1 This is the README for The GIMPressionist
2 (c) 1998, 1999 Vidar Madsen - vidar@prosalg.no
3
4 The GIMPressionist is free software, and may be distributed
5 freely, provided this file is included!
6
7 This program comes with no warranty, whatsoever. The author
8 can not be held liable for any damage caused by proper or
9 improper use of this program.
10
11
12--- Introduction
13
14The GIMPressionist is a plug-in for the GNU Image Manipulation Program,
15a.k.a. GIMP. It can be used to create natural looking painting effects
16and similar. It can also be run in a primitive "standalone" mode.
17
18The current version is still a bit shaky, and is to be considered beta
19software. I'll do some serious testing, hopefully across a few more
20platforms, as soon as I can.
21
22The official Web-page is http://www.prosalg.no/~vidar/gimpressionist/ and
23will always contain a link to the latest released version.
24
25
26--- Compiling / Installing
27
28To compile (hopefully):
29 make
30
31If you want to compile for GTK-1.1 and GIMP-1.1 instead, you will have
32to change the two variable at the top of Makefile. Possibly you would
33want to edit DEFAULTPATH as well, but that's not critical.
34
35To install plug-in and accompanying files:
36 make install
37
38The plug-in installs itself under $HOME/.gimp/plug-ins/ and copies a
39couple of files into the directory $HOME/.gimp/gimpressionist/. The
40subdirectories 'Brushes', 'Paper' and 'Presets' will be created during
41"make install", and a few files will be added; As a minimum,
42'defaultbrush.pgm' and 'defaultpaper.pgm' under their respective
43directories. These are vanilla .PGM files, which could be edited (and
44created) with any decent program - like GIMP! :-)
45
46
47--- Standalone
48
49As of version 0.99 and later, the GIMPressionist can also be run
50separately from GIMP. This is primarily intended for debugging
51purposes, though, as it still needs GIMP libraries to compile. In your
52shell, type:
53 gimpressionist somefile.ppm
54
55The image specified must be a valid PPM file. No other formats are
56supported, and probably never will.
57
58If you click "OK", the PPM will be replaced with the "repainted" version.
59If you "Cancel", nothing will be done to the file.
60
61
62--- File Formats
63
64The "normal" brushes are simply grayscale PGM files, which can be created
65with almost any program, including xv and of course GIMP. A number of
66brushes is included, so I guess a more in-depth explanation is not
67necessary. And, for those who might want to try it, GIMPressionist can
68also read GBR files, which is GIMP's native brush format. (You still
69need to copy them to the GIMPressionist's brush-directory, though. This
70will probably be fixed sometimes.)
71
72Version 0.99.4 introduced the concept of using "colored" brushes (although
73"pre-rendered" usually is more correct). The brushes' file format is a
74plain PPM file, but the layout is somewhat special (and kinda hard to
75explain);
76
77- The Red channel contains a shading map of the brush in question. Often
78 it resembles the overall image more or less completely.
79
80- The Green channel contains a high-light map. This is a pre-defined
81 image of the shiny parts of the brush. (Ordinary grayscale brushes
82 have this calculated automatically with a rough emboss-ish algorithm.)
83
84- The Blue channel functions as a brush mask. When applying a brush
85 stroke to the image, all areas colored blue in the file are first
86 "blacked out" of the image.
87
88
89--- Feedback
90
91If you have any comments, criticism, ideas for improvement or new
92features, or if you run into problems of any sort, let me know, so that I
93can (try to) fix it for the next release! (And, if you find platform-
94dependent bugs, please try to fix them and send me a patch!)
95
96I'm also welcoming contributions in the form of brushes or textures! For
97this program to be valuable, it needs them... Bad! All contributions will
98be properly credited, of course.
99
100Good luck and happy painting!
101
102Vidar Madsen <vidar@prosalg.no>
103