(Updated: January 30, 2006)

GIMP Art Lab

Last Updated by: Hosna Jabbari
Comments to: Steve Wolfman

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Sources and contributions:The first version of this lab was written by David Hsu, Diann Mok & Jacquelyn Lam as a CPSC 101 course project. Revisions were made by Jacquelyn Lam, Diann Mok, and Andrew Kaufman. Portions of other GIMP, or Ultimate-Paint, labs and course projects by Ori Livneh, Kathy Lo, Tanya Ellchuk, and Jake Wires have been incorporated into this lab.

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Contents

• Objectives
• Before the Lab
• Part I: Getting to Know GIMP
• Part II: Creating an Original Image
• Part III: Digital Photo Editing
• Deliverables
• Resources

Objectives

In this lab, the focus will be on learning to use an image editing/creation program. The program we will be using is called GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This program has many uses; it can be used as a simple paint program or an expert photo-editing program just to name a few. In this lab you will learn techniques to illustrate a painting, edit digital photos, and enhance photo portraits. The goal is to get you interested in digital artistic processes by using GIMP.

GIMP is image editing software similar to Adobe Photoshop, but it is free to download and install and is open source. The skills that you learn using GIMP will apply (with small differences) to most other image editing software.

Before the Lab

Before starting this lab, you should acquire a digital photograph of your choice. It should be a photograph of a scene, or a photo portrait of you or a friend. You can email the image to youself, or find one online and save it onto your home directory. Make a new folder called "GIMP", and save the photo there.

If you are working on a lab computer, GIMP has been installed on you "L:" drive. Open My Computer -> L: -> GIMP 2.0. To start GIMP, double click on the GIMP Command Shell and follow the setup instructions (you can probably just hit "continue" a bunch of times).

If you get an error message like This application failed to start because libglib-2.0-0.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.
Don't panic. There is always a work around :-)
Here's a work around that you can use.
1) Copy the folder L:\GIMP-2.0 to C:\Temp.
(The files may already be in C:\Temp. So if that is the case, you can skip right to step 3.)
2) Copy everything in L:\GTK\2.0\bin to C:\Temp\GIMP-2.0\bin.
3) Run C:\Temp\GIMP-2.0\bin\gimp-2.2.exe
This will bring up the setup screen. Follow the setup and your will be fine.

If you'd like to work from home, you'll need to install GIMP on your computer. It's available for free for Windows, Mac, and UNIX from http://www.gimp.org/. For example, for Windows, go to the Windows GIMP install site and install the programs labelled "GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment" and "The GIMP for Windows"

It may also be helpful to visit the official website of GIMP to obtain a step-by-step introduction of the basic functions. The rest of this lab assumes that you are familiar with the basic functions available in GIMP.

Start thinking creatively and prepare to bring out your artistic side. You will need to be creative in this lab!

During the Lab

Part I: Getting to Know GIMP

During this part of the lab, your job is to try out the various features of GIMP that we present. Explore playfully! See what you can do and create! In the next section, we'll give you a more specific goal to shoot for.

A Friendly Reminder: GIMP shares many of the keyboard shortcuts with other windows programs. For example, you can undo your last move by pressing Control + Z, save by pressing Control + S, and so on.

1. Open GIMP - Click on My Computer > L: > GIMP-2.0 > GIMP 2.0 (Windows Command Script)

2. Create a New Image - choose template & Image Size > Ok.

Basic Skills:

• Setting the Background Color
  1. Click on the Foreground & Background color on the Toolbox menu.
     Double click to open the color selection dialog and select a color.

     
     

     
     
  2. Select Bucket Fill tool () from the menus to fill with a color or pattern.
     Choose the fill type and click anywhere on the canvas to fill the canvas with your background color.

• Freehand Drawing
  1. You can choose to use a pencil (), paintbrush (), airbrush ( ), or ink ( ) from the menu.
     After you click on one of them, you can choose different options for each of them.
     
     
  2. Click with your left mouse button in order to choose a color for your brush. Click the foreground color and choose your color.
     
     
  3. Hold down the mouse button and draw with the brush in the image window.
     
     
  4. Try selecting a brush and painting with it. Does it create a different effect from the original brush? Try a few more brushes and think about what you can do with these effects.
  
  
• Shape Drawing
  
  
  1. GIMP allows you to draw different kinds of shapes like a rectangle or circle.
     When you hold down the shift key and click the left mouse button, you can draw a straight line to the point where your cursor is currently located.
     
     
  2. You can also draw simple squares or circles using Edit->Stroke Selection.
     More complex shapes can be drawn using the Path tool or with Filters -> Render –>Gfig.
     
     
  3. Feel free to play around with the different tools. You can't make any mistakes. Try and make whatever comes to your mind.
     
     
• Saving an Image
  
  
  1. GIMP can save all of the information in an image including special editing features like layers, transparency, etc.
     You can save your image as XCF, the native file format, so that you can come back and work with your image later, and when you are finished, you can then save it as jpeg, gif,...etc.
     
     
• Advanced Brush Options
  
  
  1. For the Paintbrush, You can choose different tool options like opacity, mode, type & size of brush, gradient, length...etc. in the menu.
     
