GIMP Bible

Chapter 17. Working with Specialized Filters

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using filters to speed up web design

• Working with filters to aid animation

• Creating quick 'n' dirty logos

• Understanding layer effects

Specialized filters are useful when you want to apply your work to the web. The Internet and the servers that provide the pages you view host your art. To get the best possible view of your work, and fast load times, you can apply GIMP's Specialized filter set. For example, Web filters in GIMP optimize the size, functionality and appearance of an image for use on for the web.

Web Filters

These filters are mostly used on images used for web sites with tables, as well as for quicker loading of pages, hyperlinking and so on. The filters themselves work with your image to make them "web-ready".

The Image Map filter is used to add linkable hot-spots on your digital image. Often called "slicing", this function will take an image too large for the screen and break it up into smaller segments in order to load faster. It is also used to apply hyperlinks to specific sections of the image. This is done through HTML table code. You can also use the Semi-Flatten filter, which is used for images without an alpha channel and can create semi-transparent images.

You can use web filters for most of your slicing and dicing needs. The Slice filter is helpful when you want to create tables in HTML for your sliced work.

Image Map

When looking to create a hyperlink from an image source, you can use the Image Map filter. ...