G’MIC is a fast-growing free plug-in that adds a ton of image processing functionality and general image editing and manipulation effects to GIMP. As a result of the software’s growing popularity, GIMP users have been heading over to the creator’s website in droves to download it.
The main issue with the plugin, however, is that it isn’t abundantly clear at first how to download and install the plug-in when working on a MAC OS computer. That is – until now.
In this GIMP Help Article, I show you step-by-step how to download and install the G’MIC-QT plug-in for MAC OS.
Step 1: Install the Plug-in from the G’MIC Website
You’ll of course need to start by downloading the actual plugin from the G’MIC website. To do this, simply navigate over to the G’MIC Downloads page (click here) and scroll down to where it says “G’MIC Plug-in for GIMP” (red arrow in the photo above).
Then, under the “MAC OS:” section, click on the “.tgz archive” file (green arrow in the photo above). This is the G’MIC-QT plugin’s download file for MAC. Clicking this link will download the file to your Downloads folder on your computer.
Step 2: Extract the Download File
Now that the plug-in has been downloaded to your computer, you’ll need to locate it and extract the files from the download. You can do this with a single click by clicking on your Downloads icon in the taskbar (red arrow in the photo above), which will display the .tgz archive file you just downloaded (titled “GMIC-GIMP-2.10-osx.tgz” in my case – denoted by the blue arrow in the photo above). When you click on this file, it will automatically extract everything in the download file to your Downloads folder.
It should also open up a new Finder window automatically that takes you to the location where the file was extracted (it should be extracted to the Downloads folder by default – as shown in the photo above).
(NOTE: you can also perform the above step simply by opening a new Finder window, navigating to your Downloads folder, and double-clicking on the “GMIC-GIMP-2.10-osx.tgz file. This should extract the download)
The final result after the files are extracted from your download should be a folder titeld “GMIC-GIMP-2.10-osx” (denoted by the red arrow in the photo above). Keep this Finder window open as we will need it in a future step. Next, we need to locate our GIMP Plugins folder.
Step 3: Locate Your GIMP Plug-ins Folder
Next, you’ll need to locate your GIMP Plug-ins folder so that you can drag the G’MIC-QT plug-in into it. For starters, you’ll want to open up a new Finder window.
With your Downloads folder still open in your Finder window, go to File>New Finder Window (red arrow in the photo above). This will open up a separate Finder window.
Go to the “Applications” folder (red arrow in the image above), then scroll down until you find “GIMP” (green arrow – the version displayed will depend on what version you have downloaded. I always recommend having the latest version of GIMP).
Single-click on the “GIMP” application (don’t double-click it or it will open up GIMP, which we don’t need to do right now). In the above photo, I have the GIMP-2.10 application selected.
While clicked on the GIMP application, click the gear icon (red arrow in the photo above) towards the top of the finder window (or right-click on the application) and go to “Show Package Contents” (green arrow in the photo above).
This will take you to a folder titled “Contents,” which contains all of the contents within GIMP. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the folder (red arrow in the image above) to expand the contents of the folder.
Then, expand the following folders: Resources>lib>gimp>2.0>plug-ins. This will take you to the GIMP plug-ins folder (red arrow in the photo above).
Step 4: Drag the G’MIC-QT Plugin Files to the GIMP Plugin Folder
We can now drag and drop the G’MIC plugin into the GIMP plugin folder.
To do this, navigate back over to the Finder window that has your G’MIC-QT plugin folder. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the folder (red arrow in the photo above) to expand the file and display the contents within the folder.
Next, select both the “gmic_gimp_qt” file and the “GMIC” folder (red arrow in the photo above – both files are outlined in blue, indicating they are selected). You will need both of these files for the plugin to work.
Drag and drop both of these files into the Plug-ins folder (which is currently open in your other Finder window – follow the red arrow and green dotted line in the image above). When you release your mouse, both of these files should now be inside the GIMP “plug-ins” folder.
Step 5: Close and Re-open GIMP
If you currently have GIMP open, you’ll need to close it down and re-open it for the changes to take effect.
Once GIMP is re-opened, go to the Filters menu and you should see “G’MIC-QT” towards the bottom (outlined in green in the photo above). The filter will be grayed out until you open an image as it requires an image to work.
That’s it for this tutorial! If you enjoyed it, you can check out any of my other GIMP Help Articles or GIMP Video Tutorials. You can also get my GIMP Book of Layers and GIMP Help Center App when you become a Davies Media Design Premium Member!
