- About GIMP
- Features and Capabilities¶
- GIMP
- Installation
- Tips and tricks
- Captions
- Create a circle
- Photoshop behaviour
- Plugins
- Manual installation
- Packaging
- Troubleshooting
- Green text
- Hide Noto
- PDF files
- What is GIMP in Linux? [Installation & Usage]
- How to Install GIMP in Linux Using GUI?
- How to Install GIMP in Linux Using CLI?
- How to Open Image Files with GIMP in Linux
- How to Edit Image File with GIMP
- Image Scaling
- Image Cropping
- Adding Text to Image
- Saving Picture in the GIMP Editor
- Difference Between GIMP and Photoshop
- Conclusion
- GIMP
- Recent News
- High Quality Photo Manipulation
- Original Artwork Creation
- Graphic Design Elements
- Programming Algorithms
- Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow
About GIMP
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It 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.
GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on Windows and macOS.
Features and Capabilities¶
This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features. You can also have a look at the illustrated features overview.
- Painting
- Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
- Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
- Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
- Supports custom brushes and patterns
- Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
- Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
- Full alpha channel support
- Layers and channels
- Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
- Editable text layers
- Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
- Selection tools including rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy
- Foreground extraction tool
- Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
- Transformable paths, transformable selections.
- Quickmask to paint a selection.
- A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
- Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
- Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
- Over 100 plug-ins already available
- Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
- MNG support
- Frame Navigator (in GAP , the GIMP Animation Package)
- Onion Skin (in GAP , the GIMP Animation Package)
- Bluebox (in GAP , the GIMP Animation Package)
- File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
- Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
- SVG path import/export
GIMP
GIMP is a powerful raster image editing program, and commonly used for photo retouching, image composition, and general graphic design work. 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.
Installation
Tips and tricks
Captions
To caption an image follow these steps after inputting the desired text:
- Click Layer and Text to Path
- Click Select and From Path
- Click Select and Invert
- Click Edit and Stroke Path
Create a circle
To draw a circle in GIMP follow these steps:
- Select the Ellipse tool and hold Shift
- Click Edit and Fill with Color
- Click Select and Shrink
- Press Delete
Photoshop behaviour
Since GIMP is highly configurable, it is possible to change the keybinds, and even the UI, to be more familiar to those who are used to the raster image editing program Photoshop.
Specifically the GimpPs theme aims to make GIMP behave more like Photoshop, which you can install on top of GIMP.
Alternately, if you just want the keybinds, the relevant lines are included in the theme’s menurc file, which you can then add to your local ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/menurc .
There is also the PhotoGIMP project, aiming to do to the same.
Plugins
GIMP has an extensive plugin system, as well as a Scheme interpreter which can be used to write Script-Fu scripts.
Most plugins are distributed via the official repositories (for example, gimp-plugin-gmic ) and the AUR; some, but not all, are listed as optional dependencies of the gimp package.
Note: The Python-Fu plugin is not available on the version of GIMP distributed via the official repositories, since it requires python2 AUR , which has reached end of life in 2020. To restore the functionality, python2-gimp AUR can be used instead.
Manual installation
If not distributed via the repositories, plugins can be compiled and installed using the gimptool executable.
To install a plugin from source:
To install a pre-compiled plugin:
$ gimptool --install-bin executable
To install a Script-Fu script:
$ gimptool --install-script script.scm
Further options may be found in the gimptool —help message.
Packaging
Plugin packages should add their files to a directory with their name within /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/ .
Troubleshooting
Green text
Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you see a green tint around letters with antialiasing enabled:
Hide Noto
Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you have noto-fonts installed and would like to remove them from GIMP’s fonts list:
PDF files
GIMP requires the poppler-glib library to open PDF files or it will report that they are unrecognised.
Since GIMP rasterizes PDF files right from the start, it will not exploit intrinsic PDF capabilities while editing them. Other programs (like LibreOffice Draw) can be used to better edit PDF files.
What is GIMP in Linux? [Installation & Usage]
GIMP in Linux/UNIX-like system stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is an open-source image editor. This editor is available for both UNIX-like systems and Windows NT-based systems. In this article, I will show you how to install the GIMP application on your Linux-based machine. And I will also show some use of this application.
How to Install GIMP in Linux Using GUI?
If you want to use the GUI to install GIMP you have to use your machine keyboard and mouse. Now follow the steps below. Steps to Follow ➊ Open your Ubuntu Desktop. ➋ Click on the Application icon. ➌ Now, click on the search icon in the upper left corner and search for gimp. ➍ Now, click on GIMP and the install button. ➎ It will ask for a Password. Give the password and the installation will start. ➏ You can check if the application is installed from the application menu.
