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The Book of GIMP
Michael Ross writes "Web designers, graphics artists, and others who create and edit digital images, have a number of commercial image-manipulation packages from which they can choose — such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Fireworks (originally developed by Macromedia). Yet there are also many alternatives in the open-source world, the most well-known being GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is available for all major operating systems, and supports all commonly-used image formats. This powerful application is loaded with features, including plug-ins and scripting. Yet detractors criticize it as being complicated (as if Photoshop is intuitively obvious). Admittedly, anyone hoping to learn it could benefit from a comprehensive guide, such as The Book of GIMP." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything
author
Olivier Lecarme and Karine Delvare
pages
676 pages
publisher
No Starch Press
rating
9/10
reviewer
Michael J. Ross
ISBN
978-1593273835
summary
A comprehensive tutorial and reference to GIMP 2.8.
Authored by Olivier Lecarme and Karine Delvare, The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything was published by No Starch Press on 22 January 2013, with the ISBN 978-1593273835. The publisher's page offers minimal information on the book and its authors, as well as a skimpy table of contents, and a free sample chapter (the fifth one, on composite photography). Lecarme has a companion website where visitors will find additional resources, including bonus filters, a forum (albeit almost empty), and a selection of the example images used in the book.
This title's 676 pages are organized into 22 chapters and six appendices. The first eight chapters compose "Part I — Learning GIMP"; the remaining chapters compose "Part II — Reference"; and the appendices compose the third part. In a brief but pleasant introduction, the authors encourage readers to follow along by installing GIMP on a local machine. Installation instructions can be found in Appendix E (which arguably should be the first appendix, to get readers started with a local installation). The book is based upon the most recent stable version of GIMP, namely 2.8, which reportedly introduced significant improvements over earlier versions.
As one might expect, the first chapter introduces the basics of the GIMP user interface, explaining how to find and open images, use the menu system in the main image dock, and perform basic editing operations, such as resizing and cropping. It also presents some essential concepts in GIMP — filters, layers, and drawing tools — and then discusses the use of a tablet in conjunction with GIMP. The next six chapters each focus on a major category of image work: photo retouching, drawing and illustration, logos and textures, composite photography, animation, and image preprocessing. The last chapter in the group covers utilizing GIMP for crafting the visual design of a website. The only problem I found in the narrative is the inconsistency in terminology, primarily the references to something as a "dock" on some occasions, and other times as a "window"; also, the "multi-dialog window" (page 4) is later called the "multi-docks window" (page 18). Nonetheless, the prose is straightforward and concise; there is a lot of information contained in each section. Consequently, anyone reading these tutorial chapters should take them at a modest pace, and frequently compare the authors' narrative and one's understanding of it with the screenshots and/or one's own results if following along (a practice I strongly recommend for this particular book, so one will better internalize the broad ideas as well as the details).
Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, whose questions tend to be much more open-ended and difficult than those normally found in technical books. In fact, readers may be frustrated how some of the exercises challenge one to perform task completely unmentioned in the corresponding chapter. For instance, the very first one in the book, Exercise 1.1 (page 24), asks the reader to build a new dock with dialogs, even though at no point in the chapter was the reader told how to do anything remotely like this. Appendix B contains tips for a minority of the exercises.
The bulk of the book, "Part II — Reference," offers almost 400 pages of details on every aspect of GIMP: the user interface, its displays, layers, colors, selections, masks, drawing tools, transformation tools, filters, animation tools, scanning and printing images, image formats, scripts and plug-ins, and other methods of customizing the application — with each chapter starting with the basics. All of the information is terrific, but the thoughtful reader may wonder why the book begins with advanced topics — such as photo retouching, composite photography, animation, and website design — and later presents the detailed explanations of all the aforementioned aspects of using GIMP. It seems to me that it would have been better to present the Part II chapters first, and then present the advanced topics currently in Part I, except for what is now Chapter 1 ("Getting Started"), which would still be a fine way to begin the explication.
The third and final part contains half a dozen appendices, the first of which is a fascinating exploration of the science of human vision and the three main models of digital color representation. As noted earlier, the second appendix contains tips and hints for some of the chapter exercises. The third appendix is brief, but contains a wealth of online resources for anyone who would like to learn more about GIMP and its community. The next appendix contains a list of frequently asked questions and their answers, and is well worth reading. The fifth chapter explains how to install GIMP on computers running GNU/Linux, Unix, various Linux distros, Windows, and Mac OS X. The final appendix addresses batch processing of images, including the use of ImageMagick.
