GNU/Linux, Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS,
AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Digital UNIX, OSF/1, IRIX, OS/2, and BeOS.
The GIMP is easily ported to other operating systems because of its source code availability. For
further information visit the GIMP developers homepage. [GIMP-DEV].

2.1.2 Language
GIMP automatically detects and uses the system language. In the unlikely event that language detection
fails, or if you just want to use a different language, since GIMP-2.8, you can do so through: Edit →
Preferences → Interface.
You can also use:

Under Linux In LINUX: in console mode, type LANGUAGE=en gimp or LANG=en gimp replacing en
by fr, de, ... according to the language you want. Background: Using LANGUAGE=en sets an envi-
ronment variable for the executed program gimp.

Under Windows XP Control Panel → System → Advanced → Environment button in “System Vari-
ables” area: Add button: Enter LANG for Name and fr or de... for Value. Watch out! You have to
click on three successive OK to validate your choice.
If you change languages often, you can create a batch file to change the language. Open NotePad.
Type the following commands (for french for instance):
set lang=fr
start [Link]

Save this file as [Link] (or another name, but always with a .BAT extension). Create a
shortcut and drag it to your desktop.
Another possibility: Start → Programs → GTK Runtime Environment Then Select language and
select the language you want in the drop-down list.

11
CHAPTER 2. FIRE UP THE GIMP 2.1. RUNNING GIMP

Under Apple Mac OS X From System Preferences, click on the International icon. In the Language tab,
the desired language should be the first in the list.

Another GIMP instance Use -n to run multiple instances of GIMP. For example, use gimp-2.8 to start
GIMP in the default system language, and LANGUAGE=en gimp-2.8 -n to start another instance
of GIMP in English; this is very useful for translators.

2.1.3 Command Line Arguments

Although arguments are not required when starting GIMP, the most common arguments are shown
below. On a Unix system, you can use man gimpfor a complete list.
Command line arguments must be in the command line that you use to start GIMP as gimp-2.8
[OPTION...] [FILE|URI...].

-?, --help Display a list of all commandline options.

--help-all Show all help options.

--help-gtk Show GTK+ Options.

-v, --version Print the GIMP version and exit.

--license Show license information and exit.

--verbose Show detailed start-up messages.

-n, --new-instance Start a new GIMP instance.

-a, --as-new Open images as new.

-i, --no-interface Run without a user interface.

-d, --no-data Do not load patterns, gradients, palettes, or brushes. Often useful in non-interactive situ-
ations where start-up time is to be minimized.

-f, --no-fonts Do not load any fonts. This is useful to load GIMP faster for scripts that do not use fonts,
or to find problems related to malformed fonts that hang GIMP.

-s, --no-splash Do not show the splash screen while starting.

--no-shm Do not use shared memory between GIMP and plugins.

--no-cpu-accel Do not use special CPU acceleration functions. Useful for finding or disabling buggy
accelerated hardware or functions.

--session=name Use a different sessionrc for this GIMP session. The given session name is appended
to the default sessionrc filename.

--gimprc=filename Use an alternative gimprc instead of the default one. The gimprc file contains a
record of your preferences. Useful in cases where plugins paths or machine specs may be different.

--system-gimprc=filename Use an alternate system gimprc file.

-b, --batch=commands Execute the set of commands non-interactively. The set of commands is typically
in the form of a script that can be executed by one of the GIMP scripting extensions. When the
command is -, commands are read from standard input.

--batch-interpreter=proc Specify the procedure to use to process batch commands. The default proce-
dure is Script-Fu.

--console-messages Do not popup dialog boxes on errors or warnings. Print the messages on the console
instead.

--pdb-compat-mode=mode PDB compatibility mode (off|on|warn).

--stack-trace-mode=mode Debug in case of a crash (never|query|always).

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CHAPTER 2. FIRE UP THE GIMP 2.2. STARTING GIMP THE FIRST TIME

--debug-handlers Enable non-fatal debugging signal handlers. Useful for GIMP debugging.
--g-fatal-warnings Make all warnings fatal. Useful for debug.

--dump-gimprc Output a gimprc file with default settings. Useful if you messed up the gimprc file.
--display=display Use the designated X display (does not apply to all platforms).

2.2 Starting GIMP the first time

When first run, GIMP performs a series of steps to configure options and directories. The configura-
tion process creates a subdirectory in your home directory called .gimp-2.8. All of the configuration
information is stored in this directory. If you remove or rename the directory, GIMP will repeat the ini-
tial configuration process, creating a new .gimp-2.8 directory. Use this capability to explore different
configuration options without destroying your existing installation, or to recover if your configuration
files are damaged.

2.2.1 Finally . . .
Just a couple of suggestions before you start, though: First, GIMP provides tips you can read at any
time using the menu command Help → Tip of the Day. The tips provide information that is considered
useful, but not easy to learn by experimenting; so they are worth reading. Please read the tips when
you have the time. Second, if at some point you are trying to do something, and GIMP seems to have
suddenly stopped functioning, the section Getting Unstuck may help you out. Happy Gimping!

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Chapter 3

First Steps with Wilber

3.1 Basic Concepts

Figure 3.1 Wilber, the GIMP mascot

The Wilber_Construction_Kit (in src/images/) allows you to give the mascot a different appearance. It is the work
of Tuomas Kuosmanen ([Link]).

This section provides a brief introduction to the basic concepts and terminology used in GIMP. The
concepts presented here are explained in much greater depth elsewhere. With a few exceptions, we
have avoided cluttering this section with a lot of links and cross-references: everything mentioned here
is so high-level that you can easily locate it in the index.

Images Images are the basic entities used by GIMP. Roughly speaking, an “image” corresponds to a
single file, such as a TIFF or JPEG file. You can also think of an image as corresponding to a single
display window (although in truth it is possible to have multiple windows all displaying the same
image). It is not possible to have a single window display more than one image, though, or for an
image to have no window displaying it.
A GIMP image may be quite a complicated thing. Instead of thinking of it as a sheet of paper with
a picture on it, think of it as more like a stack of sheets, called “layers”. In addition to a stack of
layers, a GIMP image may contain a selection mask, a set of channels, and a set of paths. In fact,
GIMP provides a mechanism for attaching arbitrary pieces of data, called “parasites”, to an image.
In GIMP, it is possible to have many images open at the same time. Although large images may use
many megabytes of memory, GIMP uses a sophisticated tile-based memory management system
that allows GIMP to handle very large images gracefully. There are limits, however, and having
more memory available may improve system performance.

Layers If a simple image can be compared to a single sheet of paper, an image with layers is likened to a
sheaf of transparent papers stacked one on top of the other. You can draw on each paper, but still
see the content of the other sheets through the transparent areas. You can also move one sheet in
relation to the others. Sophisticated GIMP users often deal with images containing many layers,
even dozens of them. Layers need not be opaque, and they need not cover the entire extent of an

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.1. BASIC CONCEPTS

image, so when you look at an image’s display, you may see more than just the top layer: you may
see elements of many layers.

Resolution Digital images comprise of a grid of square elements of varying colors, called pixels. Each
image has a pixel size, such as 900 pixels wide by 600 pixels high. But pixels don’t have a set size
in physical space. To set up an image for printing, we use a value called resolution, defined as the
ratio between an image’s size in pixels and its physical size (usually in inches) when it is printed
on paper. Most file formats (but not all) can save this value, which is expressed as ppi — pixels per
inch. When printing a file, the resolution value determines the size the image will have on paper,
and as a result, the physical size of the pixels. The same 900x600 pixel image may be printed as
a small 3x2” card with barely noticeable pixels — or as a large poster with large, chunky pixels.
Images imported from cameras and mobile devices tend to have a resolution value attached to the
file. The value is usually 72 or 96ppi. It is important to realize that this value is arbitrary and was
chosen for historic reasons. You can always change the resolution value inside GIMP — this has
no effect on the actual image pixels. Furthermore, for uses such as displaying images on line, on
mobile devices, television or video games — in short, any use that is not print — the resolution
value is meaningless and is ignored, and instead the image is usually displayed so that each image
pixel conforms to one screen pixel.

Channels A Channel is a single component of a pixel’s color. For a colored pixel in GIMP, these com-
ponents are usually Red, Green, Blue and sometimes transparency (Alpha). For a Grayscale image,
they are Gray and Alpha and for an Indexed color image, they are Indexed and Alpha.
The entire rectangular array of any one of the color components for all of the pixels in an image is
also referred to as a Channel. You can see these color channels with the Channels dialog.
When the image is displayed, GIMP puts these components together to form the pixel colors for
the screen, printer, or other output device. Some output devices may use different channels from
Red, Green and Blue. If they do, GIMP’s channels are converted into the appropriate ones for the
device when the image is displayed.
Channels can be useful when you are working on an image which needs adjustment in one partic-
ular color. For example, if you want to remove “red eye” from a photograph, you might work on
the Red channel.
You can look at channels as masks which allow or restrict the output of the color that the channel
represents. By using Filters on the channel information, you can create many varied and subtle
effects on an image. A simple example of using a Filter on the color channels is the Channel Mixer
filter.
In addition to these channels, GIMP also allows you to create other channels (or more correctly,
Channel Masks), which are displayed in the lower part of the Channels dialog. You can create a
New Channel or save a selection to a channel (mask). See the glossary entry on Masks for more
information about Channel Masks.

Selections Often when modify an image, you only want a part of the image to be affected. The “selec-
tion” mechanism makes this possible. Each image has its own selection, which you normally see as
a moving dashed line separating the selected parts from the unselected parts (the so-called “march-
ing ants” ). Actually this is a bit misleading: selection in GIMP is graded, not all-or-nothing, and
really the selection is represented by a full-fledged grayscale channel. The dashed line that you nor-
mally see is simply a contour line at the 50%-selected level. At any time, though, you can visualize
the selection channel in all its glorious detail by toggling the QuickMask button.
A large component of learning how to use GIMP effectively is acquiring the art of making good
selections—selections that contain exactly what you need and nothing more. Because selection-
handling is so centrally important, GIMP provides many tools for doing it: an assortment of selection-
making tools, a menu of selection operations, and the ability to switch to Quick Mask mode, in
which you can treat the selection channel as though it were a color channel, thereby “painting the
selection”.

Undoing When you make mistakes, you can undo them. Nearly everything you can do to an image is
undoable. In fact, you can usually undo a substantial number of the most recent things you did,
if you decide that they were misguided. GIMP makes this possible by keeping a history of your
actions. This history consumes memory, though, so undoability is not infinite. Some actions use

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very little undo memory, so that you can do dozens of them before the earliest ones are deleted from
this history; other types of actions require massive amounts of undo memory. You can configure
the amount of memory GIMP allows for the undo history of each image, but in any situation, you
should always be able to undo at least your 2-3 most recent actions. (The most important action
that is not undoable is closing an image. For this reason, GIMP asks you to confirm that you really
want to close the image if you have made any changes to it.)

Plug-ins Many, probably most, of the things that you do to an image in GIMP are done by the GIMP
application itself. However, GIMP also makes extensive use of “plug-ins”, which are external
programs that interact very closely with GIMP, and are capable of manipulating images and other
GIMP objects in very sophisticated ways. Many important plug-ins are bundled with GIMP, but
there are also many available by other means. In fact, writing plug-ins (and scripts) is the easiest
way for people not on the GIMP development team to add new capabilities to GIMP.

All of the commands in the Filters menu, and a substantial number of commands in other menus,
are actually implemented as plug-ins.

Scripts In addition to plug-ins, which are programs written in the C language, GIMP can also make use
of scripts. The largest number of existing scripts are written in a language called Script-Fu, which
is unique to GIMP (for those who care, it is a dialect of the Lisp-like language called Scheme). It
is also possible to write GIMP scripts in Python or Perl. These languages are more flexible and
powerful than Script-Fu; their disadvantage is that they depend on software that does not auto-
matically come packaged with GIMP, so they are not guaranteed to work correctly in every GIMP
installation.

3.2 Main Windows

The GIMP user interface is now available in two modes:

• multi-window mode,

• single window mode.

When you open GIMP for the first time, it opens in multi-window mode by default. You can en-
able single-window mode through Windows → >Single-Window Mode) in the image menu bar. After
quitting GIMP with this option enabled, GIMP will start in single-window mode next time.

Multi-Window Mode

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Figure 3.2 A screenshot illustrating the multi-window mode.

The screenshot above shows the most basic arrangement of GIMP windows that can be used effec-
tively.
You can notice two panels, left and right, and an image window in middle. A second image is
partially masked. The left panel collects Toolbox and Tool Options dialog together. The right
panel collects layers, channels, paths, undo history dialogs together in a multi-tab dock, brushes,
patterns and gradients dialogs together in another dock below. You can move these panels on
screen. You can also mask them using the Tab key.

1. The Main Toolbox: Contains a set of icon buttons used to select tools. By default, it also contains
the foreground and background colors. You can add brush, pattern, gradient and active image
icons. Use Edit → Preferences → Toolbox to enable, or disable the extra items.
2. Tool options: Docked below the main Toolbox is a Tool Options dialog, showing options for
the currently selected tool (in this case, the Move tool).
3. Image windows: Each image open in GIMP is displayed in a separate window. Many images
can be open at the same time, limited by only the system resources. Before you can do any-
thing useful in GIMP, you need to have at least one image window open. The image window
holds the Menu of the main commands of GIMP (File, Edit, Select...), which you can also get
by right-clicking on the window.
An image can be bigger than the image window. In that case, GIMP displays the image in a
reduced zoom level which allows to see the full image in the image window. If you turn to
the 100% zoom level, scroll bars appear, allowing you to pan across the image.
4. The Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo History dock — note that the dialogs in the dock are tabs.
The Layers tab is open : it shows the layer structure of the currently active image, and allows
it to be manipulated in a variety of ways. It is possible to do a few very basic things without
using the Layers dialog, but even moderately sophisticated GIMP users find it indispensable
to have the Layers dialog available at all times.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

5. Brushes/Patterns/Gradients: The docked dialog below the layer dialog shows the dialogs (tabs)
for managing brushes, patterns and gradients.

Dialog and dock managing is described in Section 3.2.3.

Single Window Mode

Figure 3.3 A screenshot illustrating the single-window mode.

You find the same elements, with differences in their management:

• Left and right panels are fixed; you can’t move them. But you can decrease or increase their
width by dragging the moving pointer that appears when the mouse pointer overflies the
right border of the left pane. If you want to keep the left pane narrow, please use the slider at
the bottom of the tool options to pan across the options display.
If you reduce the width of a multi-tab dock, there may be not enough place for all tabs;then
arrow-heads appear allowing you to scroll through tabs.

As in multi-window mode, you can mask these panels using the Tab key.
• The image window occupies all space between both panels.
When several images are open, a new bar appears above the image window, with a tab for ev-
ery image. You can navigate between images by clicking on tabs or either using Ctrl-Page Up
or Page Down or Alt-Number. “Number” is tab number; you must use the number keys of
the upper line of your keyboard, not that of keypad (Alt-shift necessary for some national
keyboards).

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

This is a minimal setup. There are over a dozen other types of dialogs used by GIMP for various
purposes, but users typically open them when they need them and close them when they are done.
Knowledgeable users generally keep the Toolbox (with Tool Options) and Layers dialog open at all
times. The Toolbox is essential to many GIMP operations. The Tool Options section is actually a separate
dialog, shown docked to the Main Toolbox in the screenshot. Knowledgeable users almost always have
it set up this way: it is very difficult to use tools effectively without being able to see how their options
are set. The Layers dialog comes into play when you work with an image with multiple layers: after
you advance beyond the most basic stages of GIMP expertise, this means almost always. And of course
it helps to display the images you’re editing on the screen; if you close the image window before saving
your work, GIMP will ask you whether you want to close the file.

Note
If your GIMP layout is lost, your arrangement is easy to recover using Windows
→ Recently Closed Docks ; the Windows menu command is only available while
an image is open. To add, close, or detach a tab from a dock, click in the upper
right corner of a dialog. This opens the Tab menu. Select Add Tab, Close Tab , or
Detach Tab.

The following sections walk you through the components of each of the windows shown in the
screenshot, explaining what they are and how they work. Once you have read them, plus the section
describing the basic structure of GIMP images, you should have learned enough to use GIMP for a wide
variety of basic image manipulations. You can then look through the rest of the manual at your leisure
(or just experiment) to learn the almost limitless number of more subtle and specialized things that are
possible. Have fun!

3.2.1 The Toolbox

Figure 3.4 Screenshot of the Toolbox

The Toolbox is the heart of GIMP. Here is a quick tour of what you will find there.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Tip
In the Toolbox, as in most parts of GIMP, moving the mouse over something and
letting it rest for a moment, usually displays a “tooltip” that describes the thing. Short
cut keys are also frequently shown in the tooltip. In many cases, you can hover
the mouse over an item and press the F1 key to get help about the thing that is
underneath the mouse.

By default, only the Foreground-background icon is visible. You can add Brush-Pattern-Gradient
icons and Active Image icon through Edit → Preferences → Toolbox: Tools configuration.

1. Tool icons: These icons are buttons which activate tools for a wide variety of purposes: selecting
parts of images, painting an image, transforming an image, etc. Section 14.1 gives an overview of
how to work with tools, and each tool is described systematically in the Tools chapter.

2. Foreground/Background colors: The color areas here show you GIMP’s current foreground and back-
ground colors, which come into play in many operations. Clicking on either one of them brings up
a color selector dialog that allows you to change to a different color. Clicking on the double-headed
arrow swaps the two colors, and clicking on the small symbol in the lower left corner resets them
to black and white.

3. Brush/Pattern/Gradient: The symbols here show you GIMP’s current selections for: the Paintbrush,
used by all tools that allow you to paint on the image (“painting” includes operations like erasing
and smudging, by the way); for the Pattern, which is used in filling selected areas of an image; and
for the Gradient, which comes into play whenever an operation requires a smoothly varying range
of colors. Clicking on any of these symbols brings up a dialog window that allows you to change
it.

4. Active Image: In GIMP, you can work with many images at once, but at any given moment, only
one image is the “active image”. Here you find a small iconic representation of the active image.
Click the icon to display a dialog with a list of the currently open images, click an image in the
dialog to make it active. Usually, you click an image window in multi-window mode, or an image
tab in single-window mode, to make it the active image.
You can “Drop to an XDS file manager to save the image”. XDS is an acronym for “X Direct Save
Protocol”: an additional feature for the X Window System graphical user interface for Unix-like
operating systems.

Note
At every start, GIMP selects a tool (the brush), a color, a brush and a pattern by
default, always the same. If you want GIMP to select the last tool, color, brush and
pattern you used when quitting your previous session, check the Save input device
settings on exit in Preferences/Input Devices.

Tip
The Toolbox window displays “Wilber’s eyes” along the top of the dialog. You can
get rid of the “Wilber’s eyes” by adding the following line to your gimprc file: (to
olbox-wilber no). It only affects the toolbox. The eyes in the Image window
are only visible when you do not have an open image.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Tip

Drag and drop an image from a file browser into the Toolbox window to open the
image in its own Image window or tab.

3.2.2 Image Window

GIMP user interface is now available in two modes: multi-window mode (default), and single-window
mode (optional, through Windows → >Single-Window Mode. But, if you quit GIMP with this option
enabled, GIMP will open in single mode next time).

In single-window mode, no new window is added: images and dialogs are added in tabs. Please see
Single Window Mode.

When you start GIMP without any image open, the image window seems to be absent in single-
window mode, while, in multi-window mode, an image window exists, even if no image is open.

We will begin with a brief description of the components that are present by default in an ordinary
image window. Some of the components can be removed by using commands in the View menu.

Figure 3.5 The Image Window in Multi-Window Mode

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Figure 3.6 The Image Area in Single-Window Mode

Note

Despite Single-window Mode, we will use “image window” for “image area”.

1. Title Bar: The Title Bar in an image window without an image displays “GNU Image Manipulating
Program”. An image window with an image displays the image name and its specifications in the
title bar according to the settings in Preference Dialog. The Title Bar is provided by the operating
system, not by GIMP, so its appearance is likely to vary with the operating system, window man-
ager, and/or theme — in Linux systems, this title bar has a button to display the image window
on all your desktops. You also have this button in toolbox window and layer window.
If you have opened a non-xcf image, it is “(imported)” as a .xcf file and its original name appears
in the status bar at the bottom of the image window.
When an image is modified, an asterisk appears in front of title.
2. Image Menu: Directly below the Title Bar appears the Menu bar (unless it has been suppressed).
The Image Menu provides access to nearly every operation you can perform on an image. You
can also right-click on an image to display a pop-up image menu, 1 , or by left-clicking on the little
“arrow-head” symbol in the upper left corner, called Menu Button, described just below. Many
menu commands are also associated with keyboard shortcuts as shown in the menu. You can define
your own custom shortcuts for menu actions, if you enable Use Dynamic Keyboard Shortcuts in
the Preferences dialog.
1 Users with an Apple Macintosh and a one button mouse can use Ctrl-Mouse Button instead.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

3. Menu Button: Click the Menu Button to display the Image Menu in a column,(essential in full screen
mode). If you like to use keyboard shortcuts, use Shift-F10 to open the menu.
4. Ruler: In the default layout, rulers are shown above and to the left of the image. Use the rulers
to determine coordinates within the image. The default unit for rulers is pixels; use the settings
described below to use a unit other than pixels.
One of the most important uses of rulers is to create guides. Click and drag a ruler into the image to
create a guide. A guide is a line that helps you accurately position things—or verify that another
line is truly horizontal or vertical. Click and drag a guide to move it. Drag a guide out of the image
to delete it; you can always drag another guide into the image. You can even use multiple guides
at the same time.
In ruler area, the mouse pointer position is marked with two small arrow-heads pointing vertically
and horizontally.
5. QuickMask Toggle: The small button in the lower left corner of the image toggles the Quick Mask
on and off. When the Quick Mask is on, the button is outlined in red. See QuickMask for more
details on this highly useful tool.
6. Pointer Coordinates: When the pointer (mouse cursor, if you are using a mouse) is within the image
boundaries, the rectangular area in the lower left corner of the window displays the current pointer
coordinates. The units are the same as for the rulers.
7. Units Menu: Use the Units Menu to change the units used for rulers and several other purposes.
The default unit is pixels, but you can quickly change to inches, cm, or several other possibilities
using this menu. Note that the setting of “Dot for dot” in the View menu affects how the display
is scaled: see Dot for Dot for more information.
8. Zoom Button: There are a number of ways to zoom the image in or out, but the Zoom Button is
perhaps the simplest. You can directly enter a zoom level in the text box for precise control.
9. Status Area: The Status Area is at the bottom of the image window. By default, the Status Area
displays the original name of the [Link] file, and the amount of system memory used by the
image. Please use Edit → Preferences → Image Windows → Title & Status to customize the in-
formation displayed in the Status Area. During time-consuming operations, the status area tem-
porarily shows the running operation and how complete the operation is.

Note
Note that the memory used by the image is very different from the image file
size. For instance, a 70Kb .PNG image may occupy 246Kb in RAM when
displayed. There are two primary reasons the difference in memory usage.
First, a .PNG file is compressed format, and the image is reconstituted in
RAM in uncompressed form. Second, GIMP uses extra memory, and copies
of the image, for use by the Undo command.

10. Cancel Button: During complex time-consuming operations, usually a plug-in, a Cancel button
temporarily appears in the lower right corner of the window. Use the Cancel button to stop the
operation.

Note

A few plug-ins respond badly to being canceled, sometimes leaving corrupted

pieces of images behind.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

11. Navigation Control: This is a small cross-shaped button at the lower right corner of the image dis-
play. Click and hold (do not release the mouse button) on the navigation control to display the
Navigation Preview. The Navigation Preview has a miniature view of the image with the displayed
area outlined. Use the Navigation Preview to quickly pan to a different part of the image—move
the mouse while keeping the button pressed. The Navigation Window is often the most convenient
way to quickly navigate around a large image with only a small portion displayed. (See Naviga-
tion Dialog for other ways to access the Navigation Window). (If your mouse has a middle-button,
click-drag with it to pan across the image).
12. Inactive Padding Area: When the image dimensions are smaller than the image window, this padding
area separates the active image display and the inactive padding area, so you’re able to distinguish
between them. You cannot apply any Filters or Operations in general to the inactive area.
13. Image Display: The most important part of the image window is, of course, the image display or
canvas. It occupies the central area of the window, surrounded by a yellow dotted line showing
the image boundary, against a neutral gray background. You can change the zoom level of the
image display in a variety of ways, including the Zoom setting described below.
14. Image Window Resize Toggle: Without enabling this feature, if you change the size of the image
window by click-and-dragging border limits, the image size and zoom does not change. If you
make the window larger, for example, then you will see more of the image. If this button is pressed,
however, the image resizes when the window resizes so that (mostly) the same portion of the image
is displayed before and after the window is resized.

Tip
Drag and drop an image into the Toolbox window from a file browser to open the
image in its own Image window or tab.
Dragging an image file into the Layer dialog adds it to the image as a new layer.

Image size and image window size can be different. You can make image fit window, and vice versa,
using two keyboard shortcuts:
• Ctrl-J: this command keeps the zoom level; it adapts window size to image size. The Shrink Wrap
command does the same.
• Ctrl-Shift-J: this command modifies the zoom level to adapt the image display to the window.

3.2.3 Dialogs and Docking

[Link] Organizing Dialogs
GIMP has great flexibility for arranging dialog on your screen. A “dialog” is a moving window which
contains options for a tool or is dedicated to a special task. A “dock” is a container which can hold
a collection of persistent dialogs, such as the Tool Options dialog, Brushes dialog, Palette dialog, etc.
Docks cannot, however, hold non-persistent dialogs such as the Preferences dialog or an Image window.
GIMP has three default docks:
• the Tool Options dock under the Toolbox in the left panel,
• the Layers, Channels, Paths and Undo dock in the upper part of the right panel,
• the Brushes, Patterns and Gradients dock in the lower part of the right panel.
In these docks, each dialog is in its own tab.
In multi-window mode, the Toolbox is a utility window and not a dock. In single-window mode, it
belongs to the single window.
Use Windows → Dockable Dialogs to view a list of dockable dialogs. Select a dockable dialog from
the list to view the dialog. If the dialog is available in a dock, then it is made visible. If the dialog is not
in a dock, the behavior is different in multi and single window modes:

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• In multi-window mode, a new window, containing the dialog, appears on the screen.

• In single-window mode, the dialog is automatically docked to the Layers-Undo dock as a tab.

You can click-and-drag a tab and drop it in the wanted place:

• either in the tab bar of a dock, to integrate it in the dialog group,

• or on a docking bar that appears as a blue line when the mouse pointer goes over a dock border,
to anchor the dialog to the dock.

In multi-window mode, you can also click on the dialog title and drag it to the wanted place.

Figure 3.7 Integrating a new dialog in a dialog group

Here, in multi-window mode, the Histogram dialog was dragged to the tab bar of the Layers-Undo dock.

More simple: the Add tab command in the Tab menu Section [Link].

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Figure 3.8 Anchoring a dialog to a dock border

The Histogram dialog dragged to the left vertical docking bar of the right panel and the result: the dialog anchored
to the left border of the right panel. This dialog now belongs to the right panel.
So, you can arrange dialogs in a multi-column display, interesting if you work with two screens, one for dialogs,
the other for images.

Tip
Press the Tab key in an Image window to toggle the visibility of the docks. This is
useful if the docks hide a portion of the image Window. You can quickly hide all the
docks, do your work, then display all the docs again. Pressing the Tab key inside
a dock to navigate through the dock.

[Link] Tab Menu

Figure 3.9 A dialog in a dock, with the Tab menu button highlighted.

In each dialog, you can access a special menu of tab-related operations by pressing the Tab Menu button,
as highlighted in the figure above. Exactly which commands are shown in the menu depends on the
active dialog, but they always include operations for creating new tabs, closing or detaching tabs.

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Figure 3.10 The Tab menu of the Layers dialog.

The Tab menu gives you access to the following commands:

Context Menu At the top of each Tab menu, an entry opens the dialog’s context menu, which contains
operations specific to that particular type of dialog. For example, the context menu for the Layers
tab is Layers Menu, which contains a set of operations for manipulating layers.
Add Tab Add Tab opens into a submenu allowing you to add a large variety of dockable dialogs as new
tabs.

Figure 3.11 “Add tab” sub-menu

Close Tab Close the dialog. Closing the last dialog in a dock causes the dock itself to close.
Detach Tab Detach the dialog from the dock, creating a new dock with the detached dialog as its only
member. It has the same effect as dragging the tab out of the dock and releasing it at a location
where it cannot be docked.
It’s a way to create a paradoxical new window in single-window mode!
If the tab is locked, this menu item is insensitive and grayed out.

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Lock Tab to Dock Prevent the dialog from being moved or detached. When activated, Detach Tab is
insensitive and grayed out.

Preview Size

Figure 3.12 Preview Size submenu of a Tab menu.

Many, but not all, dialogs have Tab menus containing a Preview Size option, which opens into a
submenu giving a list of sizes for the items in the dialog (see the figure above). For example, the
Brushes dialog shows pictures of all available brushes: the Preview Size determines how large the
pictures are. The default is Medium.

Tab Style

Figure 3.13 Tab Style submenu of a Tab menu.

Available only when multiple dialogs are in the same dock, Tab Style opens a submenu allowing
you to choose the appearance of the tabs at the top (see the figure above). There are five choices,
not all are available for every dialog:

Icon Use an icon to represent the dialog type.

Current Status Is only available for dialogs that allows you to select something, such as a brush,
pattern, gradient, etc. Current Status shows a representation of the currently selected item in
the tab top.

Text Use text to display the dialog type.

Icon and Text Using both an icon and text results in wider tabs.

Status and Text Show the currently selected item and text with the dialog type.

View as List; View as Grid These entries are shown in dialogs that allow you to select an item from
a set: brushes, patterns, fonts, etc. You can choose to view the items as a vertical list, with the
name of each beside it, or as a grid, with representations of the items but no names. Each has its
advantages: viewing as a list gives you more information, but viewing as a grid allows you to see
more possibilities at once. The default for this varies across dialogs: for brushes and patterns, the
default is a grid; for most other things, the default is a list.

When the tree-view is View as List, you can use tags. Please see Section 15.3.6.

You can also use a list search field:

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.2. MAIN WINDOWS

Figure 3.14 The list search field.

Use Ctrl-F to open the list search field. An item must be selected for this command to be effective.

The list search field automatically closes after five seconds if you do nothing.

Note

The search field shortcut is also available for the tree-view you get in the
“Brush”, “Font” or “Pattern” option of several tools.

Show Button Bar Some dialogs display a button bar on the bottom of the dialog; for example, the Pat-
terns, Brushes, Gradients, and Images dialogs. This is a toggle. If it is checked, then the Button Bar
is displayed.

Figure 3.15 Button Bar on the Brushes dialog.

Show Image Selection This option is available in multi-window mode only. This is a toggle. If it is
checked, then an Image Menu is shown at the top of the dock:

Figure 3.16 A dock with an Image Menu highlighted.

It is not available for dialogs docked below the Toolbox. This option is interesting only if you have
several open images on your screen.

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CHAPTER 3. FIRST STEPS WITH WILBER 3.3. UNDOING

Auto Follow Active Image This option is available in multi-window mode only. This option is also
interesting only if you have several images open on your screen. Then, the information displayed
in a dock is always that of the selected image in the Image Selection drop-down list. If the Auto
Follow Active Image is disabled, the image can be selected only in the Image Selection. If enabled,
you can also select it by activating the image directly (clicking on its title bar).

3.3 Undoing
Almost anything you do to an image in GIMP can be undone. You can undo the most recent action
by choosing Edit → Undo from the image menu, but this is done so frequently that you really should
memorize the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-Z.
Undoing can itself be undone. After having undone an action, you can redo it by choosing Edit →
Redo from the image menu, or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-Y. It is often helpful to judge the effect of
an action by repeatedly undoing and redoing it. This is usually very quick, and does not consume any
extra resources or alter the undo history, so there is never any harm in it.

Caution
If you undo one or more actions and then operate on the image in any way except
by using Undo or Redo, it will no longer be possible to redo those actions: they are
lost forever. The solution to this, if it creates a problem for you, is to duplicate the
image and then test on the copy. ( Do Not test the original, because the undo/redo
history is not copied when you duplicate an image.)

If you often find yourself undoing and redoing many steps at a time, it may be more convenient to
work with the Undo History dialog, a dockable dialog that shows you a small sketch of each point in the
Undo History, allowing you to go back or forward to that point by clicking.
Undo is performed on an image-specific basis: the ”Undo History” is one of the components of an
image. GIMP allocates a certain amount of memory to each image for this purpose. You can customize
your Preferences to increase or decrease the amount, using the Environment page of the Preferences
dialog. There are two important variables: the minimal number of undo levels, which GIMP will maintain
regardless of how much memory they consume, and the maximum undo memory, beyond which GIMP
will begin to delete the oldest items from the Undo History.

Note

Even though the Undo History is a component of an image, it is not saved when
you save the image using GIMP’s native XCF format, which preserves every other
image property. When the image is reopened, it will have an empty Undo History.

GIMP’s implementation of Undo is rather sophisticated. Many operations require very little Undo
memory (e.g., changing visibility of a layer), so you can perform long sequences of them before they
drop out of the Undo History. Some operations, such as changing layer visibility, are compressed, so that
doing them several times in a row produces only a single point in the Undo History. However, there are
other operations that may consume a lot of undo memory. Most filters are implemented by plug-ins, so
the GIMP core has no efficient way of knowing what changed. As such, there is no way to implement
Undo except by memorizing the entire contents of the affected layer before and after the operation. You
might only be able to perform a few such operations before they drop out of the Undo History.

3.3.1 Things That Cannot be Undone

Most actions that alter an image can be undone. Actions that do not alter the image generally cannot
be undone. Examples include saving the image to a file, duplicating the image, copying part of the
image to the clipboard, etc. It also includes most actions that affect the image display without altering

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the underlying image data. The most important example is zooming. There are, however, exceptions:
toggling QuickMask on or off can be undone, even though it does not alter the image data.
There are a few important actions that do alter an image but cannot be undone:

Closing the image The Undo History is a component of the image, so when the image is closed and all
of its resources are freed, the Undo History is gone. Because of this, unless the image has not been
modified since the last time it was saved, GIMP always asks you to confirm that you really want
to close the image. (You can disable this in the Environment page of the Preferences dialog; if you
do, you are assuming responsibility for thinking about what you are doing.)

Reverting the image “Reverting” means reloading the image from the file. GIMP actually implements
this by closing the image and creating a new image, so the Undo History is lost as a consequence.
Because of this, if the image is unclean, GIMP asks you to confirm that you really want to revert
the image.

