Hi all. I've just downloaded GIMP and I'm finding it totally user unfriendly tbh! Where do I start? I've so far managed to get a photo from my computer onto it to try and edit and had a little fiddle but don't know how to save what I've done. I also have no clue about what each of the little icons means. I've tried watching youtube tutorials but I'm still none the wiser. Up until now I've just used Picnik so have had my hand held very firmly through the editing process but would like to swap over before it becomes defunct! Any help would be gratefully received x
@jenrobcarr Haha, thanks Jen :o) I think I'm too old for this computer malarky. None of my children understand but then they've grown up with them and seem to have an inbuilt knowledge. Middle son 'helped' me last night with it. 'Just play around with it Mum and you'll soon understand what to do' He gave me a mission today. 'Mum, take a photo of a mug and see if you can change it to B&W in GIMP' :o) I can't even find out how to save it so I've got no hope.
LGC went to the scrap yard :o( sad times, but I now have QT (Quite Tiny) exactly the same colour as Little Green Car but a bit smaller. He has a working clock, petrol light, radio, backlit glowing green dials and even a CD player...I'm so spoilt ;o) xx
my advice is to just start playing with all the icons - trying everything what it does and mix it a little. it would also help if you can find some of the shortcut keys and try checking the linux support page for gimp - its more user friendly
@ggg Thanks. That's what I've been doing really but I still have no idea how to save anything (if I can get anything to work) Is it as simple as file-save as, or do I need to press any particular button to set it? Sorry, you must think I'm awfully thick but technophobe is not nearly a strong enough word to describe me :oS
@psychographer Not a GIMP expert but I'm using it for my editing. To save your work, you can try to "File->Save as..." and give the file the "xcf" extension (i.e. "test.xcf")", which I think is GIMP native format
I used to use GIMP and used to just google for tutorials on what I'd like to do. If you hover over the icons they tell you what they are. Once you have a little play around it quite soon becomes easier to use. What sort of things do you want to do?
@psychographer Oh I've had it for awhile but only tried a couple of times because picnik is just so easy! I'm in denial that picnik is closing I think! My friend on here @noo I think knows how it works.
File --> Save as ... , select .xcf extension for keeping the picture in GIMP format for further editing. Or, select .jpg format if you want to post the picture here. The JPEG quality slider appears, I always select 100% for maximum quality.
If you want to make a b&w, go to Color --> Desaturate and try the different selections, which one gives you the most pleasing end result...
I'm in the same boat too. Definitely going to try and get used to its basics before picnik dies. Tried pixlr on the weekend - the basic version is quite user friendly, but the main editor is like Gimp/photoshop. I failed because I couldn't open the file! I could get all the others in there just not the one I wanted to edit!
I might use it for simple edits like picnik, but I was trying to do the planet photo thingy.
We'll manage somehow @psychographer ! Link me in to any helpful tips you find! X
@janmaki you can get a better result for b & w by going to colours ----> components -----> decompose... select RGB then open layers window (ctrl+L) delete the blue layer at the bottom then click on the red layer at the top and set the mode to overlay, you can then use the opacity slider to get exactly the right tone :)
@psychographer If I can be of any help let me know and I shold be able to point you in some direction :D, it may look complicated but when you get used to it it is very straight forward
Thanks for this thread, and all the advice. I have been wanting to try Gimp but been too skeeered! Will give it a try now. Gonna trya the B&W thing as I have a pic in mind for this. Will post how I get on.
I'd suggest searching for a specific tutorial to do whatever it is you want. Also, if you hover the mouse over an icon, it will normally bring you up a label. And if it needs you to do something else too, there will be an instruction in the bottom bar. like "Ctrl + Click to set source point" when cloning.
@tabbycat@janmaki@asrai@autumnseden@wormentude Thanks everyone. I'll be giving it a go soon. I don't know if it's just me or the tutorials I've looked at but they don't make it any clearer for me to understand. To start with I just need to know the very basics like crop, exposure etc. but there are so many boxes I really don't know where to start. As for the icons, I've hovered over them but although they tell me what they are I don't understand what they mean!! I am majorly technophobic so I really do need step by step instructions :oS
crop ~ in the tool box is a little icon that symbolises a craft knife (3rd row down second button in) click on that , left click on the photo and drag out the box then to make the selection just click inside the image
exposure ~ you can find most of these tools under colours, the best will probably be levels just open up the levels screen and play around with the sliders to see what happens to your picture, there is also brightness and contrast and curves that do similar things
if you dont understand an icon pop it up here and I will do my best to explain
@asrai Thanks Lee. I've just been back on and feel like giving up tbh!! There are so many things I just don't understand. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately whichever way you look at !) I'm more of a visual learner than one that learns from instruction so I need someone sitting with me and showing me what each thing does. When I got my DSLR I had to get my son to show me how to alter the aperture etc. cos I couldn't even find the right button :o) Maybe I need to go on a course x
GIMP has a hopeless interface. and to be honest im more into SOOC. bu ti do use the free Canon software: DPP. Its good for doing basic things in raw format. as far as i know, GIMP doesnt support RAW
What do you want Lisa? if you look under the Toolbox bar, you can set up a whole load of extra information. So if you're using the crop tool, if you click on the tab for that, you can then choose things like guides (thirds are really useful) or fixed aspect if you want to try different shapes.