The production quality of this book is excellent (judging by the print copy kindly provided to me by No Starch Press for review). It was a smart choice on the part of the authors to request full-color images on every page, and the publisher's decision to do so, given the book's visual subject — even though it resulted in a heavier product (3.4 pounds).
Naturally, as a book discussing an image editor, this one makes extensive use of example photos and other images, which are extremely helpful to the reader. Only a few problems were evident; for instance, Figures 1.24 and 1.25 are so small that the cropping pointers are almost invisible. In some cases the descriptions or screenshots do not match what I saw when following along; for instance, on page 3, the author states that the three startup windows (Toolbox, Image, and multi-dialog) by default occupy the full width of the screen, which contradicts the screenshot in Figure 1.1, which shows the Image window at partial width.
The writing is generally clear and easy to follow, even though some of the phrasing is odd (e.g., "source text" to mean "source code"), perhaps because both authors are French. That could also account for the errata — for instance, "on [the] left" (page 15) and "its there" (page 22) — of which there were remarkably few for a book of this length.
If any reader is looking for a free and full-featured image-editing program, then by all means consider GIMP, as well as this outstanding tutorial and reference book.
Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.
You can purchase The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This title's 676 pages are organized into 22 chapters and six appendices. The first eight chapters compose "Part I — Learning GIMP"; the remaining chapters compose "Part II — Reference"; and the appendices compose the third part. In a brief but pleasant introduction, the authors encourage readers to follow along by installing GIMP on a local machine. Installation instructions can be found in Appendix E (which arguably should be the first appendix, to get readers started with a local installation). The book is based upon the most recent stable version of GIMP, namely 2.8, which reportedly introduced significant improvements over earlier versions.
As one might expect, the first chapter introduces the basics of the GIMP user interface, explaining how to find and open images, use the menu system in the main image dock, and perform basic editing operations, such as resizing and cropping. It also presents some essential concepts in GIMP — filters, layers, and drawing tools — and then discusses the use of a tablet in conjunction with GIMP. The next six chapters each focus on a major category of image work: photo retouching, drawing and illustration, logos and textures, composite photography, animation, and image preprocessing. The last chapter in the group covers utilizing GIMP for crafting the visual design of a website. The only problem I found in the narrative is the inconsistency in terminology, primarily the references to something as a "dock" on some occasions, and other times as a "window"; also, the "multi-dialog window" (page 4) is later called the "multi-docks window" (page 18). Nonetheless, the prose is straightforward and concise; there is a lot of information contained in each section. Consequently, anyone reading these tutorial chapters should take them at a modest pace, and frequently compare the authors' narrative and one's understanding of it with the screenshots and/or one's own results if following along (a practice I strongly recommend for this particular book, so one will better internalize the broad ideas as well as the details).
Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises, whose questions tend to be much more open-ended and difficult than those normally found in technical books. In fact, readers may be frustrated how some of the exercises challenge one to perform task completely unmentioned in the corresponding chapter. For instance, the very first one in the book, Exercise 1.1 (page 24), asks the reader to build a new dock with dialogs, even though at no point in the chapter was the reader told how to do anything remotely like this. Appendix B contains tips for a minority of the exercises.
The bulk of the book, "Part II — Reference," offers almost 400 pages of details on every aspect of GIMP: the user interface, its displays, layers, colors, selections, masks, drawing tools, transformation tools, filters, animation tools, scanning and printing images, image formats, scripts and plug-ins, and other methods of customizing the application — with each chapter starting with the basics. All of the information is terrific, but the thoughtful reader may wonder why the book begins with advanced topics — such as photo retouching, composite photography, animation, and website design — and later presents the detailed explanations of all the aforementioned aspects of using GIMP. It seems to me that it would have been better to present the Part II chapters first, and then present the advanced topics currently in Part I, except for what is now Chapter 1 ("Getting Started"), which would still be a fine way to begin the explication.
