Focus Using GIMP to Increase Business Productivity GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Programme is a cross-platform, open source image editor. In our last article on GIMP (published in January 2020), we explored some features of the tool. Continuing it further, here are some more. IMP 2.10 ships with All painting tools now have painting tools with various symmetries a number of the explicit ‘Hardness’ and ‘Force’ sliders, (mirror, mandala, tiling…). This new improvements requested by except for the MyPaint Brush tool version of GIMP also ships with more Gdigital painters. One of the which only has the ‘Hardness’ slider. new brushes, which are available by most interesting new additions is the GIMP now supports canvas rotation default. Some of the new GEGL-based MyPaint Brush tool that first appeared and flipping to help illustrators check filters—Exposure, Shadows-Highlights, in the GIMP-Painter fork. proportions and perspective. High-pass, Wavelet Decompose, The ‘Smudge’ tool has got updates A new ‘Brush lock to view’ option Panorama Projection and others—are specifically targeted at painting gives one a choice to lock a brush at a specifically targeted at photographers. related use cases. The new ‘No erase certain zoom level and rotate the angle Apart from that, the new ‘Extract effect’ option prevents the tools from of the canvas. The option is available Component’ filter simplifies extracting changing the alpha of pixels, and the for all painting tools that use a brush, a channel of an arbitrary colour model foreground colour can now be blended except for the MyPaint Brush tool. (LAB, LCH, CMYK, etc) from the into smudged pixels controlled by a A new ‘Symmetry Painting’ currently selected layer. If one is used new ‘Flow’ slider, where ‘0’ means dockable dialogue box, enabled on a to decomposing and recomposing no blending. per-image basis, allows one to use all images, it will be easier now. Moreover, 30 | MARCH 2020 | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | www.OpenSourceForU.com Focus one can now use either Darktable or with the last values you used by just The settings are available on the Image RawTherapee as GIMP plugins for pressing Shift and clicking on the Import and Export page in Preferences. opening raw files. Any recent version of respective layer’s preview. either application will do. A new ‘Clip All dialogue boxes except the ones On-canvas interaction Warning’ display filter will visualise like Scale now remember the last GIMP 2.10 ships with a new feature under-exposed and over-exposed areas values you used across sessions. that allows some GEGL based filters of a photo, with customisable colours. All GEGL based filters allow saving to render on-canvas controls. For now, For now, it is mostly geared towards named presets and automatically this applies to just three filters: Spiral, images where colours are stored with make timestamped presets for the Supernova and Panorama Projection. floating point precision. You will last time you used them. benefit from this if you work on 16- You can now choose the fill colour Search system /32-bit per channel float images such as or pattern for empty spaces after As GIMP keeps evolving and getting EXR and TIFF. resizing the canvas. more features, it becomes increasingly difficult to locate particular commands Plugins File format support in the user interface. This is especially GIMP now ships with over 80 GIMP is now capable of reading and true when one is a new user who has GEGL based filters. A lot of these writing TIFF, PNG, PSD and FITS files yet to master image editing or an are former GIMP effects. Here are with up to 32-bit per channel precision, experienced user who is accustomed some reasons why GEGL based where applicable. The PSD plugin to a different application. GIMP 2.10 implementations are better: additionally supports pass-through, comes with a search system that One can apply them on images in hard mix, pin light, vivid light and allows you to easily locate a command 32-bit per colour channel precision linear light blending modes. GIMP now available in GIMP’s menu. The slash mode. also ships with native WebP support, key (/) has to be pressed, a keyword One can preview them right on the including features like animation, ICC typed and the command that looks most canvas, and if an image is larger profiles, and metadata. Both importing applicable is chosen. than the viewport, GIMP will render and exporting are supported. The The next big update will be the viewport first for immediate JPEG 2000 plugin was rewritten to v3.0, which will feature the GTK+3 feedback. use the OpenJPEG library rather than port and a lot of internal changes. One can use split preview to the somewhat obsolete Jasper library. For users, this will mostly mean an compare an original