One of the funnest features of digital image editing is taking pieces of different images and blending them together in a single image, like putting a funny hat on your mom or putting your dog on a jet ski. Or even something serious, like improving a photo of a landscape by adding an element from a different photo. Today we are going to learn how to do this in GIMP, the excellent open source image editing program.

GIMP is not LAME

Computer geeks think they are funny, and that how we end up with names like GIMP and LAME. GIMP is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. LAME is a recursive acronym for LAME Ain’t an MP3 Encoder. Together they form my mildly amusing subheading. At any rate, whatever the shortcomings of the name, GIMP is an excellent open source painting, drawing, and image editing program. It is free of cost and runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows, and supports a number of drawing tablets like Wacom.

You’ll need a batch of existing images to follow this tutorial– photos, clipart, anything is fine. You can copy images from Web pages by right-clicking on them, and then left-clicking “Save as” in the right-click menu. This is legal for private, personal use; don’t commit copyright infringement by distributing copyrighted images without permission. Visit the Wikimedia Commons to find excellent permissively-licensed images, and you can even share your own.

Saving Your Work

The first and most important lesson is to make a habit of saving your projects as .xcf files. This is the native GIMP file format. You can create composite images out of any mix of image file formats such as JPG, GIF, and PNG. But always save a master file as .xcf because it saves all of your layers and all other editing information, so you can easily re-edit your images. You can export to any image file format you want from .xcf such as JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP…as long as you have that master .xcf file you can do anything you want.

Fun With Layers

Understanding how to use layers is the #1 most important feature of any higher-end image editor. This is your mighty power tool that gives you fine control over your images. In figure 1 I opened an existing image of Tux, the Linux penguin. Tux was created by Larry Ewing using GIMP. GIMP can take a little getting used to because the toolbars and dialogues are all in separate docks, instead of a single window. You can expose just the ones you want to use and drag them anywhere on your screen. Some users love this, some don’t. (GIMP 2.7.3 includes the long-promised single-window mode option, and will soon be available.)

Figure 1: Tux the Linux penguin in a new GIMP session, with the Toolbox, first image layer, and Layers dialogue.

Now let’s put a hat on Tux. I have a red fedora downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, and this image is given to the public domain, so I can do anything I want with it. I want to put it on Tux’s head. The first step is to go to File > Open as layers in Tux’s window (figure 2.)

Figure 2: Hat image opened in a new layer on Tux.

It’s the wrong size and in the wrong place, but that’s OK. It’s in a separate layer so I can edit it just as though it were in a separate window. Note how the Layers dialogue shows two entries now (figure 3). If you don’t see the Layers dialogue, then press Ctrl+l or click Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Layers to open it.

Figure 3: the Layers dialogue displays two layers and several controls.

The first image you open will always be labeled “background” in the layers dialog. You can change this name by right-clicking on it, and then left-click Edit Layer Attributes. Note how this right-click menu offers you a whole lot more controls (figure 4). GIMP has a lot of redundant controls, so you’ll see the same ones in multiple locations.

Figure 4: Right-click any item in your Layers dialog to see this menu.

But let’s not get distracted by all these new controls, for we have a hat to edit. Aim your eyeballs to the left and take a look at the Toolbox. This should always open by default (figure 5).

Figure 5: The GIMP Toolbox.

The Toolbox contains a selection of cursor tools. By default it becomes a paintbrush when you pass it over your image. I don’t want a paintbrush, I want the Move tool. That is the little four-pointed dealie. Click on it so you can move objects (figure 6). Remember to always select your tool first.

Figure 6: The Move tool.

Now I’m going to drag the hat onto Tux’s head. And oops, my canvas is a little too small. Which is no problem, because Image > Canvas Size makes it bigger. A little more height and I have room for the hat (figure 7).

Figure 7: A slightly bigger canvas for more headroom.

Well now, that’s not too bad, except the hat is too big. First I click on the hat layer in the Layer dialog to select it, and then click Layer > Scale Layer in the image window. This opens a dialog for changing the size of the image just in that layer. Note the little chain link between the Width and Height values; when these are linked changes are proportionate. Click the link to un-link the values and control them separately.

With the hat resized and positioned, I’m still not satisfied because the hat points to the right, and I want it to point to the left. Layer > Transform > Flip Horizontally turns it to the left. A little tweaking the position, and voilà! Tux has a stylin’ hat (figure 8).