The third and final part contains half a dozen appendices, the first of which is a fascinating exploration of the science of human vision and the three main models of digital color representation. As noted earlier, the second appendix contains tips and hints for some of the chapter exercises. The third appendix is brief, but contains a wealth of online resources for anyone who would like to learn more about GIMP and its community. The next appendix contains a list of frequently asked questions and their answers, and is well worth reading. The fifth chapter explains how to install GIMP on computers running GNU/Linux, Unix, various Linux distros, Windows, and Mac OS X. The final appendix addresses batch processing of images, including the use of ImageMagick.
The production quality of this book is excellent (judging by the print copy kindly provided to me by No Starch Press for review). It was a smart choice on the part of the authors to request full-color images on every page, and the publisher's decision to do so, given the book's visual subject — even though it resulted in a heavier product (3.4 pounds).
Naturally, as a book discussing an image editor, this one makes extensive use of example photos and other images, which are extremely helpful to the reader. Only a few problems were evident; for instance, Figures 1.24 and 1.25 are so small that the cropping pointers are almost invisible. In some cases the descriptions or screenshots do not match what I saw when following along; for instance, on page 3, the author states that the three startup windows (Toolbox, Image, and multi-dialog) by default occupy the full width of the screen, which contradicts the screenshot in Figure 1.1, which shows the Image window at partial width.
The writing is generally clear and easy to follow, even though some of the phrasing is odd (e.g., "source text" to mean "source code"), perhaps because both authors are French. That could also account for the errata — for instance, "on [the] left" (page 15) and "its there" (page 22) — of which there were remarkably few for a book of this length.
If any reader is looking for a free and full-featured image-editing program, then by all means consider GIMP, as well as this outstanding tutorial and reference book.
Michael J. Ross is a freelance web developer and writer.
You can purchase The Book of GIMP: A Complete Guide to Nearly Everything 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 don't really have much to say about this review or the article, but I'd like to say, as someone who has been using GIMP extensively for the past six months, it's a really fantastic program and probably one of the best, most reliable, and most useful free/open source software packages I've used. I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
I picked up Photoshop ver. 4 when I was 15 or so. It was very intuitive. I learned it in a few hours.
However, PS is so bloated with features that I have a hard time learning what the new things are....or how they even "help" me. So no, it's not easy to learn PS these days. Too many icons and menus that's intimidating, imo. But because I've known PS, I can use it and know what tools are fundamental for my workflow.
The problem (or benefit) of PS is that it's used across many industries and it's not limited to photographers. 3D artists use it. Medical imaging professionals use it. And everything in between. I think that's why PS is bloated to help those outsiders "in". I mean, you can configure it to have different workspaces depending on your work field.
Anyways, it's no excuse to GIMP's lack of intuitiveness. Or rather, lack of focus. I see GIMP users as coders who want to do some web design on the side or fix something really quick to fit the website layout. Basically, web-related stuff. I wish GIMP would design the UI to cater to that demographic/ needs. Or maybe it already does, I'm just not the audience.
-an actual professional photographer who actually makes a living taking photos & maintains a studio.
GIMP 2.6 was very good, even on Windows. Then they decided to force GEGL through in preparation for adjustment layers and other functionality to mimick Photoshop features that had been missing for a long time. The trouble is the reimplementation of these features has made them MUCH slower and buggier. For instance where arbitrary rotation was no problem in 2.6 all of a sudden only discrete steps are allowed in 2.8 - if you pick something inbetween on rotation dialog it rounds it to the nearest discreet step it's willing to do, then it takes a lot longer to perform the operation than it did in 2.6.
GIMP is going the way of Firefox. "We know better, and it's free so you'll take these changes and you'll like them". FUCK!
I see this battle a lot, but it's inherently flawed. GIMP was never created to compete with photoshop, and photoshop used by industry professionals don't only use Ps. It's usually used in tandem with illustrator, lightroom, etc. Whatever tool is best needed for the job.
I used to use the Gimp, because it was free. I mainly used it for restoring old photos and for some postprocessing on my own digital photos. But then I discovered Lightroom. In the Gimp, fixing the white balance is a manual process using curves, but in Lightroom, you just point at a neutral color in the photo and it's all done for you.
In the Gimp, applying a graduated neutral density filter involves working with layers, but in Lightroom, you just click and drag to create two regions, then set the exposure individually for each.
Lightroom's cataloging and batch features make it easy to work with large numbers of images.
