June 1st, 2008
APPENDIX B INSTALLING THE GIMP ON WINDOWS 489 Of course, you ll need to unzip the files. You probably already have an unzip utility, but if you don t, there are many free programs available that will work. Each file should unzip to a folder. Inside each folder will be an installer. On many systems, expanding the zip file will automatically open the folder for you. Installing GTK+ Double-click on the installer in the GTK+ folder. It should be named something like gtk+[version].exe. You should see a welcome screen with a colorful GTK logo. After basking in the warm fuzzies, click on the Next button. A copy of the GNU General Public License will appear. It s interesting reading, all about your rights regarding free software. You re free to skip it, but you do have to click Next again. Up comes the usual Select Destination dialog. The installer will present you with a default location. Unless you have a very good reason and know exactly what you re doing, you should accept the default and, you guessed it, click Next again. Now you get to select which components get installed. The base component is not optional, but is listed for completeness. GTK-Wimp will make the GIMP look more like your other Windows apps, and is generally a good thing. Translations are not necessary for English speakers (they won t hurt anything besides taking up a little more disk space), but are a good idea for everyone else. Caution GTK-Wimp may rarely cause conflicts on some older systems. If you find the GIMP complaining about fonts a lot after installation, you might try reinstalling GTK without GTK-Wimp. So it s a good idea to remember where this screen is. If you leave GTK-Wimp checked, you ll be warned that it requires you to use only TrueType fonts in your Windows display. You probably already are using TrueType but if you find after installing that the fonts in GIMP windows look ugly, try changing your display fonts (usually Appearance in the Display Properties window). If that doesn t work, try reinstalling without GTK-Wimp. Oh, you ll have to dismiss the warning to continue the installation, of course. Time for the Moment Of Truth: the Ready To Install dialog. This shows a list of the options you ve chosen and what will happen when you take the plunge. Go for it! Click Install. After a brief display of The Bar That Moves Right (five seconds on my machine) you get the Finished! dialog, with a button that says Finish. Click it and you re done. If all went well, you now have GTK+ installed on your computer and otherwise nothing is different. It s usually well behaved, and you shouldn t even notice it s there. Time to get the GIMP working! Installing the GIMP Navigate to the gimp[version]setup folder you unzipped earlier. Double-click the installer. It should be named something like gimp[version].exe. Up comes another welcome screen, this time with cute GIMP graphics. After finding Wilber, click on the Next button.
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May 31st, 2008
488 APPENDIX B INSTALLING THE GIMP ON WINDOWS Note When you click the download links, you ll be presented with a choice of mirror sites. If this step or any other is disorienting, read at least the first parts of The Longer Version below. The Longer Version: Getting the GIMP The gimp.org website has a page on GIMP for Windows which discusses various aspects of installation in some detail. More detail than you probably want, really. Referencing this matter can be interesting and informative, but if you re in a hurry, it s probably best to skip right along to the download page. Like many free and open source projects, GIMP for Windows is hosted on SourceForge, a valuable resource for all computer owners. So point your favorite browser to: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/ and click on Stable. Normally, this page has two main sections, the Stable version download and Additional packages. Generally, the latter will not be needed and can safely be ignored. The first section will have a link to download the most recent versions of GTK+ and the GIMP for Windows. You ll need both. Click on the link under HTTP (it usually says Download ) for each program in turn. The order of download is unimportant, but the install order will matter. When you click the download link, you ll be referred to a page showing mirror sites on many continents. Note Mirrors are sites that host exact copies of files from a project or application s main site. This allows gimp.org and other project sites to offload some of the burden of distributing their products. Most major free and open source projects have mirror sites. It s usually best to choose the mirror in the region nearest you. In most browsers, this will initiate the download automatically. On the mirror sites page, click on the button next to the file size in the Download column. There s a natural tendency to click on the mirror s logo in the left-most column (Host), but that will take you to a website rather than delivering the file! Normally, both downloads add up to about 11MB. On completion, you should end up with two files in your download folder. One should look like gtk+[version]setup.zip, and the other gimp[version]setup.zip. Note The [version] notation is there because the GIMP can be updated at any time. So it s impossible to predict here exactly which version will be on the site by the time you read this. However, this book should be appropriate for all versions of GIMP, starting with 2.
