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Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional 2nd Ed
r3lody writes "An extremely large amount of the information we get on a daily basis comes from what we see. Imagery is therefore very important to those who want to communicate with us. When computers had advanced enough to be able to process images in a digital fashion, the market opened up for programs that could manipulate them in many ways. While many professionals would opt for the paid programs, there is a free alternative: GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). The only stumbling block is learning how to use it properly. That is where Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Akkana Peck comes in." Read below for the rest of Ray's review.
Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition
author
Akkana Peck
pages
584
publisher
Apress
rating
8/10
reviewer
Ray Lodato
ISBN
1430210702
summary
An easy-to-read, fairly complete introduction to image processing with GIMP
I first attempted to use GIMP to fix a photograph or two of mine, but was quickly bogged down in the many options available in the program. That is why I was happy to get my hands on a copy of Beginning GIMP. The book is based mainly on GIMP 2.4, but the author included a preview of GIMP 2.6 in Appendix D. When I downloaded the latest verson of GIMP from gimp.org, I received GIMP 2.6.0. So I used the PortableApps version of GIMP (2.4.6) on Windows XP while reviewing the book and found only minor variations from the text.
One thing that strikes you as you open the book is the extensive use of color. Most texts are black-and-white throughout, but here you are presented with a pleasantly colorful tome. To follow the examples as best as I could, I downloaded the images available on the gimpbook.com web site. Although the images are supposed to be for the 2nd edition, several of those shown in the text for demonstrations purposes are not included. It appears that the images for the tools new to GIMP 2.4 are missing from the web site. This is surprising, since the 1st edition of the book covered version 2.4, so you would expect the images to be there.
The book begins by giving the reader a brief tour of the three main windows of GIMP: the Toolbox window, the Layer/Channels/Path/Undo window, and the Image window. Some basic navigation is presented, along with tear-off menus and how to modify tool placement. It concludes with a simple project layering a small image onto a larger one was given. Unfortunately, the files supplied from the web site did not include the PNG file used in the text, so it's difficult to reproduce the picture as shown. I later found the missing image in a GIMP-format file called wilber.xcf.gz. Unfortunately, xcf files are not discussed until the next chapter.
After the simple introduction, the author, Akkana Peck, gets into the most common adjustments a beginning user might need: re-sizing, cropping, rotating, brightening and darkening, and fixing red-eye. Each manipulation is presented with careful step-by-step instructions. I was able to match the pictures shown in the book, providing me with a level of comfort that I was learning the right way to fix photos.
One of the most common and useful methods of altering photographs uses the concept of layers. Layers act like cinematic cels, being mostly transparent with some opaque portions to lay on top of other layers. Chapter 3 gives a clear description of how to use layers to make changes. Two sample projects use layers to add text and another image to an existing photo, and to create an animated GIF using a series of layers for each frame of the animation. While I found minor differences between the text and the version of GIMP I used, I had no real problem understanding how the concept is applied.
You will probably need to do some freehand drawing from time to time, and chapter 4 covers the tools you'll need. While these tools are familiar to anyone who has used a basic painting program like Microsoft Paint, there are enough differences in how they are applied to warrant their own chapter. After creating some basic shapes (rectangle and circles), outlining and filling them, the author explores various fills and patterns. The chapter ends with a tutorial of creating a tree in a planter box, using just the drawing tools.
Every tool you use in GIMP works on the current selection. Knowing how to select just the parts of the image you want affected is important to getting the results you want. The author devotes an entire chapter to the numerous ways to select areas, add to or subtract from the selections, and fine-tuning them to only touch the parts you want touched. Basic rectangle, ellipse, and free-hand selections are followed by more sophisticated methods including the intelligent scissors and SIOX (Simple Interactive Object Extraction). The book also shows how to save selections as channels, so you can return to them in future editing sessions.
Sometimes, however, all you really need to do is a little touch-up on a photograph. Is someone's face in shadow or too much sun? Did you wish to get rid of some little irritating extra in a photo? Maybe you just wanted to draw attention to one subject and blur out the rest. Chapter 6 provides the information on how to make these basic adjustments. Darkroom techniques called dodging and burning provide minor adjustments to brightness, while cloning and healing can completely eradicate unwanted portions of the image. To draw attention to portions of the picture, you can enhance it using the blur and sharpen tools.
