Top 40+ GIMP plugins

GIMP is the undisputed king of image editing in Linux platforms, and is next only to Photoshop in popularity in Windows and Mac platforms. With a large community of developers and an even larger pool of users, it is no surprise that GIMP is very popular.

Much like Firefox, GIMP’s strength lies in its plugins, which are developed by the open-source toting community. Since the users themselves develop them, they know all the needs and conceive a plugin for everything (well, except making a coffee for you ;) ).

And what better way for me to endorse GIMP than a list of good plugins? Most of them are aimed at web-designers and photographers, the main users of GIMP. There are also some to fix common problems of GIMP.

Web Design

• Snow: Generate realistic 3D snow. Caution: Requires large amount of memory and swap memory.
• Anti-aliasing: Smoothen and fix straight lines.
• Adaptive contrast enhancement: Intelligent adjustment of contrast.
• Fourier Transformation: GIMP plugin version of Fourier Transformation.
• Refract/Reflect: Refraction effects to simulate falling water drops.
• ShapeIt: Bend text or image according to information in map layer.
• Borders: Add borders to your image.
• SoapBubble: Create bubbles. Contains two versions, for GIMP v2.2 and v2.4.
• Aqua Bou: Create web buttons in ‘Aqua Bou’ style easily.
• Chrominium: Create a chrome logo with glow and sparkles.
• Cloud Generation: For easy creation of clouds. Updated to work with GIMP 2.4, the latest version.
• Gothic Glow: GIMP’s version of Gothic Glow action, originally for Photoshop.
• Liquid Rescale: Content-aware rescaling. Keeps the features of the image while rescaling along a single direction.
• Particle Deposition: simulates particle deposition on a surface. It generates small particles with random size and velocity and lets them fall onto the surface where they settle, increasing surface height in the place a bit.
• Stampify: Make your image look like a postage stamp.
• Plasma2: Newer version of the original Plasma plugin for GIMP.
• SaveForWeb: Find optimal compromise between minimal file size and acceptable quality of image quickly. Useful for designers.
• Steel Text: Create a text effect that looks like shiny steel (or gold) and a dropshadow.

Photography

• Pandora: Stitch together multiple images to make a panorama.
• Film Grain: Add film grain for a classic feel, to BW images.
• Black Ink: Transform an image to a B&W drawing made with ink.
• Copyright Text: Add a copyright text to image.
• DeNoise: Noise reduction plugin using a modified Gaussian blur algorithm.
• DustCleaner: Detect and remove the dust spots in digital image.
• Astro-plugins: A set of plugins for astronomical image processing.
• FocusBlur: Makes an image out of focus with luminosity and depth.
• Lomo: Make photos clear, sharp and crisp. Especially useful for outdoor photographs.
• ISO Noise Reduction: Implements an ISO noise reduction, using different methods (masking the edges, then blurring the individual color channels or the lumimance channel only).
• Photo Effects: A bunch of scripts brought together in one script-fu file. Contains cartoon, color pencil, conte crayon, cutout, Drawing, ink pen, note paper, paint dot image, palette knife, pastel, stamp, water paint effect, wrap effect, angled strokes, crosshatched, chrome image, cross light, funky color, soft focus, solarisation, brick wall, patchwork, stained glass, texturizer, high pass, scroll effects.
• RedEye: Quickly remove red eye effect caused by camera flashes.
• ShadowRecovery: Recover image information in darked regions.
• Shadows/Highlights: Eliminate shadows and highlights in photographs.
• Refocus: Opposite of FocusBlur(listed above), this refocuses images. Provides better results than Unsharp masking which is built into GIMP.
• PhotoToolbox: Perform several actions on a photo at once such as defocus, desaturate (several papers emulations), toning, add grain.
• Light Filter: Provides basic filtering by adjusting colour levels of each pixels.
• Gradient Along Path: Strikes a vector applying a gradient orthogonally to the path.
• Landscape painter: Creates interesting paint effect that looks best with landscapes.
• EZ Improviser: Improve dull, dingy images.
• Edgy: Make an image look edgy.
• Digital IR: Simulate a black and white infrared image.
• Colour saturation: Change the color saturation of your image.
• Blot: GIMP avatar of BlotBrush. Based on blot algorithm and works well with spatter or cloudy image.

Miscellaneous

• GIMP Dewierdifyer: (for Windows) Get rid of common window annoyances in the GIMP. It adds a background window that sits under GIMP. It groups other GIMP windows into one, so that when you’re alt+tabbing to other apps, only one icon of GIMP gets in your way.
• Turing Pattern: Renders a kind of Turing pattern.
• Yin-Yang+: A seemingly useless plugin, but fun nonetheless. Add yin and yang symbols. Also optionally add drop-shadows.

Further resources

1. Writing a GIMP plugin: Plugin guide in PDF, HTML, archive and XML formats.
2. GIMP plugin template: A blank plugin template that has the basic structure and reduces the time required to develop a plugin considerably. The direct link is currently here, but may change in future (if it changes, click the link on “GIMP plugin template”.
3. Writing plugins: Another guide for writing plugins, this one from GIMP.org’s developer site.
4. Writing Plugin: Another guide at GIMP.org main site.

