Text tool in GIMP 2.8

A quick word on the text tool in GIMP 2.8. It has been greatly improved over previous versions and is definitely more intuitive and works really how you would expect it to.

Choose the A icon from the Tool Options menu, think of it as a square and click + drag to the size you think you will need, don't worry too much about the size of the text this can be re sized after.

You can also choose dynamic from the Box drop down menu, this will wrap the text box around the text and always keep it to the size needed.

If you would like dynamic by default simply choose the text tool and click on the canvas without dragging.

Start typing some text into the box, click the icon in the Tool Options menu that has Aa then cycle through the different fonts, you will notice the text picks up the changed font immediately and displays it in the preview. It also works with size, color and all of the other options available for text.

When you are finished editing the text simply select a new tool to deselect the text tool.

• Use editor will open an inline editor, this may come in useful if you are typing a lot of text. I am usually only editing a few words so never use this feature but I can see why it would come in handy.
• Antialiasing will smooth out the font for you, zoom in and look at an O, notice when antialiasing is enabled the O looks smooth, and when it is disabled the O looks jaggedy!

How to make GIMP work in one window.

This is a feature I have been looking for in the GIMP for a long time, every other application works in a single window environment.

Having said that I have gotten used to the multi windowed environment of the GIMP.

Anyways I came across this while messing around with an experimental (2.7) version. It wouldn't install on my Windows 7 64bit machine so I installed it within a virtualbox. I got the file from the following location: http://www.gimpusers.com/downloads/8-gimp-2-7-1-windows-32-64-bit

Below is a screenshot of the GIMP in single window mode:

I think it looks good :)

Creating patterns in GIMP

Step 1.

Open the GIMP and go to File > New. When the new document dialog opens up insert the values shown below in the image to create a new image 8x8 pixels.

When the image is created it will be very small, use the magnifier to magnify the image right up until it is easy to work with.

Step 2.

Choose the pencil tool from the toolbox and choose the brush Circle(01) as shown in the picture below.

Now that you are ready to draw the pattern I will illustrate two simple pattern types, they are shown below.

For the Zigzag, draw the following with the pencil tool.

And for the stripey pattern draw the following.

Final Step:

Finally to make these images as patterns save them as stripey/zigzag .pat move the .pat file into your gimp patterns folder, on Windows 7 this will be located in C:\Users\<username>\.gimp-<ver>\patterns.

Go back to gimp click on the small arrow in the patterns tab outlined in the image below select refresh patterns.

And thats how you create and add patterns in GIMP.