In addition to simple adjustments, GIMP offers a plethora of various tools to modify or create images. Under the Filters menu, you will find a large selection of tools. When I first looked, I felt that there were so many, who would need all of them? In the Filters and Effects chapter, Akkana Peck goes through them all, showing how they can be used to enhance your image. Because there are so many, she does not provide examples of each effect, but each one is described and you are encouraged to play. Remember, Undo is your friend here!
Chapter 8 delves into a very important aspect of your photos and drawings — the colors. First, the concepts of the RGB (Red-Green-Blue) and CMY (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow) colorspaces are described, followed by the HSV (Hue-Saturation-Value) space. A lot of time is used reviewing how these different colorspaces are used, and how they can be manipulated. The tools for breaking the image into its component layers, and demonstrations on how manipulating them can enhance your photo follow. The chapter concludes with some discussion on color profiles.
Now that you've learned quite a few niceties of GIMP, you need to learn more advanced techniques. The next two chapters go into more detail about drawing and compositing. The chapter on Advanced Drawing covers three main topics: mask and layer modes, realism using perspective and shading, and making new brushes, patterns and gradients. The Layer Mode section is the most interesting, showing how blending layers using various modes other than simple overlays can produce interesting effects. There are a number of examples, all easily followed and replicated. Once you've got a basic understanding of the advanced drawing techniques, it's time to put them to use on photographs. The chapter on Advanced Compositing shows how to use layer modes to play with images to improve their looks. You can brighten images, improve contrast, create eerie landscapes, fix noisy photos, and create panoramas, all using various layer modes. Many examples are shown, so you can get a good feel for the technique.
GIMP plug-ins provide automated tasks for the user. In fact, a number of GIMP's tools are provided by plug-ins. A variety of languages is supported. Plug-in scripts can be written in Scheme (the default — always installed), Python, and Perl (if available on your computer). If you need greater speed, you can write a plug-in in C. Chapter 11 uses the sphere plug-in as an example. Xtns — Misc — Sphere creates a sphere on a solid background. Akkana explains how to modify the script to provide a transparent background. A full discussion of the programming of the original script follows. Each step is carefully explained so only a minimal amount of programming background is needed to understand the concepts. Finally, examples in Python, Perl and C round out the chapter. Also included are explanations of how to find plug-ins and help on callable routines.
Unfortunately, there is so much to GIMP that one medium-sized book cannot contain it all. There is a potpourri of topics in the final chapter, including printing, scanning, setting preferences and the configuration files. The chapter ends with information on where to go for more help, source code, and images.
The appendices offer information on how to get and install GIMP, how to install it on older systems, and how to build it from source. Naturally, GIMP is always evolving, and Appendix D offers a list of enhancements in GIMP 2.6 that were not incorporated into the main text.
Over the course of reading the book, I had very little trouble reproducing the examples as demonstrated. I must admit that, despite the book's subtitle: From Novice to Professional, I am now at best an intermediate user. The depth of the capabilities available within GIMP is much deeper than the author could provide in the text. At almost 600 pages, this book is just about the right size, and provides the right amount of instruction for most people. The Additional Topics chapter provides information and links for further study and training, for those so inclined. If you are a beginner to image manipulation, and want to get fairly proficient with GIMP, then definitely get Beginning GIMP. It's not leaving my desk any time soon.
You can purchase Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
One thing that strikes you as you open the book is the extensive use of color. Most texts are black-and-white throughout, but here you are presented with a pleasantly colorful tome. To follow the examples as best as I could, I downloaded the images available on the gimpbook.com web site. Although the images are supposed to be for the 2nd edition, several of those shown in the text for demonstrations purposes are not included. It appears that the images for the tools new to GIMP 2.4 are missing from the web site. This is surprising, since the 1st edition of the book covered version 2.4, so you would expect the images to be there.
The book begins by giving the reader a brief tour of the three main windows of GIMP: the Toolbox window, the Layer/Channels/Path/Undo window, and the Image window. Some basic navigation is presented, along with tear-off menus and how to modify tool placement. It concludes with a simple project layering a small image onto a larger one was given. Unfortunately, the files supplied from the web site did not include the PNG file used in the text, so it's difficult to reproduce the picture as shown. I later found the missing image in a GIMP-format file called wilber.xcf.gz. Unfortunately, xcf files are not discussed until the next chapter.
