13 Jan 2005

The Gimp comes with a wonderful feature that's bound to help you out. It's called "Dynamic Shortcuts". This feature basically allows you to attach any key, or key combination (alt, ctrl, or shift-key) to any feature within The Gimp.

To do it is surprisingly easy. Simply start up The Gimp



Open up the preferences dialogue by clicking on the "File -> Preferences" button from the main Gimp window.



A preferences window will open, and from there, click on the Interface menu item in the left-hand menu, and then click the checkbox in the left-hand content area. Click OK and you're done with the first part.



Now open any image you wish with The Gimp, and right-click in the loaded image.

You'll see a menu pop up.



Find a menu item with which you would like to associate a keystroke shortcut.

I personally like associating the "ctrl-i" key combination with the "Image Resize" function of Gimp. To create this association, I find the appropriate function, and while it is highlighted with the mouse, I press the shortcut I wish to associate - in this case it's "ctrl-i".

Immediately after pressing the keystroke combination, the same appears in the menu after the highlighted function.



From now on, if I wish to resize an image, I simply press ctrl-i and away I go!

For those of you who are used to Photoshop's keystroke shortcuts, there is a site which explains the process of creating similar shortcuts in Gimp quite easily. Click here to access the site.