image with its Finally, the PDF plugin now supports updated user interface, better support processed version, and swap before/ importing password-protected files for graphic tablets, better support for after sides both horizontally and (one needs to know the password) and HiDPI displays, and better support for vertically. exporting multi-page PDF documents Wayland on Linux. In a future, non-destructive GIMP, (each layer will be a page). one will be able to adjust settings of An overview of the those filters without undoing a ton Metadata viewing, editing and image formats of steps. preservation The pros and cons of various image Some of the GEGL based filters GIMP now ships with plugins for formats from a GIMP perspective have the OpenCL version for hardware viewing and editing Exif, XMP, IPTC, XCF: The eXperimental Computing acceleration. This will come in handy GPS and DICOM metadata. These are Facility (XCF) is where GIMP was if OpenCL drivers work well for you. available via the Image > Metadata authored. Besides, many operations can be sub-menu. GIMP will also preserve multi-threaded, using the power of your existing metadata in TIFF, PNG, JPEG Pros processors to their full extent. and WebP files. Each plugin has its This is the native GIMP image While working with active users, options when exporting, to enable format. quite a few usability issues were got rid or disable exporting the metadata. Everything is saved—layers, of. Here are just some of these changes: Additionally, users can now set defaults selections, channels, paths and All transformation tools now for whether or not to preserve metadata more. automatically disable original layer in all affected file forms at plugins, at view so that you can clearly see once. This depends on whether they Cons adjustments against the backdrop. want complete privacy; if not, they can This is not a ‘display’ format, even Masks can now easily be created do a lot of micro-stock photography. if you can find codecs to display www.OpenSourceForU.com | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | MARCH 2020 | 31 Focus thumbnails of XCF images in file GIF Recommended uses explorers. Pros Storage of camera output, but a It’s bulky. Universally supported for secondary copy in some universal Colour channels are coded in 8 bits animation. format could be a good idea. (in GIMP 2.8). Cons There are of course many other Recommended uses Only 256 colours per image, leading image formats, but these cover most use Saving all GIMP work. to a blocky look (a modern variant cases. They can usually be converted supports 256 colours per frame, but easily to any other format, should the JPG GIMP does not use it). need arise. Pros Supports transparency but only as Compresses the files quite fully transparent/fully opaque. Selling GIMP efficiently. The terms and conditions for copying, Is universally supported for display. Recommended uses distribution and modification of GIMP Small animated images (in all other are clearly listed in the GNU General Cons still-image uses, PNG is a better Public License. Redistribution for free Compression is ‘lossy’ and this alternative, and for bigger animation, or for profit is specifically allowed as slightly alters the image data. In modern HTML supports video). long as the licence is included and the case of global changes (colour, source code is made available. Besides contrast, etc), repeated file editing TIFF the rights and conditions given by the will slowly degrade the image Pros GPL, it would also be nice (but not quality. Lossless format, and all pixels are required) to mention in any advertising At good quality levels, compression kept. that the product being sold is GIMP (or is invisible in photography but can Colour channels can be coded in 16 a bundle including GIMP) or has been be seen (so called ‘artefacts’) in bits. derived from it. computer-generated graphics and text. Can store several images (layers). It does not support transparency. Supported by all image processing Recommendations for those Colour channels are coded on 8 bits. software. who sell copies of GIMP If you or your company intend to sell Recommended uses Cons GIMP, it would be good to follow the Display of photography. Can be bulky for complex images. guidelines given below: Storage of photography. Be honest: Do not try to hide the Recommended uses fact that the product you are selling PNG Storage and exchange of high is or contains GIMP (the GNU Image Pros quality images. Manipulation Program). Mention it in Lossless format, and all pixels are any advertisement. kept. Raw images formats: NEF Add value: Try to provide more Supports partial transparency. (Nikon), CR2 (Canon), etc than what can be found in the default Produces small files with most Pros GIMP package. Include a nice installer, computer graphics.