I still occasionally use the Gimp for things I can't do in Lightroom (most recently, to blur out a license plate using a mosaic effect), but for most of what I do, Lightroom is much easier and faster.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I used to be a Gimp basher on here when I had PS and Dreamweaver installed via a pirated copy. I used to be agaisn't piracy but after not working for awhile I used it to justify it. I decided to kick the habbit after going through contstant hacks and other potentially trojaned KMS servers.
Yeah PS is better, but those who say so pirate it 80% of the time! That is not really fair. If you had to actually pay $700 for it would it be worth your value then for its features?
Now since my computer is pirated free and I have my integrity back I have to say no.
In that economical sense NO, for 90% of users. Unless you are a professional marketer or photographer who makes thousands of dollars from it I have to say the GIMP is better. I do like the UI for paint.net better.
It is a shame PaintShop Pro is gone or rather gimped (no pun intended) after Corel bought it. That $79 program could do much photo editing plus create cool textures for websites. Corel got rid of the secondary feature so I can spend more money buying other crappy products they make to duplicate its lost functionality.
Value for dollar you can't beat the Gimp. The only difference is if you work for an advertising agency and get paid serious bucks for production material does PS provide better value.
http://saveie6.com/
This Book: GIMP 2.6 Cookbook. More to the point, it has interesting and useful artistic advice http://www.amazon.com/GIMP-cookbook-Juan-Manuel-Ferreyra/dp/1849512027 of course the gimp part is great. it shouldve been color printed though
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
Don't know about you guys but Photoshop CS2 is free from Adobe.
"criticize it as having an idiotic interface" would be a more realistic comment.
That and it's branding sucks, which is unfortunate. The person that chose the name "GIMP" should be hung drawn and quartered.
Yes we know what it stands for, but 99% of the new user base that could have used it doesn't. Why? Because he/she read the name first and passed on it, and is now using another image app. If the app can't take itself seriously, why would the user?
If you had to actually pay $700 for it would it be worth your value then for its features?
No, that's why they made Photoshop Elements that you can get for around $70 on Amazon for version 11.
Valentine's day is next week and my sex slave would love the book of gimps!
The section on masks is on page 119.
Photoshop is "trendy"? Since when?
Seriously though, the name has always gotten chuckles and odd looks to the non geek when mentioned. I remember once mentioning "shebang" whilst describing something to a coworker. Just as I mentioned it a women non-geek coworker passed by and gave me a look like "you perv". I have no idea who comes up with these names, but I say keep them coming. : p
Which, like, *NEVER* happens, right?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yeah PS is better, but those who say so pirate it 80% of the time! That is not really fair. If you had to actually pay $700 for it would it be worth your value then for its features?
Probably not, but when you can get Photoshop Elements for $99 (sometimes lower on sale) or Photoshop CS2 for free from Adobe's website, GIMP looks a lot less attractive.
"Bring out the gimp"
Or you can get CS2 for free. http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Valentine's day is next week and my sex slave would love the book of gimps!
The section on masks is on page 119.
And the Cage Transform is explained in the advanced user appendix. Beginners should stick to crops, and everyone should be familiar with the Healing Tool before starting.
Unconventionally, the safe work is "control-zed".
Are you hoping to lay 'er?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I use GIMP 2.8 , single-window. I've used Photoshop before also, and GIMP can most definitely be compared to Photoshop. There is one thing I dislike about GIMP, 'Save As'. Save As in GIMP saves the file in some strange format and doesn't allow me to actually 'Save As'. If I want to Save a Photo as a .jpeg, then I need to click 'Export'; I hate that.
The most important thing is what I use it for, Photo editing/Creation etc, and it suits my needs well. I don't care if Adobe has a version of Photoshop for $70, $70 is too much for what I want out of an Editor of this sort. Not that I could use Photoshop anyway because I use Linux, even though CS2 works OK in Wine, which I dislike.
Not quite free: The serial numbers below should only be used by customers who legitimately purchased CS2 or Acrobat 7 and need to maintain their current use of these products
"Should." Doesn't prohibit other use from what I can see.
OTOH, realistically speaking, it's an old version that they don't really want to keep supporting, and from what I understand, doesn't work on Windows past XP.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
If you're serious about color reproduction on magazines, packaging, and corporate brochures with trademarked colors (i.e. Coca Cola #pantone_red), then you will convert it to CMYK to ensure things don't get lost in translation. True, magazines will mainly accept jpg, but if you're anal about colors, you can talk to the art director about color fidelity and they'll accept images with CMYK profile - but only if you're willing to do some color processing for free in order to fit the layout's colors, and more importantly their schedule. Digital techs for commercial photographers proof their work in CMYK if they know it'll be printed, and adjust accordingly and hand over a custom profile for the print dept. to use.
