Gimp Tutorials

Good tutorials for the free image manipulation program GIMP will teach you skills in selecting images, painting and working with layers and filters. You will learn how to enhance your photos by applying filters such as Red eye removal, and how to use the Eraser tool to edit imagery made with the Paintbrush painting tool. Study tutorials that teach you not only how to use GIMP's tools, but the concepts underlying these tools.

Selections

Effective GIMP tutorials will show you how to select a portion of a larger image. This task is important because you'll often want to perform an operation like removing a background or isolating some other part of your image for editing, while protecting the remaining portions of the image. A good selection tutorial will cover the automated selection tools such as Fuzzy select, which creates selections based on color and whose tool palette icon is a magic wand. The tutorial will cover the Foreground select tool, which selects based on a region you roughly define with mouse movements. You will also learn manual selection tools such as Quick mask mode, in which you paint over the regions you want to select, and the Rectangular selection tool, with which you create image selections shaped like rectangles.

Painting

GIMP painting tutorials will show you how to use the program's Paintbrush tool, which lets you apply digital paint to the canvas to create original artworks or edit existing pictures, including photos. These tutorials will show you how to enter painting mode by clicking the tool palette icon shaped like a paintbrush, and how to choose a color for painting by clicking the swatches at the bottom of the tool palette. Clicking and dragging on the canvas to apply the paint, will be among the instructions you will receive.

Layers

Tutorials teaching you skills in using GIMP's layers will point out the role of these virtual transparencies. One facet of that role is protecting image portions on underlying layers. Layering tutorials will show you how to add layers with the Layer menu's New command, and how to rearrange layers by dragging items representing them in the Layers palette. A thorough layer tutorial will teach you how to make a layer partially or completely transparent by changing the layer's Opacity setting in the Layers palette, and how to make a layer invisible by clicking its eye icon in the same palette.

Filters

Tutorials showing you how to use filters will explain that filters apply imaging algorithms to create new imagery for your GIMP files, or to modify existing images. These tutorials will point out that filters often produce highly realistic images, and that you should make a backup copy of your picture before applying a filter to it. The reason for this is that filters change the data in your images. Good filter tutorials will show you how to use common filters such as Gaussian blur, which can mask skin marks on face portraits to make skin appear smooth. You may also learn how to use the Unsharp filter, which sharpens images despite its contradictory name.

References

• "The GIMP User Manual"; GIMP documentation team; 2009