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Top GIMP tutorial sites

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After some discussion at Creative Curio I was starting to think that building a site similar to PSDTuts for GIMP tutorials would be cool.

I haven’t seen much in the way of GIMP tutorial sites that I really like; except for Meet the GIMP, but video tutorials are different in my mind.

Before I go and jump into a huge project like that I wanted to have a look at what was out there. When I say “Top GIMP tutorial sites” I don’t mean that these are sites that I endorse or recommend (although I might when I get to know them better), it actually means these are the top search results (with my first impressions of them).

  • Official GIMP website lists some tutorials, but I don’t think it gets updated very often.
  • GIMP Tutorials is not particularly pretty, but it does seem to have fairly navigable features (sorting tutes chronologically, most viewed and most rated) as well as having a reasonable category system.
  • gimp-tutorials.net is definitely my favourite to look at – that logo is cute! The whole thing is pretty easy to navigate; good categories. They even have some interpretations of photoshop tutorials for GIMP (something I really like doing).
  • Gimp User Group has a tutorials page. No idea how often it’s updated. The layout for the tutorials is okay, some weird things happening with borders in my browser, but nothing disastrous.
  • GIMP Talk Community has a page with a list of tutorials. It doesn’t excite me: the page only loads every second time that I try to load it and who really wants to read through long lists of titles? They might be great tutorials, but not very navigable.
  • GIMPguru.org could probably do with a better site design – some elements that should be more weighty (like the titles next to the images) just aren’t. However, I have used tutorials on this site and found it to be really good. Perhaps with a revamp this would be a really great site.
  • Gimpology is the second prettiest site I came across. The list of tutorials have thumbnails and the titles are easy to read. The categories could be a bit more categorical though… “article” what’s that? The site is basically a round up of tutorials on other sites, so it doesn’t control the end experience.

So, it seems like there are quite a few tutorial sites, but they could be better. The question then becomes, do I try to do better or do I get involved with other sites to improve them (or hope that my contributions/suggestions help)?

What do you think? Would you be interested in being involved with a new GIMP tutorial site?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Another question: would this post have benefited from screenshots of the sites in question, or would that just be using images for the sake of it?

  2. Also just found another site GIMP University. Not sure about the decision to use a blogger blog: potential for very limited navigation (there’s potential for great navigation too, it just requires a lot more effort and know-how).

  3. I think screenshots of the sites would be good. We will recognize them when we get there then.

    You could get involved with other sites if you don’t want to put the time into managing one yourself. But then you don’t have much control over where your content is and you can’t expect them to heed your advice or suggestions.

    I think you should host your own GIMP tutorials! You don’t have to do them all the time or have a site solely dedicated to GIMP tutorials.

  5. Kristarella – I just stumbled upon your site, and wanted to say thanks for the very useful list – I had no idea there were so many GIMP resources out there.

    You no what the funny thing is? Most of the sites are so ugly, it gives you no confidence in what GIMP is actually capable of.

    I use GIMP in work to do post-processing on photographs, but I’d love to know more. I find myself watching PSDTUTS and wondering how I could do the same thing in GIMP. So maybe a better GIMP tutorial site wouldn’t be a bad idea!

  7. hi makes me happy to see my site on the list and glad you liked the logo πŸ™‚

    i totally agree with the comment Gerard made and thats one of the reasons why i started gimp-tutorials.net.

    the site has been doing ok but could do much better with more than just me writing tutorials.

    its been hard to come by GIMP users who are willing.

    so i’m definitely interested in starting something like psdtuts.
    let me know if your still interested.

  8. Gerard – I was surprised that there were so many as well. You’re absolutely correct about the look of many of the sites. I think it’s why I didn’t really get into them in the first place (when I started using GIMP 6 years ago). I love using PS tutorials (usually from deviantArt, not from PSDTuts because I only found that site very recently) and working it out in GIMP. Often it works, sometimes you just can’t do it.

    Moshin – you’re welcome! Thanks for the stumble πŸ™‚

    gimper – Schweet! Sounds like we could join forces… I’ll email you.

  12. I have spent hours googling on the internet trying to find good gimp tutorials and guides. Thanks for the list. I eventually bought a couple of books to learn the gimp.

