Linux Multimedia Hacks

Edit Images

Use the GIMP to crop, scale, and otherwise edit your photos.

[Hack #6] discusses different ways under Linux to access the photos from a digital camera, but what tools do you use once the photos are on your computer? Sometimes you might be fine with a picture, but other times you may want to crop out something, resize the photo, or rotate it so it has the right orientation. While there are a number of programs that can do all these things—even some that run from the command line—the GIMP is the de facto standard when you want to edit images graphically. In this hack, I cover how to perform some of the common changes you might want to make to a photo or other image. The GIMP can do a number of pretty advanced things, but this hack sticks to the basics.

The first step is to install the GIMP. Installation is made easy by the fact that this is a very popular program that has been around for a long time. Any major Linux distribution should offer the GIMP in its packages, and some even install it by default, so check your application menu. If it isn’t installed, just use your standard packaging tool to install it.

To start the GIMP, select it from your desktop’s menu or, alternatively, type gimp in a terminal. The first time the GIMP runs, it goes through a basic configuration wizard; the defaults should be suitable for most users. The default interface might seem daunting at first if you aren’t experienced with image editing tools, but for basic editing you only need to be ...