Post by Tela on Nov 4, 2011 16:31:47 GMT -5
I just installed the new GIMP 2.6.10. When it opens, the working window is shrunken. Click the open window icon on the top right to get the window all the way opened. Now, move the toolbox down a little so you can see the menu.
I need to set up a few other things, too. I want to see a History of the changes that I make to my picture. Go to Window> Dockable Dialogs and click Undo History. Now, you can undo changes that you make very easily. Go back to Window> Dockable Dialogs and click Layers. This will allow us to see and select layers. Move these above and below each other, to the right side of the window.
Go to File> Open and choose a file to open. If you get a dialog box, just say IMPORT. Also, if it is a TIFF image, you will have a choice to open layers or image- open image only, this will may give you two images, one smaller than the other. Close the small one. You can drag an image in, too. Or, you can drag an image to your taskbar where the Gimp program is open. Drag to the taskbar, hold a second and Gimp will pop up, then let go of the image.
Depending on the size of your image, you may need to adjust your view of the image in the window. Go to VIEW in the top menu and select "fit image to window". That's usually best.
Now, to crop. Gimp is kind of convoluted about something so simple! Choose from your Toolbox, the thing that looks like an exacto blade. It is next to the square with arrows on each side. 3rd down, 2nd from the left. Mouse over this and it should say crop. Click it. See the box pop up under your toolbox? Those are the parameters you can set. For a square box check Fixed : Aspect Ratio. Under that box will be another that has the size of your image. Change that to 1:1. Now, your crop will be constrained to a square. Draw out a box on your picture. You can move the box by placing your tool inside the box- click/hold and move. When it is where you want it, let go of the mouse. If you're happy, hit enter.
Notice in your History palette on the right, you now have an entry for crop. Click Base image, above it, and your cropping goes away. Click crop again and it's back. This is the easiest way to undo changes that you make.
My image is still huge! I have to resize it to something more manageable. Go to Image> Scale Image. Here we can change the size of the image. I am going to work with inches. Change the first box to inches where it says pixels. Now, type in 5.25 and click the chain looking thing next to the two boxes. This keeps the proportions the same. I have a square box so clicking this will fill in the other box. In the top resolution box, type in 96 and click the chain again. Now, the square will be 5.25 inches and the pixels per inch (resolution) will be 96 which is good for the web. Click Scale.
Type the number 1, to resize your photo to fit the screen at 100%.
Ok, now to the fun stuff! Go to Colors at the top and then down to Levels. This opens a new dialog box. You see that map looking thing? That's a histogram. You can do a lot with it, but we don't need to. See the slider just underneath it? That's what we want. What you want to do, is grab the right triangle and move it to the center to lighten a photo. On the left is the slider for dark or black. In the middle is the one for gray or midtones. Try sliding those around a little at a time to adjust your picture. If you get way off track, click reset at the bottom and start again. Use these settings to enhance your photo, but be careful not to misrepresent what's IN the photo. Once you are happy with the changes, click ok. Now, wasn't that easy?
Another small tweak to do in addition to levels is to adjust the contrast. Go to Color Tools and then Brightness-Contrast. Levels does a good job of this, this step is just icing on the cake. On the Contrast slider, go to the right to 2 or 3. Keep playing with it till you are happy and then click OK.
You have just edited your first photo! Aren't you proud of yourself? Now put your name on it. Go to the toolbox and click the big "A". You see the choices that popped up? Choose a font, size and color- ignore the rest for now. Click on your image and start to type, a little useless box pops up to show you what you have typed. You can move your writing around, too. Just grab, hold and move it. The lines around the text won't be on your final image- it is just there for editing purposes. If you want to change the size, color or font just double click the color box or font box. To change the font size just change it in the box and watch it change as you do. It may "grow" out of the bounding box, but you can grab the box and resize it.
You notice on the right hand side that the layers palette now has two things in it- background (your picture) and a text layer. To edit the text layer again, you will have to select it again.
Select the background in your layers pallette. Go to Filters and then Enhance. Click on Unsharp Mask. You will see a window with your image, Radius, Amount, Threshold. I don't use threshold, but you can play with that, too. Click on your thumbnail image. You can move it around to where you want to. When you click it, it also reverts to the original picture. You can see your changes, too, by clicking and unclicking the checkbox for preview. Try starting with a radius of 2-5 and amount .30. When you are satisfied with your changes select OK. Use this sparingly, too much looks really bad.
We have 2 layers that we want to make into one and save. Go to Image and down to Flatten Image, click it. You now have 1 layer.
Go to File, Save as. Change the name and/or the file type and where you want to save it. Click Save. Leave the quality on high.
Now, we want a version that is optimized for the web. Save the file again as a jpg. This time, in the dialog box that pops up click preview image and move the Quality slider around till you get the smallest size with the best looking image and save.
There is also a plug in for this. This link has the plug ins for all systems. registry.gimp.org/node/33 Close Gimp first. Download the correct version. Unzip it, find the .exe, copy it and paste it into your Gimp plug in folder. This folder is in different places according to your system, but look in your program files under Gimp first. Check the folders in there for a plug in folder. Reopen Gimp and you should find it under File. The plug in is great and I recommend it. It gives a better preview and is easier to use. It also has a handy "strip exif" which I wish PS had. This takes all the metadata out of your picture. before you put it online.
