On 11/16/18, Dick Marti via gimp-user-list wrote:

Thanks for answering my previous questions about Gimp. Your answers led me to a further question. Amazon lists dozens of book titles on using Gimp. Many of them involve assistance with particular aspects of using Gimp, such as making posters or putting images inside text. Usually the book titles are not helpful in determining what the content covers. Can you recommend the best recent books on producing fantasy landscapes by arranging snippets of several different pictures?

Hi Dick,

I don't know of such books, but I know of a training DVD on GIMP that is as close as it gets to what you are probably thinking of:

http://www.rosiehardy.com/online-tutorials

Also, http://www.rosiehardy.com/2848357-2015-editing-tutorials

Alex

On 11/15/18 4:45 PM, Dick Marti via gimp-user-list wrote:

Thanks for answering my previous questions about Gimp. Your answers led me to a further question. Amazon lists dozens of book titles on using Gimp. Many of them involve assistance with particular aspects of using Gimp, such as making posters or putting images inside text. Usually the book titles are not helpful in determining what the content covers. Can you recommend the best recent books on producing fantasy landscapes by arranging snippets of several different pictures?

Hey Dick,

As far as I know, no GIMP books in print are up to date, in the sense of covering new and changed features in the latest version of the GIMP.

The good news is, that this will rarely make a difference. When it does, the GIMP's built in Help files and the online GIMP User Manual should explain the differences at once. If following the directions in a book or tutorial fail or give unexpected results, review the tools used and check there first.

https://www.gimp.org/docs/

As you are looking to produce fantasy landscapes by combining elements from multiple images, topics of large interest would include:

* Layers: The source images you are combining will each live on their own layer in the XCF file you are working on, all but the lowest layer "in front of" and hiding parts of the layers below it.

You will be working with layers and layer masks a lot, so it will pay to learn how all their basic layer functions work early on: Toggling visibility on and off, moving layers up and down in the stack, moving layers around on the canvas (main editing window), adding and using layer masks, copying layers, creating new layers from the currently visible layers. Layer groups are also likely to come in handy.

* Layer masks: In the GIMP a "mask" is in effect a black and white (grayscale) layer "hooked to" a regular layer. Where the mask is white, its parent layer will be fully visible in the finished image. Where the mask is black, its parent layer will be completely transparent in the finished images. Shades of gray enable partial transparency, blending from one to the other.

Masking vs. erasing: You can use the Eraser tool (or numerous others) to remove pixels from any layer, leaving the affected areas transparent (if the layer's alpha channel is on). This might look like the e-z and obvious way to cut out bits of an image imported into a project, but beware: You can't bring erased pixels back except by "undo" (vs. control-z), so if you decide WAY later in the editing process you need to do that... oops. But when using a layer mask to "mask out" unwanted parts of imported images, the original layer is still there and you can refine or change your cutting job by painting on the mask with white to restore 'invisible' pixels, or black to 'erase' more of the pesky things. Paint on the mask with a soft edged brush to smoothly blend edges - or, with the mask "active" in the layers dialog, do a "Fuzzy Select" (magic wand) selection of a sharp edged area, drag and drop white or black as required into the selection to feather its edge..

* Understanding issues of scale and resolution, to assure that the source images you choose will "look right" in the finished images.

* The Scale, Rotate and Perspective tools: Making the bits fit when composing a collage that's supposed to look like a reasonably natural landscape (dragons or etc. included as needs be) takes a lot of tweaking: Make them the right size, make them point the right way "up" for a perfect fit, and smoothly stretching them into new shapes, will be among the first things done to a newly imported layer in the kinds of project you describe.

* Color and light adjustment: The Curves, Hue-Saturation, and Color Balance tools will probably play prominent roles in your project. The Curves tool allows selective brightening or darkening of a layer's content, relative to the pixels' original brightness; hard to describe, easy to understand if you play with it. The Hue-Saturation tool lets you make "big" color adjustments to a layer, the Color Balance tool enables fine tuning of same.

The Perspective Clone tool will probably come in VERY handy:

https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-perspective-clone.html

Reading up on the specific tools named above in the GIMP Help menu and the online GIMP manual, and playing with what you learn as you go... IS the book you're looking for. :D

Actual books:

I recommend Grokking The GIMP, eldrich horror that it is, to anyone interested in image editing. The ancient version of the GIMP Carey Bunks wrote about is long long gone, but Carey's content related to image editing itself is very much worth knowing: Image composition, manipulating perceived depth of field, vignette lighting, etc. never go out of style.

Free as in Freedom:

https://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/graphics_tools/gimp_advanced_guide/index.html

Another and much more 'current' title, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional by Akkana Peck, strikes me as GIMP book worth paying for. As the title suggests, Akkana carries the reader from clueless to competent, especially those who "work along with" the chapters in the GIMP itself while reading. It's a little out of date relative to the current GIMP release, but as noted above, the Help files and online Manual are your friends. Aside from major improvements "under the hood," the latest greatest GIMP still looks and acts almost exactly the same as when Beginning GIMP came out... just better, is all.

https://gimpbook.com/

:o)

On 11/15/18 7:41 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:

... > When using a layer mask to "mask out" unwanted

parts of imported images, the original layer is still there and you can refine or change your cutting job by painting on the mask with white to restore 'invisible' pixels, or black to 'erase' more of the pesky things. Paint on the mask with a soft edged brush to smoothly blend edges - or, with the mask "active" in the layers dialog, do a "Fuzzy Select" (magic wand) selection of a sharp edged area, drag and drop white or black as required into the selection to feather its edge..

Heh, skipped a step. Do Select > Feather Selection before the drag and drop part.

