Title: GIMP 2.6 Cookbook
Author: Juan Manuel Ferreyra
Over 50 recipes to produce amazing graphics with the GIMP
Here is a listing of the chapters in the book:
- Using Draw and Paint Tools
- Image Filters and Effects
- Text and Fonts
- Photo Manipulation
- Playing With Color and Sharpness
- Web Design Tips: Buttons and Blogs
- Plugins and Scripts
The cookbook contains various features of GIMP which could be used for digital drawing and paintings, text and font design for logos etc, photo/image manipulation, and also for web designing. The several recipes in this cookbook vary from quite easy functionalities to complex design and manipulation techniques.
The first chapter introduces the reader to basics of GIMP, in terms of editing and authoring images, and use of tools like Blend, Smudge or Dodge.
The second chapter covers filters and effects. The third chapter explains working with text. It contains interesting recipes like ‘rubber stamp effect’, the ‘fiery effect’, the warm gold color effect and the icy cold color effect.
The chapter four deals with using GIMP for photo manipulation.It covers basic recipes like rotating and cropping. It has few complex recipes like fixing low-light photographs, creating the black and white effect, and advanced concepts like HDR (Hight Dynamic Range) photographs from normal images.
The fifth chapter deals with still advanced features in terms of photo-manipulation. It covers GIMP’s capability of color correction and image retouch from the basic red-eye reduction to complex object removal from an image and correcting facial imperfections in portraits. These recipes would come in handy for any amateur photographer who wants to use a Open Source tool set.
The sixth and seventh chapter deals with Web Design Tips, which in my opinion is not a forte of GIMP. One would rather use Inkscape. Have you checked out Inkscake 0.48 Illustrator’s Cookbook?
Most of the recipes contain screen shots for reference and even the detailed settings required for a particular step in a recipe. However those being black and white, many of the final images or even the Work In Progress screen shots do not help a lot in visualizing if this is what you would like in your image. You would have to pick an image of your own, follow the recipe to what you get versus what you need. On the positive though, the recipes at many instances provide a range, instead of a particular value of settings, so that you could play around to see what works for your image.
The book is worth buying if you are beginner at GIMP or if you are an entry level photographer who wants to work on post-process.
Check out the sample chapter: Chapter 3 – Text and Fonts [PDF]
Disclaimer: Packt Publishing has sent me a reviewer’s copy of the book.
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