GIMP

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GIMP is a powerful raster image editing program, and commonly used for photo retouching, image composition, and general graphic design work. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

Installation

Install the gimp package.

Tip: The GIMP implements a plug-in system and the repositories (official, AUR) contain more plug-ins than listed in the package's optional depends.

Tips and tricks

Captions

To caption an image follow these steps after inputting the desired text:

  1. Click Layer and Text to Path
  2. Click Select and From Path
  3. Click Select and Invert
  4. Click Edit and Stroke Path

Create a circle

To draw a circle in GIMP follow these steps:

  1. Select the Ellipse tool and hold Shift
  2. Click Edit and Fill with Color
  3. Click Select and Shrink
  4. Press Delete
Tip: Grow and Border give the same result.

Photoshop behaviour

Since GIMP is highly configurable, it is possible to change the keybinds, and even the UI, to be more familiar to those who are used to the raster image editing program Photoshop.

Specifically the GimpPs theme aims to make GIMP behave more like Photoshop, which you can install on top of GIMP.

Alternately, if you just want the keybinds, the relevant lines are included in the theme's menurc file, which you can then add to your local ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/menurc.

There is also the PhotoGIMP project, aiming to do to the same.

Troubleshooting

Green text

Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you see a green tint around letters with antialiasing enabled: 

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
      <const>none</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Hide Noto

Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you have noto-fonts installed and would like to remove them from GIMP's fonts list: 

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <rejectfont>
    <glob>/usr/share/fonts/noto</glob>
  </rejectfont>
</fontconfig>

See fonts-conf(5) and Font configuration#Whitelisting and blacklisting fonts for more information.

PDF files

GIMP requires the poppler-glib library to open PDF files or it will report that they are unrecognised.

Since GIMP rasterizes PDF files right from the start, it will not exploit intrinsic PDF capabilities while editing them. Other programs (like LibreOffice Draw) can be used to better edit PDF files.

See also