After the simple introduction, the author, Akkana Peck, gets into the most common adjustments a beginning user might need: re-sizing, cropping, rotating, brightening and darkening, and fixing red-eye. Each manipulation is presented with careful step-by-step instructions. I was able to match the pictures shown in the book, providing me with a level of comfort that I was learning the right way to fix photos.
One of the most common and useful methods of altering photographs uses the concept of layers. Layers act like cinematic cels, being mostly transparent with some opaque portions to lay on top of other layers. Chapter 3 gives a clear description of how to use layers to make changes. Two sample projects use layers to add text and another image to an existing photo, and to create an animated GIF using a series of layers for each frame of the animation. While I found minor differences between the text and the version of GIMP I used, I had no real problem understanding how the concept is applied.
You will probably need to do some freehand drawing from time to time, and chapter 4 covers the tools you'll need. While these tools are familiar to anyone who has used a basic painting program like Microsoft Paint, there are enough differences in how they are applied to warrant their own chapter. After creating some basic shapes (rectangle and circles), outlining and filling them, the author explores various fills and patterns. The chapter ends with a tutorial of creating a tree in a planter box, using just the drawing tools.
Every tool you use in GIMP works on the current selection. Knowing how to select just the parts of the image you want affected is important to getting the results you want. The author devotes an entire chapter to the numerous ways to select areas, add to or subtract from the selections, and fine-tuning them to only touch the parts you want touched. Basic rectangle, ellipse, and free-hand selections are followed by more sophisticated methods including the intelligent scissors and SIOX (Simple Interactive Object Extraction). The book also shows how to save selections as channels, so you can return to them in future editing sessions.
Sometimes, however, all you really need to do is a little touch-up on a photograph. Is someone's face in shadow or too much sun? Did you wish to get rid of some little irritating extra in a photo? Maybe you just wanted to draw attention to one subject and blur out the rest. Chapter 6 provides the information on how to make these basic adjustments. Darkroom techniques called dodging and burning provide minor adjustments to brightness, while cloning and healing can completely eradicate unwanted portions of the image. To draw attention to portions of the picture, you can enhance it using the blur and sharpen tools.
In addition to simple adjustments, GIMP offers a plethora of various tools to modify or create images. Under the Filters menu, you will find a large selection of tools. When I first looked, I felt that there were so many, who would need all of them? In the Filters and Effects chapter, Akkana Peck goes through them all, showing how they can be used to enhance your image. Because there are so many, she does not provide examples of each effect, but each one is described and you are encouraged to play. Remember, Undo is your friend here!
Chapter 8 delves into a very important aspect of your photos and drawings — the colors. First, the concepts of the RGB (Red-Green-Blue) and CMY (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow) colorspaces are described, followed by the HSV (Hue-Saturation-Value) space. A lot of time is used reviewing how these different colorspaces are used, and how they can be manipulated. The tools for breaking the image into its component layers, and demonstrations on how manipulating them can enhance your photo follow. The chapter concludes with some discussion on color profiles.
Now that you've learned quite a few niceties of GIMP, you need to learn more advanced techniques. The next two chapters go into more detail about drawing and compositing. The chapter on Advanced Drawing covers three main topics: mask and layer modes, realism using perspective and shading, and making new brushes, patterns and gradients. The Layer Mode section is the most interesting, showing how blending layers using various modes other than simple overlays can produce interesting effects. There are a number of examples, all easily followed and replicated. Once you've got a basic understanding of the advanced drawing techniques, it's time to put them to use on photographs. The chapter on Advanced Compositing shows how to use layer modes to play with images to improve their looks. You can brighten images, improve contrast, create eerie landscapes, fix noisy photos, and create panoramas, all using various layer modes. Many examples are shown, so you can get a good feel for the technique.
