Life Behind A Lens

A little earlier, I posted some info about adding a script to GIMP for adding a watermark/copyright text string without the need for messing about working with layers and so on manually. (Available Here)

However, one of the tricky things involved with this is actually getting the script in the right place for it to work with GIMP, especially if you aren’t familiar with scripts or what they do. So, here’s a little more in depth info on scripts and how to get them to work for you.

What Is A Script?
A script is basically a small section of program code that ONLY works within GIMP to perform a task. It might automate a set of tasks (as in the watermarking example above) or do something a little more complex. They don’t work as seperate programs on their own so downloading and double clicking will only confuse your computer. :))

Where Do I Find Scripts?
If you have something in mind that you want to do with GIMP, it might be worth checking the GIMP Plugin Registry and search for a keyword of what you want to do. In the watermarking example above, I searched the registry for, can you guess??? Yup, Watermark. Outstanding huh? :)))

It’s also possible to search Google for them, but most often a Google Search will find items in the registry above anyway.

How Do I Download it?
Basically, you need to download the script file (.scm) by rightclicking and using save target as in Internet Explorer or left clicking it and choosing save as in Firefox. Then you need to save it in the Gimp Script folder on your hardrive.

Where The Hell Is My Gimp Script Folder?
Okey! Okey! I’m getting to it! :))

In your User Area (for Vista) or your ‘My Documents’ area (for XP) you’ll see a folder similar to the one highlighted above (depending on the version of GIMP that you have).

Go into that and you will see:

There’s a number of folders within your GIMP folder and some of them you may never touch.

The one that we’re after is towards the end of the folders:

Your downloaded script needs to placed in that highlighted Scripts folder.

How Do I Use The Script Now That I’ve Installed It?
To use the script that you have just installed, you need to open GIMP (or close and reopen if you did the above with GIMP running) and then look at the menu areas of the main image window. You’re looking for the Script-Fu Menu as below:

If you click on that, a submenu will open containing various scripts that you have installed on GIMP. Any that you’ve installed using the above method will appear in MyScripts

That’s it. Your script is now installed and ready to use in GIMP :))

I was asked about an easy way of adding a watermark/copyright signature to images processed in GIMP by the lovely Kimangeline a couple of days ago and so I thought I’d add it as a ‘How To’.

The end result of which will give us something like below:

In order to make this fairly easy, we’re going to need a script to automate some of the process for us. I won’t go too much into scripts here for now but here’s what we need to do:

• Close GIMP down if you have it open.
• Go to This Webpage
• Download the watermark.scm file from the webpage (it’s near the top) and save it to the scripts folder in the GIMP area and within your ‘My Documents’ on your PC. Here’s the exact file path as it appears on my PC running Vista Ross/.gimp-2.6/scripts

Note:The file does not need to be unzipped, converted or changed in any way. It is a script file and simply needs to be copied and pasted from the internet to the correct folder on your PC

• Now start up GIMP and you should see a new menu selection on the main image window called Script-Fu. It should be residing between Filters and Windows.
• If all is well, when you click on Script-Fu it should drop down with My Scripts and in there should be watermark.

Using the script itself is pretty simple and self explanatory. You simply enter the text that you’d like to add, select your font, it’s size, it’s location and it’s opacity before clicking OK.

If everything has gone to plan, you should now have a watermarked image. Well done you! :))