Linux Pro Magazine GIMP Handbook Special Edition

I received a few Promo copies of the Linux Pro Magazine GIMP Handbook Special Edition in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I’ve just been too busy to sit down and have a look at it in depth.

I did give it a few flip-throughs when I had a moment, though.

This is apparently a “Special Edition” magazine aimed entirely at GIMP and using it. As such, it’s mostly (unlike my blog) ad free. So that means there’s over 100+ (full color) pages of good content!

It’s broken down nicely by sections:

• Get Started
• Compiling GIMP
• GIMP 2.8 and 2.9
• User Interfaces
• Settings
• Basic Functions
• Highlights
• Basic Functions
• Colors
• Light and Shadow
• Animation with GIMP
• Practice
• Layers
• Selection
• Colors
• Paths
• Text and Logos
• Photo Processing
• Sharpening
• Light and Shadow
• Retouch
• GIMP Maps
• Know How
• G'MIC
• UFRaw
• Painting
• Fine Art HDR Processing
• Animation with GIMP

The sections appear well written and are clearly laid out. They cover external resources where it makes sense as well (referencing the GIMP Registry quite a few times for some of the more useful and popular scripts).

As an image editing program, GIMP provides a variety of useful and advanced functions for any possible task. Before you use them, however, you should be aware of some simple things. Get Started: Basic Functions

The writing is nice and clear, and there is a good range of topics covered that should get most beginners on track for exploring further in GIMP.

For example, in the “Photo Processing” section, while discussing Sharpening an image, they make mention of most of what users are likely to need (and some more obscure ones): Standard Sharpening, Unsharp Mask, High-Pass Sharpening, Wavelet Sharpen, and more.

The instructions are clearly presented, and having all full-color pages really helps as there are many examples showing the concepts. There’s also some neat coverage of associated/support programs as well like G’MIC, UFRaw, and LuminanceHDR!

There’s a bundled DVD included that will boot to ArtistX linux as well (and includes GIMP install files for OSX/Win).

All in all, quite a bit of content for $15.99.

To sweeten the deal, the nice folks at LinuxPro Magazine are offering a discount code to save 20% off the price!

The discount code is: GIMP20DISCOUNT and it’ll be valid through July 15^th.

Of course… A Give-Away!

I do have a few copies they sent to me as promotional copies. I thought it might be more fun to go ahead and pay them forward to someone else who might get more use out of them than me.

So, all you need to do is either leave a comment below, or share any blog post of mine on Twitter or Google+ with the hashtags #patdavid #GIMP.

You can also email me with “GIMP Giveaway” in the subject.

If you do enter, make sure I have a way to reach you.

Oh, and disclaimer: I’ve never done a give away for anything before, so please bear with me if I suck at it…

I’ll sift through the hashtags and whatnot later next week and randomly pick three folks to send these copies to!

[Update]
I chose the winners earlier this week using http://www.random.org. So congratulations to Stan, Anand, and Doug! I’ll be dropping your magazines in the mail this week!