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The Gimp Books Media Book Reviews

Review:The Artists' Guide to the GIMP 109

Posted by Hemos from the making-things-pretty dept.
The return of SEGV brings with it a review of Michael J. Hammel's The Artists' Guide to the GIMP. This is an interesting book for those artists and wanna-be artists using the GIMP, and wanting to learn more what you/they can do-click below for more information.
The Artists' Guide to the GIMP
author Michael J. Hammel
pages 340
publisher S
rating 8/10
reviewer SEGV
ISBN
summary A well-done user manual for the GIMP. Walks the reader through common GIMP tasks with practical advice and suggestions.

User Manual

The GIMP has been hailed as an open source alternative to such commercial image manipulation "killer apps" as Adobe Photoshop. However, there are obvious areas where the GIMP falls short. For example, it does not come with a commercial quality printed user manual.

Now GIMP aficionados have an option: Michael Hammel has written what amounts to a user manual for the GIMP. It is "meant to be a reference guide for non-technical users -- people who want to use the GIMP to do real work."

Topic Coverage

The book covers release 1.0 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The first half covers GIMP features and functionality. The second half contains many examples of filters and script-fu effects applied to images.

The book does not cover GIMP development, particularly plug-ins and scripting. However, the author does mention that these are potential topics for revised editions.

The introductory chapters cover such basics as graphics formats, colour models, resolution, and so forth. The author also briefly covers SANE, Ghostscript, the GFig plug-in, the gimprc file, and fonts.

Explanatory Style

The author adopts a relatively informal explanatory style which I found easy and enjoyable to read, while not detracting from the topic at hand. It is clear that the author understands what he is writing about, and also how to communicate with the casual reader.

He offers tips throughout the text, from effective settings for specific dialogs to how to scan three-dimensional objects. He's also at ease enough to criticize aspects of the application where deserved, such as inconsistent dialogs or awkward interfaces. This honesty reassures the reader that he's on her side.

The author points out where GIMP and Photoshop are alike and differ, which will be a boon to readers with experience with the latter.

Tutorial Approach

Many of the chapters conclude with a tutorial summarizing the material covered: 16 pages in all. They are easy enough to follow and serve to reinforce the concepts learned.

Frequently the author employs a "how-to" approach when describing a feature. For example, he uses an image of a skyline to demonstrate how guides can help select buildings. He enumerates the steps you might take to correct a scanned image.

Book and CD-ROM

The book is printed on glossy paper in full colour. This is important, as many of the images illustrate subtle graphic effects. For example, an image may be a slightly brightened or blurred version of another.

I'm not sure how well the book would stand up to everyday use. My copy developed a cracked spine, so it's possible to lose a page or two if the reader is not careful.

The CD-ROM contains the software, although I'm sure most will acquire later versions from the net. It also includes the book's tutorials, images, and more images from the author's collection, as well as documentation, resources, and links.

There are plenty of tables of shortcuts and modifiers, but strangely no quick reference card (an obvious added value).

Drawbacks

The book as one or two minor drawbacks. Generally, there are a couple of places where the text could have been improved.

Some extended explanations (e.g., crop tool) are very confusing. The reader is hard put to make progress without the application running in front of her. Admittedly, part of the blame for this lies with the application itself.

The author references some Linux Journal covers, yet does not provide their images for illustration.

Summary

I've seen industry award-winning commercial user manuals, and this book is in that league. If you're looking for a simple user manual for the GIMP, this is it.

If you're looking for a more advanced manual or reference, you might be a little bit disappointed. There are still stones left un-turned.

If you're looking for an art book, again you might be disappointed. It isn't a text on graphic design, although there are tips throughout.

It's a user manual for the GIMP.

