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GIMP 2 for Photographers
Jon Allen writes "A glance through any photography magazine will confirm that Adobe Photoshop is the accepted standard image editing software, offering almost unparalleled power and control over your images. However, costing more than many DSLR cameras, for non-professionals it can be a very hard purchase to justify (and of course for Linux users this is a moot point, as Photoshop is not available for their platform). Luckily, the free software community has provided us with an alternative. The GIMP, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program, offers a huge amount of the power of Photoshop but is available at no cost. Additionally GIMP is cross-platform, available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix." Read below for the rest of Jon's review.
GIMP 2 for Photographers
author
Klaus Goelker
pages
185
publisher
Rocky Nook / O'Reilly
rating
9/10
reviewer
Jon Allen
ISBN
978-1-933952-03-1
summary
A great book for anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos
The one downside to using GIMP is that most magazines and photography books use Photoshop in their articles and tutorials, so if you do choose GIMP there's a bit more of a learning curve. Now once you're used to GIMP you'll find that many of Photoshop's features have equivalents, albeit with a different user interface, but getting that initial level of experience and familiarity with the software can be rather difficult. The GIMP does come with a manual, but it is really more of a reference guide and while very comprehensive it is not particularly friendly for new users. GIMP 2 for Photographers aims to rectify this.
Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.
Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.
I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.
The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techie' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.
As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.
Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday).
I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever received with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.
As for the book itself, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.
These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the techniques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting color balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.
Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, tool bars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.
Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticeable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.
In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase.
You can purchase GIMP 2 for Photographers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.
Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.
I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.
The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techie' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.
As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.
Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday).
I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever received with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.
As for the book itself, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.
These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the techniques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting color balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.
Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, tool bars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.
Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticeable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.
In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase.
You can purchase GIMP 2 for Photographers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I was quite confused by this article at first. Does this mean there is a new verison of Gimp out for Photographers? What's wrong with the current version of Gimp? Surely this is not an article refering to the release of Gimp2, that was released a while back.
After reading and rereading the article, I think I have come to the conclusion that this is a review of a book, and the review was aimed at the non-slashdot community.
You just have to look at it from programmer's point of view. For example, there is no separate commands to draw geometric shapes. Instead you define a selection and then stroke or fill it. The upshot is that it's much easier to, for example, draw an intersection of two shapes. Default settings in photoshop also leave much to be desired. For example, only several undo levels are enabled by default. In Gimp you can review a long undo history and snap your project back to any point.
I am sure PS is a great tool for professional artists, but it's horrible for programmers who want to do a little icon drawing. On the other hand, price of Photoshop and lack of Pen tool in Photoshop Elements make it unsuitable for most hobbyists and shareware authors.
Spencer: Bring out the GIMP.
Peter: The GIMP's not installed.
Spencer: Well, I guess you'll have to compile it now, won't you?
Picasa is good enough for my photo needs (i.e. straightening, lightening) and it is free too.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
No 16bit support on Gimp, and so it's NOT a good solution for prosumer or pro photographers. And Cinepaint has forked a long time ago and so many other features are missing from it, so don't even mention it as an alternative. 16bit support on Gimp was first promised in 2002, but it's still not here...
I would imagine that a large number of photographers have switched over to Adobe Lightroom. It's tailor made for photo work (workflow, organization and processing). It's a very nice piece of software and a lot cheaper than PS CS3!
1. How do you change the shape of your selection outlines, or make small adjustments to it? In Photoshop, as they're defined by vector shapes, you can do this.
2. Photoshop has the history palette (and even history branching, if I'm not mistaking, in the later versions)
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Comparing GIMP to the full version of Photoshop is a straw man argument. Compare it instead to Photoshop Elements. Elements is about $100, not about $700.
I have used both Elements and GIMP and find Elements much more intuitive. This is even though
I used GIMP first. Elements also supports the RAW mode for my Nikon D70.
I now only use GIMP when I don't have access to my home machine, where the one licensed copy I have is installed.
Elements also allows you to organize your photos into categories without having to create a directory structure. It has built in partial and full backup functions.
