GIMP loads pretty quickly on my PC but not so fast that I never see the brush-chewing coyote splash screen.
And it’s this splash screen that is the focus of today’s how to.
GIMP Splash Screen
When you start GIMP it shows a small loading screen that displays short status message while the program loads all of its components and plugins.
You can see what it looks like by default in the image to the right.
It’s decent enough, right? Perhaps a little dull. But did you know that can change the GIMP loading screen to virtually any other image you want?
You most certainly can, and over the years open-source design enthusiasts have created hundreds upon hundreds of replacement GIMP splash screens. A quick Google image search will throw up plenty.
For this article we’re going to use a pre-made pack called “GIMP Splash Collection“.
GIMP Splash Collection is a set of 12 replacement splash screens for GIMP. Each image is colourful and creative, and helps inject a little more punch and personality into open-source’s premier image editor.
You may be wondering why you might need 12 images. Technically you don’t, but because GIMP is awesome it will automatically select one image at random each time it starts, so the more you have the more variety you’ll see each time you open the app!
How To Change GIMP Splash Screen
1. Create a new folder called ‘splashes’ inside the ~/.gimp-2.8/ directory in your Home folder.
Remember: to view hidden files and folders (those prefixed with a period) you need to press Ctrl + H.
2. Download the ‘GIMP Splash Collection’ from GNOME-Look.org:
3. Extract the archive and move (or copy) the splash screens inside into the ‘splashes’ folder you created in step 1.
That’s it. Open up the GIMP and it will show one of these stylish new splash screens.