[TriLUG] OT looking for Gimp book recommendation

[William Sutton]

I recall having many of the same frustrations when I first started trying 
to use Gimp.  Documentation wasn't particularly good then, and as far as I 
know hasn't gotten any better.

What I ended up doing was playing around with it to see what it did.  I 
know that isn't very helpful, so let me try to provide some hints based on 
what my 2.0 Gimp installation does (for the record I really want to go 
back to 1.x, for various frustration reasons, mostly having to do with 
zoom in/out).

When you first start up Gimp, you will probably see 3 windows.  One will 
have a bunch of buttons, a foreground/background color picker, and a 
brush/pattern/gradient picker.  Another will have various tool options 
(default is for rectangular select).  The third will be a layer window.

The tool options and layer windows will be context sensitive to your 
current canvas window, which I presume you have at least a little 
experience with on your raw plugin converter.  Soooo...open a canvas 
window by doing File|New.  When the dialog comes up, set the width/height 
as desired.  Leave image type as RGB (unless you like drawing in 
greyscale...I don't).  For Fill Type, select "Transparent".  Set the image 
comment if you like, then hit OK.

You now have a transparent canvas window.  If you do <shift>+<number 
row plus> (don't use keypad plus), you can zoom in.  If you do 
<number row minus>, it will zoom out.  (Aside:  in gimp 1.x, you didn't 
have to <shift> the <plus>.  Having to do so is a major pain in the back 
side, not to mention completely opposite of what it used to be).

If you right click inside the window, you will observe a number of context 
menus, which correspond to the menus at the top of the canvas window (I 
assume they added the window menus for people who couldn't figure out the 
context menus....).

Now then, the menus that you're probably interested in are Image, Layer, 
and Filters.  Image|Mode gives you the option of RGB/Indexed/Greyscale.  
Image|Merge Visible Layers allows you to merge your image (<CTRL>+<M>).

Layer|New Layer allows you to create a blank layer with fill type (e.g., 
colorized or transparent) and size.  Layer|Duplicate Layer makes a copy of 
the current layer.  Layer|Delete Layer removes the current layer.

Remember, too, that <CTRL>+<Z> will perform several iterations of undo.

Layer|Colors provides Color Brightness/Saturation/Contrast/etc.

Filters gives you access to things like Gaussian blur, motion blur, 
tileable blur, bump mapping, etc.  I suggest you play around with the 
various options.  I can provide some specific assistance on those items if 
you like as I have become quite adept :)

Hopefully that's a good get-started primer.  You can see some of what I'm 
capable of at http://free.house.cx/~william/bg-smithing.shtml (also what 
Gimp itself can do, and I'm still not a Gimp expert).

William


On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, Joseph Mack wrote:

> Having purchased a digital camera, I realise I need gimp. 
> So far I've only used gimp to convert Cannon raw format
> to jpg using a plugin I downloaded. I'd like to do color
> balance, merging frames, and compressing/expanding 
> exposure (at least).
> 
> The gimp books at
> 
> http://www.gimp.org/books/
> 
> are from 2001 or earlier and are older than gimp_v2.x. Is this a problem?
> 
> "Grokking the GIMP" says its for advanced users. While
> I may become one eventually, at this stage I'm more intested
> in getting the basics down.
> 
> Thanks Joe
>