You can pick it up at Amazon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
1. Introduction
2. GIMP Basics
3. GIMP Windows
4. The Toolbox
5. Selections
6. Layers and Channels
7. Colors and Text
8. Drawing and Painting
9. Using Transforms
10. Gradients
11. Scanning, Printing, and Print Media
Part 2: Filters and Script-Fu Effects
12. Artistic
13. Blur
14. Colors
15. Distorts
16. Edge-Detect and Combine
17. Enhance
18. Glass Effects
19. Light Effects
20. Map and Miscellaneous
21. Noise
22. Render
23. Script-Fu
Glossary
Appendix A: The gimprc File
Appendix B: Keyboard Shortcuts
Appendix C: Adding Fonts to Your System
Index
About the CD-ROM
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Review:The Artists' Guide to the GIMP More

Review:The Artists' Guide to the GIMP

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  • > Oh, and the information on using X and
    > installing fonts seemed out of place. Either
    > you're relatively unix clueful, and can manage
    > them, or you're not and you have a sysadmin who
    > does it for you.

    Or you're only mildly clueful home user who doesn't have a sysadmin, and doesn't get a chance to learn about how X handles fonts until he/she comes across a problem that requires him/her to find out. That's probably why that section on fonts that you described is in that Artist's Guide to the Gimp.
  • Since when do we change the English language?

    1. I'm a guy. If this book applies only to girls, where's the book for the guys?
    2. In English, the standard has been to use "him".
    3. For the non-gender-specific individuals, "one" and "one's self" are appropriate in English.
    4. Let's stop trying to alter the accepted rules for grammar and writing.


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • does shift+click work in gimp versions = 1.0?


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • zoom down to the closest-in resolution...make sure you got the grid on...go to some starting place on the grid (100*100 works nice in a 600*400 image), then select an area as many pixels tall as you want your line to be thick, and stretch the area to some final destination (say 101*500)...fill the line in with your color/texture...now rotate/stretch the region to the proper angle...


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • get xfstt and install it, you can symlink your windows fonts into the standard ttf dir for Linux...if you run RH you may have to edit your init scripts to start xfstt on boot...then sync xfstt with the X fontserver and enjoy...

    it isn't a perfect solution (Arial on my box looks like crap, but Helvetica looks pretty good), but it's better than rebooting and it allows you the use of all those 'doze fonts :)


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • User Maunual DOES suck...I don't know how the book compares....(just try using User Manual to make a cut-out effect...argh!)


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • OK, so please explain for all of us who still haven't figured it out :)

    How do I create a decent (flat) bevel instead of the script-fu rounded bevel?


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • Fine...if ya like some windows software, use it...but don't advertise where it doesn't matter...

    by the way, front page is the worst program ever to come out of megasloth...the idea behind it was good, but the implementation sucks...any program that inserts useless comments and code into my web page, re-arranges the structure of my site, creates directories beginning with "_", and creates non-standard html, (e.g., front page) deserves to die a horrid death without users


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?

  • Re:Cool (Score:1)

    by valis ( 947 )
    Really? Check the developer version for the features you want. It just recently surpassed photoshop for MY purposes.

    If there are still things missing for you, you should suggest them as improvements.

    The UI is different so sometimes you have to relearn how to do things, but there's a lot of stuff hidden in there. It's probably more tuned to a new user than to one who is expecting all of photoshops ideosynchrocies.

    But the developers need to know what is still missing to make the gimp even cooler.

    (fsck spelling)
  • scared the #$%@ out of me.

    In the future, please PLEASE don't use moving gif's :(

  • Specificy what features would you like to see added to gimp. Or what things in Photoshop can't you do or do easily in Gimp?

    I know there are things I just want to know which things people are interested in.
  • This is intended as only a bullet point list, mail me if you are interested in a solid critique of the GIMP, it's something I'm insterested in.
    No order of importance..

    1. Bad UI. There are two file menus. The nesting is wrong, and too deep for common ops. Few (less than half?) functions can be reached with hotkeys.

    2. Confusing selection metaphor, and use of two kinds of 'crawling ants' marque utterly confusing.
    3. Dialogues, esp layer dialogues far too big - this maybe a shortcoming of GTK.
    4. Antialiasing _very_ poor compared with Pshop.
    5. Slow (esp selection dragging) compared with Pshop.
    6. Font handling quite appalling, but this is really an X/unix problem - alas no adobe type manager for Linux (AFAIK)
    7. Paths are very implemented in a clumsy manner.
    8. Wasted and/or inconsistent use of right mouse button throughout.

