Our Maiden Century

Suciô is very gratified to have received this congratulatory telegram from

Her Majesty the Queen.

Today, as promised, we're going to start a series of small-print GIMP tutorials.
They're in small print as a signal to those who know GIMP or Photoshop that they can be completely ignored.

Betta sp control plus (Ctrl++) will zoom on most browsers. (;

The Small Print Tutorial - Everything You Can Do In Paint

I'm assuming that those who want to play along have managed to install GIMP with no problems. (If not, there's an FAQ here for Windows users.) In general with GIMP, let Google be your friend: there's a mountain of information and tutorials out there. We can't/won't add to that pile here. We just want to cover the very basics to get you up and running.

Okay, let's start with the simplest form of image manipulation ("shooping") - a little mindless graffiti. Save the image of the Mona Lisa and open her up in GIMP.  I prefer to <right click> on the saved file and "Edit with GIMP" in Windows. You could instead start the GIMP application <All Programs><GIMP><Gimp 2.0> and then <file><Open>.. and browse for the file, but GIMP's Linux-like file browsing windows suck.

Now GIMP should have scattered a confusing mess of mini-windows all over your screen. The one we're interested in is the image window containing the Mona Lisa - it should be titled something like "Mona_Lisa.jpg-11.0 (RGB, 1 layer) 385x598 - GIMP". Make sure this image window is active and then press <Ctrl+B> to bring up the Toolbox window.

Click on the paintbrush icon to select - you guesssed it - the Paintbrush Tool. Now just scribble on Leonardo's masterpiece. Go on - DO IT FAGGOT! As long as you don't <file><save>, you can always get the original image back by clicking <file><revert>.


Reverting to the saved file is a bit extreme. What if you just want to undo the last brush-stroke? Well, like most Windows programs, you can type Ctrl+Z (or <edit><undo>) to undo your last change. GIMP actually stores all your actions, so you can keep pressing Ctrl+Z to undo a whole series of changes. (You can undo an undo by pressing Ctrl+Y or <edit><redo>.)

So far, all your doodles should have been in black paint (the default foreground color when GIMP start up). A couple of rows below the Paintbrush icon in your Toolbox, you'll see a pair of rectangles (black & white in the picture above). These show the current foreground and background colors.


The foreground color is, as you'd expect, the color you get when you use the paintbrush. The background color is what you get when you use the Eraser Tool  (unless you're making things transparent, as we'll discuss tomorrow.)


Click on the foreground color black rectangle and a fairly standard looking palette window pops up, titled "change foreground color". Play around a bit and see if you can give the lady a red nose.


While you're at it, move the Scale slider in the Tool Options window to change the brush size. (The Tool Options window is docked with the Toolbox in our picture. You may have to find it by selecting <Windows><Dockable Dialogs><Tool Options> from the image window menu.)


If you've used Microsoft paint, you should be able to figure out most of the icons in the toolbox. Things start to get different when we use layers - as we'll do tomorrow.

When you're happy with your piece, <file><save as> it as "Mona_Lisa2.jpg" or something. When you click the "SAVE" button, GIMP will bitch that "JPEG can't handle transparency". For now, just click "Export" and "Save" again.

Send a copy of your finished masterpiece to  daubs@vote-sanchez.com - don't forget to include your Blogger name or the work may be mis-attributed to NaughtyGirl69@hotmail.com.