GIMP Articles and Tutorials

A screen shot showing the layers of method 2 for creating the Orton effect in the GIMP.

This is a collection of GIMP articles and tutorials. They explain and explore how to use the GIMP and techniques I’ve played around with. Some are nuts and bolts and some are how you can use the GIMP to make digital art. I love the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (affectionately known as “the GIMP”). It’s an open-source, raster image processing program. To download the GIMP go to gimp.org.

Background

I started using the GIMP several years ago, because I was too cheap to buy Photoshop and I wanted to remove a background. Then, when Adobe went exclusively to the cloudy subscription model and I got a new computer and couldn’t load my already owned, older version of LightRoom I cut the cord entirely.

I recently got a new computer and made a video about how to load the open-source software that I use: the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), Raw Therapee and the resynthesizer and G’MIC plugins for the GIMP.

Raw file note

Because the GIMP does not read raw files, you must use something else for that. After a good bit of experimentation, I settled on using Raw Therapee along with the GIMP for all of my basic photo editing…and many creative techniques as well. I experimented with both Raw Therapee and DarkTable. Finally settling on Raw Therapee because I was routinely more satisfied with the results, and it is a bit less resource intensive (I don’t have a high end computer). You might have other preferences (DarkTable integrates a bit more seamlessly with the GIMP, and it has more extensive file management tools).

You can find Raw Therapee here. Raw Therapee can’t, at this time, be called from the GIMP, but you can go directly from Raw Therapee into the GIMP. However, I typically open files in Raw Therapee, work with them, then save them as .tif files in my Projects folder. This lets me use the files in other software that I occasionally use, such as Topaz Labs programs.

Plug-ins

I believe that there are two necessary plug-ins for the GIMP. The first is called the “Resynthesizer”. It does healing and smart extensions. This Post explains how to find and download the resynthesizer.

The second is G’mic. Which is a collection of over 500 filters, from basic sharpening to artistic to extremely sophisticated photo manipulation. You can download G’mic from here.

My posts about how to use the GIMP

Using Vignettes in the GIMP

Vignettes are a great tool for helping to guide the viewer’s eyes to the subject of your photos. In this post I demonstrate using vignettes in the GIMP. You can apply a vignette directly on a photo; as an overlay, by putting it on a separate layer; or apply it to the layer mask. Visually,…

Continue Reading Using Vignettes in the GIMP

Get going with the GIMP

The purpose of this is not to reinvent the wheel, there are thousands on YouTube about how to do these things, if you need more detail. This is just to give you enough information that you can quickly get going with the GIMP to be able to follow instructions in various how-to posts (like the…

Continue Reading Get going with the GIMP

© 2024 K.S. McCormick

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