The things I use most often are the curves on the colour tab along the top, the crop tool which is either the craft knife on the tool bar or you can also find it in Tools -> Transform tools, and the scaling to resize images. To resize images it's under Image -> Scale. When I'm using the colour menu, I tick the GEGL button - it gives you more control.
For the picture I put up yesterday, the chillies - I used:
Colours -> Curves to brighten the colours to start with - try pulling down the bottom half in a curve and the top half up, so you have an S-shape along the line,
then I used Filters -> Artistic -> Oilify (which is the oil painting effect),
decided it didn't have enough pop, so went back to
Colours -> Posterize - upped it from 3 to 5 colours
I had a pretty revolting yellow in the shadows, so I went back to
Colours -> Hue-Saturation and changed the yellow colour on the slider bars
@gdenoord there is a download to work with RAW - I don't shoot in RAW because I've got a p&s, but I found it for someone else.
If you right click on any where on your photo a drop down menu appears, I just went through all the options till I got familiar.
If you double click on say... desaturate, then a plug in/effect control will pop up. If it has a preview option keep it checked and mess around, anything you do will not finalise till you say ok and even then it can all be undone until you are at the rendering stage. On most plug ins there is a help button if you click this it will direct you straight to a GIMP help page about that particular plug in or effect.
Also I recommend looking at the photographers basic tutorial on the sight to learn how to resize crop ect.
There is a selective colour tutorial on there for making black and white photos with a select colour showing. It took me two or three attempts to be able to do it by myself but now it is a doddle.
Another tutorial I looked for and found on youtube was for healing as I wanted to take some childish graffiti off an otherwise brilliant picture of my son.
Just persevere, it might seem hard at first but after a few edits it will feel as easy as picnik. If you want to try something else there is photoscape and picassa both free and very much like piknik but not as good I don't think. Then there is photofiltre which is also free and a lot easier to grasp than gimp. It just doesn't have layers.
I use a pentax and have to convert my PEF RAW files to PNG. I do this using a free converter, it tags the picture ever so slightly as its shareware. you can pay to take the tag off but I usually just crop it out anyway. Thats called "Total Image converter".
@gerard de noord GIMP can work with a wide variety of raw formats and you don't lose anything in the conversion. I would say it has more than enough features for what the average person wants.
@gdenoord No I shoot in jpg Gerard but I'll definitely check out the Canon disc at some point. I think there's a stitch option for panoramas that I'd like to use.
@shanne To tell the truth Shanne I don't know. Fiddle about really just to see what's possible. There's nothing in particular but I know the possibilities are much broader if I use GIMP compared to Picnik. I need to face the fear and make myself play around. I'm sure that in the end I'll get the hang of it :o)
@justeddie Thanks Eddie. I've been having another look on youtube and have found a guy who's made 49 separate tutorials. I like his style and tbh think a lot of the problem I was having was with the people doing the tutorials. This guy is at my level and if I save the links I can go back over them. I'll check out the links you've put up though. thanks for your help :o)
You're not alone, Lisa! I felt the same way when I watch the first few PS Lightroom tutes on YouTube. The people all went way too fast and assumed a LOT of prior knowledge. It was VERY frustrating! I also gave up on Gimp after two or three tries at it, but from the stuff I've seen Lee do with it, it's well worth any time and effort you put into it! I'm buying PS CS5 in the next few weeks. VERY excited!!
Hi guys! I edited my photo to B&W.
Lee's way was fine. Jani's way was fine too, up to the point where you have to pick which of 3 options you want. the 3 options all looked the same, although the preview box was ticked and there was a demo on the Help page which showed clear differences. Lee's method gave a better result than the 1 result I got on Jani's version.
I tried to crop as well, but the option I thought I wanted was greyed out. The other 2 options didn't seem to fit what I wanted, as far as I could tell. In the end, I came out of gimp and took the B&W image to Office Picture Manager and cropped it there. Bit of a clunky method, but at least I got what I wanted. I can't remember which way I got to a crop option exactly. I think it was on the toolbar - 'tools', it definitely wasn't the craft knife Icon in the toolbox. Tried that later and struggled with that too, but thought I might get there with practice. @psychographer - who was the guy you found on youtube? I think we might be at a similar level? - Thanks!
I have a youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/gimpthirsty I'm not going to claim that I am a professional, but I have done a lot of editing with that software =] If you need help with anything feel free to message me on youtube =]
@psychographer Lisa Gimp is just as good as PS is when you lean how to use it. It seems daunting at times I know I was just like you when I started using gimp but after watching some good and bad you tube videos I just played around with it finding new ways of doing things. Believe me once you learn it you will be like picnik what? lol If you ever need help with what you are trying to do in Gimp please email me and I will step you through it. Email is relicsong@gmail.com or you can find me on facebook and friend me.
