CHAPTER 7 FILTERS AND (Web hosting account) EFFECTS 257 There
CHAPTER 7 FILTERS AND EFFECTS 257 There are quite a few tools that don t show up in the Toolbox. You can always get to them from the Tools menu in the image window, or from the File . Dialogs . Tools dialog in the Toolbox, which gives a list of every tool the GIMP knows about. And you can customize your Toolbox, adding or hiding tools using the eye icon in this dialog. If you forget the difference between tools and plug-ins, don t worry about it. You can use all these filters just fine without remembering which is which. This chapter won t cover the filters in the Colors menu; you ve already used some of them, and you ll meet the rest in Chapter 8. The Filters Menu The Filters menu is where most GIMP plug-ins live. It s a collection of fun functions that can transform your image in all sorts of different ways. You can spend hours exploring and barely scratch the surface. The first two items in the Filters menu let you repeat the last filter operation. Repeat will run whichever filter you ran last (the menu entry will change to tell you what that filter was, e.g., Repeat Gaussian Blur ) with the same settings you used last time. Re-Show will bring up the dialog for that filter, so that you can run the same filter but use different parameters this time around. (Not every filter shows up in the Repeat menus, though; scripts usually don t.) Reset all Filters lets you back up all the filter dialogs to their default values. Normally, if you run a filter and change any of its parameters from the default, GIMP will remember those settings for the duration of the session. Unfortunately, there s no way to reset just a single plug-in back to its default values, though a tool can be reset with the Reset to default values button in the Tool Options dialog. The rest of the Filters menu is divided up into functional areas. Remember, if you re using a version prior to 2.4 and a function isn t where you expect it to be, try looking under the Script-Fu menu. Tip In many of these filters, the dialog will show you a preview region. But you may not actually see a preview unless you check the Preview checkbox underneath. If you re ever in doubt about whether you re seeing a live preview, look for a box marked Preview. With any luck, in some future version of the GIMP it will be possible to say Always preview. Blur You learned about Blur and the very useful Gaussian Blur in Chapter 6. But there are several other ways to blur an image. Motion Blur is the most interesting (Figure 7-1). It blurs only in one direction (specified by Angle) to give an impression of motion.
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