Hopefully, this was helpful to you. I don't use Gimp much, but maybe I can answer a few easy questions.
And, remember Google is your friend. There are a lot of free tutes and info online.
I need to set up a few other things, too. I want to see a History of the changes that I make to my picture. Go to Window> Dockable Dialogs and click Undo History. Now, you can undo changes that you make very easily. Go back to Window> Dockable Dialogs and click Layers. This will allow us to see and select layers. Move these above and below each other, to the right side of the window.
Go to File> Open and choose a file to open. If you get a dialog box, just say IMPORT. Also, if it is a TIFF image, you will have a choice to open layers or image- open image only, this will may give you two images, one smaller than the other. Close the small one. You can drag an image in, too. Or, you can drag an image to your taskbar where the Gimp program is open. Drag to the taskbar, hold a second and Gimp will pop up, then let go of the image.
Depending on the size of your image, you may need to adjust your view of the image in the window. Go to VIEW in the top menu and select "fit image to window". That's usually best.
Now, to crop. Gimp is kind of convoluted about something so simple! Choose from your Toolbox, the thing that looks like an exacto blade. It is next to the square with arrows on each side. 3rd down, 2nd from the left. Mouse over this and it should say crop. Click it. See the box pop up under your toolbox? Those are the parameters you can set. For a square box check Fixed : Aspect Ratio. Under that box will be another that has the size of your image. Change that to 1:1. Now, your crop will be constrained to a square. Draw out a box on your picture. You can move the box by placing your tool inside the box- click/hold and move. When it is where you want it, let go of the mouse. If you're happy, hit enter.
Notice in your History palette on the right, you now have an entry for crop. Click Base image, above it, and your cropping goes away. Click crop again and it's back. This is the easiest way to undo changes that you make.
My image is still huge! I have to resize it to something more manageable. Go to Image> Scale Image. Here we can change the size of the image. I am going to work with inches. Change the first box to inches where it says pixels. Now, type in 5.25 and click the chain looking thing next to the two boxes. This keeps the proportions the same. I have a square box so clicking this will fill in the other box. In the top resolution box, type in 96 and click the chain again. Now, the square will be 5.25 inches and the pixels per inch (resolution) will be 96 which is good for the web. Click Scale.
Type the number 1, to resize your photo to fit the screen at 100%.
Ok, now to the fun stuff! Go to Colors at the top and then down to Levels. This opens a new dialog box. You see that map looking thing? That's a histogram. You can do a lot with it, but we don't need to. See the slider just underneath it? That's what we want. What you want to do, is grab the right triangle and move it to the center to lighten a photo. On the left is the slider for dark or black. In the middle is the one for gray or midtones. Try sliding those around a little at a time to adjust your picture. If you get way off track, click reset at the bottom and start again. Use these settings to enhance your photo, but be careful not to misrepresent what's IN the photo. Once you are happy with the changes, click ok. Now, wasn't that easy?
Another small tweak to do in addition to levels is to adjust the contrast. Go to Color Tools and then Brightness-Contrast. Levels does a good job of this, this step is just icing on the cake. On the Contrast slider, go to the right to 2 or 3. Keep playing with it till you are happy and then click OK.
You have just edited your first photo! Aren't you proud of yourself? Now put your name on it. Go to the toolbox and click the big "A". You see the choices that popped up? Choose a font, size and color- ignore the rest for now. Click on your image and start to type, a little useless box pops up to show you what you have typed. You can move your writing around, too. Just grab, hold and move it. The lines around the text won't be on your final image- it is just there for editing purposes. If you want to change the size, color or font just double click the color box or font box. To change the font size just change it in the box and watch it change as you do. It may "grow" out of the bounding box, but you can grab the box and resize it.
You notice on the right hand side that the layers palette now has two things in it- background (your picture) and a text layer. To edit the text layer again, you will have to select it again.
Select the background in your layers pallette. Go to Filters and then Enhance. Click on Unsharp Mask. You will see a window with your image, Radius, Amount, Threshold. I don't use threshold, but you can play with that, too. Click on your thumbnail image. You can move it around to where you want to. When you click it, it also reverts to the original picture. You can see your changes, too, by clicking and unclicking the checkbox for preview. Try starting with a radius of 2-5 and amount .30. When you are satisfied with your changes select OK. Use this sparingly, too much looks really bad.
We have 2 layers that we want to make into one and save. Go to Image and down to Flatten Image, click it. You now have 1 layer.
Go to File, Save as. Change the name and/or the file type and where you want to save it. Click Save. Leave the quality on high.
Now, we want a version that is optimized for the web. Save the file again as a jpg. This time, in the dialog box that pops up click preview image and move the Quality slider around till you get the smallest size with the best looking image and save.
There is also a plug in for this. This link has the plug ins for all systems. registry.gimp.org/node/33 Close Gimp first. Download the correct version. Unzip it, find the .exe, copy it and paste it into your Gimp plug in folder. This folder is in different places according to your system, but look in your program files under Gimp first. Check the folders in there for a plug in folder. Reopen Gimp and you should find it under File. The plug in is great and I recommend it. It gives a better preview and is easier to use. It also has a handy "strip exif" which I wish PS had. This takes all the metadata out of your picture. before you put it online.
Hopefully, this was helpful to you. I don't use Gimp much, but maybe I can answer a few easy questions.
And, remember Google is your friend. There are a lot of free tutes and info online.