Of course, YMMV.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
1. You create a path, edit it until you are satisfied and then convert it into selection
2. Nice to know, but when you just install the thing, Apple-Z stops working after just several undo steps. They could have easily used an adoptive algorithm that discards old undos when running low on memory or resorts to slower strategy of storing images every N steps and redoing operations in the middle.
I've been using photoshop for about 10 years now and have become very proficient. I recently made the switch to linux. The only real application i havn't found a replacement for is photoshop. I have tried using GIMP but their are just too many problems with it. While it is probably acceptable for those who have never used photo editing software before, anyone who has touched photoshop will feel severly handycapped. When i first heard about GIMP i was hoping it would simply be an attempt at cloning photoshops capabilities and interface. Perhaps someone has an answer to this question: why during the design stage did the developers not simply stick with the industry standard interms of interface/menus? Does anyone know where the developers are planning on taking GIMP in the future?
PS users frequently work with images that take up many megabytes, and if there weren't a default 20 or whatever undo steps then out of the box PS would be maxing out the amount of memory you let it work with nearly every time. Anyway this is all very easily configurable, and if you're actually serious about using a tool like PS, you're going to be doing some configuration and personalization to it anyhow.
I like basketball!!1!
Actually GIMP's support for raw files has improved dramatically in the last few years. Install the UFRaw plugin, which most Linux distros package up and which supports the D70 as well as many others.
Why would super-expensive software be so dumb that it can not detect that I am editing an 128x128 pixel icon and adjust undo steps automatically?
It's not about the oft-slagged interface, it's about actual capability falling behind the curve.
It's going to be a common rant in this thread, I am sure, but the fact is, GIMP is falling behind because it has not yet mainstreamed any support for "deep color." It is stuck in an 8-bits-per-channel world, which is fine for many forms of web graphics and proofing, but has some serious limitations in advanced photography. Many photographers are getting quite interested in HDR, RAW, and ICC. What few plugins exist for these in the GIMP world are incomplete and only allow you to import their results back into the limits of an 8-bits-per-channel world.
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You just have to look at it from programmer's point of view.
This is why most linux applications are nowhere near ready for the desktop.
not flaming.
You might be intrested in GIMPShop. I've never used it, but it is a modified version of GIMP designed to have an interface that is closer to that of Photoshop. There is some Photoshop fuctionality that is missing in GIMP, and this does change that, but it might help long-term Photoshop users become comfortable with GIMP faster, especially if you're in a situation where you need to use both. Again, I've never used it, so I can't speak as to how much it helps.
For Web work, The Gimp is unrivaled. For some sorts of print work, I would either use Photoshop or Inkscape, depending on what it was that I needed to do. For editing stills for film, I'd use Cinepaint or Photoshop.
I do not understand the fascination with GIMP. I have used Photoshop for basic editing for years, and found GIMP to be a nightmare when I tried it.
Paint.net, on the other hand, is easy to use, works in basically the same way as Photoshop (many of the shortcut commands are even the same), and is free. I now use it almost every day at work for basic web stuff - resizing, erasing undesirable elements with the clone brush, converting formats, etc.
Maybe I misunderstand GIMP (maybe because I'm running XP), but you know Photoshop and you're looking for a free version, Paint.net will be a much easier transition.
Look at Pixel: same interface, most of the power, a fraction of the price.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The problem is not that it can't detect that you're working with a small file and give additional history steps. The problem is that if you consistently work with small files and get used to having a long undo trail then you may get surprised when you only have a short history when you open a big file.
For example, in your system a user might usually edit 128x128 px images and have 150 undo steps available. They'd get used to being able to undo 100 brush actions in a row if they needed to revert. But when they edit a larger image they'd inevitably scream with frustration when their history has been silently taken away and they can't undo the stupid change. It's a risk.
I'm not saying that Adobe made the right design call, but there are positives and negatives on both sides.
For resizing images, GIMP defaults to using Linear interpolation, but you can change this to use cubic splines, which often gives better results. GIMP does not inherently support more complex interpolations such as Lanczos, but these generally only make a significant difference when upsampling (scaling up).
