User Guide

GNU Image Manipulation Program
23 / 653
• Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality anti-aliasing
• Full Alpha channel support for working with transparency
• Layers and channels
• A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-Fu
• Advanced scripting capabilities
• Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space)
• Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
• File formats supported include GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others
• Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent
• Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
1.2 What’s New in GIMP?
GIMP 1.0 evolved gradually into the very stable and widely used 1.2 release. Three years later, as the GIMP development came
closer to the next stable release, they decided that the level of fundamental change to the inner workings of the program justified
calling the new stable version 2.0. GIMP 2.0.0 was released on March 23, 2004. For GIMP 2.2, the developers aimed at a short
cycle, adding a number of important features that did not require instability-inducing low level changes. GIMP 2.2.0 was released
on December 19, 2004. This section briefly describes the new features that were added in GIMP 2.2, as well as the features that
were introduced in GIMP 2.0. If you are interested in the history of GIMP you are welcome to read Appendix A.
Here is a brief summary of some of the most important new features introduced in GIMP 2.2. There are many other smaller
changes that long-time users will notice and appreciate (or complain about!). There are also important changes at the level of
plug-in programming and script-fu creating that are not covered here.
1.2.1 Interoperability and Standards Support
• You can drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste image data from the GIMP to any application which supports image/png drops
(currently Abiword and Kword at least) and image/xml+svg drops (Inkscape supports this one). So you can copy-and-paste
curves into the GIMP from Inkscape, and then drag a selection into Abiword to include it inline in your document.
• Patterns can now be any supported GtkPixbuf format, including png, jpeg, xbm and others.
• GIMP can load gradients from SVG files, and palettes from ACT and RIFF files.
• Drag-and-drop support has been extended. You can now drop files and URIs onto an image window, where they will be opened
in the existing image as new layers.
Note
Please note, that Drag and Drop will not work for Apple Mac OS X between GIMP and the finder. This is due to a
lack of functionality on Apples X11.app
1.2.2 Shortcut Editor
You can now edit your shortcuts in a dedicated dialog, as well as continue to use the little-known dynamic shortcuts feature
(which has been there since 1.2).