GIMP Tutorial #4 – How to Make a Cool Abstract Wallpaper

My first thought when I first installed and used this incredible piece of freeware was: “why should anybody pay for expensive image editors when you can get GIMP for free”. It’s almost embarrassing that this fabulous image manipulation and retouching program is 100% for free. So, buckle-up your eyes ’cause I’m going to take you for a ride!! Today I’m going to tell you how to create an awesome abstract wallpaper for your desktop to dress it up in the most glamorous GIMP-Style. Before we start… have you got GIMP in your computer? If you don’t, just visit www.GoFree.com there you’ll be able to download the latest 100% free fully functioning version of GIMP.

So, let’s get our noses to the grindstone, now that you have GIMP installed and running, the first thing to do is to create a new image by going to File > New… in the Image Window menu, and in the dialog that opens you can adjust a few parameters, the most important is the size which you should adjust to fit your monitor resolution, as a guide line, 1024 x 768 pixels may fit most displays resolutions.

Click OK to create it. Make sure that the Foreground & background Tool is set to black like in the next screen capture.

The next step is to activate the Bucket Fill Tool and click on the new image to make a black background for your wallpaper.

This is the background for your wallpaper, and now you are going to select the colors for the image itself, to do so click on the black rectangle of the Foreground & background Tool, doing so opens the color selection dialogue box, as you can see in the next screen capture I selected a turquoise-like color for the first color but you can select whatever you want, it will be better if it is a bright color, avoid dark ones because the image will not contrast enough.

Next comes the foreground, for this item I’ve chosen a gray-pink color as you can see in the next screen capture.

Having set the colors, let’s start with the image itself, to do this you will use a flame rendered filter, so go to Filters > Render > Nature > Flame…

In this dialog you can play a bit till you see the image you like in the Flame window, click on the “Edit” button and you’ll go to the Edit Flame selection options, if you click repetitively on the Randomize button you’ll get different options…

Once you selected the one you liked most click on the OK button, some advice? take your time and search as there are so many cool variants. Now you are back in the Flame options, if you open the Camera tab you can adjust the size (Zoom control) and position (X and Y controls) of the image.

Through the Rendering tab you can adjust other settings like brightness, contrast etc. You can also play a with these parameters till you find the image appealing.

So, just click on the OK button and in a matter of seconds your wallpaper image will be created. Cool huh?

In order to finish this procedure you have to export the wallpaper and be able to use it as your desktop background is to convert it in a supported format, JPG is highly recommendable but some others work too, like PNG, BMP, etc.

Now you can use your new wallpaper and place it as your desktop background, just browse to the folder where you stored the wallpaper and right-click on it, from the popup menu click on “Set as desktop background”.

Your new Wallpaper is show. I added a few gadgets and meters to fulfill this screen capture but you can certainly think of some other to make of yours the coolest desktop.

Final Words

Easy and straightforward, that is what it is like to create a new wallpaper of your own with GIMP. If what you are looking for is to let your imagination run free with some abstract backgrounds, GIMP is definitely your friend!!

Download GIMP now and start creating, visit our GIMP dedicated section at www.GoFree.com and enjoy!!

GIMP Plugins – How to Install GIMP Paint Studio

GIMP is an outstanding free open-source image editor that offers a great set of brushes including the most common types: ordinary, color, image pipes and parametric, nevertheless, in some cases this default set is not enough for the needs of advanced users. Fortunately, Ramon Miranda took the job and now we can enjoy of GPS (GIMP Paint Studio) an extremely useful and advantageous set of brushes and presets for the existing tools. The goal of this collection is to provide a convenient work-space for graphic designers and artists where they can feel comfortable with GIMP from the very beginning. What is really interesting is that users are allowed to change these settings to best fit their own work-flow preferences and their level of understanding of GIMP.

GIMP Paint Studio can be used for many different tasks, such as painting, erasing, blurring, airbrushing, inking, applying special effects and much more.

So, GPS is a great way to not only expand GIMP’s capabilities but also make it easier to use in particular when we are talking about repetitive tasks.

