Editing Software Alternatives (section)

=== Notes on how to use GIMP ===

Play with it for a few (5-6 or so) hours and I think you'll understand/like it
because it's very different and extensible in its own way. A neat opinion
article on why to learn any graphics editor (https://blog.codinghorror.com
/programming-tip-learn-a-graphics-editor/) I've found that GIMP can do some
really neat things that would be hard to do with PS.

2.10.8: There are some bugs like icons (like "make layer visible" (eyeball icon)) not appearing or text
for layers not showing up. Resize the left/right panels to fix this.
"And I will add this one warning: although GIMP is both free and powerful, the
interface is so excruciatingly difficult to use that by the time you become
proficient, you'll be able to handle any graphics editor on the market with ease."
Remember that layers have a fixed size and the general behavior of it is that
more things have to be "defined" first in GIMP.

Useful Things: Move tool>Move the active layer. Fill tool>fill whole
selection/fill similar colors - whole selection can be useful, you can say what
you want it to do for a particular selection. Use the select color and fuzzy
select (acts like "magic wand" in Photoshop) tool. Use the arrange tool for
arranging multiple items. Press ENTER when done using the scale or rotate,
etc tools, or click something else to confirm. Also, you can preview your
gradient while making it! And there are all sorts of cool brushes and effects
for them you can use!

The text tool works well, it doesn't have the same "warping" UX like PS
does, but you can have "text paths" (tutorial on YT (https://www.youtube.com
/watch?time_continue=36&v=6nHyKrJwsaE)).

USE LAYER GROUPS. You'll need them since you can't select multiple layers
at once. Also the color picker (as of 2.10.8) is weird, just select the layer with
that color and pick the color from that INSIDE the *MAIN* GIMP window.
USE HARDWARE ACCELERATION. Edit>Preferences>Hardware
Acceleration>Tick "Use OpenCL". It makes things a lot faster, especially with
a GPU.

If you haven't played with Photoshop at all, the learning curve is pretty steep - try something like Krita first. It has greatly improved since the 2.8 days.

Plugins such as G'MIC (can install through package manager or manually)
(https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-gimp-plugins/) and the many
filters/"script-fu" scripts can help. Ex: "Drop Shadow..." can be done under
Filters>Light and Shadow. Deleting things to have a transparent background
as part of the layer - tutorial here (https://logosbynick.com/gimp-delete-
background-to-transparent/) - click Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel
and then select something/delete it.

Drawing built-in geometric shapes (circle, square, etc) can be done using
either G'MIC (creates a weird type of concentric circles), as of G'MIC in
2/27/19 you need to go to Testing>Samj>Arrays & Tiles to find this
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W1vutySBC4), the Gfig plugin under
Filters>Render>Gfig (http://gimpforums.com/thread-i-need-a-plugin-to-draw-
squares-and-circles-on-gimp) (NOTE: you can't resize the preview of the
image this way), or through selections manually (https://alvinalexander.com
/gimp/gimp-how-to-create-draw-circle-in-gimp-tutorial) (I use this method
sometimes because I can change the preview size/zoom, and Gfig is annoying
with this sometimes - try a smaller document w/ nothing in it if you want to
use Gfig, then move it to the larger one).

Grow/shrink selection (e.g. to make concentric circles or a specific border
color) (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/270534/making-concentric-
circles-in-gimp) using Select>Shrink.../Grow... The selection sticks when you
create a new layer.

Creating custom shapes video (https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=X4IjrPS1ISE)

==== GIMP's planned features ====
* Nondestructive editing (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ulnmm
/gimp_gimp_292_released_and_nondestructive_editing/) is planned for 3.2.
Viewing/changing filter properties on layers
(https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/46152/how-can-i-view-
applied-filters-in-gimp) is planned for the 3.x series.
* 3.0 is being heavily worked on in 2019 and expected to be released after the 2.99.2 beta. It's another GTK3 overhaul! (https://www.gimp.org/news/2019/01/02/gimp-and-gegl-in-2018/)