Guest tutorials » Gimp » Basic settings

To get things started it is handy to have the same setup as me, when you get more experienced with the program you'll soon find out your own preferences. When you open The Gimp for the first time you'll see it opens in 4 or 5 different windows. I'll talk you through the most important ones and show you how to set it up.

The Toolbox

Toolbox

This is the most important window, as it is the actual program. If you close this window you close the program. With the other windows this is not the case; you'll only close that particular window. This window is both referred as Toolbox and as The Gimp. Don't get confused!

Area 1: In this File-Menu you can open files, create new files, set your preferences and so on. I will refer to this File-Menu as "The Gimp File-Menu", because there is another File-Menu in the Image Window.

Area 2: This is where your tool icons are. If you click on any of them the preferences for the tool will open in Area 3.

The Image

Image

This is where you work on. The menus are the most important of the Program. At the title you see the name of your image. Note that there are different extensions. The extension on The Gimp that saves your layers is .xcf. Always safe your image as an xcf first, and then as a jpg for uploading it on HL.

Brush Editor, Brushes

Brushes

This is the window where you can select your brush, or edit it. A big problem with The Gimp is that the brushes aren't very flexible, you can't just change the size of a brush, and you have to open it, edit it and save it. I have a way around this, which can be found at the Tips and Tricks.

Layers

Layers

This is the window where you can alter your layers. I can not stress enough how important layers are. The rule is for every new thing you add, add a new layer first. That way your picture won't be ruined when it all goes wrong...

Your view should now more or less look like this.

The Toolbox

Trust Me ;)