So, I switched to the right hand selection resize handle and voila – it would increment between even numbers! I tried this out on a few more selections with different images and notice that pretty consistently the left would increment odd numbers and the right would increment even numbers. Try it out and see if you get similar results.

Let’s open up a test image and click on the Path tool (icon in the Toolbar). It looks like a pen.

Now click around the shape you want to crop. Don’t drag, just click the various points around the shape – a line will automatically connect these points.

When you get to the end of clicking out the path points around your shape, press and hold CTRL and click the first point to “close” it.

Now, we’re cooking because once you close the path you can turn it into a selection. That’s exactly what we need.

From the Menu bar, choose SELECT | From Path. You will now see the familiar dotted moving line around your shape.

Little tricky part here – to remove around your shape, you need to go back up to the Menu bar and choose SELECT | Invert to now select all the stuff around your shape.

Press the Delete key on your keyboard and *bingo* – you’re left with your irregular shaped crop.

Play with the settings on the Select before choosing it to get a “softer” cut line. Also, once you close the path, you can now even use the handles to arc and curve around your shape and really refine things.

Happy cropping~!

You can download and find install/troubleshooting information on David’s Batch Processor here. You can also send David a donation from that page if you want to send the good karma back.

Once you get it all installed, let’s get started! Open Gimp. On the main window menu bar you will go to Filters | Batch Process

Try to reign in your excitement when you see all the options tabs in this window. I’ll never admit to spending many a late nerdy nights trying out the options to “just see what happens”.

Ok, let’s add the directory of files we want to batch resize.  Click the Add Files button.

You can select individual images or the whole range depending on which one’s you want to apply the resizing to. I usually click the top image, hold down the SHIFT button, scroll, and click the last image to select them all. If you want to select just individual images, use CTRL-ALT and click the one’s you want to add.

Once you have them selected, click Add.

So. You clicked Add right. And it looked like nothing happened. You will need to click the Close button to close this window.

You will now see your added files in the list. To resize all the images in the list, click the RESIZE tab.

Again, lots of options. For the purpose of this tutorial we’re going to keep it simple. Resizing can be relative to the input image size or an absolute size. Check the ENABLE button to “turn on” Resizing and  check the box KEEP ASPECT locks the x and y sliders to the same value.  Set the X and Y to .20, this will resize the images to 20% of their original size.

While it’s tempting to click the Start or Test button’s now, WAIT – we haven’t finished our settings! Click the Output tab and in the drop down area, choose JPG. You can modify the settings here as you’d like, increasing the Quality will increase each individual file size but sometimes that’s a good trade off. I went with a medium setting of 75.

Almost there so let’s click on the most confusing tab ever, the Rename tab. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. If you really want to make yourself crazy, just try and figure out what clicking the Source Dir button does. I’m not going to torture you, so click the Select Dir and choose the same folder where the original images are. I like to add a prefix to my file names so they will be listed together, as you can see here a “t-” will be added to the original filename when it is resized.

Ignore what the path says after “Original:”. Honestly, you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to sort it. This is easily the most frustrating tab as one errant click here will generate a long and hard to understand error message. If I get that error, I usually close the batch processor and try again.

Click Start and the image batch processing will run until it’s complete. You’ve now got a whole set of original files and a whole set of resized images. Well done!

click image for a larger version

Gimp’s auto white balance has been pretty reliable to quickly set the correct tones in my grayish photos. See the results here:

click image for a larger version

And there you go – one click white balance correction in Gimp!

To view the Layer’s dialog box, press CTRL-L or from the Dialog menu.

Create a new layer:

Notice that in the dialog box for a new layer you can select different options. I use the “Transparent” option most of the time, so my new layer will overlay the background layer. Also notice the size of the new layer. This is where it gets tricky in GIMP. Leave it at the size of the image right now.

Next, draw a new selection on this new layer and fill it with a color. When you click on a tool in GIMP, the dialog box below the tools area will change to allow for options with that tool. Experiment a bit with that and you’ll find some cool effects.

Once you have created a new shape on the layer:

Click to see a bigger version of this screenshot

Click on the Bucket tool and fill it.

Great! You’ve created a shape that’s on it’s own layer! Now if you move that graphic around it will float independant of the lower and upper layers. Oh, wait a minute – if you move it around you’re moving a layer the size of the entire graphic, not just the shape you made. This can really get you at the end of your design when you go to print or export – you’ll have a layer that is “over the edge” of the background layer. Trust me when I say, this is pure GIMP chaos.

So, just as soon as I’m happy with a shape for that layer I use the Autocrop Layer to resize the layer to just around my shape. Then, when I move the shape around, the layer won’t go over the edges of the main background layer.

