General

Show tool tips

Tool tips are small text bubbles that appear when the pointer hovers for a moment over some element of the interface, such as a button or icon. Sometimes they explain what the element does; sometimes they give you hints about non-obvious ways to use it. If you find them too distracting, you can disable them here by unchecking this option. We recommend that you leave them enabled unless you are a very advanced user.

[GIMP 2.0] "F1" shows context-dependent help

In GIMP 2.0, this options controls whether pressing the "F1" key will evoke Help information for the object in which the mouse pointer is currently located. GIMP 2.2 no longer gives you the ability to disable this function.

Show tips on startup

Startup tips are helpful hints that appear each time you start GIMP. You can switch them on or off here. If you have switched them off by unchecking "Show tip next time GIMP starts" in the tip window, you can switch them back on by checking here. Whatever you decide to do, at some point you should take the time to go through the list of tips: they are considered to be very useful, and the things they tell you are not easy to discover by experimenting. If you prefer, you can read them at any time by choosing Help → Tip of the Day in the Toolbox menu.

Help Browser

Help browser to use

GIMP Help is supplied in the form of HTML files, i. e., web pages. You can view them using either a special help browser that comes with GIMP, or a web browser of your choice. Here you choose which option to use. Because the help pages were carefully checked to make sure they work well with GIMP's browser, whereas other web browsers are somewhat variable in their support of features, the safer option is to use the internal browser; but really any modern web browser should be okay.

	Note
	Note that the help browser is not available on all platforms. If it is missing, the web-browser will be used to allow access to the help pages.

Web Browser

Web browser to use

If you selected "Internal" for the Help browser, this option has no effect. If you selected "Web browser", you can decide here which browser to use, and how to invoke it, by entering the command that will be used to run the browser. The button to the right brings up a file selector, which you can use to locate the executable file for the browser if you like, but in most cases it is probably easier to enter a command by hand.

	Note
	In Windows, the system-wide configured default web-browser will be used. The input field described here is not available on this platform.

Guide and Grid Snapping

Snap distance

"Snapping" to guides, or to an image grid, means that when a tool is applied by clicking somewhere on the image display, if the clicked point is near enough to a guide or grid, it is shifted exactly onto the guide or grid. Snapping to guides can be toggled using View → Snap to Guides in the image menu; and if the grid is switched on, snapping to it can be toggled using View → Snap to Grid. This preference option determines how close a clicked point must be to a guide or grid in order to be snapped onto it, in pixels.

Finding Contiguous Regions

Default threshold

The "magic wand" tool creates selections that consist of contiguous regions, i. e., regions that are not divided by swaths of open space. This option determines how near each other two pixels need to be in order to be considered contiguous.

Scaling

Default interpolation

When you scale something, each pixel in the result is calculated by interpolating several pixels in the source. This option determines the default interpolation method: it can always be changed, though, in the Tool Options dialog. There are three choices: None, Linear, and Cubic. "None" is fastest, but quite crude: you should only consider using it if your machine is very seriously speed-impaired. "Linear" is the default, and is good enough for most purposes. "Cubic" is the best (although it can actually look worse than Linear for some types of images), but also the slowest.

Paint Options Shared Between Tools

Brush, Pattern, Gradient

You can decide here whether changing the brush etc for one tool should cause the new item to be used for all tools, or whether each individual tool (pencil, paintbrush, airbrush, etc) should remember the item that was last used for it specifically.

Appearance

Show foreground and background color

Controls whether the color area on the left (3) appears in the Toolbox.

Show active brush, pattern, and gradient

Controls whether the area in the center (4), with the brush, pattern, and gradient icons, appears in the Toolbox.

Show active image

Controls whether a preview of the currently active image appears on the right (5).

General

Use "Dot for dot" by default

Using "Dot for dot" means that at 1:1 zoom, each pixel is the image is scaled to one pixel on the display. If "Dot for dot" is not used, then the displayed image size is determined by the X and Y resolution of the image. See the Scale Image section for more information.

Marching ants speed

When you create a selection, the edge of it is shown as a dashed line with dashes that appear to move, marching slowly along the boundary: they are jokingly called "marching ants". The smaller the value entered here, the faster the ants march (and consequently the more distracting they are!).

Zoom and Resize Behavior

Resize window on zoom

If this option is checked, then each time you zoom the image, the image window will automatically resize to follow it. Otherwise, the image window will maintain the same size when you zoom the image.

Resize window on image size change

If this option is checked, then each time change the size of the image, by cropping or resizing it, the image window will automatically resize to follow. Otherwise, the image window will maintain the same size.

Initial zoom ratio

You can choose either to have images, when they are first opened, scaled so that the whole image fits comfortably on your display, or else shown at 1:1 zoom. If you choose the second option, and the image is too large to fit on your display, then the image window will show only part of it (but you will be able to scroll to other parts).

