GIMP - Additional Information
About GIMP
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It is an extremely capable piece of software with many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, a expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, a image format converter, etc. GIMP is extremely expandedable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plugins 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.
The Basics of The GIMP
Creating New Images
Choose the File menu in the Toolbox, and select New. This will bring up a dialog box. Here you must decide the size of your image in pixels, whether your image should be grayscale or RGB, and whether it should have a solid background or be transparent. As you can see, there are two types of solid background available: Background and White. White will produce a white background, whereas Background will produce a colored background based the background color in the Toolbox. Transparent results in a checkerboard-like background that signifies transparency. This is a nice feature if you are creating transparent GIFs.
Saving Images
You may access the Save dialog box via the right-mouse-button menu in the window that contains the image you want to save. The Save dialog is exactly the same as the Open dialog box, except that the Determine file type menu is a bit different: the default in this context is By extension. This means that the format of the resulting image depends upon the image filename's extension. For example, if you name your imagehello.gif it will automatically be saved in GIF format. You can of course choose to save hello.gif in TIFF format, by selecting TIFF in the Determine File type menu, but this is highly discouraged. If you want to save a file without an extension, then you must choose the file type from the menu. Remember to flatten the layers in your image before you save it, unless you are using the XCF format ( Gimp's native file format) or creating a GIF animation. Gimp supports many different file formats; how many depends on which plug-ins you have installed. Yes, as with many things in Gimp, file format support is implemented via plug-ins. Examples of plug-ins are the mail and print plug-ins, and of course all the filters. We will discuss plug-ins in general later on in this manual; but for now, we will concentrate on the file format plug-ins that are included in the base Gimp distribution.
Format Write Read Format Write Read Bmp X X Pcx X X Bzip X X Pix X X Cel X X Png X X FaxG3 X Pnm X X Fits X X Psd X FLI/FLC X PostScript X X Gbr X X Sgi X X Gicon X X Snp X Gif X X SunRas X X Gzip X X Targa X X Header X Tiff X X Hrz X X Xcf X X Jpeg X X Xwd X X Mpeg X Xpm X X Pat X X URL X X
** XCF is the native Gimp format. It supports layers and other Gimp-specific information. If you save your image in a different file format, all Gimp specific information will be lost, and you won't be able to open and edit your layers anymore (GIF supports layers in that each layer becomes a frame in a GIF-animation). Note that only the active layer gets saved when you save an image in formats other than XCF and GIF. So, for example, if you want to save a layered image in TIFF format, make sure you flatten it before you save it.
Additional Help With The GIMP
Documentation on the Gimp is located at: gimp.org
Useful online tutorials are located at: gimp.org/tutorials
There is a 32 page pdf manual about: color samples with special effects
There is a 924 page pdf manual: second edition manual
There is also an online manual at: manual.gimp.org