Or, just use the Free Select tool to draw a sloppy outline around the part of the mask you want to feather, and with that selection active, use Gaussian Blur to make the sharp edges included in your selection fuzzy.

:D

On Thu, 2018-11-15 at 16:45 -0500, Dick Marti via gimp-user-list wrote:

Can you recommend the best
recent books on producing fantasy landscapes by arranging snippets of several different pictures?

i'm not aware of any books on that topic exactly :) but The Artist's Guide to GIMP (Hammel, 2nd edition) is one of the best books of tutorials i've seen for any program. The reason for each step is explained, and the tutorials are fairly robust (e.g. telling you to press d to reset the fg/bg colours to their defaults before painting).

Liam (slave ankh on IRC)

Liam Quin - web slave for https://www.fromoldbooks.org/
with fabulous vintage art and fascinating texts to read.
Click here to have the slave beaten.

I hate studying and doing my homework. I want to do what I love: playing video games and hanging out with friends. I think that in this situation I need to contact college essay writers - https://www.bestessay.com/college-essay/ to write student papers for me. Luckily, I know of a proven writing service.

i'm not aware of any books on that topic exactly :) but The Artist's Guide to GIMP (Hammel, 2nd edition) is one of the best books of tutorials i've seen for any program. The reason for each step is explained, and the tutorials are fairly robust (e.g. telling you to press d to reset the fg/bg colours to their defaults before painting).

Liam (slave ankh on IRC)

I like that you have provided reference books, it will be easier for me to choose the one on which I will research. This is one of the learning assignments, writing a book review, but it should be a whole literary review. I drew attention to the article https://educationisaround.com/step-by-step-guide-for-writing-a-literature-review/ where it was just said about the options for the correct writing of such reviews. I assure you it will do you and me good

Hey Dick,

As far as I know, no GIMP books in print are up to date, in the sense of
covering new and changed features in the latest version of the GIMP.

The good news is, that this will rarely make a difference. When it does, the GIMP's built in Help files and the online GIMP User Manual should explain the differences at once. If following the directions in
a book or tutorial fail or give unexpected results, review the tools used and check there first.

https://www.gimp.org/docs/

As you are looking to produce fantasy landscapes by combining elements from multiple images, topics of large interest would include:

* Layers: The source images you are combining will each live on their own layer in the XCF file you are working on, all but the lowest layer "in front of" and hiding parts of the layers below it.

You will be working with layers and layer masks a lot, so it will pay to
learn how all their basic layer functions work early on: Toggling visibility on and off, moving layers up and down in the stack, moving layers around on the canvas (main editing window), adding and using layer masks, copying layers, creating new layers from the currently visible layers. Layer groups are also likely to come in handy.

* Layer masks: In the GIMP a "mask" is in effect a black and white (grayscale) layer "hooked to" a regular layer. Where the mask is white,
its parent layer will be fully visible in the finished image. Where the
mask is black, its parent layer will be completely transparent in the finished images. Shades of gray enable partial transparency, blending from one to the other.

Masking vs. erasing: You can use the Eraser tool (or numerous others) to remove pixels from any layer, leaving the affected areas transparent
(if the layer's alpha channel is on). This might look like the e-z and
obvious way to cut out bits of an image imported into a project, but beware: You can't bring erased pixels back except by "undo" (vs. control-z), so if you decide WAY later in the editing process you need to do that... oops. But when using a layer mask to "mask out" unwanted
parts of imported images, the original layer is still there and you can
refine or change your cutting job by painting on the mask with white to
restore 'invisible' pixels, or black to 'erase' more of the pesky things. Paint on the mask with a soft edged brush to smoothly blend edges - or, with the mask "active" in the layers dialog, do a "Fuzzy Select" (magic wand) selection of a sharp edged area, drag and drop white or black as required into the selection to feather its edge..

* Understanding issues of scale and resolution, to assure that the source images you choose will "look right" in the finished images.

* The Scale, Rotate and Perspective tools: Making the bits fit when composing a collage that's supposed to look like a reasonably natural landscape (dragons or etc. included as needs be) takes a lot of tweaking: Make them the right size, make them point the right way "up"
for a perfect fit, and smoothly stretching them into new shapes, will be
among the first things done to a newly imported layer in the kinds of project you describe.

* Color and light adjustment: The Curves, Hue-Saturation, and Color Balance tools will probably play prominent roles in your project. The Curves tool allows selective brightening or darkening of a layer's content, relative to the pixels' original brightness; hard to describe,
easy to understand if you play with it. The Hue-Saturation tool lets you make "big" color adjustments to a layer, the Color Balance tool enables fine tuning of same.

The Perspective Clone tool will probably come in VERY handy:

https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-perspective-clone.html

Reading up on the specific tools named above in the GIMP Help menu and the online GIMP manual, and playing with what you learn as you go... IS
the book you're looking for. :D

Actual books:

I recommend Grokking The GIMP, eldrich horror that it is, to anyone interested in image editing. The ancient version of the GIMP Carey Bunks wrote about is long long gone, but Carey's content related to image editing itself is very much worth knowing: Image composition, manipulating perceived depth of field, vignette lighting, etc. never go
out of style.

Free as in Freedom:

https://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/graphics_tools/gimp_advanced_guide/index.html

Another and much more 'current' title, Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional by Akkana Peck, strikes me as GIMP book worth paying for. As the title suggests, Akkana carries the reader from clueless to competent, especially those who "work along with" the chapters in the GIMP itself while reading. It's a little out of date relative to the current GIMP release, but as noted above, the Help files and online Manual are your friends. Aside from major improvements "under the hood," the latest greatest GIMP still looks and acts almost exactly the
same as when Beginning GIMP came out... just better, is all.

https://gimpbook.com/

:o)

Hello and thank you very much for the advice on books!