[FirefoxWiz]

I looked all over, yet I haven't found a way to make text Bold, Underlined or Italic in the Gimp!! Does anyone know how? If so, please share! :)

Thanks,
FirefoxWiz

[Rouskis]

Well.. Almost all of default fonts includes italy and bold options like this: Arial italy or Arial bold

I mean there is different fonts for italy, bold, et cetera..

[FirefoxWiz]

Yeah, most of the default fonts do. But some other's I have downloaded didn't have bold underline italic fonts included. It's really aggravating that I can't do that in Gimp! :s:

[Gunther]

If the font doesn't have an italic or bold mode, that's not Gimp's fault. You could try using the skew or perspective tools to italicise a font, and try maybe stroking a path outline of the font to make it bold.

[FirefoxWiz]

Ohh, I know it's not Gimp's fault.

I was just simply wondering if there was an easy way to make the text bold, ect. :w:

I'll try out what you said though.

~FW

[Dobly]

Gunther said:

If the font doesn't have an italic or bold mode, that's not Gimp's fault. You could try using the skew or perspective tools to italicise a font, and try maybe stroking a path outline of the font to make it bold.

That is not true.. Take for example the font Papyrus.. You can use it in say MS Word, bold it, italicize it or any combination of the above. Yet in GIMP there is no such option.

If it is just a matter of 'using the skew or perspective tools' to make it italicized (I'd like to see you bold a font this or any other way), then why not add that into GIMP features..

The pseudo code for that might be..

If (!Font.Italics) Then
Font.Skew.Perspective.Whatever
Font.AddTo.FontList(Font.Name + " Italic")
End if

As it is now I have to create the text in Word, Italicize it, print the screen to the clipboard, acquire it into GIMP, cut out the text and paste it into my image. Less than ideal. In fact, a downright pain in the you know what.

Even this web based WYSIWYG editor can make a font bold

[ubducted]

This is so silly. And I hope the Gimp Developers are reading this thread. The original post was October 2006 and here I am, 3 YEARS and 2 months later wanting the exact same feature.

The answer that a Font does not have support for Bold is either:
- bogus
- not programmed into Gimp
- or is difficult to find in Gimp and poorly documented.

I was using Parchment MT font which cannot be made bold in Gimp but it can be made bold in Open Office.

If Open Office can do it, surely Gimp can do it. And to have a feature like this in Gimp IMHO is incredibly important. I can't believe it was overlooked. My guess is that it's been a feature that was put off to the side and then forgotten about.

I haven't used Gimp much until a few months ago. It has always been said to be a powerful image editor and decent replacement for Photoshop, so I invested the time to learning some of the ins and outs shortcut keys. It's really grown on me and I find I use it quite regularly now. Interestingly, this "bug" really disappointed me.

[PhotoComix]

To get some attention from developers you need to make a enhancement request in gimp bugzilla

I doubt that a bug report will be accepted....Doesn't seems a bug i:
f a font contains bold italic and so on the character are correctly displayed
just Gimp can't emulate the missed types.

as enhancement request may be considered but there is no bug

Maybe , a request of a better integration with other program (as OpenOffice and Inskcape) , including for example possibility to import as text layers text composed in openoffice may get more interest (if doable, i have no idea of the possible problem...just seems more compatible with the gimp development goal )

But i am surprised you think so important, for working with logo and text inkscape seems a more adapt sw,

will be nice if was possible just copy a piece of code from openoffice and paste in gimp to solve, but modify the text tool is quite more complex

[ubducted]

Thanks for the reply. You brought up some good points.

I agree that it's not a bug but a feature enhancement. There is no harm in asking them about this feature.

I do think its an important feature. Imagine being able to choose colors from a color palette but finding out the developers excluded the entire red spectrum. This may be a somewhat extreme analogy, but if a text tool is going to be implemented, then it should be a complete text tool.

[Griatch]

The text tool of GIMP is indeed somewhat limited; this is slowly improving for each version though. I personally am waiting for the ability to easily mix italics with normal font when writing.
Photocomix is right though, for more complex text work, GIMP works quite well together with Inkscape, I use the two together for making comics for example. Worth looking at until your feature request (and GIMP's general development) comes through.
.
Griatch

[jolie]

I agree that this is a feature that needs to be added. And I honestly don't understand why it hasn't been added years ago. Even MS paint has this feature.

[PhotoComix]

I believe there is some ideological resistance in the staff that can be summarized in the repeated mantra "Gimp is a bitmap editor not a vector tool"

Sentence that come up every time similar enhancement are proposed, last was about the possibility to save in SVG (before was a similar discussion on open/save multipage PDF) , but also the possibility to use svg brushes, as any improvement the text tool are in fact proposal to enhance vectorial capacity of Gimp....because is strictly needed for that

If i understand well the point is both true and obsolete...true because is obvious that Gimp is a bitmap editor (but that do not exclude the need to support some vectorial functions..)...obsolete because if i understand well Gegl does not care to make so clear distinction between vector and bitmap operations and may support both...

so the point now should be if a enhancement is worth ,and if there are developers willing to work on it ....not if regard vectorial or bitmap.
But well many are still very passionates on that "Gimp is a bitmap editor not a vector tool" mantra

(

[Levophed]

Try this :

1 . Select your text with the "Fuzzy Select" (wand) tool
2. Go to Select > Grow and play around with adding 1 or 2 pixels to your selection's width
3. Select the paint tool and paint within your new bold text selection

Presto! Bold lives!

