Mark's Quick Gimp Tip

The PDF file format is used for web publications, like this one, and all over the internet. And for whatever reason, you may want to edit a PDF file. Well, Gimp can handle that! From the file menu select "File > Open" and navigate to the directory containing your PDF. A dialog window will pop up and you'll be given a thumbnail of the PDF. Below this, you'll be given options (see the screen shot at right) as to how you want this file opened/handled. You can select a resolution, choose to open pages as layers or individual files, or select a specific page. Once the PDF opens in Gimp, it gets treated as a large image file. You can then use Gimp's various tools to make your changes. You can then save as any image format. To save again as a PDF, save the file in Gimp as a Postscript (.ps) file.

When this .ps file is opened in a PDF viewer (like Evince or Okular), you simply "print to file" (.pdf) to make the conversion from .ps back to .pdf!