GIMP lesson 003 – Launching GIMP
Since I started this “learning exercise” for GIMP almost 2.5 years ago, and the training was already a year or two old at that point, my lessons are a bit jumbled up. Not only that, it was designed for v2.6 of GIMP, and the current version is 3.0.8. A few versions later, to say the least. As such, I’m going to have to do a bit of searching from time to time to convert certain steps over into “new GIMP”.
When I started, I looked at how to save images and optimize certain file types for size. Now, I’m stepping back for a moment to see the “start-up” options to see if there is anything I should tweak or customize.
One of the first tweaks is to personalize my workspace palettes. It’s a decently long list of options of things to add to the default desktop:
- Tool options *
- Device status *
- Layers ***
- Channels ***
- Paths ***
- Colormap
- Histogram
- Selection editor **
- Navigation
- Undo history *
- Pointed
- Sample points
- Symmetry painting
- Colors
- Brushes **
- Paint dynamics
- MyPaint brushes
- Patterns **
- Gradients
- Palettes **
- Fonts **
- Tool presets
- Buffers
- Images *
- Document history **
- Templates
- Error Console
- Dashboard
The ones with asterisks are part of my default choices; a bunch of the others will come in handy when I eventually get to the stage of doing astro processing. The ones with one * are on the left sidebar; the ones with ** are on the top right; and the ones with *** are on the bottom right.
After that, you either open an existing file (FILE / OPEN) or create a new one (blank or from an existing template as FILE / NEW).
What I learned today
I learned how to set up my desktop for access to my most common “palettes” (submenus and tools) and how to create a new file.