Ok, I loaded Gimp and watched alot of how to's on yahoo, but no one tells you how to make the layers. I can get my photo there and can play with brushes etc. but how in the world do I start more layers. I know, I too might be to old to learn such a complicated program. lol
Ok new subj. lol. One of you gave a great site on layers. And I t;hink I've got it. But it says to put the layers box on the right side of the screen I should go to,file,,dialogs, create new doc. and layers channel. I go to file, but do not see dial. anywhere. HELP.
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LGC went to the scrap yard :o( sad times, but I now have QT (Quite Tiny) exactly the same colour as Little Green Car but a bit smaller. He has a working clock, petrol light, radio, backlit glowing green dials and even a CD player...I'm so spoilt ;o) xx
;)
@asrai
If he doesn't arrive here to offer you something, go harass him on his project! Good luck!
If you want to make a b&w, go to Color --> Desaturate and try the different selections, which one gives you the most pleasing end result...
I might use it for simple edits like picnik, but I was trying to do the planet photo thingy.
We'll manage somehow @psychographer ! Link me in to any helpful tips you find! X
exposure ~ you can find most of these tools under colours, the best will probably be levels just open up the levels screen and play around with the sliders to see what happens to your picture, there is also brightness and contrast and curves that do similar things
if you dont understand an icon pop it up here and I will do my best to explain
The things I use most often are the curves on the colour tab along the top, the crop tool which is either the craft knife on the tool bar or you can also find it in Tools -> Transform tools, and the scaling to resize images. To resize images it's under Image -> Scale. When I'm using the colour menu, I tick the GEGL button - it gives you more control.
For the picture I put up yesterday, the chillies - I used:
Colours -> Curves to brighten the colours to start with - try pulling down the bottom half in a curve and the top half up, so you have an S-shape along the line,
then I used Filters -> Artistic -> Oilify (which is the oil painting effect),
decided it didn't have enough pop, so went back to
Colours -> Posterize - upped it from 3 to 5 colours
I had a pretty revolting yellow in the shadows, so I went back to
Colours -> Hue-Saturation and changed the yellow colour on the slider bars
@gdenoord there is a download to work with RAW - I don't shoot in RAW because I've got a p&s, but I found it for someone else.
If you double click on say... desaturate, then a plug in/effect control will pop up. If it has a preview option keep it checked and mess around, anything you do will not finalise till you say ok and even then it can all be undone until you are at the rendering stage. On most plug ins there is a help button if you click this it will direct you straight to a GIMP help page about that particular plug in or effect.
Also I recommend looking at the photographers basic tutorial on the sight to learn how to resize crop ect.
There is a selective colour tutorial on there for making black and white photos with a select colour showing. It took me two or three attempts to be able to do it by myself but now it is a doddle.
Another tutorial I looked for and found on youtube was for healing as I wanted to take some childish graffiti off an otherwise brilliant picture of my son.
Just persevere, it might seem hard at first but after a few edits it will feel as easy as picnik. If you want to try something else there is photoscape and picassa both free and very much like piknik but not as good I don't think. Then there is photofiltre which is also free and a lot easier to grasp than gimp. It just doesn't have layers.
http://tutorialblog.org/gimp-tutorials/
http://www.techdrivein.com/2010/09/12-useful-gimp-video-tutorials-for.html
@gerard de noord GIMP can work with a wide variety of raw formats and you don't lose anything in the conversion. I would say it has more than enough features for what the average person wants.
@shanne To tell the truth Shanne I don't know. Fiddle about really just to see what's possible. There's nothing in particular but I know the possibilities are much broader if I use GIMP compared to Picnik. I need to face the fear and make myself play around. I'm sure that in the end I'll get the hang of it :o)
@justeddie Thanks Eddie. I've been having another look on youtube and have found a guy who's made 49 separate tutorials. I like his style and tbh think a lot of the problem I was having was with the people doing the tutorials. This guy is at my level and if I save the links I can go back over them. I'll check out the links you've put up though. thanks for your help :o)
Lee's way was fine. Jani's way was fine too, up to the point where you have to pick which of 3 options you want. the 3 options all looked the same, although the preview box was ticked and there was a demo on the Help page which showed clear differences. Lee's method gave a better result than the 1 result I got on Jani's version.
I tried to crop as well, but the option I thought I wanted was greyed out. The other 2 options didn't seem to fit what I wanted, as far as I could tell. In the end, I came out of gimp and took the B&W image to Office Picture Manager and cropped it there. Bit of a clunky method, but at least I got what I wanted. I can't remember which way I got to a crop option exactly. I think it was on the toolbar - 'tools', it definitely wasn't the craft knife Icon in the toolbox. Tried that later and struggled with that too, but thought I might get there with practice.
@psychographer - who was the guy you found on youtube? I think we might be at a similar level? - Thanks!
@jenirainbow Well done Jeni, that's further than I managed to get today. Here's the link for the youtube guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVnI3l9fgE
@relicsong Thankyou Beth. That's so kind of you. I'll look for you on fb :o) xx