Introduction to Gimp
The Gimp package contains the GNU
Image Manipulation Program which is useful for photo retouching,
image composition and image authoring.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages
properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most
recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
Additional Downloads
Note
The English version of the help files is complete, but some parts
of the text for other languages may not yet be translated.
Gimp Dependencies
Required
appstream-glib-0.8.3, gegl-0.4.64,
gexiv2-0.14.6, glib-networking-2.80.1, GTK-3.24.51,
harfBuzz-12.1.0, libmypaint-1.6.1, librsvg-2.61.2, libtiff-4.7.1,
libxml2-2.15.1 (to build the translated help
files), Little CMS-2.17, mypaint-brushes-1.3.1, and Poppler-25.10.0 (including poppler-data)
Recommended
Graphviz-14.0.2, ghostscript-10.06.0 (with libgs
installed), ISO Codes-4.18.0, libgudev-238,
PyGObject-3.52.3, and xdg-utils-1.2.1
Optional
AAlib-1.4rc5, alsa-lib-1.2.14, AppStream-1.1.1 (for one test), Gi-DocGen-2025.5, Gjs-1.84.2, libjxl-0.11.1, libmng-2.0.3,
libunwind-1.8.3, libwebp-1.6.0,
Lua-5.4.8, OpenJPEG-2.5.4, cfitsio, libbacktrace,
libiff, libilbm,
libheif with libde265
(both needed to read macOS heic images), libwmf, OpenEXR, and qoi
Optional, for building the help system
dblatex (for PDF docs),
pngnq
and pngcrush to optimize
the png files, but see the note on the help download above
Editor Notes: https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/gimp
Installation of Gimp
If upgrading from a previous Gimp-3 installation, as the
root user, remove some files and
directories from the old installation or the build system may
mistakenly pick them up, causing a build failure:
rm -rf /usr/{lib,share}/gimp/3.0 &&
rm -f /usr/share/gir-1.0/Gimp-3.0.gir &&
rm -f /usr/lib/girepository-1.0/Gimp-3.0.typelib &&
rm -f /usr/lib/libgimp*-3.0.so*
Install Gimp by running the
following commands:
mkdir gimp-build &&
cd gimp-build &&
meson setup .. \
--prefix=/usr \
--buildtype=release \
-D headless-tests=disabled &&
ninja
To test the results (requires a terminal in a graphical
environment) issue: ninja
test. Three tests, gimp:app
/ save-and-export, gimp:app /
single-window-mode, and gimp:app /
ui, are known to fail.
Now, as the root user:
ninja install
Note
This package installs icon files into the /usr/share/icons/hicolor hierarchy and desktop
files into the /usr/share/applications hierarchy. You can
improve system performance and memory usage by updating
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme and
/usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache. To
perform the update you must have GTK-3.24.51 installed
(for the icon cache) and desktop-file-utils-0.28 (for the
desktop cache) and issue the following commands as the
root user:
gtk-update-icon-cache -qtf /usr/share/icons/hicolor &&
update-desktop-database -q
Installation of Gimp-Help
The gimp-help tarball contains images
and English text help for help files, together with translations.
If you wish to install local copies of the help files to read
offline, unpack the gimp-help tarball and change into the root of
the newly created source tree.
tar -xf ../../gimp-help-3.0.0.tar.bz2 &&
cd gimp-help-3.0.0
sed -i 's/import libxml2//' configure &&
ALL_LINGUAS="en" \
./configure --prefix=/usr
Building non-English languages is only possible with the libxml2
Python 3 module, which is deprecated and no longer enabled in the
BLFS libxml2 build.
Now build the help files:
make
Issue the following commands as the root user to install the help files:
make install &&
chown -R root:root /usr/share/gimp/3.0/help
Command Explanations
-D headless-tests=disabled:
This switch disables using xvfb-run for running the tests.
Without this switch, many tests fail if xvfb-run has been installed.
Configuring The Gimp
Config Files
/etc/gimp/3.0/*
Contents
Installed Programs:
gimp-3.0, gimp-console-3.0, gimptool-3.0,
gimp-test-clipboard-3.0, gimp-script-fu-interpreter-3.0, and
gimp{,-console,tool,-test-clipboard,script-fu-interpreter}{,-3}
(symlinks)
Installed Libraries:
libgimp-3.0.so, libgimp-scriptfu-3.0,
libgimpbase-3.0.so, libgimpcolor-3.0.so, libgimpconfig-3.0.so,
libgimpmath-3.0.so, libgimpmodule-3.0.so, libgimpthumb-3.0.so,
libgimpui-3.0.so, and libgimpwidgets-3.0.so
Installed Directories:
/etc/gimp, /usr/include/gimp-3.0,
/usr/lib/gimp-3.0, /usr/lib/gimp/3.0, /usr/share/gimp/3.0, and
/usr/share/doc/gimp-3.0
Short Descriptions
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gimp-3.0
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is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It works with a
variety of image formats and provides a large selection
of tools
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gimp-console-3.0
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is a console program that behaves as if The Gimp was called with the
--no-interface command-line
option
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gimptool-3.0
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is a tool that can build plug-ins or scripts and install
them if they are distributed in one source file.
gimptool-3.0 can also
be used by programs that need to know what libraries and
include-paths The Gimp
was compiled with
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libgimp-3.0.so
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provides C bindings for The Gimp's Procedural Database (PDB),
which offers an interface to core functions and to
functionality provided by plug-ins
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libgimpbase-3.0.so
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provides the C functions for basic Gimp functionality such as
determining enumeration data types, gettext translation,
determining The Gimp's
version number and capabilities, handling data files and
accessing the environment
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libgimpcolor-3.0.so
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provides the C functions relating to RGB, HSV and CMYK
colors as well as converting colors between different
color models and performing adaptive supersampling on an
area
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libgimpconfig-3.0.so
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contains C functions for reading and writing config
information
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libgimpmath-3.0.so
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contains C functions which provide mathematical
definitions and macros, manipulate 3x3 transformation
matrices, set up and manipulate vectors and the MD5
message-digest algorithm
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libgimpmodule-3.0.so
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provides the C functions which implement module loading
using GModule and supports keeping a list of GimpModule's
found in a given searchpath
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libgimpthumb-3.0.so
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provides the C functions for handling The Gimp's thumbnail objects
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libgimpui-3.0.so
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contains The Gimp's
common user interface functions
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libgimpwidgets-3.0.so
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contains The Gimp and
GTK's widget creation
and manipulation functions
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