  14. Mathias – hope the books help! I’ve also found it worth while to look at Photoshop tutorials and figure out if GIMP has those tools and how to use them.

    sumit – it’s true, a good chunk of the information, especially when it involves brushes or gradients etc, is transferable.

  18. I have been using GIMP for about 3 years now, it is the only editing program I have ever used. I would love to see more sites dedicated to helping people use it to the fullest and to embrace the importance of ‘Open Source’.
    If you click on my link you will see some examples of what I have been able to do with it. I have to give credit to the nice folks at Gimp Talk, most of what I know, I learned there.
    Best Regards
    http://circleof2.googlepages.com/home

  19. Jason — thanks for that, I especially like your button and fire tutorials.

    Geoserv — thank you for that link too. That ebook seems like a good idea, I’m going to check it out.

    Barbara — you definitely have a unique style. Great work! If we do anything new in terms of a GIMP tutorial site I’ll let you know, thanks for the vote πŸ™‚

  22. WWO – Yep, I would recommend Photoshop to someone wanting “professional” photo editing. However, in my opinion that means you’re getting paid for your photos and it’s reasonable to think you can buy photoshop. GIMP is incredibly powerful and can do an enormous amount. Some stuff is hidden under different names than Photoshop, but if a person isn’t highly familiar with either program then they’ll have to learn those things anyway. I would recommend GIMP over Photoshop for someone who’s just starting photo editing any day, because $3000 is a damn lot of money (more than my computer and all the software currently on it cost!).

  23. Thanks for the list. I am converting to Open Source as I can’t afford to maintain the various programs I run… I am intrigued with GIMP from a designer’s perspective and want to learn more about it to create and design digital scrapbooking components. Thanks again

  24. I still like GIMP although it seems to be a bit complicated at times. But paint.net is a great program as well . That is my favorite free image editor. But I think it is limited to windows only.

  26. I am definitely serious in helping put a ‘gimptuts’ type site together. I recently posted a thread on Ubuntu forums, asking “Do you use Gimp for pro design?” and it seems that many do not. In fact if you read through various linux forums, most seems to want know how to get their legal or illegal copy of Photoshop running under Linux.

    I acknowledge that Gimp has some issues with intuativeness, but Gimp IS powerful, and most of the difficulties are due to a lack of knowledge, hence the need for a good tut site, plus, not enough is being said on the power of Gimp, without the need to compare it to Photoshop, Gimp needs to stand up by itself, thus the need for clear Gimp ‘evangelism’, without the word ‘Photoshop’ in site.
    It would be great to get involved in a project with a team of people, who are already involved in some of the other Gimp sites, to share the workload.

    Who’s up for it?

  27. I am a digital scrapbooker and have switched my computer to Linux and need to learn GIMP as I can’t afford to return to Windows or buy Photoshop….. I would love to see some GIMP tutorials focusing on design and digital scrapbooking… By the way, screenshots are always a good thing.

  28. Hey – what the internet needs is a GIMPTUTS. Make a website that is as easy to navigate and looks a good with similar functionality and I guarantee it will become popular. Contact the makers of the current tutorials and see if they would want to help you compile inot one site – as long as you link back to their respective sites then you shouldn’t have a problem and it will mean you have the biggest collection all in one easy place.

    I don’t know much with the GiMP but I could right a few simple beginners tutorials to get you started if you decided to set up your own site.

  29. Ouch, my spelling is atrocious :/ nevermind eh?

    Just realised how old this actually is – lemme know if anything has been set up and I’ll see what I can do to help.

  30. Hey Richie,

    Thanks for the vote. There’s been a bit of interest in this idea. I was doing honours at uni last year, so really I had this idea and then had less than no time to implement it.

    I will think about trying to implement it. GIMP is getting better and I still haven’t seen any really good and reliable sites.

    Although, check out http://gimp-tutorials.net/ I think, by far, it looks the nicest of GIMP tutes site. The main problem I had with it was that the RSS feed only had titles.

  31. Also one terrific site is http://meetthegimp.org
    If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pics!
    This guy has close to 100 video tutorials. Just terrific!
    Sashi

  32. Sashi, yeah I mentioned it in the intro to the post. I learnt a lot from those videos. Very excellent. Haven’t watched in a while though. Should subscribe on iTunes!