Re: GIMP on a small screen
- From: Joal Heagney <jhe13586@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:55:20 GMT
Weeble wrote:
Hello. I'm trying out GIMP to see if I can start using it instead of
Paint Shop Pro 8 on my Windows XP laptop.
Welcome, hope we can help with getting started. :)
* Is there any way to streamline the brushes palette (or palettes in
general)? I've already gotten rid of all the brushes I'm never going to
use, but the frame itself uses up a lot of space when all I'm doing is
picking brushes, not editing them. The best I can figure out is to
detach the brushes palette and hide it, then click on the current brush
in the toolbox when I want to change it. This pops up the whole brushes
palette where I can pick one, but then I need to close it again
manually. Ideally I'd like either a simple brushes palette much like
the tools in the toolbox, or a popup grid of brushes that disappears
again when you pick one. Is there some way to get this?
Don't know if this will help, but you can resize the palette once it's been detached and (I think) gimp will remember the size you set it to. Additionally, click on the little arrow at the top that points to the left (hoping you get this under Microsoft) and it pops up a menu. One of the menu entries is to change the preview size.
Secondly, you can close the brush palette just like any other window, once the palette has been detached. If you then select your brushes from the tool option palette/dialog (By default below the Gimp toolbox), you won't need to open up the brushes palette.
Thirdly, you can reorganize palettes/dialogs any way you want. Click on their titles and drag them out of their docking bays to detach. Drag them back into a docking bay and drop to reattach.
* Is there a way to make tool palettes stay out of the taskbar when
GIMP is minimised? Maybe I need some kind of helper application to
manage windows a bit better?
*grins* See the bottom of this post for a suggestion.
* Is there a way to collapse elements in a dock without closing them?
Gimp docks will allow you to drop multiple dialogs into the one dock, and will then put a row of tabs across the top. The difference is that there are at least two types of docks. There's the free-floating ones, and then there's a special one that appears at the bottom of the gimp toolbox.
* Is there a way to make the tool windows appear and disappear in
unison? At the moment if I use show desktop to clear everything away, I
need to go through all of my tool windows to restore them one at a
time.
Not in gimp alone, but see the bottom of this post. :)
* Are the lovely simple tool buttons and current
colour/brush/pattern/gradient indicators special? I can't seem to
detach them from the main menu or each other.
The tool buttons aren't in a dock as such, so yes, they are special. You can resize and reshape the toolbar however. E.g. Remove the tool options dialog from the bottom of the toolbar, and then make the toolbar tall and thin. Makes it hard to access menu entries however.
I'm finding GIMP wonderful and powerful, and actually drawing stuff is
a joy (I love the way GIMP supports the eraser on my Wacom tablet!),
but I seem to be struggling with all of these windows much more than I
did in Paintshop. Could somebody help me out so that I can enjoy using
GIMP even more?
Final suggestion. To manage multiple windows and applications, you might want to take a leaf from the Linux/Unix world and install one of the following virtual desktop manager applications onto your Microsoft machine. I haven't tried any of these, so you might want to do some research before installing.
Virtual Desktop Manager. Shareware, *ugh* but mentioned a lot on the web.
http://www.easyfp.com/virtualdesk/
Virtual Dimension, a freeware program, but the download is about a year old. *sighs*
http://www.easyfp.com/virtualdesk/
And finally, have a look at this site. There's a link at the bottom of the page.
http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/1596
All of these basically make your computer think that it has four (or more) desktops instead of one, and allow you to move between them. You could set up the toolbar and the dialogs on one virtual desktop, and have the window fullscreen on a second.
Think of it as having four playmats and one table. The playmats are your virtual desktops, the table is your monitor, and the toys that sit on each playmat are your application windows. When you want to work with what's on playmat 2, you just move the current playmat off the table and place playmat 2 on. This is a blessing when you're short on monitor space.
Weeble.
Hope that helps,
Joal Heagney
.
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