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May 31st, 2008
Installing the GIMP on Windows APPENDIX B Coaxing the GIMP onto most Windows computers is a very simple two-step process: first download and install GTK+, and then download and install the GIMP. Both are available from the same site. Everything should go fine if you have Windows NT or later. GIMP 2.2 will work on Windows 98 and ME (though neither platform was officially supported), but the newer versions of GTK+, needed for GIMP 2.4, no longer work on these platforms. Windows 95 users may be able to use GIMP 2.0 (read on for details). Don t forget to read Appendix F (First Startup) after you re done with the installation. In this appendix, you ll find the following: The Quick Start Version Getting the GIMP for Windows Installing GTK+ Installing the GIMP Cleaning up The Quick Start Version 1. First, point your browser to: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html 2. Download GTK+ 2 for Windows (this is normally the first download link). 3. While you re there, download The Gimp for Windows (the second link). 4. Navigate to your download folder and double-click the gtk+[version]setup.zip. This will launch an installer. Follow the directions. 5. Double-click gimp[version]setup.zip and follow the directions again. It s probably best to let it install a desktop shortcut. 6. Double-click on the GIMP icon to start it (and see Appendix F, First Startup ).
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May 30th, 2008
486 APPENDIX A GETTING AND INSTALLING THE GIMP GIMP is a GTK+ application. That means its user interface menus, buttons, and so on is made using the GIMP ToolKit. GTK+ was originally developed in order to build the GIMP, but has since become well known on its own as the basis for hundreds of other cross-platform open source applications. If you don t already have GTK+, you ll need to install it: the installa tion instructions for each platform will discuss where to get it. On Unix-based systems (including Mac OS X and Linux), GIMP is also an X application: GTK+ uses the X Window System (sometimes called X11 since most systems use version 11) for drawing to the screen, creating windows, and other low-level operations. So on Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix systems, you ll need X in order to run the GIMP. X doesn t stand for anything except the next letter after W. (Seriously! X was the successor to a window system called W which was in use at MIT in 1984 when X was being designed.) One thing you shouldn t need is money. The GIMP is free software: free because you can get it without paying, and also because you re free to redistribute it or modify it. You can buy the GIMP from various sources, and sometimes these versions include extra goodies like an installer or a collection of cool brushes. But most of the time, you ll do just as well starting with the free version. IF THE GIMP IS FREE SOFTWARE, IS IT LEGAL FOR PEOPLE TO SELL IT? Yes. The GIMP is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allows anyone to distribute the software, and even to charge money for it. However, the GPL does insist that further redistribution be allowed (the seller can t prevent you from making copies and giving them out to your friends). Also, the source code for the program (the human-readable instructions that make the program work) must be included, or at least be made available. The GPL also requires that you receive a copy of the license itself along with the program, so you can learn about your rights to share the program, modify it, or contribute to the project. Where to Find the GIMP The GIMP project lives at http://gimp.org. There, you can find downloadable versions for several operating systems along with instructions on how to get the GIMP for even more systems. You can also find out how to build it yourself if you want to see the latest cutting-edge version. At gimp.org, you ll also find a substantial collection of documentation. There s a full user s manual, a large collection of tutorials, and information on GIMP s programming interfaces for anyone interested in writing scripts or plug-ins. You can sample a collection of mailing lists and an IRC channel where you can ask questions, volunteer to help, or just trade tips. Notes on the OS-specific Installation Appendixes The Mac and Windows appendixes have a Quick Start Version near the beginning. If you re fairly familiar with your system and software installation, you ll probably do fine with the Quick Start alone. However, if you hit a snag, just proceed to the more thorough explanation that follows. Most Linux and BSD users have it pretty easy, and most systems will already have the GIMP installed. Before you try installing, make sure you don t already have it! If you don t, Appendix D will get you on the right track. Time to get started!