You need to have GIMP pre-installed on your PC prior to the installation of GPS. If you do not have it you can download GIMP by visiting www.GoFree.com, there you will be able to get the latest fully featured version of GIMP which is also tested to be virus free.

Secondly, download the most recent release of GPS by going to this site. To have GPS installed in GIMP you have to do a manual installation inside your .gimp-2.6 directories, today I’m going to show you how to step by step go through the installation of this incredible tools-set and preset collection for GIMP.

Note: You have to close GIMP (File->Quit) if it is running. and do not panic GPS installation only takes a few minutes.

Now is a good moment to download the last version of GPS from Google Code site

Unzip the GPS_1_4 release.zip file into any location (e.g. your Desktop) and you’ll get the following folders and files as you can see in the next screen capture:

As its name indicates,in the “brushes” folder are located the GPS brushes, so you have to copy its content to your GIMP brushes folder which under Windows XP is:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\brushes

Under Windows 7:

C:\Users\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\brushes

Do the same for the GPS palettes inside the “palettes” folder and copy its contents to your GIMP palettes folder:

Under Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\palettes

Under Windows 7:

C:\Users\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\palettes

Now access the tool-options folder in the GPS folder and copy/paste all the contents to the GIMP “tool-options” folder:

Under Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\tool-options

Under Windows 7:

C:\Users\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\tool-options

And finally the gradients folder: copy from GPS and paste to:

Under Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\gradients

Under Windows 7:

C:\Users\<your username>\.gimp-2.6\gradients

Now to the files:

“toolrc” and “sessionrc”

Copy the toolrc and sessionrc files to the top level of your GIMP configuration folder to include the new GPS tools to the Toolbox.

Typically the path where you’ll find it is this:

Under Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\.gimp-2.6

Under Windows 7:

C:\Users\<your username>\.gimp-2.6

After that the icons for the Hue/Saturation and Curves dialogs will be added to the Toolbox and it will allow you to use the GPS dialog layout. Remember that performing this action will replace the default toolrc and sessionrc files in the program directory (to be on the safe side copy these files somewhere else or add .old as extension in case you want to restore them later).

Ready, Set, Paint!

So now we are ready to launch Gimp and see how your new GPS tools and brushes are installed and ready to be used.

Some Tips

I would recommend that you go to the Edit->Preferences->Image Windows/Mouse Pointers menu and uncheck the “Show brush outline” option and check the “Show pointer for paint tools” box. Which will enhance the brushes’ speed while painting.

You can also apply two more changes that will improve the overall usability in terms of the GUI. First, go to Edit->Preferences->Toolbox and check the three boxes.

And finally open the Edit->Preferences->Tool Options and disable the three options (Brush, Pattern, and Gradient) under the Paint Options Shared BetweenTools.

The next screen capture contains a small sample of what you can do with the new brushes:

And a view of the menu containing the varied list of brushes you can use:

Of course, there is a lot more which you will learn in future tutorials like how to configure and use this new capabilities to make nice paintings with GIMP, so, stay tuned!

Final Words

As Ramon Miranda the creator of GPS said, GPS is: “one of the most complete sets of paintings that can be found freely on the network. And I hope many of you will benefit from all this stuff ”. Certainly you will do benefit from this awesome free brushes set and tool presets. What’s really interesting about GPS is that the more you use it the more you will become familiar with it and you’ll start making your own settings based on your own experience and knowledge of GIMP. Download GIMP now, just visit www.GoFree.com and obtain the latest fully functioning version of this amazing image editor it’s 100% free and no registration process is needed.

GIMP Tutorial #3 – How to Create Nice Border Effects.

GIMP is a really interesting free and open-source image manipulation application and toolbox which is particularly useful when it comes to photo retouching, this free image edition program has versions for Windows operating systems, Mac OS and those based on Unix, as you may know GIMP is widely popular as it is the most successful free fully featured alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop. You can download GIMP by visiting www.GoFree.com there you will find the latest fully functioning version which is thoroughly tested to be virus free.

Today you’ll learn how to create amazing border effects using GIMP’s tool named “QuickMask”. this useful tool will help you to modify the border area of an image. We are going to also use other tools such as the rectangle select and the paintbrush.

