last night's online e-book purchases through o'Reilly Media

• PacktPub--Instant_Nokogiri.20130826122153.pdf (ruby xml)
• TidBITS--Take_Control_of_Your_Online_Privacy.20130827161623.pdf
• nostarch--Book_of_GIMP.20130128094115.pdf
• nostarch--Perl_One_Liners.20131101112448.pdf (perl)
• rockynook--Testing_Cloud_Services.20130826101828.pdf (testing)

No Starch Press: Book of GIMP

http://tinker.tv/gimp

Whether you're just getting started with GIMP or working to master GIMP's more complex features, you'll find the answers you're looking for in The Book of GIMP.

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GIMP 2.7.3 arrives with single-window mode - The H Open Source: News and Features

GIMP 2.7.3 arrives with single-window mode - The H Open Source: News and Features: The latest development branch release of GIMP includes a number of updates to the image editor, such as a fully functional single-window mode and working session management

No Starch Press book: Book of GIMP

Book of GIMP | No Starch Press

how to convert a rectangular image into a square one?

Most of the images I download from LinkedIn or Xing are not square ones. But I want to make use of them in my Google Mail address book, which allows me to select a square sub-section of those rectangular images. I know how to transform rectangular images into square ones using Gimp, but that takes far too many manual steps. I would actually prefer a command line utility. Can anybody help?

how to make a rectangle image a square image using GIMP

I like reusing profile pictures from the web in my Google Mail Contacts aka address book.

On Xing or LinkedIn these pictures not necessarily are square, but on Google Mail Contacts you have to choose a sub-square. So maybe you want to resize the picture appropriately, so you don't cut it, where you don't want to cut it. Here is, how to proceed:

• Image / Canvas Size: disconnect the coupling between width and height,
• then make both the same, preferredly the larger one,
• then center
• and resize!
• Last not least: save the file with the highest quality!

BTW my designer mate doesn't like GIMP, he prefers Photoshop. I gave GIMP a try for this purpose, and it did, what I expected it to do, in a perfect way, every try a perfect hit!