Adding Text with GIMP

Adding text to an image is a common task. It's highly likely that you'll find yourself working with text on a regular basis. Therefore, it is important that you understand how text works in GIMP.

Adding text with GIMP is a bit different to adding text with say, a word processing application (such as MS Word or WordPerfect).

At first, you might find GIMP a bit "clunky" when working with text. Hold in there though. Once you get the hang of it, you will find that GIMP provides you with an enormous range of options for how your text is presented.

How To Add Text

To add text in GIMP, open a new image (File > New) and then do the following:

1. Select the Text tool. To do this, click the Text tool icon from the main toolbox:
   
2. Click within the image, roughly where you would like the text to appear.
3. The GIMP Text Editor will pop up. Enter your text into the text editor. As you type, the image will be updated with your text using the current style. Don't worry if it's not in the style you want, you can change the style later on. At this stage, it should look something like this:
   
4. Once you've written your text, feel free to close the GIMP Text Editor. You can open it again later if you need to change anything.

Text And Layers

When you add text in GIMP, a new layer is added automatically. When you view your Layers dialog, you will see a new layer containing the text you just created.

This is quite handy, as it gives you the ability to manipulate the text without affecting other parts of the image. As mentioned previously, this is one of the main benefits of layers.

Manipulating The Text

Once you've added your text, you can then manipulate it as required. For example, you can change the font family, change the size, color, etc. You can also do things like, apply special effects/filters against your text, transform your text using transformation tools, etc.

Changing The Font

Now that you've entered your text, you may be wondering how to do something simple, such as change the font.

This is where the Tool Options dialog comes in handy.

To change the font (as well as other properties):

1. Make sure you still have the Text tool selected (on the main toolbox), and that the correct layer is currently selected/highlighted. If these aren't selected, select them now.
2. Open the Tool Options dialog. You do this by selecting Dialogs > Tool Options. The Tool Options dialog looks like this:
   
3. Change the font as required. To do this, click on the "Aa" button and select a font from the list. As you can see, there are other properties that you can change here.

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