• From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,963

Topic: Graphics Noobs

My little question hardly deserved a thread of its own. I know there are plenty of people here who know how to use Gimp and Inkscape; maybe there are also people like me who can resize, crop, "save as..." and not much more. Would there be a point in a thread for simple graphics-type questions?

Anyway, here's mine:
Wanting to convert largish jpg files to little gif images for the web in Gimp, is it better to resize, then save as gif, or save as gif first, then resize? Does it make any difference? Any other hints for getting the best possible quality image with the lowest possible byte size?

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

johnraff's Website

  • From: Washington State
  • Registered: 2011-09-01
  • Posts: 878

Re: Graphics Noobs

^ I would resize and then save as PNG. This has always been reliable for my uses. Also it's always a safe bet to rename the resized image as something else.

I'm pretty sure that zombies really do exist...
MrPeachy's v9000      Sector11's Conky PitStop      My Gallery
  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,233

Re: Graphics Noobs

i'd also first resize, then save as alternative fileformat.
also, why Gimp? wouldn't it be easier to just use the Imagemagick toolset to do this? you could then also batch-convert.

bash :: @script :: system :: fclean
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,963

Re: Graphics Noobs

Thanks both!

I used Gimp because it's not a batch operation here, just something that comes up every few months or so. Imagemagick is fantastic when you know what you want, but for one-offs it's nice to be able to see what you're going to get before doing it. I usually have little idea exactly what dimensions I want till I play around with it and see. Also other smaller image editors can't usually save as gif, which is still a useful web format.

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

johnraff's Website

  • From: Washington State
  • Registered: 2011-09-01
  • Posts: 878

Re: Graphics Noobs

@Johnraff ...something that I have found very useful when making webpages is to take a screenshot of the page and open it in Gimp (I use Gimp for everything) and then open your images as layers.. from there you can resize them and get a pretty good visual of how things are going to look.

also PNG is an improved format of GIF.

I'm pretty sure that zombies really do exist...
MrPeachy's v9000      Sector11's Conky PitStop      My Gallery
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 306

Re: Graphics Noobs

Here's some links from my website.  Enjoy!

GIMP:
http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html (GIMP - docs)
http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~federico/gimp/links.html (GIMP - docs)
http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/gimp.html (GIMP - docs)
http://carol.gimp.org/gimp2/basics/gimplite/ (GIMP - docs)
http://linux.suramya.com/tutorials/Install_GIMPShop/ (GIMPshop - docs)
http://www.gimptalk.com/ (GimpTalk: docs, forum, arts, etc) http://gimp-tutorials.net/ (gimp-tutorials.net: tutorial, forum, downloads)
http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2009-02-2 … store.html (Exceptional new plugin to restore faded transparencies/photos; 2/28/09)
http://www.linuxloop.com/2009/08/21/3-g … ographers/ (3 Gimp Plugins For Photographers; 8/21/09
http://ostatic.com/blog/free-tools-for- … ics-editor (Free Tools for Getting Started with the Mighty GIMP Graphics Editor; 11/17/11)
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/ … s-for-gimp (30 Great tutorials for GIMP; 2011)
http://ostatic.com/blog/free-tools-for- … ics-editor (Free Tools for Getting Started with the Mighty GIMP Graphics Editor; 11/17/11)
http://gimpology.com/ (gimpology: HowTos)
http://puteraaladin.blogspot.com/ (alot of gIMP stuffs)
http://www.gimp.org/books/ (Books about The GIMP)
http://gug.sunsite.dk/forum/ (non-commercial; GIMP - forums)

Inkscape:
http://maketecheasier.com/getting-start … 2010/04/06 (Inkscape; 4/6/10)
http://www.packtpub.com/article/getting … h-inkscape (Inkscape tutorial)
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/ … f-inkscape (31 Great Tutorial for Inkscape!)

Sheng-Chieh

Tux's Links
http://shengchieh.50webs.com/tuxslinks.html
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,963

Re: Graphics Noobs

@shengchieh Thank you! http://ompldr.org/vYTZ5aw

btw, anyone else, feel free to join in with similar questions - little things that wouldn't need a whole thread...

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

johnraff's Website

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,963

Re: Graphics Noobs

Not a question but a trick I discovered today:
Export an Open/Libreoffice odt file from Writer as an image

Make sure the page is formatted to the size you want, then:
File>Export as pdf>default options only are enough

Now open the pdf file in Gimp.
In the pdf import dialogue that pops up, set the dpi to, say, 300 or 600 for a nice printout (the dimensions should already be correct).
Now it's easy: file>save as>jpg, png whatever.

Bit cumbersome but the end result was spot on. smile

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

johnraff's Website

  • From: Houghton, MI
  • Registered: 2011-08-26
  • Posts: 56

Re: Graphics Noobs

^ Couldn't you just use Open/LibreOffice Draw instead and do a straight export to .png, .eps, etc?

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,963

Re: Graphics Noobs

^Yes there is a plugin to export from Draw to an image, but I already had everything arranged nicely on the page in Write, and couldn't find a way to export it to Draw without having to do all the formatting again. I guess it would have been better to use Draw from the beginning... or Inkscape.

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“Good morning sir, which way up would you like your reality today?”  "As it comes, Jeeves, as it comes..."

johnraff's Website

  • Registered: 2011-11-26
  • Posts: 123

Re: Graphics Noobs

Okay, I've actually got a GIMP question that came up yesterday. Great thread johnraff!

Does anyone know if it's possible to truncate decimals when saving SVG files of path coordinates?

At this point, my solution is to save it and go back and forth through geany and LibreOffice Calc to wind up with what I want, but something even quicker would make my life a lot easier, because I've gotta repeat the process a good amount of times.