First of all you have to find and open the picture you want to apply the border effect to. Oh, this is a good moment to install GIMP if you haven’t. Go to www.GoFree.com and click on the the big “Download” button. The complete download and installation process only takes a few minutes of your time.

So, now that you have GIMP running and your image opened select the Rectangle Tool by clicking on its icon. Make a rectangular selection covering the area you want to modify. It should look like this:

Next click on the QuickMask button which is located at the lower-left side of the image.

Click on it and your selection will turn into a transparent red tinted area representing the outside of your selection like this:

At this point you can play a bit with this mask. Go to the menu Filters > Distorts > Waves… in the Image window menu and this dialog will open.

Play a bit with the Amplitude, Phase and Wavelenght parameters to achieve the exact look you are looking for. After that you are ready to apply the filter, and more or less like this should be the result on the mask.

As it is shown in the upper screen capture the transparent area got wavy. I also added a bit of blur effect by going to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur just to soften the edges and now it looks like this.

Now you have to is to click on the red QuickMask button in order to convert the mask into a selection path.

It is interesting at this point to notice how the selection follows the mask. This fact shows how powerful GIMP’s QuickMask feature is. Now we have to go through the last step by inverting the selection, go to Select > Invert in the Image window menu and immediately after that go to Edit > Fill with BG Color also in the Image window menu.

Voilà! Now you have a wavy soft transition from the image itself and into the white background .

Next you can see other examples of what you can do if instead of wave distortion you use other filters.

First example is with the filter Noise.

And using with the Blur filter in the Random Slur mode.

Final Words

So, you have learned how to use GIMP’s tools to create cool borders or “vignette” effects that you can apply to your favorite pictures. Free your imagination with GIMP and express yourself in new ways. Download GIMP now by visiting www.GoFree.com it’s 100% free and no registration is required.

GIMP Tutorial #2 – How to Install Plugins

GIMP is a fabulous free image editor with a lot of features that will satisfy all your needs in terms of image edition, photo retouching and even creating new images from scratch with free hand drawing capabilities, layer control and the possibility to save and convert your images in an extensive list of file formats. You can visit www.GoFree.com and obtain the latest full version of this awesome image manipulation program,it’s totally for free and you do not have to register anywhere.

In this tutorial I’m going to tell you how to install those useful plugins we have already reviewed in our previous post. They are Liquid Rescale, SaveForWeb and GimpPublishr.

The first one is Liquid Rescale which as I told you, is an extremely handy plugin when you need to resize and scale images in a really advanced way. So let’s get our noses to the grindstone! First of all, in order to install Liquid Rescale for GIMP you have to download the plugin intaller from here, and launch it. Just follow the instructions and you’ll be fine.

The next time you launch GIMP, you will find the plugin menu entry under the Layer menu

Take quick look at what this great plugin will help you to do:

Note: Windows Vista and Seven users will need administrator privileges to be able to run the installation.

Our second plugin, SaveForWeb, is also a very helpful plugin for GIMP, which once you install it allows you to convert and save your large images in an Internet-friendly size helping you to upload them in an easier and faster way. So, download the plugin installer from here. Decompress the archive with your favorite archive manager like 7-Zip and copy webexport.exe file to your personal plug-ins folder, for example, XP users should find it at this location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins

And under Windows 7 the path should look like this:

C:\Users\<username>\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins

(Replace <username> with the name of your user account).

Now you will find Save for web… in the File menu all you have to do is click and define the parameters to save your image. Simple and easy, couldn’t ask for more!

Last but not least we find GimpPublishr, and please notice that installing this free plugin can be a little tricky if you do not take the right steps.

1.-First of all, make sure that GIMP has Python already installed, by going to GIMP’s Filter menu in the image window and check if it is placed over the Script-fu menu, it should appear like this:

If everything is alright you can go straight ahead to point 6 and install GimpPublishr directly. If not continue to point 2.

Python for windows consists on four components: Python 2.6, PyCairo, PyGObject and PyGtk

2.- Download Python from here and install it.

3.- Download PyCairo from here and install it.

4.- Download PyGopject from here and install it.