    GIMP has a great feature set implemented in a decidedly disjointed way. It is a case of not having the basics right - all the filters and scripts count for nothing unless you get these three things 100% right on:

    1. Selection management
    2. Layer management
    3. Colour management
    4. User interface
  • "Write back when your OS knows how to fork() :)"

    Write back when your OS kernel is 100% thread safe :)

    Let's not throw stones in glass houses :->
  • There is a way for HP 720C, 820C, and 1000C winprinters to work under linux.
    PPA for the masses [httptech.com]
    It does not have color support but will print black text and graphics just fine.
  • I used to have this same problem, until I realized that the images that I was trying to add text to where all Indexed, and anti-aliasing only works on RGB images (D'oh!).

    Always convert your images to RGB first before you start modifying them.

  • Actually I noticed that too. I think it's the gloss paper. It's probably vegetable-based ink as well. :-)
  • I haven't looked at the online user manual.

    But I have worked on projects in a company where our own tech writing and graphics department created our own user manuals. They won industry awards for their work.

    This book is equivalent to a commercial quality user manual. I'm not sure it would win an industry award (or even qualify) but it isn't just cobbled together.
  • Being the reviewer, I can answer this question?

    Why? Not for political correctness. I don't believe in that.

    For variety.

    And, if you look carefully, you will find another reason. In my writing I generally refer to the user as "her" and the developer as "he". Therefore, the pronoun gives a hint as to the referee.

    I've actually been accused of being un-PC for that particular convention.

    Hope this clears it up.
  • Does GIMP support an arbitrary number of channels yet? At the very least, it absolutely needs CMYK support. Support for display correction using (and embedding of) ICC profiles is another feature that would be really useful.

    (For people who are curious, Chapter 13 of Foley & van Dam talks about color spaces.)

  • How diffrent is this book from the HTML user manual [gimp.org] that's downloadable from the gimp site? My wife is trying to learn GIMP, and she thinks the User Manual sucks... (I learned to use it by just messing with it for over a year now, haven't read a single thing from either).

  • OS/2 version of Gimp available here (Score:3)

    by timur ( 2029 ) on Tuesday August 10, 1999 @06:19AM (#1754468)
    The Gimp for OS/2 webpage is http://www.netlabs.org/gimp/ [netlabs.org]. The current stable version is 1.0.2, and a beta of 1.1.8 is available from ftp://tmp:tmpftp@ftpserver.spacetec .no/pub/os2/ [spacetec.no].

    Gimp/2 requires XFree86 for OS/2 [borneo.gmd.de].
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  • Try looking here! [bookarea.com]
    Sorry, it only gets down to about 35 bucks.
  • But there is this. [amazon.com]
    Gimp User's Manual : Learn the Ins and Outs of Gimp from the Masters Who Wrote the Official Manual on the Web.

    Is this any good?
  • is there a way to make a friggin line in GIMP? you know like the line tool in photoshop???? ive been messing with it for weeks and cant find it. does the book address this!?
  • Few (less than half?) functions can be reached with hotkeys.

    Perhaps you're talking about an older version, but anything using a recent gtk version has on-the-fly shortcut assignment. You don't have to make do with the defaults. Just press a key combination while the menu item you're after is highlighted, and the key combo becomes the shortcut for that item.
    --

  • Shift-click.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Shift-click with the pencil or brush tool.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • I'm personally most interested in alternate colorspaces and in effects layers. Tool plug-ins would be real nice, too.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • I wanted a nice printed book (since I'm not in a position to print the entire GUM [gimp.org]) to learn the GIMP by. With much software that I anticipate heavily using, I don't mind a steep learning curve, but I only dabble with the Gimp, and wanted to quickly get going.

