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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS Caution When editing a digital camera photo, it s a good idea to make a copy of the image first, and then edit the copy. Although you can use the GIMP s Save As dialog to save a file to a different name, it s easy to forget to do that, and overwrite your original image. Rescaling Modern digital cameras take beautiful photos in high resolution: 3, 4, 5 megapixels or even more. That s great, but higher resolution makes for larger files of at least half a megabyte each and perhaps much more. If you put images this big on the web, or send them via email, the recipients will not thank you. The solution is to scale the images: make them smaller. Don t confuse this with resizing: in the GIMP, resize means to change the size of the image without changing the contents. Resizing an image larger just creates more blank space around it (enlarging the frame), while resizing it smaller eliminates part of the image. To take the image contents and blow them up or shrink them down, scale is what you want. The Scale Image dialog (Figure 2-2) is accessed from the Image menu in the image window: Image . Scale Image. Figure 2-2. The Scale Image dialog The dialog has three sections. The most important section comes first: the new size (width and height) of the image. By default, size is given in pixels. This is a good choice, and you should use it unless you have a firm reason to do otherwise. The width and height are chained together, as discussed in the section Default Image in Chapter 1. You can type a new number into either the Width or Height field, then hit the Tab key or click in another field, and the other dimension will automatically update to keep the aspect ratio the ratio of width to height of the image unchanged. This prevents the contents of your photo from getting taller and skinnier, or shorter and fatter. Very convenient!
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CHAPTER 2 IMPROVING DIGITAL PHOTOS Once the GIMP is running, you can open additional images with the File . Open… dialog, which is shown in Figure 2-1. Figure 2-1. The GIMP s Open dialog The GIMP s Open dialog lists files and folders in the main frame of the dialog. Above the file area is a sequence of buttons representing the filesystem path to the currently chosen folder. Clicking on these buttons can move you up one level, or several. You can select more than one file at a time in the file list. Click on the first file, and then hold down the Shift key while clicking on another file to highlight a range of files; or hold the Control key down while clicking individual files to select them. The GIMP will open each file as a separate image. Try typing the first few letters of an image s name to jump to that image in the file list. Control+L will bring up a dialog that allows typing or pasting a file name. On Linux, typing certain characters (such as /) will cause this dialog to pop up without the need for Control+L. On the left side of the dialog is a list of bookmarks. You can double-click on a bookmark to jump directly there, or add the current folder to the bookmarks list by clicking the Add button. Underneath the file list is a menu for file type, initialized to All Images. You can use this menu to restrict the types of images you see in the dialog. Below the Add and Remove buttons is an expander for Select File Type. This is for unusual situations where the GIMP cannot detect the format of an image file automatically. It is seldom useful: if the GIMP can t detect an image file s type on its own, it usually means that the file has been damaged in some way, in which case this selector won t help. However, if you have an image that you think may have the wrong extension, it s worth a try. Besides the Open dialog, GIMP offers two more Open options in its File menu: Open Location, which allows you to paste a web location, and the Open Recent menu, which lists images you ve edited . . . well, recently. If the file you re looking for is no longer listed in the Open Recent menu, you may still find it in Document History at the bottom of the Open Recent menu.
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Improving Digital Photos CHAPTER 2 You have your shiny new digital camera, and it takes great pictures. But straight out of the camera, the photos are huge, and far too big to put on a website or email to friends. Maybe they have other problems, too, which you d like to correct before you show them to anyone. This chapter will explore some of the most common ways you can use the GIMP to improve your digital photos and share them with the world. It will cover the following: Opening files Rescaling Saving files Cropping Brightening and darkening Rotating Sharpening Fixing red-eye Opening Files The first step in editing any image is to open it. In Chapter 1, you saw that you can drag an image from a web browser or file manager to the GIMP s Toolbox window to open it. In addition, you can drag one or more images to the GIMP s desktop icon, if you have one, or simply run GIMP from the command line: gimp file1.jpg file2.jpg . . . Caution Some of these suggestions, including drag and drop, may not work properly on the Macintosh version of the GIMP. On a Mac, your best bet is to drag files onto the GIMP icon in the Dock.
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP Figure 1-22. Wilber visits Chaco Canyon That s all there is to it! Now you can invite Wilber (or any other character you like) along on your next vacation. Summary At this point, you should have a basic understanding of the GIMP s windows, menus, and preferences. You ve seen how to combine two images in a simple GIMP project, and perhaps you ve spent some time playing with some of the GIMP s built-in filters and plug-ins. Now let s move on to the details of image editing and explore how to make digital photographs look better.