In any case, interpolating will blur the image slightly, even when scaling down, so most of the time applying a small to moderate amount of sharpening or unsharp-mask makes the images look much better.
The world of pro/semi photography has moved on to tools like Aperture/Lightroom. When you are shooting hundreds images working with them in PS or Gimp is far too time/labor intensive. With the next generation for tools I can efficiently deal with hundreds/thousands of image to grade and quick edit images then if required do fine editing with PS/Gimp.
I wish I was clever!
This is a new feature in the soon to be released Gimp 2.4, check the release notes at:
http://next.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html
It's very sad to me that Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo (XI, or X2, or whatever) doesn't get mentioned in this conversation usually. It's a very full-featured, robust program (built on the former Jasc Paint Shop Pro) with most every feature (including a "lightroom"-like addition to X2) that photoshop has. It's very reasonably priced, and I would place it (in terms of functionality) somewhere between GIMP and Photoshop, and way above Elements, even though the price is basically Elements.
Last time I looked, here in the UK they were about the same price - £569, although it'll be more for the camera (maybe £900+) if you're going to be wanting a decent lens. You're also assuming that said DSLR fanatic already has a computer, which you can also argue is a requirement.
If you're going to pony up between £500 and £1000 for a camera, then it's worth factoring in the price of software, especially as you don't need to buy film.
I mean that's like getting a film SLR and moaning about the cost of darkroom kit... it's the same with any hobby; horse riding isn't just the price of a horse, fishing isn't just the price of a rod and digital photography isn't just the price of a digital camera, you have to account for all the necessary extras as they say...
Sheesh. You're really stretching to find a reason. It doesn't do it because Adobe hasn't put it in. And the reason they haven't is probably because there's not a lot of call for it. That seems like a perfectly reasonable answer.
Photoshop is an amazing program. I'm surprised the reviewer wrote "almost unparalleled." It's flat-out unparalleled. But it's undo, and even its history feature, are not as good as they could be.
For a professional, you have to have high quality CMYK support. Period. Doesn't matter how good the other features are, if you're stuck with RGB, you're never going to be accepted in the world of the printed page.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'll give you two features that alone make Photoshop easier to use:
... give it a couple years.
- Unified move/scale/rotate/perspective/etc tool with transparency. Want to paste a person on top of a building? A flower on a hat? Paste your logo on a billboard on a photograph? You move, scale, rotate and do everything else in one shot until it looks right. Scale a bit, move, scale, move, rotate, rescale, change transparency, doesn't match quite right, rescale again... ok. On the Gimp, you have to do scaling and rotation separately, which is harder to get right and you lose quality, especially if you do it repeatedly. The best I found was to use the measuring tool on an axis on both source and destination, and then calculate scale and rotation and enter it on the two dialogs, then move. Even the transparent move wasn't implemented until recently, and you have to make sure to disable visibility of the layer before you move. (Or at least you did a month ago)
- Adjustment layers: Nondestructive editing is good. Adjust the colors. Adjust the colors of another layer. Doesn't look quite right? Readjust the colors of the first one. In the gimp I end up making copies before a color adjustment so that I can redo it if I need to.
Notice I'm not talking about high powered features, or 256 bit color in YMCA palette or whatever. I'm talking about every day things. Even the layer grouping in Photoshop is very useful even if you don't put in the layer blending effects, making it easy to implement.
There are a couple features from the Gimp I miss when I'm using Photoshop, but the end balance is in photoshop's favor.
For simple editing the Gimp is good. If you don't have Photoshop, the Gimp is good. One-on-one comparison
First post? Dude, you're like, an hour late. Were you just masturbating to your link too long and lost track of time?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
People who complain about Gimp's interface aren't just whingeing for the sake of it. Gimp is immensely capable, but dear god, why is the interface split across so many windows? Photo editing in Gimp is a chore, chasing little windows around the desktop with the mouse.
