The Essential GIMP Tutorial thread is located here

Considering the estimated 130 million books in the world, it's been said that it's not important how many books one can read during their lifetime, it's which books one reads during their lifetime that really counts.

Extending that notion to GIMP, what would be the 10 or 20 (or more) best GIMP tutorials for a person to follow, keeping in mind that a new gimp user would follow the tutorials in sequence?

The tutorials would cover topics including basic creation and editing of an image, layers, channels, paths, masking, bump/displacement mapping and other essential techniques.

I think this would be a great list to compile.

Great idea

I'm not much for using tutorials, but fencepost's GIMP Scripting tuts should be included. They're the best primer I've come across.

That's a good suggestion, nzdawghaus. Actually, we already have a thread containing essential scripting resources stuck at the top of the scripting forum. Fencepost's tuts are in there but we could certainly use more.

I was thinking of a good set of GIMP tuts. Tutorials can be fun and educational. And, you end up with a finished image at the end of each step.

Bias aside, I created a post on here called Gimp Youtube Series and have since begun creating a series of videos for absolute beginners on GIMP. Go check that post out and throw your input in on what should be discussed! I'll keep making the tutorials, and will make changes per your guys's suggestions. Together I think we can make the best set of beginner tutorials out there.

I must admit that following tutorials was how I learned how to use Gimp. I started with the easier tuts and moved on up as I became familiar with how to use the tools and filters. I liked being shown what to do, step by step, and ending up with a finished product. I will say that I started with written tutorials but also like vids...especially those with audio explanation as you go along. Either way, I find tuts much easier and I learn more from them than just messing around with the program. I think it would benefit all new users if the tuts could be organized in some fashion.

I learned a lot from Jolie's GIMPtricks tutorials and send links all the time. There's no real order to them I guess, but they're great for learning the basics and for learning new things.

I was just planning a post that contained links to 10-15 or 25 "essential" tutorials, in order.

What would be the 1st tutorial you would recommend to a new GIMP user?

I'd recommend GIMPtricks' "GIMP Basics -Introduction + Beginner tutorial exercise (How to use GIMP)".

Description:
GIMP beginner tutorial and/or Gimp basics tutorial. Has an introduction to the GIMP interface and a beginners excercise to get started with GIMP. A great way for GIMP beginners and learning the GIMP basics, basically getting started with GIMP/beginning with GIMP.

Follow the steps and you will learn how layers work in GIMP, how to make a basic gradient in GIMP. How to use the text tool in GIMP, how to change the font color in GIMP, how to make a border around text in GIMP, how to make a drop shadow in GIMP, how to make a border around an image in GIMP, learn the basics about selections in GIMP and layers in GIMP.

All explained so a GIMP beginner will be able to follow it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LmW5ndnEqw

I think the best tutorial list would/should go something like this -
#1 - Installing Gimp on various machines, and system platforms.
#2 - Gimps interface and docking different dialogs, and working with tabs.
#3 - Gimps tools and extensive usage of each tool.
#4 and beyond - Gimps menus and how to use each filter that comes with Gimp.
The very last tutorial should be about adding new resources to Gimp the correct way.
Possibly also adding Python to Gimp.