Tips & Tricks

Add plug-ins to GIMP

Those users who works with GIMP on Windows now can add Photoshop plugins to this image editor.

The author of the tutorial Torsten Neuer shares his practices:

How to make the plugins work in GIMP

• Step 1. Download the Photoshop filter plugin (pspi) for GIMP:
  http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/gimp-pspi-1.0.5.win32.zip

  Open the archive "gimp-pspi-1.0.5.win32.zip" and copy the plugin filter (pspi.exe) to the GIMP plugin directory,
  either in the GIMP installation path or the user data directory: (GIMP directory)\lib\gimp\(GIMP version)\plug-ins\

• Step 2. Check for the existence of "plugin.dll" and "msvcrt10.dll" on your harddrive.

  Some Photoshop plugins will require this to run. If these are installed in another program's installation directory, you should copy them to a global .dll directory like \windows\system32\.

  If you cannot find them already installed on your harddrive, you need to download them as well (click to download).

• Step 3. Install Photoshop plugins, for example, AKVIS software. You can find the instruction here.

  GIMP is not recognized by the setup program, but that does no harm.

• Step 4. Open GIMP and select Photoshop Plug-in settings... in the Xtns (Extensions) menu
  (the latter may have a different name, depending on the language you used to install GIMP).
  

  Select the "Add new path" icon (leftmost button) in the path list box that will open and navigate (rightmost button) to the installation directory of the plugin you want to register with GIMP.

  

  Repeat this step for any plugin you would like to use in GIMP.

  Hint: You can copy all necessary plugins (8bf files) to a separate folder and add only this folder to GIMP.

  When done, you will get a message instructing you to close and re-start GIMP, so that the filter plugin can register the new filters. Comply.

  
• Step 5. After re-opening GIMP, you can now use the newly installed filters by selecting "Filters" in the menu.
  

Bear in mind that not all AKVIS plug-ins are fully compatible with GIMP which works with selection in other way than Photoshop.
Please consult the table of compatibility of AKVIS plug-ins.