It's a terrible pity, because so much work has gone into making Gimp. To can do almost everything an amateur photographer could want, but after a few weeks using it I went looking for an alternative and bought Photoshop Elements. Elements is missing a few features, but it's a pleasure to use, and that's why so many people use it instead of Gimp.
Only if you're working in pre-press. Photographers, even professionals, don't deal with CMYK. Cameras and film scanners are RGB, all retouching is done in RGB, and final images are delivered to magazines/newspapers/whatever in RGB (usually TIFF, sometimes 16 bits per channel, usually 8). Then the pre-press production work begins by moving the images to CMYK and adjusting the colors so they look good in that colorspace and in the print system's color profile.
This book is for photographers, not pre-press production. For photographers, the real issues that make Photoshop better than the GIMP are:
Only item 2 above is a real showstopper, and that's only for images that benefit from greater dynamic range. Item 3 is huge convenience, but can be worked around. Item 4 is also just a convenience factor, but there are some plugins that do stuff that would take hours to do manually. If you need one of those regularly, you're best off getting Photoshop and the plugin.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You just have to look at it from programmer's point of view.
:)
That might be the best UI insult I have every seen
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
When I used GIMP, I didn't expect a Photoshop clone. But I *did* expect a program with a GUI that was at least intelligible.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, you didn't. It's more like this:
The rest of that fluff you added to the translation might actually hold water if there wasn't already enough demand to cause GIMPShop to be created.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Because "Computing" isn't a profession. A computer is a tool/household appliance, not a job.
I own this book and I enjoyed it very much. Not only is the book well structured, a high quality printing process is used. In other words, the paper is nice, the pictures are in color and well done (not the case with all books). I own a few books on Gimp and this is one of my favorites. Perhaps I should note that Gimp is my only option because I use Linux. I also use Bibble to handle conversion from RAW. It has numerous features to handle the conversions in an efficient work flow for multiple photos. For many items, this is sufficient and I must only use Gimp for those rare items not easily supported in Bibble, like whitening teeth. http://www.bibblelabs.com/ The book targets photo manipulation, so it is not the best book if you want to create things such as icons. This is the first time that I have seen perspective correction demonstrated in a book. I also have a comment on the people that choose to comment. Why must mention of Gimp turn into rants and arguments related to Photoshop versus Gimp? This is silly and non-productive for reasons that are not worth stating.
Try the 2.4 RC; they finally added a "save defaults" button to that window. (It's been driving me insane as well)
Unfortunate pop-culture reference, but using the GIMP reminds me a lot of the episode of South Park in which Mr. Garrison involves an alternative form of transport with a rather unfortunate control interface.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
"The user interface is just horrendous."
You should try the release candidates for version 2.4 - the UI has been significantly improved. It's still not "OMG SEXY" or anything, but it's *far* better than the 2.2 series' was.
Two reasons why I've tried GIMP and will *NOT* return to it unless it has: a) a better GUI b) better documentation How do you expect ordinary users to use it, regardless of how wonderful it is, if its hard to use and isn't intuitive? Even MS Paint is better, and easier to use than GIMP's functionality!
My web domain.
If appearances, didn't matter, we wouldn't need image manipulation programs! Time and again, I've seen professional photographers reject the GIMP. Why? Not because it lacks patented color spaces or features, though it does. Simply because the name is cringeingly embarrassing. They'll use some awful shareware app if they can't use photoshop, not the GIMP.
Now, as some borderline autist developer, you may not care about such things, and think their embarrassment is stupid and irrational. but arty types - including digital media workers - tend to be emotional and less than entiely rational. They're *all about appearances*. When they're talking shop to their colleagues, they don't want to be saying "I just opened up the gimp".
It makes no sense to you that these authors are trying to make a living? Seems perfectly sensible to me. Still better than buying a book on Photoshop, learning the skills, and still having to drop a huge chunk of money on the software.
A few months ago I did a little poking around to see what my son was doing on the internet.
Well, besides all the obvious things a 17 year old looks for on the net, he was hanging out on a discussion forum for video games. The first post of his that I found was this:
paint sux use gimp.
As a father, I'm conflicted.
