Falko Schindler

A Computer Vision Scientist from Bonn, Germany

Connecting GIMP with Octave or Matlab

2010-06-10 by Falko Schindler, tagged as matlab

GIMP is one of the most common open source and platform independent image editing softwares. For scientific purposes you might want to apply your freshly developed image processing algorithm to an image loaded with GIMP.
The GIMP Octave Plugin is a quick and easy way to run Octave or Matlab right out of the GIMP environment.

  1. Start by downloading elsamuko-gimp-octave.tar.gz and elsamuko-gimp-octave.c.
  2. Extract all files to a location of your choice.
  3. Install gimptool by simply running sudo aptitude install libgimp2.0.
  4. Run gimptool-2.0 --install elsamuko-gimp-octave_8.c to create a sample gimp.m in the directory ~/.gimp-octave/. This is where you can insert your own algorithm.
  5. Each time you modify gimp.m and you want to apply it to an image loaded in GIMP, simply select Filters > Mathematics > GIMP Octave — or just press Update.