Click for a bigger version of this screenshot

Choose, Layer and then Autocrop Layer. Voila! Now, the layer is exactly the size of your shape. What’s awesome about the Autocrop Layer is if you had multiple shapes and lines on a layer it would Autocrop to the edges of all the elements.

Experiment with this and you’ll soon see Autocrop Layer is your best friend when working with complex graphic layers.

1) Click and drag a selection over the area that you want to remain as your image.

2) From the Image Menu, choose Crop To Selection

3)You now have a quickly cropped picture in GIMP!

In part 3, we learned how to move and edit individual nodes on our multi-curved stroke path.

Today we are going to learn how to join two stroke paths into one. Open up Inkscape to our previous lesson file called Goldy.

You should have a finished stroke path like this:

Use the Edit Nodes tool  to add a new stroke path. As you are clicking areas for the node points, I recommend placing them at the end of the curve path and/or in the middle of the curve path, depending on where you want your arcs to turn. This just takes practice and experimenting, so give it a try.

After clicking the placement of your Nodes, press the Enter key on your keyboard to draw the stroke in. You should have something like this:

Shift-Click and then drag the third node to view and adjust the arcs with the Arc Circle tool. Now, you will have to use a combination of adjusting the arcs and moving the nodes along the path to get the desired results.

To refresh, use the circle handlebars on each node to adjust the arc of the curve path.

Use Alt-Click on a node to be able to adjust it on the stroke path. You will know it’s adjustable because the square node will turn Yellow. You can use the arrow keys on the keyboard or the mouse to move it along the path.

After adjusting, you should have something like this. Click the image below for a larger screenshot:

Now, even though they are close together and overlap, these are still two distinct stroke paths. To combine them Shift-Click both paths:

Then click on the top menu Path | Combine (or Ctrl-K) to combine the two paths. Now you have one stroke path with all the nodes still intact and able to be edited:

Save your file and then practice adjusting the arcs and moving the nodes on the combined path to see how combining them affects things. Happy vectoring!

Here in part 3, we are going to practice moving and editing individual nodes on our multi-curved stroke path. Open up your practice file in Inkscape. Click on the Edit Nodes tool from the left side toolbar:

Press the Shift key and then Click on your stroke path to show where the current nodes are and the angle of the arc for each curved segment:

Now you can click and drag each node segment to adjust, you will notice the segment node you are editing when it turns red:

Make adjustments to the node, the squares, and the arc, the circles, as needed. Click the Select tool, the Arrow icon, to view your progress:

To create new Bezier curves, or stroke paths, refer to part one of this tutorial series. Happy vectoring!

Open Gimp and then open an image you want to try this out on, preferably a photo that needs correction and/or has a grey wash to it. If you need an image to practice on, you can download this one.

Within Gimp, on the Image’s menu bar, select Colors | Levels and this dialog box will open up.

Notice the granular adjustments you can do, however correcting most photos I’ve found can be done with just pulling in the slider triangles from each edge to the beginning of the color levels for each photo/image, like so:

What’s nice about this tool, and Gimp in general, is that as you slide the triangles the image will change accordingly. I start by pulling the triangles in to the edges of the image’s color levels and check the image. If it looks good, just click OK and there you go, easy color adjustment with the Levels tool.

Notice that on different images the Level Input area will be different, so just adjust the triangle sliders in from each side to the beginning of the color level for each photo/image for quick color correction:

Ok, now that you’ve got Gimp, lets rock the crop! Open an image you want to crop by choosing File | Open. Now, click on the Rectangle Select Tool from the main left toolbar, like so (click the image below to see a larger version):

Click and drag to select the area you want to crop to, or what you want the final image to look like. Let go of the click and you will see the dashed lines around the area. You can use the mouse, click and drag, to adjust these lines as needed. Just move your mouse to the edge of the dashed lines and the cursor will change to indicate you can drag and move the lines.

Here’s the important part – you have to invert the selection, so you can delete the area surrounding the final image you want. So, use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL-I (or you can select it off the menu by choosing Select | Invert) to invert the selection, so now you will have the area around the image crop you want selected. The dashed lines will now extend from the crop line to the edge of the image like this:

Next, we want to delete the now selected inverted area, so on the keyboard press CTRL-X to cut it away. I like to use Cut so I can undo if needed. Now you will have white space around the image crop:

Finally, to get rid of the white space and trim down to your cropped image, from the Image Menu (the menu right off the top of your image), choose Image | Autocrop Image

You will now have the picture cropped and can save accordingly.