How to Install GIMP in Linux Using CLI?
If you want to install GIMP, you first have to find the GIMP files in your system. Then you will install the software using root user privilege. For enabling the root user privilege sudo command is necessary. Now follow the steps below to see how to install the GIMP editing tool. Steps to Follow ➊ Open your Ubuntu terminal. ➋ Write the following commands and press ENTER.
This command looks through the entire machine for available GIMP files to install. Now, look at the picture below to see the command output. ➌ Now, write the command below to install GIMP.
➍ Type your user password and press ENTER. This will start the installation, you will see a window like below. So this is how you can install GIMP on your system. Now I installed this application using the CLI(Command Line Interface) but I could have done that using the GUI(Graphical User Interface). So in the next section, I will show you how to install GIMP using the GUI.
How to Open Image Files with GIMP in Linux
In this section, I will show you how to work with GIMP. First I will show you how to open a file inside the GIMP editor. Now follow the steps below. Steps to Follow ➊ Go to your application menu and search GIMP. ➋ Now click on the icon the application window will open up. ➌ Now, click on File in the upper right corner of the menu bar. ➍ From the drop-down menu click on open file ➎ Finally browse through the machine and select the file that you want to open inside the editor. So this is how you open an image inside the editor GIMP. Now in the next section, I will show you how to work with an opened file.
How to Edit Image File with GIMP
Image Scaling
If you want to scale your image to your own preference then follow the steps below. Steps to Follow ➊ Click on the Image button from the menu bar then, click on the scale image from the drop-down menu. Look at the picture below to understand properly. ➋ Now, the scaling window will pop up, give your expected resolution and finally click on scale. So this is how GIMP is used to scale an image. Next, I will show you how to crop an image using the GIMP application.
Image Cropping
If you want to crop an image using GIMP in Linux you will have to select the crop tool or just press CTRL+C. Now follow the steps below to crop an image perfectly. Steps to Follow ➊ First click on Tools from the menu bar then, select Transform Tools from there select Crop. Look at the picture below to understand properly. ➋ Now, pull your mouse from any corner to where you the picture to be cropped and then press ENTER. And so the image is cropped. This is how you properly crop an image using the GIMP tool in Linux.
Adding Text to Image
If you want to add text to an image using GIMP in Linux you will have to select the text tool or just press T. Now follow the steps below to add text to an image perfectly. Steps to Follow ➊ First click on Tools from the menu bar then, select Text. Look at the picture below to understand properly. ➋ After clicking on the Text Tool, Click anywhere on the picture Which will give you a text box. You will write inside that box. This is how you can add text to a picture. Now take a close look at the picture below. But now you have to save this picture in your desired format. In the next section, I will show you how to do that.
Saving Picture in the GIMP Editor
If you want to save the picture after some editing like cropping or scaling you will simply press CTRL+S but the problem is it saves the file in .xcf format. But for using the edited image properly it has to be in a popular format like .png or .jpg. Now follow the steps below to perform this operation. Steps to Follow ➊ At first you will press CTRL+E and then change the format. Now, look at the picture below to see how this works. ➋ And then export the image file. Look at the picture below to get a clear idea.
Difference Between GIMP and Photoshop
There are many differences between the two of these editors. But some important differences are given below.
- GIMP is a free-to-use software but Photoshop is paid software.
- GIMP can only be used on Computers but Photoshop is also available for android mobile or IOS.
- GIMP doesn’t have any classified standards but Photoshop has many standards which are commercial standards.
These are some of the important differences. There are other differences too but these are the most important ones.
Conclusion
In this article, I have tried to explain how to install GIMP on a machine and how GIMP works, some useful Examples, and the difference between GIMP and Photoshop. I tried to make it as simple as possible, considering how hard it is to learn to use the GIMP editor for beginners. So after reading this article you should be able to use GIMP properly and without facing many difficulties.
Similar Readings
GIMP
This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
Recent News
High Quality Photo Manipulation
GIMP provides the tools needed for high quality image manipulation. From retouching to restoring to creative composites, the only limit is your imagination.
Original Artwork Creation
GIMP gives artists the power and flexibility to transform images into truly unique creations.
Graphic Design Elements
GIMP is used for producing icons, graphical design elements, and art for user interface components and mockups.
Programming Algorithms
GIMP is a high quality framework for scripted image manipulation, with multi-language support such as C, C++, Perl, Python, Scheme, and more!
Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow
GIMP provides top-notch color management features to ensure high-fidelity color reproduction across digital and printed media. It is best used in workflows involving other free software such as Scribus, Inkscape, and SwatchBooker.