Figure 8

There is one last task, and that is creating a caption. To launch the text editor, go to the Toolbar and click the big A. This also automatically creates a new layer for the text. GIMP has a habit of opening dialogs in inconvenient locations, so drag the text dialog anywhere to get it out of the way. When I type my caption into the text dialog it appears on the image at the same time, and gives a live preview of size, font, and color (figure 9).

Figure 9: Adding a caption.

By default layers are transparent, and my text doesn’t show up very well. So one way (there are several ways to do this) to give text a solid background is to click Layer > Transparency > Remove Alpha channel. This results in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Tux now has a hat and caption with a white background.

Now my stylin’ Tux can be saved as any image file format, but don’t forget to always first save your work in .xcf format. Then if you need to make any changes simply select the layer you want to work on. Take a look at the Layers dialog and you’ll see a wealth of useful options: delete, re-order, stack in whatever order you want, duplicate layers, all kinds of modes, and lots more. Which we will explore in future installments. If you like good howto books, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional is the best GIMP book.

By CARLA SCHRODER

Check out this post: Gimp resources to take you from Newbie to Power User

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the best Web-based resources for Inkscape users — documentation and tutorials, sites and forums to follow, plus how to find brushes, palettes, scripts and extensions. It only seems fair to do the same thing for the non-vector-artists out there as well. GIMP is every bit as powerful and multi-faceted as Inkscape, of course, and getting the most out of it involves many of the same questions.

Informational resources

Documentation and manuals

The official GIMP documentation is found at the GIMP web site, and its online manual is certainly the place to start. Although you’re probably familiar with most of the tool metaphors, the GIMP User Manual will help you get more out of the lesser-known tool options and explain some of the settings.

Moving on from there, there have been plenty of quality GIMP books written over the years, most of which are cataloged on the GIMP site under gimp.org/books. Some of them are print-only, but many are available as online docs, too. That is the case for the canonical third-party GIMP instructional tome, Grokking the GIMP. Though you can buy a printed version and help support the author, the full text is available online, in HTML, for free.

Gimp Books (click on image for full view)

Tutorials

GIMP tutorials, you’ll be happy to learn, are not in short supply. The GIMP home page maintains a hand-selected list, broken into different skill-level categories and split up by image-editing task — web, photography, even scripting.

There are also several good GIMP-only tutorial sites. Despite the similarity in URLs, gimp-tutorials.net and gimp-tutorials.com are separate collections — some original, some from outside sources. They may compete in name-space, but you don’t have to choose — subscribe to both. Gimpology is a GIMP-centric site that exclusively links to tutorials written elsewhere on the Web, submitted by users. GHUJ is more-or-less the same, although it earns plenty of style points for its distinctive, gallery-like presentation, too, as well as its “random tutorial” selector. Finally, GIMPS.de puts its emphasis on photo-retouching, but has tutorials in its archive for all sorts of tasks.

Gimp Tutorials (click on image for full view)

You should also check out general-purpose design tutorial sites; many have dedicated GIMP sections, including Pixel2Life, Tutorialized, and TutorialBlog.org. So, too, does the digital artist community site deviantART, which as you’ll see later, has plenty of other resources to share in addition to tutorials.

Pixels2life.com (click on image for full view)

GIMP user forums and discussion sites also tend to be excellent tutorial-finding spots. GimpUsers maintains a separate, curated tutorials page, while gimptalk reserves a special section on its discussion boards for tutorials and tips.

Gimpusers.com (click on image for full view)

Last but not least, almost any tutorial for another raster graphics tool will work for GIMP as well; so if you’re looking for a particular effect without luck, don’t forget to search for a Photoshop tutorial on the same subject. There are several examples of Photoshop-to-GIMP tutorial conversions on display at Lava360, for instance. Likewise, a lot of Photoshop and generic-graphic-design blogs provide good coverage of GIMP along with their other news topics, so you will find good resources like “30+ Exceptional GIMP Tutorials and Resources” fairly often outside the GIMP-specific world.

Videos

As was the case with Inkscape, sometimes a video tutorial beats a written, screenshot-driven tutorial when it comes to explaining a particular process or technique, so video tutorials deserve a special mention.

The leader in this category is Meet the GIMP, a site that specialized in original, video-based tutorials for the GIMP. They are detailed, and the archives contain well over 150 individual videos, in your choice of video formats.

