Raster image manipulation with "The GIMP"

Do you know "The GIMP" ? That's a nice tool for manipulating raster images. It supports the mostly used raster formats like JPEG, TIFF, GBRUSH, PCD, PNG, PNM, TGA, XPM, .... It has a lot of features like other commercial products but its free. It is available for Windows and for a lot of UNIX systems. For more information you should look at its homepage.
For the Windows version you should look at GIMP for Windows.

For problems reading PostScript/PDF files with GIMP see below.

For questions about the following plug-ins mailto:peter@kirchgessner.net:

Compose (compose gray images to RGB images)
Decompose (decompose RGB images into separate RGB, CMYK channels)
Film (compose multiple images to a roll of film)
FITS (read/write FITS files)
Mapcolor (map color ranges, adjust foreground/background)
PostScript/PDF (read/write PostScript, read PDF)
XWD (read/write XWD files)
SUNRAS (read/write Sun-raster files)

A simple effect performed with GIMP

See here how to get this

from this

Additional plug-ins for the GIMP

Go to additional plug-ins for old versions of GIMP (GIMP V 1.0 or GIMP V 1.2).
For GIMP V 2.x there are no additional plug-ins available.

GIMP V 1.0 (out of date)

For the GIMP V 1.0 the following additional plug-ins are available in source for download:

File plug-ins to load/save different file formats:

ASCII V1.01 (plug-in to read ASCII-files (.asc, .txt)). Download 24KB.
RTL V1.00 (plug-in to save and print RTL-files). Download 11KB.

Plug-ins to manipulate/create images:

MAPCOLOR V1.00 (tone correction, color mapping). Download 6KB.

GIMP V 1.2 (out of date)

For the GIMP V 1.2 the following additional plug-ins are available in source/executable for download:

PostScript/PDF V1.13
Bugfix to read DOS EPS binary files. Download source and executable for Linux i386 (41KB, Gimp v1.2.3/gtk+ 1.2.8). Extract the executable ps to the plug-ins directory (/usr/local/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins or /usr/lib/gimp/1.2/plug-ins).

GIMP V 2.x

No additional plug-ins available for GIMP V 2.x

Where to install additional plug-ins

Executables of the plug-ins must be copied to the plug-ins directory of GIMP. On UNIX this is usually /opt/gnome/lib/gimp/<version>/plug-ins. On Windows this is usually c:\programs\GIMP-<version>\lib\gimp\<version>\plug-ins.

Problems reading PostScript/PDF files

All current installations of GIMP include the PostScript/PDF plug-in which is required to read PostScript/PDF files with GIMP. The plug-in uses GhostScript or a GhostScript-library to do this. On Linux systems GhostScript is usually installed. For Windows, at least the installer from V 2.8.4 on, installs PostScript-support automatically. So GhostScript does not need to be installed separately.
For older Versions of Gimp, here is how to install GhostScript:

Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript
Look for package GPL Ghostscript or AFPL Ghostscript (non-commercial use only)
Download a prepared Windows distribution like gs904w32.exe
Start the executable and follow the instructions of the installation procedure
Copy the executable gswin32c.exe (not the gswin32.exe) from the directory bin of the ghostscript installation to the Windows directory (e.g. c:\windows or c:\winnt). Or copy it to any other directory that is contained in the environment variable PATH.
As an alternative, advanced users can set an environment variable GS_PROG to point to gswin32c.exe (e.g. c:\gs\gsX.YY\bin\gswin32c.exe)
Restart GIMP to activate the changes.

Now you should be able to read PostScript and PDF files with GIMP.
Please note that you must not move the directories of ghostscript once the installation has finished. Registry entries have been created that allow ghostscript to find libraries.

Last revised: 2013-02-27