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A Free program for Photo Manipulation, The GIMP (1 Viewer)

PhilH

Active member
Since this site is very much concerned with digital photography of wildlife and the enhancement of resulting images, i've made a few mentions of my favourite graphics app, The GIMP, in related topics but thought that it would probably be more helpful to actually write up a brief explanation in the correct forum category.

The GIMP is a Free and Open Source, Multiplatform Graphic Manipulation program, It's suitable for use in a variety of tasks, including image compositing, photo retouching and manipulation. The program is developed by a group of volunteers from around the globe, collaborating via the internet to provide the Free software community with a quality product.

While the GIMP is developed primarily for and on Linux, it's very portable and builds are available for Mac OSX and Windows users too.

If you'd like to give the GIMP a go and you're running Windows then the following page should help you out.

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

The installation may, at first, seem daunting but it's really quite straightforward. The GTK and GIMP installers are the two files that you must download, if downloading through sourceforge click on the appropriate links and choose a mirror near you to continue to the download page.
once in posession of both files you'll need to unzip them and install GTK followed by the GIMP.

Mac users can get The GIMP through Fink and Darwin ports, or from http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/, I'm afraid that i'm unable to provide any more advice for Mac users.

Linux users, if there are any of you here, your distribution should come with the GIMP, if you haven't installed it already you can probably find it on your installation discs or the package repository for your distro.

post installation, it's really a case of getting settled into the program. Reading the free ebook 'Grokking The GIMP' available at http://gimp-savvy.com/ is a helpful introduction, despite the fact that this guide is written for GIMP 1.x it is still largely relevant. If you'd rather have the book available offline you can download a tarball from gimp-savvy or, alternatively, download this installer.
further useful content can be found at:
GIMP.org
The GIMP User Group

if any of the above fails to make sense, and i'm sure some of it will, let me know and i'll try to help.
 
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'Amateur Photographer' magazine gave away a free CD of this program earlier on this year.

I was keen to try it out until I read on the CD case: 'for Windows 2000 and XP only' - I'm still using 98SE!
 
try it regardless, though i'd download the latest version, if you can, rather using one from "earlier on this year"
 
Just sorted out the CD - it's version 2.0 full edition, presented with the June 19th edition of the magazine

I'll give it a try later.
 
Adey Baker said:
'Amateur Photographer' magazine gave away a free CD of this program earlier on this year.

I was keen to try it out until I read on the CD case: 'for Windows 2000 and XP only' - I'm still using 98SE!

It's on the cover disk of PCPro every month.

Jeff
 
I've used it with Windows XP and also currently have it on a Linux box running Fedora Core 2.The Gimp came with the FC2 DVD that was included with the AUG '04 Linux Format magazine.I also had it while running Red Hat Enterprise 3 WS and Mandrake 9.2.The Gimp is usually included with most if not all Linux distributions except for some of the "live distros".I have downloaded and installed to the Windows pc with no problems.Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when you open it,this was on the FC2 Linux box.

Phil
 

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I just unistalled the gimp from my PC. I'm running Windows XP. The screen didn't look anything like the one in Phil's screen shot. I imagin that's because I'm using windows XP instead of Linux.
I found the program extremely user unfriendly primarily because the manual isn't specific enough to guide a dumby like me through photo manipulations. I couldn't even find the commands to do some of the things the manual tells me to do.
I will re-install Gimp later just in case it didn't install properly the first but I'm not optimistic.
It would also help if the program had Help that could be accessed directly from the program rather than having to go to the Gimp web site for information. It would also help if the manual were searchable. I know that the program is free and put together by volunteers so I guess I shouldn't be complaining but The fact is that i find the program almost impossible to use.
If anyone has any suggestions I'd certainly appreciate them.
 
I have used versions 1 & 2 in Linux and I have version 2 installed on Windows 98SE (which I prefer to XP!). The Windows installation looks harder than it really is and is actually very easy if the instructions are followed. It has many of the features of Photoshop which is not the easiest of programs to learn to use.
The GIMP (both versions) are often preferable to most other graphics programs.
I agree that it is a great program!
 