Meetthegimp.org (click on image for full view)

GIMPers.com also specializes in GIMP video tutorials, including practical “basic learning” episodes and wacky, out-there effects.

Naturally, the general design/tutorial market has its share of GIMP video content as well. Check out the GIMP video section at Design Your Own Web, and the list at Six Revisions. And don’t forget that you can always find good user-created content — usually shorter in length — by saving a search at a video sharing site like YouTube.

Blogs

The main resource for GIMP blogging is GraphicsPlanet, which aggregates numerous GIMP and free software graphics developers and artists into one feed. There isn’t (currently) an official “GIMP development” blog, but if you want to follow GIMP’s changes and enhancements, there are some people to follow: Martin Nordholts blogs at chromecode.com, Peter Sikking at MMIworks, and Øyvind Kolås at codecave.org. Also be sure to check out GIMP writer Akkana Peck at shallowsky.com.

Mmiworks.net (click on image for full view)

You’ll also want to watch Libre Graphics World, an independent news site maintained by photographer Alexandre Prokoudine. LGW covers the full spectrum of open source graphics, including raster and vector graphics, photography, 3-D, typography, and much more. It’s often the fist place to report on new GIMP features and development releases.

Forums

In addition to its aforementioned news content, LGW also hosts Web discussion forums, which are a good place to turn for user-to-user questions, whether newbie or seasoned pro. The same is true of Meet the GIMP’s forum section; though the top board on the page is for discussing the video tutorial episodes, there are dedicated GIMP sections (including a photography section and a user gallery section), as well as discussion boards covering more general graphics topics. In fact, it is one of the few open source graphics forums to have a dedicated hardware section, so if you’re experiencing trouble with your graphics tablet, it’s a good place to go.

There are at least three major GIMP-only discussion sites worth checking out: Gimp Chat, GimpTalk, and the Gimp Users Group (GUG). They are, quite naturally, similar in nature — each has multiple subsections to organize the discussion, including photo-versus-web graphics, scripting and plugins, brushes and swatches, and user-written tutorials. If you’re looking for help with a particular subject, there’s no reason you have to limit yourself to searching just one of them.

Gimpusergroup (click on image for full view)

Finally, a number of the general-purpose digital artist forums on the Web have started hosting GIMP-specific sections, too, so be sure and check in there as well. The #the-gimp channel at DeviantArt, for example, hosts discussions in addition to linking to all of the member designers’ work.

Tools and content resources

Sharable resources like brushes, gradients, palettes and textures are popular discussion content for artists and graphic designers. You’ll occasionally see a design blog do a special post on GIMP resources of this nature, such as AG Design’s two part “ultimate” series on the GIMP.

The truth is, however, that because GIMP is natively capable of using Photoshop’s brush and file formats, you don’t need to seek out GIMP-specific Web sites. The vast majority of what you’ll find at a Photoshop-oriented site like BlendFu works without any trouble in GIMP. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t GIMP-centric sites to visit, too.

Brush resources

You might start with the official GIMP site’s tutorial on creating and customizing brushes. From there, persistent artist communities are among the best resources to search for new brushes. DeviantArt has a GIMP brushes section. TechZilo maintains a list that links to many independent brush collections (which includes several from DeviantArt).

Dedicated brush library pages exist, too. Brushnet is a general-purpose raster brush site that has a special GIMP section as well as a Photoshop section. Free-Brushes.com advertises GIMP support, although it does not maintain a separate category.

Brushnet.com (click on image for full view)

FreeBrushes.com (click on image for full view)

Art and design blogs periodically collect far more than a single post’s worth of brush resources, such as Noupe’s massive collection of over 1000 brushes. Searching for specialty lists can help narrow down the field, too — several of the above sites break down brushes by category, and blogs tend to post narrower collections as regular post content, as in Creative Mac’s film brushes collection.

Color palette, texture, and swatch resources

DeviantArt is also a good source for patterns and textures, though you should note that in the case of patterns, GIMP resources cannot be imported to be used in Photoshop.

Design community sites like AGDesign also host texture collection libraries; you will also find lots of individual pattern collections on designer’s home pages, like pgd-design or HelensImages. The latter site, notably, contains displacement map patterns, which GIMP can use to create water-like distortion-effects, in addition to traditional textures. Finally, several tutorial sites also stock texture and pattern libraries, such as GIMP-Tutorials.net.

