GIMP 2.5.1 is another snapshot from the 2.5 development series. It gives developers and interested users a view into the current development towards GIMP 2.6. The changes in GIMP 2.5 are listed in the NEWS file:

It can be annoying how the GIMP image editor’s image and toolbox windows are separate, if all of them are hidden behind another window you have to bring not only the image to the front but also the toolboxes. This could work much more productively, why not show all the toolboxes whenever a image is in the foreground?

Gimp is universally used for image manipulation. However, with a bit of creativity and a couple of tricks, it can also be used as an audio filter! Here is how…

I've been using the Gimp now for a few years and have really come to love it. Since getting my larger 22-inch flat panel, The Gimp has become much easier to use. Gimp makes use of floating tool panels. One panel for bushes, eraser, paint bucket and other tools. another panel handles brush size, navigation, layers,etc. And a main panel that houses the image you're going to edit.

Here is another article of our “GIMP tricks” series. This time you are going to learn a simple trick: how to make your teeth look really white on a photograph. By the way, perhaps it’s the right time to visit a dentist?

There's a few flame effect tutorials out there, but all the ones I've found are either badly outdated or too fiddly. This is how I set any object - including text - ablaze with the Gimp, in just six quick steps.

As is common to open-source applications, GIMP too has a huge repository of plugins, scripts, brushes and gradients (we’ve already covered Top 40 GIMP plugins). The open-source enthusiasts pour hundreds of hours into developing the application and its add-ons for no cost, and shares them generously with the community.

I couldn't find any Ubuntu logo GIMP brushes on the Ubuntu Wiki Artwork/Official page, so I've created some. The brushes are quite large, but now that GIMP supports scalable brushes they can be easily scaled down in size.

Ok, this time I’ll show you how to make one of these bad boys, an animated banner logo. Like this or this: [picture]. The first one is actually a bit trickier as it involves a lot more layers than the other one, but I’ll explain that later.

Publishr is a quite useful GIMP plugin. With Publishr, you can directly upload images to Flickr and Picasaweb from GIMP. The latest version of Publishr is 0.2. You can download it at here.

After four months of hard work we are proud to announce another release of the user manual. It features:

• documentation for GIMP 2.4
• new content, spelling and grammar fixes for English, German, French, Russian, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish
• an alternate CSS stylesheet for HTML
  

I really like the Lomo photo effect and I'd love to own a real Lomo camera — I just don't take enough pictures to warrant the purchase. Luckily the Lomo effect can be digitally emulated using a GIMP filter, and the results aren't too bad. See some before and after examples here.

I love playing around with GIMP, it's a fantastic piece of software. I use it to design websites and web graphics. I have to admit that it took me a while to really get used to using it. I was used to using Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. GIMP in comparison to these seemed archaic and not too user friendly. I can see now that this is not the case and I'm glad that I persevered and continued to use GIMP. GIMP is now my friend.

By default GIMP comes with a rather limited set of brushes. There's a package available from the Ubuntu repositories to install some extra brushes, however this is also a little limited. To this end, I've created a new package containing over 150 additional brushes for GIMP.

This isn't really an Earth-shattering technique, but I've lucked out with it enough times to warrant a tutorial. It actually fits with the popular art-school methods for drawing a figure on paper, especially for drawing superhero-type figures.

I've recently started creating some banners and buttons for Ubuntu. I've been using Gimp to create the images and I wanted a quick-and-easy way to create a new file with the correct dimensions. To accomplish this I edited Gimp's templaterc file and created a new template entry for each of the IAB Ad Units.

General Improvements

Refreshed Look

A whole new default icon theme has been created for 2.4. The icons comply with the Tango style guidelines so GIMP doesn't feel out of place on any of the supported platforms. Regardless of whether you run GIMP under Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X or Linux (GNOME, KDE or Xfce), GIMP provides a polished, consistent look.

I have been successfully using GIMP for what seems like years. It's free, it's stable and once you understand the rather strange menu layout, it actually provides fantastic functionality. But the reality remains that some people are still trying to come off their Photoshop dependency, and for these individuals, the argument about how fantastic it is tends to fall on deaf ears.

The GIMP image editor is preparing for the start of a new development cycle, and you can have your say in the way the next version looks by submitting a mock-up to the GIMP UI Brainstorm blog. User interface designer Peter Sikking spoke with us about the project and how it fits into the larger work of creating the GIMP's UI.

On my last post I wrote about the “Liquid Rescale Plug-in” for Gimp and published an image that I resized. Now I’ll show how to make it step-by-step.