Synopses & Reviews
As a full-featured, free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, GIMP is one of the world's most popular open source projects. The latest version of GIMP (2.8) brings long-awaited improvements and powerful new tools to make graphic design and photo manipulation even easier—but it's still a notoriously challenging program to use.
The Artist's Guide to GIMP teaches you how to use GIMP without a tedious list of menu paths and options. Instead, as you follow along with Michael J. Hammel's step-by-step instructions, you'll learn to produce professional-looking advertisements, apply impressive photographic effects, and design cool logos and text effects. These extensively illustrated tutorials are perfect for hands-on learning or as templates for your own artistic experiments.
After a crash course in GIMP's core tools like brushes, patterns, selections, layers, modes, and masks, you'll learn:
- Photographic techniques to clean up blemishes and dust, create sepia-toned antique images, swap colors, produce motion blurs, alter depth of field, simulate a tilt-shift, and fix rips in an old photo
- Web design techniques to create navigation tabs, icons, fancy buttons, backgrounds, and borders
- Type effects to create depth, perspective shadows, metallic and distressed text, and neon and graffiti lettering
- Advertising effects to produce movie posters and package designs; simulate clouds, cracks, cloth, and underwater effects; and create specialized lighting
Whether you're new to GIMP or you've been playing with this powerful software for years, you'll be inspired by the original art, creative photo manipulations, and numerous tips for designers.
Covers GIMP 2.8
Synopsis
As a full-featured, free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP is one of the world's most popular open source projects, with millions of users. Although extremely powerful, the GIMP is not always easy to use and the mountains of forums and how-to videos online are daunting to wade through and not always helpful.
The Artist's Guide to GIMP, 2nd Edition will show you how to unlock the power of GIMP 2.8 with its collection of practical, illustrated tutorials. Rather than describe every menu item in exhaustive detail, author Michael J. Hammel (a GIMP user and contributor for over 15 years), focuses on the program's most useful features, like brush customization, selection tools, and patterns and gradients. After a tour of the GIMP interface and an introduction to fundamental techniques like using layers, selecting objects, and drawing basic shapes, Hammel dives into a series of illustrated hands-on tutorials that will show you how to repair damaged photos, convert a picture to a sketch, add reflections, manipulate text, design logos, and much more. Whether you're trying to create an advertisement, restore an old photo or express your artistic side without breaking the bank, The Artist's Guide to GIMP, 2nd Editionputs the power of GIMP at your fingertips.
About the Author
Michael J. Hammel is an embedded software engineer living in Colorado Springs. He's been involved with the GIMP since version 0.54 and was a contributor to the early development of the program. Hammel wrote a column on the GIMP for Linux Format magazine for three years and is the author of The Artist's Guide to GIMP (Frank Kasper & Associates, 1998) and Essential GIMP for Web Professionals (Prentice Hall PTR, 2001).
Table of Contents
-
- About the Author
- About the Technical Reviewer
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Fundamental Techniques
- Chapter 2: Photographic Effects
- Chapter 3: Web Design
- Chapter 4: Advertising and Special Effects
- Chapter 5: Type Effects
- Chapter 6: Creative Inspiration