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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Make GIMP the Default External Editor in iPhoto

 

Apple's iPhoto has some really good editing tools, but sometimes you need the far more powerful tools available in GIMP. You can easily make GIMP the default editor for iPhoto images.

Open the iPhoto Preferences window and you'll see an option "Edit photo:".

edit-in.png

The current selection is probably "In main window".

Click the arrow button and choose "In application…".

in_application.png

Choose GIMP in the Open dialog.

choosegimp.jpg

Now GIMP is the default editor for your iPhoto images. When you select a photo and click the Edit icon in the iPhoto tool bar, the image will be opened in GIMP.

If, like me, you don't want to launch GIMP for minor editing and adjustments, you can reset iPhoto to default to its internal editor when you click the Edit icon. Simply go back to the Preferences window and reset the "Edit photo:" option to "In main window".

gimp2main.png

However, if you Cmd-click or right-click on the photo to display its contextual menu, choosing "Edit in external editor" will still open the image in GIMP, giving you the best of both worlds!

editinext.png

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

 

5 comments:

pyasuda said...

After editing in GIMP, how do you save the image so it's available in iPhoto? Do you have to re-import after it's saved as a JPG?

Have you tried to make this work with the Macports version of GIMP? It does not open from the GIMP executable; maybe it has to be packaged as a .app?

Thomas Boito said...

So long as the image is in JPG, PNG, or a format that iPhoto recognizes, the edited image should update in iPhoto just as it does when using the iPhoto "main window" editor. However, if you've changed the format to XCF, this won't happen.

I can't speak on the Macports question, sorry.

tosher said...

Are you using Iphoto '11? Been having trouble with the new version and command click.

tosher said...

I was wondering what version of Iphoto you are using. Is it Iphoto '11. I am having trouble doing the command click option to open the external editor.

Thomas Boito said...

I'm using iPhoto '09, so I can't comment on '11. I'm sure there must be a similar way to send your image to an external editor. I did a quick Google ans see that there seems to be issues with using an external editor in '11, though.