Perl Graphics Programming

Chapter 5. Scripting the Gimp with Perl

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (Gimp) has been around since 1995. The story of the Gimp began with two Berkeley students named Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, who started writing a “Photoshop-like” program for an undergraduate class in computer science. Over the course of the next year they crafted the program into a smart, expandable image manipulation system. The first public release was Version 0.54, at which point they invited others to help contribute. A couple of years and several thousand lines of code later, Gimp 1.0 was released. This was a remarkably slick and stable platform for creating computer graphics, particularly graphics intended for use on the Web. The version documented in this chapter, Gimp 1.2, is a significant improvement on Version 1.0. Version 2.0 will likely be a complete rewrite of the Gimp base code, along with a plug-in architecture that may be different the one described here.

This chapter is not intended as a manual for the Gimp—there are already several fine ones available. Instead, this chapter is geared toward those who don’t necessarily start by reading the manual, and who want to immediately begin using the Gimp for making web graphics and creating plug-ins with Perl for advanced web graphics applications. The chapter starts with a quick tour of the Gimp by stepping through the process of creating an animated “electronic marble,” then describes the Perl-Gimp interface that allows you to write powerful ...