“Pieces” of actions Some tools require you to perform a complex series of manipulations before they
take effect, but only allow you to undo the whole thing rather than the individual elements. For
example, the Intelligent Scissors require you to create a closed path by clicking at multiple points
in the image, and then clicking inside the path to create a selection. You cannot undo the indi-
vidual clicks: undoing after you are finished takes you all the way back to the starting point. For
another example, when you are working with the Text tool, you cannot undo individual letters,
font changes, etc.: undoing after you are finished removes the newly created text layer.

Filters, and other actions performed by plugins or scripts, can be undone just like actions imple-
mented by the GIMP core, but this requires them to make correct use of GIMP’s Undo functions. If
the code is not correct, a plugin can potentially corrupt the Undo History, so that not only the plugin
but also previous actions can no longer properly be undone. The plugins and scripts distributed with
GIMP are all believed to be set up correctly, but obviously no guarantees can be given for plugins you
obtain from other sources. Also, even if the code is correct, canceling a plugin while it is running may
corrupt the Undo History, so it is best to avoid this unless you have accidentally done something whose
consequences are going to be very harmful.

3.4 Common Tasks

This tutorial is based on text Copyright © 2004 Carol Spears. The original tutorial can be found online:
[TUT02].

3.4.1 Intention
GIMP is a powerful image editing program with many options and tools. However, it is also well suited
for smaller tasks. The following tutorials are meant for those who want to achieve these common tasks
without having to learn all the intricacies of GIMP and computer graphics in general.
Hopefully, these tutorials will not only help you with your current task, but also get you ready to
learn more complex tools and methods later, when you have the time and inspiration.
All you need to know to start this tutorial, is how to find and open your image. ( File → Open from
the Image window).

3.4.2 Change the Size of an Image for the screen

You have a huge image, possibly from a digital camera, and you want to resize it so that it displays nicely
on a web page, online board or email message.

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Figure 3.17 Example Image for Scaling

The first thing that you might notice after opening the image, is that GIMP opens the image at a
logical size for viewing. If your image is very large, like the sample image, GIMP sets the zoom so that
it displays nicely on the screen. The zoom level is shown in the status area at the bottom of the Image
window. This does not change the actual image.

The other thing to look at in the title-bar is the mode. If the mode shows as RGB in the title bar, you
are fine. If the mode says Indexed or Grayscale, read the Section 3.4.7.

Figure 3.18 GIMP Used for Image Scaling

Use Image → Scale Image to open the “Scale Image” dialog. You can right click on the image to open
the menu, or use the menu along the top of the Image window. Notice that the “Scale Image” menu item
contains three dots, which is a hint that a dialog will be opened.

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Figure 3.19 Dialog for Image Scaling in Pixels

The unit of size for the purpose of displaying an image on a screen is the pixel. You can see the dialog
has two sections: one for width and height and another for resolution. Resolution applies to printing
only and has no effect on the image’s size when it is displayed on a monitor or a mobile device. The
reason is that different devices have different pixels sizes and so, an image that displays on one device
(such as a smartphone) with a certain physical size, might display on other devices (such as an LCD
projector) in another size altogether. For the purpose of displaying an image on a screen, you can ignore
the resolution parameter. For the same reason, do not use any size unit other than the pixel in the height
/ width fields.
If you know the desired width, enter it in the dialog at the top where it says Width. This is shown in
the figure above. If you don’t have such a number in mind, choose an appropriate width for the desired
use. Common screen sizes range between 320 pixels for simpler phones, 1024 pixels for a netbook, 1440
for a wide-screen PC display and 1920 pixels for an HD screen. for the purpose of displaying an image
on-line, a width of 600 to 800 pixels offers a good compromise.
When you change one of the image’s dimensions, GIMP changes the other dimension proportionally.
To change the other dimension, see Section 3.4.5. Bear in mind that when you change the two dimensions
arbitrarily, the image might become stretched or squashed.

3.4.3 Change the Size of an Image for print

As discussed before, pixels don’t have a set size in the real world. When you set out to print an image
on paper, GIMP needs to know how big each pixels is. We use a parameter called resolution to set the
ratio between pixels and real-world units such as inches.
By default, most images open with the resolution set to 72. This number was chosen for historical
reasons as it was the resolution of screens in the past, and means that when printed, every pixel is 1/72
of an inch wide. When printing images are taken with modern digital cameras, this produces very large
but chunky images with visible pixels. What we want to do is tell GIMP to print it with the size we have
in mind, but not alter the pixel data so as not to lose quality.
To change the print size use Image → Print Size to open the “Print Size” dialog. Select a size unit
you are comfortable with, such as “inches”. Set one dimension, and let GIMP change the other one
proportionally. Now examine the change in resolution. If the resolution is 300 pixels per Inch or over,
the printed image’s quality will be very high and pixels will not be noticeable. With a resolution of
between 200 and 150 ppi, pixels will be somewhat noticeable, but the image will be fine as long as its not
inspected too closely. Values lower than 100 are visibly coarse and should only be used for material that
is seen from a distance, such as signs or large posters.

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Figure 3.20 Dialog for Setting Print Size

3.4.4 Compressing Images

Figure 3.21 Example Image for JPEG Saving

If you have images that take up a large space on disk, you can reduce that space even without changing
the image dimensions. The best image compression is achieved by using the JPG format, but even if the
image is already in this format, you can usually still make it take up less space, as the JPG format has
an adaptive compression scheme that allows saving in varying levels of compression. The trade-off is
that the less space an image takes, the more detail from the original image you lose. You should also be
aware that repeated saving in the JPG format causes more and more image degradation.

Since GIMP-2.8, images are loaded and saved as .XCF files. Your JPG image has been loaded as XCF.
GIMP offers you to Overwrite [Link] or File → Export As to open the “Export Image” dialog.

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Figure 3.22 “Export Image” Dialog

The dialog opens with the file name already typed in the Name box, with the [Link] extension.
Delete the existing extension and type JPG instead, and GIMP will determine the file type from the file
extension. Use the file extension list, red circled in the figure above, to see the types supported by GIMP.
The supported extensions change depending on your installed libraries. If GIMP complains, or if “JPEG”
is grayed out in the Extensions menu, cancel out of everything and step through the Section 3.4.7. Once
you have done this, click Save. This opens the “Export Image as JPEG” dialog that contains the quality
control.
The “Export Image as JPEG” dialog uses default values that reduce size in memory while retaining
good visual quality; this is the safest and quickest thing to do.

Figure 3.23 “Export Image as JPEG” dialog with default quality

Reduce the image Quality to make the image even smaller. Reduced quality degrades the image,
so be certain to check “Show preview in image window” to visually gauge the degradation. A Quality
setting of 10 produces a very poor quality image that uses very little disk space. The figure below shows

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a more reasonable image. A quality of 75 produces a reasonable image using much less disk space, which
will, in turn, load much faster on a web page. Although the image is somewhat degraded, it is acceptable
for the intended purpose.

Figure 3.24 “Export Image as JPEG” dialog with quality 75

Finally, here is a comparison of the same picture with varying degrees of compression:

Figure 3.25 Example for High JPEG Compression

(a) Quality: 10; Size: 3.4 KiloBytes (b) Quality: 40; Size: 9.3 KiloBytes

Figure 3.26 Example for Moderate JPEG Compression

(a) Quality: 70; Size: 15.2 KiloBytes (b) Quality: 100; Size: 72.6 KiloBytes

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3.4.5 Crop An Image

Figure 3.27 Example Image for Cropping

(a) Source image (b) Image after cropping

There are many reasons to crop an image; for example, fitting an image to fill a frame, removing a portion
of the background to emphasize the subject, etc. There are two methods to activate the crop tool. Click

the button in the Toolbox, or use Tools → Transform Tools → Crop in the image window. This
changes the cursor and allow you to click and drag a rectangular shape. The button in the toolbox is the
easiest way to get to any of the tools.

Figure 3.28 Select a Region to Crop

Click on one corner of the desired crop area and drag your mouse to create the crop rectangle. You
don’t have to be accurate as you can change the exact shape of the rectangle later.

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Figure 3.29 Dialog for Cropping

After completing the click and drag motion, a rectangle with special regions is shown on the canvas.
As the cursor is moved over the different areas of the selected crop area, the cursor changes. You can
then drag the rectangle’s corners or edges to change the dimensions of the selected area. As shown in the
figure above, as the crop area is resized, the dimensions and ratio are shown in the status bar. Double-
click inside the rectangle or press Enter to complete cropping. See Section 14.4.4 for more information
on cropping in GIMP.
If you would like to crop the image in a specific aspect ratio, such as a square, make sure the tool
options are visible ( Windows → Dockable Dialogs → Tool Options). In the Tool Options dockable,
check the mark next to Fixed and make sure the drop-down box next to it is set to Aspect Ratio. You can
now type the desired aspect ratio on the text box below, such as “1:1”.
You also have controls to change the aspect from landscape to portrait. After you set the aspect ratio,
drag one of the corners of the crop rectangle to update it. The rectangle changes to the chosen ratio, and
when you drag it should maintain that ratio.

3.4.6 Find Info About Your Image

Figure 3.30 Finding Info

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When you need to find out information about your image, Use Image → Image Properties to open the
“Image Properties” dialog, which contains information about the image size, resolution, mode and much
more.

Figure 3.31 “Image Properties” Dialog

3.4.7 Change the Mode

As with anything else, images come in different kinds and serve different purposes. Sometimes, a small
size is important (for web sites) and at other times, retaining a high color depth (e.g., a family portrait)
is what you want. GIMP can handle all of this, and more, primarily by converting between three funda-
mental modes, as seen in this menu. In order to switch your image to one of these modes, you open it
and follow that menu and click the mode you want.

Figure 3.32 Dialog for changing the mode

RGB- This is the default mode, used for high-quality images, and able to display millions of colors.
This is also the mode for most of your image work including scaling, cropping, and even flipping. In
RGB mode, each pixel consists of three different components: R->Red, G->Green, B->Blue. Each of these

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in turn can have an intensity value of 0-255. What you see at every pixel is an additive combination of
these three components.
Indexed- This is the mode usually used when file size is of concern, or when you are working with
images with few colors. It involves using a fixed number of colors (256 or less) for the entire image
to represent colors. By default, when you change an image to a palleted image, GIMP generates an
“optimum palette” to best represent your image.

Figure 3.33 Dialog “Convert Image to Indexed Colors”

As you might expect, since the information needed to represent the color at each pixel is less, the
file size is smaller. However, sometimes, there are options in the various menus that are grayed-out for
no apparent reason. This usually means that the filter or option cannot be applied when your image
is in its current mode. Changing the mode to RGB, as outlined above, should solve this issue. If RGB
mode doesn’t work either, perhaps the option you’re trying requires your layer to have the ability to be
transparent. This can be done just as easily via Layer → Transparency → Add Alpha Channel.

Figure 3.34 Add Alpha Channel

Grayscale- Grayscale images have only shades of gray. This mode has some specific uses and takes

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less space on the hard drive in some formats, but is not recommended for general use as reading it is not
supported by many applications.

There is no need to convert an image to a specific mode before saving it in your favorite format, as
GIMP is smart enough to properly export the image.

3.4.8 Flip An Image

Use this option when you need the person in the photo looking in the other direction, or you need the

top of the image to be the bottom. Use Tools → Transform Tools → Flip , or use the button on
the toolbox. After selecting the flip tool from the toolbox, click inside the canvas. Controls in the Tool
Options dockable let you switch between Horizontal and Vertical modes.

Figure 3.35 Dialog “Flip an Image”

After selecting the flip tool from the toolbox, click inside the canvas. The tool flips the image hori-
zontally. Use the options dialog to switch between horizontal and vertical. If it is not already displayed
in the dock under the toolbox, double click the toolbox button. You can also use the Ctrl key to switch
between horizontal and vertical.

In the images below, all possible flips are demonstrated:

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Figure 3.36 Example Image to Flip

Source image

Horizontal flipped image

Vertical flipped image

Horizontal and vertical flipped image

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3.4.9 Rotate An Image

Figure 3.37 Menu for “Rotate An Image”

Images that are taken with digital cameras sometimes need to be rotated. To do this, use Image →
Transform → Rotate 90° clockwise (or counter-clockwise). The images below demonstrate a 90 degrees
CCW rotation.

Figure 3.38 Example for “Rotate An Image”

(a) Source Image (b) Rotated image 90 degree CCW

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3.4.10 Separating an Object From Its Background

Figure 3.39 Object with Background

Sometimes you need to separate the subject of an image from its background. You may want to have the
subject on a flat color, or keep the background transparent so you can use it on an existing background,
or any other thing you have in mind. To do this, you must first use GIMP’s selection tools to draw a
selection around your subject. This is not an easy task, and selecting the correct tool is crucial. You have
several tools to accomplish this.
The “Free Select Tool” allows you to draw a border using either freehand or straight lines. Use this
when the subject has a relatively simple shape. Read more about this tool here: Section 14.2.4

Figure 3.40 Free Select Tool

The “Intelligent Scissors Select Tool” lets you select a freehand border and uses edge-recognition
algorithms to better fit the border around the object. Use this when the subject is complex but distinct
enough against its current background. Read more about this tool here: Section 14.2.7

Figure 3.41 Intelligent Scissors Select Tool

The “Foreground Select Tool” lets you mark areas as “Foreground” or “Background” and refines the
selection automatically. Read more about this tool here: Section 14.2.8

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Figure 3.42 Foreground Select Tool

Once you have selected your subject successfully, use Select → Invert. Now, instead of the subject,
the background is selected. What you do now depends on what you intended to do with the background.

• To fill the background with a single color:

Click the foreground color swatch (the top left of the two overlapping colored rectangles) in the
toolbox and select the desired color. Next, use Section 14.3.4 to replace the background with your
chosen color.

Figure 3.43 Result of Adding a Plain Color Background

• To make a transparent background:

Use Layer → Transparence → Add Alpha Channel to add an alpha channel. Next, use Edit Clear
or hit the Del key on the keyboard to remove the background. Please note that only a small subset
of file formats support transparent areas. Your best bet is to save your image as PNG.

Figure 3.44 Result of Adding a Transparent Background

• To make a black-and-white background while keeping the subject in color:

Use Colors → Desaturate. In the dialog that opens, cycle between the modes and select the best-
looking one, then click OK.

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Figure 3.45 Result of Desaturating the Background

3.5 How to Draw Straight Lines

This tutorial is based on Text and images Copyright © 2002 Seth Burgess. The original tutorial can be
found in the Internet [TUT01].

3.5.1 Intention

Figure 3.46 Example of straight lines

This tutorial shows you how to draw straight lines with GIMP. Forcing a line to be straight is a convenient
way to deal with the imprecision of a mouse or tablet, and to take advantage of the power of a computer
to make things look neat and orderly. This tutorial doesn’t use Straight Lines for complex tasks; its
intended to show how you can use it to create quick and easy straight lines.

1. Preparations

Figure 3.47 Introducing the Shift-key

The invention called the typewriter introduced the Shift Key. You generally have 2 of them on
your keyboard. They look something like the figure above. The keys are located on the left and

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right sides of your keyboard. The mouse was invented by Douglas C. Engelbart in 1970. These
come in different varieties, but always have at least one button.

2. Creating a Blank Drawable

Figure 3.48 New image

First, create a new image. Any size will do. Use File → New to create a new image.

3. Choose a Tool

Figure 3.49 Paint tools in the toolbox

Any of the red-highlighted tools on the above toolbox can do lines.

4. Create a Starting Point

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Figure 3.50 Starting point

Click on the paintbrush in the toolbox. Click in the image where you want a line to start or end. A
single dot will appear on the screen. The size of this dot represents the current brush size, which
you can change in the Brush Dialog (see Section 15.3.2).Now, lets start drawing a line. Hold down
the Shift key, and keep it down.

5. Drawing the Line

Figure 3.51 Drawing the line

After you have a starting point and while pressing the Shift key, you will see a straight line that
follows the cursor. Press the first button on the mouse (the leftmost one usually) and let it go.
During that whole “click” of the mouse button, you need to keep the Shift key held down.

6. Final

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Figure 3.52 Final Image

This is a powerful feature. You can draw straight lines with any of the draw tools. You can even
draw more lines at the end of this one. Our last step is to let go of the Shift key. And there you
have it. Some more examples are shown below. Happy GIMPing!

3.5.2 Examples

Figure 3.53 Examples I

(a) Check Use color from gradi- (b) Select the Clone tool and set
ent. the source to “Maple Leaves” pat-
tern.

Figure 3.54 Examples II

(a) Use Filters → Render → (b) Use Filters → Render →

Pattern → Grid to create a grid. Clouds → Plasma to create the
Use the Smudge Tool to draw a cool plasma cloud. Use the Erase
line with a slightly larger brush. Tool with a square brush to draw
a line.

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Figure 3.55 Example III

Use the rectangle select tool to select a rectangle, and then fill the selection with a light blue color. Select the
dodge/burn tool. Set the type to Dodge and paint along the top and left side using an appropriately sized brush.
Set the type to Burn and paint along the right and bottom.

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Chapter 4

Getting Unstuck

4.1 Getting Unstuck

4.1.1 Stuck!

All right, okay: you’re stuck. You’re trying to use one of the tools on an image, and nothing is happening,
and nothing you try makes any difference. Your fists are starting to clench, and your face is starting to
feel warm. Are you going to have to kill the program, and lose all your work? This sucks!
Well, hold on a second. This happens pretty frequently, even to people who’ve used GIMP for a long
time, but generally the cause is not so hard to figure out (and fix) if you know where to look. Lets be
calm, and go through a checklist that will probably get you GIMPing happily again.

4.1.2 Common Causes of GIMP Non-Responsiveness

[Link] There is a floating selection

Figure 4.1 Layers dialog showing a floating selection.

How to tell: If there is a floating selection, many actions are impossible until the floating section is an-
chored. To check, look at the Layers dialog (making sure it’s set to the image you’re working on) and
see whether the top layer is called “Floating Selection”.
How to solve: Either anchor the floating selection, or convert it into an ordinary (non-floating) layer.
If you need help on how to do this, see Floating Selections.

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[Link] The selection is hidden

Figure 4.2 Unstuck show selection menu

In the View menu, make sure that ”Show Selection” is checked.

How to tell: If this is the problem, merely reading this will already have made you realize it, probably,
but to explain in any case: sometimes the flickering line that outlines the selection is annoying because it
makes it hard to see important details of the image, so GIMP gives you the option of hiding the selection,
by unchecking Show Selection in the View menu. It is easy to forget that you have done this, though.
How to fix: If this hasn’t rung any bells, it isn’t the problem, and if it has, you probably know how to
fix it, because it doesn’t happen unless you explicitly tell it to; but anyway: just go to the View menu for
the image and, if Show Selection is unchecked, click on it..

[Link] You are acting outside of the selection

Figure 4.3 Unstuck select all

Click “All” in the Select menu to make sure that everything is selected.

How to fix: If doing this has destroyed a selection that you wanted to keep, hit Ctrl-Z (undo) a couple
of times to restore it, and then we’ll figure out what the problem is. There are a couple of possibilities.
If you couldn’t see any selection, there may have been a very tiny one, or even one that contained no
pixels. If this was the case, it surely is not a selection that you wanted to keep, so why have you gotten

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this far in the first place? If you can see a selection but thought you were inside it, it might be inverted
from what you think. The easiest way to tell is to hit the Quick Mask button: the selected area will be
clear and the unselected area will be masked. If this was the problem, then you can solve it by toggling
Quick Mask off and choosing Invert in the Select menu.

[Link] The active drawable is not visible

Figure 4.4 Unstuck layer invisibility

Layers dialog with visibility off for the active layer.

How to tell: The Layers dialog gives you ability to toggle the visibility of each layer on or off. Look at
the Layers dialog, and see if the layer you are trying to act on is active (i.e., darkened) and has an eye
symbol to the left of it. If not, this is your problem.
How to fix: If your intended target layer is not active, click on it in the Layers dialog to activate it.
(If none of the layers are active, the active drawable might be a channel -- you can look at the Channels
tab in the Layers dialog to see. This does not change the solution, though.) If the eye symbol does not
appear, click in the Layers dialog at the left edge to toggle it: this should make the layer visible. See the
Help section for the Layers Dialog if you need more help.

[Link] The active drawable is transparent

Figure 4.5 Unstuck layer transparency

Layers dialog with opacity set to zero for the active layer.

How to tell: When the opacity is set 0 on the layer, you cannot see anything which you draw on it. Look
the Opacity slider, and see which side the slider placed at. If it is at the leftmost side, that is your problem.
How to fix: Move the slider.

[Link] You are trying to act outside the layer

How to tell: In GIMP, layers don’t need to have the same dimensions as the image: they can be larger or
smaller. If you try to paint outside the borders of a layer, nothing happens. To see if this is happening,
look for a black-and-yellow dashed rectangle that does not enclose the area you’re trying to draw at.

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How to fix: You need to enlarge the layer. There are two commands at the bottom of the Layer menu
that will let you do this: Layer to Image Size, which sets the layer bounds to match the image borders; and
Layer Boundary Size, which brings up a dialog that allows you to set the layer dimensions to whatever
you please.

[Link] The image is in indexed color mode.

How to tell:GIMP can handle three different color modes: RGB(A), Indexed and Grayscale. The indexed
colormode uses a colormap, where all used colors on the image are indexed. The color picker in GIMP
however, let you choose RGB colors. That means, if you try to paint with a different color than it is
indexed in the colormap, you end up in very undetermined results (e.g. it paints with the wrong color
or you can’t paint).
How to fix: Always use the RGB Color mode to paint on images. You can verify and select another
color mode from the Mode menuitem in the Image menu.

[Link] Eraser and brushes no longer work

You have selected the clipboard brush and the clipboard is empty.

Figure 4.6 Empty Clipboard Brush

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 Part II

How do I Become a GIMP Wizard?

57
Chapter 5

Getting Images into GIMP

This chapter is about getting images into GIMP. It explains how to create new images, how to load images
from files, how to scan them and how to make screenshots.
But first we want to introduce you to the general structure of images in GIMP.

5.1 Image Types

It is tempting to think of an image as something that corresponds with a single display window, or to a
single file such as a JPEG file. In reality, however, a GIMP image is a a complicated structure, containing
a stack of layers plus several other types of objects: a selection mask, a set of channels, a set of paths, an
”undo” history, etc. In this section we take a detailed look at the components of a GIMP image, and the
things that you can do with them.
The most basic property of an image is its mode. There are three possible modes: RGB, grayscale, and
indexed. RGB stands for Red-Green-Blue, and indicates that each point in the image is represented by a
“red” level, a “green” level, and a “blue” level; representing a full-color image. Each color channel has
256 possible intensity levels. More details in Color Models
In a grayscale image, each point is represented by a brightness value, ranging from 0 (black) to 255
(white), with intermediate values representing different levels of gray.

Figure 5.1 Components of the RGB and CMY Color Model

(a) In the RGB Color Model, mixing Red, (b) In the CMY(K) color model, mixing Cyan,
Green and Blue gives White, which is what hap- Magenta and Yellow gives Black, which is what
pens on your screen. happens when you print on a white paper. The
printer will actually use the black cartridge for
economical reasons and better color rendering.

Conceptually, the difference between a grayscale image and an RGB image is the number of “color
channels”: a grayscale image has one; an RGB image has three. An RGB image can be thought of as three
superimposed grayscale images, one colored red, one green, and one blue.
Actually, both RGB and grayscale images have one additional color channel called the alpha channel,
which represents opacity. When the alpha value at a given location in a given layer is zero, the layer

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is completely transparent (you can see through it), and the color at that location is determined by what
lies underneath. When alpha is maximal (255), the layer is opaque (you cannot see through it), and the
color is determined by the color of the layer. Intermediate alpha values correspond to varying degrees
of transparency / opacity: the color at the location is a proportional mixture of color from the layer and
color from underneath.

Figure 5.2 Example of an image in RGB and Grayscale mode

(a) An image in RGB mode, with the channels (b) An image in Grayscale mode, with the
corresponding to Red, Green and Blue. channel corresponding to Luminosity.

In GIMP, every color channel, including the alpha channel, has a range of possible values from 0 to
255; in computing terminology, a depth of 8 bits. Some digital cameras can produce image files with a
depth of 16 bits per color channel. GIMP cannot load such a file without losing resolution. In most cases
the effects are too subtle to be detected by the human eye, but in some cases, mainly where there are
large areas with slowly varying color gradients, the difference may be perceptible.

Figure 5.3 Example of an image with alpha channel

(a) Red chan- (b) Green (c) Blue chan- (d) The Alpha (e) A color
nel channel nel channel shows image in RGB
the image area mode with an
which is trans- Alpha channel.
parent.

The third type, indexed images, is a bit more complicated to understand. In an indexed image, only a
limited set of discrete colors are used, usually 256 or less. These colors form the “colormap” of the image,
and each point in the image is assigned a color from the colormap. Indexed images have the advantage
that they can be represented inside a computer in a way which consumes relatively little memory, and
back in the dark ages (say, ten years ago), they were very commonly used. As time goes on, they are
used less and less, but they are still important enough to be worth supporting in GIMP. (Also, there are a
few important kinds of image manipulation that are easier to implement with indexed images than with
continuous-color RGB images.)
Some very commonly used types of files (including GIF and PNG) produce indexed images when
they are opened in GIMP. Many of GIMP’s tools don’t work very well on indexed images–and many
filters don’t work at all–because of the limited number of colors available. Because of this, it is usually
best to convert an image to RGB mode before working on it. If necessary, you can convert it back to
indexed mode when you are ready to save it
GIMP makes it easy to convert from one image type to another, using the Mode command in the
Image menu. Some types of conversions, of course (RGB to grayscale or indexed, for example) lose
information that cannot be regained by converting back in the other direction.

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Note
If you are trying to use a filter on an image, and it appears grayed out in the menu,
usually the cause is that the image (or, more specifically, the layer) you are working
on is the wrong type. Many filters can’t be used on indexed images. Some can
be used only on RGB images, or only on grayscale images. Some also require the
presence or absence of an alpha channel. Usually the fix is to convert the image to
a different type, most commonly RGB.

5.2 Creating new Files

Use File → New to open the Create a new image dialog. Modify the initial width and height of the file or
use the standard values, then create a new image file. More information about the Create a new image
dialog can be found in Section 16.2.2.

5.3 Opening Files

There are several ways of opening an existing image in GIMP:

5.3.1 Open File

The most obvious way to open an existing image is the menu. Use File → Open to open the Open Image
dialog,allowing you to navigate to the file and click on its name. This method works well if you know the
name and location of the file you want to open. Although the Open Image dialog does have a preview
pane, it is not convenient (easy) to find an image based on a thumbnail.

Note
While opening a file, GIMP must determine the file type. Unfortunately, the file ex-
tension, such as .jpg, is not reliable: file extensions vary from system to system;
any file can be renamed to have any extension; and there are many reasons why a
file name might lack an extension. GIMP first tries to recognize a file by examining
its contents: most of the commonly used file formats have “magic headers” that
permit them to be recognized. Only if the magic yields no result does GIMP resort
to using the extension.

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Figure 5.4 The “Open Image” dialog

GIMP 2.2 introduced a new Open Image dialog that provides several features to help you navigate
quickly to a file. Perhaps the most important is the ability to create “bookmarks”, or Places, for folders
that you use often. Your list of bookmarks appears on the left side of the dialog. The ones at the top, such
as “Desktop”, are provided automatically. Use the the Add button to add the current directory to the
list. Use the Remove button to remove the selected bookmark. Double-click on a bookmark to navigate
directly to that directory.
The center of the dialog contains a listing of the contents of the selected directory. Subdirectories
are shown at the top of the list, files below them. By default, all files in the directory are listed, but you
can restrict the listing to image files of a specific type using the File Type selection menu that appears
beneath the directory listing.
When you select an image file entry in the listing, a preview appears on the right side of the dialog,
along with some basic information about the image. Note that previews are cached when they are gen-
erated, and there are some things you can do that may cause a preview to be incorrect. If you suspect
that this may be happening, you can force a new preview to be generated by holding down the Ctrl key
and clicking in the Preview area.
By default, a Location text box is present in the File Open dialog. It may be absent: the Ctrl-L key
combination toggles this text box. Alternatively, you can click on the icon of the paper and pencil in the
upper left corner to toggle the text box.

Note
If you select a file name from the list, and click the “Open” button in the lower right
corner or the dialog, it is almost always true that GIMP will automatically determine
the file type for you. On rare occasions, mainly if the file type is unusual and the
name lacks a meaningful extension, GIMP may fail to correctly identify the file type.
Use Select File Type at the bottom of the dialog to manually specify the file type if
this is required. More commonly, though, if GIMP fails to open an image file, it is
either corrupt or not a supported format.

5.3.2 Open Location

If instead of a file name, you have a URI (i.e., a web address) for the image, you can open it using the
menu, by choosing File → Open Location… from an image menu. This brings up a small dialog that
allows you to enter (or paste) the URI.

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Figure 5.5 The “Open Location” dialog

The “Open Location” dialog.

5.3.3 Open Recent

The easiest way to open an image that was recently open in GIMP, may be using File → Open Recent.
This displays a scrollable list of the mostly recently opened images with icons beside them. Select and
open the desired image.

5.3.4 Using External Programs

GIMP uses plugins for reading and writing all file formats except XCF. These plugins may use external
libraries or programs. For example, GIMP does not directly support PostScript. Instead, for reading (or
writing) PostScript files (file extension .ps or .eps), GIMP requires a powerful free software program
called Ghostscript.

[Link] Installing Ghostscript

Linux distributions almost always come with Ghostscript already installed (not necessarily the most
recent version). For other operating systems, you may have to install it yourself. Here are instructions
for installing it on Windows:

• Go to the Ghostscript project page on Sourceforge [GHOSTSCRIPT].

• Look for the package gnu-gs or ghostscript (for non-commercial use only) and go to the download
section.

• Download one of the prepared Windows distributions, such as [Link] or gs700w32.

exe.

• Start the executable and follow the instructions for the installation procedure.

• Set the GS_PROG environment variable to the full file name of the gswin32c binary (e.g. C:\\gs\
\[Link]\\bin\\[Link]).

Now you should be able to read PostScript files with GIMP. Please note that you must not move the
Ghostscript directories once the installation is complete. The installation creates registry entries which
allow Ghostscript to find its libraries. (These instructions courtesy of [Link]

5.3.5 File Manager

If you have associated an image file type with GIMP, either when you installed GIMP or later, then
you can navigate to the file using a file manager (such as Nautilus or Konqueror in Linux, or Windows
Explorer in Windows), and once you have found it, double-click on the file. If properly configured, the
image will open in GIMP.

5.3.6 Drag and Drop

Drag and drop a file onto the GIMP Toolbox to open the file. Drag an image into an open GIMP image
to add dropped file as a new layer, or set of layers, to the already open image.
Many applications support dragging and dropping an image into GIMP; for example, drag an image
from Firefox and drop it onto GIMP’s toolbox.

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5.3.7 Copy and Paste

Use File → Create → From Clipboard to create a new image from the clipboard; alternatively, you can
use Edit → Paste as → New Image. Many applications support copying an image to the clipboard that
can then be pasted into GIMP. Many operating systems support copying screens to the clipboard. Print
Screen typically copies the screen to the clipboard, and Alt-Print Screen copies only the active window.
Print screen is not universally supported, and just because your operating system can copy an image to
the clipboard, does not mean that GIMP can use the image from the clipboard. Your best bet is to try it
and see if it works.

5.3.8 Image Browser

Linux supports an image-management application named gThumb. Besides being an excellent image
browser, you can right click an image, choose Open with, then select GIMP from the list of options. You
can also drag an image from gThumb onto the GIMP toolbox. See the gThumb home page [GTHUMB]
for more information. Other similar applications are : GQview [GQVIEW], and XnView [XNVIEW].

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Getting Images out of GIMP

6.1 Files
GIMP is capable of reading and writing a large variety of graphics file formats. With the exception of
GIMP’s native XCF file type, file handling is done by Plugins. Thus, it is relatively easy to extend GIMP
to support new file types when the need arises.

6.1.1 Save / Export Images

Note
In former GIMP releases, when you loaded an image in some format, let us say
JPG or PNG, the image kept its format and was saved in the same format by Save.
With GIMP-2.8, images are loaded, imported, in the XCF format as a new project.
For example, a “sunfl[Link]” image will be loaded as “*[sunflower] (imported)-
1.0 (indexed color, 1 layer)”. The leading asterisk indicates that this file has been
changed. This image will be saved as “sunfl[Link]” by Save. To save this image
in a format other than XCF, you must use Export.

When you are finished working with an image, you will want to save the results. (In fact, it is often a
good idea to save at intermediate stages too: GIMP is a pretty robust program, but we have heard rumors,
possibly apocryphal, that it may have been known on rare and mysterious occasions to crash.) Most of
the file formats that GIMP can open, can also be used for saving. There is one file format that is special,
though: XCF is GIMP’s native format, and is useful because it stores everything about an image (well,
almost everything; it does not store “undo” information). Thus, the XCF format is especially suitable
for saving intermediate results, and for saving images to be re-opened later in GIMP. XCF files are not
readable by most other programs that display images, so once you have finished, you will probably also
want to export the image in a more widely used format, such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.

6.1.2 File Formats

There are several commands for saving images. A list, and information on how to use them, can be found
in the section covering the File Menu.
GIMP allows you to export the images you create in a wide variety of formats. It is important to realize
that the only format capable of saving all of the information in an image, including layers, transparency,
etc., is GIMP’s native XCF format. Every other format preserves some image properties and loses others.
It is up to you to understand the capabilities of the format you choose.
Exporting an image does not modify the image itself, so you do not lose anything by exporting. See
Export file.

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Note
When you close an image (possibly by quitting GIMP), you are warned if the im-
age is ”dirty”; that is, if it has been changed without subsequently being saved (an
asterisk is in front of the image name).

Figure 6.1 Closing warning

Saving an image in any file format will cause the image to be considered ”not dirty”,
even if the file format does not represent all of the information from the image.

[Link] Export Image as GIF

Figure 6.2 The GIF Export dialog

Warning

The GIF file format does not support some basic image properties such as print
resolution. If you care for these properties, use a different file format like PNG.

