GIMP Bible

Appendix B. Setting Up External Input Devices

IN THIS APPENDIX

• Getting GIMP to work with your scanner

• Printing your work from GIMP

• Setting up a drawing tablet

The bulk of this book is focused on dealing with image data that's already been digitized — whether it started as a digital photograph or was scanned from a paper source — and is in your computer. Eventually, though, you're going to have GIMP interact with the meatspace world a bit. This means scanning photos or drawings to digitize them or taking your digital works and creating tangible copies printed on paper. It also includes the use of drawing tablets like the ones made by Wacom (www.wacom.com) to use a more familiar pen interface to draw directly in GIMP rather than using a mouse or trackball.

Getting these external devices to play nice with GIMP can be a bit daunting, depending on the operating system that you're using. This is especially true if you're using GIMP in a Linux environment. There used to be a time when I wouldn't even consider seriously using scanners, tablets, or printers with GIMP simply because of the hassle involved with getting them set up. Fortunately, things have improved quite a bit since then.

This appendix walks you through making sure these devices work well with GIMP and points out ways to get around common potential snags you might hit along the way.

Acquiring Images with a Scanner

No matter how cool and flexible working digitally is, good reasons still exist to create things in the old-school, analog ...