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Acknowledgements

The GIMP began in the summer of 1995 as an enormously ambitious project of two undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. When they began, they probably didn't realize just how impossible it was, and yet, they made it work. They created a beta version that captured the imagination of the open-source movement. Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis were those students, and I would like to thank them as much for the creative inspiration they received as for that they created in others. This book, of course, would have never existed without them.

The seed of inspiration planted by Peter and Spencer attracted a talented group of core developers who have grown the GIMP into the powerful digital image manipulation tool that it is today. They are a loose-knit collection of men and women from around the globe, connected by only the thin wires of cyberspace. Most of them have never met face to face, and, nevertheless, they have collaborated and cooperated on a project of significant complexity and great value. What an amazing phenomenon the GIMP project is! I would like to thank each one of them. Their names, as of version 1.1.15 of the GIMP, are Lauri Alanko, Shawn Amundson, John Beale, Zach Beane, Tom Bech, Marc Bless, Edward Blevins, Roberto Boyd, Stanislav Brabec, Simon Budig, Seth Burgess, Brent Burton, Francisco Bustamante, Kenneth Christiansen, Ed Connel, Jay Cox, Andreas Dilger, Austin Donnelly, Scott Draves, Misha Dynin, Daniel Egger, Larry Ewing, Nick Fetchak, Valek Filippov, David Forsyth, Jim Geuther, Scott Goehring, Heiko Goller, Michael Hammel, Ville Hautamäki, James Henstridge, Christoph Hoegl, Wolfgang Hofer, Jan Hubicka, Simon Janes, Tim Janik, Peter Kirchgessner, Tuomas Kuosmanen, Karin Kylander, Olof S. Kylander, Chris Lahey, Nick Lamb, Karl LaRocca, Jens Lautenbacher, Laramie Leavitt, Elliot Lee, Marc Lehmann, Wing Tung Leung, Raph Levien, Adrian Likins, Tor Lillqvist, Ingo Luetkebohle, Josh MacDonald, Ed Mackey, Vidar Madsen, Marcelo Malheiros, Ian Main, Kjartan Maraas, Kelly Martin, Torsten Martinsen, Daniele Medri, Federico Mena, David Monniaux, Adam D. Moss, Sung-Hyun Nam, Balazs Nagy, Shuji Narazaki, Michael Natterer, Sven Neumann, Stephen Robert Norris, Erik Nygren, Tomas Ögren, Miles O'Neal, Jay Painter, Asbjorn Pettersen, Mike Phillips, Raphael Quinet, Vincent Renardias, James Robinson, Mike Schaeffer, Tracy Scott, Aaron Sherman, Manish Singh, Nathan Summers, Mike Sweet, Eiichi Takamori, Tristan Tarrant, Owen Taylor, Ian Tester, Andy Thomas, James Wang, Kris Wehner, Matthew Wilson, and Shirasaki Yasuhiro.

Of all those in the GIMP developers group, I would like to express an especially warm note of thanks to Karin and Olof Kylander. They are the authors of The GIMP User Manual (see [2] and [3]), the first complete reference to the GIMP. I personally found it to be invaluable in the drafting of my own book.

I would also like to thank the famous `tigert`, a.k.a. Tuomas Kuosmanen, GIMP developer and GIMP artist. He graciously accepted to create this book's cover art.

Editorially, there are many individuals that have directly helped me in the preparation of this book. I'd like to start by thanking Laurie Petrycki, executive editor at New Riders Publishing. Laurie is a genuine supporter of the open-source software community, and she has done a lot to change the editorial work flow at New Riders to accommodate authors, like me, using open-source tools. She was enthusiastic, open to ideas, and willing to change many boilerplate business and design practices to make my book better. I would highly recommend her to anyone wanting to write an open-source software book.

I'd also like to thank Jim Chalex, my development editor. He encouraged me, gave good advice on improving this book's structure and content, displayed an uncommon mastery of the comma, and came up with a great book title. My hat's off to you, Jim!

The technical reviewers, Guillermo Romero and Zach Beane, deserve a lot of credit. They both read through a difficult first draft and, nevertheless, prepared excellent technical reviews making many useful comments and suggestions.

I also greatly enjoyed interacting with both Louisa Klucznick and Aren Howell, responsible for the book's design. They taught me a lot about paper, spot glosses, type styles, and page layouts. My heartfelt thanks also go to Kelli Brooks and Gayle Johnson who did a great job of copy editing. Finally, I'd like to thank the project editor, Caroline Wise, who smoothly orchestrated the entire editorial, layout, and printing process.

In addition to the list of individuals who have had an important influence on this book, there are also several organizations that merit acknowledgement here. The concepts and techniques presented in this book are greatly enhanced by a large collection of raw, digital-image materials used to illustrate them. The source for most of these images is from several United States governmental agency Web sites that generously allow their online photographic archives to be used without copyright assertion. These include the sites of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). These agencies provide a wonderful resource to the world, and I salute them.

Many thanks to all, and Happy GIMPing!

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