Grokking the GIMP

Carey Bunks is a Senior Scientist at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he currently works on a variety of research projects in underwater sonar, active noise and vibration control, and network security. He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987, and has since specialized in the area of signal processing. Carey has worked on problems of seismic imaging, image artifact filtering, and motion estimation from image data. He has over twenty publications in scientific journals and holds several patents. Carey is also a member of the development group for Scilab, an open-source scientific and engineering computation package. He developed the Scilab signal processing toolbox and is co-author of the book Scientific and Engineering Computing with Scilab, published with Birkhäuser in 1999. In addition, Carey is a serious student of circus and vaudeville arts. He attended the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida, graduating in 1977. An accomplished magician and juggler, he has entertained hundreds of groups in the U.S. and Europe with his street-theater style show. He is an authority on trick roping and is the author of the online book entitled The Lasso¿A Rational Guide to Trick Roping. Carey and his wife, Homaira, live in Boston, Massachusetts. They enjoy sailing, skiing, and traveling in Europe.

1. GIMP Basics.


Introducing the GIMP Windows and Dialogs.



Loading and Saving Images.



Creating New Images.



RGB, Grayscale, and Indexed Images.



Undoing and Redoing.



Recalling the Last Filter Dialog.



Copy, Cut, and Paste Buffers.



Zoom and New View.



The Help System.



Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions.



2. Review of Layers.


Layers and the Role They Play in Images.



Channels and Their Relationship to Layers.



Layers Creation, Deletion, Duplication, and Organization.



Layer Export and Import.



Floats.



Manipulating Layers.



3. Selections.


The Basic Selection Tools.



Combining Selections.



The Select Menu and Friends.



The Paths Dialog.



Using Selections Effectively.



Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions.



4. Masks.


Channel Masks.



Layer Masks.



Basic Tools for Working with Channel and Layer Masks.



Conversions of Selections, Channel Masks, Layer Masks, and Alpha Channels.



Masks and Selections.



Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions.



Colorspaces and Blending Modes.


The RGB Colorspace.



The HSV Colorspace.



Relating HSV to RGB.



The Subtractive Color Systems CMY and CMYK.



Conversion to Grayscale.



The Blending Modes.



Opacity and Transparency.



Practical Uses of Blending Modes.



Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions.



6. Touchup and Enhancement.


Improving Tonal Range.



Removing Color Casts.



Repairing Blemishes with the Clone Tool.



Sharpening.



A Case Study.



Compositing.


Project 1: Fish on Holiday!



Project 2: Through the Looking Glass.



Project 3: Destination Saturn.



Project 4: The Call of the Mermaid.



Project 5: Panoramas.



Rendering Techniques.


The Bucket Fill Tool.



Gradient Rendering Techniques.



The Emboss and Bump Map Filters.



Shadows.



Rendering Project I: Drop Shadow and Punchout.



Rendering Project II: A Carved Stencil.



Rendering Project III: Chiseled Text.



9. Web-Centric GIMP.


Web Animations.



Clickable Image Maps.



Type Effects.



Tileable Backgrounds.



Web-Safe Color.



Semi-Transparency and Indexed Images.



Which Format: GIF or JPEG?



References.


Appendix A - GIMP Resources.


Appendix B - Keyboard Shortcuts.


Index.