im mer heiter

All of gimp

2012-01-23T04:34:00.000-08:00

GIMP Layers Tutorial

Preamble

If you've ended up here, I assume you are a novice with the GIMP and image manipulation programs generally. Everyone has to start somewhere, so why not here

I found that when I was learning to use GIMP, with no previous image manipulation experience, the eureka moment was when I understood what layers were and how one could have an effect on another. Once I'd grasped that, the rest just fell into place through experimentation. I hope the following tutorial does the same for you.

This tutorial has been updated for use with GIMP 2.6.

The basics

Having opened the GIMP for the first time you were probably presented with a few boxes (dialogues), of which you recognised maybe one or two (if any!). Do not despair and don't give up, just follow these instructions. Close all the boxes except for the main GIMP toolbox and the active image window.

Next open the Layers Dialogue, which can be found in the active image as follows

Windows » Dockable Dialogs » Layers

Arrange the main GIMP toolbox and the Layers Dialogue so that they are to one side of the screen, which gives you most of the desktop for your active image window.

A four layer example

The example below on the left shows an image comprising four layers. The image on the right shows theLayers Dialogue with all the layers that make up the image.

The second set of images show the same layers, with layer 3 brought up to the foreground. This is achieved by selecting layer 3 (the green layer) in the Layers Dialogue and then clicking the Up button to bring the layer to the top of the stack.

Note:

The layers have had some opacity added to them to make the example easier to understand, don't worry about what this is or how to do it yet, it's explained later.

Layers tutorial

Creating layers

The first thing I'll show you is an image that has two layers. If you want to create one to experiment with as this progresses follow these instructions. In the active image go to

File » New

This creates a new blank image.

Adjust the image to a reasonable size (200×200px) and click OK.

Duplicating the layer

You now have a 200×200px white image (white, assuming you opted for the default background colour). If you now look at the Layers Dialogue you will see this image is called Background.

Now go to the Duplicate Layer button in the Layers Dialogue and click for a duplicated layer, this will beBackground copy.

Choosing a layer colour

With the Background copy layer selected (highlighted) in the Layers Dialogue, go to the GIMP toolbox and double click on the Foreground Color button, which will open the Change Foreground Color tool.

In the HTML notation box type in FF0000 (this is the hexidecimal code for red) and then click OK.

Adding colour to the layers

In the active image window go to

Edit » Fill with FG Color

This will fill the Background copy layer with red.

In the Layers Dialogue click on the Background layer to select it.

Repeat the above process with the Background layer, making this layer blue or hexidecimal code 0000FF.

And then fill the Background layer with blue.

Ok that's the work over, the rest of this tutorial will just involve tweaking the two layers you have hopefully just created.

Layer order

When you look at the Layers Dialogue you can see the red & blue layers. The red layer is at the top of the stack, so that is the one that shows up in the image.

It goes up, it goes down

With the blue layer selected in the Layers Dialogue click the Up arrow. You will now see that the blue layer is at the top of the stack and consequently the image is blue.

Clicking the Down arrow in the Layers Dialogue will, as I'm sure you have gathered, move the blue layer back to the bottom of the stack.

Ok, all very interesting, but not very useful eh? Well you should now have a clear idea of what a layer actually is. And you will need to know that to start using the GIMP.

Opacity

Ok, it's back to your art classes at school now. If you mix red and blue what colour do you get? And you all answered purple I'm sure

So with our red & blue layers this is very easy to do. Select the top layer in the Layers Dialogue, for this exercise it doesn't matter if the top layer is the red or the blue.

Now adjust the Opacity slider in the Layers Dialogue, until it is at 50%. As you will see the image has now turned purple. So now you have used one layer to have an effect on the overall image.

Opacity is not transparency! Opacity is in fact the polar opposite, it achieves the same thing though. Initially your layer will have 100% opacity. If you slide the Opacity down to 0% the layer would be 100% transparent. Glad we've got that sorted

What is Gimp

2011-10-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.
In addition to detailed image retouching and free-form drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image editing tasks such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, photomontages combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create animated images in many formats such as GIF and MPEG through the Animation Plugin.
GIMP's product vision is that GIMP is a free software high-end graphics application for the editing and creation of original images, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.

why is photoshop better than gimp

2011-09-13T12:07:00.001-07:00

Digital photography has changed all of our lives and given us the ability to sit behind a computer monitor and be our own Ansel Adams with the post production. But it’s not that simple, there are several pieces of software to edit your photos with after you take them, the most well known being Photoshop. There is a clear cut rival to Photoshop called GIMP, an open source software that is very similar to Photoshop, and some say better.

Image by Rore

1. Starting with the most obvious and possibly most important, GIMP is free. Yes free, no charge, nada, zip, zero. Photoshop costs upwards of $700 for a single license! The old saying stays true, if it’s free it’s for me.
2. GIMP is a much smaller install, about 20x smaller then Photoshop. Not only does the install go much quicker, but it takes up far less hard drive making it the perfect image editing software for laptops and netbooks where hard drive space may be at a premium.
3. Photoshop is extremely resource intensive, it will run on older hardware but it’s not optimized to and will be sluggish and slow. GIMP on the other hand is amazingly fast and stable. It will install on nearly any hardware running Mac, Windows or even Unix!
4. Gimp is more user friendly. Photoshop was actually created as a piece of software intended for graphics and photographic editing, never just digital photo editing. Because of this it’s bloated with features and functions most photographs don’t want or need. The physical layout of the screen is similar to that of Photoshop, but is also customizable and flexible to fit your needs.
5. Open source architecture means anyone can modify the core code and develop plugins and new features, you don’t need to be approved by Adobes’ development team.
6. Batch processing through automated actions is far superior in GIMP. Because photographers often need to do repeatable actions to large groups of images, this feature alone is worth its weight in gold.
7. Open, edit and save Photoshop’s native PSD file format with GIMP. If you’re editing for someone else, it doesn’t matter if they’ve started the job in Photoshop because GIMP can handle the file format.
8. Free upgrades. Not only is GIMP free to download, install and use, upgrades are free! Photoshop upgrades, which happen on average every 12-18 months can cost as much as $200, on top of the original purchase price!
9. Replicate the look and feel of Photoshop and its keyboard shortcuts in GIMP. There are several tutorial sites aimed at skinning and rearranging GIMP to fully replicate the Photoshop layout if that’s what you are used to using.
10. GIMP goes portable! As if the install of GIMP wasn’t small enough already, a portable version is available to load on your USB thumb drive to take on the go and edit programs on anyone’s computer, anywhere!
With all the benefits and upsides to GIMP and the free price of the software, it’s most definitely worth looking at when searching for an image editing software.

Click Here: 10 Reasons GIMP is Better Than Photoshop

Welcome to this blog!!

2011-09-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

We speck in this blog near Photoshop & 3d tutorials