FIGURE D

Use this software or we'll retouch this doggy. Click picture for a larger image.

Most work can be accomplished through the menus. If you've opened the File menu, you'll find it surprisingly bare. To save time, the creators of the GIMP have made most features and functions available by simply right-clicking the image. If you'll refer back to Figure A, you'll see this in action. Typical photo editing tasks such as cropping and resizing are all available here, as well as a number of fancier tools. Saving, exporting, and the always-helpful Undo feature are all in this menu as well.

A few simple tasks
Now that we've installed the GIMP and explored a little bit, let's try a few basic functions: zooming, saving, cropping, and resizing. First you're going to need an image to edit. Simply select Open from the File menu and you will be presented with the ubiquitous file browsing dialog. In this example, I've browsed to my pictures folder and have selected a picture of a nasty-looking spider that I'd like to display on the web. It's 1600x1200, much larger than I'd prefer to upload. At this size, the GIMP has opened it with a default zoom level of 50% to display the full image on-screen.

I want to work with the full-size image for this crop, so first let's blow it up. To zoom in, right-click your image, then select Zoom -> 1:1 from the View menu. This nets the view shown in Figure E on my 1280x1024 desktop.

FIGURE E

Even though this image may require some scrolling after you click the thumbnail, we've left it big so you can really see it in all its glory. Click picture for a larger image.

Note here that keyboard shortcuts are displayed to the right of menu options. So, in this case, I could also have obtained the 1:1 zoom by touching 1 on the keyboard.

Now, we don't want to ruin our original photos, so let's save a copy to work with. Right-click your image and select Save As... from the File menu. Browse to a new folder if you like, and type the new file name below. Note as well you can change the file type here if desired either by typing it by hand with "By file type" selected or by selecting a specific file type from the drop-down menu. Upon saving, you will be presented with an additional dialog as appropriate to the format to tweak options such as compression or comments.

Next let's crop the image. Once again you right-click the image, then select Transform Tools -> Crop & Resize from the Tools menu (or Shift+C on the keyboard). Click the image once and the Crop & Resize Information dialog box will appear near the center of the screen as shown in Figure F, showing the XY coordinates of your starting point and the window size as you drag and create your crop or resizing area.

FIGURE F

First we talk about GIMP. Then about crops. Just keep you mind out of the gutter, OK? Click picture for a larger image.

This is a feature I really like in the GIMP. Most other tools I've worked with require watching the toolbars for the given information. Simply move the crop box out of your way, then draw your cropping area by clicking and dragging. The Crop & Resize Information dialog box will display the size of crop rectangle as you drag. To refine your selection, you can drag the upper-left and lower-right corners to resize the selection and the upper-right and lower-left corners to move the selection.