Text-Handling in GIMP

Vision

Text handling in GIMP

• Text in GIMP is always part of the composition - (unless it is an annotation)
• There is no such thing as paging in gimp
• Text in gimp has form and symbolic meaning, but meta levels of information in text are not supported

Users get:

• Complete control over typography and the layout of text on the canvas
• unicode supported localisation of text tools
• editable text until they decide otherwise
• super-fast workflow, when they are experienced

Functionality

Internationalization

• full support of all Unicode content
• support for all OpenType features
• multiple writing systems in the same text-box
• right to left and top-down textflow

Corrections

• the text content is always accessible and editable
• all applied effects are kept

Quick plain text

• the full-functionality text-tool is not obligatory
• simple annotations are supported
• can be inserted in an easy way

Effects

• stroke text
• fill text
• all effects and filter can be applied on the text itself (see "Corrections")

Layout

• full control to the user on every level
• all this is done in the context of the overall work:
  • the canvas
  • the applied effects

Positioning

• freely positionable on the canvas
• text boxes of any shape
• (rectangular) box fixed or dynamic
• text overflow from box to box
• text along path
• transformation tools
• combinations of above functions
• ?grid (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_%28page_layout%29 )

Typography

• fine grained-control
• presets can be saved
• manual access (M) to open type (OT) features: Glyph palette

Character level

• Font family
• Font variant
• size
• Color
• Hinting
• Kerning (M+OT)
• faux bold+italics
• underline
• through-line
• baseline shift
• language

+ OpenType features

• ?glyph scaling (vertical and horizontal)

line and paragraph level

• leading (Line Spacing)
• tracking
• Indent
• justification
• inter-paragraph spacing
• text-flow

User scenarios

Photographer (Annotations)

(see Scenario 1a)

• open file
• apply changes
• add text information to image
  • no effects, basic font+style+size

Creating Original Art

"text as graphics"

• [no-text work]
• freely define text-box-shape (draw it)
• type text
• experiment with font-family/variant/size/color
• apply effects on all text elements
• apply overall effect (let text "interact" with other parts of the composition)
• transform text-box
• transform text (-> perspective, 3-D, along path)
• fine-tune text (make use of advanced typography)
• manually alter advanced typo: manual kerning, individual glyph replacement,…
• do further brushwork
• apply more effects
• change wording

text as information

• create several text-boxes (e.g. info)
  • define overflow direction
• paste text (formatted or plain)
• work on typography
  • chose font family + variant
  • chose size + color
  • set alignment, justification, hyphenation
  • use advanced open type features
  • manually fine-tune text layout (kerning, tracking, glyph replacement)
• move, resize, reshape, reorder boxes

• save/export/print

later

• return - load file
• change wording/correct text
  • maybe change font (other computer)
  • adjust typography
• save/export/print

Icon Design

• Open/hot link to vector image
• Polish & refine the icon
• add very small amount of text
  • manually pick a glyph
• deform text (vector-based)
• apply pixel-based effects
• Review icon & make changes to vector image (& edit text in GIMP). Go back to the 2nd bullet, and repeat.
• Save Icon

Web Images - Production

text use mostly in buttons etc.

• insert text, where it needs to be graphically altered or integrated with the pixel level
• replacement of text for production of multiple instances of the same design element
• Make sets of image elements, see how they work together
  • see how use of text in different parts works together - adjust typography accordingly
• Export parts in optimised web format