Tips and Tricks and Resources
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While writing the book I came across various tips and tricks that simply weren’t applicable to the tutorials I’d written about. But since these are meaningful to users I thought it would be useful if I collected these into some searchable environment – like a web page.
So here they are, categorized as best as I can. I’ll continue to update these as I receive (or locate or generate on my own) more tips.
Since I culled this information off of mailing list and other sites, it’s only appropriate I give credit due where possible. Note that I may have paraphrased some of this content.
Extra Brushes, Patterns, etc.
- Where can I find the Gold Cloth pattern? Or the Circle (29) brush. They are not in my version of the GIMP.
This comes in the GIMP Data Extras package. Fedora users can do
yum install gimp-data-extras
while uses of other Linux distributions and Windows will have to check with their packagers to find out how to get this prepackaged. If you can’t find the packaged version, try one of the mirrors sites to grab the source, which can usually just be unpacked in your $HOME/.gimp-2.2 directory.
- Can I use Photoshop brushes with the GIMP?
Yes, but only with GIMP 2.3 (the development version of GIMP which will eventualy become GIMP 2.4). With this version you can copy any Photoshop brush files – these have a suffix of .abr – into your brush directory. If you have the GIMP open already, refresh your brush list and then you should be able to use the new Photoshop brush.
- Do you know of any other free brushes that work with the GIMP?
Here are the ones I know about so far. Let me know if you find any others.
Photography
- How can you watermark images in bulk
You could do it with a script (Python, Perl or Script-Fu) but this is probably much easier to do with something like ImageMagick. (jim feldman)
- How can you work with RAW images under Windows?
Try the ufraw plugin. You can also look at Noise Ninja, a commercial application which has Windows, Mac and Linux ports. (jim feldman)
- How do you break a GIMP image into CMYK separations?
Filters->Colors->Components->Decompose, using the CMYK option. This will produce 4 new grayscale layers in a new window, one for each color channel. To convert these to individual images, just drag the layer (from the Layers dialog) into the Toolbox. You can perform similar operations for various other color models, such as RGB, HSV and LAB (which is used in Photoshop) plus 4 different types of digital video (YUV) decompositions. Note that the colors in the separated images for CMYK (and possibly others) are inverted. Where there is a white pixel, that would be maximum color while where there is black there is no color.
- How do you convert scans of color negative film into their color positive?
This question came up on the GIMP User mailing list and sparked an interesting thread. The summary: turning the scan of color negative film into color positive is a function of the scanner software and not a function of the GIMP (at least not at the moment). This is because all brands of film have different yellow and red masks that need to be removed. XSane can handle this for most film types, as can other scanner software.
Preferences
- Is it possible to change the startup tool?
Yes. Choose the tool you want from the Toolbox, then open the Preferences dialog (File->Preferences). Under Input Devices, click on the Save Input Device Settings Now button.
General
- Creating grub-splash screens with GIMP
Basic instructions for a Grub splash screen:
* Must be in gzipped, xpm file format
* Dimensions: 640×480
* 14 colors onlyStarting with dimension: When you start to create your image, create a canvas of that size (File->New, set dimensions to 640×480). Alternatively, scale your canvas to that size before saving (though this will likely distort the image a bit, especially when you only have 14 colors to work with).
After you create your 640×80 canvas, draw or paint your image, then before you save it convert it to an Indexed Mode image (Image->Mode->Indexed). In the Indexed Color Conversion dialog that opens, choose "Generate Optimum Palette" and set the maximum number of colors to 14.
Finally, save the file with an extension of .xpm. In the Save As dialog make sure the Select File Type option says "(By Extension)" next to it. After that you can pass the file through gzip: gzip <filename>