As a professional artist / amateur illustrator, and working around some fantastically talented people, I gotta say that any raster program you're working with isn't going to cut it for really awesome quality illustrations/webcomics.
What I've found works best is to take the pencil sketch and then either preliminarily ink it, or scan it in to Illustrator (though I'm sure Inkscape would work well enough too. If you've got a Wacom or similar tablet, you can do inking in Illustrator and use the pressure sensitivity of the pen to get some very natural lines. After that, take the "inked" illustration into Photoshop and paint under it for a good clean illustration.
Outside of that, you could ink/trace over vellum, scan in the inked sheet, and use Illustrator's "live trace" (prolly in Inkscape too) as another way to get a good vector version of the illustration.
And hell, failing all that, you can always just use a Wacom tablet + brush tool and draw directly in Photoshop/GIMP over the scanned image.
I guess the moral of the story is that taking pencil art into a final piece is just painful, and you should just use something, anything to get a clean trace to colour/paint/etc. off of.
I work as a news photographer at a daily paper full time. We use Photoshop on OS X at work. The only thing GIMP really lacks that would make it unattractive for news work is the lack of CMYK. But I understand Krita can handle CMYK just fine. The other standard stuff -- dodging, burning, adjusting levels and curves, resizing, applying unsharp mask -- GIMP does fine. But I don't think the newspaper industry is interested in GIMP. $600 for Photoshop isn't an issue with most newspapers, plus it's a standard so everyone knows how to use it and you don't need to re-train everyone.
... some individual portraits and some group portraits.
... [The IT guy at work] told me we have a book in our professional library on how to use GIMP. I checked it out on Thursday before I left for Helena. I am looking forward to trying it out. It will be good to have a new interest occupying my time every so often."
8bits per channel vs. 12-16 bits per channel isn't really an issue for newspaper work. I've never noticed any fellow photographers use these extra bit depth modes. Everybody seems to stick with 8bit/channel jpegs. RAW is slow and takes up a lot of space on memory cards. Also, bear in mind that newsprint is "axle grease on toilet paper" so any advantage that higher bit depths provide will not be especially noticeable. Heck, just getting the CMYK registration to line up on a press is a big enough challenge!
8bit/channel images are the standard for Web images. So for newspaper Web sites, GIMP, of course, would be perfectly adequate.
For personal work, I use GIMP. All my flickr photos are processed using GIMP. When I make prints at the one-hour lab, I bring in my media card full if images adjusted only with GIMP. For me, price is an issue. I strongly prefer not to spend $600 on Photoshop. But also, and just as important, I am a fan of the Free Software philosophy. It appeals to me. For these same reasons and more, I use GNU/Linux and BSD at home, also.
Regarding GIMPs interface, coming from a Photoshop background, it did seem to be awkward to me at first, but now that I'm familiar with it, GIMP's interface seems fine to me. It all depends on what you're used to.
I've also used GIMP for personal paid projects
As an aside, I recently installed GIMP on a family friend's computer. They love it! Here's an actual email I received from them:
"... I took the copy of the rooster photo you had on my CD to send to Costco to make a large print for my sister. The color was dull, so Drew helped me with GIMP and we got vibrant color and an amazing print. I will send it to my sister framed for Christmas; it will be the perfect gift. Thank you for giving us copies of your terrific photos. I want to learn more about GIMP this year, and this experiment has me excited about the possibilities
This fellow: http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/ has an excellent free book.
If you edit that document and save it, you'll see those changes propogated through every instance you used it in your main file. This means you can clone that image around as many times as you like, then change it later. I don't know if I'm explaining this very clearly or not. The simple version is that it's another non-destructive mode Photoshop has. It's relatively new to PS, but man, I cannot live without it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Wacom support, I don't know but as far as photography is concerned I don't think there is much use for one of those.
For many photographers using a tablet is much easier and natural than using a mouse. And like a trackball, which also have the above advantages, it offers more precise control.
Some pictures from me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gomox/ (all processed in Gimp)
Some nice shots.
FalconShould there be a Law?