[...]... at the bottom of the toolbox The foreground and background colors in the swatches box at the bottom of the toolbox Brush, Pattern, and Gradient Previews The brush, pattern, and gradient previews reflect the selection currently active for the Brushes, Patterns, and Gradients dialogs Click any of these previews to open the associated dialog and change the active selection Brushes Patterns Gradients The. .. pattern, and gradient previews in the toolbox Once you’ve enabled the active image preview in the Preferences dialog, the preview appears at the bottom of the toolbox The position will be to the right and/ or below the other previews, depending on how you change the size of the toolbox area Chapter 1: Fundamental Techniques    5 Docking A dock is a window that holds other windows For example, the toolbox... open the tool’s associated dialog or use the File menu to access it (File4Dialogs) The Tool Options dialog for the Rectangle Select tool Color Swatches and Tool Previews At the bottom of the toolbox you’ll find the color swatches and the brush, pattern, and gradient previews If you’ve enabled it in the Preferences dialog, you’ll also see the active image preview In the swatches box, you’ll find the. .. another The GIMP Toolbox The default layout for GIMP, from left to right, includes the toolbox, an empty canvas window, and the default docks The toolbox holds all of GIMP s core tools The canvas window is used to draw, paint, and edit images Docks are windows that hold one or more of GIMP s various dialogs, such as the Layers, Channels, Brush, and Paths dialogs 2   Chapter 1: Fundamental Techniques Toolbox... dialog gives you access to the active tool’s options and settings This dialog opens as a tab at the top of the two initial docks Clicking the icon for a GIMP tool does two things: it activates the tool, and it displays the Tool Options dialog for that tool Function Eraser The Eraser tool removes pixels from almost all layers, leaving transparent pixels in their place When applied to the Background layer,... use the Brush dialog to change the default spacing for any brush A higher Spacing value allows you to create shapes like wire frames and tubing from ordinary brushes 12   Chapter 1: Fundamental Techniques The Pencil tool (top) and Paintbrush tool (bottom) are used to draw lines with the Round Fuzzy (101) and Pepper brushes The Paintbrush Tool The Eraser Tool Throughout the tutorials, this is the paint... in the toolbox The Airbrush Tool The Airbrush tool is very similar to the Paintbrush tool, except that it applies a lighter or darker stroke, depending on the Rate and Flow values set in the Tool Options dialog It also continues applying the brush to a single point if the cursor doesn’t move For these reasons, the Airbrush tool is useful for enhancing shading and lighting in images The Eraser tool removes... http://www.morguefile.com/ Stock.XCHNG http://www.sxc.hu/ Links to all the stock images used in the book are available at the companion website: http://www.artistsguidetogimp.com/ Many of this book’s tutorials are inspired by tutorials presented in countless Photoshop texts My knowledge of how to use tools like GIMP was born from those early Photoshop tutorials; I learned to translate and reimagine those techniques into the. .. Airbrush, Eraser, and Ink tools are collectively referred to as GIMP s paint tools This section of the book introduces these tools to new users The Basic Tutorials in Section 1.10 will help you get a grasp on using these paint tools so you’ll be prepared to experiment with them later in the book Paint Tools and Features Before discussing each of the paint tools, let’s examine some features they have in... Length value to determine the length of the stroke before the fade Changing the Dynamics option to Fade Tapering will add a tapered end to the fading stroke, as shown in this example The Ink tool is the only paint tool that doesn’t offer this option Now that you’re familiar with the basics, here are the GIMP paint tools used most often in this book’s tutorials The Pencil Tool The Pencil tool applies . The Artist’s Guide to GIMP, 2nd Edition The ArTisT’s Guide To GIMP creative techniques for photographers, artists, and designers | michael j. hammel seCoNd ediTioN The Artist’s Guide to GIMP, . of the program. Hammel wrote a column on GIMP for Linux Format for three years and is the author of The Artists’ Guide to the GIMP (Frank Kasper & Associates, 1998) and Essential GIMP for. www.nostarch.com The Library of Congress cataloged the first edition as follows: Hammel, Michael J. The artist’s guide to GIMP effects : creative techniques for photographers, artists, and designers