This and other title images
Newer stuff is above older stuff.
- September 26:
- Updated Ingo's addresses.
- September 25:
- Added pointer to Peter Kirch's page.
- Addded pointer to Blaise R. Camp's page.
- August 26:
- Added pointer to Simon Janes's page.
- August 19:
- Added pointer to John Beale's page.
- August 13:
- Changed the filename of this page from el-the-gimp.html to
index.html. I hope this makes it easier to access :) I have kept a
link with the old name, so that hopefully no one will have to change
any pointers.
To keep things short:
- It is the General Image Manipulation Program.
- It is free software, released under the FSF's General Public
License (the GPL).
- It is just what many people who do painting and image processing
under UNIX need.
- It is cool.
You can visit The Gimp's
home page for more details.
I have prepared a nice
screenshot of The Gimp in action. The platform used was a no-name
486DX2/66 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 1 MB CL/GD5420 video card, running Linux
1.2.13. You can download the
small version (172 KB) or the
big full-sized version (890 KB (yikes!)).
If you have a Gimp-related home page or know of one that is not listed
here, please let me
know and I'll add it to this list.
Main Gimp site
- The Gimp's home page,
of course. Here you can download the source code for The Gimp, as
well as precompiled binaries for several platforms (including i386
Linux, Solaris, SunOS, HP/UX, IRIX,
etc.).
- The Gimp's FTP site
has a directory with some very neat
plug-ins
that do not come with the standard distribution.
People's pages
Gimp mailing lists
- There are several mailing lists for The Gimp users and
developers. The lists are as follows:
- gimp-user - For the everyday user. Here you will find
tips for doing cool effects, user questions, etc.
- gimp-developer - For plug-in developers and `core' program
developers. Here you will find patches to the source code and
discussion about The Gimp development in general.
- gimp-announce - Everyone should be subscribed to at least
this list, since it is where announcements of new plug-ins and
features are made.
To subscribe to any of these lists, send mail to
majordomo@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu
and put the string
subscribe some-list yourname@blah.com
in the message body, substituting "some-list" for the name of the list
you want to subscribe to. To post messages to a list, send mail to
some-list@scam.xcf.berkeley.edu.
- Raph Levien has set up an
archive of all the Gimp mailing lists. This should be useful to
people who want to browse past discussions. It can be accessed from
here.
- Jason Garman is
archiving the gimp-user mailing list described just above. You can
access this archive from
here.
My own stuff
- You can use my version of .gimprc for your
own setup. It contains entries for almost all the available plug-ins,
and it is (I think) a bit better organized than the default .gimprc
that comes with The Gimp's distribution. Please note that it may need
some minor tweaking to accomodate your settings, paths, etc.
I have begun writing some (hopefully) useful tutorials for The Gimp.
Many people who have not used this kind of programs in the past have
trouble actually starting accomplishing things... perhaps this is
because the large number of features The Gimp has, and it is not so
easy to get the hang of combining them :)
Creating effects and images
Tweaking your Gimp setup
For developers only
Other people (Zach Beane, Mike Phillips, et al) have written many more
very fine tutorials. You may want to check out their pages (the links
are above).
Note: the thumbnail images may be too small to show enough detail!
Click here for
information on how to add new plug-ins to The Gimp.
-
Whirl 1.03 May 6 - Imagine
pressing your finger on the center of a round table covered with a
tablecloth. Then rotate your finger. This filter creates a whirlpool
on an image.
-
Pinch 1.03 May 6 - Imagine pressing
your finger against an elastic surface. That is pinching inwards.
Now push the elastic surface from behind, towards you. That is
pinching outwards.
-
Bump Map 1.05 May 23 - This
plug-in uses the algorithm described by John Schlag, "Fast Embossing
Effects on Raster Image Data" in Graphics Gems IV (ISBN
0-12-336155-9). It takes a grayscale image to be applied as a
bump-map to another image, producing a nice embossing effect. It has
some minor bugs, described in the source (with work-arounds).
-
Contrast Autostretch 1.04 May 23 - This
simple plug-in does an automatic contrast stretch. For each channel
in the image, it finds the minimum and maximum values... it uses those
values to stretch the individual histograms to the full contrast
range. For some images it may do just what you want; for others, it
may be total crap :)
-
De-interlace 1.01 May 6 - This
plug-in is used for the following... When an image is taken from a
video capture (f.i. a freeze-frame), sometimes only either the odd or
even fields get captured, resulting in an image which, line by line,
is data-black-data-black-etc. This plug-in does an interpolation
between the odd or even lines in an image to correct this.
-
Interpolate/Extrapolate 1.01 May 23 - This
plug-in is basically the same as the standard 'Blend' plug-in in that
it does a linear interpolation between two images. However, I/E does
not limit you with values in the range [0, 1]... you can use any value
you choose. This allows for much flexibility, since you can
accomplish very interesting effects with just a simple linear
interpolation. For tips on how to use this sort of plug-in, check the
Grafica Obscura
home page. As an interesting example, below I have an image and its
grayscale version. Extrapolating 'away' from the grayscale image
leads to an image with increased saturation.
-
Page Curl 0.5 June 5 - This
plug-in does the well-known `page curl' effect (a la KPT). It
is like when you curl one of the corners of a sheet of paper.
FIX: Many people are getting an "unexpected message" error from The
Gimp when they run the Page Curl plug-in. To fix this, do the
following. Open plug-ins/gimp.c and around line 635, there should be
a line that says
gimp_send (IMAGE_COLOR, sizeof (MsgColor), &color);
Well, right after that line add
gimp_wait_one();
If you do a "make" now, all the plug-ins should be recompiled. All
should work fine. This also fixes problems with other plug-ins which
request the foreground color from The Gimp.
-
My new structure for organising the plug-ins source directories is
available here. Download it and
tell me what you think.
Send comments, bug reports, and other stuff to
federico@nuclecu.unam.mx. That's Federico Mena Quintero.
This page last updated: 1996/09/26 20:22:31