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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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!