Color fidelity doesn't stop at just getting a colorimeter for your monitor. But then again, it depends on your field. CMYK is very much alive. Just go to the cereal aisle and look at the packaging. Or any industry which takes their time and money to trademark their branding. I know fashion and some garments such as a basic towel from Bath Bed & Beyond will want the color on the towel from the catalog to *exactly* match the real towel's color.
The local printing business just assume you won't care about the color shift or that you'll probably have a greater tolerance. Your jpg will still be converted to CMYK because large scale printers still use them (plus spot colors like Pantone). If you want professional quality with high fidelity, you'll convert your file to CMYK yourself and do color adjustments under this workspace to ensure no sudden shifts or replacements for out-of-gamut colors, and again, hand over your profile.
Hell, go visit a professional graphic designer. I bet he has a Pantone color swatch. Guess what's written on them? CMYK approximate colors. He won't care about it when he shows the swatch or give the code to the printer, but a printer worth his/ her salt will follow the recipe printed on the swatch to the tee and ensure the printed color will match the swatch.
Your "industry" is just a different one with higher tolerances. It's not better or worse. There are still food and architecture photographers using large format cameras with tilt & shift controls on the lens & back, but there are those who are just fine with a 35mm with a very limited tilt& shift on the lens only and the clients are still fine with them. One will command a $10k gross fee and the other $2k. Guess which is what. Or heck, there's the photographer who uses a lens baby on a Canon rebel - he'll probably charge $100 or worse, work for free for a portfolio piece. Honestly, it depends on the client and their budget. Just because you don't care or use CMYK, doesn't mean others don't, but it's possible that those who care about CMYK will be marginalized if the client's audience doesn't care. But personally, if I can justify my fees with just a lens baby I'd love to do it. Much less work in post too, if I don't have to worry about color correction/ compensation.
On the other hand, I appreciate what GIMP is doing. Good luck on their efforts. I see it working for the back-end coders for a web design firm, but not in the other industries where files are widely shared across different departments and techs.
One last thing....when you submit your photos to a photo printer like ones at the corner drugstore, they project your jpg image on a photo sensitive paper which then gets run into a chemical bath. It takes about 7 minutes to go through the developer, bleach/ fix, and wash. Then another 2 minutes to dry. This is just for a single photo, but the photo can be up to 30x36, but most decent retail photo printers only go up to 16x20 and cut to size or queue your single 6x4 with other jobs so everything is printed on a single large sheet and then cut down to several 6x4.
Printing press - whether it's for magazines, brochures, or packaging - they need to fulfill several hundred to thousands of copies as fast as possible. They rely on CMYK and metal plates because it's fast and durable for these long runs. 7 minutes for only 1 image? That's a lifetime for those guys. Again, when you submit your jpg, they still convert it to CMYK themselves. Unless you speak out about color fidelity, these guys will just assume you don't care and will do their best to give you a pleasing and realistic result.
>I agree Gimp sucks
It's the layers. They are what makes GIMP suck.
An average user, expects that when they select a rectangle, plant the mouse in the middle and drag it, the contents move. This happens in photoshop. It sometimes happens in GIMP, but usually not. This is something to do with layers, it is massively annoying and it is the barrier to entry that leaves most people saying GIMP sucks.
If I encounter this non functionality, I can usually drill through some menus and find something to 'merge layers' so they behave like the bitmap they are supposed to behave like. But most people don't manage to do that and give up.
It is inexcusable that when you import a jpeg picture it comes in as more than one layer and GIMPs tools then interact with a different invisible layer, frustrating the user trying to edit the image.
That is why GIMP sucks. If they fixed the layer interface, GIMP would not suck. I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy designing chips to fork GIMP and fix it.'
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
As a "serious" amateur photographer I check out GIMP every year or so for three things:
- 16-bit image processing (yes, I know 8-bit is good enough for 99.9% of cases, but that's not good enough for me)
- proper and intuitive color management
- color-managed printing
Until all three are implemented properly, I can't and won't move from PS.16-bit has been promised for literally years, but last time I checked all three above were missing. Is it still the case?
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer