GiMP or GiMPSHOP?

A reader e-mailed me and asked me about a port called "GiMPSHOP" -- why did I use "GiMP" rather than "GiMPSHOP"?

Well, two reasons:

[1] I had never seen "GiMPSHOP" before the e-mail

[2] GiMP doesn't need to look like photoshop to be just as powerful.

You can google "gimpshop" if you want to download it and try it out. I downloaded it for kicks and didn't see the appeal. Your milage may differ.

Comments are open for this post for your questions and comments; they are moderated, so if they don't show up right away, don't panic.

Comments

Gimpshop is also an abandoned project, as far as I know, and considering the changes in the scripting engine, it is another good reason to prefer the plain-vanilla Gimp
John P said…
Cent:

Thanks for the work you are putting in...it has been very helpful.

One question I have is how can you create a "clear" background so that no matter what color you put your graphic in front of, all you see is the graphic, and not a black or white box with the graphic inside. I know you can use the Color Picker Tool to match the background color, but if you want to use the graphic on multiple colors, it would become a bit more tedious, and I was wondering if there was a shortcut that would work with every color.

Keep the posts coming, I am telling several others about how useful it is
Tom Gee said…
I have been very feebling pawing at Gimp for years, but have never developed much skill at it. Thank you so much, Frank, for these excellent helps!

Graphics help, brilliant insights into Baptists and Presbyterians, solid biblical theology and clever comics.

Is there anything you don't do, Cent?
FX Turk said…
tongee:

I'm glad I'm not just posting this stuff into the ether. Glad to be of service. The comics are a clear sign of my depravity, as is my Baptist-ness.
FX Turk said…
John P:

that's a great question. Part of the answer is in this lesson. If you have an image on any kind of background, and you can select it, you can clip it out of its background and paste it into a transparent layer. that leaves it available for all kinds of graphics madness.

we'll be doing more with lifting images out of context in the future because, well, why try to draw or take photos when [a] you are completely talentless in that area and [b] there are so many royalty-free images available on the web to use for your creative work?
John P said…
Frank:

Thanks for trying to help, and don't worry about responding.

I tried to do what you said, but when I put the image on a colored background, it still shows up with a white background around the image(see my latest blog post if you doubt). I guess I am completely talentless in more areas than I thought.

I will keep playing around with it until I figure it out. I am sure I am making a simple mistake somewhere. Thanks again for taking your time to do this.
Unknown said…
GIMP, FTW. I am a satisfied GIMP user on an Ubuntu OS. Feels good that I have a good system with clean updates.
JohnP:
You have to save it as gif or png (png dosesn't work on some IE version). Standard JPG it's unable to manage transparency.
FX Turk said…
John P:

AHA! I think I understand your problem.

When you create your new layer, I'll bet you're creating a layer which is NOT transparent. Normally, I'd open up the GiMP and check my work here, but let's see if I can give you the steps to do this right off the top of my head.

[1] select the image you want to pull out of your original.
[2] create a new "sandbox" image, but before you click "OK", click the "advanced options" karat so you can see the characteristics of the new workspace. In there, use the drop-down menu to make the background of that space "transparent". NOW click OK.
[3] paste and anchor your clipping into the new workspace.

If that doesn't work, I'll whip up a tutorial to do this and post it.

Good Hunting. :-)
FX Turk said…
And as Roberto's post indicates, there are some file types which don;t support transparency. My preference for "working" files rather than "posting" files is .xcf, which is GiMP-native format that preserves layers as well as transparency.

And I have a geek-speak post on filetypes coming up on the issue of transparency on my list of things to do. Thanks to Roberto for his helpful insight.

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