5.- Download PyGtk from here and install it.

Once you are done reinstall GIMP and select the custom installation option and when the components selection appears select GIMP Python extension checkbox.

Now you are ready to install the GimpPublishr plugin.

6.- Download the plugin form here and decompress it in any folder for example your desktop, copy the content of the archive to Gimp’s plugin folder, Windows XP users should find it at this location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins

And under Windows 7 the path should look like this:

C:\Users\<username>\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins

(Replace <username> with the name of your user account).

OK, if you did everything right you will see the publish on Web… item at the bottom of the File menu. Clicking on it will open a dialog box where you choose among the publishing services of Flickr and Picasaweb .

Final words

Summing it all, if you followed this simple tutorial you can enhance GIMP’s functionality with these three magnificent plugins and gain a lot of extra features to use for free whenever you want. Remember that GIMP is totally for free and you can download it without even having to register by visiting WWW.GoFree.com. Besides, you can also visit GoFree’s home page for hundreds of other  free categorized downloads.

GIMP Plugins – Liquid Rescale, SaveFor Web, Antialiasing and GimpPublishr

What we have here is an incredible free multi-platform image edition application which in terms of popularity and functionality can only be compared with Adobe’s Photoshop. GIMP has a huge supporting community of developers and is massive in the number of users. Like many other free open-source programs such as the popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox, the greatest virtue of this versatile and solid free image editor program lies in the possibility of expanding its features and functionality through the use of plugins. This fact brings an enormous advantage because this plugins are mostly developed by its users and they create them according to their needs.

In this article I’m going to share some of those plugins which in my humble opinion are a must have, not only for advanced GIMP users but also for novices. I’m also going to tell you what they are useful for and if  you check our GIMP Tutorials Sections you’ll learn how to install and run them. Visit www.GoFree.com to download the latest fully featured version of GIMP, its 100% free and no registration in required!

To start with, I’m going to tell you about Liquid Rescale. I’m putting this first in the list due to its great capabilities. When you add Liquid Rescale to GIMP, it allows you to make content-aware image re-size . I know, right now you are asking yourself what does it mean and how can Liquid Rescale be useful for my work, well, as you know… an image is worth a thousand words, take a minute to watch the next video and you’ll see.

Based on the Seam Carving algorithm, the Liquid Rescale plugin not only gives you the ability to re-size images in a not uniform way keeping its original characteristics such as avoiding the distortion of important parts, but it also enables you to consistently remove selected areas of the image.

If you want to add this magnificent plugin to your GIMP you can download Liquid Rescale from here.

In the second place we find a really interesting plugin that will be of great help when it comes to finding the right balance between image file size and quality when uploading your images to the Web. Once you installed SaveForWeb to your GIMP you’ll be able to achieve the best combination between small file size and good quality for your images. What is really interesting is that it can be done a quickly and easily. Extremely handy for graphic designers, the plugin installer can be obtained by visiting here

The third place in this list  is occupied by Antialiasing: which is an extremely useful plugin if what you need is to smoothen and fix straight lines. Furthermore, this plugin became a standard feature of GIMP and you do not have to install it if you have installed the latest version of GIMP, you will find it in the ”Filter” menu.

Last but not least I’m going to put GimpPublishr, with it you can turn GIMP into the next level and publish your pictures to Picassa and Flickr directly from GIMP’s menus. Download GimpPublishr by visiting this site.

Notice: you have to have Python already installed along with GIMP in your computer for this plugin to work correctly. Obviously you need account either on Picassa and Flickr for the uploading to be successful.

Final Words

GIMP’s possibilities for expansion are just fascinating and these four awesome pieces of freeware will allow you to do wonders with your pictures. This bunch of plugins not only allow you to enhance GIMP in terms of its functionality, but also to share it with your friends and relatives via social networking services.

GIMP’s Basic Functionality #3

In this third article of the GIMP Functionality Series we are going to go through GIMP’s capabilities in the image creation field. What I’m going to to show you today is how to use this incredible free image manipulation program to create an image from scratch and not die trying. All you need is to have GIMP already installed and running in your computer, if not you can download and install GIMP’s latest fully functioning version by visiting www.GoFree.com it’s absolutely free!!