    The Artist's Guide to the Gimp (AGG) is a good start. However, it is a step below what I was looking for. If you're familiar with Photoshop, you'll find the book a really light, fluffy intro. On the down side, you won't learn the equivalents of all of your favorite Photoshoppy goodness (and almost everything has equivalents these days), but on the up side, you'll quickly chew through the book and be productive in the Gimp (as opposed to guessing what the buttons do. :-)

    The biggest problem is that the book is seriously out of date. I've found the latest builds of the development tree relatively stable, and the huge number of new features makes it hard to consider going back to the practically ancient 1.0x series the book describes. Still, it's nice to have large portions of the software's basic use described, making the newer shinier portions easier to get a handle on. Oh, and the information on using X and installing fonts seemed out of place. Either you're relatively unix clueful, and can manage them, or you're not and you have a sysadmin who does it for you. Either way it's not real valuable in my eyes.

  • Literally. I am currently working my way through the book and think it is a great book. It is easy to read and is a great aid for a someone who has no experience with this type of software.

    But my book smells funny. It might be the glue or maybe the ink/paper combination. I don't know what it is, but it smells funny.

  • There is a complimentary site at www.thegimp.com

    One of the pages there is an attempt to map photoshop commands to the gimp equivalents;

    http://www.thegimp.com/tips-tricks.html
  • Somehow related: what printer has both good photo quality capability and good linux driver to use the printer's capabilities?
    Any real live experience?
  • I'm very fond of the GIMP, but Photoshop is still the king in my opinion. (Although I'm also quite fond of CorelXARA 2).
  • Lack of professionalism is an SSC hallmark! I cringe at some of the things that I see in LJ. They've become slicker, (IE, they don't look as much like a user group newsletter as they used to) also somewhat more professional over the years, but still are lacking.

    The last issue printed a snapshot of the OS Sucks/rules O'meter! Sure thats a cool net think, but looks appallingly tacky in print..

    They printed a review of the GIMP book even though they published it, and the book author is a major LJ contributor, thankfully he didn't write the review himself.

    They tend to fill the whole magazine with articles of narrow interest. IE, a "Linux in Manufacturing" issue, or what-not. Sure an article here and there on the subject is good, but don't fill the whole issue with them.

    I notice that there is now another Linux magazine on the market (forget the name, saw it at Barnes and Noble. Maybe I'll switch when my sub. runs out.
  • For some reason, my mouse hand gets sore using it. I never get so sore using xpaint.
  • I know this is semi-off topic, but I find the anti-aliasing to be kind of shoddy. Is there any way to improve it? Is there 'configuration' that has to go into what quality anti-aliasing you want? I made an image in Photoshop first semester (yay, college!) for an engineering website. Second semester, the prof. changed, so I had to update the image. I was not in the mood for a reboot (who ever is?) so I just used the GIMP. It worked, but the quality of the text was horrid in comparison. Does anyone know anything about this? How can it be improved? Would it help for me to get TrueType fonts going? Can the GIMP use TTFonts? Thanks. Is there a mailing list for this kind of thing? reds.

  • Whoops, sorry. Got greedy with the 'Submit'

    I know this is semi-off topic, but I find the anti-aliasing to be kind of shoddy. Is there any way to improve it? Is there 'configuration' that has to go into what quality anti-aliasing you want?

    I made an image in Photoshop first semester (yay, college!) for an engineering website. Second semester, the prof. changed, so I had to update the image. I was not in the mood for a reboot (who ever is?) so I just used the GIMP. It worked, but the quality of the text was horrid in comparison.

    Does anyone know anything about this?
    How can it be improved?
    Would it help for me to get TrueType fonts going?
    Can the GIMP use TTFonts?

    Thanks.
    Is there a mailing list for this kind of thing?

    reds.

  • Thanks for the compliment.

    Actually, I already HAD read the FAQ...

    I did not ask HOW to set up TTFonts, I asked if it would make a difference with respect to ANTI-ALIASING. Thanks for the link, but I'd expect more courtesy from a "typical Slashdot reader."

  • Thanks to everyone for their info.
    I appreciate it.

    I'll give it a whirl when I finally get my box back together. (made a new one, and turned the old one into an OpenBSD server)

    reds.