I suspect that it is a great program and I have no intention in giving up on it yet. I should say, I guess, that after I installed the program, my next move was to print out the first three chapters of the manual. I then printed off a couple of the tutorials. Unfortunately, the information about the program in the manual and in the tutorials doesn't always match what is visible or available on my screen, plus there are occasional error messages, that's why I uninstalled it and why I intend to re-install it.

As I said I don't find it very user friendly. I am surprised, for example, that to bring a photo into Gimp to be edited I have to go through about five screens starting from C: then Documents then Owner then My Documents to My Pictures to the folder where the photo is stored, actually Ithink that's six screens. In basic programs like Photosuite I can bring a photo forward in two clicks.
I'll be working on it again today so I'll see what happens after the re-install.
 
I re-installed GIMP and the error messages are gone and i now have in-program access to Help so things are looking up.
 
It is good to try different editing software just to see what's out there.I have just recently downloaded a Linux "live distro" named Morphix that includes an earlier version of the Gimp.The OS has a total size of 203MB and I burned the iso image to a mini-CDR and when you place it in your disc drive of your Windows pc and reboot, it runs from RAM and not your hard disk.I took another screenshot of the Gimp with the screencapture feature it has showing the Morphix desktop with a board game in progress.Sun Microsystems has built a new desktop on top of the Morphix/Linux and are calling it the "JDS Linux Desktop" and have taken the Gimp and supposedly given it a friendlier user interface.I haven't tried it yet as I'm still waiting for reviews to come in.

Phil
 

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MI_Phil said:
It is good to try different editing software just to see what's out there.I have just recently downloaded a Linux "live distro" named Morphix that includes an earlier version of the Gimp.The OS has a total size of 203MB and I burned the iso image to a mini-CDR and when you place it in your disc drive of your Windows pc and reboot, it runs from RAM and not your hard disk.I took another screenshot of the Gimp with the screencapture feature it has showing the Morphix desktop with a board game in progress.Sun Microsystems has built a new desktop on top of the Morphix/Linux and are calling it the "JDS Linux Desktop" and have taken the Gimp and supposedly given it a friendlier user interface.I haven't tried it yet as I'm still waiting for reviews to come in.

Phil

And here it is under Mac OSX.

Alan
 

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snowyowl said:
Maybe it's time for me to look at Linux as an operating system. Any idea how expensive it is?

Cost = time taken to download, burn a CD and install it! Start at http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html - there are distros that you do not have to install, just boot up from CD. There is a huge choice; Fedora, Suse and Mandrake are popular.

Learning curve can be quite steep!

Good luck,

Andy.
 
jeff posted
But would the software be any easier to use under Linux?

No,plus you would be at a disadvantage if you were not familiar with an operating system built on Linux.To answer snowyowl,a good place to start may be at your local library or you could try a newstand that may carry Linux Format or Linux User magazines and they usually have cover discs/DVD's with various Linux distributions included for the price of the mag.

Phil
 
jeff said:
But would the software be any easier to use under Linux?

It quite possibly could be, window management is something performed under Linux (well, X and GNOME specifically) while being more or less unheard of in win32, multiple desktops and grouped taskbar entries are handy too.

a nice looking fresh face on the Linux scene is Ubuntu, a debian Linux based distribution with a focus on ease of use, it's far more of an end user's operating system than most.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

anyway, glad to see this thread waking up again, if anyone here likes to live dangerously, the GIMP developers could use some testers for the 2.2 pre-release, windows users can get it from the unstable section of http://gimp-win.sf.net/

if you find bugs then head over to http://gug.sunsite.dk/forum/ and let us know, or, if you already know how to use bugzilla, go straight to bugs.gimp.org

be persistant, you'll get the hang of it.
 
I'm not a fan of Microsoft and, over the years, I've installed various Linuxes at work and at home. The one thing I would say is that Linux on your own is a hobby in itself. Don't forget to make some time for birding.
 
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