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May 29th, 2008
Getting and Installing the GIMP APPENDIX A You ve decided to learn to edit images with the GIMP! But if it s not already on your computer, first you have to install it. You may have Windows, Linux, a Mac, or another UNIX system such as FreeBSD. All of them can run the GIMP, but each has a different installation method. First, read through this introduction to installation, and then proceed to the appropriate appendix for your system. But whatever you do, be sure to read through Appendix F ( First Startup ) at least once. Starting the GIMP for the first time can be a little daunting. It asks you a slew of questions for which you cannot possibly have reasonable answers. First Startup is brief and to the point. You ll be glad you read it. In this appendix, you ll learn about the following: Requirements Where to find the GIMP The next three appendixes are specific to various operating system types. Appendix B: Installing on Windows Appendix C: Installing on Mac Appendix D: Installing on Linux or Unix Since the GIMP is open source, you can compile a version tailored to your system. Appendix E: Building from Source And once your installation is finished, be absolutely certain to check out the final appendix: Appendix F: First Startup Requirements The GIMP is highly portable. It runs on most versions of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and quite a few versions of Unix. Whatever machine you re using can probably run the GIMP. It doesn t require an especially fast machine. However, if you want to work with large images, you ll find that adding more memory will help a lot. A faster processor won t hurt, of course.
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May 29th, 2008
CHAPTER 12 ADDITIONAL TOPICS 483 Deviant Art is a community of digital artists. It s not all GIMP users, but a number of GIMP artists hang out there. There s an enormous sampling of digital art to browse, discussion forums, and it s even possible to sell art. The website can be found at http://www.deviantart.com/. Then there are the Photoshop contests. Don t let the name put you off: you can use GIMP or any other program to enter. Photoshop contests are websites where participants create digital images according to a set of guidelines, and then everyone votes for the winners. Most often, the images are very entertaining. Even if you re not interested in entering a contest, it can be addictive to browse Photoshop contest sites. And entering the contests can be a great incentive to practice your GIMP skills. Some sites use a theme, like Extreme sports, and participants are free to create any image that illustrates the theme, such as someone juggling live tigers, or waterskiing on the back of a great white shark. Other sites provide an image, and the goal is to modify the image in some (usually humorous) way. Some contest sites are free to enter while others charge a small fee; some give prizes to the winners, others don t. A web search for photoshop contest should turn up several likely candidates. Summary and Conclusion That s it! You re on your own now. But you should have enough information to accomplish anything you want in the GIMP. You can read and understand your GIMP configuration files, and edit them when you need to make changes. You can print your GIMP creations (assuming you have a suitable printer) and make screen shots of your GIMP windows for writing your own tutorials. If you find a bug, you can track down the details and report it. If the skills you need for making an image aren t in this book, maybe they re covered in the GIMP User Manual on the GIMP website. Or maybe there s a tutorial to show you exactly what you need, either one of the official ones on gimp.org, or somewhere else on the web. Finally, you know some sources to look for raw images for your creations, images with appropriate licenses so that you can distribute your derived art. You ve explored some art sites that can give you inspiration, and you have places you can post your art when you have something to show off. The rest is just practice. The more you work with the GIMP, the easier it gets. Tasks that seemed impossibly confusing the first time you tried them (like making a selection with Paths) become second nature. You may have stayed away from plug-ins because you re not a programmer but eventually you may change your mind and decide to try writing or modifying one. You may have joined a mailing list or two in order to ask for help . . . and before long, you re the one helping other people. You may even decide some day to become a GIMP contributor, writing code or documentation or web pages. Proceed at your own pace, and work with the kinds of images that interest you most. The only rule is: Be sure to have fun!