Mouse Cursors

Show brush outline

If this option is checked, then when you use a paint tool, the outline of the brush will be shown on the image as you move the pointer around. On slow systems, if the brush is very large, this could occasionally cause some lag in GIMP's ability to follow your movements: if so, switching this off might help. Otherwise, you will probably find it quite useful.

Show paint tool cursor

If this is checked, a cursor will be shown. This is in addition to the brush outline, if the brush outline is being shown. The type of cursor is determined by the next option.

Cursor mode

This option has no effect unless "Show paint tool cursor" is checked. If it is, you have three choices: "Tool icon", which causes a small iconic representation of the currently active tool to be shown beside the cursor; "Tool icon with crosshair", which shows the icon as well as a crosshair indicating the center of the cursor; or "Crosshair only".

Cursor rendering

If you choose "Fancy" here, the cursor is drawn in grayscale. If you choose "Black and White", it is drawn in a simpler way that may speed things up a little bit if you have speed issues.

Transparency

Transparency type

By default, GIMP indicates transparency using a checkerboard pattern with mid-tone checks, but you can change this if you want, either to a different type of checkerboard, or to solid black, white, or gray.

Check size

Here you can alter the size of the squares in the checkerboard pattern used to indicate transparency.

Monitor Resolution

Monitor Resolution is the ratio of pixels, horizontally and vertically, to inches. You have three ways to proceed here:

• Get Resolution from windowing system. (easiest, probably inaccurate).

• Set Manually

• Push the Calibrate Button.

The Calibrate Dialog

My monitor was impressively off when I tried the Calibrate Dialog. The "Calibrate Game" is fun to play. You will need a soft ruler.

Window Manager Hints

Envois pour la boite d'outils et les fenêtres attachables

The choices you make here determine how the Toolbox, and the docks that hold dialogs, will be treated. If you choose "Normal Window", they will be treated like any other windows. If you choose "Utility Window", they will be raised into visibility whenever you activate an image window, and kept in front of every image window. If you choose "Keep above", they will be kept in front of every other window at all times. Note that changes you make here will not take effect until the next time you start GIMP.

Focus

Activate the focused image

Normally, when you focus an image window (usually indicated by a change in the color of the frame), it becomes the "active image" for GIMP, and therefore the target for any image-related actions you perform. Some people, though, prefer to set up their window managers such that any window entered by the pointer is automatically focused. If you do this, you may find that it is inconvenient for focused images to automatically become active, and may be happier if you uncheck this option.

Window Positions

Save window positions on exit

If this option is checked, the next time you start GIMP, you will see the same set of dialog windows, in the same positions they occupied when you last exited.

Save Window Positions Now

This button is only useful if "Save window positions on exit" is unchecked. It allows you to set up your windows they way you like, click the button, and then have them come up in that arrangement each time you start GIMP.

Reset Saved Window Positions to Default Values

If you decide that you are unhappy with the arrangement of windows you have saved, and would rather go back to the default arrangement than spend time moving them around, you can do so by pressing this button.

Resource Consumption

Minimal number of undo levels

GIMP allows you to undo most actions by maintaining an "Undo History" for each image, for which a certain amount of memory is allocated. Regardless of memory usage, however, GIMP always permits some minimal number of the most recent actions to be undone: this is the number specified here. See Undoing for more information about GIMP's Undo mechanism.

Maximum undo memory

This is the amount of undo memory allocated for each image. If the Undo History size exceeds this, the oldest points are deleted, unless this would result in fewer points being present than the minimal number specified above.

Tile cache size

This is the amount of system RAM allocated for GIMP image data. If GIMP requires more memory than this, it begins to swap to disk, which may in some circumstances cause a dramatic slowdown. You are given an opportunity to set this number when you install GIMP, but you can alter it here. See How to Set Your Tile Cache for more information.

Maximum new image size

This is not a hard contraint: if you try to create a new image larger than the specified size, you are asked to confirm that you really want to do it. This is to prevent you from accidentally creating images much larger than you intend, which can either crash GIMP or cause it to respond verrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwly.

Image Thumbnails

Size of thumbnails

This options allows you to set the size of the thumbnails shown in the File Open dialog (and also saved for possible use by other programs). The options are "None", "Normal (128x128)", and "Large (256x256)".

Maximum filesize for thumbnailing

If an image file is larger than the specified maximum size, GIMP will not generate a thumbnail for it. This options allows you to prevent thumbnailing of extremely large image files from slowing GIMP to a crawl.

Saving Images

Confirm closing of unsaved images

Closing an image is not undoable, so by default GIMP asks you to confirm that you really want to do it, whenever it would lead to a loss of unsaved changes. You can disable this if you find it annoying; but then of course you are responsible for remembering what you have and have not saved.