GIF Options

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Interlace Checking interlace allows an image on a web page to be progressively displayed as it is

downloaded. Progressive image display is useful with slow connection speeds, because you
can stop an image that is of no interest; interlace is of less use today with our faster connection
speeds.
GIF comment GIF comments support only 7-bit ASCII characters. If you use a character outside
the 7-bit ASCII set, GIMP will export the image without a comment, and then inform you that
the comment was not saved.
Animated GIF Options
Loop forever When this option is checked, the animation will play repeatedly until you stop it.
Delay between frames where unspecified You can set the delay, in milliseconds, between frames
if it has not been set before. In this case, you can modify every delay in the Layer Dialog.
Frame disposal where unspecified If this has not been set before, you can set how frames will be
superimposed. You can select among three options :
• I don’t care: you can use this option if all your layers are opaque. Layers will overwrite
what is beneath.
• Cumulative Layers (combine): previous frames will not be deleted when a new one is
displayed.
• One frame per layer (replace): previous frames will be deleted before displaying a new
frame.
Use delay entered above for all frames Self-explanatory.
Use disposal entered above for all frames Self-explanatory.

[Link] Export Image as JPEG

JPEG files usually have an extension .jpg, .JPG, or .jpeg. It is a very widely used format, because it
compresses images very efficiently, while minimizing the loss of image quality. No other format comes
close to achieving the same level of compression. It does not, however, support transparency or multiple
layers.

Figure 6.3 The JPEG Export dialog

The JPEG algorithm is quite complex, and involves a bewildering number of options, whose meaning
is beyond the scope of this documentation. Unless you are a JPEG expert, the Quality parameter is
probably the only one you will need to adjust.

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Quality When you save a file in JPEG format, a dialog is displayed that allows you to set the Quality
level, which ranges from 0 to 100. Values above 95 are generally not useful, though. The default
quality of 85 usually produces excellent results, but in many cases it is possible to set the quality
substantially lower without noticeably degrading the image. You can test the effect of different
quality settings by checking Show Preview in image window in the JPEG dialog.

Note
Please note, that the numbers for the JPEG quality level have a different
meaning in different applications. Saving with a quality level of 80 in GIMP is
not necessarily comparable with saving with a quality level of 80 in a different
application.

Preview in image window Checking this option causes each change in quality (or any other JPEG pa-
rameter) to be shown in the image display. (This does not alter the image: the image reverts back
to its original state when the JPEG dialog is closed.)

Advanced settings Some information about the advanced settings:

Optimize If you enable this option, the optimization of entropy encoding parameters will be used.
The result is typically a smaller file, but it takes more time to generate.
Progressive With this option enabled, the image chunks are stored in the file in an order that
allows progressive image refinement during a slow connection web download. The progres-
sive option for JPG has the same purpose as the interlace option for GIF. Unfortunately, the
progressive option produces slightly larger JPG files (than without the progressive option).
Save EXIF data JPEG files from many digital cameras contain extra information, called EXIF data.
EXIF data provides information about the image such as camera make and model, image size,
image date, etc. Although GIMP uses the “libexif” library to read and write EXIF data, the
library is not automatically packaged with GIMP. If GIMP was built with libexif support, then
EXIF data is preserved if you open a JPEG file, work with the resulting image, and then export
it as JPEG. The EXIF data is not altered in any way when you do this. The EXIF data may
indicate things such as image creation time and file name, which may no longer be correct. If
GIMP was not built with EXIF support, you can still open JPG files containing EXIF data, but
the EXIF data is ignored, and will not be saved when the resulting image is later exported.
Save thumbnail This option lets you save a thumbnail with the image. Many applications use the
small thumbnail image as a quickly available small preview image.

Note

This option is present only if GIMP was built with EXIF support.

Save XMP data XMP data is “meta” data about the image; it is a competing format with EXIF. If
you enable this option, the meta data of the image is saved in an XMP-structure within the
file.
Use quality settings from original image If a particular quality setting (or “quantization table”)
was attached to the image when it was loaded, then this option allows you to use them instead
of the standard ones.
If you have only made a few changes to the image, then re-using the same quality setting will
give you almost the same quality and file size as the original image. This will minimize the
losses caused by the quantization step, compared to what would happen if you used different
quality setting.

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If the quality setting found in the original file are not better than your default quality settings,
then the option “Use quality settings from original image” will be available but not enabled.
This ensures that you always get at least the minimum quality specified in your defaults. If
you did not make major changes to the image and you want to save it using the same quality
as the original, then you can do it by enabling this option.
Smoothing JPG compression creates artifacts. By using this option, you can smooth the image
when saving, reducing them. But your image becomes somewhat blurred.
Restart markers The image file can include markers which allow the image to be loaded as seg-
ments. If a connection is broken while loading the image in a web page, loading can resume
from the next marker.
Subsampling The human eye is not sensitive in the same way over the entire color spectrum. The
compression can use this to treat slightly different colors that the eye perceives as very close,
as identical colors. Three methods are available :
• 1x1,1x1,1x1 (best quality): Commonly referred to as ([Link]), this produces the best quality,
preserving borders and contrasting colors, but compression is less.
• 2x1,1x1,1x1 ([Link]): This is the standard subsampling, which usually provides a good ra-
tio between image quality and file size. There are situations, however, in which using
no subsampling ([Link]) provides a noticeable increase in the image quality; for example,
when the image contains fine details such as text over a uniform background, or images
with almost-flat colors.
• 1x2,1x1,1x1 This is similar to (2x1,1x1,1x1), but the chroma sampling is in the horizontal
direction rather than the vertical direction; as if someone rotated an image.
• 2x2,1x1,1x1 (smallest file): Commonly referred to as ([Link]), this produces the smallest
files. This suits images with weak borders but tends to denature colors.
DCT Method DCT is “discrete cosine transform”, and it is the first step in the JPEG algorithm go-
ing from the spatial to the frequency domain. The choices are “float”, “integer” (the default),
and “fast integer”.
• float: The float method is very slightly more accurate than the integer method, but is
much slower unless your machine has very fast floating-point hardware. Also note that
the results of the floating-point method may vary slightly across machines, while the
integer methods should give the same results everywhere.
• integer (the default): This method is faster than “float”, but not as accurate.
• fast integer: The fast integer method is much less accurate than the other two.
Image comments In this text box, you can enter a comment which is saved with the image.

[Link] Export Image as PNG

Figure 6.4 The “Export Image as PNG” dialog

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Interlacing Checking interlace allows an image on a web page to be progressively displayed as it is

downloaded. Progressive image display is useful with slow connection speeds, because you can
stop an image that is of no interest; interlace is of less use today with our faster connection speeds.

Save background color If your image has many transparency levels, the Internet browsers that recog-
nize only two levels, will use the background color of your Toolbox instead. Internet Explorer up
to version 6 did not use this information.

Save gamma Gamma correction is the ability to correct for differences in how computers interpret color
values. This saves gamma information in the PNG that reflects the current Gamma factor for your
display. Viewers on other computers can then compensate to ensure that the image is not too dark
or too bright.

Save layer offset PNG supports an offset value called the “oFFs chunk”, which provides position data.
Unfortunately, PNG offset support in GIMP is broken, or at least is not compatible with other
applications, and has been for a long time. Do not enable offsets, let GIMP flatten the layers before
saving, and you will have no problems.

Save Resolution Save the image resolution, in ppi (pixels per inch).

Save creation time Date the file was saved.

Save comment You can read this comment in the Image Properties.

Save color values from transparent pixels When this option is checked, the color values are saved even
if the pixels are completely transparent. But this is possible only with a single layer, not with a
merged composition. When a multi-layer image gets exported to a single-layer file format, there
is no way GIMP could preserve the color values in the transparent pixels.

Compression level Since compression is not lossy, the only reason to use a compression level less than
9, is if it takes too long to compress a file on a slow computer. Nothing to fear from decompression:
it is as quick whatever the compression level.

Save Defaults Click to save the current settings. Latter, you can use Load Defaults to load the saved
settings.

Note
The PNG format supports indexed images. Using fewer colors, therefore, results in
a smaller file; this is especially useful for creating web images; see Section 16.6.6.
Computers work on 8 bits blocks named “Byte”. A byte allows 256 colors. Reducing
the number of colors below 256 is not useful: a byte will be used anyway and the
file size will not be less. More, this “PNG8” format, like GIF, uses only one bit for
transparency; only two transparency levels are possible, transparent or opaque.
If you want PNG transparency to be fully displayed by Internet Explorer, you can
use the AlphaImageLoader DirectX filter in the code of your Web page. See Mi-
crosoft Knowledge Base [MSKB-294714]. Please note, that this is not necessary
for InternetExplorer 7 and above.

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[Link] Export Image as TIFF

Figure 6.5 The TIFF Export dialog

Compression This option allows you to specify the algorithm used to compress the image.

• None: is fast, and lossless, but the resulting file is very large.
• LZW: The image is compressed using the “Lempel-Ziv-Welch” algorithm, a lossless compres-
sion technique. This is old, but efficient and fast. More information at [WKPD-LZW].
• Pack Bits: is a fast, simple compression scheme for run-length encoding of data. Apple in-
troduced the PackBits format with the release of MacPaint on the Macintosh computer. A
PackBits data stream consists of packets of one byte of header followed by data. (Source:
[WKPD-PACKBITS])
• Deflate: is a lossless data compression algorithm that uses a combination of the LZ77 al-
gorithm and Huffman coding. It is also used in Zip, Gzip and PNG file formats. Source:
[WKPD-DEFLATE].
• JPEG: is a very good compression algorithm but lossy.
• CCITT Group 3 fax; CCITT Group 4 fax is a black and white format developed to transfer
images by FAX.

Note
These options can only be selected, if the image is in indexed mode
and reduced to two colors. Use Image → Mode → Indexed to convert
the image to indexed. Be certain to check “Use black and white (1-bit)
palette”.

Save color values from transparent pixels With this option the color values are saved even if the pixels
are completely transparent.

Comment In this text box, you can enter a comment that is associated with the image.

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[Link] Export Image as MNG

Figure 6.6 Export MNG File Dialog

MNG is acronym for “Multiple-Image Network Graphics”.

The main problem is that Konqueror is the only Web navigator that recognizes the MNG animation
format. Please see [Link]

6.2 Preparing your Images for the Web

One of the most common uses for GIMP, is to prepare images for web sites. This means that images
should look as nice as possible while keeping the file size as small as possible. This step-by-step guide
demonstrates how to create small files with minimal loss of image quality.

6.2.1 Images with an Optimal Size/Quality Ratio

An optimal image for the web depends upon the image type and the file format. Use JPEG for Pho-
tographs because they usually have many colors and great detail. An image with fewer colors, such as
a button, icon, or screenshot, is better suited to the PNG format.

1. First, open the image as usual. I have opened our Wilber as an example image.

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Figure 6.7 The Wilber image opened in RGBA mode

2. The image is now in RGB mode, with an additional Alpha channel (RGBA). There is usually no
need to have an alpha channel for your web image. You can remove the alpha channel by flattening
the image.

A photograph rarely has an alpha channel, so the image will open in RGB mode rather than RGBA
mode; and you won’t have to remove the alpha channel.

Note
If the image has a soft transition into the transparent areas, you should not
remove the alpha channel, since the information used for the transition is not
be saved in the file. To export an image with transparent areas that do not
have a soft transition, (similar to GIF), remove the alpha channel.

3. After you have flattened the image, export the image in the PNG format for your web site.

Note
You can export your image in the PNG format with the default settings. Always
using maximum compression when creating the image. Maximum compression
has no affect on image quality or the time required to display the image, but it does
take longer to export. A JPEG image, however, loses quality as the compression
is increased. If your image is a photograph with lots of colors, you should use jpeg.
The main thing is to find the best tradeoff between quality and compression. You
can find more information about this topic in Section [Link].

6.2.2 Reducing the File Size Even More

If you want to reduce the size of your image a bit more, you could convert your image to Indexed mode.
That means that all of the colors will be reduced to only 256 values. Do not convert images with smooth
color transitions or gradients to indexed mode, because the original smooth gradients are typically con-
verted into a series of bands. Indexed mode is not recommended for photographs because after the
conversion, they typically look coarse and grainy.

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Figure 6.8 The indexed image

An indexed image can look a bit grainy. The left image is Wilber in its original size, the right image is zoomed in
by 300 percent.

1. Use the command described in Section 16.6.3 to convert an RGB image to indexed mode.
2. After you convert an image to indexed mode, you are once again able to export the image in PNG
format.

6.2.3 Saving Images with Transparency

There are two different approaches used by graphic file formats for supporting transparent image areas:
simple binary transparency and alpha transparency. Simple binary transparency is supported in the GIF
format; one color from the indexed color palette is marked as the transparent color. Alpha transparency
is supported in the PNG format; the transparency information is stored in a separate channel, the Alpha
channel.

Note

The GIF format is rarely used because PNG supports all the features of GIF with
additional features (e.g., alpha transparency). Nevertheless, GIF is still used for
animations.

Creating an Image with Transparent Areas (Alpha Transparency)

1. First of all, we will use the same image as in the previous tutorials, Wilber the GIMP mascot.

Figure 6.9 The Wilber image opened in RGBA mode

2. To export an image with alpha transparency, you must have an alpha channel. To check if the
image has an alpha channel, go to the channel dialog and verify that an entry for “Alpha” exists,
besides Red, Green and Blue. If this is not the case, add a new alpha channel from the layers menu;
Layer+Transparency → Add Alpha Channel.
3. The original XCF file contains background layers that you can remove. GIMP comes with standard
filters that supports creating gradients; look under Filters+Light and Shadow. You are only limited
by your imagination. To demonstrate the capabilities of alpha transparency, a soft glow in the
background around Wilber is shown.

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4. After you’re done with your image, you can export it in PNG format.

Figure 6.10 The Wilber image with transparency

Mid-Tone Checks in the background layer represent the transparent region of the exported image while you are
working on it in GIMP.

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Chapter 7

Painting with GIMP

7.1 The Selection

Often when you operate on an image, you only want part of it to be affected. In GIMP, you make this
happen by selecting that part. Each image has a selection associated with it. Most, but not all, GIMP
operations act only on the selected portions of the image.

Figure 7.1 How would you isolate the tree?

There are many, many situations where creating just the right selection is the key to getting the result
you want, and often it is not easy to do. For example, in the above image, suppose I want to cut the tree
out from its background, and paste it into a different image. To do this, I need to create a selection that
contains the tree and nothing but the tree. It is difficult because the tree has a complex shape, and in
several spots is hard to distinguish from the objects behind it.

Figure 7.2 Selection shown as usual with dashed line.

Now here is a very important point, and it is crucial to understand this. Ordinarily when you create a
selection, you see it as a dashed line enclosing a portion of the image. The common, not entirely accurate,
idea you could get from this, is that the selection is a sort of container, with the selected parts of the image
inside, and the unselected parts outside. Although this concept of selection is okay for many purposes,
it is not entirely correct.

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Actually the selection is implemented as a channel. In terms of its internal structure, it is identical to
the red, green, blue, and alpha channels of an image. Thus, the selection has a value defined at each pixel
of the image, ranging between 0 (unselected) and 255 (fully selected). The advantage of this approach
is that it allows some pixels to be partially selected, by giving them intermediate values between 0 and
255. As you will see, there are many situations where it is desirable to have smooth transitions between
selected and unselected regions.
What, then, is the dashed line that appears when you create a selection?
The dashed line is a contour line, dividing areas that are more than half selected from areas that are
less than half selected.

Figure 7.3 Same selection in QuickMask mode.

While looking at the dashed line that represents the selection, always remember that the line tells
only part of the story. If you want to see the selection in complete detail, the easiest way is to click the
QuickMask button in the lower left corner of the image window. This causes the selection to be shown
as a translucent overlay atop the image. Selected areas are unaffected; unselected areas are reddened.
The more completely selected an area is, the less red it appears.
Many operations work differently in QuickMask mode, as mentioned in the QuickMask overview.
Use the QuickMask button in the lower left corner of the image window to toggle QuickMask mode on
and off.

Figure 7.4 Same selection in QuickMask mode after feathering.

7.1.1 Feathering
With the default settings, the basic selection tools, such as the Rectangle Select tool, create sharp selec-
tions. Pixels inside the dashed line are fully selected, and pixels outside completely unselected. You
can verify this by toggling QuickMask: you see a clear rectangle with sharp edges, surrounded by uni-
form red. Use the “Feather edges” checkbox in the Tool Options to toggle between graduated selections
and sharp selections. The feather radius, which you can adjust, determines the distance over which the
transition occurs.
If you are following along, try this with the Rectangle Select tool, and then toggle QuickMask. You
will see that the clear rectangle has a fuzzy edge.
Feathering is particularly useful when you are cutting and pasting, so that the pasted object blends
smoothly and unobtrusively with its surroundings.
It is possible to feather a selection at any time, even if it was originally created as a sharp selection. Use
Select → Feather from the image menu to open the Feather Selection dialog. Set the feather radius and

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click OK. Use Select → Sharpen to do the opposite—sharpen a graduated selection into an all-or-nothing
selection.

Note

For technically oriented readers: feathering works by applying a Gaussian blur to

the selection channel, with the specified blurring radius.

7.1.2 Making a Selection Partially Transparent

You can set layer opacity, but you cannot do that directly for a selection. It is quite useful to make the
image of a glass transparent. Use the following methods to set the layer opacity:

• For simple selections, use the Eraser tool with the desired opacity.

• For complex selections: use Selection → Floating to create a floating selection. This creates a new
layer with the selection called “Floating Selection”. Set the opacity slider in the Layer Dialog to
the desired opacity. Then anchor the selection: outside the selection, the mouse pointer includes
an anchor. When you click while the mouse pointer includes the anchor, the floating selection
disappears from the Layer Dialog and the selection is at the right place and partially transparent
(anchoring works this way only if a selection tool is activated : you can also use the Anchor Layer
command in the context menu by right clicking on the selected layer in the layer dialog).
And, if you use this function frequently: Ctrl-C to copy the selection, Ctrl-V to paste the clipboard
as a floating selection, and Layer → New Layer to turn the selection into a new layer. You can
adjust the opacity before, or after creating the new layer.

• Another way: use Layer → Mask → Add Layer Mask to add a layer mask to the layer with the
selection, initializing it with the selection. Then use a brush with the desired opacity to paint the
selection with black, i.e. paint it with transparency. Then Layer/Mask/Apply Layer Mask. See
Section [Link].

• To make the solid background of an image transparent, add an Alpha channel, and use the Magic Wand
to select the background. Then, use the Color Picker tool to select the background color, which
becomes the foreground color in Toolbox. Use the Bucket Fill tool with the selected color. Set the
Bucket Fill mode to “Color Erase”, which erases pixels with the selected color; other pixels are
partially erased and their color is changed.
The simplest method is to use Edit → Clear, which gives complete transparency to a selection.

7.2 Creating and Using Selections

7.2.1 Moving a Selection
Rectangular and elliptical selections have two modes. The default mode has handles on the selection.
If you click the selection or press the Enter key,the handles disappear leaving only the dotted outline
(marching ants). The other selection tools have different behaviour.

[Link] Moving rectangular and elliptical selections

If you click-and drag a selection with handles, you move the selection outline, and you don’t move the
contents of rectangular or elliptic selections.
Select the Move tool and set the options to move the selection; the tool supports moving the selection,
path, or layer.

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Figure 7.5 Moving selection outline

Most systems support moving the selection using the arrow keys. The precise behavior is system
dependent. If the arrow keys do not cause the selection to move, try hovering the mouse cursor over
the selection first. Press and hold the Alt (or Ctrl-Alt, Shift-Alt, or Alt). One combination may move the
selection by one pixel, and another by 25 pixels each step. Hover the mouse cursor over a side or corner
handle, and the arrow keys and combinations can change the size of the selection.
If you click-and-drag the selection without handles, you create a new selection! To move the selection
contents, you have to

• hold down Ctrl-Alt keys and click-and-drag the selection. This makes the original place empty. A
floating selection is created. The required key commands may differ on your system, look in the
status bar to see if another combination is specified; for example, Shift-Ctrl-Alt.

Figure 7.6 Moving a selection and its content, emptying the original place

• hold down Shift-Alt keys and click-and-drag the selection to move without emptying the original
place. A floating selection is created.

Figure 7.7 Moving a selection and its content without emptying the original place

Note

On some systems, you must push Alt before Shift or Ctrl. On these systems,
pressing Shift or Ctrl first, causes GIMP to enter a mode that adds or subtract
from the current selection — after that, the Alt key is ineffective!

[Link] Moving the other selections

The other selections (Lasso, Magic wand, By Color) have no handle. Click-and dragging them doesn’t
move them. To move their contents, as with rectangular and elliptical selections, you have to hold down
Ctrl-Alt keys or Shift-Alt and click-and-drag.
If you use keyboard arrow keys instead of click-and-drag, you move the outline.

[Link] Other method

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Note

You can also use a more roundabout method to move a selection. Make it float-
ing. Then you can move its content, emptying the origin, by click-and-dragging or
keyboard arrow keys. To move without emptying, use copy-paste.

7.2.2 Adding or subtracting selections

Tools have options that you can configure. Each selection tool allows you to set the selection mode. The
following selection modes are supported:

• Replace is the most used selection mode. In replace mode, a selection replaces any existing selec-
tion.

• Add mode, causes new selections to be added to any existing selection. Press and hold the Shift
key while making a selection to temporarily enter add mode.

• Subtract mode, causes new selections to be removed from any existing selection. Press and hold
the Ctrl key while making a selection to temporarily enter subtract mode.

• Intersect mode, causes areas in both the new and existing selection to become the new selection.
Press and hold both the Shift and Ctrl key while making a selection to temporarily enter intersect
mode.

Figure 7.8 Enlarging a rectangular selection with the Lasso

The figure shows an existing rectangular selection. Select the Lasso. While pressing the Shift key,
make a free hand selection that includes the existing selection. Release the mouse button and areas are
included in the selection.

Note

To correct selection defects precisely, use the Quick Mask.

7.3 The QuickMask

Figure 7.9 Image with QuickMask enabled

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The usual selection tools involve tracing an outline around an area of interest, which does not work well
for some complex selections. The QuickMask, however, allows you to paint a selection instead of just
tracing its outline.

7.3.1 Overview
Normally, a selection in GIMP is represented by “marching ants” that trace the selection outline, but
there may be more to a selection than the marching ants show. A GIMP selection is actually a full-
fledged grayscale channel, covering the image, with pixel values ranging from 0 (unselected) to 255 (fully
selected). The marching ants are drawn along a contour of half-selected pixels. Thus, what the marching
ants show you as either inside or outside the boundary is really just a slice through a continuum.
The QuickMask is GIMP’s way of showing the full structure of the selection. QuickMask also pro-
vides the ability to interact with the selection in new, and substantially more powerful, ways. Click the
small outlined button at the lower left of the image window to toggle QuickMask on and off. The but-
ton switches between QuickMask mode, and marching ants mode. You can also use Select → Toggle
QuickMask, or Shift-Q, to toggle between QuickMask and marching ants mode.
In QuickMask mode, the selection is shown as a translucent screen overlying the image, whose trans-
parency at each pixel indicates the degree to which that pixel is selected. By default the mask is shown
in red, but you can change this if another mask color is more convenient. The less a pixel is selected, the
more it is obscured by the mask. Fully selected pixels are shown completely clear.
In QuickMask mode, many image manipulations act on the selection channel rather than the image
itself. This includes, in particular, paint tools. Painting with white selects pixels, and painting with black
unselects pixels. You can use any of the paint tools, as well as the bucket fill and gradient fill tools, in
this way. Advanced users of GIMP learn that “painting the selection” is the easiest and most effective
way to delicately manipulate the image.

Tip
To save a QuickMask selection to a new channel; Make sure that there is a selection
and that QuickMask mode is not active in the image window. Use Select → Save
to Channel. to create a new channel in the channel dialog called “SelectionMask
copy” (repeating this command creates “..copy#1”, “...copy#2” and so on...).

Tip

In QuickMask mode, Cut and Paste act on the selection rather than the image.
You can sometimes make use of this as the most convenient way of transferring a
selection from one image to another.

You can learn more on Selection masks in the section dedicated to the channel dialog.

7.3.2 Properties
There are two QuickMask properties you can change by right-clicking on the QuickMask button.

• Normally the QuickMask shows unselected areas “fogged over ” and selected areas “in clear”, but
you can reverse this by choosing “Mask Selected Areas” instead of the default “Mask Unselected
Areas”.

• Use “Configure Color and Opacity” to open a dialog that allows you to set these to values other
than the defaults, which are red at 50% opacity.

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7.4 Using QuickMask Mode

1. Open an image or begin a new document.
2. Activate QuickMask mode using the left-bottom button in the image window. If a selection is
present the mask is initialized with the content of the selection.
3. Choose any drawing tool. Paint on the QuickMask with black to remove selected areas, and paint
with white to add selected areas. Use grey colors to partially select areas.
You can also use selection tools and fill these selections with the Bucket Fill tool; this does not
destroy the QuickMask selections!
4. Toggle QuickMask mode off using the left-bottom button in the image window: the selection will
be displayed with marching ants.

7.5 Paths
Paths are curves (known as Bézier-curves). Paths are easy to learn and use in GIMP. To understand their
concepts and mechanism, look at the glossary Bézier-curve or Wikipedia [WKPD-BEZIER]. The Paths
tool is very powerful, allowing you to design sophisticated forms. To use the Paths tool in GIMP, you
must first create a path, and then stroke the path.
In GIMP, the term “Stroke path” means to apply a specific style to the path (color, width, pattern... ).
A Path has two main purposes:

• You can convert a closed path to a selection.

• Any path, open or closed, can be stroked; that is, painted on the image in a variety of ways.

Figure 7.10 Illustration of four different path creating

Four examples of GIMP paths: one closed and polygonal; one open and polygonal; one closed and curved; one
with a mixture of straight and curved segments.

7.5.1 Path Creation

Start by drawing the outline for your path; the outline can be modified later (see the Paths tool). To start,
select the Paths tool using one of the following methods:

• Use Tools → Path from the image menu.

• Use the relevant icon in toolbox.

• Use the hotkey B.

When the Paths tool is selected, the mouse cursor changes into a pointer (arrow) with a curve. Left
click in the image to create the first point on the path. Move the mouse to a new point and left click the
mouse to create another point linked to the previous point. Although you can create as many points as
you desire, you only need two points to learn about Paths. While adding points, the mouse cursor has a

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little “+” next to the curve, which indicates that clicking will add a new point. When the mouse cursor
is close to a line segment, the “+” changes into a cross with arrows; like the move tool.
Move the mouse cursor close to a line segment, left-click and drag the line segment. Two events
occur.
• The line segment bends and curves as it is pulled.
• Each line segment has a start point and an end point that is clearly labeled. A “direction line” now
projects from each end point for the line segment that was moved.
The curved line segment leaves an end point in the same direction that the “direction line” leaves the
end point. The length of the “direction line” controls how far the line segment projects along the “di-
rection line” before curving toward the other end point. Each “direction line” has an empty square box
(called a handle) on one end. Click and drag a handle to change the direction and length of a “direction
line”.

Figure 7.11 Appearance of a path while it is manipulated

Appearance of a path while it is manipulated using the Path tool.

The path is comprised of two components with both straight and curved segments. Black squares are
anchor points, the open circle indicates the selected anchor, and the two open squares are the handles
associated with the selected anchor.

7.5.2 Path Properties

Paths, like layers and channels, are components of an image. When an image is saved in GIMP’s native
XCF file format, any paths it has are saved with it. The list of paths in an image can be viewed and
operated on using the Paths dialog. You can move a path from one image to another by copying and
pasting using the pop-up menu in the Paths dialog, or by dragging an icon from the Paths dialog into
the destination image window.
GIMP paths belong to a mathematical type called “Bezier paths”. What this means in practical terms
is that they are defined by anchors and handles. “Anchors” are points the path goes through. “Handles”
define the direction of a path when it enters or leaves an anchor point: each anchor point has two handles
attached to it.
Paths can be very complex. If you create them by hand using the Path tool, unless you are obsessive
they probably won’t contain more than a few dozen anchor points (often many fewer); but if you create
them by transforming a selection into a path, or by transforming text into a path, the result can easily
contain hundreds of anchor points, or even thousands.
A path may contain multiple components. A “component” is a part of a path whose anchor points are
all connected to each other by path segments. The ability to have multiple components in paths allows
you to convert them into selections having multiple disconnected parts.
Each component of a path can be either open or closed: “closed” means that the last anchor point is
connected to the first anchor point. If you transform a path into a selection, any open components are
automatically converted into closed components by connecting the last anchor point to the first anchor
point with a straight line.
Path segments can be either straight or curved. A path is called “polygonal” if all of its segments are
straight. A new path segment is always created straight; the handles for the anchor points are directly on
top of the anchor points, yielding handles of zero length, which produces straight-line segments. Drag
a handle handle away from an anchor point to cause a segment to curve.

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One nice thing about paths is that they use very few resources, especially in comparison with im-
ages. Representing a path in RAM requires storing only the coordinates of its anchors and handles: 1K
of memory is enough to hold a complex path, but not enough to hold a small 20x20 pixel RGB layer.
Therefore, it is possible to have literally hundreds of paths in an image without causing any significant
stress to your system; the amount of stress that hundreds of paths might cause you, however, is another
question. Even a path with thousands of segments consumes minimal resources in comparison to a
typical layer or channel.
Paths can be created and manipulated using the Path tool.

7.5.3 Paths and Selections

GIMP lets you transform the selection for an image into a path; it also lets you transform paths into
selections. For information about the selection and how it works, see the Selection section.
When you transform a selection into a path, the path closely follows the “marching ants”. Now,
the selection is a two-dimensional entity, but a path is a one-dimensional entity, so there is no way to
transform the selection into a path without losing information. In fact, any information about partially se-
lected areas (i.e., feathering) are lost when a selection is turned into a path. If the path is transformed back
into a selection, the result is an all-or-none selection, similar to what is obtained by executing ”Sharpen”
from the Select menu.

7.5.4 Transforming Paths

Each of the Transform tools (Rotate, Scale, Perspective, etc) can be set to act on a layer, selection, or path.
Select the transform tool in the toolbox, then select layer, selection, or path for the “Transform:” option
in the tool’s Tool Options dialog. This gives you a powerful set of methods for altering the shapes of
paths without affecting other elements of the image.
By default a Transform tool, when it is set to affect paths, acts on only one path: the active path for the
image, which is shown highlighted in the Paths dialog. You can make a transformation affect more than
one path, and possibly other things as well, using the “transform lock” buttons in the Paths dialog. Not
only paths, but also layers and channels, can be transform-locked. If you transform one element that is
transform-locked, all others will be transformed in the same way. So, for example, if you want to scale
a layer and a path by the same amount, click the transform-lock buttons so that “chain” symbols appear
next to the layer in the Layers dialog, and the path in the Paths dialog; then use the Scale tool on either
the layer or the path, and the other will automatically follow.

7.5.5 Stroking a Path

Figure 7.12 Stroking paths

The four paths from the top illustration, each stroked in a different way.

Paths do not alter the appearance of the image pixel data unless they are stroked, using Edit → Stroke
Path from the image menu or the Paths dialog right-click menu, or the “Stroke Path” button in the Tool
Options dialog for the Path tool.
Choosing “Stroke Path” by any of these means brings up a dialog that allows you to control the way
the stroking is done. You can choose from a wide variety of line styles, or you can stroke with any of the
Paint tools, including unusual ones such as the Clone tool, Smudge tool, Eraser, etc.

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Figure 7.13 The Stroke Path dialog

You can further increase the range of stroking effects by stroking a path multiple times, or by using
lines or brushes of different widths. The possibilities for getting interesting effects in this way are almost
unlimited.

7.5.6 Paths and Text

Figure 7.14 Text converted to a path

(a) Text converted to a path and then (b) The path shown above, stroked with a
transformed using the Perspective tool. fuzzy brush and then gradient-mapped us-
ing the Gradient Map filter with the “Yel-
low Contrast” gradient.

A text item created using the Text tool can be transformed into a path using the Path from Text command
in the the context menu of the Text tool. This can be useful for several purposes, including:
• Stroking the path, which gives you many possibilities for fancy text.
• More importantly, transforming the text. Converting text into a path, then transforming the path,
and finally either stroking the path or converting it to a selection and filling it, often leads to much
higher-quality results than rendering the text as a layer and transforming the pixel data.

7.5.7 Paths and SVG files

SVG, standing for “Scalable Vector Graphics”, is an increasingly popular file format for vector graphics, in
which graphical elements are represented in a resolution-independent format, in contrast to raster graph-
ics; in which graphical elements are represented as arrays of pixels. GIMP is mainly a raster graphics
program, but paths are vector entities.

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Fortunately, paths are represented in SVG files in almost exactly the same way they are represented
in GIMP. (Actually fortune has nothing to do with it: GIMP’s path handling was rewritten for GIMP 2.0
with SVG paths in mind.) This compatibility makes it possible to store GIMP paths as SVG files without
losing any information. You can access this capability in the Paths dialog.
It also means that GIMP can create paths from SVG files saved in other programs, such as Inkscape
or Sodipodi, two popular open-source vector graphics applications. This is nice because those programs
have much more powerful path-manipulation tools than GIMP does. You can import a path from an
SVG file using the Paths dialog.
The SVG format handles many other graphical elements than just paths: among other things, it han-
dles figures such as squares, rectangles, circles, ellipses, regular polygons, etc. GIMP cannot do anything
with these entities, but it can load them as paths.

Note

Creating paths is not the only thing GIMP can do with SVG files. It can also open
SVG files as GIMP images, in the usual way.

7.6 Brushes

Figure 7.15 Brush strokes example

A number of examples of brushstrokes painted using different brushes from the set supplied with GIMP. All were
painted using the Paintbrush tool.

A brush is a pixmap or set of pixmaps used for painting. GIMP includes a set of 10 “paint tools”, which
not only perform operations that you would normally think of as painting, but also operations such as
erasing, copying, smudging, lightening or darkening, etc. All of the paint tools, except the ink tool, use
the same set of brushes. The brush pixmaps represent the marks that are made by single “touches” of
the brush to the image. A brush stroke, usually made by moving the pointer across the image with the
mouse button held down, produces a series of marks spaced along the trajectory, in a way specified by
the characteristics of the brush and the paint tool being used.
Brushes can be selected by clicking on an icon in the Brushes dialog. GIMP’s current brush is shown
in the Brush/Pattern/Gradient area of the Toolbox. Clicking on the brush symbol there is one way of
activating the Brushes dialog.
When you install GIMP, it comes with a number of basic brushes, plus a few bizarre ones that serve
mainly to give you examples of what is possible (i. e., the ”green pepper” brush in the illustration). You
can also create new brushes, or download them and install them so that GIMP will recognize them.
GIMP can use several different types of brushes. All of them, however, are used in the same way,
and for most purposes you don’t need to worry about the differences when you paint with them. Here
are the available types of brushes:

Ordinary brushes Most of the brushes supplied with GIMP fall into this category. They are represented
in the Brushes dialog by grayscale pixmaps. When you paint using them, the current foreground

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color (as shown in the Color Area of the Toolbox) is substituted for black, and the pixmap shown
in the brushes dialog represents the mark that the brush makes on the image.
To create such a brush: Create a small image in gray levels using zoom. Save it with the .gbr ex-
tension. Click on Refresh button in the Brush Dialog to get it in preview without it being necessary
to restart GIMP.
Color brushes Brushes in this category are represented by colored images in the Brushes dialog. They
can be pictures or text. When you paint with them, the colors are used as shown; the current
foreground color does not come into play. Otherwise they work the same way as ordinary brushes.
To create such a brush: Create a small RGBA image. For this, open New Image, select RGB for
image type and Transparent for fill type. Draw your image and and firs save it as a .xcf file to keep
its properties. Then save it in .gbr format. Click on the Refresh button in Brush Dialog to get your
brush without it being necessary to restart GIMP.

