Summary
GIMP offers plugins like DALL-E for AI images and Refocus for sharpness. G'MIC offers filters for image processing and manipulation. The Resynthesizer plugin enhances photo editing within GIMP with a suite of tools.
Using GIMP for editing photos is a great way of keeping your workflow away from larger corporations like Adobe. GIMP is a famed open-source alternative to Photoshop , but it also has tools that can replace your Lightroom workflow if you're a direct photo editor. With nine plugin options, you can turn your GIMP photo-editing workflow into a professional standard in your techniques and the results that follow.
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9 DALL-E plugin
Add AI-generated images to your GIMP projects
Source: DALL-E GIMP Plugin
While most people using open-source software typically don't approve of AI tools or AI-generated images, there is a minority of people who would like the option. There are Stable Diffusion plugins for Krita, and there are also ways to add Stable Diffusion to GIMP, but there's a DALL-E plugin for something a little different.
You can find the DALL-E for GIMP plugin at its Git repository. It's a small project, so there might be some issues regarding its use. It requires knowledge of Python to install it in your GIMP program.
With this plugin, users can add small overlaid images to their larger projects, or you can generate an entire image to become your project. As with most AI generators, you can cycle through a variety of results before committing your choice to your project.
DALL-E for GIMP
See at Github
8 G'MIC
Filters and effects for photo editing
Source: G'MIC
G'MIC is a plugin for image processing. It's a free, open-source plugin with free-to-use software licenses. With G'MIC, you can convert, process, or visualize generic image datasets. These range from 1D scalar signals to 3D+t sequences of multi-spectral volumetric imagers. This also includes 2D color images for a full range.
Although most open-source projects are available for all major operating systems, there's no official G'MIC plugin available for macOS. There's an unofficial macOS one available. Gmic'q has official plugins for Windows and Linux systems, found in its Git
G'MIC
See at GMIC
7 Cyan
CMYK color emulator for printing
While more focused on prepress production for layout design, the Cyan plugin can be helpful for your photo-editing workflow if you plan to print your images. Cyan's plugin is a color emulator that lets you convert the colors in your file from RGB to CMYK for printing or from CMYK to RGB if editing for a screen-based result.
While simply converting from one color profile to another isn't always the best method of fixing colors correctly for printing or screen usage, in a pinch, it helps you out. For hobby-based reasons, the Cyan emulator will work fine enough. Still, for professional printing or screen sharing, you'll likely require a different workflow than simply converting at the end of your photo editing.
Cyan is available both as a standalone tool and as a plugin for GIMP and other software. You can export your images in TIFF, PSD, and JPEG formats and import them into PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and PSD formats. Cyan has support for many color profiles, including RGB, CMYK, GRAY 8, 16, and 32-bit, and ICC and ICM profiles.
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Cyan
See at Official Site
6 Refocus
Turn your images from blurry to sharp in seconds
Even the best photographers occasionally have out-of-focus images; if you're just a hobby photographer, it's even more likely. GIMP users can install the Refocus plugin, which is designed to remove blur for the perfect photo.
The technique Refocus uses has more successful results than the typical Unsharp Mask often used for sharpening images.
Refocus is an excellent tool for digital photos, but it shows more success for film photos and images that have been scanned into your computer. Often, film photos and scans become less sharp through the process of digitizing them, but Refocus allows you to bring back the sharpness as if that scanning process didn't happen.
Refocus
See at Official Site
5 Hugin
Stitch your panoramic images together in GIMP
Source: Hugin
If you ever use photo editing software to create panoramic pictures or photo-stitched scenes, there's a GIMP plugin that stitches your images with a click: Hugin.
If you manually stitch your images together, it takes a long time and incredible precision to line up each separate image for a seamless connection. With the Hugin plugin, you can match your images together in seconds to create mosaic images, panoramic landscapes, or photo-stitched art pieces.
The Hugin plugin is one such GIMP plugin that helps propel GIMP closer to Photoshop and some features offered there as standard.
Hugin
See at Hugin
4 Resynthesizer
Great for retouching photos
Source: Resynthesizer
If you're using GIMP to retouch photos in your editing workflow, then the Resynthesizer is an excellent plugin tool to use. Resynthesizer is a suite of plugins which all work within GIMP, rather than it being one plugin for one process. With this plugin suite, you can edit your photos in many ways, including the Heal tool, Uncrop, Sharpen, Enlarge and Sharpen, texture rendering, and more. These are all third-party plugins within the Resynthesizer suite.
The Resynthesizer plugin has been a long-existing plugin for GIMP but, unfortunately has received fewer developments in recent years, most especially for the Windows model of the plugin. Due to this, your mileage may vary with the successful use of the plugin.
Resynthesizer
See at Github
3 Darktable
Use GIMP to edit RAW images
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Darktable is a standalone software that works as a great free open-source alternative to Lightroom , but it's also available as a plugin for GIMP.
Using Darktable allows you to edit RAW file images , a format that photographers typically shoot for better color retention and quality in photos. You can't always edit RAW file images in some software, like Photoshop or GIMP, with no plugins. The Darktable plugin transforms your ability to edit high-quality images in your open-source software.
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Darktable
See at Darktable
2 Save For Web
Optimize your photos for posting online
Saving or exporting your photos requires different settings depending on your ultimate use. If you plan to print your photos, you need to ensure you set your DPI correctly, especially in Photoshop , but to post images online, you need a different type of settings configuration.
The Save For Web plugin automates the process of saving or exporting your image for posting on the web. This includes saving it as a smaller file size for better online optimization and loading speeds.
Although the Save For Web plugin still works, it hasn't received many updates since the 2010s.
Save For Web
See at Official Site
1 BIMP
Batch editing for a faster workflow
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There's no better way to streamline your photo editing workflow than batch editing. Using the BIMP plugin, you can easily batch process images in GIMP , use custom options for which features you can batch process.
You can set the BIMP plugin for any editing effect you can do within the GIMP software. Once installed, open the plugin within GIMP and choose the editing processes you wish to batch, such as adding a watermark or switching to black and white, before committing the batch processing to your chosen number of images.
For better batch production, you can also double up on multiple edits within the batch tool, essentially killing multiple birds with one stone. Batch processing in GIMP is one plugin that makes GIMP as good as Photoshop , compared to Photoshop Scripts for batch editing processes.
BIMP
See at BIMP
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Creative plugins for photo editing can transform your GIMP workflow
GIMP has many built-in tools for both photo editing and generic image creation, but to truly transform your photo-editing workflow, downloading a handful of plugins can save you time and give you incredible results often only found in premium software like Adobe Lightroom. From adding textures and filters to batch processing or resharpening, the plugins available in GIMP's open-source software can improve your photos tenfold.
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GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
See at GIMP