AllGraphicdesign.com (click on image for full view)

Color palettes are a bit different from patterns and textures. Several of the resource sites mentioned above maintain both, although some (like AGDesign) maintain separate pages. Several DeviantArt collections exist, such as Nevit’s and MarmiteMamie’s. You’ll also find several individual’s collections of high-quality GIMP palettes on the Web, including Tigert’s and ChrisDesign’s.

nevit.deviantart.com (click on image for full view)

chrisdesign.wordpress.com (click on image for full view)

But you can also import color palettes from a a variety of other sources, which opens up more resource possibilities. That includes the Web — the Colorzilla site contains an excellent collection of GIMP-compatible palettes, and the CSSDrive color palette generator can create a palette based on the colors in any image you upload. Last but certainly not least, if you need to create palettes yourself, the Agave desktop tool is the best utility available on Linux.

Scripts, plugins, and extensions

Arguably GIMP’s most powerful feature is its scriptability; plugins and scripts are available in several scripting languages that extend its functionality with new tools, effects, filters, even additional image formats. The canonical list of known GIMP plugins is the official GIMP Plugin Registry. It houses the full catalog of extensions, and is searchable by popularity, keyword tagging, and more. The main registry page also hosts a news feed of new plugin releases and updates. There is also a registry user forum where you can ask plugin- and script-specific help questions.

registry.gimp.org (click on image for full view)

If that seems a little daunting, that’s okay. There are also third-party sites and lists that pare the library down into more manageable chunks. The Open Source Photography Flickr group maintains a GIMP Scripts page, as does TechZilo. DeviantArt maintains a separate resource category just for GIMP extensions.

Finally, as with the other categories, you’ll also find good special-purpose lists maintained by blogs or individual artists. Kevin Cozens maintains an excellent scripts page at his personal site, and TechZilo has — separate from its main resource library listed above — an editor-maintained list of plugins useful for users used to Photoshop.

Art and PSD resources

As was true with Inkscape, there are far more design resources out there that are useful in GIMP than just those created for the GIMP itself.

Here again, the Open Clip Art Library site is a valuable resource; a community-maintained of user-created designs and graphical elements, all of which is free to use under public domain terms.

Openclipart.org

Similarly, the Open Font Library is a resource site for typography available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license; you can search for fonts to use in any of your projects without fear of running into licensing trouble. Its wiki can also be a valuable way to find open typographic resources from other projects.

Also check out design sites like Dezignus.com, SixRevisions, or other artist blogs. Finally, when you’re looking for design resources, don’t forget that GIMP has full import functionality for Photoshop’s .PSD file format. That means you can include anything that bases its templates around PSD files. This includes design mags like SpeckyBoy, the PSD section of community sites like DeviantArt, blogs like Lava360, or PSD-centric sites like Official PSDs or FreePSDFiles.net.

Dezignus.com (click on image for full view)

BY NATHAN WILLIS

Check out how to make labels with Gimplabels by Akkana Peck

In spite of Silicon Valley’s best efforts, it is still not a paperless world. On a free software desktop, this is rarely a problem, because significant work has gone into making CUPS, Foomatic, and other parts of the printing tool chain work well and integrate seamlessly into the application suite — at least, for the typical “office” document. There are still a few things the average user can do to enhance the quality of prints from graphics applications like GIMP. Some are common to all raster image editors but which you might need a refresher course on, and some of which are more specialized. Given the price of high-quality inks and photo paper, though, a little preparation can save both time and money.

By Nathan Willis

Pre-flight check: accounting for how raster images work

An image undergoes multiple transformation between the time is read from the hard disk and the time it pops out of the printer. Most importantly, of course, that includes the editing that you perform in GIMP. A critical component to getting consistently good prints in enabling and configuring GIMP’s color management (CM). CM is built-in to all recent GIMP releases, but it does not come pre-configured, so if you don’t take the time to set it up, it does you no good.

“GIMP’s color management settings, where assigning color profiles allows you to accurately preview printouts.”

Open the Preferences dialog (found in Edit -> Preferences), and click on the Color Management tab. Set the “Mode of operation:” selector to “Color managed display.” Beneath this is a list of other preference selectors. Even though we are discussing printing, you need to select an “RGB profile” and a “Monitor profile” in addition to a “Print simulation profile.”