  • I imagine that yes, it would be a help to you to get TrueType fonts up and running, if you want to use them :) Something like xfstt or xfsft will allow X to use TrueTypes as well as its own fonts. (I prefer xfstt because you don't have to recompile to font server...)

    chris
  • One thing that I find particularly clumsy is having to manually tell The Gimp where the alpha border is on layers. Photoshop automatically does this and doesn't allocate the full pixel dimension of the layer to memory. With Gimp you can be lazy and just leave everything full size but then you eat up memory fast.
    If it was too difficult to automatically do this, even something like allowing the user to resize the yellow border in the window instead of having to rely on guesswork in the layer's pallete would help a ton.
  • Well that depends on your distribution. With debian Apt all you need to do is type:
    apt-get install gnome
    and it will automatically upgrade/install/download everything you need. that is in my opinion far easier than anything i've seen for windows.
  • Sounds simple... I could never figure it out though. Drove me up the wall
  • I'm often sitting there in gimp with a picture zoomed way in, editing something, and I want to scroll real quick, so I pounce on the arrow keys. No such luck, the arrow keys, page up, page down, home, and end don't move the picture. If not a default, it would make a great option. I'm sure it would be elementary to implement for someone familiar with the gimp codebase.
  • I'm currently going through this nifty little book, but I was wondering... are there any books out yet that detail script-fu? :-)

    If it comes from man, it will fail.
    If it comes from god, It will succeed.

  • I hope no one gets mad because I stole this one from them - - with software you can make what I like to call "ports." Unless it's from Microcrap which is closed source an won't let you use any apps, that is... With hardware I like to use a magical piece of software called a "device driver." I can only hope this was some sort of pathectic joke...
  • Erm, I don't think it would be that good for what its cost is, seeing as it is written by the people who put the manual up on the web - - just download it and read it that way. Or, go to the nearest Barnes and Noble and sit in a comfy chair with a nice latte and read the whole thing. If its the GIMP manual I'm thinking of, its not that long.
  • What the big fuc*ing deal? Who cares whether it be she or he or it or whatever the hell anyone wants to use?
    >:p
  • I don't think we need a book about The GIMP, we just need a larger feature library. The ability to create shapes is almost a necessity sometimes, and that guy up there was right, drawing a straight line does become nearly impossible. The way *I* draw a straight line, for lack of a tool to do so (or circles for that matter) is create text filled with underscores about 25 point (depending on the thickness you want) and then place or transform it as you see fit.

    I think the guys doing the GIMP should think about building from the basics up rather than competing with the kickass tools first. Who the hell really needs to do a fractal trace?
  • See, I'll tell you why you're an idiot. It's not the apps that lock us into Linux, it's the STABILITY among other things. Windows is a great OS if you're content to point and drool all day.
  • Since when do we change the English language?

    The last time I checked, most dictionaries had accepted ``her'' as a legal word in English.

    Relax. It is becoming common practice to use ``her'' as the routine third-person pronoun in examples.
  • more helpful to say: with brush or pencil, click and release, then move mouse, hold shift, and click and release again. A line results, but getting it to be straight with no jaggies requires setting guides to snap to. Would much prefer like PSP, where you *drag* while holding shift and you get a straight line, and can get a perfectly straight vertical or horizontal line. Something else: is there a way to see your x,y coordinates of where your cursor is? I like this in PSP. And I mean a more exact way than just eyeballing the pointers on the rulers.
  • more helpful to say: with brush or pencil, click and release, then move mouse, hold shift, and click and release again. A line results from point a to point b, but getting it to be straight with no jaggies requires setting guides to snap to. Would much prefer like PSP, where you drag while holding shift and you get a straight line, and can get a perfectly straight vertical or horizontal line. Something else: is there a way to see the x,y coordinates of where your cursor is? I like this in PSP. And I mean a more exact way than just eyeballing the pointers on the rulers.
  • Guess they got /.'ed. :)

  • holding shift while clicking with the pencil or brush tool connects with a straight line the new point with the last one you made with that tool.

    so, to make a straight line, click somewhere, shift+click somewhere else.

    the development series gimp will show you where the connecting line will be if you just press shift. quite cool. in fact, nearly everything about gimp1.1 is better than 1.0.

