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Asset Folders
by Pat David

So You Want to Install Some Assets?

GIMP allows users to include various types of assets to extend its
functionality. These include common items such as brushes, patterns,
palettes, fonts, Plug-Ins, and Scripts. A common question from new users
is how to install these assets, so we are going to look at that here!

Finding Asset Folders

GIMP searches for these assets in locations specified in the
Preferences dialog.

To open it on macOS, make sure GIMP is the active application then on

the menu bar go to:

GIMP-(version number) → Preferences

To open it on Windows or Linux, go to:

Edit → Preferences

Which will open the GIMP preferences dialog:

Expanding the Folders (click the “+”) in the left pane of the dialog will
expose the various asset folders:

Selecting one of the options on the left will show the current paths that
GIMP will search for that option. In the example above you can see that
there are three locations that GIMP will search for Script-Fu scripts:

C:\Users\patrickd\.gimp-2.8\scripts
C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\share\gimp\2.0\scripts
F:\Personal\gimp-scripts

You can make scripts available (ie: install them) in GIMP by placing them
in any of the listed folders.

Before you just start placing scripts in any folder you see here though,
let’s think about this for a moment. The first two locations are default
locations that are created by GIMP. The third entry, however, is a
custom entry.

It can be very helpful to save GIMP assets to a directory outside of the

default paths. In the event that you want to upgrade or try a different
version of GIMP, you can simply point the appropriate folder to this
location to make the assets available again. You can also use a folder as
part of a file-syncing service to make scripts and assets available across
different computers.

Defining Asset Folders

On the right side of the dialog there are a series of buttons that allow
you to manage the folders in the list:

The first button is to define a new folder location to search. The second
and third are to change the order that GIMP searches the folders. The
fourth is to delete an entry. The fifth invokes the file dialog. The sixth
opens the file manager at the selected location.

To define a new location, start by pressing the first button. Then use the
file chooser button on the far right to navigate your file system and find
a folder you’d like to add to this list.

For example, I’ve navigated to, and chosen, the folder

F:\Personal\github\test-gimp-scripts :

If you’re happy with your choice, you can press the OK button to save
your changes. If not, you can press the Delete button to remove
that entry.

After adding new assets, you need to tell GIMP to re-read them. Many,
for example Brushes, Gradients, Patterns and Pallettes, can be refreshed
by clicking the refresh icon at the bottom of their respective dialog. .scm
scripts can be refreshed by going to

Filters → Script-Fu → Refresh Scripts

.py scripts (Plug-ins) will require restarting GIMP. On Linux and macOS, .py scripts (Plug-ins) will need to be
allowed to run as a program/made executable to work.

In Conclusion
This is the definitive means for determining where GIMP is looking for
these various assets. It will work regardless of OS and should be the
default method for finding these folder locations.

TIP: If possible, consider using a separate folder to store your own assets
in, and then linking to it from these dialogs.

GIMP Tutorial - GIMP Quickies (text & images) by Pat David is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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