Hello, I spent a fair amount of hours designing this gtk2 gimp theme and I think I've come to a point where I'm satisfied enough so I'm making it public, there are few minor elements I couldn't modify and despite my will I didn't understand how to fine-tune them. As you can see, this is a dark-but-not-that-dark theme where I tried to aim both at usability and aesthetics without sacrificing performances.

Please, if you try it, tell me what you think.

Requirements:
- Gimp 2.8.?
Gimp linux build is expected to work fine with this theme
Gimp windows builds by partha will work with this theme
- mist engine, (attached in this post in case you didn't have it)
- recent murrine engine (attached in this post), I stressed the word recent, because you may have libmurrine.dll by default in your gimp installation but it's probably an outdated version so I've attached partha's recent windows port of this engine in case the theme doesn't display properly, if you're using windows, you'll have to place this engine dll in ...\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\engines. To check if you have the correct murrine engine, look at the widgets (buttons, scrollbars, checkboxes, radioboxes etc.) and compare yours with those seen in my screenshot, if they don't match then your libmurrine.dll is outdated and you need the dll I attached.

Issues:
- windows users, sourceforge Gimp version reacts badly with this theme (and supposedly) any other themes that use specific engines to draw widgets, such as aurora, clearlooks, murrine etc.
- linux users, there might be a permission issue with the folders. Install the gtkrc file in the theme folder in Gimp's user profile, right click the file and make sure the permissions box is checked. Fire up Gimp, change the theme and all should be well.

Screenshot:

Thanks K1te, I'll wait for your input! (:

Well sorry for the where-to-put, I almost mentioned at first where to put the folder but because people use various builds of gimp, I wasn't sure how to safely lead them to the correct theme folder...

Now thank you for the feeback but actually you doesn't see what I see, well you see only a part of it actually your screen cap' show that your gimp version doesn't have the engine (libmurrine.dll) I used to draw widgets, compare with my screenshot, so you're in the case where you have to download the dll I attached in the first post and place it in the folder ...\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\engines then restart gimp to apply.

Oh and please tell me which gimp version you use (I assume its the sourceforge installer version?) so I can reproduce what's going wrong.


theoretically, you shouldn't have to replace any present gtkrc, my zip file contains a folder and it is this folder that has to be placed in theme folder, like any theme already present in your build. Wait, I think I see what's wrong you unzipped and ended up with only a file not a folder with a file inside, right ?

Looks good in the screenshots, and surprisingly easy to read for a darkish theme, nice work.
Can't use it myself as I'm running Linux here.

Thanks, I hope it will be as readable as it seems to be, if you try it !
Well, I removed the note about linuxians in my first post, as I realize I have honestly no idea how you can install this theme, it may be simple or not I just don't know, all I know is that you need mist engine and murrine engine, I think you don't need to have mist and murrine themes but only their engines, and specifically a recent build of murrine, you should find it on https://git.gnome.org/browse/murrine/

Ok, I'll install it to see what happens
Edit: Okay, I installed sourceforge gimp and there are surprisingly only 2 engines included: wimp and pixmap, so I'm attaching now the missing mist engine dll in my first post and set it as required.
Edit2: Unfortunately sourceforge gimp doesn't want to detect any engine, I've tried several themes and they all look "engineless" so the widgets are inevitably drawn in the old windows 98 fashion, this is quite frustrating.

90% sure that it shouldn't be an issue


Ok, issue solved

Let's try something if you will, try it if placing mist and murrine dlls in your engine folder doesn't change anything, open my gtkrc and modify the line 124
from this

Code: Select all

engine "mist"      # why mist ? go to combobox style to understand..

to this

Code: Select all

engine "murrine"   # why mist ? go to combobox style to understand..

and tell me if widgets changed. useless to try, because of sourceforge gimp not detecting any engines, right now I'm clueless for sourceforge gimp users.