GIMP plug-ins provide automated tasks for the user. In fact, a number of GIMP's tools are provided by plug-ins. A variety of languages is supported. Plug-in scripts can be written in Scheme (the default — always installed), Python, and Perl (if available on your computer). If you need greater speed, you can write a plug-in in C. Chapter 11 uses the sphere plug-in as an example. Xtns — Misc — Sphere creates a sphere on a solid background. Akkana explains how to modify the script to provide a transparent background. A full discussion of the programming of the original script follows. Each step is carefully explained so only a minimal amount of programming background is needed to understand the concepts. Finally, examples in Python, Perl and C round out the chapter. Also included are explanations of how to find plug-ins and help on callable routines.
Unfortunately, there is so much to GIMP that one medium-sized book cannot contain it all. There is a potpourri of topics in the final chapter, including printing, scanning, setting preferences and the configuration files. The chapter ends with information on where to go for more help, source code, and images.
The appendices offer information on how to get and install GIMP, how to install it on older systems, and how to build it from source. Naturally, GIMP is always evolving, and Appendix D offers a list of enhancements in GIMP 2.6 that were not incorporated into the main text.
Over the course of reading the book, I had very little trouble reproducing the examples as demonstrated. I must admit that, despite the book's subtitle: From Novice to Professional, I am now at best an intermediate user. The depth of the capabilities available within GIMP is much deeper than the author could provide in the text. At almost 600 pages, this book is just about the right size, and provides the right amount of instruction for most people. The Additional Topics chapter provides information and links for further study and training, for those so inclined. If you are a beginner to image manipulation, and want to get fairly proficient with GIMP, then definitely get Beginning GIMP. It's not leaving my desk any time soon.
You can purchase Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition 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 love the Gimp. I find many features are easier to learn than Photoshop. It goes both ways though... some stuff is much nicer in Photoshop. I miss a few features though - Gimp doesn't do 16 bits per color channel (yet), and it doesn't do clipping paths in JPEG files (which arent part of the JPEG standards). If it could do both of these it would meet all my professional needs.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Takes some getting use to but it is very powerful and I currently use it side by side with photoshop (GIMP has some interesting features not in CS3)
I want to say thanks for the people that toil over these free programs.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I've got Gimp 2.6.1 on my box. Why would I want to buy a new book published about the 2.4 series?
As goofy as the Adobe GUI is, Photoshop is the poop, pure and simple, and all other image appas are compared to it. Painter, for example is slower and clumsier, but it has awesome brushes, MS Paint is its own hobbled ugliness but has its uses, GIMP is ugly and retarded, but it's free and it works, etc. The day Adobe puts CS on Linux is the day GIMP gets a stake driven through its heart. Ad that day can't come too soon, IMHO. I'd love to run CS on a Linux box and be done with Mac AND Windows and run on generic hardware.
I've been advocating for YEARS for Adobe to sell Linux boxen with CS locked on and pre-installed. They could give the computer away for practically free. BUY SOFTWARE - FREE COMPUTER!
I would also suggest that Adobe needs to jump on this now, as Linux is gaining greater acceptance, GIMP will also, and they don't want GIMP to rule that platform - first in and all that.
I'll definitely buy this book. I dislike GIMP intensely, but knowing it better might take an edge off.
RS RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
But in the end, professionals use Photoshop.
Just like the legal community is pretty much still using WordPerfect. It has little basis in merit or features.
The GIMP does the work of 80% of the worlds photoshop users, with about the same learning curve. The other 20% would run into a limitation and need to use some feature that is Adobe specific.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Well, Freedom for one, and price for another.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
And just what do you think is "improper" about the one it has now?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Want to move your gimp session to a different virtual desktop? must move at least 3 windows. what a pain in the ass.
OK, let's assume for the moment that the statement "The GIMP does the work of 80% of the worlds photoshop users" is true. The issue comes in that when you need any feature form the other 20%, you need to use PS. So, why learn two apps? Just learn PS and be done with it and then you have 100% of the features all the time. Yes PS is damn expensive. But, it's a world-class piece of s/w that is rivaled by none. Oh, and I doubt the the original supposition about Gimp having 80% of the features is really true. Certainly not when you count plugins, tutorials, and so on.
