Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks, Second Edition

Image Editing

The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) is one of the best-known open source image manipulation programs. You can get a build for Mac OS X from Fink (see Chapter 11). With the GIMP, you can create drawings, touch up photographs you’ve taken, convert images, and do much more.

You can even use the GIMP as iPhoto’s default image editor. To do this, use the Script Editor (/Applications/AppleScript) to create the following AppleScript, and save it as an Application named /Applications/LaunchGIMP:

on open all_images
  repeat with image in all_images

    (* replace colons with slashes, prefix path with /Volumes *)
    do shell script "perl -e '$f=shift; $f =~ s/:/\\//g;  " & ¬ 
      "print \"/Volumes/$f\";' \"" & image & "\""
    set image to the result

    (* set the X11 DISPLAY variable, and launch gimp-remote *)
    do shell script "DISPLAY=:0.0; export DISPLAY;  " & ¬
     "/sw/bin/gimp-remote -n \"" & image & "\""

  end repeat
  tell application "X11" to activate
end open

Next, go to iPhoto’s Preferences window (iPhoto → Preferences, or

-,) and follow these steps:

1. In the Double-Click section, click on the radio button next to “Opens in other”.

2. Click on the Select button.

3. Choose LaunchGIMP as the application.

4. Close the Preferences window (

   

   -W).

5. Quit iPhoto (

   -Q).

When you relaunch iPhoto, you will be able to use the GIMP as your ...