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP Tip When you re inserting a character like Wilber into another image, you ll usually want the Wilber image to have a transparent background, so you don t end up with a white square around the image you inserted. You ll learn more about ways to make a colored background transparent in Chapter 5. For now, just choose an image in GIF or PNG format that already has a transparent background. Fortunately most of the Wilber images on the GIMP website will work fine. If you have your Layers dialog open, you may notice the new layer has appeared. If not, don t worry about it; we ll talk about layers in Chapter 3. The yellow-and-black square around Wilber is the layer boundary: it shows the size of the layer. It s not really part of the image, and will not be visible to anyone else. Wilber appears in the middle of the image, which probably isn t where you want him. In my Chaco Canyon image, I want Wilber s head to appear in the window. To move a layer, select the Move tool from the Toolbox window (Figure 1-21). Figure 1-21. The Move tool With the Move tool selected, you can drag a layer around with your mouse to position it exactly where you want it. Then save the image by choosing File . Save As… from the image window, and give it a file name, such as chaco-wilber.jpg. (You ll learn more about image file formats in Chapter 2.) If the GIMP pops up a dialog about JPG not handling transparency or layers, just click OK. Figure 1-22 shows the final image.
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP To jazz up the image, it s time to introduce a new character: Wilber (Figure 1-19). Wilber is the GIMP s mascot, drawn by GIMP contributor Tuomas Kuosmanen ( tigert ). Figure 1-19. Wilber, the GIMP mascot Images of Wilber can be found on the GIMP s website, http://www.gimp.org. Try dragging one of these images from your browser window into the image window you already opened. The image is added to the current window as a separate layer (Figure 1-20). If dragging doesn t work, save the image from your browser (right-clicking on the image will usually offer that option), and then drag it from your file manager into the GIMP image window. Figure 1-20. Chaco Canyon image with Wilber added
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP Folders The Folders preference category lets you configure where the GIMP stores its various preferences, plug-ins, brushes, and other information it needs. Normally, it s best to leave all of these at their default values. When you start adding collections of brushes and plug-ins, you can add folders to the lists here to make it easier to keep track of what s where. A First GIMP Project Enough exposition the only way to learn the GIMP is to edit images, so let s try making an image! Begin with any photo you like. I ll start with a vacation photo of some ancient ruins from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. You could use an image you already have in a file on your hard disk, and use the GIMP s File . Open… dialog to open it. But you may want to choose an image you re keeping on a website. The GIMP makes it especially easy to open an image that is on the web: just drag from the image in the browser window, and drop it onto GIMP s Toolbox window. Drop it anywhere over the tool buttons; it isn t important which button is underneath. When you drop the image (release the mouse button) over the Toolbox window, a New Image window containing the chosen image opens (Figure 1-18). At this point, you don t yet have a copy of the image on disk; that won t happen until you save the image and give it a file name. Figure 1-18. Image window showing Chaco Canyon ruins
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP Input Devices The Input Devices preferences control goodies such as graphics tablets, which you can use in addition to a regular mouse. If you have such a tablet, choose Configure Extended Input Devices to select which of your tablet s tools will be used by the GIMP. Tip The Save Settings button in this preferences pane is useful even if you don t have a graphics tablet. If you have a tool you use frequently in the GIMP, you can make the GIMP select that tool automatically whenever you start up by selecting the tool in the Toolbox and then clicking Save Input Device Settings Now. Input Controllers Here, you can configure the GIMP s behavior in response to hardware such as a mouse wheel when used in a GIMP image window. By default, the mouse wheel by itself scrolls up and down in the image window (assuming a scrollbar is present); holding the Shift key down while using the mouse wheel scrolls left and right. Holding the Control key down makes the mouse wheel zoom the image larger and smaller. Other combinations of key modifiers cause other behaviors: in this preferences pane, you can view the current settings, delete current settings, or add your own by clicking on a setting, such as Scroll Up (Shift+Control) then clicking the Edit button. This will bring up a dialog showing the actions you can trigger using the mouse wheel. Clicking on the Main Keyboard tab shows functions that are bound to the arrow keys on the keyboard. By default, the arrow keys scroll by a small amount, unless a tool is selected (such as the Move tool) in which the arrow keys do something else. Again, you can customize the behaviors in response to the arrow keys using the Edit button, or Delete a behavior if it bothers you. Window Management This group of preferences controls the behavior of some of the GIMP s windows. If you have problems such as windows not staying on top when you think they should, or windows starting up in the wrong position, try changing these preferences. Window Manager Hints controls whether the Toolbox and other docked dialogs such as the Layers dialog should be treated like dialogs and always kept above image windows, or treated like normal windows. Choosing Utility Window keeps the window always on top of every GIMP image window; Keep Above tries to keep it above every window on the system. Not every system may support all of these behaviors. Activate the focused image makes an image window active as soon as it receives focus: in other words, as soon as you click on it, tab to it, or sometimes just move the mouse over it. Moving to a new active window changes the behavior of other open dialogs, such as the Layers dialog, which can be inconvenient. Disable this preference if you have this problem. If you do disable Activate the focused image, you may find that you need a way to make a new image active without making any changes to it. An easy way to activate an image is to focus the image window, then hit the space bar. The remainder of the Window Management pane concerns the GIMP remembering its window positions.