     
  2. There is also a Brushes Dialog that includes many different shapes, types, and size of brushes.
     
     
     
     
• Special Effects
  
  
  1. You can try many fun options under the Filter menus:
     1. Filters > Blur > Pixelize
     2. Filters > Artistic > Cartoon

     There are lots of effects or filters you can try.
     With the selection tool , you can select a segment of your image to try out different effects.
     
     

  2. Try selecting just one part of your image and applying a filter. If you don't like, it, then undo it and try something new.
  3. More effects: You can try out the Script-Fu menu for more cool effects
     
     
• Cropping
  
  
  1. Crop is used for removing unwanted areas in your image. First double click on the Crop tool icon. Below you should see the Tool Toggle Menu which sets Crop as default. Then you click on your image and drag the tool which will form a rectangle cropping area. You will clearly be able to see your cropping area since it will be highlighted. Everything outside the cropping area that you created will be deleted.
     
     
  
  
  
  2. Another way to crop is to change the settings of origin, width, and height. The default is set at pixels and it is a good idea to set the origins to X=0 and Y=0 which is the top left corner of your image and the width and height to be the bottom right most pixel, which is width=1023 height=699 if your image has 1024 x 700 pixels. The Auto shrink button locates a border from your image to draw dimensions from. However, it should only be used when there are isolated objects contrasting sharply with the background. The Tool Toggle Menu has more options for you to click on. Current Layer Only will crop or resize the active layer. If you don't know what a layer is, don't owrry about it. They will be explained later in the lab. Allow Enlarging makes the crop or resize take place outside the boundary of the image or layer. Fixed Aspect Ratio will keep a fixed ratio between width and height.
     
     
     
• Color Tools
  
  
  1. There are many different color tools you can experiment with in Gimp. Here are two of them. The Color balance tool makes changes to the color balance of the active selection or layer. It is located by clicking the image menu Tools-> Color Tools->Color Balance.

     The Posterize Tool weighs the pixel colors of the active layer and reduces the number of colors while maintaining a balance of characteristics of the original image. It is located by clicking the image menu Tools->Color Tools->Posterize.

     
     You can change the number of levels (2-256) in each RVB channel by using the arrow head or the slider. The total number of colors is a combination of these levels. For instance, level 3 will give 23 = 8 colors. Click on the preview selection so you could see changes in your image directly. If you don't understand what these features are doing, then try them out! See what happens. It is always easier to understand how the tools will work if you see the results for yourself.
     
     
     

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Part II: Creating an Original Image

Create an Image: Use GIMP to create a new image by using different kinds of shapes, brushes, colors, and effects of the filters. The image you create should be unique and inventive. Push the limits of GIMP, as well as the limits of your creativity. Almost half of your grade is for creativity. You will be asked to explain your motivation behind the image you create. This doesn't have to be an indepth explanation, but should help to demontrate your intent and creativity. Some possible ideas and styles you could use that would make use of the many features of GIMP are listed below. If you've never heard of some of these styles, search for the style along with the word paintings on Google Images:

• Still life: a basket or a bowl of fruit
• Landscape: a beach scene or cityscape scene
• Cartoon: a favorite or original cartoon character
• Abstract
• Pointillism
• Surrealism
• Cubism
• Futurist
• Dada
• Modern
• Post Modern

You are not limited to these suggestions. If you have an idea other than the above, create it! Just make sure to incorporate the various shapes, colours, textures, etc. of GIMP. Try to come up with something that you could add to your web page.

You can also copy and paste together images from the web to create a collage or to add to your creation. You could even place yourself into the scene that you created. All found images that you use must be shown to the TA to ensure that your image is an original work.

If you are struggling to come up with an idea, worried that your artistic skills need some work, or are doubting the capabilities of GIMP, then you can follow this tutorial to learn how to make an image like the one below:

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Part III: Digital Photo Editing

Before digital photo-editing software was available, most photo editing was done in dark rooms and studios. However, thanks to software like GIMP, features such as improving the composition, colours, sharpness, and removing unwanted elements are now accessible to everyone.

For this part of the lab, you will need the digital photograph that you brought into class. Open the photo in GIMP using File -> Open.

If your photograph is a portrait, you can get some tips on digitally enhancing your portrait by following this tutorial. If your photograph is a landscape or other scene, you might find some helpful ideas in this tutorial.

In either case, the purpose of Part III is to play around with the photo editing capabilities of GIMP. Improve your photos by fixing them up, or by adding interesting artistic effects. Remember that creativity is part of your grade here. Whatever you decide to do to your photo, you need to be able to explain why you did it.

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Deliverables

Show the original image that you created to your TA, along with digital photo you brought in and the edited version that you have created. If you like, add the images to your web page.

Grading scheme for this lab:

• 3 marks for creating an original image
• 3 marks for editing a digital photograph
• 2 marks for creativity in your original image (explain your motivation behind the image to the TA)
• 2 marks for creativity in your digital photograph (explain what modifications you made, and why, to the TA)

Resources

There is a lot more that you can do with GIMP then we have covered in this lab. If you have time, explore the possibilties of GIMP beyond what we have done here.

Helpful links:

• Download GIMP
• Concepts for Beginners
• Online Tutorials