Thanks for the info about the theme engines, but they're are already installed - which I don't think they are - or I don't need them.
I dropped the gtkrc file into my gimp users profile theme folder but that didn't work, it was a no show under preferences/themes. So I pasted it into the usr/share/Gimp/ 2.0 theme folder and that worked. I had to create a folder called Blue via the terminal first, this goes in Gimp's 2.0 theme folder, and then open it as administrator so that I could paste the gtkrc file into it.
The theme looks good, but it's a massive change from what I'm used to, a bright silver/grey theme. I will stay with it for a while and see if it grows on me.
Thanks for this, anarkhya.

Hey, excellent, it works, all engines functional !

Seeing how you and k1te fight a bit with folders, I guess I made a wrong move in compressing the gtkrc instead of making a folder (in fact, I assumed that the user would automatically extract the zip towards a folder, not extract the content as a file), So I'm attaching another zip with folder in it this time.

Please, tell me your gimp version, so I can mark yours as ok

And if you feel like something need to be adjusted, widgets, contrast, colors, just tell me (:

I'm running Gimp 2.8.4 on Linux Mint. I do find the tool icons a little bit on the small side, they are slightly bigger if I use the default theme, but not by much, and the dodge/burn tool icon is very hard to see, but that's by virtue of the fact that it's set against a dark background. Apart from those couple of little things everything looks fine.
I don't know if you plan to publish this theme for general release but I think there might be a lot of Linux users who would appreciate it. As far as I can tell the Gimp theme is set by the theme that Linux uses, and I think that a lot of folk would like to use a different Gimp theme but can't find any - the windows themes don't appear to work - or a way to do it. So maybe a Linux download with some instructions on where the gtkrc file goes would make some folk happy. Your choice though.

Official gimp on Linux mint, ok thanks!

- Tool icons size, can you post a real size screenshot for me to compare because I think that these icons should be of same size than those of gimp default theme, what might confuse the eye is that I set the padding narrower in my theme.

- dodge/burn tool, yes I see it now, I know a workaround though, I can use pixmap to import and replace any gimp icon, in fact that could have been the second phase of my theming process, changing the too white-ish icons that flashes too much against dark bg but I'm still unsure as I'm afraid of the performance hit if I import too many icons.

- linux world, yes, publishing also for linux users is planned (in fact when learning to build this theme I spent hours reading and downloading on gnome-look.org), I was a bit afraid about how this theme would interact with linux OS theme, but as seen in your screenshot everything seems fine with your distro so I may expect the same result with other distros around.

The reason I think the icons are smaller is because with the default theme there are only four icons across each row of the tool box window, as can be seen in the screenshot above. In the dark theme there are five icons on each row. I could be wrong and maybe the tool box is wider in the default theme, in all honesty I'm not sure though.



One other thing I've noticed, and it's a small point again, the paths tab in the layers window is quite difficult to see. I don't see this as a problem for experienced users as they already know where the tab is but for new users it might prove hard to find.

It's good to hear that this will be available for Linux users, I'm sure they will appreciate it.

Ok, I can confirm with your screenshot that toolbox icons are of the same size, it's only an illusion created by the narrower margins between each icons.

Path icon on notebooks, indeed, noted. Now I'll try to import new path and dodge/burn icons to enhance readability then I'll comeback with an updated gtkrc, thanks again !

Updated with:
- new path icon in DockBook (tabs)
- new dodge/burn icon in ToolPalette (toolbox)
To reflect readability improvements suggested by Caz.

The path tab and dodge/burn tool are much clearer now, I had some trouble installing it though. Just dropping the nocturne-blue folder into the user/share/gimp/themes folder won't work, not for me anyway. First off I had to make a new folder via the terminal in the themes folder, then within that folder I had to make a new folder called images for the new path and dodge/burn tool icons to go into. All the permissions where denied on the original downloaded version and so Gimp wasn't able to read them, without making new folders from scratch there was no way that I could find to make the theme work.
I thought I would post this in case it's of help to anyone else trying to install the theme.

Good to know, indeed, I'll note this one even if I have absolutely no idea why transferring files from win to linux would create a permission issue.

Okay, I did one final experiment to see if there is an easier way to install the theme in Linux and there is.
Install the gtkrc file in the theme folder in Gimp's user profile, right click the file and make sure the permissions box is checked. Fire up Gimp, change the theme and all should be well. A much more straight forward way than the method I used before.