New GIMP Save/Export plug-in: Saver (Shallow Thoughts)

New GIMP Save/Export plug-in: Saver

The split between Save and Export that GIMP introduced in version 2.8 has been a matter of much controversy. It's been over two years now, and people are still complaining on the gimp-users list.

Early on, I wrote a simple Python plug-in called Save-Export Clean, which saved over an image's current save or export filename regardless of whether the filename was XCF (save) or a different format (export). The idea was that you could bind Ctrl-S to the plug-in and not be pestered by needing to remember whether it was XCF, JPG or what.

Save-Export Clean has been widely cited, and I hope it's helped some people who were bothered by the Save/Export split. But personally I didn't like it very much. It wasn't very flexible -- there was no way to change the filename, for one thing, and it was awfully easy to overwrite an original image without knowing that you'd done it. I went back to using GIMP's separate Save and Export, but in the back of my mind I was turning over ideas, trying to understand my workflow and what I really wanted out of a GIMP Save plug-in.

The result of that was a new Python plug-in called Saver. I first wrote it a year ago, but I've been tweaking it and using it since then, with Ctrl-S bound to Saverand Ctrl-Shift-S bound to Saver as...). I wanted to make sure that it was useful and working reliably ... and somehow I never got around to writing it up and announcing it formally ... until now.

Saver, like Save/Export Clean, will overwrite your chosen filename, whether XCF or another format, and will mark the image as saved so GIMP won't pester you when you exit.

What's different? Mainly, three things:

1. A Saver as... option so you can change the filename or file type.
2. Merges multiple layers so they'll show up properly in your JPG or PNG image.
3. An option to save as .xcf or .xcf.gz and, at the same time, export a copy in another format, possibly scaled down. So you can maintain your multi-layer XCF image but also update the JPG copy that you're going to put on the web.

I've been using Saver for nearly all my saving for the past year. If I'm just making a quick edit of a JPEG camera image, Ctrl-S overwrites it without questioning me. If I'm editing an elaborate multi-layer GIMP project, Ctrl-S overwrites the .xcf.gz. If I'm planning to export that image for the web, I Ctrl-Shift-S to bring up the Saver As... dialog, make sure the main filename is .xcf.gz, set a name (ending in .jpg) for the exported copy; and from then on, Ctrl-S will save both the XCF and the JPG copy.

Saver is available on my github page, with installation instructions here: GIMP Saver and Save/Export Clean Plug-ins. I hope you find it useful.