Planet GIMP

[laura_seabrook]

Been playing around with the GIMP. I followed a tutorial found on the GIMP TALK forums.

It's sort of meant to be a planet. Maybe the GIMP isn't that bad after all...

Comments

gimp fascinate'

[rashelleym.livejournal.com]

I actually thought GIMP is open source, but I suppose it depends on the particular flavor of license that's attached, and what the author(s) desire.

I've been playing with GIMP for about two years (currently using it to look at PNG's exported by dia, for instance), but I wouldn't have a clue about how to make an image like this one. Which is why GIMP fascinates me.

Anyhoo, I'll be updating my profile presently to reflect del.iciou.us bookmarking (with the same user name). That sort of social networking versus this kind is more my speed. (Which is much much slower than "the speed of mice".)

Re: gimp fascinate'

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Um, it is open source!

My own experience however is mostly with Paint Shop Pro, which isn't, and Windows only. The big obstacle I've found with GIMP (and it's teh same when I use photoshop) is that the commands are similar but in different places in the menus, or have different terminology / keyboard shortcuts et cetera. All of which will get sorted out over time...

attention to learning

[rashelleym.livejournal.com]

I avoid, absolutely minimize, doing things that require "mousework." But I'm finding that taking the time (and attention) to organize a particular task between mouse and keyboard actions necessary (for instance, toward learning precisely what a menu item is doing), and then additionally repeating the same routine, mouse actions to keyboard actions--conscious learning, in other words--I seem to do much, much better. Quite fatiguing, but whatever.

Probably menu items are in similar yet quite different places in different versions of GIMP, too. But fascinate' see that organization evolve, personally.

I avoid creating shortcuts in apps, and instead learn how the "factory defaults" work in relation to the primary GUI. For instance, KDE uses ctl and alt of "tab" to switch among "windows" and "desktops". Of course, I avoid using GUI programs at all; if I didn't, I'd pick them, and immediately try to discover if my selection(s) were colliding with PGUI defaults. (Of course one may examine menus and go about it more systematically, at least with KDE, but I prefer to just try things. "Systematic approaches" were always foiled by Microsoft brand operating systems I used to be able to use.)

Customizing via keymapping and so forth at the os lvel on the other hand I would absolutely approach systematically, because it would possibly change not only how the hot-keys in the PGUI work, but also the hot-keys in every GUI application interface "under" every PGUI that may be run with that os configuration.

Uh. Too much information, really. I don't "know" all that much about this stuff, but I trust the above may be somewhat useful if you're reading background Linux documentation about how to use shortcut keys in GIMP. (And, actually, I can't recall ever seeing the term PGUI/"primary graphical user interface" before I wrote it, above.)

Everybody uses technology differently. The attraction of free/open source operating systems and software seems to be that, with attention and focused continual learning, one can use it more and more closely exactly as one desires.

Re: attention to learning

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Perhaps as well, with open source there's more a feeling that one can also contribute to its ongoing development by (if not a programmer) by giving good feedback about bugs, and what does and doesn't work.