Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional is a comprehensive guide to GIMP -- the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the premier free open source image editing program.

Loaded with full-color examples, step-by-step instructions and sample projects, it's written to be accessible even to newcomers who have never edited an image before. Find out how to get the most out of that digital camera, and how to prepare digital images for your web site or turn them into posters or greeting cards.

Once you're comfortable with the basics, you'll learn how to paint out unwanted objects or paste an object from one photograph into another, and how to draw original icons of your own.

Later chapters progress to intermediate and advanced topics such as layer masks, creating brushes and patterns, stitching panoramas, blending modes, image stacking, and writing simple GIMP scripts and plug-ins.

The second edition is available now. It discusses some of the changes in GIMP 2.6, and adds some tutorials for more advanced projects such as putting leopard spots on a furry animal or changing the color of a cloudy sky. The first edition is also available.

There's a sample chapter available at Apress.com. There's also a download file there containing all of the source code discussed in the book, some sample images in the GIMP's native format (XCF), plus a few other useful scripts which were used to generate some of the figures in the book.

Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition
by Akkana Peck
published by Apress
ISBN 978-1430210702

Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional
by Akkana Peck
published by Apress
ISBN 1-59059-587-4