Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The 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 3, “Linux System Administration”, for details). The Gimp takes up quite a lot of
space on the SD card—although not as much as LibreOffice—so make sure you have enough
free space before installing it.
To install The Gimp, open a terminal window and type the following:
sudo apt-get install gimp
The Gimp can take a little while to get used to, because its user interface uses three different
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,
The Gimp User Manual
is not installed. For the Pi, this is a good thing: the 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.
The 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 definitely 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 (see Chapter 6, “The Raspberry Pi Software Configuration Tool”,
for more details on how this is achieved).
When saving files in The Gimp, you can use a variety of file formats. If you're planning on
coming back to the file and doing more editing, you should use The Gimp's default XCF file
format. This 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
file, choose the Export option from the File menu rather than the Save option (see Figure
9-4). This allows you to choose the file format from a wide variety of file types.