40+最佳GIMP插件

---

GIMP无可置疑的是Linux平台下图像处理的王者,并且在人气上仅次于Windows 和 Mac平台下的Photoshop。它拥有一个巨大的开发者社区和甚至更大量的使用者，GIMP很流行就并不奇怪了。

就像Firefox一样，GIMP的强处在于它的插件，这些插件都是开源社区带动开发的。因为插件是用户自己开发的，用户了解所有的需要并且构思好了插件的一切（当然，除了为你准备一杯咖啡;) ）。

那还有什么方式比一系列好插件更能让我认可GIMP呢？它们大多数是针对网页设计师和摄影师的，这是GIMP的主要用户。还有其他一些是修复GIMP的普通问题的。

网页设计

---

• Snow： 产生逼真的3D雪花。注意：需要大量的内存和交换分区。
• Anti-aliasing： 平滑和固定直线。
• Adaptive contrast enhancement： 智能调整对比度。
• Fourier Transformation： 傅里叶变换的GIMP插件版本。
• Refract/Reflect：仿真滴落水滴的折射效应。
• ShapeIt:：根据映像层信息弯曲文字或图像。
• Borders： 给图像添加边框。
• SoapBubble：产生泡泡。包含针对GIMP v2.2 和 v2.4的两个版本。
• Aqua Bou：轻松的制作‘Aqua Bou’风格的网页按钮。
• Chrominium： 产生带光辉和火花的铬合金logo。
• Cloud Generation： 轻松制作云彩。更新后可适用于最新版本GIMP 2.4。
• Gothic Glow： GIMP版本的哥特辉光效果，源自Photoshop。
• Liquid Rescale：智能图片剪裁算法。当沿单方向剪裁图像时保留图像特性。 
• Particle Deposition： 在图像表面仿真粒子沉积效果。它产生随机大小和速度的小粒子，让它们落到图像表面上，使图像产生表面高度小小渐增的效果。
• Stampify：使你的图片看起来像一张邮票。
• Plasma2： GIMP原来等离子插件的新版本。
• SaveForWeb：快速在最小文件尺寸和可接受图像质量之间找到最优折衷。对设计师很有用。
• Steel Text： 创建带阴影的闪亮钢铁（或黄金）文字效果。

摄影

• Pandora：组合一组图片生成一幅全景图。 
• Film Grain：添加经典的电影纹理感觉，使图像成为黑白电影片风格。
• Black Ink：把图像转换成墨水画的黑白电影风格。
• Copyright Text：为图像添加版权信息。
• DeNoise： 使用高斯模糊算法的降噪插件。
• DustCleaner： 检测并移除数码图像上的尘点。
• Astro-plugins：天文图象处理的一组插件。
• FocusBlur：通过亮度和深度使图像失焦。
• Lomo： 使照片清晰、锐利和简洁。对户外照片尤其有用。
• ISO Noise Reduction：实现ISO降噪功能，使用不同的方法（ 屏蔽边界，然后单独模糊单色通道或亮度通道）。
• Photo Effects：打包到一个script-fu文件里的一串脚本。包括卡通、彩色铅笔、彩色粉笔、切块工具、制图、墨水笔、笔记本、油漆点像、调色刀、彩色蜡笔、图章、水性漆效果、 包装效果、成角的线条、交叉排线阴影、铬图像、交叉光线、搞笑色、软聚焦、过度曝光、砖墙、拼缀图、彩色玻璃效果、组织成型、高通、卷轴效果。
• RedEye：快速消除照相机闪光产生的红眼效应。
• ShadowRecovery：恢复图像阴暗区域的信息。
• Shadows/Highlights：消除照片上的阴影和高光。
• Refocus： FocusBlur(上列)的反作用, 此功能重新聚焦图像。提供比GIMP内置的锐化掩模更好的效果。
• PhotoToolbox：立即在图片上执行散焦、降低饱和度（多层仿真）、 调色、增加纹理等功能。
• Light Filter：通过调整每个像素的色彩层次提供标准滤光片功能。
• Gradient Along Path： 对路径应用梯度正交产生矢量图。
• Landscape painter：在风景画上产生看起来不错的有趣油漆效果。
• EZ Improviser：改善阴暗、色深的图像。
• Edgy：使图像看起来锐利。
• Digital IR：仿真黑白的红外图像。
• Colour saturation:：改变图像的色饱和度。
• Blot： GIMP污点刷的具体化。基于污点算法，可以很好的处理溅污或有云纹的图像。

其他

• GIMP Dewierdifyer：（Windows专用） 摆脱GIMP普通窗口的烦恼。它在GIMP之下放置一个背景窗口。把其他GIMP窗口结合为一组，那么当你按ALT+TAB键切换到其他程序时，GIMP符号只出现一次。
• Turing Pattern：呈现一种图灵模式。
• Yin-Yang+：一个表面看起来没有用的插件，但是非常有趣。添加阴、阳符号。也会随机的添加阴影。

更多资源

1. Writing a GIMP plugin：PDF, HTML, 存档文件 和 XML格式的插件指导。
2. GIMP plugin template：一个有基本结构的空白插件模板，可以大大减少开发一个插件的时间。直接链接在这里 ，但是以后可能会改变（如果它改变了，直接点击“GIMP plugin template”）。
3. Writing plugins：编写插件的另一个指导，它在GIMP.org开发者分站上。
4. Writing Plugin：GIMP.org 主站上的另一个指导。