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP brush, and can reflect the current tool in use. Most people will want to leave these at their default settings, except perhaps on a very slow machine. However, some people may prefer the crosshair since it doesn t get in the way of the image as much as the regular cursor. Image Windows: Appearance Remember all the parts of the image window, back in Figure 1-4? This preferences panel lets you configure which of those elements are shown. The padding mentioned on this screen is the blank space shown to either side of the image in an image window if you resize the window to be larger than needed for the image. You can also add or remove many of these items using the View menu inside the image window. Image Windows: Title and Status This panel controls what information is shown in the title bar and status bar areas of image windows. You can use regular text, choose from a selection of useful samples, or design your own title or status string by selecting from special variables providing information about the current image. Note You can change these settings interactively and watch what they do in the image window. For a list of these variables and how to use them, see the gimprc manual, discussed in Chapter 12. Display When the GIMP displays an image that is partly transparent, the transparent parts are indicated with a light gray and dark gray checkerboard, so it s easy to see where they are. It may be easiest to think of this as GIMP keeping a gray checkerboard behind the image you re working on. If the checkerboard annoys you, or if you re working on an image involving a gray checkerboard and can t tell it apart from GIMP s transparency indicator, you can change the way GIMP shows transparent areas here. Also included in the Display preferences is the GIMP s notion of your display s resolution (in dpi). Normally, the GIMP can get this information from your windowing system, but if you need to change it, check Manually and enter the resolution here. Notice that there s another chain link icon here linking the horizontal and vertical resolution values together, as discussed earlier in the Advanced Options section of the Default Image category. You can also choose Calibrate, which brings up a window with rulers, and which you can measure and compare to a real ruler to get your monitor s true resolution. You may be surprised at how far off your computer s idea of your monitor resolution is. Be careful not to scratch your screen with the ruler! (A cloth measuring tape or a piece of paper can work well here too.) Color Management These preferences let you specify color profiles matching particular monitors and printers. Most people should not need to change the color management preferences, but see Chapter 12 for more details on color management.
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CHAPTER 1 GET TO KNOW THE GIMP Default Grid Moving on past the New Image category, we find Default Grid. You can make the GIMP s grid visible from the View menu of an image window: View . Show Grid. Grids can be helpful if you need to draw a lot of horizontal and vertical lines with well-defined intersections. Image Windows The GIMP offers quite a few preferences that you can use to control the appearance and behavior of the GIMP s image windows (Figure 1-17). Use Dot for dot by default controls how windows are zoomed; you probably won t want to change it unless you regularly work with very high-resolution images intended for a printer. Marching ants speed controls the way selections are shown; you ll meet the marching ants a bit later, in Chapter 5. Figure 1-17. Image Windows preferences Zoom & Resize Behavior is a particularly useful group. Enabling these two preferences makes windows resize smaller or larger when you zoom in or out on the image. With the preferences disabled, the window will stay the same size when you zoom in or out, and will present scrollbars if needed. Initial zoom ratio, if set to 1:1, will always present images at full size when you first open them; otherwise, the GIMP will scale the image up or down to make it a comfortable size to fit on the screen. Mouse Cursors lets you change the appearance of the cursor as you move your mouse over different parts of an image. In particular, the cursor can show the size and shape of the current
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