Work is finally getting under way on the 2nd edition of the Artist's Guide to GIMP Effects. I've updated the text of sections 1, 2 and 3 to match the current state of gimp development on the 2.8 release. I shipped those off tonight for review by the editor – big milestone for the update! I plan on having 15 new tutorials for the book along with updates to many of the original tutorials. Some of the old stock images used in the book are no longer available so I'm redoing them using new stock images that, hopefully, will still be available for readers to purchase and/or download. I'm only using freely available stock images or images from low cost sites like BigStockPhoto.com.
Another big update will be the screen shots. I plan on redoing all of them in order to increase the font size used in windows and, well, just make them easier to see. However, I haven't yet started to create those screen shots since I want to finish up the text first – get it into the hands of the editors. Then, while they work on those, I can start in on the screen shots. That will also allow the gimp developers more time to stabilize the windows, menus, and other visual components.
No plans yet for when the book will be ready. The new tutorials need to be fleshed out and essentially written from scratch so those will slow things down a bit. With luck I'll have the content done by late May and the edits an screen shots done in June. Cross your fingers!
Any plans for when the book will be ready?
No Starch (the publisher) said we’re shooting for February, I think (don’t have that email handy). I know I have all the tutorials submitted but still need to take the screenshots for the first chapter which is introductory material (user-guide-ish). We’ve completed copy edits of Chapters 2-3 and I’m half way through the copyedits for Chapter 4. We also have a technical reviewer working through the tutorials.
After copyedits come production edits – making sure cross references are correct, etc. prior to going into layout.
IMHO, tutorial books like this are a lot harder to do than other books because of the large number of screen shots. The text has to flow with the images more so than the typical GIMP user guide. One minor change by an editor or reviewer can cause all the screenshots for a tutorial to have to be redone. But there is light at the end of this particular tunnel now that I’ve submitted all the tutorials. Now we just need to wade our way through all the editing processes.
Don’t have a cover yet. We’re tossing around some ideas. We should have that nailed down soon too.
Thanks! I'm looking forward to read this new edition.
thanks for your interest! Keep an eye on NoStarch.com – I would imagine they’ll list it under the “Coming Soon” group sometime in the next two months.