How to use The Gimp in OS X 10.5 Leopard
November 9th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |
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It’s your image editor of choice. You’ve upgraded to Leopard. And The Gimp no longer works for you. You can try some of the suggestions found here, or you can just download AquaGimp. Note: I can only confirm AquaGimp works on an Intel based Mac.
With any luck The Gimp will be working in all of it’s X11 glory soon, and this tutorial will become moot.
If you go the AquaGimp route (which is what I’ve resorted to for the time being) continue reading for some tips on a few ‘quirks’ I’ve discovered so far.
- If it seems to ‘hang’ while starting up, just click inside the load-menu a few times. Don’t ask me…
- When you try to change numbers via the keyboard (instead of a slider etc) or pretty much anything that involves keyboard input, hold down the key on your keyboard. Then it’ll start. Very annoying when you’re trying to save a file with a different name.
- If you use the Hide feature (Apple Key + H) click the gimp 2.4 icon in your dock, not the actual Gimp icon, to bring The Gimp back into focus.
- Don’t even bother to right-click the Gimp icon in your dock. It always appears to be in a state of “not responding” even when The Gimp itself is responsive.
5 Responses to “How to use The Gimp in OS X 10.5 Leopard”
By Mike Bowie on Nov 14, 2007 | Reply
Thank you for a helpful site, Ross. You mention the Intel Mac. I am running an iMac G4 Power PC (the last of the beautiful pod design). Leopard has just been installed & I am desperate to find an alternative to Photoshop. Gimp sounds ideal. So if you know, or you know of someone else who might be able to solve my dilemma, I’d be eternally grateful. As with all of us: I just want to be able to work productfully without hassels - life has enough of those nasties already! Thanking you in anticipation. Sincerely, Mike.
By Mike Bowie on Nov 15, 2007 | Reply
Thank you Ross for your quick reply. The XDarwin link looks too geeky for me. I used to be a Windows man & fiddled far too much (the OS invites tinkering) & while I learnt a lot I caused myself much grief. As a relatively newbe to the Mac I would rather not start experimenting with this OS - at least at this stage. I think I’d best wait for a version of Gimp I can download & use straight off. If you hear anything I’d be very grateful to know. Cheers & God bless.
By Christoph on Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
I am really suprised, that someone prefers the Aqua Version over the X11 version. X11 is much more stable and great stuff like drag an drop works.
I just did AquaGimp as a Test. But i will try a new version in the next weeks
By Scooter on Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
This really is a great workaround for Leopard! I’ve been so used to using GIMP without any trouble, that I had just assumed GIMP and Leopard would play nice - big mistake.
This workaround saved me during a crunch to finish a project - thanks again!
By jack linguini on Dec 17, 2007 | Reply
I have installed the aqua-gimp from mac-ports
in order to get printing to work. On my other
builds of gimp 2.4x on Leopard X11 the printers
were not showing up in the printing dialog.
If I feel really ambitious I’ll install the
other version of gimp from macports.