This is probably the first in a series. I think I should possibly post Gimp tips and maybe eventually tutorials or such… and also links to sites that have some of the mentioned as well.

Anyway, here’s a very basic answer to a question I’m asked quite often… “How do you save an image in the Gimp with layers, guides, and other stuff?”

The answer is short and sweet. Use the XCF format. The file image would end up like this: “foo.xcf” (if your image is called “foo”).

As an added bonus, append a compression format at the end and Gimp will transparently handle the compression as well. For example, “foo.xcf.gz” is the format I always use (gzip compressed XCF). You can also use “foo.xcf.bz2”, but it is much slower and doesn’t save all that much space. Using xcf.gz vs a plain xcf, does result in signifigant savings, however.

A little bit of trivia… XCF stands for “eXperimental Computing Facility”, which is the birthplace of the Gimp.