Main /

Gimp

This is a big program and there is a lot you can do with it. I would not recommend using this program if you have Adobe available. You will run into many many problems with resizing and vectorizing. This will only go over some of the most very basic stuff. We will go over cropping, moving and tiling images. To go over color shifting and lighting you will have to do that on your own. This program is inferior to Illustrator, but it is free and can do things pretty fast.

Start-Up and Saving

To run Gimp you can launch it as an application or through command prompt:
- $ gimp
To load in a picture, you do this by going to File > Open and navigating to the picture you desire
To load another image into the same session go to File > Open As Layers and navigate to the picture you want to layer-in
Saving your session is intuitive. Just go to File > Save As and follow the prompts
To Save your image in the file format you want, File > Export As and follow the prompts

Selecting/Moving/Editing

If you have multiple layers, the order of the layers can be seen in the Layers-Brushes window. Click-Hold and move the layers to re-arrange them.
To move a layer, select that layer in the Layers-Brushes Window, then in the ToolBox select the move tool and click to align the pictures.
The canvas is the area that gimp allows the picture to be shown. To edit this there are 3 things you can do. All 3 can be accessed by right clicking on picture or with the top menu bar:
- Image > Scale Image
- Image > Fit Canvas to Layers
- Image > Canvas Size
To resize and image go to Layer > Scale Layer
- The drop-down changes the units from px (pixels) to whatever you want
- Clicking the arrows scales both width and height
- Manually changing the values will not scale the image according to original dimensions
- Select "Scale" once desired dimensions are inputted
To move an element within a layer. Make sure the proper layer is selected in your Layers-Brushes window
- Select the area
- Press and hold Ctrl + Alt
- Mouse click and hold inside the selection
- Move the mouse to place it in the location you want
- Ctrl + H to add the floating selection back into the layer
To delete/white-out a field. Select the region you want deleted and then press Ctrl + X

Cropping or Cutting an immage

Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel
Select the Free Select Tool (or any of the other selection tools like rectangle, ellipse, fuzzy, color, scissors or foreground select tool)
Click and drag to select the section you want.
Mouse click (or keyboard Enter) to finish the selection. You will need to close the area for selection to complete. You should have an animated dotted line indicating the selection was completed
Select > Invert This inverts your selection to everything except the region you just selected
Ctrl + X This will remove the background
Selection Layer > Auto-crop Layer is also a good idea
Save as .png or .eps to preserve transparency. I don't think .jpeg preserve transparency
To edit/blend you can only do brush/pencil/spray brush/etc. on one layer. Select the layer you want to pick color from and use dropper (or hold Ctrl). Then select the top layer to paint that color onto.

Other Random Stuff

To zoom in/out key press Z. Mouse click to zoom in; Ctrl + click to zoom out. Note don't zoom in/out too fast otherwise you will get some crazy zooms.
To create a line/box/circle or any other type of outline. Use selection tool of choice to make your shape, then Edit > Stroke Selection and use the GUI to determine the type of line you want.