Tip

When you do a Copy or a Cut on a selection, you see the contents of the
clipboard (that is the selection) at the first position in the brushes dialog. And
you can use it for painting.

Figure 7.16 Selection to Brush after Copy or Cut

Image hoses / Image pipes Brushes in this category can make more than one kind of mark on an image.
They are indicated by small red triangles at the lower right corner of the brush symbol in the
Brushes dialog. They are sometimes called ”animated brushes” because the marks change as you
trace out a brushstroke. In principle, image hose brushes can be very sophisticated, especially if
you use a tablet, changing shape as a function of pressure, angle, etc. These possibilities have never
really been exploited, however; and the ones supplied with GIMP are relatively simple (but still
quite useful).
You will find an example on how to create such brushes in Animated brushes
Parametric brushes These are brushes created using the Brush Editor, which allows you to generate a
wide variety of brush shapes by using a simple graphical interface. A nice feature of parametric
brushes is that they are resizable. It is possible, using the Preferences dialog, to make key presses
or mouse wheel rotations cause the current brush to become larger or smaller, if it is a parametric
brush.
Now, all brushes have a variable size. In fact, in the option box of all painting tools there is a slider to
enlarge or reduce the size of the active brush. You can do this directly in the image window if you have
set correctly your mouse wheel; see Varying brush size.
In addition to the brush pixmap, each GIMP brush has one other important property: the brush
Spacing. This represents the distance between consecutive brush-marks when a continuous brushstroke
is painted. Each brush has an assigned default value for this, which can be modified using the Brushes
dialog.

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7.7 Adding New Brushes

To add a new brush, after either creating or downloading it, you need to save it in a format GIMP can
use. The brush file needs to be placed in the GIMP’s brush search path, so that GIMP is able to index and
display it in the Brushes dialog. You can hit the Refresh button, which reindexes the brush directory.
GIMP uses three file formats for brushes:

GBR The .gbr (”gimp brush”) format is used for ordinary and color brushes. You can convert many
other types of images, including many brushes used by other programs, into GIMP brushes by
opening them in GIMP and saving them with file names ending in .gbr. This brings up a dialog
box in which you can set the default Spacing for the brush. A more complete description of the
GBR file format can be found in the file [Link] in the devel-docs directory of the GIMP source
distribution.

Figure 7.17 Save a .gbr brush

GIH The .gih (”gimp image hose”) format is used for animated brushes. These brushes are constructed
from images containing multiple layers: each layer may contain multiple brush-shapes, arranged
in a grid. When you save an image as a .gih file, a dialog comes up that allows you to describe
the format of the brush. Look at The GIH dialog box for more information about the dialog. The
GIH format is rather complicated: a complete description can be found in the file [Link] in the
devel-docs directory of the GIMP source distribution.

VBR The .vbr format is used for parametric brushes, i. e., brushes created using the Brush Editor.
There is really no other meaningful way of obtaining files in this format.

To make a brush available, place it in one of the folders in GIMP’s brush search path. By default, the
brush search path includes two folders, the system brushes folder, which you should not use or alter,
and the brushes folder inside your personal GIMP directory. You can add new folders to the brush
search path using the Brush Folders page of the Preferences dialog. Any GBR, GIH, or VBR file included
in a folder in the brush search path will show up in the Brushes dialog the next time you start GIMP, or
as soon as you press the Refresh button in the Brushes dialog.

Note

When you create a new parametric brush using the Brush Editor, it is automatically
saved in your personal brushes folder.

There are a number of web sites with downloadable collections of GIMP brushes. Rather than sup-
plying a list of links that will soon be out of date, the best advice is to do a search with your favorite
search engine for “GIMP brushes”. There are also many collections of brushes for other programs with
painting functionality. Some can be converted easily into GIMP brushes, some require special conver-
sion utilities, and some cannot be converted at all. Most fancy procedural brush types fall into the last
category. If you need to know, look around on the web, and if you don’t find anything, look for an expert
to ask.

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7.8 The GIH Dialog Box

When your new animated brush is created, it is displayed within the image window and you would like
save it into a gih format. You select File → Save as... menu, name your work with the gih extension in
the new window relevant field and as soon as you pressed the Save button, the following window is
displayed:

Figure 7.18 The dialog to describe the animated brush

This dialog box shows up, if you save an image as GIMP image hose

This dialog box has several options not easy to understand. They allow you to determine the way
your brush is animated.

Spacing (Percent) “Spacing” is the distance between consecutive brush marks when you trace out a
brushstroke with the pointer. You must consider drawing with a brush, whatever the paint tool,
like stamping. If Spacing is low, stamps will be very close and stroke look continuous. If spacing
is high, stamps will be separated: that’s interesting with a color brush (like “green pepper” for
instance). Value varies from 1 to 200 and this percentage refers to brush “diameter”: 100% is one
diameter.

Description It’s the brush name that will appear at the top of Brush Dialog (grid mode) when the brush
is selected.

Cell Size That’s size of cells you will cut up in layers... Default is one cell per layer and size is that of
the layer. Then there is only one brush aspect per layer.
We could have only one big layer and cut up in it the cells that will be used for the different aspects
of the animated brush.
For instance, we want a 100x100 pixels brush with 8 different aspects. We can take these 8 aspects
from a 400x200 pixels layer, or from a 300x300 pixels layer but with one cell unused.

Number of cells That’s the number of cells (one cell per aspect) that will be cut in every layer. Default
is the number of layers as there is only one layer per aspect.

Display as This tells how cells have been arranged in layers. If, for example, you have placed height
cells at the rate of two cells per layer on four layers, GIMP will display: 1 rows of 2 columns
on each layer.

Dimension, Ranks, Selection There things are getting complicated! Explanations are necessary to un-
derstand how to arrange cell and layers.
GIMP starts retrieving cells from each layer and stacks them into a FIFO stack (First In First Out:
the first in is at the top of the stack and so can be first out). In our example 4 layers with 2 cells
in each, we’ll have, from top to bottom: first cell of first layer, second cell of first layer, first cell
of second layer, second cell of second layer..., second cell of fourth layer. With one cell per layer

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or with several cells per layer, result is the same. You can see this stack in the Layer Dialog of the
resulting .gih image file.
Then GIMP creates a computer array from this stack with the Dimensions you have set. You can
use four dimensions.
In computer science an array has a “myarray(x,y,z)” form for a 3 dimensions array (3D). It’s easy
to imagine a 2D array: on a paper it’s an array with rows and columns

With a 3d array we don’t talk rows and columns but Dimensions and Ranks. The first dimension
is along x axis, the second dimension along y axis, the third along z axis. Each dimension has ranks
of cells.

To fill up this array, GIMP starts retrieving cells from the top of stack. The way it fills the array
reminds that of an odometer: right rank digits turn first and, when they reach their maximum, left
rank digits start running. If you have some memories of Basic programming you will have, with
an array(4,2,2), the following succession: (1,1,1),(1,1,2),(1,2,1),(1,2,2),(2,1,1),(2,1,2),(2,2,2),(3,1,1)....
(4,2,2). We will see this later in an example.
Besides the rank number that you can give to each dimension, you can also give them a Selection
mode. You have several modes that will be applied when drawing:
Incremental GIMP selects a rank from the concerned dimension according to the order ranks have
in that dimension.
Random GIMP selects a rank at random from the concerned dimension.
Angular GIMP selects a rank in the concerned dimension according to the moving angle of the
brush.
The first rank is for the direction 0°, upwards. The other ranks are affected, clockwise, to an
angle whose value is 360/number of ranks. So, with 4 ranks in the concerned dimension, the
angle will move 90° clockwise for each direction change: second rank will be affected to 90°
(rightwards), third rank to 180° (downwards) and fourth rank to 270° (-90°) (leftwards).1
Speed, Pressure, x tilt, y tilt These options are for sophisticated drawing tablets.
Examples
A one dimension image pipe Well! What is all this useful for? We’ll see that gradually with examples.
You can actually place in each dimension cases that will give your brush a particular action.
Let us start with a 1D brush which will allow us to study selection modes action. We can imagine
it like this:

Follow these steps:

1. Open a new 30x30 pixels image, RGB with Transparent fill type. Using the Text tool create 4
layers “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”. Delete the “background” layer.
2. Save this image first with .xcf extension to keep its properties then save it as .gih.
1 For previous GIMP versions you may have to replace “clockwise” with “counter-clockwise”.

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3. The Save As Dialog is opened: select a destination for your image. OK. The GIH dialog is
opened: Choose Spacing 100, give a name in Description box, 30x30 for Cell Size, 1 dimension,
4 ranks and choose “Incremental” in Selection box. OK.
4. You may have difficulties to save directly in the GIMP Brush directory. In that case, save
the .gih file manually into the /usr/share/gimp/gimp/2.0/brushes directory. Then
come back into the Toolbox, click in the brush icon to open the Brush Dialog then click on
Refresh icon button. Your new brush appears in the Brush window. Select it. Select pencil
tool for instance and click and hold with it on a new image:

You see 1, 2, 3, 4 digits following one another in order.

5. Take your .xcf image file back and save it as .gih setting Selection to “Random”:

Digits will be displayed at random order.

6. Now select “Angular” Selection:

A 3 dimensions image hose We are now going to create a 3D animated brush: its orientation will vary
according to brush direction, it will alternate Left/Right hands regularly and its color will vary at
random between black and blue.
The first question we have to answer to is the number of images that is necessary. We reserve the
first dimension (x) to the brush direction (4 directions). The second dimension (y) is for Left/Right
alternation and the third dimension (z) for color variation. Such a brush is represented in a 3D
array “myarray(4,2,2)”:

There are 4 ranks in first dimension (x), 2 ranks in second dimension (y) and 2 ranks in third di-
mension (z). We see that there are 4x2x2 = 16 cells. We need 16 images.

1. Creating images of dimension 1 (x)

Open a new 30x30 pixels image, RGB with Transparent Fill Type. Using the zoom draw a left
hand with fingers upwards.2 Save it as [Link] (hand Left 0° Black).
Open the Layer Dialog. Double click on the layer to open the Layer Attributes Dialog and
rename it to handL0k.
Duplicate the layer. Let visible only the duplicated layer, select it and apply a 90° rotation
(Layer/Transform/ 90° rotation clockwise). Rename it to handL90k.
Repeat the same operations to create handL180k and handL-90k (or handL270k).
2. Creating images of dimension 2 (y)
This dimension in our example has two ranks, one for left hand and the other for right hand.
The left hand rank exists yet. We shall build right hand images by flipping it horizontally.
Duplicate the handL0k layer. Let it visible only and select it. Rename it to handR0K. Apply
Layer/Transform/Flip Horizontally.
2 Ok, we are cheating here: our hand is borrowed from [Link]
png.

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Repeat the same operation on the other left hand layers to create their right hand equivalent.
Re-order layers to have a clockwise rotation from top to bottom, alternating Left and Right:
handL0k, handR0k, handL90k, handR90k, ..., handR-90k.
3. Creating images of dimension 3 (z)
Creating images of dimension 3 (z): The third dimension has two ranks, one for black color and
the other for blue color. The first rank, black, exists yet. We well see that images of dimension
3 will be a copy, in blue, of the images of dimension 2. So we will have our 16 images. But a
row of 16 layers is not easy to manage: we will use layers with two images.
Select the handL0k layer and let it visible only. Using Image/Canvas Size change canvas size
to 60x30 pixels.
Duplicate hand0k layer. On the copy, fill the hand with blue using Bucket Fill tool.
Now, select the Move tool. Double click on it to accede to its properties: check Move the
Current Layer option. Move the blue hand into the right part of the layer precisely with the
help of Zoom.
Make sure only handL0k and its blue copy are visible. Right click on the Layer Dialog: Apply
the Merge Visible Layers command with the option Expand as Necessary. You get a 60x30
pixels layer with the black hand on the left and the blue hand on the right. Rename it to
“handsL0”.
Repeat the same operations on the other layers.
4. Set layers in order
Layers must be set in order so that GIMP can find the required image at some point of using the
brush. Our layers are yet in order but we must understand more generally how to have them
in [Link] are two ways to imagine this setting in order. The first method is mathematical:
GIMP divides the 16 layers first by 4; that gives 4 groups of 4 layers for the first dimension.
Each group represents a direction of the brush. Then, it divides each group by 2; that gives 8
groups of 2 layers for the second dimension: each group represents a L/R alternation. Then
another division by 2 for the third dimension to represent a color at random between black
and blue.
The other method is visual, by using the array representation. Correlation between two meth-
ods is represented in next image:

How will GIMP read this array?: GIMP starts with the first dimension which is programmed
for “angular”, for instance 90°. In this 90° rank, in yellow, in the second dimension, it selects
a L/R alternation, in an “incremental” way. Then, in the third dimension, in a random way,
it chooses a color. Finally, our layers must be in the following order:

5. Voilà. Your brush is ready. Save it as .xcf first, then as .gih with the following parameters:

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• Spacing: 100
• Description: Hands
• Cell Size: 30x30
• Number of cells: 16
• Dimensions: 3
– Dimension 1: 4 ranks Selection: Angular
– Dimension 2: 2 ranks Selection: Incremental
– Dimension 3: 2 ranks Selection: Random
Place your .gih file into GIMP brush directory and refresh the brush box. You can now use
your brush.

Figure 7.19 Here is the result by stroking an elliptical selection with the brush:

This brush alternates right hand and left hand regularly, black and blue color at random, direction according to
four brush directions.

7.9 Varying brush size

From GIMP-2.4, all brushes have a variable size.

7.9.1 How to vary the height of a brush

You can get the brush size varying in three ways:

1. Using the Size slider of the tool options. Pencil, Paintbrush, Eraser, Airbrush, Clone, Heal, Per-
spective Clone, Blur/Sharpen and Dodge/Burn tools have a slider to vary the brush size.

Figure 7.20 The Size slider

2. By programming the mouse wheel:

(a) In the main window of GIMP, click on Edit → Preferences.

(b) In the left column of the new window, select Input Devices → Input Controllers.
(c) You can see Additional Input Controllers, with two columns: Available Controllers and Ac-
tive Controllers.
In the column Active Controllers, double-click the Main Mouse Wheel button.
(d) Then, you see a new window: Configure Input Controller.
In the left column Event, click Scroll Up to get it highlighted.
(e) Click the Edit button (at the bottom middle of the list).

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(f) You can see the window Select Controller Event Action.
Drop-down the Tools item, by clicking the small triangle on its left.
(g) In the left column Action, click Increase Brush Scale to highlight it, then click the OK button.
(h) Now, in front of Scroll Up is display tools-paint-brush-scale-increase.
(i) Close the window.
(j) With the same method, program Scroll Down with Decrease Brush Scale.
(k) Don’t forget to click the OK button of the main window of Preferences.

After these somewhat long explanations, you can use your mouse wheel to vary size brush. For
example, choose the pencil tool with the “Circle” brush. Set the pointer in the image window, use
the mouse wheel, in the two directions, you can see the “Circle” shrinking or stretching.

3. You can program the “Up” and “Down” arrow keys of the keyboard.
The method is similar to that of the mouse wheel. The only differences are:

• In the column Active Controllers, double-click Main Keyboard.

• In the column Event, click Cursor Up for the first key, and Cursor Down for the second key.
• Then, use the two keys (Up arrow and Down arrow) and the result is the same as you got
with the mouse wheel.

7.9.2 Creating a brush quickly

Two methods to create a new brush easily:

1. First, the “superfast” method. You have an image area you want make a brush from it, to be used
with a tool like pencil, airbrush... Select it with the rectangular (or elliptical) select tool, then do
a Copy of this selection and immediately you can see this copy in the first position of the Brush
Dialog, and its name is “Clipboard”. It is immediately usable.

Figure 7.21 Selection becomes a brush after copying

2. The second method is more elaborate.

Do File → New with, for example, a width and a length of 35 pixels and in the advanced options a
Color Space in Gray Level and Fill with: white.
Zoom on this new image to enlarge it and draw on it with a black pencil.
Save it with a .gbr extension in the directory /home/name_of_user/.gimp-2.8/brushes/.
In the Brushes dialog window, click on the button Refresh brushes .
And your marvellous brush appears right in the middle of the other brushes. You can use it im-
mediately, without starting GIMP again.

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Figure 7.22 Steps to create a brush

(a) Draw (b) Refresh brushes (c) Use the brush

image,
save as
brush

7.10 Gradients

Figure 7.23 Some examples of GIMP gradients.

Gradients from top to bottom: FG to BG (RGB); Full saturation spectrum; Nauseating headache; Browns; Four
bars

A gradient is a set of colors arranged in a linear order. The most basic use of gradients is by the Blend
tool, sometimes known as the “gradient tool” or “gradient fill tool”: it works by filling the selection with
colors from a gradient. You have many options to choose from for controlling the way the gradient colors
are arranged within the selection. There are also other important ways to use gradients, including:

Painting with a gradient Each of GIMP’s basic painting tools allows you the option of using colors from
a gradient. This enables you to create brushstrokes that change color from one end to the other.

The Gradient Map filter This filter is now in the Colors menu, and allows you to “colorize” an image,
using the color intensity of each point with the corresponding color from the active gradient (the
intensity 0, very dark, is replaced by the color at most left end of the gradient, progressively until
the intensity is 255, very light, replaced by the most right color of the gradient. See Section 16.8.23
for more information.

When you install GIMP, it comes presupplied with a large number of interesting gradients, and you
can add new ones that you create or download from other sources. You can access the full set of available
gradients using the Gradients dialog, a dockable dialog that you can either activate when you need it,
or keep around as a tab in a dock. The “current gradient”, used in most gradient-related operations,
is shown in the Brush/Pattern/Gradient area of the Toolbox. Clicking on the gradient symbol in the
Toolbox is an alternative way of bringing up the Gradients dialog.
Many quickly examples of working with gradient (for more information see Blend Tool):

• Put a gradient in a selection:

1. Choose a gradient.
2. With the Blend Tool click and drag with the mouse between two points of a selection.

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3. Colors will distributed perpendicularly to the direction of the drag of the mouse and according
to the length of it.

Figure 7.24 How to use rapidly a gradient in a selection

• Painting with a gradient:

You can also use a gradient with the Pencil, Paintbrush or Airbrush tools if you choose the dynam-
ics Color From Gradient. In the next step choose a suitable gradient from Color options and in the
Fade options set the gradients length and the style of the repeating. The chapter Section [Link]
describes these parameters in more detail.

The following example shows the impact on the Pencil tool. You see in the upper side of the fig-
ure the necessary settings and the lower side of the figure shows the resulting succession of the
gradients colors.

Figure 7.25 How to use rapidly a gradient with a drawing tool

To use the Paint tools with the same settings as they were known as option Use color from gradient
in GIMP up to version 2.6 open the Tool Presets Dialog. Then choose one of the items Airbrush
(Color From Gradient), Paintbrush (Color From Gradient) or Pencil (Color From Gradient) from it.

• Different productions with the same gradient:

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Figure 7.26 Gradient usage

Four ways of using the Tropical Colors gradient: a linear gradient fill, a shaped gradient fill, a stroke painted
using colors from a gradient, and a stroke painted with a fuzzy brush then colored using the Gradient Map filter.

A few useful things to know about GIMP’s gradients:

• The first four gradients in the list are special: they use the Foreground and Background colors from
the Toolbox Color Area, instead of being fixed. FG to BG (RGB) is the RGB representation of the
gradient from the Foreground color to the Background color in Toolbox. FG to BG (HSV counter-
clockwise) represents the hue succession in Color Circle from the selected hue to 360°. FG to BG
(HSV clockwise represents the hue succession in Color Circle from the selected hue to 0°. With
FG to transparent , the selected hue becomes more and more transparent. You can modify these
colors by using the Color Selector. Thus, by altering the foreground and background colors, you
can make these gradients transition smoothly between any two colors you want.
• Gradients can involve not just color changes, but also changes in opacity. Some of the gradients are
completely opaque; others include transparent or translucent parts. When you fill or paint with a
non-opaque gradient, the existing contents of the layer will show through behind it.
• You can create new custom gradients, using the Gradient Editor. You cannot modify the gradients
that are supplied with GIMP, but you can duplicate them or create new ones, and then edit those.
The gradients that are supplied with GIMP are stored in a system gradients folder. By default,
gradients that you create are stored in a folder called gradients in your personal GIMP directory.
Any gradient files (ending with the extension .ggr) found in one of these folders, will automatically be
loaded when you start GIMP. You can add more directories to the gradient search path, if you want to,
in the Gradients tab of the Data Folders pages of the Preferences dialog.
New in GIMP 2.2 is the ability to load gradient files in SVG format, used by many vector graphics
programs. To make GIMP load an SVG gradient file, all you need to do is place it in the gradients
folder of your personal GIMP directory, or any other folder in your gradient search path.

Tip
You can find a large number of interesting SVG gradients on the web, in particular
at OpenClipArt Gradients [OPENCLIPART-GRADIENT]. You won’t be able to see
what these gradients look like unless your browser supports SVG, but that won’t
prevent you from downloading them.

7.11 Patterns
A pattern is an image, usually small, used for filling regions by tiling, that is, by placing copies of the
pattern side by side like ceramic tiles. A pattern is said to be tileable if copies of it can be adjoined left-edge-
to-right-edge and top-edge-to-bottom-edge without creating obvious seams. Not all useful patterns are
tileable, but tileable patterns are nicest for many purposes. (A texture, by the way, is the same thing as a
pattern.)

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Figure 7.27 Pattern usage

Three ways of using the “Leopard” pattern: bucket-filling a selection, painting with the Clone tool, and stroking
an elliptical selection with the pattern.

In GIMP there are three main uses for patterns:

• With the Bucket Fill tool, you can choose to fill a region with a pattern instead of a solid color.

Figure 7.28 The checked box for use a pattern

The box for pattern fill is checked and a click on the pattern shows you all patterns in grid mode.

• With the Clone tool, you can paint using a pattern, with a wide variety of paintbrush shapes.
• When you stroke a path or selection, you can do it with a pattern instead of a solid color. You can
also use the Clone tool as your choice if you stroke the selection using a painting tool.

Tip

Note: Patterns do not need to be opaque. If you fill or paint using a pattern with
translucent or transparent areas, then the previous contents of the area will show
through from behind it. This is one of many ways of doing “overlays” in GIMP.

When you install GIMP, it comes presupplied with a few dozen patterns, which seem to have been
chosen more or less randomly. You can also add new patterns, either ones you create yourself, or ones
you download from the vast number available online.
GIMP’s current pattern, used in most pattern-related operations, is shown in the Brush/Pattern/Gra-
dient area of the Toolbox. Clicking on the pattern symbol brings up the Patterns dialog, which allows
you to select a different pattern. You can also access the Patterns dialog by menu, or dock it so that it is
present continuously.

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To add a new pattern to the collection, so that it shows up in the Patterns dialog, you need to save
it in a format GIMP can use, in a folder included in GIMP’s pattern search path. There are several file
formats you can use for patterns:

PAT The .pat format is used for patterns which were created specifically for GIMP. You can convert
any image into a .pat file by opening it in GIMP and then saving it using a file name ending in
.pat.

Caution
Do not confuse GIMP-generated .pat files with files created by other pro-
grams (e.g. Photoshop) – after all, .pat is just a part of an (arbitrary) file
name.
(However, GIMP does support Photoshop .pat files until a certain version.)

PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF Since GIMP 2.2 you can use .png, .jpg, .bmp, .gif, or .tiff files as
patterns.

To make a pattern available, you place it in one of the folders in GIMP’s pattern search path. By
default, the pattern search path includes two folders, the system patterns folder, which you should
not use or alter, and the patterns folder inside your personal GIMP directory. You can add new folders
to the pattern search path using the Pattern Folders page of the Preferences dialog. Any PAT file (or, in
GIMP 2.2, any of the other acceptable formats) included in a folder in the pattern search path will show
up in the Patterns dialog the next time you start GIMP.
There are countless ways of creating interesting patterns in GIMP, using the wide variety of available
tools and filters -- particularly the rendering filters. You can find tutorials for this in many locations,
including the GIMP home page [GIMP]. Some of the filters have options that allows you to make their
results tileable. Also, see Section 17.2.7, this filter allows you to blend the edges of an image in order to
make it more smoothly tileable.

Figure 7.29 Pattern script examples

Examples of patterns created using six of the Pattern Script-Fu’s that come with GIMP. Default settings were
used for everything except size. (From left to right: 3D Truchet; Camouflage; Flatland; Land; Render Map;
Swirly)

Also of interest are a set of pattern-generating scripts that come with GIMP: you can find them in
the menu bar, through File → Create → Patterns. Each of the scripts creates a new image filled with
a particular type of pattern: a dialog pops up that allows you to set parameters controlling the details
of the appearance. Some of these patterns are most useful for cutting and pasting; others serve best as
bumpmaps.

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Figure 7.30 How to create new patterns

7.12 Palettes
A palette is a set of discrete colors. In GIMP, palettes are used mainly for two purposes:

• They allow you to paint with a selected set of colors, in the same way an oil painter works with
colors from a limited number of tubes.

• They form the colormaps of indexed images. An indexed image can use a maximum of 256 different
colors, but these can be any colors. The colormap of an indexed image is called an ”indexed palette”
in GIMP.

Actually neither of these functions fall very much into the mainstream of GIMP usage: it is possible
to do rather sophisticated things in GIMP without ever dealing with palettes. Still, they are something
that an advanced user should understand, and even a less advanced user may need to think about them
in some situations, as for example when working with GIF files.

Figure 7.31 The Palettes dialog

When you install GIMP, it comes supplied with several dozen predefined palettes, and you can also
create new ones. Some of the predefined palettes are commonly useful, such as the “Web” palette, which
contains the set of colors considered “web safe”; many of the palettes seem to have been chosen more
or less whimsically. You can access all of the available palettes using the Palettes dialog. This is also the
starting point if you want to create a new palette.

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Figure 7.32 The Palette Editor

Double-clicking on a palette in the Palettes dialog brings up the Palette Editor, showing the colors
from the palette you clicked on. You can use this to paint with the palette: clicking on a color sets GIMP’s
foreground to that color, as shown in the Color Area of the Toolbox. Holding down the Ctrl key while
clicking, on the other hand, sets GIMP’s background color to the color you click on.
You can also, as the name implies, use the Palette Editor to change the colors in a palette, so long as
it is a palette that you have created yourself. You cannot edit the palettes that are supplied with GIMP;
however you can duplicate them and then edit the copies.
When you create palettes using the Palette Editor, they are automatically saved as soon as you exit
GIMP, in the palettes folder of your personal GIMP directory. Any palette files in this directory, or
in the system palettes directory created when GIMP is installed, are automatically loaded and shown
in the Palettes dialog the next time you start GIMP. You can also add other folders to the palette search
path using the Palette Folders page of the Preferences dialog.
GIMP palettes are stored using a special file format, in files with the extension .gpl. It is a very
simple format, and they are ASCII files, so if you happen to obtain palettes from another source, and
would like to use them in GIMP, it probably won’t be very hard to convert them: just take a look at any
.gpl and you will see what to do.

7.12.1 Colormap
Confusingly, GIMP makes use of two types of palettes. The more noticeable are the type shown in the
Palettes dialog: palettes that exist independently of any image. The second type, indexed palettes, form
the colormaps of indexed images. Each indexed image has its own private indexed palette, defining the
set of colors available in the image: the maximum number of colors allowed in an indexed palette is 256.
These palettes are called “indexed” because each color is associated with an index number. (Actually,
the colors in ordinary palettes are numbered as well, but the numbers have no functional significance.)

Figure 7.33 The Colormap dialog

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The colormap of an indexed image is shown in the Indexed Palette dialog, which should not be
confused with the Palettes dialog. The Palettes dialog shows a list of all of the palettes available; the
Colormap dialog shows the colormap of the currently active image, if it is an indexed image – otherwise
it shows nothing.
You can, however, create an ordinary palette from the colors in an indexed image—actually from the
colors in any image. To do this, choose Import Palette from the right-click popup menu in the Palettes
dialog: this pops up a dialog that gives you several options, including the option to import the palette
from an image. (You can also import any of GIMP’s gradients as a palette.) This possibility becomes
important if you want to create a set of indexed images that all use the same set of colors.
When you convert an image into indexed mode, a major part of the process is the creation of an
indexed palette for the image. How this happens is described in detail in Section 16.6.6. Briefly, you
have several methods to choose from, one of which is to use a specified palette from the Palettes dialog.
Thus, to sum up the foregoing, ordinary palettes can be turned into indexed palettes when you con-
vert an image into indexed mode; indexed palettes can be turned into ordinary palettes by importing
them into the Palettes dialog.

Figure 7.34 Colormap dialog (1) and Palette dialog (2)

7.13 Presets
If you often use tools with particular settings, presets are for you. You can save these settings and get
them back when you want.
Paint tools, which are normally in Toolbox, have a preset system that have been much improved with
GIMP-2.8. Color tools (except Posterize and Desaturate), which are not normally in Toolbox, have their
own preset system.
Four buttons at the bottom of all tools options dialogs allow you to save, restore, delete or reset
presets.

Paint tool presets are described in Section 15.5.1.

Color tool presets are described in Section [Link].

7.14 Drawing Simple Objects

In this section, you will learn how to create simple objects in GIMP. It’s pretty easy once you figure out
how to do it. GIMP provides a huge set of Tools and Shortcuts which most new users get lost in.

7.14.1 Drawing a Straight Line

Let’s begin by painting a straight line. The easiest way to create a straight line is by using your favorite
brush tool, the mouse and the keyboard.

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Drawing a Straight Line

Figure 7.35 A new image

1.
The dialog shows a new image, filled with a white background.

Create a new image. Select your favorite brush tool or use the pencil, if in doubt. Select a fore-
ground color, but be sure that the foreground and background colors are different.

Figure 7.36 The start of the straight line

2.
The dialog shows a new image, with the first dot which indicates the start of the straight line. The dot has a black
foreground color.

Create a starting point by clicking on the image display area with the left mouse button. Your
canvas should look similar to Figure 7.35.

Figure 7.37 The helpline

3.
The screenshot shows the helpline, which indicates how the finished line will look.

Now, hold down the Shift button on your keyboard and move the mouse away from the starting
point you created. You’ll see a thin line indicating how the line will look.

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Figure 7.38 The line after the second click

4.
The line created appears in the image window after drawing the second point (or end point), while the Shift key is
still pressed.

If you’re satisfied with the direction and length of the line, click the left mouse button again to finish
the line. The GIMP displays a straight line now. If the line doesn’t appear, check the foreground
and background colors and be sure that you kept the Shift key pressed while painting. You can
keep creating lines by continuing to hold the Shift key and creating additional end points.

7.14.2 Creating a Basic Shape

1. GIMP is not designed to be used for drawing.3 However, you may create shapes by either painting
them using the technique described in Section 7.14.1 or by using the selection tools. Of course, there
are various other ways to paint a shape, but we’ll stick to the easiest ones here. So, create a new
image and check that the foreground and background colors are different.

Figure 7.39 Creating a rectangular selection

2.
The screenshot shows how a rectangular selection is created. Press and hold the left mouse button while you move
the mouse in the direction of the red arrow.

Basic shapes like rectangles or ellipses, can be created using the selection tools. This tutorial uses
a rectangular selection as an example. So, choose the rectangular selection tool and create a new
selection: press and hold the left mouse button while you move the mouse to another position in
the image (illustrated in figure Figure 7.39). The selection is created when you release the mouse
button. For more information about key modifiers see selection tools.

Figure 7.40 Rectangular selection filled with foreground color

3.
The screenshot shows a rectangular selection filled with the foreground color.
3 Try out e.g. [INKSCAPE] for this purpose.

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After creating the selection, you can either create a filled or an outlined shape with the foreground
color of your choice. If you go for the first option, choose a foreground color and fill the selec-
tion with the bucket fill tool. If you choose the latter option, create an outline by using theStroke
selection menu item from the Edit menu. If you’re satisfied with the result, remove the selection.

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Chapter 8

Combining Images

8.1 Introduction to Layers

A good way to visualize a GIMP image is as a stack of transparencies: in GIMP terminology, each indi-
vidual transparency is called a layer. There is no limit, in principle, to the number of layers an image can
have: only the amount of memory available on the system. It is not uncommon for advanced users to
work with images containing dozens of layers.
The organization of layers in an image is shown by the Layers dialog, which is the second most
important type of dialog window in GIMP, after the Main Toolbox. The appearance of the Layers dialog
is shown in the adjoining illustration. How it works is described in detail in the Layers Dialog section,
but we will touch on some aspects of it here, in relation to the layer properties that they display.
Each open image has at any time a single active drawable. A “drawable” is a GIMP concept that in-
cludes layers, but also several other types of things, such as channels, layer masks, and the selection
mask. (Basically, a “drawable” is anything that can be drawn on with painting tools). If a layer is cur-
rently active, it is shown highlighted in the Layers dialog, and its name is shown in the status area of the
image window. If not, you can activate it by clicking on it. If none of the layers are highlighted, it means
the active drawable is something other than a layer.
In the menubar above an image window, you can find a menu called Layer, containing a number of
commands that affect the active layer of the image. The same menu can be accessed by right-clicking in
the Layers dialog.

8.1.1 Layer Properties

Each layer in an image has a number of important attributes:

Name Every layer has a name. This is assigned automatically when the layer is created, but you can
change it. You can change the name of a layer either by double-clicking on it in the Layers dialog,
or by right-clicking there and then selecting the top entry in the menu that appears, Edit Layer
Attributes.

