[ Linux Today reader Glenn writes: ]
When I first decided to get the book ‘Sams Teach Yourself GIMP
in 24 Hours’, I said “Well, I know it won’t be an in depth
treatment of GIMP” but I just wanted something to get me started.
GIMP has so many things that it would be nice to have another Linux
user’s perspective on what things were important and what things
that person used it for.
Well, I got that. This book is not a bible but like I said, the
author is an active Linux enthusiast and it’s always good to read a
book from someone like that. Was the book worth the money?
Things that the book covers are starting from ground zero. If
you have never used the GIMP but you think it might be installed on
your computer, this book is for you. Just remember to type “gimp
&” at the command line.
After reading the book, you might have more questions than
answers and that is the way it should be. An open ended invitation
to explore the myriad possibilities of the GIMP. The book came with
a cd-rom containing lots of gimp stuff, distributions of the GIMP
in rpm and deb formats along with a few libraries. Good stuff
although most Linux distros already include those things.
But I was always afraid of using the GIMP for some reason but
not now. It’s very simple. I now understand the concepts of
layering and opacity and how to combine layers into one jpeg image,
if I want to. These are very powerful techniques, or rather, very
simple operations that can result in very interesting images. So
the bottom line is the author teaches you the basics and you can
then build your skills from there. Creating things no eye has ever
seen? Possible.