While I love GIMP for my home use of cropping, rescaling, and general minor editing of images, it's these kind of ridiculous UI complexities that drive many professionals right back to photoshop. I don't know how difficult it is to implement a click/drag approach to drawing a circle or a straight line, but it's something that should be on the priority list for the development community, along with a "Photoshop Compatibility Mode" interface option to ease transition of professionals who's experience is entrenched in Photoshop as well as making it easier for Photoshop and GIMP users to talk back and forth about how to do the something that can be done on both applications.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
What the author of the review doesn't explain is the niche Gimp fills.
He is not reviewing GIMP, he is reviewing a book about it, so that kind of commentary is outside the scope of this book review.
Fixed that for you.
Not true. The assertion that you will somehow need infinite resources and time to develop programs, just because you're using C++, is completely false, not to mention ignorant.
With a solid knowledge of C++ and STL, Boost and a handful of other what I'd call core libraries, you can accomplish most tasks very quickly. Similarly if you are experienced in Perl, you can accomplish tasks quickly with few lines of code. On the other hand, if you are a beginner in Perl or C++, you can easily waste days or weeks solving simple problems in messy, convoluted ways.
This knee-jerk response that C++ absorbs "infinite time and resources", for no reason other than the fact that it's C++, is not constructive at all, and just serves to exhibit your own tunnel vision when it comes to Perl (or whatever your tool of choice happens to be).
A price tag.
I don't think the GP was implying that you should learn two programs. He was saying that for 80% of the people currently editing images, they could be using the Gimp with equal results to PS. For the remaining 20%, the Gimp is not an option, so they may be better served using PS.
He wasn't saying that you should use the Gimp 80% of the time and then use PS for the remaining 20% of work that the Gimp lacks support for.
What professionals are you talking about?
If you mean: "I do photography for a magazine," or "I do big budget advertising work." Yeah, sure. Lack of CMYK support and good color calibration are a killer. The GIMP is not a suitable tool for those professionals.
If you mean: "I'm a reporter for a small weekly newspaper who is also expected to be her own photographer and do her own photo cropping and correction," the GIMP is ready today. It was ready several years ago when a friend in exactly that position gave it a try. She was using Photoshop to do the work and found that the GIMP was a complete replacement. (She didn't like the interface, but GIMPshop instantly eliminated that complaint.) If you mean, "I'm doing web design for a small company," the GIMP is ready today.
I am also curious what people did before Photoshop itself got CMYK support, or good color calibration, or whatever it is you're whining about today. Were there just no professionals in the field then?
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I had the same problem with GIMP at first. Then I realized that by using the "Paint along Path" or "Stroke Selection" options you can draw your ellipse (or rectangle or whatever) with _any_ of the available painting tools and brushes. You're not limited to just a simple colored shape, like you are if you use something like MS Paint. In typical GIMP fashion, it's a couple of non-intuitive steps that give you a great amount of flexibility.
a review should explain what the appropriate tasks are
A review of a book about using it should? Maybe a review of the program itself should, maybe the book should, but I don't think the author of the review is obligated to tell you what the program should be used for.
I think it's more that 80% of normal PC users or the people (mainly kids no doubt) illegaly downloading PS actually would only need GIMP as they aren't creating professional quality flyers, catalogues or anything else for print media.
1. I don't have work that requires rigorous color management so I don't use any such feature from GIMP, but I'll trust that you know what you're talking about.
Hey, wait a second! What's this, then! That was back in 2.4! Man, I'm going to have to be careful about trusting what you say.
2. You'll have to say specifically what's missing here.
3. That's a bogus complaint. I mean, the difficulty of learning a new interface, and even extra awkwardness because of being accustomed to another, is a legitimate issue, but it is not something unique or inherent to GIMP. But an already-learned interface is not something "a professional image editor [has] that GIMP doesn't" -- one still has to learn the interface of closed-source applications. It's a legitimate complaint outside the topic you're addressing.
4. Is there a specific plug-in capability that you think is lacking in GIMP's large provided-with-app plug-in library or is lacking in the available realm of plug-ins provided by third parties?
5. That's a pretty specific need. But at a glance I see four different plug-ins for stitching? Why is built-in critical here, especially on the heels of talking up the value of plug-ins?
6. As far as I can tell this is correct. I mean, Smart Filters. "Other indispensible advanced doodads" is vague, though, innit?
Any bets on when GIMP gets Smart Filters? Shortly before you start using it, perhaps?