Presence or absence of an alpha channel An alpha channel encodes information about how transpar-
ent a layer is at each pixel. It is visible in the Channel Dialog: white is complete opacity, black is
complete transparency and grey levels are partial transparencies.
The background layer is particular. If you have just created a new image, it has still only one
layer which is a background layer. If the image has been created with an opaque Fill type, this
one layer has no Alpha channel. If you add a new layer, even with an opaque Fill type, an Alpha
channel is automatically created, which applies to all layers apart from the background layer. To
get a background layer with transparency, either you create your new image with a transparent
Fill type, or you use the Add an Alpha Channel.
Every layer other than the bottom layer of an image has automatically an Alpha channel, but you
can’t see a grayscale representation of the alpha values. See Alpha in Glossary for more informa-
tion.
Example for Alpha channel

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Figure 8.1 Alpha channel example: Basic image

This image has three layers painted with pure 100% opaque Red, Green, and Blue. In the Channel Dialog, you
can see that an alpha Channel has been added. It is white because the image is not transparent since there is at
least one 100% opaque layer. The current layer is the red one : since it is painted with pure red, there is no green
and no blue and the corresponding channels are black.

Figure 8.2 Alpha channel example: One transparent layer

The left part of the first layer has been made transparent (Rectangular selection, Edit/Clear). The second layer,
green, is visible. The Alpha channel is still white, since there is an opaque layer in this part of the image.

Figure 8.3 Alpha channel example: Two transparent layers

The left part of the second layer has been made transparent. The third layer, blue, is visible through the first and
second layers. The Alpha channel is still white, since there is an opaque layer in this part of the image.

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Figure 8.4 Alpha channel example: Three transparent layers

The left part of the third layer has been made transparent. The Alpha channel is still white and the left part of the
layer is white, opaque! The background layer has no Alpha channel. In this case, the Clear command works like
the Eraser and uses the Background color of Toolbox.

Figure 8.5 Alpha channel example: Alpha channel added to the Background

We used the Layer → Transparency → Add Alpha Channel command, on the Background layer. Now, the left
part of the image is fully transparent and has the color of the page the image is lying on. The left part of the Alpha
Channel thumbnail is black (transparent) in the Channel Dialog.

Layer type The layer type is determined by the image type (see previous section) and the presence or
absence of an alpha channel. These are the possible layer types:

• RGB
• RGBA
• Gray
• GrayA
• Indexed
• IndexedA

The main reason this matters is that most filters (in the Filters menu) only accept a subset of layer
types, and appear grayed out in the menu if the active layer does not have an acceptable type.
Often you can rectify this either by changing the mode of the image or by adding or removing an
alpha channel.

Visibility It is possible to remove a layer from an image, without destroying it, by clicking on the
symbol in the Layers dialog. This is called “toggling the visibility” of the layer. Most operations on
an image treat toggled-off layers as if they did not exist. When you work with images containing
many layers, with varying opacity, you often can get a better picture of the contents of the layer
you want to work on by hiding some of the other layers.

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Tip

If you Shift-click on the eye symbol, this will cause all layers except the one
you click on to be hidden.

Linkage to other layers If you click between the eye icon and the layer thumbnail, you get a chain
icon, which enables you to group layers for operations on multiple layers (for example with the
Move tool or a transform tool).

Figure 8.6 Layer Dialog

Red: Linkage to others layers. Green: Visibility.

Size and boundaries In GIMP, the boundaries of a layer do not necessarily match the boundaries of the
image that contains it. When you create text, for example, each text item goes into its own separate
layer, and the layer is precisely sized to contain the text and nothing more. Also, when you create
a new layer using cut-and-paste, the new layer is sized just large enough to contain the pasted
item. In the image window, the boundaries of the currently active layer are shown outlined with
a black-and-yellow dashed line.
The main reason why this matters is that you cannot do anything to a layer outside of its bound-
aries: you can’t act on what doesn’t exist. If this causes you problems, you can alter the dimensions
of the layer using any of several commands that you can find near the bottom of the Layer menu.

Note
The amount of memory that a layer consumes is determined by its dimen-
sions, not its contents. So, if you are working with large images or images
that contain many layers, it might pay off to trim layers to the minimum possi-
ble size.

Opacity The opacity of a layer determines the extent to which it lets colors from layers beneath it in the
stack show through. Opacity ranges from 0 to 100, with 0 meaning complete transparency, and
100 meaning complete opacity.

Mode The Mode of a layer determines how colors from the layer are combined with colors from the
underlying layers to produce a visible result. This is a sufficiently complex, and sufficiently im-
portant, concept to deserve a section of its own, which follows. See Section 8.2.

Layer mask In addition to the alpha channel, there is another way to control the transparency of a layer:
by adding a layer mask, which is an extra grayscale drawable associated with the layer. A layer
does not have a layer mask by default: it must be added specifically. Layer masks, and how to
work with them, are described much more extensively in the Layer Mask section.

“Lock alpha channel” setting In the upper left corner of the Layers dialog appears a small checkbox
that controls the “Lock” setting for the transparency of the layer (see the figure below). If this is
checked, then the alpha channel for the layer is locked, and no manipulation has any effect on it.
In particular, nothing that you do to a transparent part of the layer will have any effect.

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Figure 8.7 Lock Alpha channel

8.2 Layer Modes

GIMP has twenty-one layer modes. Layer modes are also sometimes called “blending modes”. Selecting
a layer mode changes the appearance of the layer or image, based on the layer or layers beneath it. If
there is only one layer, the layer mode has no effect. There must therefore be at least two layers in the
image to be able to use layer modes.

You can set the layer mode in the Mode menu in the Layers dialog. GIMP uses the layer mode to
determine how to combine each pixel in the top layer with the pixel in the same location in the layer
below it.

Note
There is a drop-down list in the Toolbox options box which contains modes that
affect the painting tools in a similar way to the layer modes. You can use all of the
same modes for painting that are available for layers, and there are two additional
modes just for the painting tools. See Section 14.3.3.

Layer modes permit complex color changes in the image. They are often used with a new layer which
acts as a kind of mask. For example, if you put a solid white layer over an image and set the layer mode
of the new layer to “Saturation”, the underlying visible layers will appear in shades of gray.

Figure 8.8 Images (masks) for layer mode examples

(a) Mask 1 (b) Mask 2

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Figure 8.9 Images (backgrounds) for layer mode examples

(a) Key fob (b) Ducks

In the descriptions of the layer modes below, the equations are also shown. This is for those who
are curious about the mathematics of the layer modes. You do not need to understand the equations in
order to use the layer modes effectively, however.

The equations are in a shorthand notation. For example, the equation

Equation 8.1 Example

E =M +I

means, “ For each pixel in the upper (Mask)and lower (Image) layer, add each of the corresponding
color components together to form the E resulting pixel’s color. ” Pixel color components must always
be between 0 and 255.

Note

Unless the description below says otherwise, a negative color component is set to
0 and a color component larger than 255 is set to 255.

The examples below show the effects of each of the modes.

Since the results of each mode vary greatly depending upon the colors on the layers, these images
can only give you a general idea of how the modes work. You are encouraged to try them out yourself.
You might start with two similar layers, where one is a copy of the other, but slightly modified (by being
blurred, moved, rotated, scaled, color-inverted, etc.) and seeing what happens with the layer modes.

Normal

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Figure 8.10 Example for layer mode “Normal”

(a) Both images are blended into each other with (b) With 100% opacity only the upper layer is
the same intensity. shown when blending with “Normal”.

Normal mode is the default layer mode. The layer on top covers the layers below it. If you want to
see anything below the top layer when you use this mode, the layer must have some transparent
areas.
The equation is:

Equation 8.2 Equation for layer mode Normal

E=M

Dissolve

Figure 8.11 Example for layer mode “Dissolve”

(a) Both images are blended into each other with (b) With 100% opacity only the upper layer is
the same intensity. shown when blending with “dissolve”.

Dissolve mode dissolves the upper layer into the layer beneath it by drawing a random pattern of
pixels in areas of partial transparency. It is useful as a layer mode, but it is also often useful as a
painting mode.
This is especially visible along the edges within an image. It is easiest to see in an enlarged screen-
shot. The image on the left illustrates “Normal” layer mode (enlarged) and the image on the right
shows the same two layers in “Dissolve” mode, where it can be clearly seen how the pixels are
dispersed.

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Figure 8.12 Enlarged screenshots

(a) Normal mode. (b) Dissolve mode.

Multiply

Figure 8.13 Example for layer mode “Multiply”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Multiply mode multiplies the pixel values of the upper layer with those of the layer below it and
then divides the result by 255. The result is usually a darker image. If either layer is white, the
resulting image is the same as the other layer (1 * I = I). If either layer is black, the resulting image
is completely black (0 * I = 0).

The equation is:

Equation 8.3 Equation for layer mode Multiply

M ×I
E=
255

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.

Divide

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Figure 8.14 Example for layer mode “Divide”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% opacity. (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity.

Divide mode multiplies each pixel value in the lower layer by 256 and then divides that by the
corresponding pixel value of the upper layer plus one. (Adding one to the denominator avoids
dividing by zero.) The resulting image is often lighter, and sometimes looks “burned out”.

The equation is:

Equation 8.4 Equation for layer mode Divide

256 × I
E=
M +1

Screen

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Figure 8.15 Example for layer mode “Screen”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Screen mode inverts the values of each of the visible pixels in the two layers of the image. (That is, it
subtracts each of them from 255.) Then it multiplies them together, divides by 255 and inverts this
value again. The resulting image is usually brighter, and sometimes “washed out” in appearance.
The exceptions to this are a black layer, which does not change the other layer, and a white layer,
which results in a white image. Darker colors in the image appear to be more transparent.
The equation is:

Equation 8.5 Equation for layer mode Screen

(255 − M ) × (255 − I)
E = 255 −
255

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.

Overlay

Figure 8.16 Example for layer mode “Overlay”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Overlay mode inverts the pixel value of the lower layer, multiplies it by two times the pixel value
of the upper layer, adds that to the original pixel value of the lower layer, divides by 255, and then
multiplies by the pixel value of the original lower layer and divides by 255 again. It darkens the
image, but not as much as with “Multiply” mode.

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1
The equation is:

Equation 8.6 Equation for layer mode Overlay

( )
I 2×M
E= × I+ × (255 − I)
255 255

Dodge

Figure 8.17 Example for layer mode “Dodge”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Dodge mode multiplies the pixel value of the lower layer by 256, then divides that by the inverse
of the pixel value of the top layer. The resulting image is usually lighter, but some colors may be
inverted.

In photography, dodging is a technique used in a darkroom to decrease the exposure in particular

areas of the image. This brings out details in the shadows. When used for this purpose, dodge
may work best on Grayscale images and with a painting tool, rather than as a layer mode.

The equation is:

Equation 8.7 Equation for layer mode Dodge

256 × I
E=
(255 − M ) + 1

Burn

1 The equation is the *theoretical* equation. Due to Bug #162395 , the actual equation is equivalent to Soft light. It is difficult

to fix this bug without changing the appearance of existing images.

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Figure 8.18 Example for layer mode “Burn”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Burn mode inverts the pixel value of the lower layer, multiplies it by 256, divides that by one
plus the pixel value of the upper layer, then inverts the result. It tends to make the image darker,
somewhat similar to “Multiply” mode.
In photography, burning is a technique used in a darkroom to increase the exposure in particular
areas of the image. This brings out details in the highlights. When used for this purpose, burn may
work best on Grayscale images and with a painting tool, rather than as a layer mode.
The equation is:

Equation 8.8 Equation for layer mode Burn

256 × (255 − I)
E = 255 −
M +1

Hard light

Figure 8.19 Example for layer mode “Hard light”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Hard light mode is rather complicated because the equation consists of two parts, one for darker
colors and one for brighter colors. If the pixel color of the upper layer is greater than 128, the layers
are combined according to the first formula shown below. Otherwise, the pixel values of the upper
and lower layers are multiplied together and multiplied by two, then divided by 256. You might
use this mode to combine two photographs and obtain bright colors and sharp edges.

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The equation is complex and different according to the value >128 or ≤ 128:

Equation 8.9 Equation for layer mode Hard light, M > 128
( )
255 − 2 × (M − 128) × (255 − I)
E = 255 − , M > 128
256

Equation 8.10 Equation for layer mode Hard light, M ≤ 128

2×M ×I
E= , M ≤ 128
256

Soft light

Figure 8.20 Example for layer mode “Soft light”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Soft light is not related to “Hard light” in anything but the name, but it does tend to make the
edges softer and the colors not so bright. It is similar to “Overlay” mode. In some versions of
GIMP, “Overlay” mode and “Soft light” mode are identical.

The equation is complicated. It needs Rs, the result of Screen mode :

Equation 8.11 Equation for layer mode Screen

(255 − M ) × (255 − I)
Rs = 255 −
255

Equation 8.12 Equation for layer mode Soft light

(255 − I) × M + Rs
E= ×I
255

Grain extract

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Figure 8.21 Example for layer mode “Grain extract”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Grain extract mode is supposed to extract the “film grain” from a layer to produce a new layer that
is pure grain, but it can also be useful for giving images an embossed appearance. It subtracts the
pixel value of the upper layer from that of the lower layer and adds 128.
The equation is:

Equation 8.13 Equation for layer mode Grain extract

E = I − M + 128

Grain merge There are two more layer modes, but these are available only for painting tools. See Paint-
ing Modes for detailed information.

Figure 8.22 Example for layer mode “Grain merge”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Grain merge mode merges a grain layer (possibly one created from the “Grain extract” mode) into
the current layer, leaving a grainy version of the original layer. It does just the opposite of “Grain
extract”. It adds the pixel values of the upper and lower layers together and subtracts 128.
The equation is:

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Equation 8.14 Equation for layer mode Grain merge

E = I + M − 128

Difference

Figure 8.23 Example for layer mode “Difference”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Difference mode subtracts the pixel value of the upper layer from that of the lower layer and then
takes the absolute value of the result. No matter what the original two layers look like, the result
looks rather odd. You can use it to invert elements of an image.
The equation is:

Equation 8.15 Equation for layer mode Difference

E = |I − M |

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.
Addition

Figure 8.24 Example for layer mode “Addition”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

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Addition mode is very simple. The pixel values of the upper and lower layers are added to each
other. The resulting image is usually lighter. The equation can result in color values greater than
255, so some of the light colors may be set to the maximum value of 255.

The equation is:

Equation 8.16 Equation for layer mode Addition

( )
E = min (M + I), 255

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.

Subtract

Figure 8.25 Example for layer mode “Subtract”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Subtract mode subtracts the pixel values of the upper layer from the pixel values of the lower layer.
The resulting image is normally darker. You might get a lot of black or near-black in the resulting
image. The equation can result in negative color values, so some of the dark colors may be set to
the minimum value of 0.

The equation is:

Equation 8.17 Equation for layer mode Subtraction

( )
E = max (I − M ), 0

Darken only

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Figure 8.26 Example for layer mode “Darken only”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Darken only mode compares each component of each pixel in the upper layer with the correspond-
ing one in the lower layer and uses the smaller value in the resulting image. Completely white
layers have no effect on the final image and completely black layers result in a black image.
The equation is:

Equation 8.18 Equation for layer mode Darken only

E = min(M, I)

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.
Lighten only

Figure 8.27 Example for layer mode “Lighten only”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Lighten only mode compares each component of each pixel in the upper layer with the correspond-
ing one in the lower layer and uses the larger value in the resulting image. Completely black layers
have no effect on the final image and completely white layers result in a white image.
The equation is:

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Equation 8.19 Equation for layer mode Lighten only

E = max(M, I)

The mode is commutative; the order of the two layers doesn’t matter.

Hue

Figure 8.28 Example for layer mode “Hue”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Hue mode uses the hue of the upper layer and the saturation and value of the lower layer to form
the resulting image. However, if the saturation of the upper layer is zero, the hue is taken from the
lower layer, too.

Saturation

Figure 8.29 Example for layer mode “Saturation”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Saturation mode uses the saturation of the upper layer and the hue and value of the lower layer to
form the resulting image.

Color

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Figure 8.30 Example for layer mode “Color”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Color mode uses the hue and saturation of the upper layer and the value of the lower layer to form
the resulting image.
Value

Figure 8.31 Example for layer mode “Value”

(a) Mask 1 is used as upper layer with 100% (b) Mask 2 is used as upper layer with 100%
opacity. opacity.

Value mode uses the value of the upper layer and the saturation and hue of the lower layer to form
the resulting image. You can use this mode to reveal details in dark and light areas of an image
without changing the saturation.
Each layer in an image can have a different layer mode. (Of course, the layer mode of the bottom
layer of an image has no effect.) The effects of these layer modes are cumulative. The image shown
below has three layers. The top layer consists of Wilber surrounded by transparency and has a layer
mode of “Difference”. The second layer is solid light blue and has a layer mode of “Addition”. The
bottom layer is filled with the “Red Cubes” pattern.

Figure 8.32 Multi layer example

GIMP also has similar modes which are used for the painting tools. These are the same twenty-one
modes as the layer modes, plus additionally two modes which are specific to the painting tools. You

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can set these modes from the Mode menu in the Tools option dialog. In the equations shown above, the
layer you are painting on is the “lower layer” and the pixels painted by the tool are the “upper layer”.
Naturally, you do not need more than one layer in the image to use these modes, since they only operate
on the current layer and the selected painting tool.
See Section [Link] for a description of the two additional painting modes.

8.3 Creating New Layers

There are several ways to create new layers in an image. Here are the most important ones:

• Selecting Layer → New Layer in the image menu. This brings up a dialog that allows you to set
the basic properties of the new layer; see the New Layer dialog section for help with it.

• Selecting Layer → Duplicate Layer in the image menu. This creates a new layer, that is a perfect
copy of the currently active layer, just above the active layer.

• When you “cut” or “copy” something, and then paste it using Ctrl-V or Edit → Paste, the result
is a “floating selection”, which is a sort of temporary layer. Before you can do anything else, you
either have to anchor the floating selection to an existing layer, or convert it into a normal layer. If
you do the latter, the new layer will be sized just large enough to contain the pasted material.

8.4 Layer Groups

This possibility appeared with GIMP-2.8.
You can group layers that have similarities in a tree-like way. So, the layer list becomes easier to
manage.

Create a Layer Group You can create a layer group by clicking on the Create a new layer group button
at the bottom of the layer dialog,
through Layer → New Layer Group, or through the layer dialog context menu.
This empty layer group appears just above the current layer. It is important to give it an evocative
name (double-click or F2 on the name, or use Edit Layer Attributes in the context menu you get by
right clicking the Layer dialog, to edit it), else you will get confused when several ones are created.
You can create several layer groups and you can embbed them, that is include a layer group in
another one.

Adding Layers to a Layer Group You can add existing layers to a layer group by click-and-dragging
them.

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Note
The hand representing the mouse pointer must turn smaller before releasing
the mouse button.
A thin horizontal line marks where the layer will be laid down.

To add a new layer to the current layer group, click on the Create a new layer at the bottom of the
layer dialog, or use the New Layer command in the image menu.

When a layer group is not empty, a small “>” icon appears. By clicking on it, you can fold/unfold
the layer list.

Layers that belong to a layer group are slightly indented to the right, allowing you know easily
which layers are part of the group.

Raise and Lower Layer Groups You can raise and lower layer groups in the layer dialog as you do with
normal layers: click-and-dragging, using arrow up and down keys at the bottom of the layer dialog.

Duplicate a Layer Group You can duplicate a layer group: click on the Create a duplicate of the layer
button or right-click and select the Duplicate Layer command in the pop up context menu.

Move Layer Groups You can move a layer group to another image by click-and-dragging. You can
also copy-paste it using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V: then, you get a floating selection that you must anchor
(anchor button at the bottom of the layer dialog).

You can also move a layer group to the canvas: this duplicates the group in the group. Chain all
layers in the duplicated layer group, activate the Move tool, then, in the image, move the layer.
That’s a way to multiply multi-layer objects in an image.

Delete a Layer Group To delete a layer group, click on the red cross button at the bottom of the layer
dialog or right-click and select Delete layer.

Embed Layer Groups When a layer group is activated, you can add another group inside it with the
“Add New Layer Group” command. There seems to be no limit, excepted memory, to the number
of embedded layer groups.

Layer Modes and Groups A layer mode applied to a layer group acts on layers that are in this group
only. A layer mode above a layer group acts on all layers underneath, outside and inside the layer
groups.

Original image

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Figure 8.33 Layer Mode in or out Layer Group

(a) We added a white layer in the layer group with sat- (b) We added a white layer out of the layer group with
uration mode: only square and triangle are grayed out. saturation mode: all layers underneath are grayed out,
background layer also.

Opacity When a layer group is activated, opacity changes are applied to all the layers of the group.

Layer Mask You cannot add a layer mask to a layer group (the corresponding option is grayed out).
But, as with normal layers, you can add a layer mask to a layer in the group to mask a part of the
layer.

We added a white (Full opacity) layer mask to the triangle layer.

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Chapter 9

Text Management

9.1 Text Management

Text is managed with the Text tool. This tool creates a new layer containing the text, above the current
layer in the layer dialog, with the size of the text box. Its name is the beginning of the text.

Figure 9.1 Example of a text item

(a) Example of a text item, (b) The layer dialog, with the
showing the boundary of the text layer above the layer which
text layer. (Font: Utopia was current.
Bold)

The Text tool is progressively improved. With GIMP-2.8, you can now edit text directly on canvas.
A text tool box has been added which overlays the canvas above the text box.

As soon as you click on the canvas with the Text tool, you get a closed text box and a semi-transparent tool box
just above.
Text tool options are described in Section 14.6.6.

9.1.1 Text Area

You can start typing text at once. The text box will enlarge gradually. Press Enter to add a new line.
You can also enlarge the text box by click-and-dragging, as you do with selections. The box size
appears then in the status bar at the bottom of the image:

To edit text, you must, first, select the part you want to edit by click-and-drag, or Shift-arrow keys
and then use the options of the Section 9.1.3.
Instead of using the on-canvas text editing, you can use the text editor dialog described in Sec-
tion [Link].
You can move the text on the image using the Move tool: you must click on a character, not on the
background.
You can get Unicode characters with Ctrl-Shift-U plus hexadecimal Unicode code of the desired char,
for example:

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Figure 9.2 Entering Unicode characters

(a) Ctrl-Shift-U (b) 4 7 (c) Enter

Of course this feature is more useful for entering special (even exotic) characters, provided that the
required glyphs for these characters are supplied by the selected font — only few fonts support Klingon.
;-)

Unicode 0x47 (“G”), 0x2665, 0x0271, 0x03C0

You can edit the text later, if the text layer still exists and has not been modified by another tool (see
below): make the text layer active in theLayer dialog, select the Text tool and click on the text in the
image window.

9.1.2 Managing Text Layer

You can operate on a text layer in the same ways as any other layer, but doing so often means giving up
the ability to edit the text without losing the results of your work.
To understand some of the idiosyncrasies of text handling, it may help for you to realize that a text
layer contains more information than the pixel data that you see: it also contains a representation of the
text in a text-editor format. You can see this in the text-editor window that pops up while you are using
the Text tool. Every time you alter the text, the image layer is redrawn to reflect your changes.
Now suppose you create a text layer, and then operate on it in some way that does not involve the
Text tool: rotate it, for example. Suppose you then come back and try to edit it using the Text tool. As
soon as you edit the text, the Text tool will redraw the layer, wiping out the results of the operations you
performed in the meantime.
Because this danger is not obvious, the Text tool tries to protect you from it. If you operate on a text
layer, and then later try to edit the text, a message pops up, warning you that your alterations will be
undone, and giving you three options:

• edit the text anyway;

• cancel;

• create a new text layer with the same text as the existing layer, leaving the existing layer unchanged.

Figure 9.3 Warning lose modifications

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9.1.3 Text Toolbox

Figure 9.4 Text Toolbox

You get this box, which overlays canvas, as soon as you click on canvas with the Text Tool. It allows you
to edit text directly on canvas.
Apart from the usual text formatting features like font family, style and size selectors you get numeric
control over baseline offset and kerning, as well as the ability to change text color for a selection.
• Change font of selected text: as soon as you start editing the default font name, a drop-down list
appears, allowing you to select a font.
• Change size of selected text: self-explanatory.
• Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough : self-explanatory.
• Change baseline of selected text: ”In European typography and penmanship, baseline is the line
upon which most letters ”sit” and below which descenders extend” (Wikipedia). In HTML, there
are several kinds of baselines (alphabetic, ideographic, bottom…). Here, consider that baseline
is ”bottom” and determines the place for descenders. The default baseline ”0” gives place for
descenders. You can use it to increase space between two lines only, while “Adjust line spacing”
in tool options increases space between all lines.

Figure 9.5 Default Baseline

Default baseline marked with a red line.

• Change kerning of selected text: ”In typography, kerning… is the process of adjusting the spacing
between characters in a proportional font.” (Wikipedia). You will probably use this setting to adjust
letter spacing of a selected part of text.
Let us look at a selected text (zoomx800 to see pixels):

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We can see that the Sans font is a proportional font: letters widths are different, and “T” glyph
comes over the “e”. Letters widths are marked with thin vertical lines and left borders of letter
width cover preceding letters by one pixel. Now we set “Change kerning of selected text” to 2
pixels:

Blank spaces, 2 pixels wide, are added between all selected characters and letter widths are pre-
served. If no text is selected, a blank space is added at the place of the mouse pointer between two
characters.
Now, we compare with the “Adjust letter spacing” option of Text tool:

The option applies to the whole text, not only to the selected text. Blank spaces are added inside
letters widths and letter widths are not respected.
• You can also use Alt-arrow keys to change baseline offset and kerning.
• Change color of selected text: this command opens a color dialog where you choose a color for
the selected text.
• Clear style of selected text: using this command, you can get rid of all new settings you applied
to the selected text.

9.1.4 Text Context Menu

Figure 9.6 Text Editing Context Menu

You get this menu by right-clicking on text. It is somewhat different from that of the Text Editor dialog.

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• Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete: these options concern a selected text. They remain grayed out as long as
no text is selected. “Paste” is activated if the clipboard is full of text.

• Open text file: this command opens a file browser where you can find the wanted text file.

• Clear: this command deletes all the text, selected or not.

• Path from text: this command creates a path from the outlines of the current text. The result is not
evident. You have to open the Path dialog and make path visible. Then select the Path tool and
click on the text. Every letter is now surrounded with a path component. So you can modify the
shape of letters by moving path control points.
This command is similar to Layer → Text to Path.

Figure 9.7 Text to path applied

Nothing appears.

Figure 9.8 Path made visible

Path made visible in Path tab. Path appears as a red border around text.

Figure 9.9 Path tool activated

Path tool activated; click on path.

• Text along path:

This option is enabled only if a path exists. When your text is created, then create or import a path
and make it active. If you create your path before the text, the path becomes invisible and you have
to make it visible in the Path Dialog.
This command is also available from the “Layer” menu:

Figure 9.10 The Text along Path command among text commands in the Layer menu

This group of options appears only if a text layer exists.

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Click on the Text along Path button. The text is bent along the path. Letters are represented with
their outline. Each of them is a component of the new path that appears in the Path dialog. All
path options should apply to this new path.

Figure 9.11 “Text along Path” example

• From Left to Right / From Right to Left: fix the writing direction of your language.
• Input Methods: methods are available for some languages. For example, selecting “Inuktitut”
transforms your keyboard into an Inuktitut keyboard, temporarily.

9.2 Text
9.2.1 Embellishing Text

Figure 9.12 Fancy text

Four fancy text items created using logo scripts: “alien neon”, “bovination”, “frosty”, and “chalk”. Default
settings were used for everything except font size.

There are many things you can do to vary the appearance of text beyond just rendering it with different
fonts or different colors. By converting a text item to a selection or a path, you can fill it, stroke the
outlines, transform it, or generally apply the whole panoply of GIMP tools to get interesting effects. As
a demonstration of some of the possibilities, try out the ”logo” scripts at File → Create → Logos. Each
of these scripts allows you to enter some text, and then creates a new image showing a logo constructed
out of that text. If you would like to modify one of these scripts, or construct a logo script of your own,
the Using Script-Fu and Script-Fu Tutorial sections should help you get started. Of course, you don’t
need Script-Fu to create these sorts of effects, only to automate them.

9.2.2 Adding Fonts

For the most authoritative and up-to-date information on fonts in GIMP, consult the “Fonts in GIMP 2.0”
page [GIMP-FONTS] at the GIMP web site. This section attempts to give you a helpful overview.
GIMP uses the FreeType 2 font engine to render fonts, and a system called Fontconfig to manage
them. GIMP will let you use any font in Fontconfig’s font path; it will also let you use any font it finds
in GIMP’s font search path, which is set on the Font Folders page of the Preferences dialog. By default,

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the font search path includes a system GIMP-fonts folder (which you should not alter, even though it is
actually empty), and a fonts folder inside your personal GIMP directory. You can add new folders to
the font search path if it is more convenient for you.
FreeType 2 is a very powerful and flexible system. By default, it supports the following font file
formats:

• TrueType fonts (and collections)

• Type 1 fonts

• CID-keyed Type 1 fonts

• CFF fonts

• OpenType fonts (both TrueType and CFF variants)

• SFNT-based bitmap fonts

• X11 PCF fonts

• Windows FNT fonts

• BDF fonts (including anti-aliased ones)

• PFR fonts

• Type42 fonts (limited support)

You can also add modules to support other types of font files. See FREETYPE 2 [FREETYPE] for more
information.
Linux On a Linux system, if the Fontconfig utility is set up as usual, all you need to do to add a new
font is to place the file in the directory ~/.fonts. This will make the font available not only to GIMP,
but to any other program that uses Fontconfig. If for some reason you want the font to be available to
GIMP only, you can place it in the fonts sub-directory of your personal GIMP directory, or some other
location in your font search path. Doing either will cause the font to show up the next time you start
GIMP. If you want to use it in an already running GIMP, press the Refresh button in the Fonts dialog.
Windows The easiest way to install a font is to drag the file onto the Fonts directory and let the
shell do its magic. Unless you’ve done something creative, it’s probably in its default location of C:
\\windows\\fonts or C:\\winnt\\fonts. Sometimes double-clicking on a font will install it as
well as display it; sometimes it only displays it. This method will make the font available not only to
GIMP, but also to other Windows applications.
Mac OS X There are several ways to install fonts on your system. You can drag-and-drop them to
the “Fonts” folder in “Libraries” folder of your “Home Folder”. Or you may use Font Book, invoked
by double-clicking the font file icon in the Finder. You can see what the font looks like, and click your
favorite fonts so that their files are to be installed on the system. These methods will make the fonts
available for all applications, not only GIMP. If you want all users can use the fonts, drag-and-drop the
fonts to the “Fonts” folder in “Libraries” folder of the Mac OS X Disk, or to the “Computer” folder in the
Collection column of Font Book.
To install a Type 1 file, you need both the .pfb and .pfm files. Drag the one that gets an icon into the
fonts folder. The other one doesn’t strictly need to be in the same directory when you drag the file, since
it uses some kind of search algorithm to find it if it’s not, but in any case putting it in the same directory
does no harm.
In principle, GIMP can use any type of font on Windows that FreeType can handle; however, for fonts
that Windows can’t handle natively, you should install them by placing the font files in the fonts folder
of your personal GIMP directory, or some other location in your font search path. The support Windows
has varies by version. All that GIMP runs on support at least TrueType, Windows FON, and Windows
FNT. Windows 2000 and later support Type 1 and OpenType. Windows ME supports OpenType and
possibly Type 1 (but the most widely used Windows GIMP installer does not officially support Windows
ME, although it may work anyway).

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Note
GIMP uses Fontconfig to manage fonts on Windows as well as Linux. The instruc-
tions above work because Fontconfig by default uses the Windows fonts directory,
i. e., the same fonts that Windows uses itself. If for some reason your Fontconfig
is set up differently, you will have to figure out where to put fonts so that GIMP can
find them: in any case, the fonts folder of your personal GIMP directory should
work.

9.2.3 Font Problems

Problems with fonts have probably been responsible for more GIMP 2 bug reports than any other single
cause, although they have become much less frequent in the most recent releases in the 2.0 series. In
most cases they have been caused by malformed font files giving trouble to Fontconfig. If you experi-
ence crashes at start-up when GIMP scans your font directories, the best solution is to upgrade to a ver-
sion of Fontconfig newer than 2.2.0. As a quick workaround you can start gimp with the --no-fonts
command-line option, but then you will not be able to use the text tool.
Another known problem is that Pango 1.2 cannot load fonts that don’t provide an Unicode character
mapping. (Pango is the text layout library used by GIMP.) A lot of symbol fonts fall into this category.
On some systems, using such a font can cause GIMP to crash. Updating to Pango 1.4 will fix this problem
and makes symbol fonts available in GIMP.
A frequent source of confusion occurs on Windows systems, when GIMP encounters a malformed
font file and generates an error message: this causes a console window to pop up so that you can see
the message. Do not close that console window. It is harmless, and closing it will shut down GIMP. When
this happens, it often seems to users that GIMP has crashed. It hasn’t: closing the console window
causes Windows to shut GIMP down. Unfortunately, this annoying situation is caused by an interaction
between Windows and the libraries that GIMP links to: it cannot be fixed within GIMP. All you need to
do, though, if this happens, is minimize the console window and ignore it.

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Chapter 10

Enhancing Photographs

10.1 Working with Digital Camera Photos

10.1.1 Introduction
One of the most common uses of GIMP is to fix digital camera images that for some reason are less than
perfect. Maybe the image is overexposed or underexposed; maybe rotated a bit; maybe out of focus:
these are all common problems for which GIMP has good tools. The purpose of this chapter is to give
you an overview of those tools and the situations in which they are useful. You will not find detailed
tutorials here: in most cases it is easier to learn how to use the tools by experimenting with them than
by reading about them. (Also, each tool is described more thoroughly in the Help section devoted to it.)
You will also not find anything in this chapter about the multitude of ”special effects” that you can apply
to an image using GIMP. You should be familiar with basic GIMP concepts before reading this chapter,
but you certainly don’t need to be an expert–if you are, you probably know most of this anyway. And
don’t hesitate to experiment: GIMP’s powerful ”undo” system allows you to recover from almost any
mistake with a simple Ctrl-Z.
Most commonly the things that you want to do to clean up an imperfect photo are of four types:
improving the composition; improving the colors; improving the sharpness; and removing artifacts or
other undesirable elements of the image.