Monitors are RGB devices, but they all differ slightly in terms of their exact hues, white points, and contrast. The best monitor profile you can use for accuracy’s sake is a custom profile generated with a tool like Argyll or LProf. If you don’t have a colorimeter to measure your display, though, a decent substitute is a profile specific to the brand and model of monitor you use. You can often find these on the driver discs that accompany a retail box, or on the manufacturer’s support Web site.

The selector labeled “RGB profile” is the “working profile” that GIMP will use with open files; in other words, it is the base from which other conversions will be made. Most people choose a generic, well-established profile like sRGB or AdobeRGB for this option; your Linux distribution may come with several options stored in /usr/share/color/icc/.

Ironically, it is because sRGB is regarded as the “Web-safe” profile that most people notice few color-management problems when all they do is edit images to post online. It is when they get to printing that the difference becomes distinct. Like your monitor, you must select a “Print simulation profile” for the specific output device you intend to use. Here, too, a custom profile is best, but at the very least, you should install one provided by the manufacturer. It may not be perfect, but at least it will have the right approximate white points, primaries, and so forth.

Both of the “rendering intent” selectors offer multiple choices. Some graphics pros have strong feelings about workflow and rendering intent; if in doubt, choose “Perceptual.” With all these settings in place, GIMP can now map generic RGB pixels to your monitor and simulate the output on your printer, allowing you to “soft-proof” your work without risking paper. When doing this, it is an extremely good idea to check the “show out-of-gamut colors” preference — this will warn you if your image strays beyond the printable color range of your output device. Nobody likes that kind of surprise.

Beyond the color management, it is important to correctly prepare your image for output. Begin by “flattening” the image with Image -> Flatten Image. This eliminates extra layers, producing a smaller file, so you may want to save this output copy under a different filename. Just as importantly, this action renders any text in the image, saving you from the potential difficulty of embedding fonts or trying to manage font collections between different devices.

Next you should calculate the correct size of the image, and resize it to the exact pixel dimensions. You can use the Image -> Scale Image … dialog. Here you have to be conscious of the difference between “dots per inch” (DPI) as often quoted on printer specs and “pixels per inch” (PPI). PPI counts the actual grid of image data, in RGB triples. DPI counts the droplets of ink actually fired out of the printer; the DPI count will always be much higher, because the printer blends colors by mixing multiple dots together to match the color of each pixel.

Take the final dimensions you want your printed output to be, and multiply by 300 PPI to get the correct size of the digital image. Unless you know otherwise for a specific printer, 300 PPI is what most printers can handle. GIMP includes three interpolation algorithms in the “Quality” section of the Scale Image dialog: Linear, Cubic, and Sinc (Lanczos3). Generally speaking, Sinc is regarded as the best, but it would not hurt to try Cubic if Sinc gives you artifacts. There are occasionally images where one works better than another, depending on whether it is photo, line art, or another image type.

Saving your output image at a particular pixel size helps because the printing stack does not have to resize the image for its final output: this means less memory is used, and the printout moves considerably faster.

Finally, developer Pascal de Bruijn recommends using a small amount of “over-sharpening” when printing raster graphics, to correct for ink bleed. Whether you find this to be useful might depend on your device, as would the amount of sharpening to perform, but it is worth considering and, if you have time to run a test, comparing with real-world printouts.

Much of the advice given here applies to other raster editing programs, such as Krita or one of the raw photo converters, with the added caveat that in those programs, you also need to be sure to save the print-ready version of your file in 8-bit-per-channel color. It is always a good idea to edit in 16-bit mode if possible, to preserve detail, but printing is generally an 8-bit process. GIMP is adding more and more 16-bit operations as time goes by, of course, so in future releases this may become a factor for GIMP printers as well.

The Linux printing tool chain in all its glory

In addition to the image file format itself, it is important to understand that raster images take a very different path through the printing tool chain that do text-centric documents. The LinuxPrinting.org site has a block diagram showing how most of the pieces actually fit together, but because it is an “ASCII art” drawing, you might prefer to look at the SVG copy recreated for Wikimedia Commons.

“GIMP’s default Print functionality is provided by the OS, so it does not feature much in the way of raster-image-specific tweaks.”

A bird’s eye view of the system is that CUPS serves as the print spooler and scheduler, queuing print jobs when there are more than one and relaying them to printer servers for network-shared printers. For each individual print job, CUPS pipes the data through a filter, converting the file’s original data into an output format like PostScript.

