The Resynthesizer plugin 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 Windows. The video version of this tutorial is available directly below, while the Help Article version (available in multiple languages) is below the video. I address downloading and installing the plugin for MAC in this article.
Step 1. Locate the Plugin Download
First, you’ll need to find a safe and reliable link for downloading the Resynthesizer plugin. This is the most challenging part of the process, which is probably why you are reading this article, especially since the GIMP Plugin Registry is now defunct.
Luckily for you, though, I have done the research of finding a reliable download for you.
The original Resynthesizer plugin files can be found on GitHub, which is a developer-centric website where coders can upload source-code to everything from entire apps and software (like GIMP) to plugins. You can click here to be taken to the GitHub page for Resynthesizer.
Step 2. Download the Plugin Files
Now that you are on the Resynthesizer Plugin GitHub page, scroll down until you see the file titled “README.md” (denoted by the red arrow in the photo above). Clicking this link will take you to the “Read Me” document that explains important things about the plugin. The document also includes a link to the actual Plugin Download.
Scroll down on the page until you get to the heading “Installation.” You’ll see a link titled “Install Resynthesizer for Windows” (red arrow in the photo above). Clicking this link will take you to the download.
Click the “Download” button (red arrow in the photo above) on this page to download the zip file for the plugin. This will download the Resynthesizer zip file to your computer wherever you typically download files (in my case it will download to the Downloads folder).
Step 3. Extract Your Download
Once the zip file has downloaded to your computer, click on the arrow next to your download (red arrow in the photo above) and click on “Show in Folder” (green arrow). This will take you to the folder where your file was download.
Once in your Downloads folder, right click on the zip file (red arrow in the above photo) and go to “Extract All.”
You can choose whatever location on your computer you would like to extract the files to. In my case, I just stuck with my downloads folder.
When the file has finished extracting, it should open up the extracted Resynthesizer plugin folder in a new File Explorer window. Double click on the folder (titled “Resynthesizer_v1.0-i686” – red arrow in the photo above).
This will take you inside the folder, which contains all the scripts and files you need to run the plugin in GIMP.
Step 4. Add Your Plugin Files to GIMP
Now that I have the Resynthesizer tool’s files downloaded to my computer, I can now add the files to GIMP to access its features.
To do this, I’ll first need to locate my Plugins folder within GIMP. Once GIMP is open, go to Edit>Preferences (red arrow in the image above).
In the Preferences dialogue, scroll down to “Folders” and click the “+” icon to expand it (red arrow in the photo above).
Click the “Plugins” folder.
Next, click on the first address option (it should contain “AppData” as part of the address – this is a destination on your computer – denoted by the red arrow in the photo above). This will populate the empty field at the top of the preferences dialogue with your selection (green arrow in the photo above).
Right click on the field that should now contain the address you clicked on and go to “Copy” (you should also be able to use the ctrl+c shortcut key to copy the address as well).
Return to your File Explorer (use the File Explorer that does not contain the Resynthesizer plugin files as we will still need that open in the next step). Go to the top of the file explorer and click on the current address that is displayed (in my case it is the Downloads folder). This will highlight the destination in blue (red arrow in the photo above).
Right click on the address bar and click “Paste.” This will paste the address you copied for your Plugin Folder in GIMP into the address bar in your File Explorer.
Hit the enter key to be taken to the folder (red arrow in the photo above).
If you have any previous versions of Resythnesizer installed in this folder currently, or in any other plugin folder for your GIPM, delete those files now to prevent them from interfering with the latest install of the plugin. In this case, I do not have any previous versions, so I’ll proceed.
Open up your other File Explorer window that contains all of the files within the Resynthesizer extracted folder (from earlier in the article – shown in the image above).
Click and drag your mouse over all of the files in the folder to select them, or hit ctrl+a on your keyboard (all of the files are selected in the above image).
Next, click and drag all of the files from the folder into your GIMP Plugins folder (green dotted line to the red arrow in the photo above). The Resynthesizer plugin is now installed in GIMP – but it won’t show up just yet!
Step 5. Finish the Installation
Exit out of GIMP, then re-open it. If you do not do this, the plugin files will not show up.
When you re-open GIMP, you will now see the plugin files in their various locations in the “Filters” dialogue (the most common feature is under Filters>Enhance>Heal Selection – red arrow in the photo above).
That’s it for this GIMP Help Article! If you liked it, you can check out all of my other GIMP Help Articles, GIMP Video Tutorials, or any of my GIMP Classes.