10.1.2 Improving Composition

[Link] Rotating an Image
It is easy, when taking a picture, to hold the camera not quite perfectly vertical, resulting in a picture
where things are tilted at an angle. In GIMP, the way to fix this is to use the Rotate tool. Activate this

by clicking its icon in the Toolbox, or by pressing the Shift-R while inside the image. Make sure
the Tool Options are visible, and at the top, make sure for “Transform:” that the left button (“Transform
Layer”) is selected. If you then click the mouse inside the image and drag it, you will see a grid appear
that rotates as you drag. When the grid looks right, click Rotate or press Enter, and the image will be
rotated.
Now as a matter of fact, it isn’t so easy to get things right by this method: you often find that things
are better but not quite perfect. One solution is to rotate a bit more, but there is a disadvantage to that
approach. Each time you rotate an image, because the rotated pixels don’t line up precisely with the
original pixels, the image inevitably gets blurred a little bit. For a single rotation, the amount of blurring
is quite small, but two rotations cause twice as much blurring as one, and there is no reason to blur things
more than you have to. A better alternative is to undo the rotation and then do another, adjusting the
angle.
Fortunately, GIMP provides another way of doing it that is considerably easier to use: in the Rotate
Tool Options, for the Transform Direction you can select ”Backward (Corrective)”. When you do this,
instead of rotating the grid to compensate for the error, you can rotate it to line up with the error. If this
seems confusing, try it and you will see that it is quite straightforward.

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Note

Since GIMP 2.2, there is an option to preview the results of transformations, instead
of just seeing a grid. This makes it easier to get things right on the first try.

After you have rotated an image, there will be unpleasant triangular ”holes” at the corners. One
way to fix them is to create a background that fills the holes with some unobtrusive or neutral color, but
usually a better solution is to crop the image. The greater the rotation, the more cropping is required, so
it is best to get the camera aligned as well as possible when you take the picture in the first place.

[Link] Cropping
When you take a picture with a digital camera, you have some control over what gets included in the
image but often not as much as you would like: the result is images that could benefit from trimming.
Beyond this, it is often possible to enhance the impact of an image by trimming it so that the most im-
portant elements are placed at key points. A rule of thumb, not always to be followed but good to keep
in mind, is the “rule of thirds”, which says that maximum impact is obtained by placing the center of
interest one-third of the way across the image, both widthwise and heightwise.
To crop an image, activate the Crop tool in the Toolbox, or by pressing the “C” key (capitalized)
while inside the image. With the tool active, clicking and dragging in the image will sweep out a crop
rectangle. It will also pop up a dialog that allows you to adjust the dimensions of the crop region if they
aren’t quite right. When everything is perfect, hit the Crop button in the dialog.

10.1.3 Improving Colors

[Link] Automated Tools
In spite of sophisticated exposure-control systems, pictures taken with digital cameras often come out
over- or under-exposed, or with color casts due to imperfections in lighting. GIMP gives you a variety
of tools to correct colors in an image, ranging to automated tools that run with a simple button-click to
highly sophisticated tools that give you many parameters of control. We will start with the simplest first.
GIMP gives you several automated color correction tools. Unfortunately they don’t usually give you
quite the results you are looking for, but they only take a moment to try out, and if nothing else they
often give you an idea of some of the possibilities inherent in the image. Except for ”Auto Levels”, you
can find these tools by following the menu path Colors → Auto in the image menu.
Here they are, with a few words about each:

Normalize This tool (it is really a plug-in) is useful for underexposed images: it adjusts the whole
image uniformly until the brightest point is right at the saturation limit, and the darkest point is
black. The downside is that the amount of brightening is determined entirely by the lightest and
darkest points in the image, so even one single white pixel and/or one single black pixel will make
normalization ineffective.

Equalize This is a very powerful adjustment that tries to spread the colors in the image evenly across
the range of possible intensities. In some cases the effect is amazing, bringing out contrasts that
are very difficult to get in any other way; but more commonly, it just makes the image look weird.
Oh well, it only takes a moment to try.

Color Enhance This command increases the saturation range of the colors in the layer, without altering
brightness or hue. So this command does not work on grayscale images.

Stretch Contrast This is like “Normalize”, except that it operates on the red, green, and blue channels
independently. It often has the useful effect of reducing color casts.

Stretch HSV Does the same as Stretch Contrast but works in HSV color space, rather than RGB color
space. It preserves the Hue.

White balance This may enhance images with poor white or black by removing little used colors and
stretch the remaining range as much as possible.

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Auto Levels This is done by activating the Levels tool (Tools → Color Tools → Levels or Colors →
Levels in the image menu), and then pressing the Auto button near the center of the dialog. You
will see a preview of the result; you must press Okay for it to take effect. Pressing Cancel instead
will cause your image to revert to its previous state.
If you can find a point in the image that ought to be perfect white, and a second point that ought
to be perfect black, then you can use the Levels tool to do a semi-automatic adjustment that will
often do a good job of fixing both brightness and colors throughout the image. First, bring up the
Levels tool as previously described. Now, look down near the bottom of the Layers dialog for three
buttons with symbols on them that look like eye-droppers (at least, that is what they are supposed
to look like). The one on the left, if you mouse over it, shows its function to be “Pick Black Point”.
Click on this, then click on a point in the image that ought to be black–really truly perfectly black,
not just sort of dark–and watch the image change. Next, click on the rightmost of the three buttons
( “Pick White Point” ), and then click a point in the image that ought to be white, and once more
watch the image change. If you are happy with the result, click the Okay button otherwise Cancel.
Those are the automated color adjustments: if you find that none of them quite does the job for you, it
is time to try one of the interactive color tools. All of these, except one, can be accessed via Tools->Color
Tools in the image menu. After you select a color tool, click on the image (anywhere) to activate it and
bring up its dialog.

[Link] Exposure Problems

The simplest tool to use is the Brightness/Contrast tool. It is also the least powerful, but in many cases
it does everything you need. This tool is often useful for images that are overexposed or underexposed;
it is not useful for correcting color casts. The tool gives you two sliders to adjust, for “Brightness” and
“Contrast”. If you have the option “Preview” checked (and almost certainly you should),you will see
any adjustments you make reflected in the image. When you are happy with the results, press Okay and
they will take effect. If you can’t get results that you are happy with, press Cancel and the image will
revert to its previous state.
A more sophisticated, and only slightly more difficult, way of correcting exposure problems is to use
the Levels tool. The dialog for this tool looks very complicated, but for the basic usage we have in mind
here, the only part you need to deal with is the “Input Levels” area, specifically the three triangular
sliders that appear below the histogram. We refer you to the Levels Tool Help for instructions; but
actually the easiest way to learn how to use it is to experiment by moving the three sliders around, and
watching how the image is affected. (Make sure that “Preview” is checked at the bottom of the dialog.)
A very powerful way of correcting exposure problems is to use the Curves tool. This tool allows you
to click and drag control points on a curve, in order to create a function mapping input brightness levels
to output brightness levels. The Curves tool can replicate any effect you can achieve with Brightness/-
Contrast or the Levels tool, so it is more powerful than either of them. Once again, we refer you to the
Curves Tool Help for detailed instructions, but the easiest way to learn how to use it is by experimenting.
The most powerful approach to adjusting brightness and contrast across an image, for more expert
GIMP users, is to create a new layer above the one you are working on, and then in the Layers dialog
set the Mode for the upper layer to “Multiply”. The new layer then serves as a “gain control” layer
for the layer below it, with white yielding maximum gain and black yielding a gain of zero. Thus, by
painting on the new layer, you can selectively adjust the gain for each area of the image, giving you very
fine control. You should try to paint only with smooth gradients, because sudden changes in gain will
give rise to spurious edges in the result. Paint only using shades of gray, not colors, unless you want to
produce color shifts in the image.
Actually, “Multiply” is not the only mode that is useful for gain control. In fact, “Multiply” mode
can only darken parts of an image, never lighten them, so it is only useful where some parts of an image
are overexposed. Using “Divide” mode has the opposite effect: it can brighten areas of an image but not
darken them. Here is a trick that is often useful for bringing out the maximum amount of detail across
all areas of an image:
1. Duplicate the layer (producing a new layer above it).
2. Desaturate the new layer.
3. Apply a Gaussian blur to the result, with a large radius (100 or more).
4. Set Mode in the Layers dialog to Divide.

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5. Control the amount of correction by adjusting opacity in the Layers dialog, or by using Bright-
ness/Contrast, Levels, or Curves tools on the new layer.

6. When you are happy with the result, you can use Merge Down to combine the control layer and
the original layer into a single layer.

In addition to “Multiply” and “Divide”, you may every so often get useful effects with other layer
combination modes, such as “Dodge”, “Burn”, or “Soft Light”. It is all too easy, though, once you start
playing with these things, to look away from the computer for a moment and suddenly find that you
have just spent an hour twiddling parameters. Be warned: the more options you have, the harder it is
to make a decision.

[Link] Adjusting Hue and Saturation

In our experience, if your image has a color cast---too much red, too much blue, etc---the easiest way to
correct it is to use the Levels tool, adjusting levels individually on the red, green, and blue channels. If
this doesn’t work for you, it might be worth your while to try the Color Balance tool or the Curves tool,
but these are much more difficult to use effectively. (They are very good for creating certain types of
special effects, though.)
Sometimes it is hard to tell whether you have adjusted colors adequately. A good, objective technique
is to find a point in the image that you know should be either white or a shade of gray. Activate the Color
Picker tool (the eyedropper symbol in the Toolbox), and click on the aforesaid point: this brings up the
Color Picker dialog. If the colors are correctly adjusted, then the red, green, and blue components of the
reported color should all be equal; if not, then you should see what sort of adjustment you need to make.
This technique, when well used, allows even color-blind people to color-correct an image.
If your image is washed out---which can easily happen when you take pictures in bright light---try the
Hue/Saturation tool, which gives you three sliders to manipulate, for Hue, Lightness, and Saturation.
Raising the saturation will probably make the image look better. In same cases it is useful to adjust
the lightness at the same time. ( “Lightness” here is similar to “Brightness” in the Brightness/Contrast
tool, except that they are formed from different combinations of the red, green, and blue channels.) The
Hue/Saturation tool gives you the option of adjusting restricted subranges of colors (using the buttons
at the top of the dialog), but if you want to get natural-looking colors, in most cases you should avoid
doing this.

Tip
Even if an image does not seemed washed out, often you can increase its impact
by pushing up the saturation a bit. Veterans of the film era sometimes call this trick
“Fujifying”, after Fujichrome film, which is notorious for producing highly saturated
prints.

When you take pictures in low light conditions, in some cases you have the opposite problem: too
much saturation. In this case too the Hue/Saturation tool is a good one to use, only by reducing the
saturation instead of increasing it.

10.1.4 Adjusting Sharpness

[Link] Unblurring
If the focus on the camera is not set perfectly, or the camera is moving when the picture is taken, the
result is a blurred image. If there is a lot of blurring, you probably won’t be able to do much about it
with any technique, but if there is only a moderate amount, you should be able to improve the image.
The most generally useful technique for sharpening a fuzzy image is called the Unsharp Mask. In
spite of the rather confusing name, which derives from its origins as a technique used by film developers,
its result is to make the image sharper, not “unsharp”. It is a plug-in, and you can access it as Filters-
>Enhance->Unsharp Mask in the image menu. There are two parameters, “Radius” and “Amount”. The
default values often work pretty well, so you should try them first. Increasing either the radius or the
amount increases the strength of the effect. Don’t get carried away, though: if you make the unsharp

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mask too strong, it will amplify noise in the image and also give rise to visible artifacts where there are
sharp edges.

Tip
Sometimes using Unsharp Mask can cause color distortion where there are strong
contrasts in an image. When this happens, you can often get better results by de-
composing the image into separate Hue-Saturation-Value (HSV) layers, and run-
ning Unsharp Mask on the Value layer only, then recomposing. This works because
the human eye has much finer resolution for brightness than for color. See the sec-
tions on Decompose and Compose for more information.

Next to ”Unsharp Mask” in the Filters menu is another filter called Sharpen, which does similar
things. It is a little easier to use but not nearly as effective: our recommendation is that you ignore it and
go straight to Unsharp Mask.
In some situations, you may be able to get useful results by selectively sharpening specific parts of an
image using the Blur or Sharpen tool from the Toolbox, in ”Sharpen” mode. This allows you to increase
the sharpness in areas by painting over them with any paintbrush. You should be restrained about this,
though, or the results will not look very natural: sharpening increases the apparent sharpness of edges
in the image, but also amplifies noise.

[Link] Reducing Graininess

When you take pictures in low-light conditions or with a very fast exposure time, the camera does not
get enough data to make good estimates of the true color at each pixel, and consequently the resulting
image looks grainy. You can “smooth out” the graininess by blurring the image, but then you will also
lose sharpness. There are a couple of approaches that may give better results. Probably the best, if the
graininess is not too bad, is to use the filter called Selective Blur, setting the blurring radius to 1 or 2
pixels. The other approach is to use the Despeckle filter. This has a nice preview, so you can play with
the settings and try to find some that give good results. When graininess is really bad, though, it is often
very difficult to fix by anything except heroic measures (i.e., retouching with paint tools).

[Link] Softening

Every so often you have the opposite problem: an image is too crisp. The solution is to blur it a bit:
fortunately blurring an image is much easier than sharpening it. Since you probably don’t want to blur
it very much, the simplest method is to use the “Blur” plug-in, accessed via Filters->Blur->Blur from the
image menu. This will soften the focus of the image a little bit. If you want more softening, just repeat
until you get the result you desire.

10.1.5 Removing Unwanted Objects from an Image

There are two kinds of objects you might want to remove from an image: first, artifacts caused by junk
such as dust or hair on the lens; second, things that were really present but impair the quality of the
image, such as a telephone wire running across the edge of a beautiful mountain landscape.

[Link] Despeckling

A good tool for removing dust and other types of lens grunge is the Despeckle filter, accessed as Filters-
>Enhance->Despeckle from the image menu. Very important: to use this filter effectively, you must
begin by making a small selection containing the artifact and a small area around it. The selection must
be small enough so that the artifact pixels are statistically distinguishable from the other pixels inside
the selection. If you try to run despeckle on the whole image, you will hardly ever get anything useful.
Once you have created a reasonable selection, activate Despeckle, and watch the preview as you adjust
the parameters. If you are lucky, you will be able to find a setting that removes the junk while minimally
affecting the area around it. The more the junk stands out from the area around it, the better your results

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are likely to be. If it isn’t working for you, it might be worthwhile to cancel the filter, create a different
selection, and then try again.
If you have more than one artifact in the image, it is necessary to use Despeckle on each individually.

[Link] Garbage Removal

The most useful method for removing unwanted “clutter” from an image is the Clone tool, which
allows you to paint over one part of an image using pixel data taken from another part (or even from a
different image). The trick to using the clone tool effectively is to be able to find a different part of the
image that can be used to “copy over” the unwanted part: if the area surrounding the unwanted object
is very different from the rest of the image, you won’t have much luck. For example, if you have a lovely
beach scene, with a nasty human walking across the beach who you would like to teleport away, you
will probably be able to find an empty part of the beach that looks similar to the part he is walking across,
and use it to clone over him. It is quite astonishing how natural the results can look when this technique
works well.
Consult the Clone Tool Help for more detailed instructions. Cloning is as much an art as a science,
and the more you practice at it, the better you will get. At first it may seem impossible to produce
anything except ugly blotches, but persistence will pay off.
Another tool looking very much as the clone tool, but smarter, is the healing tool which also takes
the area around the destination into account when cloning. A typical usage is removal of wrinkles and
other minor errors in images.
In some cases you may be able to get good results by simply cutting out the offending object from the
image, and then using a plug-in called “Resynthesizer” to fill in the void. This plug-in is not included
with the main GIMP distribution, but it can be obtained from the author’s web site [PLUGIN-RESYNTH].
As with many things, your mileage may vary.

[Link] Removing Red-eye

When you take a flash picture of somebody who is looking directly toward the camera, the iris of the
eye can bounce the light of the flash back toward the camera in such a way as to make the eye appear
bright red: this effect is called “red eye”, and looks very bizarre. Many modern cameras have special
flash modes that minimize red-eye, but they only work if you use them, and even then they don’t always
work perfectly. Interestingly, the same effect occurs with animals, but the eyes may show up as other
colors, such as green.
From version 2.4, GIMP incorporated a special remove red eye filter. Make a selection with one of
the selection tools of the red part of the eye and then choose the “Remove Red Eye” filter. Perhaps you
have to fiddle around a bit with the threshold slider to get the right color.

10.1.6 Saving Your Results

[Link] Files
What file format should you use to save the results of your work, and should you resize it? The answers
depend on what you intend to use the image for.

• If you intend to open the image in GIMP again for further work, you should save it in GIMP’s
native XCF format (i. e., name it [Link]), because this is the only format that guarantees
that none of the information in the image is lost.

• If you intend to print the image on paper, you should avoid shrinking the image, except by crop-
ping it. The reason is that printers are capable of achieving much higher resolutions than video
monitors — 600 to 1400 dpi (“dots per inch”, the physical density) for typical printers, as compared
to 72 to 100 pixels per inch for monitors. A 3000 x 5000-pixel image looks huge on a monitor, but
it only comes to about 5 inches by 8 inches on paper at 600 ppi. There is usually no good reason
to expand the image either: you can’t increase the true resolution that way, and it can always be
scaled up at the time it is printed. As for the file format, it will usually be fine to use JPEG at a
quality level of 75 to 85. In rare cases, where there are large swaths of nearly uniform color, you
may need to set the quality level even higher or use a lossless format such as TIFF instead.

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• If you intend to display the image on screen or project it with a video projector, bear in mind that the
highest screen resolution for most commonly available systems is 1600 x 1200, so there is nothing
to gain by keeping the image larger than that. For this purpose, the JPEG format is almost always
a good choice.

• If you want to put the image on a web page or send it by email, it is a good idea to make every
effort to keep the file size as small as possible. First, scale the image down to the smallest size that
makes it possible to see the relevant details (bear in mind that other people may be using different
sized monitors and/or different monitor resolution settings). Second, save the image as a JPEG
file. In the JPEG save dialog, check the option to “Preview in image window” , and then adjust
the Quality slider to the lowest level that gives you acceptable image quality. (You will see in the
image the effects of each change.) Make sure that the image is zoomed at 1:1 while you do this, so
you are not misled by the effects of zooming.

See the File Formats section for more information.

[Link] Printing Your Photos

As in most softwares, in GIMP, printing needs to go to main menu File → Print. However it is very
useful to keep in mind some elementary concepts to prevent some unpleasant surprises when looking
at result, or to cure them if that occurs. You always must remember:

• that image displayed on the screen is in RGB mode and printing will be in CMYK mode; conse-
quently color feature you’ll get on printed sheet will not be exactly what you was waiting for. That
depends on the used corresponding chart. For the curious ones some adding explanations can be
got through a click on these useful Wikipedia links:

– ICC-Profile [WKPD-ICC]
– CMYK [WKPD-CMYK]
– Gamut [WKPD-GAMUT]

• that a screen resolution is roughly within a range from 75 up to 100 dpi; a printer resolution is
about 10x higher (or more) than a screen one; printed image size depends on available pixels and
resolution; so actual printed size doesn’t correspond inevitably to what is displayed on screen nor
available sheet size.

Consequently, before any printing it is relevant to go to: Image → Print size and choose here your

convenient output size in “print size” box adjusting either sizes or resolution. The symbol shows
that the both values are linked. You can dissociate x and y resolution by clicking on that symbol, but
it is risky! Probably this possibility is open because printers are built with different x vs. y resolutions.
Nevertheless if you unlinked them you can be very surprised! You can try this in special effects.
Last recommendation: think of checking your margins as well as centering. It would be a pity if a
too much large margin cuts off some part of your image or if an inappropriate centering damages your
work especially if you use a special photo paper.

[Link] EXIF Data

Modern digital cameras, when you take a picture, add information to the data file about the camera
settings and the circumstances under which the picture was taken. This data is included in JPEG or TIFF
files in a structured format called EXIF. For JPEG files, GIMP is capable of maintaining EXIF data, if it is
built appropriately: it depends on a library called “libexif”, which may not be available on all systems.
If GIMP is built with EXIF support enabled, then loading a JPEG file with EXIF data, and resaving the
resulting image in JPEG format, will cause the EXIF data to be preserved unchanged. This is not, strictly
speaking, the right way for an image editor to handle EXIF data, but it is better than simply removing it,
which is what earlier versions of GIMP did.
If you would like to see the contents of the EXIF data, you can download from the registry an Exif
Browser plug-in [PLUGIN-EXIF]. If you are able to build and install it on your system, you can access it
as Filters->Generic->Exif Browser from the image menu. (See Installing New Plug-ins for help.)

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Color Management with GIMP

11.1 Color Management in GIMP

Many devices you use in your design or photography workflow, like digital photo cameras, scanners,
displays, printers etc., have their own color reproduction characteristics. If those are not taken into
account during opening, editing and saving, harmful adjustments can be done to images. With GIMP
you can have reliable output for both Web and print.

Figure 11.1 Image Processing Workflow

(a) Workflow without Color man- (b) Process with Color manage-
agement ment

11.1.1 Problems of a non Color Managed Workflow

The basic problem of image manipulation without color management is that you do simply not see what
you do. This affects two different areas:

1. There are differences in Colors caused by different color characteristics of different devices like
cameras, scanners, displays or printers

2. There are differences in Colors caused by the limitations of the colorspace a specific device is able
to handle

The main purpose of color management is to avoid such problems. The approach taken to do so
involves the addition of a description of the color characteristic to an image or devices.
These descriptions are called color profile. A color profile is basically a look-up table to translate the
specific color characteristic of a device to a device-independent color space - the so called working-space.

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All the image manipulation is then done to images in the working-space. In addition to that the color
profile of a device can be used to simulate how colors would look on that device.
The creation of color profiles is most often done by the manufacturer of the devices themselves. To
make these profiles usable independent of platform and operating system, the ICC (International Color
Consortium) created a standard called ICC-profile that describes how color profiles are stored to files
and embedded into images.

11.1.2 Introduction to a Color Managed Workflow

Tip

Most of the parameters and profiles described here can be set in the GIMP prefer-
ences. Please see Section 12.1.14 for details.

[Link] Input
Most digital cameras embed a color profile to individual photo files without user interaction. Digital
scanners usually come with a color profile, which they also attach to the scanned images.

Figure 11.2 Applying the ICC-profile

When opening an image with an embedded color profile, GIMP offers to convert the file to the RGB
working color space. This is sRGB by default and it is recommended that all work is done in that color
space. Should you however decide to keep the embedded color profile, the image will however still be
displayed correctly.
In case for some reason a color profile is not embedded in the image and you know (or have a good
guess) which one it should be, you can manually assign it to that image.

[Link] Display
For the best results, you need a color profile for your monitor. If a monitor profile is configured, either
system-wide or in the Color Management section of the GIMP Preferences dialog, the image colors will
be displayed most accurately.
One of the most important GIMP commands to work with color management is described in Sec-
tion 16.5.8.
If you do not have a color profile for your monitor, you can create it using hardware calibration and
measurement tools. On UNIX systems you will need Argyll Color Management System [ARGYLLCMS]
and/or LProf [LPROF] to create color profiles.

[Link].1 Display Calibration and Profiling For displays there are two steps involved. One is called
calibration and the other is called profiling. Also, calibration generally involves two steps. The first
involves adjusting external monitor controls such as Contrast, Brightness, Color Temperature, etc, and
it is highly dependent on the specific monitor. In addition there are further adjustments that are loaded
into the video card memory to bring the monitor as close to a standard state as possible. This information
is stored in the monitor profile in the so-called vgct tag. Probably under Windows XP or Mac OS, the

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operating system loads this information (LUT) in the video card in the process of starting your computer.
Under Linux, at present you have to use an external program such as xcalib or dispwin. (If one just does
a simple visual calibration using a web site such as that of Norman Koren, one might only use xgamma
to load a gamma value.)
The second step, profiling, derives a set of rules which allow GIMP to translate RGB values in the
image file into appropriate colors on the screen. This is also stored in the monitor profile. It doesn’t
change the RGB values in the image, but it does change which values are sent to the video card (which
already contains the vgct LUT).

[Link] Print Simulation

Using GIMP, you can easily get a preview of what your image will look like on paper. Given a color
profile for your printer, the display can be switched into Soft Proof mode. In such a simulated printout,
colors that cannot be reproduced will optionally be marked with neutral gray color, allowing you to
correct such mistakes before sending your images to the printer.

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Enrich my GIMP

12.1 Preferences Dialog

12.1.1 Introduction

Figure 12.1 List of preference pages

The preferences dialog can be accessed from the image menu-bar, through Edit → Preferences. It lets
you customize many aspects of the way GIMP works. The following sections detail the settings that you
can customize, and what they affect.
All of the Preferences information is stored in a file called gimprc in your personal GIMP directory,
so if you are a “power user” who would rather work with a text editor than a graphical interface, you
can alter preferences by editing that file. If you do, and you are on a Linux system, then man gimprc
will give you a lot of technical information about the contents of the file and what they are used for.

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12.1.2 Environment

Figure 12.2 Environment Preferences

This page lets you customize the amount of system memory allocated for various purposes. It also allows you to
disable the confirmation dialogs that appear when you close unsaved images, and to set the size of thumbnail files
that GIMP produces.

[Link] Options
Resource Consumption
Minimal number of undo levels GIMP allows you to undo most actions by maintaining an “Undo His-
tory” for each image, for which a certain amount of memory is allocated. Regardless of memory
usage, however, GIMP always permits some minimal number of the most recent actions to be un-
done: this is the number specified here. See Section 3.3 for more information about GIMP’s Undo
mechanism.
Maximum undo memory This is the amount of undo memory allocated for each image. If the Undo
History size exceeds this, the oldest points are deleted, unless this would result in fewer points
being present than the minimal number specified above.
Tile cache size This is the amount of system RAM allocated for GIMP image data. If GIMP requires
more memory than this, it begins to swap to disk, which may in some circumstances cause a dra-
matic slowdown. You are given an opportunity to set this number when you install GIMP, but you
can alter it here. See How to Set Your Tile Cache for more information.
Maximum new image size This is not a hard constraint: if you try to create a new image larger than the
specified size, you are asked to confirm that you really want to do it. This is to prevent you from
accidentally creating images much larger than you intend, which can either crash GIMP or cause
it to respond verrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwly.
Number of processors to use Default is one. Your computer may have more than one processor.
Image Thumbnails
Size of thumbnails This options allows you to set the size of the thumbnails shown in the File Open
dialog (and also saved for possible use by other programs). The options are “None”, “Normal
(128x128)”, and “Large (256x256)”.
Maximum filesize for thumbnailing If an image file is larger than the specified maximum size, GIMP
will not generate a thumbnail for it. This options allows you to prevent thumbnailing of extremely
large image files from slowing GIMP to a crawl.

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Saving Images
Confirm closing of unsaved images Closing an image is not undoable, so by default GIMP asks you to
confirm that you really want to do it, whenever it would lead to a loss of unsaved changes. You
can disable this if you find it annoying; but then of course you are responsible for remembering
what you have and have not saved.
Document history
Keep record of used files in the Recent Documents list When checked, files you have opened will be
saved in the Document history. You can access the list of files with the Document history dialog
from the image menu-bar : File → Open Recent → Document History.

12.1.3 Interface

Figure 12.3 Assorted Interface Preferences

This page lets you customize language, layer/channel previews and keyboard shortcuts.

Options
Language The GIMP’s default language is that of your system. You can select another language in
the drop-down list. You have to start GIMP again to make this change effective. Please refer to
Section 2.1.2.
Previews By default, GIMP shows miniature previews of the contents of layers and channels in several
places, including the Layers dialog. If for some reason you would prefer to disable these, you can
do it by unchecking Enable layer and channel previews. If you do want previews to be shown,
you can customize their sizes using the menus for Default layer and channel preview size and
Navigation preview size.
Keyboard Shortcuts Any menu item can be activated by holding down Alt and pressing a sequence
of keys. Normally, the key associated with each menu entry is shown as an underlined letter in
the text, called accelerator. If for some reason you would prefer the underlines to go away (maybe
because you think they’re ugly and you don’t use them anyway), then you can make this happen
by unchecking Show menu mnemonics.
GIMP can give you the ability to create keyboard shortcuts (key combinations that activate a menu
entry) dynamically, by pressing the keys while the pointer hovers over the desired menu entry.
However, this capability is disabled by default, because it might lead novice users to accidentally

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overwrite the standard keyboard shortcuts. If you want to enable it, check Use dynamics keyboard
shortcuts here.

Pressing the button for Configure Keyboard Shortcuts brings up the Shortcut Editor, which gives
you a graphical interface to select menu items and assign shortcuts to them.

If you change shortcuts, you will probably want your changes to continue to apply in future GIMP
sessions. If not, uncheck Save keyboard shortcuts on exit. But remember that you have done this,
or you may be frustrated later. If you don’t want to save shortcuts on exit every session, you can
save the current settings at any time using the Save Keyboard Shortcuts Now button, and they will
be applied to future sessions. If you decide that you have made some bad decisions concerning
shortcuts, you can reset them to their original state by pressing Reset Saved Keyboard Shortcuts to
Default Values.

12.1.4 Theme

Figure 12.4 Theme Preference

This page lets you select a theme, which determines many aspects of the appearance of the GIMP user
interface, including the set of icons used, their sizes, fonts, spacing allowed in dialogs, etc. Two themes
are supplied with GIMP: Default, which is probably best for most people, and Small, which may be
preferable for those with small or low-resolution monitors. Clicking on a theme in the list causes it to be
applied immediately, so it is easy to see the result and change your mind if you don’t like it.
You can also use custom themes, either by downloading them from the net, or by copying one of the
supplied themes and modifying it. Custom themes should be places in the themes subdirectory of your
personal GIMP directory: if they are, they will appear in the list here. Each theme is actually a directory
containing ASCII files that you can edit. They are pretty complicated, and the meaning of the contents
goes beyond the scope of this documentation, but you should feel free to experiment: in the worst case,
if you mess things up completely, you can always revert back to one of the supplied themes.
You cannot edit the supplied themes unless you have administrator permissions, and even if you do,
you shouldn’t: if you want to customize a theme, make a copy in your personal directory and work on
it. If you make a change and would like to see the result “on the fly”, you can do so by saving the edited
theme file and then pressing Reload Current Theme.

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12.1.5 Help System

Figure 12.5 Help System Preferences

This page lets you customize the behaviour of the GIMP help system.

[Link] Options

General

Show tool tips Tool tips are small help pop-ups that appear when the pointer hovers for a moment
over some element of the interface, such as a button or icon. Sometimes they explain what the
element does; sometimes they give you hints about non-obvious ways to use it. If you find them
too distracting, you can disable them here by unchecking this option. We recommend that you
leave them enabled unless you are a very advanced user.

Show help buttons This option controls whether the help buttons are shown on every tool dialog, which
may be used alternatively to invoke the help system.

User manual This drop-down list lets you select between Use a locally installed copy and Use the online
version. See Section 16.12.2.

Help Browser

Help browser to use GIMP Help is supplied in the form of HTML files, i. e., web pages. You can view
them using either a special help browser that comes with GIMP, or a web browser of your choice.
Here you choose which option to use. Because the help pages were carefully checked to make
sure they work well with GIMP’s browser, whereas other web browsers are somewhat variable in
their support of features, the safer option is to use the internal browser; but really any modern web
browser should be okay.

Note

Note that the GIMP help browser is not available on all platforms. If it is miss-
ing, this option is hidden and the standard web browser will be used to read
the help pages.

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12.1.6 Tool Options

Figure 12.6 Tool Options Preferences

This page lets you customize several aspects of the behavior of tools.

[Link] Options
General

Save Tool Options On Exit Self explanatory

Save Tool Options Now Self explanatory

Reset Saved Tool Options To Default Values Self explanatory

Guide and Grid Snapping

Snap distance “Snapping” to guides, or to an image grid, means that when a tool is applied by clicking
somewhere on the image display, if the clicked point is near enough to a guide or grid, it is shifted
exactly onto the guide or grid. Snapping to guides can be toggled using View → Snap to Guides in
the image menu; and if the grid is switched on, snapping to it can be toggled using View → Snap
to Grid. This preference option determines how close a clicked point must be to a guide or grid in
order to be snapped onto it, in pixels.

Scaling

Default interpolation When you scale something, each pixel in the result is calculated by interpolating
several pixels in the source. This option determines the default interpolation method: it can always
be changed, though, in the Tool Options dialog.
There are four choices:

None This is the fastest method, but it’s quite crude: you should only consider using it if your
machine is very seriously speed-impaired.
Linear This used to be the default, and is good enough for most purposes.
Cubic This is the best choice (although it can actually look worse than Linear for some types of
images), but also the slowest. Since GIMP 2.6, this method is the default.

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Sinc (Lanczos3) This method performs a high quality interpolation.

Paint Options Shared Between Tools

Brush, Pattern, Gradient You can decide here whether changing the brush etc for one tool should cause
the new item to be used for all tools, or whether each individual tool (pencil, paintbrush, airbrush,
etc) should remember the item that was last used for it specifically.

Move tool

Set layer or path as active You can decide here whether changing the current layer or path when using
the move tool and without pressing any key.

12.1.7 Toolbox

Figure 12.7 Toolbox Preferences

[Link] Options

Figure 12.8 Default Toolbox appearance

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This page lets you customize the appearance of the Toolbox, by deciding whether the three “context
information” areas should be shown at the bottom.
Appearance

Show foreground and background color Controls whether the color area on the left (2) appears in the
Toolbox.

Show active brush, pattern, and gradient Controls whether the area in the center (3), with the brush,
pattern, and gradient icons, appears in the Toolbox.

Show active image Controls whether a preview of the currently active image appears on the right (4).

Tools configuration

In this list, tools with an eye are present in the Toolbox. By default, color tools have no eye: you can
add them to the Toolbox by clicking the corresponding checkbox.

You can also sort tools by priority using the arrow up and down buttons at the bottom of the dialog.

This option replaces the Tools Dialog of former GIMP versions.

12.1.8 Default Image Preferences

Figure 12.9 Default New Image Preferences

This tab lets you customize the default settings for the New Image dialog. See the New Image Dialog
section for an explanation of what each of the values means.

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12.1.9 Default Image Grid

Figure 12.10 Default Grid Preferences

This page lets you customize the default properties of GIMP’s grid, which can be toggled on or off using
View → Show Grid from the image menu. The settings here match those in the Configure Image Grid
dialog, which can be used to reconfigure the grid for an existing image, by choosing Image → Configure
Grid from the image menu. See the Configure Grid dialog section for information on the meaning of
each of the settings.

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12.1.10 Image Windows

Figure 12.11 General Image Window Preference

This page lets you customize several aspects of the behaviour of image windows.

