How to Crop Images with GIMP: The Manual and Semi-Automatic Way

Would you like to learn how cut images with GIMPToday we will show a couple of ways to split your images into smaller portions, one that doesn't require any plugins and one that requires you to download a script.

The following tutorial uses the default settings for GIMP, as well as a fresh installation with no previous installations that might have retained some of their previous settings. The version of GIMP is 2.10.12 (also works on 2.10.14)

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The manual way to crop images with GIMP

Manually slicing images with GIMP can be really laborious, depending on how many parts you want to split your image into, and it is by no means an efficient way to do it, but it will suffice for anyone who wants to split their image into 4x4 tiles or less. Follow these steps:

1. Step 1:: Once you have uploaded the image you want to cut into smaller pieces, head to image > Guides > New guide...
2. Step 2:: By clicking on «New Guide…» the following box appears.

3. Step 3:: Now you need to do some math and split your image into as many pieces as you want. You need to do this both horizontally and vertically as many times as you need guides. For this tutorial we will convert the image into 4x4 tiles, which means a size of 3000x3000 pixels, so 12000/4=3000 means you need to space all the guides 3000 pixels apart from each other, adding 3000 to each position.

NOTE: : that is, the first guide at 3000, the second guide at 6000, and the third guide at 9000.

4. Step 4:: After you have added your guides, your image should look like this;

5. Step 5:. Go to Image > Slice Using Guides: Click on it and GIMP will split the image for you into separate images and switch your view to the last piece. The original image will remain intact.

GIMP will use the same filename as your original file, but will add the row and column numbers to the end of the name, as seen in the filename in the image above, in the upper right corner.

• The original filename in this example is; M5213A-texture-12000×12000.png
• The last piece has an addition at the end of it; M5213A-texture-12000×12000-3-3.png

The following image shows how GIMP arranges tiles. The first number represents the Column and the second number represents the Row;

6. Step 6:. Save each image separately, by going to File > Export As… (or using the shortcut Shift + CTRL + E). The file extension is the same as the original file, so you don't need to change any settings when saving files. The default export path is where the original image resides, so you may want to create a new folder for the image slices.

There are also several plugins that help you save multiple tabs in GIMP.

The most automated method for cropping images with GIMP

1. Step 1:. First, download these plugins;
   1. single layer tiles
   2. Export layer
2. Step 2:: Install both plugins in the following path:
   2. C:\Users\»Your-Username»\AppData\Roaming\GIMP\2.10\plug-ins

NOTE: : Please note that the folder «2.10» is the version of GIMP you have installed and will change after each update which changes the first or second version number. Now your plugins folder should have these files.

3. Step 3:. After opening GIMP and your image file, remove the “. Png» from the name of your layer. This will ensure that the plugin «Export layers» name the layers correctly. Alternatively, you can remove the “{layername}-» from the command line, so that layers are named only by row and column number. More on that in step 5.
4. Step 4:. Go to Layers > Tiles > Split Tiles (by rows and columns)…

5. Step 5:. Choose how many rows and columns you want, no other settings need to be changed unless you want to specify different naming schemes. Read the plugin instructions for more information on this.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will split the image into 4x4 tiles, as before. By default, the slicing process named the files with the same logic as GIMP, the first number representing the Column and the second being the ROW. The only difference is that the plugin starts the numbering from 01 instead of 00, where GIMP starts from.

However, this can be changed in the settings, if it is important to you. To have the numbering start from 0, change “{column1:02d}-{row1:02d}” to “{column0:02d}-{row0:02d}”.

6. Step 6:. Press the button «Accept» and the plugin will resize the image into separate layers.
7. Step 7:. Go to File > Export Layers…

You may also be interested in reading about: How to Crop Images with Gimp – Tutorial

NOTE: : Choose the folder you would like to save the images to and your preferred file format. Once you are done, click “Export«. The plugin will save each layer as a file, and depending on the size of your original file, this could take some time.

Conclusion

As you can see, these are the steps you need to follow to crop images with GIMP. For your needs, these plugins can be gems. We are surprised how GIMP does not include this kind of functionality out of the box. But then again, open source programs tend to rely more on the community to add more functionality to the main program in the form of plugins and scripts. One thing that should be a ready-to-use functionality is the “Save all» to save all open documents quickly and easily. We hope this information has been useful to you.