Gimp Guide Mr Hall

5 Basic Parts The Main Toolbox Tool Options An Image Window Layers Dialog Brushes/Patterns/Gradients

What is Gimp? GNU Image Manipulation Program It is a free program for ; photo editing image composition image authoring

When you open up Gimp what does it look like…… To start with we are going to do is create a new file To do that right click the central area Then select -file-new

Stage 2 –create file Stage 3- Size 420 by 300 Then select -file-new To create a new image, from the main toolbox select File -> New The Create a New Image window will open, where you can select the height and width of the image, and resolution. The units for the height and width can be changed by clicking on the units menu (1) The resolution of the image can be changed by clicking (2), or selecting Advanced Options (3). For our purposes, we will use the default resolution of 420 x 300 pixels, 72 dpi, RGB color. Click OK (4) to open your new image window. Then select -file-new Stage 3- Size 420 by 300

Image Window Each image you open will be displayed in a separate window. 1 1. Image Menu From this menu you can access almost every action you can perform on an image, including those found in the main toolbox, tool options and other dialogs. 2 2. Ruler This is useful for creating guides to place components of your image accurately where you want them. By default, the units displayed are in pixels. This can be changed to inches or other units by clicking the units menu in the lower left corner (3). 4. Zoom Use this to zoom in and out of your image. 3 4 There are many other more advanced options available through the image window that will not be covered in this basic tutorial. Once you have mastered basic image editing techniques, you can learn more about these features using GIMP’s help key, F1.

Stage 5-open an existing image To open an existing image from file for editing, select File -> Open from the main toolbox. I am going to choose an image of my cat –Oscar To do that I need to locate the image I have saved on my desktop- see screenshot to right When you have found the desired image, click the Open button and it will open in a new image window. The Open Image will appear. A preview of the image will appear in the preview pane

Stage 6-cropping images-the crop tool Where we had got up to was we had set a size of our area and we had opened an image we had found –in this case my cat The next stage is to start using some of the tools in this case crop How to use the crop tool The crop tool can be used to remove unwanted areas from an image. Click on the crop tool in the main toolbox. When you select the crop tool it opens the tools options box

Stage 7-cropping images- Now we have the tool options box open Original photo In the image dialog, click and drag out a rectangular region. Release the mouse, and a crop dialog will appear. You can change the dimensions within the crop dialog, or re-click and drag until you have the portion selected you wish to keep. Click OK in the crop dialog. The unwanted region is now gone from your image. Cropped photo Final photo with crop

Stage 8- Select Hand-Drawn Regions Quick How to guide The final crop image does not really work .so what we are going to do is edit the background of the image taking it out completely . What are going to do is use the hand drawn tool to trace around the outside of the part of the image we want to keep Quick How to guide Click on the hand-drawn tool from the main toolbox. In your image, click and drag around the portion of the image you wish to modify. When you release the mouse, your selection has been made. Right-click the image to bring up a variety of tools and options for modifying your selection. You can perform any number of actions- play around with it and see what you can do! Remember Ctrl-Z will quickly undo any action. I have cropped this image so that the background is removed by copying and pasting my selection into a new image window. Original photo Image with crop trace applied Final image with crop applied

The Main Toolbox 1 2 3 4 Toolbox Menu Use these menus to open a new image dialog, load an image from file or other source, set preferences for the GIMP layout and performance, open and close dialogs, and access many other more advanced features. 2. Tool Icons This is where you will find many paint and image manipulation tools. 1 3. Foreground/Background Colors This displays the current foreground and background colors for the working image. Clicking on either of them will bring up a color palette where you can select a new color. The small symbol in the lower left corner will reset them to black and white. The double-headed arrow can be clicked to swap the foreground and background colors 2 3 4 4. Brush/Pattern/Gradient Clicking on any of these areas will bring up a dialog where you can change any of these features. The top left corner shows the currently selected brush for all paint operations. The top right corner show the currently selected pattern used to fill in selected areas of the image. The bottom area is used to set the gradient, when you want to smoothly transition a range of colors.

