The Artist's Guide to GIMP, 2nd Edition: Creative Techniques for Photographers, Artists, and Designers

by Michael Hammel

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593274146
Publisher:	No Starch Press
Publication date:	06/12/2012
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael J. Hammel has been involved with GIMP since version 0.54 and was a contributor to the early development of the program. Hammel wrote a column on GIMP for Linux Format for three years and is the author of The Artists' Guide to the GIMP and Essential GIMP for Web Professionals. He is an embedded software engineer living in Colorado Springs.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Fundamental Techniques
1.1 Drawing and Painting
1.2 Layers and Modes
1.3 Color Modes
1.4 Selections
1.5 Paths
1.6 Drawing Basic Shapes
1.7 Patterns and Gradients
1.8 Working with Text
1.9 Digital Cameras
1.10 Basic Tutorials
Chapter 2: Photographic Effects
2.1 Soft Focus
2.2 Photo to Sketch
2.3 Antiquing with Sepia Tones
2.4 Color Swap
2.5 Changing Depth of Field
2.6 Reflections on Glass
2.7 Lake Reflection
2.8 Photo Restoration
2.9 Casting Light Through a Window
2.10 Light Streaks
2.11 Miniaturize a Scene
Tips for Photographic Effects
Chapter 3: Web Design
3.1 Gel Buttons
3.2 Metal Buttons
3.3 Tabs
3.4 Website Banners
3.5 Simple Logos
3.6 Icons
Tips for Web Design
Chapter 4: Advertising and Special Effects
4.1 Creative Text Design
4.2 3-D Package Designs
4.3 Reflective Glass
4.4 Popping an Image
4.5 Shiny Emblem
4.6 Wine Bottle
4.7 Gears
4.8 Cube City
4.9 Underwater
4.10 Colored Lighting
4.11 iPod
Tips for Advertising Design
Chapter 5: Type Effects
5.1 Chrome and Metal Text
5.2 Gel Type
5.3 Distressed Text
5.4 Frost
5.5 Neon Signs
5.6 Spray Paint
Tips for Type Effects
Chapter 6: Creative Inspiration
6.1 Fire Girl
6.2 Star Field
6.3 Creamsicle Love
6.4 Mobsterville

Editorial Reviews

"A really instructive book that is expanding my knowledge of the program. Users who are looking to get more out of the GIMP might want to check it out."
—Ryan Paul, Ars Technica

"All in all I feel this is a brilliant book."
—Jayson Broughton, Linux Journal

"For anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with GIMP, The Artist's Guide, either as paper or an ebook, is one of the best resources on its subject available in any medium."
—Bruce Byfield, Linux Magazine

"This resource is a solid stepping stone."
—Oma Dial, GIMP Magazine

"The design is clear and concise, while the structure of the book will take the reader from a complete GIMP beginner to a confident designer."
—Graham Morrison, Linux Format

"This is a really, really good book. It explains everything well, in detail, without expecting any prior knowledge from you."
—Tony Mobily, Free Software Magazine

"A very good book if you want to create your own artistic pieces with GIMP. It's well explained with big photos, good design and it will teach you lot of things covering a wide range of GIMP's uses."
—Ramon Miranda, creator of GIMP Paint Studio

"It's a good book, with decent instructions and engaging projects that any competent computer user should be able to handle, whether or not they have previous experience with an image editing package."
—Phil Bull, author of the official Ubuntu documentation

"I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn photo manipulation, advertising style and creating your own web graphics, such as buttons, logos or mouseover menus."
—Ken Hess, The Frugal Networker

"The Artist's Guide to GIMP, 2nd Edition was easy for me to read and helped me do exactly what I set out to do in a short amount of time."
—Beginlinux.com

"I would definitely recommend The Artist's Guide to GIMP to those who want an all-round, practical book on how to use GIMP."
—Kevin Unhammer, Software Engineer

"Hammel has done an excellent job of creating a number of chapters focused on creating beautiful artwork with GIMP. The chapter on setting up GIMP would be especially useful to absolute beginners."
—Partha Bagchi, GIMP advocate and blogger

"The material is extremely solid, well organized, and pertinent for new or mid-level GIMP practitioners."
—Matt Paddock, Game Vortex

"This is what I want from a book."
—John D. Cook, The Endeavour

From the Publisher