[RobA]

ubducted said:

Thanks for the reply. You brought up some good points.

I agree that it's not a bug but a feature enhancement. There is no harm in asking them about this feature.

I do think its an important feature. Imagine being able to choose colors from a color palette but finding out the developers excluded the entire red spectrum. This may be a somewhat extreme analogy, but if a text tool is going to be implemented, then it should be a complete text tool.

I made a set of three scripts that help me with this (I tend to use Inkscape a lot with gimp, exporting png's from inkscape to use as layers in gimp).

http://www.silent9.com/incoming/sc ... layers.scm

They show up in both the layer menu (right click in the layer palette) and in the main image layer menu.

1) Load a new File Linked Layer - loads up an image as a layer and sets the layer name to "@FL@<full file path>".
2) Reload All File Linked Layers - looks though all the layers for ones where the name starts with the "@FL@" flag and reloads them.
3) Reload File Linked Layer - reloads the active layer if it has the @FL@ flag.

SO I make changes in inkscape, export the png, then in gimp right click on the layer and select "reload file linked layer."

Right now it doesn't transfer layer masks, blend modes, or opacity to the newly loaded layers, but that could be added if necessary.

I think there are certainly possibilities for improvement on this...suggestions are welcome.

-Rob A>

This post has been edited by RobA: 24 April 2013 - 01:39 AM

[PhotoComix]

cool :!:

i am restoring a old comix i did (but was heavily damaged by a arson ) and i must replace all the text in the balloons, the script may come very handy

[kano]

To be blunt, the text tool is trash.

No idea what all this talk about "The GIMP not being a vector tool" from the actual developers, coz it's vector functions are quite reasonable (yeah they lack 'direction' identification and some more complex path stroking effects would be good: e.g tapering or successful stroking of coloured objects along a path with consideration of path direction)
Edit: yeah of course there are vector attributes also, some might be helpful but things like colour fill, I find, are only useful when creating the vector (and you can fill it anyway with The Gimp) coz later editing usually means more than just 're-filling' on anything but a simple drawing

But editing vectors and editing text are two entirely different things.
Doing a font change/text correction in most formatted text should be a simple thing.

And I'm not sure where people get the idea that it is reasonable to use 2 programs to produce even simple text (Inkscape + The GIMP)
It's a royal PITA to have to deal with a second program ... just to correct spelling ... or italicise an extra word in a sentence :P

In general, when anyone asks me about image editing (on winblows) I install The GIMP for them. In all cases I also point out the extremely poor text functionality and tell them some rather crappy ways around it or suggest they go buy even an old copy of Photoshop and also find someone else to help them with Photoshop.

Developers, seriously, just go copy the text code from any editor that includes font setting e.g. OpenOffice or Firefox or whatever :P

[PhotoComix]

Quote

And I'm not sure where people get the idea that it is reasonable to use 2 programs to produce even simple text (Inkscape + The GIMP)
It's a royal PITA to have to deal with a second program ... just to correct spelling ... or italicise an extra word in a sentence

to produce even not too simple text Inkscape alone will suffice

I agree with you that the text tool should be better improved the problem is that is not simple as copy&paste a piece of code from another program.
And if for absurd wouldl be possible, then will be another problem, as all the scripts and plugins depending from the old version crashing or at best failing

PS except that for Realdraw by Mediachance (that include vectorial , bitmap and a touch of 3D features ) all graphic editor i know are or Bitmap or vector, and usually professional graphic need both (classic combination is Photoshop+ Illustrator )

[kano]

PhotoComix said:

I agree with you that the text tool should be better improved the problem is that is not simple as copy&paste a piece of code from another program.
And if for absurd wouldl be possible, then will be another problem, as all the scripts and plugins depending from the old version crashing or at best failing

Yes, sorry, I do realise that was rather a simplification of the fix, but of course what I mean is that if they can't work out "how" to do it, there's plenty of opensource code to explain it (or ask at their related forums)

And no I'm not looking to have illustrator in The GIMP, but at least something along the lines of what anyone would expect when editing text (bold/italic etc within the one text box on any font)

It's common to want simple text in an image, but even what most would call simple text (this topic), is beyond The GIMP text tool :(

:D :D Of course, things like running the text along a curve or path would be nice ... and I can think of others :D :D

[kano]

Sorry for the double post ... but I guess I should add something that I perceive (rightly or wrongly?) to be an issue with this:

Firstly, just because the original coder was short-sighted with his/her implementation, that is definitely no reason to not consider implementing it.

And worse, implying there would be backward compatibility issues is certainly even a worse excuse for not doing it. Way around that :) create a new "Text2" T^2 tool (and gimp internal object) :) (and then all the nice ideas that anyone wants to implement on top of that ...)

[strycat]

I just wanted to say that I'm having this same problem with the font Castellar (http://fontzone.net/...ails/Castellar/).

Other programs I'm using like libreoffice have no problems making it italics. I was about give up and to do a screen capture from that when I saw the suggestion to try inkscape.

Inkscape also easily made the font italics. I then exported to bitmap and opened it in the gimp and finally cut and pasted it into the image I wanted it in. I probably should have tried RobA's script but I didn't.

A big thanks to everyone who posted in this thread it was quite helpful.

I do hope the gimp developers will implement this feature.