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May 28th, 2008
482 CHAPTER 12 ADDITIONAL TOPICS The Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization launched by open source advocate Lawrence Lessig to enable the sharing of artistic works of all sorts, including images. You can read about the Creative Commons idea on their website, http://creativecommons.org/. The website lets you search for images you can use in your own projects. Some images have restrictions; others are completely free for any use. You can specify what sort of license you need when you search for images. If you use images from Creative Commons (or even if you don t), consider making your resulting art available for other people to use. The more people who contribute to the commons, the better it works for everyone. Burning Well is a repository for public-domain images: images that can be used without any restriction. The website is http://www.burningwell.org/. You can search for images by keyword, or browse images by category. There are over a thousand images, and some of them are very good. They may have exactly what you need. Stock.XCHNG is another free photo site. They have a large searchable collection of images organized by category, as well as forums for discussing photography at all levels of experience. The website is http://www.sxc.hu/. U.S. Government Sites The US government is an excellent source of images you can use without copyright worries. It is considered good manners to give credit where it s due, and mention the folks who did the work. See the specific copyright information on each site for more details. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has an excellent range of images of planets and other astronomical objects, as well as images of spacecraft. Some specific NASA image collections are found at the NSSDC Photo Gallery (a sort of NASA s Greatest Hits collection) at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) Planetary Photojournal at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html. And don t miss the NASA Image Of The Day Gallery at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/ imagegallery/. Or search for images by keyword at NIX: http://nix.nasa.gov/. Finally, NASA has a website devoted to 70mm Hasselblad camera images taken by astronauts on lunar missions at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/. The US Fish and Wildlife Service offers photos of wildlife and related scenery at http://images.fws.gov/. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, has lots of good images at http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/. In addition to photographs of storms, coastlines, ships, and corals, they have collections for marine animals, space (atmospheric satellites), and other interesting topics. The National Park Service has huge collections of stunning scenic shots, as well as wildlife and cultural events related to the parks. The website is currently at http://photo.itc.nps.gov/ storage/images/index.html. If that changes, start at http://nps.gov and poke around. You ll find it. Art Sites and Imaging Contests You re armed to the teeth with GIMP techniques, and itching for an excuse to use them. Even more, you d like an audience to appreciate some of the funny images you re making. Where can you look for a community of like-minded people? The GIMP User Group, GUG, has already been mentioned. It s at http://gug.sunsite.dk/ and it s full of enthusiastic GIMP artists. Go to Gallery to see some of their work. If you have images to share, you can create your own gallery.
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May 27th, 2008
CHAPTER 12 ADDITIONAL TOPICS 481 Gathering this information can take time, but think about it this way: if you re hoping the developers will volunteer some of their free time to fix the bug, it can help a lot if you spend some of your own time making their jobs a little easier. If the problem only happens with certain images, it s very helpful if you can attach an image that the developers can use to reproduce the problem. (If they can t make it happen themselves, they won t be able to fix the bug.) If you can reduce your sample image to something relatively small and simple, that s ideal. To attach an image (or anything else besides text) to a GIMP bug, click on Create a New Attachment. If you re filing a new bug, you ll have to submit the basics of the bug first, and then go back to it and add the attachment. Bugzilla can be intimidating the first few times you use it. But don t let it scare you. If you ve found a GIMP bug, the developers want to hear about it so they can fix it. Finding Source Code at cvs.gnome.org The GIMP s source code is stored using the Concurrent Version System program, or CVS, on a machine called cvs.gnome.org. If you have CVS installed, you can check out the latest version of the GIMP the one the developers are working on at any time. The GIMP website has instructions on how to do that. But even if you don t have CVS, and don t want to download the entire GIMP source code (about 15MB), you can view specific files and their revision histories using the web interface to CVS: http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gimp/. You can click on folder names to navigate to those folders, or on file names to view the revision history of the file (all the changes that have been made to it recently). If you want to see the current contents of a file, you can click on View to get a pretty colorized version, or Download to get a raw copy of the file that you can save to your local disk. This is an easy way to get copies of plug-in source to use as a basis for your own plug-ins. Where to Find Freely Available Images Sometimes you need a photo for a project, and you just can t find anything quite right in your own collection. Darn it, I wish I had my own photograph of an erupting volcano, or of the Sphinx but my travel budget doesn t allow for either one. What can a poor GIMP user do? Look on the web, of course! The problem? Most images are copyrighted by the person who created them. It s not ethical or legal to use someone else s photographs in your own project without permission. If it s just for your own use, or for GIMP practice, you might be able to get away with it. But if it s an image you re planning to post on the web, distribute to other people, or especially if you re using it for any sort of money-making purpose, it s important to use images with copyrights that allow re-use. Fortunately, there s a movement to make more forms of information freely available, and several projects have been created to help people share their images. In some cases, the images are free for non-commercial use, but if you intend to make money with the image, you must contact the person who owns the copyright. Other images are free even for commercial use. In addition, quite a few US government agencies put their images in the public domain, meaning they are free to use for any purpose because the images have already been paid for with taxpayer money. Government sites can offer excellent images on quite a range of subjects, and you may not need to look any further.