You can get improved prints from image files by using the Gutenprint driver system in place of CUPS’s defaults. Gutenprint aims at top-of-the-line quality for imaging printers such as Canon and Epson photo-quality inkjets, and will usually give better quality output than CUPS’s general-purpose settings.

At the filter stage, CUPS looks at the MIME type of the file to decide which of several conversion utilities to use, such as the text-to-PostScript filter texttops, the PDF converter pdftops, or a rasterizer such as imagetops, all of which send their output to Ghostscript. Ghostscript is then responsible for turning the PostScript output into the raw form expected by the particular printer back-end.

CUPS’s configuration allows different filters to be set up and weighted for different purposes. By default, CUPS uses the imagetoraster filter to convert raster graphics into printer-ready data. The Gutenprint project provides a different filter, named rastertogutenprint, as well as special back-end drivers for Canon and Epson photo printers.

Obviously an image embedded in a PDF should to pass through filter that takes it to Ghostscript, but for printing stand-alone images, Gutenprint is an improvement. To use it instead, you first need to install the Gutenprint packages from your Linux distribution. This may include several different packages, including cups-driver-gutenprint and foomatic-db-gutenprint. Install them all. The first helps configure CUPS itself to use the Gutenprint filter for raster files, while the second configures the Foomatic printer-configuration system (which is what you see when adding and setting up a printer) to pre-select Gutenprint when you add a new printer.

Consequently, if you have been using the standard CUPS drivers with your printer, you need to open up the OS’s printer configuration dialog, delete the printer, and then re-add the printer after you have installed Gutenprint. The Gutenprint driver will appear as the preferred driver choice for the printer, and you can simply accept the default settings. Subsequent printouts will be routed to Gutenprint, giving you improved quality without additional headache.

Conversions

There is still one more thing you can do to achieve maximum quality from your GIMP prints: do a colorspace transformation on them before you send them to the printer. In a perfect world, Gutenprint would come with built-in CM, just like GIMP, and the color management system would transform the image from your ICC working profile to your ICC device profile before it hits the printer. You would get exactly what you see when doing GIMP’s “soft proof” feature.

Unfortunately, Gutenprint does not yet support color management, so you need to apply the color transformation yourself. The LittleCMS package includes two utilities, tifficc and jpegicc, which you can run on the command line to do a color transformation. The basic syntax is tifficc -i inoutprofile.icc -o outputprofile.icc -t intent -c quality -b input.tiff output.tiff.

The intent and quality arguments are both numbers; for intent, 0 is perceptual, 1 is colorimetric, 2 is saturation, and 3 is absolute; for quality 1 is normal, 2 is high, and 3 is low. The -b argument tells the program to perform black-point compensation, which you should always choose if in doubt. You can leave off the input profile argument if the image is in sRGB, because tifficc and jpegicc assume sRGB if no profile is specified.

Naturally, the degree of improvement you will see by employing this process depends on the quality of the output device profile you create. Creating such a profile is not as simple as creating a display device profile. Argyll supports a few color measurement instruments; if you do not happen to own one of them, your best bet is to create a profile using a scanner, which of course requires that you first create a scanner profile.

On the other hand, a commercial print service may be able to provide you with printer profiles for its hardware, which it is a good idea to take advantage of for professional-quality work. You should always check the technical FAQ section of the service bureau’s Web site, however — many have very specific instructions for file preparation.

Other options: the Gutenprint GIMP plugin and PhotoPrint

You should also consider installing the Gutenprint GIMP plugin, and open source front end to the Gutenprint drivers that gives you access to the full range of printer settings supported by Gutenprint, which are not available in GIMP’s default File -> Print dialog. It is available at the Gutenprint project site. The plugin creates a second print entry in the File menu labeled “Print with Gutenprint,” so it is okay to install the plugin without fear of losing access to the normal print functionality.

“The Gutenprint plugin provides more control for high-end inkjet printers.”

In addition to more access to printer options, the Gutenprint plugin gives you full control over placing the image on the printed page, including orientation and alignment tools, plus scaling controls.

Another good printing path to consider is the stand-alone app PhotoPrint. PhotoPrint is a front-end to the Gutenprint drivers, but specifically tailored for laying out and printing photos. This includes placing multiple images onto a single sheet, border-less printing, and easy support for the photo common paper sizes. You configure PhotoPrint’s color management support in the same way that you do GIMP’s: choose “Color Management” from the Options menu, then assign display, working, and printer profiles, plus rendering intent, in the dialog box.