[Link] Options
General
Use “Dot for dot” by default Using “Dot for dot” means that at 1:1 zoom, each pixel is the image is
scaled to one pixel on the display. If “Dot for dot” is not used, then the displayed image size is de-
termined by the X and Y resolution of the image. See the Scale Image section for more information.
Marching ants speed When you create a selection, the edge of it is shown as a dashed line with dashes
that appear to move, marching slowly along the boundary: they are jokingly called “marching
ants”. The smaller the value entered here, the faster the ants march (and consequently the more
distracting they are!).
Zoom and Resize Behavior
Resize window on zoom If this option is checked, then each time you zoom the image, the image win-
dow will automatically resize to follow it. Otherwise, the image window will maintain the same
size when you zoom the image.
Resize window on image size change If this option is checked, then each time change the size of the
image, by cropping or resizing it, the image window will automatically resize to follow. Otherwise,
the image window will maintain the same size.
Initial zoom ratio You can choose either to have images, when they are first opened, scaled so that the
whole image fits comfortably on your display, or else shown at 1:1 zoom. If you choose the second
option, and the image is too large to fit on your display, then the image window will show only
part of it (but you will be able to scroll to other parts).
Space bar
While space bar is pressed
• Pan view (default) or

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• Toogle to Move Tool

• No action

Mouse Cursors

Show brush outline If this option is checked, then when you use a paint tool, the outline of the brush
will be shown on the image as you move the pointer around. On slow systems, if the brush is very
large, this could occasionally cause some lag in GIMP’s ability to follow your movements: if so,
switching this off might help. Otherwise, you will probably find it quite useful.

Show paint tool cursor If this is checked, a cursor will be shown. This is in addition to the brush outline,
if the brush outline is being shown. The type of cursor is determined by the next option.

Cursor mode This option has no effect unless Show paint tool cursor is checked. If it is, you have three
choices: Tool icon, which causes a small iconic representation of the currently active tool to be
shown beside the cursor; Tool icon with crosshair, which shows the icon as well as a crosshair
indicating the center of the cursor; or Crosshair only.

Cursor rendering If you choose “Fancy” here, the cursor is drawn in grayscale. If you choose “Black
and White”, it is drawn in a simpler way that may speed things up a little bit if you have speed
issues.

12.1.11 Image Window Appearance

Figure 12.12 Image Window Appearance Defaults

This page lets you customize the default appearance of image windows, for normal mode and for fullscreen mode.
All of the settings here can be altered on an image-specific basis using entries in the View menu. See the Image
Window section for information on the meaning of the entries.

The only parts that may need further explanation are the ones related to padding. “Padding” is the color
shown around the edges of the image, if it does not occupy all of the display area (shown in light gray in
all the figures here). You can choose among four colors for the padding color: to use the color specified
by the current theme; to use the light or dark colors specified for checks, such as represent transparent
parts of the image; or to use a custom color, which can be set using the color button for “Custom padding
color”.

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12.1.12 Image Window Title and Statusbar

Figure 12.13 Image Window Title and Statusbar formats

This page lets you customize the text that appears in two places: the title bar of an image, and the status bar. The
title bar should appear above the image; however this depends on cooperation from the window manager, so it is
not guaranteed to work in all cases. The statusbar appears underneath the image, on the right side. See the Image
Window section for more information.

[Link] Choosing a Format

You can choose among several predesigned formats, or you can create one of your own, by writing a
format string in the entry area. Here is how to understand a format string: anything you type is shown
exactly as you type it, with the exception of variables, whose names all begin with “%”. Here is a list of
the variables you can use:
Variable: %f, Meaning: Bare filename of the image, or “Untitled”
Variable: %F, Meaning: Full path to file, or “Untitled”
Variable: %p, Meaning: Image id number (this is unique)
Variable: %i, Meaning: View number, if an image has more than one display
Variable: %t, Meaning: Image type (RGB, grayscale, indexed)
Variable: %z, Meaning: Zoom factor as a percentage
Variable: %s, Meaning: Source scale factor (zoom level = %d/%s)
Variable: %d, Meaning: Destination scale factor (zoom level = %d/%s)
Variable: %Dx, Meaning: Expands to x if the image is dirty, nothing otherwise
Variable: %Cx, Meaning: Expands to x if the image is clean, nothing otherwise
Variable: %l, Meaning: The number of layers
Variable: %L, Meaning: Number of layers (long form)
Variable: %m, Meaning: Memory used by the image
Variable: %n, Meaning: Name of the active layer/channel
Variable: %P, Meaning: id of the active layer/channel
Variable: %w, Meaning: Image width in pixels
Variable: %W, Meaning: Image width in real-world units
Variable: %h, Meaning: Image height in pixels
Variable: %H, Meaning: Image height in real-world units
Variable: %u, Meaning: Unit symbol (eg. px for Pixel)

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Variable: %U, Meaning: Unit abbreviation

Variable: %%, Meaning: A literal “%” symbol

12.1.13 Display

Figure 12.14 Display Preferences

This page lets you customize the way transparent parts of an image are represented, and lets you recalibrate the
resolution of your monitor.

[Link] Options

Transparency

Transparency type By default, GIMP indicates transparency using a checkerboard pattern with mid-
tone checks, but you can change this if you want, either to a different type of checkerboard, or to
solid black, white, or gray.

Check size Here you can alter the size of the squares in the checkerboard pattern used to indicate trans-
parency.

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Figure 12.15 The Calibration dialog

Monitor Resolution Monitor Resolution is the ratio of pixels, horizontally and vertically, to inches. You
have three ways to proceed here:

• Get Resolution from windowing system. (easiest, probably inaccurate).

• Set Manually
• Push the Calibrate Button.

The Calibrate Dialog My monitor was impressively off when I tried the Calibrate Dialog. The “Cali-
brate Game” is fun to play. You will need a soft ruler.

12.1.14 Color Management

Figure 12.16 Color Management Preferences

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[Link] Options
This page lets you customize the GIMP color management.
Some of the options let you choose a color profile from a menu. If the desired profile is not in the
menu yet, you can add it by clicking on the Select color profile from disk... item.

Tip
Files containing color profiles are easily recognizable by their .icc suffix. In ad-
dition to that they are usually stored all together in only a few places. If you are
running GIMP on Mac OS X, you should try /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/
and Library/Printers/[manufacturer]/Profiles.

Mode of operation Using this option you can decide how the GIMP color management operates. There
are three modes you can choose from:

• No color management: choosing this selection shuts down the color management in GIMP
completely.
• Color managed display: with this selection you can enable the GIMP color management to
provide a fully corrected display of the images according to the given color profile for the
display.
• Print simulation: when choosing this selection, you enable the GIMP color management not
only to apply the profile for the display, but also the selected printer simulation profile. Doing
so, you can preview the color results of a print with that printer.

Note
Please note, that the GIMP color management is used to enhance the
display of images and the embedding of profiles to image files only. Es-
pecially are the options you choose in this dialog in no way used for print-
ing from within GIMP. This is because the printing is a special task done
by a more specialized printing engine that is no part of GIMP.

RGB profile Select the default color profile for working with RGB images.

CMYK profile Select the default color profile for conversion between RGB for the screen work and
CMYK for printing.

Monitor profile This option gives you two elements for interaction:

• You should select a display profile for this option. The selected color profile is used to display
GIMP on the screen.
• If you activate the Try to use the system monitor profile option, GIMP will use the color profile
provided for the displays by the operating systems color management system.

Display rendering intent Rendering intents, as the one you can configure with this option, are ways of
dealing with colors that are out-of- Gamut colors present in the source space that the destination
space is incapable of producing. There are four method rendering intents to choose from:

• Perceptual
• Relative colorimetric
• Saturation
• Absolute colorimetric

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A description of the individual methods can be found at Rendering Intent .

Print simulation mode You should select a printer profile for this option. The selected color profile is
used for the print simulation mode.

Softproof rendering intent This option again provides two different elements for interaction:

• You can use the menu to select the rendering intent for the soft proof. They are the same as
already described for the display rendering intent.

• If you enable the Mark out of gamut colors option, all pixels that have a color that is not
printable are marked by a special color. Which color is used for this can also be chosen by
you. You can do this simply by clicking on the color icon on the right besides the checkbox.

File Open behaviour Using this menu you can determine how GIMP behaves when opening a file that
contains an embedded color profile that does not match the workspace sRGB. You can choose from
the following entries:

• Ask what to do: if selected, GIMP will ask every time what to do.

• Keep embedded profile: if you choose this, GIMP will keep the attached profile and not con-
vert the image to the workspace. The image is displayed correctly anyways, because the at-
tached profile will be applied for display.

• Convert to RGB workspace: by choosing this entry GIMP will automatically use the attached
color profile to convert the image to the workspace.

Note
For more explanations:

• ICC Profiles are explained in Wikipedia [WKPD-ICC].

• See OpenICC project ([OPENICC]) where GIMP and others great names of
free infography contribute to.

Many profiles to load from the web:

• ICC sRGB Workspace: ICCsRGB [ICCsRGB]

• Microsoft sRGB Workspace: MsRGB [MsRGB]

• Adobe RGB98 Workspace : Adobe RGB (1998) [AdobeRGB]

• ECI (European Color Initiative) Profiles: ECI [ECI]

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12.1.15 Input Devices

Figure 12.17 Input devices preferences

Extended Input Devices

Configure Extended Input Devices This large button allows you to set the devices associated with your
computer: tablet, MIDI keyboard... If you have a tablet, you will see a dialog like this:

Figure 12.18 Preferences for a tablet

Save input device settings on exit When you check this box, GIMP remembers the tool, color, pattern
and brush you were using the last time you quitted.

Save Input Device Settings Now Self explanatory.

Reset Saved Input Device Settings to Default Values Delete your settings and restore default settings.

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12.1.16 Input Controllers

Figure 12.19 Input controllers preferences

This dialog has two lists of additional input controllers: Available Controllers on the left, Active Con-
trollers on the right.
A click on an item will highlight it and you can move the controller from one list to the other by
clicking on the respective arrow key. When you try to move a controller from the list of active controllers
to the available controllers, a dialog pops up and you will have the choice of removing the controller or
just disabling it.
When you double click on a (typically active) controller or alternatively click on the Edit button at
the bottom of the list, you can configure this controller in a dialog window:
Main Mouse Wheel

Figure 12.20 Main Mouse Wheel

General
Dump events from this controller This option must be checked if you want a print on the stdout
of the events generated by the enabled controllers. If you want to see those event you should

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start GIMP from a terminal or making it to print the stdout to file by the shell redirection. The
main use of this option is for debug.

Enable this controller This option must be checked if you want to add a new actions to the mouse
wheel.

Mouse Wheel Events In this window with scroll bars you have: on the left, the possible events concern-
ing the mouse wheel, more or less associated with control keys; on the right, the action assigned to
the event when it will happen. You have also two buttons, one to Edit the selected event, the other
to Cancel the action of the selected event.

Some actions are assigned to events yet. They seem to be examples, as they are not functional.

Select the action allocated to the event After selecting an event, if you click on the Edit button, you
open the following dialog:

Figure 12.21 Select Controller Event Action

If an action exists yet for this event, the window will open on this action. Else, the window will
display the sections that order actions. Click on an action to select it.

Main Keyboard

You can use this dialog in the same way as that of the mouse wheel. Events are related to the arrow
keys of the keyboard, combined or not with control keys.

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Figure 12.22 Main Keyboard

Note

You will find an example of these notions in Creating a variable size brush.

12.1.17 Window Management

Figure 12.23 Window Management Preferences

This page lets you customize the way windows are handled in GIMP. You should note that GIMP does
not manipulate windows directly, instead it sends requests to the window manager (i. e., to Windows if

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you are running in Windows; to Metacity if you are running in a standard Gnome setup in Linux; etc).
Because there are many window managers, and not all of them are well behaved, it cannot be guaranteed
that the functions described here will actually work as described. However, if you are using a modern,
standards-compliant window manager, they ought to.

[Link] Options
Window Manager Hints
Window type hints for the toolbox and the docks The choices you make here determine how the Tool-
box, and the docks that hold dialogs, will be treated. You have three possibilities for them:

• If you choose Normal Window, they will be treated like any other windows.
• If you choose Utility Window, the reduce button in the title bar is absent and the docks will
remain permanently on your screen.

Figure 12.24 Utility window title bar

(a) Normal title bar (b) The title bar in a utility window

• If you choose Keep above, they will be kept in front of every other window at all times.

Note that changes you make here will not take effect until the next time you start GIMP.
Focus
Activate the focused image Normally, when you focus an image window (usually indicated by a change
in the color of the frame), it becomes the “active image” for GIMP, and therefore the target for any
image-related actions you perform. Some people, though, prefer to set up their window managers
such that any window entered by the pointer is automatically focused. If you do this, you may
find that it is inconvenient for focused images to automatically become active, and may be happier
if you uncheck this option.
Window Positions
Save window positions on exit If this option is checked, the next time you start GIMP, you will see the
same set of dialog windows, in the same positions they occupied when you last exited.
Save Window Positions Now This button is only useful if ”Save window positions on exit” is unchecked.
It allows you to set up your windows they way you like, click the button, and then have them come
up in that arrangement each time you start GIMP.
Reset Saved Window Positions to Default Values If you decide that you are unhappy with the arrange-
ment of windows you have saved, and would rather go back to the default arrangement than spend
time moving them around, you can do so by pressing this button.

12.1.18 Folders

Figure 12.25 Basic Folder Preferences

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This page allows you to set the locations for two important folders used by GIMP for temporary files.
The pages below it allow you to customize the locations searched for resources such as brushes etc.;
see Data Folders for a description that applies to them. You can change the folders here by editing the
entries, or by pressing the buttons on the right to bring up a file chooser window.
Folders

Temp folder This folder is used for temporary files: files created for temporary storage of working
data, and then deleted within the same GIMP session. It does not require a lot of space or high
performance. By default, a subdirectory called tmp in your personal GIMP directory is used, but
if that disk is very cramped for space, or has serious performance issues, you can change it to a
different directory. The directory must exist and be writable by you, or bad things will happen.

Swap folder This is the folder used as a “memory bank” when the total size of images and data open in
GIMP exceeds the available RAM. If you work with very large images, or images with many layers,
or have many images open at once, GIMP can potentially require hundreds of megabytes of swap
space, so available disk space and performance are definitely things to think about for this folder.
By default, it is set to your personal GIMP directory, but if you have another disk with more free
space, or substantially better performance, you may see a significant benefit from moving your
swap folder there. The directory must exist and be writable by you.

12.1.19 Data Folders

Figure 12.26 Preferences: Brush Folders

GIMP uses several types of resources – such as brushes, patterns, gradients, etc. – for which a basic set
are supplied by GIMP when it is installed, and others can be created or downloaded by the user. For
each such resource type, there is a Preference page that allows you to specify the search path: the set of
directories from which items of the type in question are automatically loaded when GIMP starts. These
pages all look very much the same: the page for brushes is shown to the right as an example.
By default, the search path includes two folders: a system folder, where items installed along with
GIMP are placed, and a personal folder, inside your personal GIMP directory, where items added by you
should be placed. The system folder should not be marked as writable, and you should not try to alter
its contents. The personal folder must be marked as writable or it is useless, because there is nothing
inside it except what you put there.
You can customize the search path with the buttons at the top of the dialog.
Options

Select a Folder If you click on one of the folders in the list, it is selected for whatever action comes next.

Add/Replace Folder If you type the name of a folder in the entry space, or navigate to it using the file
chooser button on the right, and then click the left button, this will replace the selected folder
with the one you have specified. If nothing in the list is selected, the folder you specify will be
added to the list. If the light-symbol to the left of the text entry area is red instead of green, it
means that the folder you have specified does not exist. GIMP will not create it for you, so you
should do this immediately.

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Move Up/Down If you click on the up-arrow or down-arrow buttons, the selected folder will be changed
to the following or preceding one in the list. Since the folders are read in order, using those buttons
change the loading precedence of the items located in those folders.

Delete Folder If you click the trash-can button, the selected folder will be deleted from the list. (The
folder itself is not affected; it is merely removed from the search path.) Deleting the system folder
is probably a bad idea, but nothing prevents you from doing it.

12.2 Grids and Guides

You will probably have it happen many times that you need to place something in an image very pre-
cisely, and find that it is not easy to do using a mouse. Often you can get better results by using the
arrow keys on the keyboard (which move the affected object one pixel at a time, or 25 pixels if you hold
down the Shift key), but GIMP also provides you with two other aids to make positioning easier: grids
and guides.

Figure 12.27 Image used for examples below

12.2.1 The Image Grid

Figure 12.28 Image with default grid

Each image has a grid. It is always present, but by default it is not visible until you activate it by toggling
View → Show Grid in the image menu. If you want grids to be present more often than not, you can
change the default behavior by checking ”Show grid” in the Image Window Appearance page of the
Preferences dialog. (Note that there are separate settings for Normal Mode and Fullscreen Mode.)
The default grid appearance, set up when you install GIMP, consists of plus-shaped black crosshairs
at the grid line intersections, with grid lines spaced every 10 pixels both vertically and horizontally. You
can customize the default grid using the Default Image Grid page of the Preferences dialog. If you only
want to change the grid appearance for the current image, you can do so by choosing Image → Configure
Grid from the image menu: this brings up the Configure Grid dialog.

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Figure 12.29 A different grid style

Not only can a grid be helpful for judging distances and spatial relationships, it can also permit you
to align things exactly with the grid, if you toggle View → Snap to Grid in the image menu: this causes
the pointer to ”warp” perfectly to any grid line located within a certain distance. You can customize the
snap distance threshold by setting ”Snap distance” in the Tool Options page of the Preferences dialog,
but most people seem to be happy with the default value of 8 pixels. (Note that it is perfectly possible
to snap to the grid even if the grid is not visible. It isn’t easy to imagine why you might want to do this,
though.)

12.2.2 Guides

Figure 12.30 Image with four guides

In addition to the image grid, GIMP also gives you a more flexible type of positioning aid: guides. These
are horizontal or vertical lines you can temporarily display on an image while you are working on it.
To create a guide, simply click on one of the rulers in the image window and pull out a guide, while
holding the mouse Left Button pressed. The guide is then displayed as a blue, dashed line, which follows
the pointer. As soon as you create a guide, the “Move” tool is activated and the mouse pointer changes
to the Move icon.
You can also create a guide with the New Guide command, which allows you to precisely place the
guide on the image, the New Guide (by Percent) command, or the New Guides from Selection command.
You can create as many guides as you like, positioned wherever you like. To move a guide after you
have created it, activate the Move tool in the Toolbox (or press the M key), you can then click and drag a
guide. To delete a guide, simply drag it outside the image. Holding down the Shift key, you can move
everything but a guide, using the guides as an effective alignment aid.
The behavior of the guides depends upon the Move (Affect) mode of the “Move” tool. When Layer
mode is selected, the mouse pointer turns into a small hand as soon as it gets close to a guide. Then the
guide is activated and it turns red, and you can move the guide or delete it by moving it back into the
ruler. If Selection mode is selected, you can position a guide, but you cannot move it after that.
As with the grid, you can cause the pointer to snap to nearby guides, by toggling View → Snap to
Guides in the image menu. If you have a number of guides and they are making it difficult for you to
judge the image properly, you can hide them by toggling View → Show Guides. It is suggested that you

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only do this momentarily, otherwise you may get confused the next time you try to create a guide and
don’t see anything happening.
If it makes things easier for you, you can change the default behavior for guides in the Image Win-
dows Appearance page of the Preferences dialog. Disabling Show guides is probably a bad idea, though,
for the reason just given.
You can remove the guides with the Image → Guides → Remove all Guides command.

Note

Another use for guides: the Guillotine plugin can use guides to slice an image into
a set of sub-images.

12.3 Rendering a Grid

How can you create a grid that is actually part of the image? You can’t do this using the image grid:
that is only an aid, and is only visible on the monitor or in a screenshot. You can, however, use the
Grid plugin to render a grid very similar to the image grid. (Actually, the plugin has substantially more
options.)
See also Grid and Guides.

12.4 How to Set Your Tile Cache

During the data processing and manipulation of pictures, GIMP becomes in the need of much main mem-
ory. The more is available the better is. GIMP uses the operating system memory available resources as
effectively as possible, striving to maintain the work on the pictures fast and comfortable for the user.
That Data memory, during the treatment, is organized in buffered blocks of graphic data, which could
exist in two different forms of data memory: in the slow not removable disk or in the fast main RAM
memory. GIMP uses preferably the RAM, and when it runs short of this memory, it uses the hard disk
for the remaining data. These chunks of graphic data are commonly referred to as ”tiles” and the entire
system is called ”tile cache”.
A low value for tile cache means that GIMP sends data to the disk very quickly, not making real use
of the available RAM, and making the disks work for no real reason. Too high a value for tile cache, and
other applications start to have less system resources, forcing them to use swap space, which also makes
the disks work too hard; some of them may even terminate or start to malfunction due lack of RAM.
How do you choose a number for the Tile Cache size? Here are some tips to help you decide what
value to use, as well as a few tricks:

• The easiest method is to just forget about this and hope the default works. This was a usable
method when computers had little RAM, and most people just tried to make small images with
GIMP while running one or two other applications at the same time. If you want something easy
and only use GIMP to make screenshots and logos, this is probably the best solution.

• If you have a modern computer with plenty of memory–say, 512 MB or more–setting the Tile Cache
to half of your RAM will probably give good performance for GIMP in most situations without
depriving other applications. Probably even 3/4 of your RAM would be fine.

• Ask someone to do it for you, which in the case of a computer serving multiple users at the same
time can be a good idea: that way the administrator and other users do not get mad at you for
abusing the machine, nor do you get a badly underperforming GIMP. If it is your machine and
only serves a single user at a given time, this could mean money, or drinks, as price for the service.

• Start changing the value a bit each time and check that it goes faster and faster with each increase,
but the system does not complain about lack of memory. Be forewarned that sometimes lack of
memory shows up suddenly with some applications being killed to make space for the others.

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• Do some simple math and calculate a viable value. Maybe you will have to tune it later, but maybe
you have to tune it anyway with the other previous methods. At least you know what is happening
and can get the best from your computer.
Let’s suppose you prefer the last option, and want to get a good value to start with. First, you need
to get some data about your computer. This data is the amount of RAM installed in your system, the
operating system’s swap space available, and a general idea about the speed of the disks that store the
operating system’s swap and the directory used for GIMP’s swap. You do not need to do disk tests, nor
check the RPM of the disks, the thing is to see which one seems clearly faster or slower, or whether all
are similar. You can change GIMP’s swap directory in the Folders page of the Preferences dialog.
The next thing to do is to see how much resources you require for other apps you want to run at the
same time than GIMP. So start all your tools and do some work with them, except GIMP of course, and
check the usage. You can use applications like free or top, depending in what OS and what environment
you use. The numbers you want is the memory left, including file cache. Modern Unix keeps a very
small area free, in order to be able to keep large file and buffer caches. Linux’s free command does the
maths for you: check the column that says “free”, and the line “-/+ buffers/cache”. Note down also the
free swap.
Now time for decisions and a bit of simple math. Basically the concept is to decide if you want to
base all Tile Cache in RAM, or RAM plus operating system swap:
1. Do you change applications a lot? Or keep working in GIMP for a long time? If you spend a lot of
time in GIMP, you can consider free RAM plus free swap as available; if not, you need to go to the
following steps. (If you’re feeling unsure about it, check the following steps.) If you are sure you
switch apps every few minutes, only count the free RAM and just go to the final decision; no more
things to check.
2. Does the operating system swap live in the same physical disk as GIMP swap? If so, add RAM and
swap. Otherwise go to the next step.
3. Is the disk that holds the OS swap faster or the same speed as the disk that holds the GIMP swap?
If slower, take only the free RAM; if faster or similar, add free RAM and swap.
4. You now have a number, be it just the free RAM or the free RAM plus the free OS swap. Reduce it
a bit, to be on the safe side, and that is the Tile Cache you could use as a good start.
As you can see, all is about checking the free resources, and decide if the OS swap is worth using or
will cause more problems than help.
There are some reasons you want to adjust this value, though. The basic one is changes in your
computer usage pattern, or changing hardware. That could mean your assumptions about how you use
your computer, or the speed of it, are no longer valid. That would require a reevaluation of the previous
steps, which can drive you to a similar value or a completely new value.
Another reason to change the value is because it seems that GIMP runs too slowly, while changing
to other applications is fast: this means that GIMP could use more memory without impairing the other
applications. On the other hand, if you get complaints from other applications about not having enough
memory, then it may benefit you to not let GIMP hog so much of it.
If you decided to use only RAM and GIMP runs slowly, you could try increasing the value a bit, but
never to use also all the free swap. If the case is the contrary, using both RAM and swap, and you have
problems about lack of resources, then you should decrease the amount of RAM available to GIMP.
Another trick is to put the Swap Dir on a very fast disk, or on a different disk than the one where
most of your files reside. Spreading the operating system swap file over multiple disks is also a good
way to speed things up, in general. And of course, you might have to buy more RAM or stop using lots
of programs at the same time: you can not expect to edit a poster on a computer with 16MB and be fast.
You can also check what memory requirements your images have. The larger the images, and the
number of undoes, the more resources you need. This is another way to choose a number, but it is only
good if you always work with the same kind of images, and thus the real requirements do not vary. It
is also helpful to know if you will require more RAM and/or disk space.

12.5 Creating Shortcuts to Menu Functions

Many functions which are accessible via the image menu have a default keyboard shortcut. You may
want to create a new shortcut for a command that you use a lot and doesn’t have one or, more rarely,

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edit an existing shortcut. There are two methods for doing this.
Using dynamic keyboard shortcuts

1. First, you have to activate this capability by checking the Use dynamic keyboard shortcuts option in
the Interface item of the Preferences menu. This option is usually not checked, to prevent accidental
key presses from creating an unwanted shortcut.

2. While you’re doing that, also check the Save keyboard shortcuts on exit option so that your shortcut
will be saved.

3. To create a keyboard shortcut, simply place the mouse pointer on a command in the menu: it will
then be highlighted. Be careful that the mouse pointer doesn’t move and type a sequence of three
keys, keeping the keys pressed. You will see this sequence appear on the right of the command.

4. It is best to use the Ctrl-Alt-Key sequence for your custom shortcuts.

Figure 12.31 Configure Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the Keyboard Shortcut Editor

1. You get to this Editor by clicking on Configure keyboard shortcuts in the “Interface” item of the
Preferences menu.

2. As shown in this dialog, you can select the command you want to create a shortcut for, in the
“Action” area. Then you type your key sequence as above. In principle, the Space bar should clear
a shortcut. (In practice, it clears it, but doesn’t delete it.)

3. This shortcut editor also allows you to control the tool parameter settings with the keyboard. At the
top of this dialog, you can find a Context menu that takes you to the tool parameters. To make
your work easier, tool types are marked with small icons.

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Note
Custom Keyboard shortcuts are stored in one of Gimp’s hidden directory (/home/
[username]/.gimp-2.8/menurc) under Linux. Under Windows, path varies
according to version:

• C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\.gimp-2.8\menurc
under Windows XP.
• C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\etc\gimp\2.0\menurc under Windows
7.
• C:\Programmes\GIMP 2\etc\gimp\2.0\menurc under Windows 10.

More, this location may change if GIMP is installed after having already installed
Git Bash or Cygwin. In this case, they will appear in C:\Program Files\Git\
.gimp-[version]\menurc.
“[Link]” is a simple text file that you can transport from one computer to another.

12.6 Customize Splash-Screen

When you start GIMP, you see the splash-screen displaying short status messages while the program is
loading all its components.
Of course, you can customize the splash-screen: Create a splashes directory in your in your per-
sonal GIMP folder (/home/user_name/.gimp-2.8 on Linux, C:\\Documents and Settings\
\user_name\\.gimp-2.8\\ on Windows).
Copy your image(s) into this splashes directory. On start, GIMP will read this directory and choose
one of the images at random.

Tip

Make sure that your images aren’t too small.

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Scripting

13.1 Plugins
13.1.1 Introduction
One of the nicest things about GIMP is how easily its functionality can be extended, by using plug-
ins. GIMP plugins are external programs that run under the control of the main GIMP application and
interact with it very closely. Plugins can manipulate images in almost any way that users can. Their ad-
vantage is that it is much easier to add a capability to GIMP by writing a small plugin than by modifying
the huge mass of complex code that makes up the GIMP core. Many valuable plugins have C source
code that only comes to 100-200 lines or so.
Several dozen plugins are included in the main GIMP distribution, and installed automatically along
with GIMP. Most of them can be accessed through the Filters menu (in fact, everything in that menu is a
plugin), but a number are located in other menus. In many cases you can use one without ever realizing
that it is a plugin: for example, the ”Normalize” function for automatic color correction is actually a
plugin, although there is nothing about the way it works that would tell you this.
In addition to the plugins included with GIMP , many more are available on the net. A large number
can be found at the GIMP Plugin Registry [GIMP-REGISTRY], a web site whose purpose is to provide a
central repository for plugins. Creators of plugins can upload them there; users in search of plugins for
a specific purpose can search the site in a variety of ways.
Anybody in the world can write a GIMP plugin and make it available over the web, either via the
Registry or a personal web site, and many very valuable plugins can be obtained in this way some are
described elsewhere in the User’s Manual. With this freedom from constraint comes a certain degree
of risk, though: the fact that anybody can do it means that there is no effective quality control. The
plugins distributed with GIMP have all been tested and tuned by the developers, but many that you can
download were just hacked together in a few hours and then tossed to the winds. Some plugin creators
just don’t care about robustness, and even for those who do, their ability to test on a variety of systems
in a variety of situations is often quite limited. Basically, when you download a plugin, you are getting
something for free, and sometimes you get exactly what you pay for. This is not said in an attempt to
discourage you, just to make sure you understand reality.

Warning

Plugins, being full-fledged executable programs, can do any of the things that any
other program can do, including install back-doors on your system or otherwise
compromise its security. Don’t install a plugin unless it comes from a trusted source.

These caveats apply as much to the Plugin Registry as to any other source of plugins. The Registry
is available to any plugin creator who wants to use it: there is no systematic oversight. Obviously if the
maintainers became aware that something evil was there, they would remove it. (That hasn’t happened
yet.) There is, however, for GIMP and its plugins the same warranty as for any other free software:
namely, none.

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Caution
Plugins have been a feature of GIMP for many versions. However, plugins written
for one version of GIMP can hardly ever be used successfully with other versions.
They need to be ported: sometimes this is easy, sometimes not. Many plugins are
already available in several versions. Bottom line: before trying to install a plugin,
make sure that it is written for your version of GIMP.

13.1.2 Using Plugins

For the most part you can use a plugin like any other GIMP tool, without needing to be aware that it is
a plugin. But there are a few things about plugins that are useful to understand.
One is that plugins are generally not as robust as the GIMP core. When GIMP crashes, it is considered
a very serious thing: it can cost the user a lot of trouble and headache. When a plugin crashes, the con-
sequences are usually not so serious. In most cases you can just continuing working without worrying
about it.

Note
Because plugins are separate programs, they communicate with the GIMP core
in a special way: The GIMP developers call it “talking over a wire”. When a plugin
crashes, the communication breaks down, and you will see an error message about
a “wire read error”.

Tip
When a plugin crashes, GIMP gives you a very ominous-looking message telling
you that the plugin may have left GIMP in a corrupted state, and you should consider
saving your images and exiting. Strictly speaking, this is quite correct, because
plugins have the power to alter almost anything in GIMP, but for practical purposes,
experience has shown that corruption is actually quite rare, and many users just
continue working and don’t worry about it. Our advice is that you simply think about
how much trouble it would cause you if something went wrong, and weigh it against
the odds.

Because of the way plugins communicate with GIMP, they do not have any mechanism for being
informed about changes you make to an image after the plugin has been started. If you start a plugin,
and then alter the image using some other tool, the plugin will often crash, and when it doesn’t will
usually give a bogus result. You should avoid running more than one plugin at a time on an image, and
avoid doing anything to the image until the plugin has finished working on it. If you ignore this advice,
not only will you probably screw up the image, you will probably screw up the undo system as well, so
that you won’t even be able to recover from your foolishness.

13.1.3 Installing New Plugins

The plugins that are distributed with GIMP don’t require any special installation. Plugins that you down-
load yourself do. There are several scenarios, depending on what OS you are using and how the plugin
is structured. In Linux it is usually pretty easy to install a new plugin; in Windows, it is either easy or
very hard. In any case, the two are best considered separately.

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[Link] Linux / Unix-sytem like systems

Most plugins fall into two categories: small ones whose source code is distributed as a single .c file,
and larger ones whose source code is distributed as a directory containing multiple files including a
Makefile.
For a simple one-file plugin, call it borker.c, installing it is just a matter of running the command
gimptool-2.0 --install borker.c. This command compiles the plugin and installs it in your personal plu-
gin directory, ~/gimp-2.4/plugins unless you have changed it. This will cause it to be loaded auto-
matically the next time you start GIMP. You don’t need to be root to do these things; in fact, you shouldn’t
be. If the plugin fails to compile, well, be creative.
Once you have installed the plugin, how do you activate it? The menu path is determined by the
plugin itself, so to answer this you need to either look at the documentation for the plugin (if there is
any), or launch the Plugin Description dialog (from Xtns/Plugins Details) search the plug-in by its name
and look of the Tree view tab. If you still don’t find, finally explore the menus or look at the source code
in the Register section -- whichever is easiest.
For more complex plugins, organized as a directory with multiple files, there ought to be a file inside
called either INSTALL or README, with instructions. If not, the best advice is to toss the plugin in the
trash and spend your time on something else: any code written with so little concern for the user is likely
to be frustrating in myriad ways.
Some plugins (specifically those based on the GIMP Plugin Template) are designed to be installed in
the main system GIMP directory, rather than your home directory. For these, you will need to be root
to perform the final stage of installation (when issuing the make install command).
If you install in your personal plugin directory a plugin that has the same name as one in the system
plugin directory, only one can be loaded, and it will be the one in your home directory. You will receive
messages telling you this each time you start GIMP. This is probably a situation best avoided.

[Link] Windows
Windows is a much more problematic environment for building software than Linux. Every decent
Linux distribution comes fully supplied with tools for compiling software, and they are all very similar
in the way they work, but Windows does not come with such tools. It is possible to set up a good
software-building environment in Windows, but it requires either a substantial amount of money or a
substantial amount of effort and knowledge.
What this means in relation to GIMP plugins is the following: either you have an environment in
which you can build software, or you don’t. If you don’t, then your best hope is to find a precompiled
version of the plugin somewhere (or persuade somebody to compile it for you), in which case you simply
need to put it into your personal plugin directory. If you do have an environment in which you can build
software (which for present purposes means an environment in which you can build GIMP), then you
no doubt already know quite a bit about these things, and just need to follow the Linux instructions.

