GIMP 2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software Paperback – 19 Nov 2006

Rarely do you find such a clearly and carefully written guide as this. it really is a gem. I found it far more informative than anything I have read elsewhere. Suffice to say that, as a retired social scientist with a very basic knowledge of optics and newcomer to digital photo editing, I found GIMP 2 for Photographers the bees knees, the real business. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to someone who can write so clearly and with such care for the reader. Its such a rare thing to find in a technical writer. Even his exposition of the sources and downloads is crystal clear and very carefully presented. Buy it, you will not be disapppointed.

Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.

Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.

As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.

Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday!).

So, the CD gets full marks but what about the book itself?

After showing how to install the software, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations - opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.

These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the technques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing - adjusting colour balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on - but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.

Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, toolbars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.

Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.

In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read - I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase.

Rather then being a detailed guide to photo-manipulation and enhancement, this is more a beginner's guide to The Gimp from a photographer's perspective. So, you get a detailed guide to installing the software and a lot of information on the various tools - what you don't get are detailed lessons on the more esoteric photo-manipulation techniques (eg using the channel-mixer to convert a colour photo to a great B&W image) - for this, you'd have to get a Photoshop book and then see if you can recreate the effects using The Gimp.

The style of writing is also a little bit tortured, being a translation from a German book.

Book arrived on earliest date. Condition is very good. CD containing software, .pdf of book and work along examples, plus various links included. The book is well set out, well written, adequately illustrated and covers additional image editing information (scanning, print set up, colour management), with links to various open source software plus information sites as well as the instruction relating to Gimp2. Date of publication is 2007. I chose to buy a used copy of the book and it was well worth the outlay although it refers to Gimp2 version 2.2.X. At date of writing this Dec 2016) the current version of Gimp2 is 2.8.16 but the book still holds relevance. It is understood there is an updated version of the publication available from Rockynook/Amazon. Gimp2 is a very good piece of software and allied to the various other open source software given mention in the book it is a serious rival to some very expensive applications.

The book was originally supplied without the CD-ROM - which arrived three weeks after I had contacted Amazon customer services. Nevertheless I began using the book and made reasonable progress by substituting my own images for the ones on the CD and modifying the exercises slightly. When the CD arrived I reverted to the specified images, but even with the correct images some of the instructions are hard to follow. Also the description of key elements of the software are rudimentary.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that the book was written for a previous version of GIMP 2 (the current version is 2.6). This is compounded by the original text being written in German. It has suffered pretty badly in the hands of the translators and editors: blocks of text are repeated unnecessarily (which can be confusing); the instructions do not always flow smoothly; and the sentence construction is clumsy.

This is all a great pity - the book is attractively produced and in its original form (language and software version) it probably worked very well.

I have since invested in "Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional" (Akkana Peck) - which appears to be more comprehensive and more up to date.