GIMP

GIMP is a powerful raster image editing program, and commonly used for photo retouching, image composition, and general graphic design work. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

Installation

Install the gimp package.

Tips and tricks

Captions

To caption an image follow these steps after inputting the desired text:

Click Layer and Text to Path
Click Select and From Path
Click Select and Invert
Click Edit and Stroke Path

Create a circle

To draw a circle in GIMP follow these steps:

Select the Ellipse tool and hold Shift
Click Edit and Fill with Color
Click Select and Shrink
Press Delete

Tip: Grow and Border give the same result.

Photoshop behaviour

Since GIMP is highly configurable, it is possible to change the keybinds, and even the UI, to be more familiar to those who are used to the raster image editing program Photoshop.

Specifically the GimpPs theme aims to make GIMP behave more like Photoshop, which you can install on top of GIMP.

Alternately, if you just want the keybinds, the relevant lines are included in the theme's menurc file, which you can then add to your local ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/menurc.

There is also the PhotoGIMP project, aiming to do to the same.

Plugins

GIMP has an extensive plugin system, as well as a Scheme interpreter which can be used to write Script-Fu scripts.

Most plugins are distributed via the official repositories (for example, gimp-plugin-gmic) and the AUR; some, but not all, are listed as optional dependencies of the gimp package.

Note: The Python-Fu plugin is not available on the version of GIMP distributed via the official repositories, since it requires python2^AUR, which has reached end of life in 2020. To restore the functionality, python2-gimp^AUR can be used instead.

Manual installation

If not distributed via the repositories, plugins can be compiled and installed using the gimptool executable.

To install a plugin from source:

$ gimptool --install source.c

To install a pre-compiled plugin:

$ gimptool --install-bin executable

To install a Script-Fu script:

$ gimptool --install-script script.scm

Further options may be found in the gimptool --help message.

Packaging

Plugin packages should add their files to a directory with their name within /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/.

Troubleshooting

Green text

Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you see a green tint around letters with antialiasing enabled:

~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
      <const>none</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Hide Noto

Add the following to ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf if you have noto-fonts installed and would like to remove them from GIMP's fonts list:

~/.config/GIMP/2.10/fonts.conf

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <rejectfont>
    <glob>/usr/share/fonts/noto</glob>
  </rejectfont>
</fontconfig>

See fonts-conf(5) and Font configuration#Whitelisting and blacklisting fonts for more information.

PDF files

GIMP requires the poppler-glib library to open PDF files or it will report that they are unrecognised.

Since GIMP rasterizes PDF files right from the start, it will not exploit intrinsic PDF capabilities while editing them. Other programs (like LibreOffice Draw) can be used to better edit PDF files.