Lets go back-checkout the advanced option open a new area – go back to gimp –select file – then new What we are going to do now is open up the advanced option Select ok You can choose transparent here for your fill with option as it works well with png files However we are not going to use that Keep background colour selected You will as with previous example have a white box What we are going to do now is add a colour to the background

Create a layer and change background colour pt1 what we are going to now is select the bucket fill tool in the tool box you can then select background foreground options you then need to go to your work area Left click your work area and your colour you selected will be applied Select your colour from the palette then select ok

Now we are going to create a background layer in Gimp Now we need to add a new layer by clicking the add a new layer button So far your background looks like this Now we are going to add text –select text tool It is important to make sure you select the layer Then select text tool then draw out a text box on the layer

Add text and change colour of text the next task is to change the colour of the text so it I different from the background To do that we make sure that we select the layer – then select the text tool Then we select the colour pallette then ok then type in some text It will look like this Next to see the different colour text on the background select the white area, next to the background layer This is the third section along

Add a shape to your background using layers-step 1 Step one: What we are going to do now is create a new layer To do that we need to go to layer section and click on create new layer

Add a shape to your background using layers-step 2 Select the layer in the top right of GIMP- Then select the elipse select tool then over the text you have put on the background now draw a circle over the top of the text So it looks like this Now we can add a different colour to the background of the elipse by using the bucket fill tool Click the bucket fill tool The select the foreground and background colours tab and choose a new background colour

Add a shape to your background using layers-step 3 so now you have a different colour background to your text To get rid of the dotted lines around your text , you need to go to select drop down and then select none

Adding effects to text in GIMP

How to add blend effect to your background An effect you can add to your background is the blend effect To do this select the blend button You need to then draw a line across your background from left to right Before you do this select the colours you want to blend from one to another You do this by selecting blend mode on left hand side of screen, then selecting the type of gradient colours you want from list This then gives you a drop down list of different effects and colour blends You do this by clicking here

Final blended effect This effect was created by using :

Basic photo-editing in GIMP Create a folder called GIMP work Save two pictures into your documents one of a famous person and one of a background I’m going to choose a beach and Morrissey( a famous singer of the 1980’s band The Smiths with a cat on his head ) Here is Morrissey Here is cat

Merging two photos together using gimp pt 1 open up a new Gimp file File-new Then open the first image of (in my case Morrissey with cat) Then we need to go to Layer drop down – transparency-add alpha channel Now we need to select the erase tool as what we are going to do is take out the background of our picture Alter eraser size to 60 What we are going to do now is erase the background of the image What we need to do now is export this altered image - To do this -go to File-export as –save as morrissey.png

Merging two photos together using gimp –pt2 Now we have exported the image Select file –close all Go to file –open as layers Select beach image Go to file open as layers Select morrissey image

End result of photo merge

Tool Options 1 2 3 4 Tool scheme buttons The tool options dialog shows options for the currently selected tool (be it a paintbrush, pencil, or other). In this case, the brush selected is a circle, with 100% opacity. There are many more advanced options available through the Mode drop-down menu Tool Schemes: This button is used to save your tool option scheme so it can be loaded and used again at a later time. When you have one or more tool schemes saved, you can load them using this button. This will delete a selected tool scheme. Clicking this button will reset the tool options to the default values. 1 2 3 4 Tool scheme buttons

Layers Dialog Layers of an image act like a stack of transparencies or slides; as you add additional layers, your final image is a composite of all of the layers together. You can select which layer you want to work on by clicking on its name in (1) The opacity of the layer can be easily changed using the slide bar or menu at (2) (3) can be used to open a new layer The arrow buttons at (4) can be clicked to move up and down the stack of layers (5) can be clicked to duplicate a layer (6) is used to delete a layer 2 1 3 4 5 6

Brushes/Pattern/Gradients Just a reminder: any of these dialogs can be opened or closed through the main toolbox dialog, by selecting File -> Dialogs These dialogs can be used to select brush type, patterns and gradients. Many of these features can also be accessed through the main toolbox. The button options at (1), (2) and (3) are similar to those of other dialogs. They can be used to modify, delete, duplicate and/or reset the brushes, patterns and gradients. 1 2 3