GimpLabels

This is a little pair of GIMP scripts which can make it easier to design and print labels, business cards and other sized objects in GIMP, using label templates from the gLabels program. It should work in any GIMP version from 2.2 onward.

It's helpful for people who need to print business cards or other photographic labels with high quality. Open Office and gLabels can make labels, but they don't seem to be able to do high quality printing.

Warning: this is just something I whippped up over a few days. It isn't well tested; some labels may not line up properly. That said, I've used it myself for making business cards and address labels, so it works at least some of the time.

Version 0.5 adds a "printer fudge factor" in the Print label page script to compensate for the fact that printer drivers often don't print quite a full page. The default is set for my Epson; I recommend that you make some test prints on cheap paper, figure out the right number for your printer, then edit labels.scm to make that the default (see the README).

Currently, CD label routines are hardwired: they do not yet inherit from the gLabels templates. Stay tuned.

Also, us-letter paper size is the only supported paper so far. Modifying the code would be straightforward, though.

Download v. 0.5: gimplabels-0.5.tar.gz or just the script-fu file: labels.scm.

INSTALLING

The easy way to install if you just want to try out the script with the labels provided is to copy the labels.scm into your gimp scripts directory, either by dragging it from a file manager or from the commandline. For example, for GIMP 2.4 on Linux,

cd gimplabels-0.5
cp labels.scm ~/.gimp-2.4/scripts/

If you want more control or want to add your own label templates, see the README for build instructions.

HOW TO USE GIMPLABELS

New: Nathan Willis of Worldlabel.com has written an excellent and detailed article about how to use these label scripts: Fast labels and Card layout with Gimplabels.

Once installed, the scripts should show up in two places. (GIMP 2.6 moved all the menus around, so the old Toolbox menus have moved to File/Create in the image window.)

[GIMP 2.4, Toolbox window] Xtns/Misc/Labels/Rect Label...

[GIMP 2.6, Image window] File/Create/Misc/Labels/Rect Label...

Make a new image with the right aspect ratio for the particular rectangular label.

[Image window] Filters/Combine/Make Label Page...

Make an image of a page of labels, populating it with the current label image.
You can then print this page from GIMP: set the top, bottom, left and right margins to zero, or if that doesn't work right, crop the extra transparent margins from the label page and adjust the margins in gimp-print to match the margins on the paper.

[GIMP 2.4, Toolbox window] Xtns/Misc/Labels/CD Label...

[GIMP 2.6, Image window] File/Create/Misc/Labels/CD Label...

Make a CD label blank, with the inner part cut out.

[Image window] Filters/Render/CD Mask...

Cut out a CD shape from the current image.

Change Log

10/20/2007, 0.5:

Add Printer fudge factor; clarify installation instructions.

12/4/2006, 0.4:

Changes needed to run in Tiny-Fu and GIMP 2.3. Fix a page size bug: label page was choosing A4 instead of Letter. Add a "Transparent?" option to Make Label Page.

5/23/2006, 0.3:

Use Copy Visible so that the label page can handle XCF labels with multiple layers. Reorganize menus so as not to use Script-Fu menus.