The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything

GIMP is a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop with tons of professional-grade features. But with so many powerful tools and menu options, GIMP can be difficult to master. Whether you’re struggling to get started or trying to master some of GIMP’s more complex features, you’ll find the answers you’re looking for in The Book of GIMP.

The tutorials in the first half of the book walk you through essential GIMP skills, like resizing and cropping images, touching up spots and scratches, and customizing your work area. Illustrated, step-by-step instructions show you how to:

• Improve the lighting and composition of images
• Remove distortions and noise to make old and damaged photos look like new
• Create stunning panoramas and digital collages using a series of photos
• Make, edit, and export custom textures, logos, and animated GIFs
• Work with selections, channels, and masks to edit images like a pro
• Create colorful digital art, layer by layer

The book’s second half offers a comprehensive reference to GIMP’s many features, including color balancing, masks, filters, and plug-ins. You’ll find tools described in unparalleled detail, with coverage of nearly every option and parameter.

With illustrated tutorials and detailed references, The Book of GIMP is sure to become your one-stop guide to just about everything GIMP.

A List of the Author’s 5 Favorite GIMP Tool Presets:

1. The Pencil Soft Preset – An extremely realistic simulation of drawing with a charcoal pencil.

2. The Blue Pen Preset – An all-purpose way to annotate any picture.

3. The Smudge Soft Preset – Provides the best option for smoothing a painting without making it look dirty.

4. The Eraser Soft Preset – Simulates working with a high-quality eraser.

5. The Splatters Preset – A very handy way of adding blemishes to a picture.

A List of the Author’s 5 Favorite GIMP Filters:

1. The IWarp Filter – Allows you to build fun animations of people’s portraits.

2. The Edge Filter – Can be used to create extraordinary interpretations of dull photos.

3. The Make Seamless Filter – Offers the ability to generate very simple tiled backgrounds for web pages.

4. The Plasma Filter – The most fundamental filter for building new textures.

5. The G’MIC Selection of Filters – Contains all of the most useful filters.

Table of Contents

Part I: Learning GIMP
Chapter 1 Getting Started
Chapter 2 Photograph Retouching
Chapter 3 Drawing and Illustration
Chapter 4 Logos and Textures
Chapter 5 Composite Photography
Chapter 6 Animation
Chapter 7 Image Preprocessing
Chapter 8 Designing a Website

Part II: Reference
Chapter 9 The GIMP Interface
Chapter 10 Display
Chapter 11 Layers
Chapter 12 Color
Chapter 13 Selections
Chapter 14 Masks
Chapter 15 Drawing Tools
Chapter 16 Transformation Tools
Chapter 17 Filters
Chapter 18 Animation Tools
Chapter 19 Obtaining and Printing Images
Chapter 20 Image Formats
Chapter 21 Scripts and Plug-ins
Chapter 22 Customizing GIMP

Part III: Appendices
A Vision and Image Representation
B Tips and Hints for Selected Exercises
C Resources
D Frequently Asked Questions
E Installing GIMP
F Batch Processing