Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
he Gimp is not installed by default in most Raspberry Pi distributions, so you'll have to con-
nect your Pi to the Internet and install it through the package management system (see
Chapter 2, “Linux System Administration”, for details). he Gimp takes up quite a lot of
space on the SD card—although not as much as OpenOice.org—so make sure you have
enough free space before installing it.
To install he Gimp, open a terminal window and type the following:
sudo apt-get install gimp
he Gimp can take a little while to get used to, because its user interface uses three diferent
windows rather than just one. By default, the window on the left contains the Toolbox; the
window on the right displays the Layers, Channels, and Gradients options; and the middle
window displays the image you're currently editing. If you open more than one image, you'll
get more than one main window—but still only one each of the Toolbox and the Layers,
Channels, and Gradients windows.
By default,
he Gimp User Manual
is not installed. For the Pi, this is a good thing: he Gimp is
a powerful tool, and its user manual takes up a not-inconsiderable amount of space on the
SD card. If you try to access the manual by pressing the F1 key or choosing Help from the
Help menu, you'll be prompted to read an online, web-based version instead. Click the Read
Online button to open the user manual in your browser.
he Gimp is a very powerful utility, and uses a lot of memory. As a result, it runs relatively
slowly on the Raspberry Pi—although it is deinitely usable. Be patient with it, especially if
you're opening large photographs from a digital camera. It may help to increase the amount
of system memory available by changing the
start.elf
ile (see Chapter 6, “Coniguring
the Raspberry Pi”, for more details on how this is achieved).
When saving iles in he Gimp, you can use a variety of ile formats. If you're planning on
coming back to the ile and doing more editing, you should use he Gimp's default XCF ile
format. his keeps important
metadata
intact, uses lossless compression to maximise image
quality and supports images comprised of multiple layers.
If you're planning on uploading your image to the Internet or otherwise sharing it with oth-
ers, a more-portable format like JPG or PNG is recommended. To change the format of the
ile, choose the Export option from the File menu rather than the Save option (see Figure
8-4). his allows you to choose the ile format from a wide variety of ile types.