To get started you have to go to File → New… in the Image window menu. As an alternative method you can hit Ctrl + N in your keyboard.

The ”Create a New Image” dialog will open, here you can adjust the settings and parameters of your new image including the template you’ll use, the size, which can be adjusted manually and there are also two buttons to select portrait or landscape orientation.

Scroll the Template option down and you’ll find a bunch of premade configurations options. Interestingly you’ll find there is also a ”Toilet Paper” option…

As you can see in the next screen capture you will find advanced options that you can tweak, but I do not recommend to touch them unless you are an advanced user of GIMP, anyway let’s take a look at them.

In this case I’m going to use the 800 x 600 size which I consider a nice size, not too small, not too large. Remember that regarding resources consumption aspects, when using GIMP, size does matter, if you try to create or edit a very large image will result into a large file hosted in your HDD and in your RAM memory to be handled, so, the larger the file size, the longer you’ll have to wait in order to see the results of any modification you make.

Once you are done with the settings for your new image, click the ”OK” button and the ”Untitled” image will be generated and you can start working on it.

What you have now is a fresh new, blank image, it’s up to you and your creativity, GIMP will help you to transform your ideas into images. Just to show you what in my humble opinion is a good way of starting a new image is to create a good looking background, and here is where you can apply the gradient tool.

Start by clicking on the Blend Tool from the Toolbox and then select the gradient type and color by clicking on the Gradient button, this will unfold a list of preset gradients, among them you can find interesting options, on the other hand, you can always create a gradient yourself but this procedure is beyond the scope of this article.

So, if you have selected a gradient, go to the image window and indicate a path by clicking on a start point an dragging towards the end point.

The Blend Tool will create a gradient which is perpendicular to the path you draw, so you can play around with it and you’ll see that there is not only one way to make it look cool.

As you can see in the next screen capture, I made and horizontal path and the resulting gradient is this:

if you make a vertical path you may get something like this:

Final Words

And as you can imagine the possibilities are countless for this tools. In upcoming articles I’m going to tell you about including text and other objects to your images so, stay tuned!

GIMP is an outstanding and professional free image editor which you can download absolutely for free by visiting www.GoFree.com, no registration is required.

GIMP’s Basic Functionality #2

GIMP is an outstanding free image editor that offers an extensive list of features and tools that allow users to make professional image edition, photo retouching and even draw images from scratch, GIMP also comes with the possibility to expand its functionality by the use of plugins. In this article I’m going to tell you about one of its most useful tools, the Clone Tool. You can download the latest fully featured version of this amazing free image edition program by going to www.GoFree.com it’s 100% free and no registration is required.

The tool we are going to go through today  is really useful when it comes to editing images, in particular when you need to make some objects or areas disappear. What the Clone Tool actually does it to enable you to cover those object/areas with its surroundings. To get started click on the Clone Tool icon in the Toolbox and select a source area by holding the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard and clicking on the selected area.

Next, you can start covering the area you want to make disappear with the source area, so, click once on it to make single hits or drag your pointer to clone larger areas.

You have the possibility to adjust several parameters for this tool which can be found in the lower panel of the Toolbox. Notice that this panel changes its content (parameters, adjustments, etc) accordingly with the selected or active tool. In my opinion the best choice is to keep these controls/parameters in its default settings except from the Scale control, which you can adjust to enlarge or shrink the cloning area.

A useful tip which you can use is to swap the Clone Tool with the Zoom Tool so that you can visualize the cloning work requires is its optimal detail level, you can combine this with the size of the brush (scale) you are using from a single pixel to a large area by using the above mentioned Scale Control.

In the next screen capture you can see and example of what the Clone Tool can do, I used this handy tool to make the palm tree totally disappear by cloning the surrounding clouds over it. Cool, huh?

Final Words

Downlod GIMP totally for free and give the Clone Tool a try to make undesired objects completely disappear from your favorite pictures. All you have to do is to visit www.GoFree.com. No cost, no registration and thoroughly virus free tested, just download and start editing your images like a pro!