How to use Photoshop plugins in Linux with The Gimp and PSPI

Well, we all know that one of the biggest lacks of The Gimp is that it misses a good number of plugins. Photoshop is the one software that everyone loves and use when they have to apply any sort of mutation/transformation to its images, or when it has to create outstanding new graphics with the help of well-projected plugins. For photoshop there are hundreds of plugins around.

Is this a problem for the Gimp then? Not at all. Many of you may not know it but The Gimp supports a large number of photoshop plugins, both in the Windows version and in the Linux version, thanks to this wonderful tool called PSPI. Now let’s see how to use it and what we can do with our new toy. Paying nothing, of course…

Getting Started

First, we’ll have to install Wine on our Linux box (In Ubuntu you can look for Wine in synaptic), then we’ll need The Gimp, of course, and PSPI. In THIS page you’ll find the Binary version for your system. We’ll see instruction for Linux only, and I’ll give you generic instructions, working on any Linux platform.

We’ll also need at least one Photoshop plugin! To get started and write down this guide I downloaded two plugins, one commercial and one freeware. The first one is from the very interesting company Flaming Pear, I downloaded Designer Sextet from their download site. As for the second plugin, the freeware one, I’ve chosen Caravaggio from Xero Graphics. You can find lots more free Photoshop Plugins here.

Installing PSPI and photoshop plugins

Now it is time to install PSPI on your Gimp. The following is an extract from the PSPI site:

The Linux packages include three files:

• README.linux
• pspi, a small shell script
• pspi.exe.so, the binary that wine runs

Copy pspi and pspi.exe.so to your personal GIMP plug-ins folder, typically ~/.gimp-2.2/plug-ins .

When you run GIMP it will issue a warning “wire_read(): error” as pspi.exe.so can’t be started directly. (The pspi script can, though, and is from GIMP’s point of view a GIMP plug-in.) This warning is harmless (GIMP just ignores that file then), but if you want to avoid it, move pspi.exe.so somewhere else and modify the pspi script to point to its new location instead.

After starting GIMP, go to the Xtns:Photoshop Plug-in Settings and enter the folder where you are going to keep the 3rd-party Photoshop plug-ins (.8bf files) that you want to use in GIMP.

Preferrably you should use an initially empty folder for this, and then install (copy) Photoshop plug-ins there one by one, verifying that each works. It isn’t really useful to rush and install a shitload of Photoshop plug-ins at once and assume they all will work under pspi.

So I did what they wrote in the instructions and also copied my freshly downloaded PS Plugins to a folder in my home that I called ~/.gimp-2.2/psplugins.

Remember that this gimp folder we are referring to is a hidden folder, therefore, you’ll have to set your file browser so that it shows you hidden files. In my case, I use GNOME and Nautilus. I can see hidden files by using the Nautilus menù View –> Show hidden files.

Setting The Gimp UP

As the guide says, I start The Gimp and it hangs up for some seconds analyzing the newly installed plugin:

But once Gimp is loaded I get no error message as expected (The PSPI guide suggested that an error may have occurred but I can’t see any). All works fine for now. Proceeding with the settings, I open the Gimp Menù Xtns –> Photoshop Plug-in Settings and this window shows up:

Hit the New button (In my screenshot it is the white sheet of paper with an orange star over it, on the upper left corner of the above screenshot) and choose the path where you put your PS Plugins. In my case we saw that it is /home/darkmaster/.gimp-2.2/psplugins

Push the Ok button and a message will appear warning you that the new plugins will be loaded next time you restart The Gimp.

Testing the new PS Plugins

To complete the operation I close and then open again The Gimp. Even now I don’t get any error message. Fine! I then load an image from my HD, click on the filters menù and… hey! Here they are on the bottom of the menù, my newly installed Photoshop plugins! Great!

Let’s test them! Will they work? I start with Flaming Pear –> Aetherize and… wow it works! Here’s a screenshot!

Now it’s Caravaggio’s turn and wow, it works too! Another screenshot for the press 😀

This is the result of applying the Caravaggio filter:

Damn it if this doesn’t look like a real painting 😀 ! This Caravaggio plugin kinda rocks and it’s freeware. It’s really welcome in my Gimp Universe.

Conclusions

So I tested two random Photoshop plugins from around the net and two on two of them worked. Guess there’s a very high compatibility thanks to Wine getting better and better with each release… What can I say now? Enjoy and say goodbye to one of the most deprecated defects of The Gimp, the lack of good and professional plugins! If you’ve got the money, you can buy and use serious plugins like those from Alien Skin in Linux with The Gimp and PSPI now 😀 !

Rating and Credits

I rate this PSPI extension for The Gimp as a 5 on 5, it does what it promises to do and it simply rocks and adds vital functionalities to The Gimp.

A real thanks go to the Wine project, PSPI team an to The Gimp creators. Dear Developers, you know that we all love you guys, keep up with the great work! Have fun everybody 😉