 ”Photoprint allows multi-image layout, basic image adjustments, and offers color-managed printing.”

PhotoPrint includes some fancy features like pre-defined image borders, image histograms, and basic color adjustment controls, but for most users the automatic color management is its most useful feature.

There are certainly plenty of people who are happy with the results of CUPS’ raster printouts, so do not feel any pressure to complicate your workflow against your will. CUPS’s raster filters even assume that the image’s profile is sRGB, which is the most common working profile, so you may get decent results with no reconfiguration whatsoever. Similarly, there are plenty of uses for GIMP where color management is not the main concern — but where incorrectly scaling your image or trying to print a multi-layer .XCF file causes a considerable waste of time, slowing down both the desktop and the printer. As a general rule, though, the more you understand about how image printing works, the better quality printouts you can achieve, so it is probably worth your while to sit down and profile your system.

By Nathan Willis

Going back through 2009 submissions will provide a point of reference as we search for these answers.

When used effectively, gradients can add new dimensions to vector-based imagery. The landscape designed by hrum (pictured above) combines multiple gradient layers into an effective piece of art.

Photorealistic techniques became very popular design choices for the Clip Art Community in 2009, and Chrisdesign provided an excellent example with his longsword.

Near the end of the year, placidoaps merged traditional vector graphic lines with tactical uses of gradients to give his rendering of a penguin both character and depth.

The Open Clip Art Library accepts vector art from anyone, anywhere, so help make visual landmarks in 2010 by contributing! Check out other 2009 works by Simanek and klaasvangend to get inspired.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Akkana Peck’s Gimplabels is a set of scripts for the Gimp image editor that make creating labels and business cards a snap. A .tar package is available on the Web site, but the contents are simply a Gimp script named labels.scm and the utilities needed to rebuild labels.scm. Gimplabels was originally written for an older version of the Gimp, so if you are using the current revision (2.6) and it doesn’t work, try the rebuilding instructions inside the package. You should be able to install the script by copying it to the /scripts/ directory inside your Gimp configuration folder (i.e., /home/username/.gimp-2.6/).

When installed, Gimplabels adds new functions to the File -> Create -> Misc menu and to the Filters -> Combine menu. Under File -> Create -> Misc you will discover two options: Labels -> Rect Label and Labels -> CD Label. Both of these scripts create a new image for you in the exact dimensions required for the particular label you are creating.

The Rect Label script offers a list of several dozen common label templates in pop-up menu. The CD Label script allows you to choose either standard (5-inch) or mini CD (3-inch) formats. Both scripts allow you to adjust the background color and the size of the new image if you need to tweak for an exact fit. Currently, only US letter sized paper is supported.

To make rectangular labels, you create the new image as described above, then, once you’ve drawn your label, you run the second script: Filters -> Combine -> Make label page. This script takes the label image you have been working on, duplicates in the proper number of times, and lays out a new image populated for a full sheet of the selected label. You’ll notice that the same drop-down list of label templates is available here; you can run the second script on a different label template than the one you designed with, but this is not recommended.

To make CD labels, start with File -> Create -> Misc -> Labels -> CD label. This will create a new image suitable for use as a CD label: a disc with the proper diameter, with the center punched out. As with rectangular labels, once you have completed your design work, Gimplabels can automatically convert it into a label sheet. Select Filters -> Combine -> Make label page. The tool can compose label sheets compatible with Neato, Stomper, or other name-brand label sheet layouts.

Advanced usage and settings

The “Create label sheet” script has a few options, but you should familiarize yourself with them in case you need to fine-tune the settings. For example, the “Printer fudge factor” scales the image slightly to account for the fact that different brands and models of printer have slightly different printable areas.

The “From:” and “To:” settings allow you to generate an image that only prints on part of the whole sheet. So if you only need for labels, set the script for “From: 1″ “To: 4.” Next time, you can print “From: 5″ “To: 8″ or whatever number is appropriate. Note that you have to specify a continuous sequence, starting in the upper lefthand corner. There is no way to skip a label in the middle.

Gimplabels works part of its magic by depending on the GUI label designer gLabels. gLabels’ database of known templates is the source of the list that appears in the label creation and label sheet scripts. These are usually stored in /usr/share/glabels/templates. If you update gLabels and acquire a new template, you will have to run an auxiliary setup script in order for Gimplabels to re-scan the directory and pick up the new template.

