User Guide

GNU Image Manipulation Program

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To make a pattern available, you place it in one of the folders in GIMP’s pattern search path. By default, the pattern search path

includes two folders, the system patterns folder, which you should not use or alter, and the patterns folder inside your

personal GIMP directory. You can add new folders to the pattern search path using the Pattern Folders page of the Preferences

dialog. Any PAT ﬁle (or, in GIMP 2.2, any of the other acceptable formats) included in a folder in the pattern search path will

show up in the Patterns dialog the next time you start GIMP.

There are countless ways of creating interesting patterns in GIMP, using the wide variety of available tools and ﬁlters -- particu-

larly the rendering ﬁlters. You can ﬁnd tutorials for this in many locations, including the GIMP home page [GIMP]. Some of the

ﬁlters have options that allow you to make their results tileable. Also, see Section 15.2.7, this ﬁlter allows you to blend the edges

of an image in order to make it more smoothly tileable.

Figure 7.19: Pattern script examples

Examples of patterns created using six of the Pattern script-fu’s that come with GIMP. Default settings were used for everything

except size. (From left to right: 3D Truchet; Camouﬂage; Flatland; Land; Render Map; Swirly)

Also of interest are a set of pattern-generating scripts that come with GIMP: you can ﬁnd them in the Toolbox menu, under Xtns

→ Script-Fu → Patterns. Each of the scripts creates a new image ﬁlled with a particular type of pattern: a dialog pops up that

allows you to set parameters controlling the details of the appearance. Some of these patterns are most useful for cutting and

pasting; others serve best as bumpmaps.

7.12 Palettes

A palette is a set of discrete colors. In GIMP, palettes are used mainly for two purposes:

• They allow you to paint with a selected set of colors, in the same way an oil painter works with colors from a limited number

of tubes.

• They form the colormaps of indexed images. An indexed image can use a maximum of 256 different colors, but these can be

any colors. The colormap of an indexed image is called an "indexed palette" in GIMP.

Actually neither of these functions fall very much into the mainstream of GIMP usage: it is possible to do rather sophisticated

things in GIMP without ever dealing with palettes. Still, they are something that an advanced user should understand, and even

a less advanced user may need to think about them in some situations, as for example when working with GIF ﬁles.