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May 27th, 2008
480 CHAPTER 12 ADDITIONAL TOPICS You may be amazed by the long Products list. What are all those other products? GIMP shares its Bugzilla system with a project called Gnome, which includes GTK (the toolkit GIMP uses) as well as many other applications. The total number of programs covered by the Gnome bug database is huge, which is why it s important to select the GIMP Product and narrow the search to only GIMP bugs. Once you ve typed some keywords in the Summary and selected the GIMP project, you can click the Search button (to the right of the Summary; depending on your window size you may need to scroll right to see it). Or just hit the Enter key. You ll be taken to a page showing a list of GIMP bugs related to your keywords. If there are no bugs associated with those keywords, Bugzilla will say Zarro Boogs found. That was an overworked programmer s idea of a joke early in the development of Bugzilla, and unfortunately it stuck. You can always use the Back button in your browser to return to the search page and try a different set of keywords. If you re surprised to find Zarro Boogs, it might be worth clicking on the Show Advanced Options button and doing another search with all the Status options selected (Shift+click and Control+click in these lists will let you highlight multiple values). By default, Bugzilla searches only for bugs that are still Open. When a bug has been fixed in the current development version of GIMP, the bug is marked Resolved in Bugzilla, even though the version you re using may still have the bug. If you find an existing bug that s similar to yours, read it. If you want to be notified when the bug is fixed or when someone makes a comment, add your email address (the one you registered with Bugzilla) in the Add CC field. If you have more details, you can add them: Scroll down to Additional Comments and type in your information. When you re finished, click Commit. Reporting a new bug is slightly more complicated. When you go to bugzilla.gimp.org, you re presented with the bug-reporting form. Otherwise, click New. The most difficult part of bug reporting may be choosing the right Component. GIMP has quite a few components, such as Data, General, Help, Installer, Internationalization, Plug-ins, and User Interface. If one of these categories seems relevant to your bug, choose it. If you re not sure, it s safe to choose General; someone who knows more about the structure of GIMP can change that later. Be sure to specify the version of GIMP you re using. You can get that from Help . About, or by typing gimp –version (that s two minus signs before version ) at the command prompt. Don t forget to mention which platform (Windows, Linux, and so on) you re using. You can use Distribution/Version to clarify that: for instance, if you choose Windows for Operating System, you might type something like XP or 2000 in the Distribution/Version field. You can usually leave the Severity field set to Normal, unless you ve found a way to make GIMP crash, in which case you can use Critical. Don t overstate the severity of your bug to try to get the attention of developers. Try to be very specific about what you did, what you expected to see, and why it s a problem. Vague bugs saying things like Crop is broken will likely be closed or ignored. It s much better to create a very specific bug like The Zealous Crop plug-in ignores layer offsets, with a sample XCF image attached and a full description of what the plug-in does versus what you think it should do. If an error message was involved, write down the exact text of the error message; don t just paraphrase it. If you can t reproduce the bug in order to see the error message again if it s something that only happened once and never again the bug may not be worth reporting. Sometimes running GIMP from the command line will give you additional information about what s wrong, which you can then paste into a bug report.
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May 25th, 2008
CHAPTER 12 ADDITIONAL TOPICS 479 Reporting Bugs What if you re pretty sure you ve found a bug in GIMP? The GIMP s bug system is entirely open. Anyone can report a bug, or search for known bugs. The project uses a bug-tracking program known as Bugzilla, located at http://bugzilla.gimp.org. When you first go to GIMP s Bugzilla page, you will be presented with a login screen and a chance to create an account. You can search the bug system all you want without creating an account, but to file a new bug or add comments to an existing one, you ll need to register. That s so that the Bugzilla system can notify you by email if the bug is fixed, if a developer needs more information from you, or if anyone else adds a comment regarding your bug. It s a good idea to search Bugzilla before reporting a new bug. It may be that someone else has already discovered your bug and reported it. To do that, click on Search. Don t Panic! The Search page looks scary, but if you ignore most of the page and use only a couple of the fields, it s actually quite simple. First, you need some keywords for the bug you re looking for, just like you would for a web search. If you think you ve found a bug in the Zealous Crop plug-in, then searching for zealous crop is a good start (you don t need to worry about capitalization Bugzilla searches are case- insensitive). Then go to the Product field on the left side of the window and scroll down to find GIMP (Figure 12-8). Figure 12-8. The Bugzilla search page
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