[Link] Apple Mac OS X

How you install plugins on OS X mostly depends on how you installed GIMP itself. If you were one
of the brave and installed GIMP through one of the package managers like fink [DARWINORTS] or
darwinports, [FINK] the plugin installation works exactly the way it is described for the Linux platform
already. The only difference is, that a couple of plugins might be even available in the repository of you
package manager, so give it a try.
If you on the other hand are one of the Users that preferred to grab a prebuild GIMP package like
[Link], you most probably want to stick to that prebuild stuff. So you can try to get a prebuild version
of the plugin of you dreams from the author of the plugin, but I’d not want to bet on this. Building your
own binaries unfortunately involves installing GIMP through one of the package managers mentioned
above.

13.1.4 Writing Plugins

If you want to learn how to write a plugin, you can find plenty of help at the GIMP Developers web site
[GIMP-DEV-PLUGIN]. GIMP is a complex program, but the development team has made strenuous
efforts to flatten the learning curve for plugin writing: there are good instructions and examples, and
the main library that plugins use to interface with GIMP (called “libgimp”) has a well-documented API.

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Good programmers, learning by modifying existing plugins, are often able to accomplish interesting
things after just a couple of days of work.

13.2 Using Script-Fu Scripts

13.2.1 Script-Fu?
Script-Fu is what the Windows world would call ”macros” But Script-Fu is more powerful than that.
Script-Fu is based on an interpreting language called Scheme, and works by using querying functions
to the GIMP database. You can do all kinds of things with Script-Fu, but an ordinary GIMP user will
probably use it for automating things that:

• You want to do frequently.

• Are really complicated to do, and hard to remember.

Remember that you can do a whole lot with Script-Fu. The scripts that come with GIMP can be quite
useful, but they can also serve as models for learning Script-Fu, or at least as a framework and source
of modification when you make your own script. Read the Script-Fu Tutorial in the next section if you
want to learn more about how to make scripts.
We will describe some of the most useful scripts in this chapter, but we won’t cover them all. There
are simply too many scripts. Some of the scripts are also very simple and you will probably not need
any documentation to be able to use them.
Script-Fu (a dialect of Scheme) isn’t the only scripting language available for GIMP. But Script-Fu is
the only scripting language that is installed by default.

13.2.2 Installing Script-Fus

One of the great things about Script-Fu is that you can share your script with all your GIMP friends.
There are many scripts that come with GIMP by default, but there are also vast quantities of scripts that
are available for download all around the Internet.

1. If you have downloaded a script, copy or move it to your scripts directory. It can be found in the
Preferences: Folders → Scripts.

2. Do a refresh by using Filters → Script-Fu → Refresh Scripts from the image menubar. The script
will now appear in one of your menus. If you don’t find it, look for it under the root file menu
filters. If it doesn’t appear at all, something was wrong with the script (e.g. it contains syntax
errors).

13.2.3 Do’s and Don’ts

A common error when you are dealing with Script-Fus is that you simply bring them up and press the
OK button. When nothing happens, you probably think that the script is broken or buggy, but there is
most likely nothing wrong with it.

13.2.4 Different Kinds Of Script-Fus

There are two kinds of Script-Fus:

Standalone Script-Fus You will find the standalone variants under File → Create → Type of Script in
the image menubar (see the figure below).

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Figure 13.1 Script-Fus by category

Image-dependent Script-Fus Menus have been reorganized. A new Colors-menu appears. It groups
together all scripts that work on colors, for example tools that adjust hue, saturation, lightness...,
filters...etc. Filters-menu and Script-Fu-menu are merged in one Filters-menu and it is organized
according to new categories. Image-dependent Plug-ins and Script-Fus are now disseminated in
the image-menus. For example, Color to Alpha filter is in Colors-menu. At the beginning, it’s
disconcerting, but you finish to get used to this because it’s more logical.

The figure below show where you can find them in the image-menu.

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Figure 13.2 Where find Image-dependent scripts

13.2.5 Standalone Scripts

We will not try to describe every script in depth. Most Script-Fus are very easy to understand and use.
At the time of this writing, the following types are installed by default:

• Patterns

• Web page themes

• Logos

• Buttons

Patterns You will find all kinds of pattern-generating scripts here. Generally, they are quite useful be-
cause you can add many arguments to your own patterns.
We’ll take a look at the Land script. In this script you have to set the image/pattern size, and
specify what levels of random to use for your land creation. The colors used to generate the land
map are taken from the currently selected gradient in the gradient editor. You must also supply
values for the level of detail, land and sea height/depth and the scale. Scale refers to the scale of
your map, just as in an ordinary road map, 1:10 will be typed as 10.

Web Page Themes Here is clearly a practical use for scripts. By creating a script for making custom
text, logos, buttons arrows, etc., for your web site, you will give them all the same style and shape.
You will also be saving a lot of time, because you don’t have to create every logo, text or button by
hand.
Most of the scripts are quite self-explanatory, but here are some hints:

• Leave all strange characters like ’ and ” intact.

• Make sure that the pattern specified in the script exists.
• Padding refers to the amount of space around your text.
• A high value for bevel width gives the illusion of a higher button.
• If you type TRUE for ”Press”, the button will look pushed down.

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• Choose transparency if you don’t want a solid background. If you choose a solid background,
make sure it is the same color as the web page background.

Here you will find all kinds of logo-generating scripts. This is nice, but use it with care, as people
might recognize your logo as being made by a known GIMP script. You should rather regard it as
a base that you can modify to fit your needs. The dialog for making a logo is more or less the same
for all such scripts:
Logos 1. In the Text String field, type your logo name, like Frozenriver.
2. In the Font Size text field, type the size of your logo in pixels.
3. In the Font text field, type the name of the font that you want to use for your logo.
4. To choose the color of your logo, just click on the color button. This brings up a color dialog.
5. If you look at the current command field, you can watch the script run.
Make Buttons Under this headline you’ll find two scripts that makes rectangular beveled buttons, with
or without round corners (Round Button or Simple Beveled Button). They have a dozen parameters
or so, and most of them are similar to those in the logo scripts. You can experiment with different
settings to come up with a button you like.

13.2.6 Image-Dependent Scripts

Now, scripts and filters that perform operations on an existing image are accessible directly by the ap-
propriate menu. For example, the script New Brush (script-fu-paste-as-brush) is integrated in the Edit
image menu (Edit → Paste as... → New Brush), that is more logical.
Furthermore, a new Color menu has been created that regroups together all that concern works on
colors, the hue or level color adjustment tools, etc...
Filters menu and Script-Fu menu are regrouped in one Filters menu and organised according to new
categories. Now if a plugin and a filter works similarly, they are nearby in the menu.
The Script-Fu menu only appears if you have loaded additional scripts: for example the gimp-resynthesizer
pack corresponding to your Linux distribution (.deb, .rpm, .gz ...).

13.3 A Script-Fu Tutorial

In this training course, we’ll introduce you to the fundamentals of Scheme necessary to use Script-Fu,
and then build a handy script that you can add to your toolbox of scripts. The script prompts the user
for some text, then creates a new image sized perfectly to the text. We will then enhance the script to
allow for a buffer of space around the text. We will conclude with a few suggestions for ways to ramp
up your knowledge of Script-Fu.

Note

This section as adapted from a tutorial written for the GIMP 1 User Manual by Mike
Terry.

13.3.1 Getting Acquainted With Scheme

[Link] Let’s Start Scheme’ing
The first thing to learn is that:
Every statement in Scheme is surrounded by parentheses ().
The second thing you need to know is that:
The function name/operator is always the first item in the parentheses, and the rest of the
items are parameters to the function.

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However, not everything enclosed in parentheses is a function — they can also be items in a list —
but we’ll get to that later. This notation is referred to as prefix notation, because the function prefixes
everything else. If you’re familiar with postfix notation, or own a calculator that uses Reverse Polish No-
tation (such as most HP calculators), you should have no problem adapting to formulating expressions
in Scheme.
The third thing to understand is that:
Mathematical operators are also considered functions, and thus are listed first when writing
mathematical expressions.
This follows logically from the prefix notation that we just mentioned.

[Link] Examples Of Prefix, Infix, And Postfix Notations

Here are some quick examples illustrating the differences between prefix, infix, and postfix notations.
We’ll add a 1 and 23 together:
• Prefix notation: + 1 23 (the way Scheme will want it)
• Infix notation: 1 + 23 (the way we “normally” write it)
• Postfix notation: 1 23 + (the way many HP calculators will want it)

[Link] Practicing In Scheme

Now, let’s practice what we have just learned. Start up GIMP, if you have not already done so, and
choose Filters → Script-Fu → Console. This will start up the Script-Fu Console window, which allows
us to work interactively in Scheme. In a matter of moments, the Script-Fu Console will appear:

[Link] The Script-Fu Console Window

At the bottom of this window is an entry-field ought to be entitled Current Command. Here, we can test
out simple Scheme commands interactively. Let’s start out easy, and add some numbers:
(+ 3 5)

Typing this in and hitting Enter yields the expected answer of 8 in the center window.

Figure 13.3 Use Script-Fu Console.

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Now, what if we wanted to add more than one number? The “+” function can take two or more
arguments, so this is not a problem:
(+ 3 5 6)

This also yields the expected answer of 14.

So far, so good — we type in a Scheme statement and it’s executed immediately in the Script-Fu
Console window. Now for a word of caution…

[Link] Watch Out For Extra Parentheses

If you’re like me, you’re used to being able to use extra parentheses whenever you want to — like when
you’re typing a complex mathematical equation and you want to separate the parts by parentheses to
make it clearer when you read it. In Scheme, you have to be careful and not insert these extra parentheses
incorrectly. For example, say we wanted to add 3 to the result of adding 5 and 6 together:
3 + (5 + 6) + 7 = ?

Knowing that the + operator can take a list of numbers to add, you might be tempted to convert the
above to the following:
(+ 3 (5 6) 7)

However, this is incorrect — remember, every statement in Scheme starts and ends with parens, so
the Scheme interpreter will think that you’re trying to call a function named “5” in the second group of
parens, rather than summing those numbers before adding them to 3.
The correct way to write the above statement would be:
(+ 3 (+ 5 6) 7)

[Link] Make Sure You Have The Proper Spacing, Too

If you are familiar with other programming languages, like C/C++, Perl or Java, you know that you
don’t need white space around mathematical operators to properly form an expression:
3+5, 3 +5, 3+ 5

These are all accepted by C/C++, Perl and Java compilers. However, the same is not true for Scheme.
You must have a space after a mathematical operator (or any other function name or operator) in Scheme
for it to be correctly interpreted by the Scheme interpreter.
Practice a bit with simple mathematical equations in the Script-Fu Console until you’re totally com-
fortable with these initial concepts.

13.3.2 Variables And Functions

Now that we know that every Scheme statement is enclosed in parentheses, and that the function name/-
operator is listed first, we need to know how to create and use variables, and how to create and use
functions. We’ll start with the variables.

[Link] Declaring Variables

Although there are a couple of different methods for declaring variables, the preferred method is to use
the let* construct. If you’re familiar with other programming languages, this construct is equivalent
to defining a list of local variables and a scope in which they’re active. As an example, to declare two
variables, a and b, initialized to 1 and 2, respectively, you’d write:
(let*
(
(a 1)
(b 2)
)
(+ a b)
)

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or, as one line:

(let* ( (a 1) (b 2) ) (+ a b) )

Note
You’ll have to put all of this on one line if you’re using the console window. In gen-
eral, however, you’ll want to adopt a similar practice of indentation to help make
your scripts more readable. We’ll talk a bit more about this in the section on White
Space.

This declares two local variables, a and b, initializes them, then prints the sum of the two variables.

[Link] What Is A Local Variable?

You’ll notice that we wrote the summation (+ a b) within the parens of the let* expression, not after
it.
This is because the let* statement defines an area in your script in which the declared variables are
usable; if you type the (+ a b) statement after the (let* …) statement, you’ll get an error, because the
declared variables are only valid within the context of the let* statement; they are what programmers
call local variables.

[Link] The General Syntax Of let*

The general form of a let* statement is:
(let* ( variables )
expressions )

where variables are declared within parens, e.g., (a 2), and expressions are any valid Scheme ex-
pressions. Remember that the variables declared here are only valid within the let* statement — they’re
local variables.

[Link] White Space

Previously, we mentioned the fact that you’ll probably want to use indentation to help clarify and orga-
nize your scripts. This is a good policy to adopt, and is not a problem in Scheme — white space is ignored
by the Scheme interpreter, and can thus be liberally applied to help clarify and organize the code within
a script. However, if you’re working in Script-Fu’s Console window, you’ll have to enter an entire ex-
pression on one line; that is, everything between the opening and closing parens of an expression must
come on one line in the Script-Fu Console window.

[Link] Assigning A New Value To A Variable

Once you’ve initialized a variable, you might need to change its value later on in the script. Use the set!
statement to change the variable’s value:
(let* ( (theNum 10) ) (set! theNum (+ theNum theNum)) )

Try to guess what the above statement will do, then go ahead and enter it in the Script-Fu Console
window.

Note

The “\” indicates that there is no line break. Ignore it (don’t type it in your Script-Fu
console and don’t hit Enter), just continue with the next line.

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[Link] Functions
Now that you’ve got the hang of variables, let’s get to work with some functions. You declare a function
with the following syntax:
(define
(
name
param-list
)
expressions
)

where name is the name assigned to this function, param-list is a space-delimited list of parame-
ter names, and expressions is a series of expressions that the function executes when it’s called. For
example:
(define (AddXY inX inY) (+ inX inY) )

AddXY is the function’s name and inX and inY are the variables. This function takes its two param-
eters and adds them together.
If you’ve programmed in other imperative languages (like C/C++, Java, Pascal, etc.), you might
notice that a couple of things are absent in this function definition when compared to other programming
languages.

• First, notice that the parameters don’t have any “types” (that is, we didn’t declare them as strings,
or integers, etc.). Scheme is a type-less language. This is handy and allows for quicker script
writing.
• Second, notice that we don’t need to worry about how to “return” the result of our function —
the last statement is the value “returned” when calling this function. Type the function into the
console, then try something like:
(AddXY (AddXY 5 6) 4)

13.3.3 Lists, Lists And More Lists

We’ve trained you in variables and functions, and now enter the murky swamps of Scheme’s lists.

[Link] Defining A List

Before we talk more about lists, it is necessary that you know the difference between atomic values and
lists.
You’ve already seen atomic values when we initialized variables in the previous lesson. An atomic
value is a single value. So, for example, we can assign the variable “x” the single value of 8 in the
following statement:
(let* ( (x 8) ) x)

(We added the expression x at the end to print out the value assigned to x—normally you won’t need
to do this. Notice how let* operates just like a function: The value of the last statement is the value
returned.)
A variable may also refer to a list of values, rather than a single value. To assign the variable x the
list of values 1, 3, 5, we’d type:
(let* ( (x ’(1 3 5))) x)

Try typing both statements into the Script-Fu Console and notice how it replies. When you type the
first statement in, it simply replies with the result:
8

However, when you type in the other statement, it replies with the following result:
(1 3 5)

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When it replies with the value 8 it is informing you that x contains the atomic value 8. However,
when it replies with (1 3 5), it is then informing you that x contains not a single value, but a list of
values. Notice that there are no commas in our declaration or assignment of the list, nor in the printed
result.
The syntax to define a list is:
’(a b c)

where a, b, and c are literals. We use the apostrophe (’) to indicate that what follows in the paren-
theses is a list of literal values, rather than a function or expression.
An empty list can be defined as such:
’()

or simply:
()

Lists can contain atomic values, as well as other lists:

(let*
(
(x
’(”GIMP” (1 2 3) (”is” (”great” () ) ) )
)
)
x
)

Notice that after the first apostrophe, you no longer need to use an apostrophe when defining the
inner lists. Go ahead and copy the statement into the Script-Fu Console and see what it returns.
You should notice that the result returned is not a list of single, atomic values; rather, it is a list of a
literal (”The GIMP”), the list (1 2 3), etc.

[Link] How To Think Of Lists

It’s useful to think of lists as composed of a “head” and a “tail”. The head is the first element of the list,
the tail the rest of the list. You’ll see why this is important when we discuss how to add to lists and how
to access elements in the list.

[Link] Creating Lists Through Concatenation (The Cons Function)

One of the more common functions you’ll encounter is the cons function. It takes a value and places it
to its second argument, a list. From the previous section, I suggested that you think of a list as being
composed of an element (the head) and the remainder of the list (the tail). This is exactly how cons
functions — it adds an element to the head of a list. Thus, you could create a list as follows:
(cons 1 ’(2 3 4) )

The result is the list (1 2 3 4).

You could also create a list with one element:
(cons 1 () )

You can use previously declared variables in place of any literals, as you would expect.

[Link] Defining A List Using The list Function

To define a list composed of literals or previously declared variables, use the list function:
(list 5 4 3 a b c)

This will compose and return a list containing the values held by the variables a, b and c. For exam-
ple:

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(let* (
(a 1)
(b 2)
(c 3)
)

(list 5 4 3 a b c)
)

This code creates the list (5 4 3 1 2 3).

[Link] Accessing Values In A List

To access the values in a list, use the functions car and cdr, which return the first element of the list
and the rest of the list, respectively. These functions break the list down into the head::tail construct I
mentioned earlier.

[Link] The car Function

car returns the first element of the list (the head of the list). The list needs to be non-null. Thus, the
following returns the first element of the list:
(car ’(”first” 2 ”third”))

which is:
”first”

[Link] The cdr function

cdr returns the rest of the list after the first element (the tail of the list). If there is only one element in
the list, it returns an empty list.
(cdr ’(”first” 2 ”third”))

returns:
(2 ”third”)

whereas the following:

(cdr ’(”one and only”))

returns:
()

[Link] Accessing Other Elements In A List

OK, great, we can get the first element in a list, as well as the rest of the list, but how do we access
the second, third or other elements of a list? There exist several ”convenience” functions to access, for
example, the head of the head of the tail of a list (caadr), the tail of the tail of a list (cddr), etc.
The basic naming convention is easy: The a’s and d’s represent the heads and tails of lists, so
(car (cdr (car x) ) )

could be written as:

(cadar x)

To get some practice with list-accessing functions, try typing in the following (except all on one line
if you’re using the console); use different variations of car and cdr to access the different elements of
the list:

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(let* (
(x ’( (1 2 (3 4 5) 6) 7 8 (9 10) )
)
)
; place your car/cdr code here
)

Try accessing the number 3 in the list using only two function calls. If you can do that, you’re on
your way to becoming a Script-Fu Master!

Note

In Scheme, a semicolon (;) marks a comment. It, and anything that follows it on the
same line, are ignored by the script interpreter, so you can use this to add comments
to jog your memory when you look at the script later.

13.3.4 Your First Script-Fu Script

Do you not need to stop and catch your breath? No? Well then, let’s proceed with your fourth lesson —
your first Script-Fu Script.

[Link] Creating A Text Box Script

One of the most common operations I perform in GIMP is creating a box with some text in it for a web
page, a logo or whatever. However, you never quite know how big to make the initial image when you
start out. You don’t know how much space the text will fill with the font and font size you want.
The Script-Fu Master (and student) will quickly realize that this problem can easily be solved and
automated with Script-Fu.
We will, therefore, create a script, called Text Box, which creates an image correctly sized to fit snugly
around a line of text the user inputs. We’ll also let the user choose the font, font size and text color.

[Link] Editing And Storing Your Scripts

Up until now, we’ve been working in the Script-Fu Console. Now, however, we’re going to switch to
editing script text files.
Where you place your scripts is a matter of preference — if you have access to GIMP’s default script
directory, you can place your scripts there. However, I prefer keeping my personal scripts in my own
script directory, to keep them separate from the factory-installed scripts.
In the .gimp-2.8 directory that GIMP made off of your home directory, you should find a directory
called scripts. GIMP will automatically look in your .gimp-2.8 directory for a scripts directory,
and add the scripts in this directory to the Script-Fu database. You should place your personal scripts
here.

[Link] The Bare Essentials

Every Script-Fu script defines at least one function, which is the script’s main function. This is where
you do the work.
Every script must also register with the procedural database, so you can access it within GIMP.
We’ll define the main function first:
(define (script-fu-text-box inText inFont inFontSize inTextColor))

Here, we’ve defined a new function called script-fu-text-box that takes four parameters, which
will later correspond to some text, a font, the font size, and the text’s color. The function is currently
empty and thus does nothing. So far, so good — nothing new, nothing fancy.

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[Link] Naming Conventions

Scheme’s naming conventions seem to prefer lowercase letters with hyphens, which I’ve followed in the
naming of the function. However, I’ve departed from the convention with the parameters. I like more
descriptive names for my parameters and variables, and thus add the ”in” prefix to the parameters so I
can quickly see that they’re values passed into the script, rather than created within it. I use the prefix
”the” for variables defined within the script.
It’s GIMP convention to name your script functions script-fu-abc, because then when they’re
listed in the procedural database, they’ll all show up under Script-Fu when you’re listing the functions.
This also helps distinguish them from plug-ins.

[Link] Registering The Function

Now, let’s register the function with GIMP. This is done by calling the function script-fu-register.
When GIMP reads in a script, it will execute this function, which registers the script with the procedural
database. You can place this function call wherever you wish in your script, but I usually place it at the
end, after all my other code.
Here’s the listing for registering this function (I will explain all its parameters in a minute):
(script-fu-register
”script-fu-text-box” ;func name
”Text Box” ;menu label
”Creates a simple text box, sized to fit\
around the user’s choice of text,\
font, font size, and color.” ;description
”Michael Terry” ;author
”copyright 1997, Michael Terry;\
2009, the GIMP Documentation Team” ;copyright notice
”October 27, 1997” ;date created
”” ;image type that the script works on
SF-STRING ”Text” ”Text Box” ;a string variable
SF-FONT ”Font” ”Charter” ;a font variable
SF-ADJUSTMENT ”Font size” ’(50 1 1000 1 10 0 1)
;a spin-button
SF-COLOR ”Color” ’(0 0 0) ;color variable
)
(script-fu-menu-register ”script-fu-text-box” ”<Image>/File/Create/Text”)

If you save these functions in a text file with a .scm suffix in your script directory, then choose Filters
→ Script-Fu → Refresh Scripts, this new script will appear as File → Create → Text → Text Box.
If you invoke this new script, it won’t do anything, of course, but you can view the prompts you
created when registering the script (more information about what we did is covered next).
Finally, if you invoke the Procedure Browser ( Help → Procedure Browser), you’ll notice that our
script now appears in the database.

[Link] Steps For Registering The Script

To register our script with GIMP, we call the function script-fu-register, fill in the seven required
parameters and add our script’s own parameters, along with a description and default value for each
parameter.
The Required Parameters

• The name of the function we defined. This is the function called when our script is invoked (the
entry-point into our script). This is necessary because we may define additional functions within
the same file, and GIMP needs to know which of these functions to call. In our example, we only
defined one function, text-box, which we registered.

• The location in the menu where the script will be inserted. The exact location of the script is specified
like a path in Unix, with the root of the path being image menu as <Image>.1
1 Before version 2.6, <Toolbox> could be also used, but now the toolbox menu is removed, so don’t use it.

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If your script does not operate on an existing image (and thus creates a new image, like our Text
Box script will), you’ll want to insert it in the image window menu, which you can access through
the image menu bar, by right-clicking the image window, by clicking the menu button icon at the
left-top corner of the image window, or by pressing F10.
If your script is intended to work on an image being edited, you’ll want to insert it in the image
window menu. The rest of the path points to the menu lists, menus and sub-menus. Thus, we
registered our Text Box script in the Text menu of the Create menu of the File menu.2 (File → Create
→ Text → Text Box).
If you notice, the Text sub-menu in the File/Create menu wasn’t there when we began — GIMP
automatically creates any menus not already existing.

• A description of your script, to be displayed in the Procedure Browser.

• Your name (the author of the script).

• Copyright information.

• The date the script was made, or the last revision of the script.
• The types of images the script works on. This may be any of the following: RGB, RGBA, GRAY,
GRAYA, INDEXED, INDEXEDA. Or it may be none at all — in our case, we’re creating an image,
and thus don’t need to define the type of image on which we work.

Figure 13.4 The menu of our script.

[Link] Registering The Script’s Parameters

Once we have listed the required parameters, we then need to list the parameters that correspond to the
parameters our script needs. When we list these params, we give hints as to what their types are. This
is for the dialog which pops up when the user selects our script. We also provide a default value.
This section of the registration process has the following format:

Param Type Description Example

If your script operates on an
open image, this should be the
first parameter after the
SF-IMAGE required parameters. GIMP 3
will pass in a reference to the
image in this parameter.

If your script operates on an

open image, this should be the
second parameter after the
SF-IMAGE param. It refers to
SF-DRAWABLE 17
the active layer. GIMP will
pass in a reference to the
active layer in this parameter.

2 The original, written by Mike, says put the menu entry in the Script-Fu menu of the Xtns menu at the Toolbox, but since

version 2.6, the Toolbox menu had been removed and merged with the image window menubar.

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Param Type Description Example

Accepts numbers and strings.
Note that quotes must be
SF-VALUE escaped for default text, so 42
better use SF-STRING.

SF-STRING Accepts strings. ”Some text”

Indicates that a color is
SF-COLOR requested in this parameter. ’(0 102 255)

A checkbox is displayed, to
SF-TOGGLE get a Boolean value. TRUE or FALSE

[Link] The Script-Fu parameter API3

Note
Beside the above parameter types there are more types for the interactive
mode, each of them will create a widget in the control dialog. You will find
a list of these parameters with descriptions and examples in the test script
plug-ins/script-fu/scripts/[Link] shipped with the GIMP
source code.

Param Type Description

Creates an adjustment widget in the dialog.
SF-ADJUSTMENT ”label” ’(value lower upper
step_inc page_inc digits type)
Widget arguments list
Element: ”label”, Description: Text printed
before the widget.
Element: value, Description: Value print at the
start.
Element: lower / upper, Description: The lower
SF-ADJUSTMENT / upper values (range of choice).
Element: step_inc, Description:
Increment/decrement value.
Element: page_inc, Description:
Increment/decrement value using page key.
Element: digits, Description: Digits after the
point (decimal part).
Element: type, Description: One of: SF-SLIDER
or 0, SF-SPINNER or 1

3 This section is not part of the original tutorial.

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Param Type Description

Creates a color button in the dialog.
SF-COLOR ”label” ’(red green blue)
or
SF-COLOR ”label” ”color” Widget arguments
list
Element: ”label”, Description: Text printed
SF-COLOR before the widget.
Element: ’(red green blue), Description: List of
three values for the red, green and blue
components.
Element: ”color”, Description: Color name in
CSS notatation.

Creates a font-selection widget in the dialog. It

returns a fontname as a string. There are two
new gimp-text procedures to ease the use of
this return parameter:
(gimp-text-fontname image drawable x-pos
y-pos text border antialias size unit font)
(gimp-text-get-extents-fontname text size unit
font)
where font is the fontname you get. The size
specified in the fontname is silently ignored. It
SF-FONT
is only used in the font-selector. So you are
asked to set it to a useful value (24 pixels is a
good choice).
SF-FONT ”label” ”fontname” Widget
arguments list
Element: ”label”, Description: Text printed
before the widget.
Element: ”fontname”, Description: Name of the
default font.

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The

widget consists of a preview area (which when
pressed will produce a popup preview ) and a
button with the ”...” label. The button will
popup a dialog where brushes can be selected
and each of the characteristics of the brush can
be modified.
SF-BRUSH SF-BRUSH ”Brush” ’(”Circle (03)” 100 44 0)
Here the brush dialog will be popped up with a
default brush of Circle (03) opacity 100 spacing
44 and paint mode of Normal (value 0).
If this selection was unchanged the value
passed to the function as a parameter would be
’(”Circle (03)” 100 44 0).

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Param Type Description

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The
widget consists of a preview area (which when
pressed will produce a popup preview ) and a
button with the ”...” label. The button will
popup a dialog where patterns can be selected.
SF-PATTERN SF-PATTERN ”Pattern” ”Maple Leaves”
The value returned when the script is invoked
is a string containing the pattern name. If the
above selection was not altered the string
would contain ”Maple Leaves”.

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The

widget consists of a button containing a
preview of the selected gradient.
If the button is pressed a gradient selection
dialog will popup.
SF-GRADIENT SF-GRADIENT ”Gradient” ”Deep Sea”
The value returned when the script is invoked
is a string containing the gradient name. If the
above selection was not altered the string
would contain ”Deep Sea”.

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The

widget consists of a button containing the
name of the selected palette.
If the button is pressed a palette selection
dialog will popup.
SF-PALETTE SF-PALETTE ”Palette” ”Named Colors”
The value returned when the script is invoked
is a string containing the palette name. If the
above selection was not altered the string
would contain ”Named Colors”.

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The

widget consists of a button containing the
name of a file.
If the button is pressed a file selection dialog
will popup.
SF-FILENAME
SF-FILENAME ”label” (string-append ””
gimp-data-directory ”/scripts/[Link]”)
The value returned when the script is invoked
is a string containing the filename.

Only useful in interactive mode. Very similar

to SF-FILENAME, but the created widget
allows to choose a directory instead of a file.
SF-DIRNAME SF-DIRNAME ”label” ”/var/tmp/images”
The value returned when the script is invoked
is a string containing the dirname.

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Param Type Description

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The
widget is a combo-box showing the options
that are passed as a list.
The first option is the default choice.
SF-OPTION SF-OPTION ”label” ’(”option1” ”option2”)
The value returned when the script is invoked
is the number of the chosen option, where the
option first is counted as 0.

It will create a widget in the control dialog. The

widget is a combo-box showing all enum
values for the given enum type. This has to be
the name of a registered enum, without the
”Gimp” prefix. The second parameter speficies
SF-ENUM the default value, using the enum value’s nick.
SF-ENUM ”Interpolation”
’(”InterpolationType” ”linear”)
The value returned when the script is invoked
corresponds to chosen enum value.

13.3.5 Giving Our Script Some Guts

Let us continue with our training and add some functionality to our script.

[Link] Creating A New Image

In the previous lesson, we created an empty function and registered it with GIMP. In this lesson, we
want to provide functionality to our script — we want to create a new image, add the user’s text to it
and resize the image to fit the text exactly.
Once you know how to set variables, define functions and access list members, the rest is all downhill
— all you need to do is familiarize yourself with the functions available in GIMP’s procedural database
and call those functions directly. So fire up the Section 16.12.7 and let’s get cookin’!
Let’s begin by making a new image. We’ll create a new variable, theImage, set to the result of calling
GIMP’s built-in function gimp-image-new.
As you can see from the DB Browser, the function gimp-image-new takes three parameters — the
image’s width, height and the type of image. Because we’ll later resize the image to fit the text, we’ll
make a 10x10 pixels RGB image. We’ll store the image’s width and sizes in some variables, too, as we’ll
refer to and manipulate them later in the script.
(define (script-fu-text-box inText inFont inFontSize inTextColor)
(let*
(
; define our local variables
; create a new image:
(theImageWidth 10)
(theImageHeight 10)
(theImage (car
(gimp-image-new
theImageWidth
theImageHeight
RGB
)
)
)
(theText) ;a declaration for the text
;we create later

Note: We used the value RGB to specify that the image is an RGB image. We could have also used 0,
but RGB is more descriptive when we glance at the code.

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You should also notice that we took the head of the result of the function call. This may seem strange,
because the database explicitly tells us that it returns only one value — the ID of the newly created image.
However, all GIMP functions return a list, even if there is only one element in the list, so we need to get
the head of the list.

[Link] Adding A New Layer To The Image

Now that we have an image, we need to add a layer to it. We’ll call the gimp-layer-new function
to create the layer, passing in the ID of the image we just created. (From now on, instead of listing the
complete function, we’ll only list the lines we’re adding to it. You can see the complete script here.)
Because we’ve declared all of the local variables we’ll use, we’ll also close the parentheses marking the
end of our variable declarations:
;create a new layer for the image:
(theLayer
(car
(gimp-layer-new
theImage
theImageWidth
theImageHeight
RGB-IMAGE
”layer 1”
100
NORMAL
)
)
)
) ;end of our local variables

Once we have the new layer, we need to add it to the image:

(gimp-image-add-layer theImage theLayer 0)

Now, just for fun, let’s see the fruits of our labors up until this point, and add this line to show the
new, empty image:
(gimp-display-new theImage)

Save your work, select Filters → Script-Fu → Refresh Scripts, run the script and a new image should
pop up. It will probably contain garbage (random colors), because we haven’t erased it. We’ll get to that
in a second.

[Link] Adding The Text

Go ahead and remove the line to display the image (or comment it out with a (;) as the first character of
the line).
Before we add text to the image, we need to set the background and foreground colors so that the
text appears in the color the user specified. We’ll use the gimp-context-set-back/foreground functions:
(gimp-context-set-background ’(255 255 255) )
(gimp-context-set-foreground inTextColor)

With the colors properly set, let’s now clean out the garbage currently in the image by filling the
drawable with the background color:
(gimp-drawable-fill theLayer BACKGROUND-FILL)

With the image cleared, we’re ready to add some text:

(set! theText
(car
(gimp-text-fontname
theImage theLayer
0 0
inText

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0
TRUE
inFontSize PIXELS
”Sans”)
)
)

Although a long function call, it’s fairly straightforward if you go over the parameters while looking
at the function’s entry in the DB Browser. Basically, we’re creating a new text layer and assigning it to
the variable theText.
Now that we have the text, we can grab its width and height and resize the image and the image’s
layer to the text’s size:
(set! theImageWidth (car (gimp-drawable-width theText) ) )
(set! theImageHeight (car (gimp-drawable-height theText) ) )

(gimp-image-resize theImage theImageWidth theImageHeight 0 0)

(gimp-layer-resize theLayer theImageWidth theImageHeight 0 0)

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what a drawable is when compared to a layer. The
difference between the two is that a drawable is anything that can be drawn into, including layers but
also channels, layer masks, the selection, etc; a layer is a more specific version of a drawable. In most
cases, the distinction is not important.
With the image ready to go, we can now re-add our display line:
(gimp-display-new theImage)

Save your work, refresh the database and give your first script a run!

[Link] Clearing The Dirty Flag

If you try to close the image created without first saving the file, GIMP will ask you if you want to save
your work before you close the image. It asks this because the image is marked as dirty, or unsaved. In
the case of our script, this is a nuisance for the times when we simply give it a test run and don’t add or
change anything in the resulting image — that is, our work is easily reproducible in such a simpl