[Courses] [gimp] Tux images

[Mary]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2005, Patricia Peck wrote:
> I went looking for Tux in Google Images, and found many, many versions 
> of him.  Some were .jpg, some were .png, some were .gif, and they were 
> of many different sizes -- does it matter which you use for working on 
> in the gimp?  Are some better in quality than others in the final product?

This seems to be the official Tux homepage:
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/

Or at least, it's the one that Linus Torvalds links to from
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/ !

For importing images I'd suggest finding a PNG or GIF image of the right
size rather than a JPG. Reason? JPG is lossy (some details are lost or
changed on saving and loading), PNG and GIF are lossless.

You could also try finding an SVG Tux. SVG is a vector based graphics
format, which means that SVG images can be resized withut graininess.
(Essentially, a vector format image stores lines and curves, which can
be scaled up or down mathematically. JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, XCFs etc are all
pixel based, and get scaled up by making the pixels bigger, giving you
that grainy look if you get too big.)

The GIMP is a pixel based editing program, so if you find an SVG Tux
you'll need to scale him to the right size and export him to a pixel
format (PNG probably). I think you can get an SVG importer for new
versions of the GIMP: other programs that can read SVG and export it
include Sodipodi and Inkscape(?).

-Mary