  • what would really save some time would be a select tool similar to the magnetic lasso of photoshop. I've always saved alot of time using it, but in the Gimp nothing works as well (intelligent scissors dont do it for me)

  • Look and feel lawsuits have not always won in the past, but I wouldn't put it past Adobe to try and protect their intellectual property if Gimp got more Photoshop-like. I don't really see how or why, but I'm not a lawyer.

    A quick glance [mind you a very quick one] at the UI and I can't tell the difference.

    That lupinoid is staring at me . . .

  • I've just stumbled over Sketch. It's quite a nice little vector based drawing program for X and whilst I haven't had much time to use it it seems pretty good. It even imports/exports AI files which is nice. Check it out more at http://www.online.de/home/sketch/Default .htm [online.de]

  • I think I understand why this guy posted as Anonymous Coward. Stand up and be counted friend.
  • FNOOGFNOOGFNOOG. OOk OOk.
  • I just started using GIMP and I was looking for references. This is perfect!

    Although I see that I may need more books for advance work, but I'm looking for something that is for the beginner.

    If this book is a good startup book then please let me know!
  • The book is currently on back order....did Amazon get slashdotted?? Do they keep more detailed information about sales online, like how many copies were sold per day/week? I couldn't find anything like that.
  • I didn't find that out either untill it apeared
    in the "Hints" window one day. I now *always*
    read the hints.

  • Thanks! (Score:1)

    by dkm ( 42942 )
    Cool! I'd been trying to figure that out too. Thanks.
  • Best I could find it at was $31.96 from borders.

    You should try www2.addall.com. It searches 20+ online book sellers and gives the price from each.

    I don't have any affliation with the site, just think it's cool.
  • I'd prefer they use 'her' rather than 'they'. When people use they it just sounds wierd.

    I wouldn't get too hung up on this if I were you. Just a thought.
  • I said, "Cool!" and followed the link but amazon.com says the book is now on backorder, and what's more, they don't know when to expect a reprint! As in, "You're SOL."
  • Tsk, tsk. It's time for you to join the circle
    of "tolerance", which can be most usefully defined
    as an attitude wherein I demand praise for my
    ignorance while undermining the worth of your
    learning and effort.

    Take, for example, the dildo who previously
    responded to this post. He (she?) would prefer
    "her" to "they" because "they" sounds "wierd"(sic.)
    You should respect this individual's unwillingness
    to learn English. After all, if CmdrTaco and JonKatz
    don't bother with grammar, why should we?

  • The gimp is great, but it still doesn't replace photoshop for me.

    -awc
  • I guess I wasn't specific enough (first post rush, etc).

    What would really turn me on is a Photoshop-like interface option. I (and a lot of others) have invested an incredible amount of time in the effort to learn Photoshop, and as a result, we are infinitely more productive in PS than in GIMP. Some sort of interface customizability that would result in a photoshop-like interface would, IMO, go a long way toward wooing full-time photoshop users.

    Also, if it doesn't yet exist, a "GIMP for Photoshop users" document would be very useful. I know that there is a lot of functionality that I have not yet found (and don't have the time to discover) that is probably quite easy to implement.

    Does that make any sense?

    Thanks for the response.

    -awc
  • That's the problem. It looks so similar that when things don't work as expected, it is very confusing and disorienting.

    Moving the selection is one of those little things that bugs the hell out of me. I don't really have a preference, but the GIMP was of doing it (float the selection) is slightly different from the Photoshop way, and it is easy to fall into old habits.

    That's just my experience, at least. You might see it differently.

