Grokking the GIMP | 
 enlarge | Author: Carey Bunks
Publisher: Sams
Category: Book
Buy Used: $57.95
Used (5) from $57.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 119373
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 10 x 8 x 0.7
ISBN: 0735709246
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.6869
UPC: 752064709244
EAN: 9780735709249
ASIN: 0735709246
Publication Date: February 15, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
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Condition: This cover, this isbn. The binding is tight, covers have light edge wear. There is a name on bottom page edge and on inside back cover. There is a handful of pages with scribbles and underlines (approx 5). There are no rips or tears.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
The excitement described by Carey Bunks when he first beheld the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) in 1996 is palpable when you hold Bunks's new book in your hands. The phantasmagoric image on the cover of Grokking the GIMP: Advanced Techniques for Working with Digital Images melds a photograph of the moon's surface from a high orbit with an apparent solar eclipse by the earth. A penguin floats discretely in a hot air balloon between sun-earth and moon. Is the sun-moon-earth image a bit of the penguin's imagination? Is it a piece of GIMP artist/developer Tuomas Kuosmanen's imagination? Maybe it is really a credit to the visionaries at New Riders who have produced an art book to suit the computer how-to market. "Grokking" is a Robert Heinlein-ism for "appreciating," and docent Bunks takes us through the museum of computer art and method as he demonstrates the features of the freely redistributable package. The contents follow that path set down by many other how-to tech book authors: tutorial, a taste of image theory, working with the independent features of GIMP (layers, selections, masks, and colorspaces) before advancing to compositing and rendering, and ending with a short review of Web-based applications of image manipulation. The book's strengths are Bunks's obvious passion for his subject, his mature didactic style, and the wonderfully spacious design and breathtaking color-on-every-page strategy that allows him to beautifully frame GIMP features at their best. The most notable of his many case studies is the "Panorama" project that glues a series of laterally overlapping narrow-view photographs of an architecturally interesting room into a single, stunning, wide-angle panorama of the whole. Bunks documents each step in the transformation and describes the required geometrical, hue, and brightness adjustments needed to warp and blend them together. Look again at the cover, but not literally. Ignore the unphysical details. Rather, imagine the mind's capacity for juxtaposition and GIMP's power for actualizing this visual synthesis. In form and content, Bunks and New Riders have shown that the possibilities for the tech book are far broader than previously imagined. This is an eye-opening contribution, indeed. --Peter Leopold
Product Description
"Grokking the GIMP" is for the serious user of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a premiere digital image editing and painting program. It covers the GIMP in depth, and complex tasks are intuitively presented and explained using an interactive approach. In addition to emphasizing the theory and core concepts of image manipulation, "Grokking the GIMP" beautifully illustrates the practical aspects of working with digital images. This fully 4-color book presents nine major projects and a collection of many smaller ones that illustrate the core and advanced uses of this powerful open-source application. Numbered steps and an abundance of color images walk the reader through real-world examples of color correction, image enhancement, collage, photo montage, rendering, and Web-graphics creation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
Detailed intro still current January 22, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Exelent introduction to a complex subject. Still up-to-date as the fundementals apparently have not changed in 7 years. A few menus have changed slightly but I found this not a problem. This book appears to be out of print but you can download the HTML version and read it on your computer. You'll be trying out all the techniques while you read, so you just need an extra window for the text. I found the writing concise, the organization logical, and the examples helpful. You will find that the GIMP user manual also covers this material but does not really teach you what to do with it. It's not easy to learn--I've been doing photography for years so I thought I'd pick it up just fooling around with the software. It's not so easy!
O'Reilly-quality book on the GIMP February 3, 2006
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
The GIMP is a powerful image manipulation package, provided under a free software license. It is very much the PhotoShop of the open source world. This book is an excellent introduction and tutorial to the GIMP's many powerful features. However, it is not intended to be a user manual. There is a separate and complete user manual for the GIMP available on the web. This book is also available on the web, and it is published under an open-source license - although cleverly they don't mention this in the paper copy itself. However useful it is to have the on-line copy, I cannot stress enough the quality and value in having a hard copy of this book.
Each chapter covers a different theme including layers, selections, masks, color spaces and blending, photo touchup and enhancement, compositing, rendering and web-based image production (including animated GIFs and imagemaps). The material is thoughtfully presented as a series of walkthrough examples.
The physical production of the book itself is very good. Every page is in full color and each chapter's start has a color flash at the edge of the page to allow you to easily locate it. The content has been equally well thought out. There is a very comprehensive index. At the end of each chapter is a list of FAQs correcting common misunderstandings about that chapter's subject. All diagrams are very clear and instructive.
My only gripe with the book is that there is no overview of the use of the standard toolbox of tools. I feel a simple explanation of how to use the various painting controls at the start of the book would have set the context for some of the later chapters on the image manipulation facilities of the GIMP, which indeed is the main thrust of the package.
It has been several years since a major book on the GIMP was published. What would be great would be a book that focuses more on programming and on plugins specifically - how to write them and a description of the ones currently in circulation. The next book set to be published on the GIMP, "Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional" is due to be released in April 2006. Until its arrival, this is still the only book on the GIMP worth reading.
For those of you interested in the vast amount of GIMP plug-in source code, just type "Koders Search GIMP" into Google. The first link in the resulting list is what you want. From there you can search through the folders and find the source for the many GIMP plug-ins.
Most Current, to date,that I've discovered, on the Gimp December 14, 2003
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
I have searched high and low for a decent book on the Gimp. There are a several, good references ("Learning the Gimp in 24 Hours", "Essential Gimp for Web Developers", etc.) though many are out dated due to the rapid progress progress the developers. The Gimp, an excellent example of what open source cooperation produces, is well represented in this book. The author illustrates the use of the Gimp with clear diagrams, concise descriptions, and excellent examples of the Gimp's functionality. Apart from the official Gimp documentation, this book has served me well.
Outstanding book for those new to creating graphics July 30, 2003
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I have read through a lot of this book and it has helped me tremendously in understanding the basic concepts and techniques for creating and manipulating digital images and graphics using the GIMP. Although it does not cover plug-ins in any great detail, it does lay a solid foundation for learning and using them in the future. Aside from that, almost every other conceivable topic is covered.After I finish reading this book, I am confident that I will be able to read through (and understand) the many GIMP tutorials available online without difficulty. If you are looking for a good introduction to image manipulation and the GIMP, this book does not fail to deliver in any regard.
 Very good examples April 5, 2003
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
I have referenced the on-line version of this book several times and found several useful ideas and techniques out of it---especially those dealing with color correction and enhancement. However, there is no comparison to actually haveing physical pages to flip through and seeing the photos "in person". After reading through this book, several other Photoshop tutorials available make much more sense as well. My only complaint is that there is not much attention paid to any use of plugins or "advanced" clone tool techniques for repairing marred photographs without destroying the natural film grain etc. Also, some of the keybinding shortcust appear to have changed, and his examples using Layer masks did not always work for me as described in the book. Overall, though, purchasing this book is a great way to support open-source projects and learn a good deal about the Gimp as well.
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