GimpPainter and GPS combo for Arch Linux
Arch Linux users can now obtain and install the swiss army knife for digital painting and photo-editing in the form of Gimp, GimpPainter, and Gimp Paint Studio combo.
The users of other distributions could try and read the PKGBUILD (build instructions for the package) to build their own. Sorry.
Gimp Studio 1.0: Gimp for digital painters
Please see latest Gimp Studio updates by browsing posts tagged gimp studio.
Just as I was finishing uploading of GimpPainter+GPS combo, it occured to me that the OpenRaster plugin for Gimp is missing from the package. MyPaint uses this image format, so it’s essential for Gimp to also have this out-of-the-box to be a real digital painting package. Therefore I decided to repackage the whole thing.
While I was modifying the PKGBUILD to include the OpenRaster script, I thought of adding a few more useful bits. But then I decided to rename the whole package. After all, it does include more than a few things. Here’s the current listing:
- Gimp 2.6.6
- GimpPainter patch 20090715
- Gimp Paint Studio (GPS) 1.3
- OpenRaster format handler
- FX-Foundry scripts
We all know what Gimp is (or you wouldn’t be reading this, I guess), so I’ll write about the other parts of the package. Just one note though. I could not get some stuff to work with Gimp 2.6.7, so don’t expect an update to that version any time soon.
GimpPainter is a patch for Gimp developed by Yamakawa (yam). Here’s an overview from the GimpPainter blog:
Y. Yamakawa, developed a gimp patch (Mixbrush aka Gimp-Painter aka Gimp-for-Painters) which adds two new tools. One is an extension of the standard paint brush tool with some new cool features (bleeding, alpha channel mixing,etc.) that make gimp more natural and realistic. The other one is an extension of the standard inking tool, making it smoother and more sensitive to pressure.
The brushes provided bby the Gimp Paint Studio project are far more effective with the GimpPainter patch. Gimp Paint Studio (a.k.a. GPS) is a project to provide high-quality artistic brushes, patterns, palettes, and tool settings to make Gimp more usable for digital painting. You can read more about it on its project page, and the download page lists videos and documentation (PDF in English and Spanish).
The OpenRaster format is an effort to standardize raster image file format. Even if you don’t care about the standardization, you should at least care that MyPaint has native support for this format, and that it is therefore very important that Gimp has full interoprability via this channel. Fortunately, a plugin derived from MyPaint code is available for Gimp. This is now included in Gimp Studio 1.0 as well. There is a glitch that I still don’t know how to solve, and that is the file format plugin is not being recognized by Gimp 2.6.7. It’s probably because it’s meant for the 2.6.6 version of Gimp, but I am working on this. Meanwhile, we’re stuck with 2.6.6 (which is not as bad as it sounds).
UPDATE: The OpenRaster support issue is resolved, and Gimp Studio 1.0 now uses Gimp 2.6.7.
Finally, the FX-Foundry scripts is a huge collection of various scripts. There are currently more than 100 scripts. I’m really not sure if all of them work (I don’t even know what some of them do), but I’ve included them. Please tell me if some things don’t work. The list of scripts can be found in the project’s script index.
The PKGBUILD file for Gimp Studio is being tested, and I’ll post about it’s location as soon as it’s done.
UPDATE: The PKGBUILD is available in AUR.
Gimp Studio 1.0 updated to Gimp 2.6.7
Good news, everyone! After half an hour of researching, I’ve found out that I’ve mistakenly named the plugin directory plugins instead of plug-ins. The directory is now renamed, and OpenRaster support works for Gimp 2.6.7. Therefore Gimp Studio 1.0 will be based on the latest and greatest version of Gimp after all.
You can see it in action in the screenshot. I’m now doing the final compile to see if everything still works, and will be uploading the PKGBUILD soon(ish).
UPDATE: The PKGBUILD is available in AUR.
Gimp Studio 1.0 released
As promised, PKGBUILD for Gimp Studio 1.0 is now available in AUR. Arch Linux users can obtain it using yaourt and similar tools or just downloading the tarball and running makepkg -i.
Users of other Linux distributions must build their own. Build instructions in the PKGBUILD file may still help, though, and it’s not very difficult.
GS 1.0-2: Fixed “Gimp not installed” issue
The previous build of Gimp Studio had an issue where pacman didn’t realize Gimp was installed. This is fixed in the new PKGBUILD, so please update to 1.0-2.