This script is called make-label-fu.py, and is included in the Gimplabels .tar package. It needs Python and PyXML to be installed. Run it from a command line with “python make-label-fu.py”. You do not have to run make-label-fu.py or even have it installed on your system — at the project’s home page you can also choose to download just the labels.scm script by itself. gLabels has a very complete set of templates, so updating the database is probably not something to worry about unless you know of a specific new template that has been added to the list.

Gimplabels is about as easy as it gets; no guesswork is involved when creating the new image to the exact specifications required, and the script composes the sheet without your intervention — all you have to worry about is designing one label the way you want it.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

Other resources:

gLabels – EZ label creator for Linux

http://oplnk.net/~ajackson/software/maillabels/

Glabels

Openoffice.org Labels Templates

Printing Avery Labels in Linux

LabelNation

Visit Worldlabel.com for all popular size labels

GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program – is the most well-known open source graphics editing application, born in 1995 as reported in the GNU free software directory, is a freely distributed program for tasks like photo retouching, image composition and authoring. Last but not least the so-called batch mode that allows you to do image processing from the command line.

GIMP is not only an expert quality photo retouching program, it is also a simple drawing program and an image format converter (it’s worth mentioning that it manages psd, Photoshop’s file format as well as scalable vector graphics (svg) file format).

GIMP is extensible, its functionalities can be augmented with plug-ins and there are extensions that allow you to configure GIMP to replace Photoshop to do just about anything.

If you really want a GIMP version as close as possible to Photoshop, I recommend that you also take a look at GimPhoto, a GIMP modification with a different menu layout, selection of plugins, and additional resources. GIMPhoto, used in combination with GimPad, formerly known as GimPhoto Desktop, gives its best, and you don’t need to spend time searching all over the internet to find plug-ins to extend GIMP capabilities.

GIMPshop also use GIMP as the backend, adding an extra interface to make its look&feel more like Photoshop. GIMPshop addresses some common criticisms regarding GIMP’s interface, modifying the menu structure to adjust the program’s terminology to match Photoshop.

GIMP comes with documentation for both users and programmers, including tutorials.

By Roberto Galoppini of Commercial Open Source Software

In this post, I’ll stick to the many cool tools to choose from if you’re using a Windows-compatible PC. Stay tuned for future posts about Mac and Linux-compatible tools.

RoundMyCorners is a simple online image editing tool intended for people who just want to round the corners of their photos or graphics and don’t have or don’t want to take the time to learn an editing program such as Photoshop. All you do is click “Browse” and upload a JPEG, GIF or PNG image. Tell the program “how round” you want the corners of the image (in pixels) and what you’d like the background color to be, if not transparent. RoundMyCorners will give you back a PNG, JPEG or GIF image.

If you want to match text to photos or graphics for professional-quality labels, there are several free online “color pickers” that will save you the trouble of opening your file in an image editor and dragging out the eyedropper tool just to get the RGB or hex code for the color you want to match. One such program is ColorPic (image shown at right), which is a freeware Windows program. It has a built-in magnifier and mouse “nudge” function, and ColorPic also takes the guesswork out of selecting an entire palette of colors. A couple of programs designed to sample colors directly from the Web are Instant Eyedropper and ColorSchemer’s ColorPix.

Say you want to superimpose a picture of one of your associates over an image of your office and make a business card out of it to print on World Label labels or along with free printable business cards from my site, FreePrintableBusinessCards.net. A freeware program called Merge makes it a one-step process to incorporate elements of two images into one, join four images into a quadrant or merge text with an image. For instance, you could also use Merge to watermark your copyrighted photos on labels or other materials.

How about if you’re still in startup mode and haven’t yet had a company logo designed? CoolText is a graphics generator that can quickly serve up a logo based on a couple of dozen designs with the text, font and color of your choosing. In some cases, you can even upload your own background image. CoolText spits out a downloadable file in formats such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, Photoshop and .XCF (GIMP), ready to print onto labels or add to free printable business cards.

With all of these great tools, you can have fun designing your own labels without the headaches. Remember, if you’re using an online label-design template, such as those available from WorldLabel or FreePrintable.net, be sure to keep all artwork at least one-eighth inch from the edge of the labels.

Kevin Savetz is the creator of FreePrintable.net, a network of more than 25 sites that offer printable certificates, business cards, resume templates, and other printable items.