The Resynthesizer tool is a free, powerful third-party GIMP plugin that allows you to erase large objects from images, among other things. It is most similar to Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill feature – though in my opinion the Resynthesizer works better than this feature (I created a tutorial on the subject which you can watch on my YouTube channel).
In this GIMP Help Article, I’ll show you how to download and install the Resynthesizer plugin for GIMP on a MAC (a.k.a. macOS). I also have a video tutorial available on the subject (directly below), or you can read the article version available in a variety of languages. If you are looking to download this plugin for Windows, check out this article on that subject.
Step 1: Locate the Resynthesizer Plugin for MAC Download
Many of you know how elusive the Resynthesizer Plugin for MAC file download can be to find anywhere on the web -especially on a reliable website that produce a consistent result. Luckily, I have good news for you – I have been alerted to a reliable download of this plugin for MAC by one of my viewers (thanks Juanita!).
You can access the Resynthesizer plugin for MAC via this link (it will take you to the GitHub page where the file download is located). I recommend following my instructions in the remainder of this article to see how to download and install the plugin properly (and save yourself some frustration).
Step 2: Download and Extract the Plugin File
Now that you have located the GitHub page where the file download resides, scroll down to the “OSX packages” section (red arrow in the photo above) under the “Assets” subsection (green arrow). Here, you will see a variety of links to downloads for various plugins for Linux and MAC operating systems. If you recognize any of the other plugins and want to download them as well, go for it.
In this case, though, we are interested in the “Resynthesizer” plugin. So, scroll down on the page until you see the file named “ResynthesizerPlugin-Gimp-2.10-osx.tgz” (red arrow in the photo above). TGZ archives are the MAC equivalents to Zip files for Windows (to put it as simply as I can).
Once you have located this file, click on it to initiate the download.
The .tgz file will download wherever you usually download files on your computer (in my case it is the Downloads folder). Navigate to this folder or click on the arrow (red arrow in the photo above) next to the download file that pops up at the bottom of our browser window and go to “Show in Finder” (green arrow).
Step 3: Find and Navigate to Your GIMP Plugins Folder
Once you have located the file in your Downloads folder, double click on the TGZ file (red arrow in the photo above) to extract the contents of the file. It should all extract into the same folder (unless you have changed your settings to do otherwise).
The final result should be a folder with a dropdown arrow that has the same title (the folder should be titled “ResynthesizerPlugin-GIMP-2.10-osx” – green arrow in the photo above). Click the dropdown arrow on the far left of this file to reveal the contents in the folder.
Click on the top file in the folder, then shift click on the last file in the folder (a sub-folder named “ResynthesizerPlugin”) to select al of the contents with the folder (the files are highlighted in blue in the photo above).
Now, open GIMP and navigate to your Preferences by going to GIMP-2.10>Preferences (red arrow in the photo above).
Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand menu and click the “+” icon to expand the “Folders” option (red arrow in the photo above).
Scroll down until you see the “Plugins” folder. Click on this option.
Here, you will see the address on your computer where GIMP is accessing plugins to run (outlined in green in the photo above). We will need to navigate to this location to install the Resynthesizer plugin.
Open the Finder window we were working in earlier (red arrow in the photo above). It should still have all of the plugin files selected.
Next, open up a new Finder window on your computer (go to File>New Finder Window – green arrow in the above photo). Move both Finder windows so that you can still see the file location where GIMP is accessing plugins.
Now, in the second Finder window you opened, navigate to your “Applications” on your computer and click on “GIMP-2.10” (red arrow in the photo above). Click the gear icon at the top of the Finder window and go to “Show Package Contents” (green arrow in the photo above).
Click the arrow next to the “Contents” folder (red arrow in the photo above) to reveal the contents of GIMP.
Then, click the arrows next to the following folders to expand the contents of each: Resources (red arrow), lib (green arrow), gimp (blue arrow), 2.0 (orange arrow), plug-ins (yellow arrow). The “plug-ins” folder is where we will install the Resynthesizer plugin files.
Step 4: Install the Resynthesizer Plugin
Now that you have located your plug-ins folder, return to the original Finder window where all of the Resynthesizer plugin files have been selected (red arrow in the above photo).
Now, click and drag all these items into the “plug-ins” folder (follow green line to red arrow in the photo above).
The plugin won’t quite work yet – make sure you complete the last step!
Step 5: Finish Plugin Installation
To finalize the changes and have them displayed in GIMP, you’ll have to first close down GIMP and re-open it. To do this, hit the red “x” symbol in the top left corner of both the Preferences dialogue we opened earlier as well as main the GIMP program (red arrows in the photo above).
Once the program has closed down, re-open it.
Navigate to the location of the plugin files to check that they have been installed. The most popular feature, called Heal Selection, can be found under “Filters>Enhance>Heal Selection” (red arrow in the photo above).
That’s it for this tutorial! If you liked it, you can check out my other GIMP Help Articles, GIMP Video Tutorials, and GIMP Premium Classes!
