In need of: "Idiot's Guide to Gimp"

[Jabberwockxeno]

Well, to start with, fix the UI.

I would start out by turning off single window mode (in the window tab), and arranging the different windows like this:


This is really more of a personal preference thing, but it will be easier to understand everything to start with if you arrange the layout like that.

If you need help doing that, you hit ctrl+b to bring up the toolbox (The menu pictured on the right), and to bring up the one on the left, go to the window tab, dockable dialogs, and hit layers. Once that pops up, hit the little arrow on the top right of the layers window facing the left, go to add tab, and add paint dyanamics, brushes, and gradients. You can do more if you like, but that should be all you need to start with.

Once you have that done, if you want, you can turn single window mode back on, and it should keep the same layout, but have everything in a single window. You can resize windows by hovering over their edge till a <-|-> icon appears, then click and drag in a direction to resize it. This can also be done in single window mode for the menus on the right and left.

Have you used other image editing programs before, other than MS paint? If not, then It'd be easier to work through everything with you via PMs, so I can go into more detail and we can have better back and forth.