    -awc
  • Keep trying! I got mine a few months
    ago for $30.00 flat at www.cheapbytes.com
    Shipping is only $6.00 for priority mail and
    I got it in 2 days I believe!
  • GAWD I LUV that sig, can I steal it?
  • I will probably buy this book, as it sounds pretty good. I use to think gimp was under developed, but it was just that I was use to using plugins in photoshop, that were not available in GIMP. Recently I was SKEWELD in the finer arts of photoshoping with out plugins, and once you know how you can easily figure it out in GIMP. Like using difference on a 6 pixel offset to create bevels. It's all simple stuff but you have to either wait for a script-fu that will do it(lamer), or learn how to do it by hand. Now with Gimp, and Maya soon to be on the linux box, you no-longer need windows for anything, we have quake2, Q3Arena, HopkinsFBI, and a slew of other games. It's time to rm -fr /mnt/windows!

  • Gimp does do a good job. I'm not a graphics guy, but Gimp does do a good job. From my experience with Photoshop, I'd say that I prefer Gimp. It loads faster, it free, and best of all it runs on my favorite OS. Sure, they still have some work to do on it, but it's definitely a worthy opponent for Photoshop.
  • Language is not static dear fellow

    Doest thou write english after the manner of antiquity. Why doest thou and the multitude not write after this fashion? Ist Thou using bad grammar because the way of antiquity hath been surpassed by modern English?

    Really, the way the English language is used today by academia is nothing like the language that was espoused by academia at the turn of the century.

    Like other forms of evolution, the acceptance of the word "her" will either survive or die off. There is nothing to be upset about, or really to champion either. It may indeed be quaint and outmoded with time, like "daddy-o", "Square", and "Like you know like fer sure". How many women now demand to be called "Mizzzz" instead of Misses or Miss, what percentage of girls do you know really insist on spelling women as "womyn".

    Man the ramparts if you want to entertain self important delusions your culture will be subverted by a feminist, liberal, intellectual conspiracy if it gives you a sense of postmoderist identity. But in the end both you and the feminists are probably equally as ineffectual and great entertainment for each other as you take positions of hero and villian.
  • I havn't tried Xfig, so I can't speak on behalf of that one. But I too would love to see a vectored/OO drawing program for Linux. I am a big fan of Macromedia's Freehand (I use AI a lot too, but Freehand suits me just fine - not trying to start another holy war here :) ) and would love to see something like that implemented in Linux. I feel that GIMP is a more than adequate tool for image manipulation, however like most people I find that the UI gets a little awkward, especially for an old school Photoshop user. Like some of the above mentioned problems (layer movement / floating selection) are where I get frustrated. I find that GIMP tends to have great basic features and great advanced feature(awesome filters/scripts), but seems to lack some of the intermediate features IMHO (I can never tell the size of a selected area). I have considered getting some sort of book to help with some of the minor discrepencies that I have, and it sounds like this is a good one. Cheers
    ------------------------------------------ --
  • ...see the August issue of LINUX Journal.
  • Try tgif by Bill Cheng (http://bourbon.cs.umd.edu:8001/william/). Works fine for me, although the UI is a bit clumsy for Windows users, it can save you a lot of time if you are used to it. No source code though.
  • If you want to eliminate the "jaggies", and be able to get your hands on a LARGE selection of fonts, a great idea is to get TTFonts going.
    X (along with the Gimp) will handle TrueType fonts if you have a font server installed. RH6.0 has the TTF capability compiled into X already,
    but I don't know offhand of any other distros including it currently. A free font server out there that I know works under rh5.1-5.3,
    as well as other distros, is xfsft. The road to making this work was rather long and somewhat torturous (for me), so poking
    around for other references on the net might help. Anyway here's the link to xfsft [ed.ac.uk]

    Any questions just email me, i'd be glad to help:
    eckhareg@clarkson.edu

    -EE
  • i concur. i thought that i'd had a little *too*
    much vitamin c (caffiene) this morning....

    8^ )
    ________________________________________________ _
    $which weed
  • Just this morning I was thinking to myself "I should get back to making stuff with Gimp". Too bad this book is $40 (on amazon). That's too much money for me to spend on something that I may put aside in favor of learning by playing around... which is how I learned to do most stuff in Gimp.

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It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer, when you're stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm. -- Dion, noted computer scientist

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