Newsprint plug-in

What is it?

You know the kind of grainy photos that appear in newspapers? Well, this is a plug-in for the GIMP that can halftone an image in the same manner. The purple border on the left was done using the newsprint plug-in, as were all other screened images on these pages.

The impatient might want to go directly to the screenshots page.

NEWS:
18th June 2001: Version 0.60 released
Fixed long-standing bug where greyscale images with alpha were treated as RGB, and the wrong spot function and angles etc were used. Thanks to warner-gnome.bugzilla at lothar.com for spotting this and providing the patch. This latest version will be included in GIMP 1.2.2 as standard.

1st November 1998: Version 0.50 released
Changes are:
  • use resolution info from images to set initial value of "Input SPI" slider.
  • Sliders now locked togther correctly.
  • Got rid of timing message.
  • Fixed compile warnings on Alphas.
  • Option menu to select the channel to edit to save screen real estate (tickles a cosmetic bug in gtk, get the latest version).
  • Moved from <Image>/Filter/Misc to <Image>/Filter/Render

22nd October 1998: Newsprint plugin now distributed as standard
If you have a version of Gimp that's newer than 1.1.0 then you'll automatically have the latest version of the Newsprint plugin. In particular, the latest stable version 1.2.x has this plugin as standard.

23rd August 1998: Version 0.01 released!
You can download the tarfile, view my current TODO list, or take a look at the known BUGS.

What's it useful for?

It's mainly for use as a special effects filter - have a look at the gallery to see what can be achived. While I'd like it to be possible to use the filter in a pre-press role, there are currently two problems with this: (1) I'm not conviced that the CMYK separation works correctly for anything other than 0 or 100% black pullout; (2) since I don't use supercell techniques, you'll get nasty moiré patterns all over your nice graphics. While oversampling compensates a little for this, it's is not an option if you need to produce films in monochrome.

Which version of Gimp do I need?

The newsprint plug-in will work with gimp-0.99.23 and gtk-0.99.9 (or later), but it compiles with no warnings if you're using gimp-1.0.0 and gtk-1.0.5. Also, with these older gimps the supplied Makefile (which relies on gimptool) won't work - you'll need to compile the plug-in yourself. I haven't looked at development versions of the Gimp yet, but unless the plug-in API or gtk has changed significantly, chances are it will work.

Nowadays, you won't need to compile the plugin yourself because it comes as standard with Gimp 1.2.x

Further info

I've written some reference material:

Feedback

Feedback is invited - I'd like to hear suggestions from people about how to make it better. In particular, suggestions for what would make a better user interface would be most welcome. I'd like to hear about things you found confusing or not obvious, about problems with the web pages, or about features you'd find useful. Don't assume I'm going to do everything that's on the TODO list - tell me about the one(s) that would really make a difference to you. I'd also like to appeal for entries for the gallery, to show off what can be done. But most of all - enjoy!
(c) 1998 Austin Donnelly <Austin_Donnelly@yahoo.co.uk>
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