How to Organize Your Brushes in GIMP Using Tags

Tags are an easy way to organize your brushes in GIMP, and this guide shows you how to do so.

Thanks to plugins, add-ons, and a deep level of customization, GIMP is a staple of many power user's workflow. The open-source photo editing app has many tools that even long-term users might not always be aware of.

With that in mind, let's talk about GIMP's tagging system and how it can be used to level up your workflow.

Tags are essentially custom filters for everything in GIMP. And when we say everything, we aren't exaggerating (much). Brushes, gradients, fonts, palettes, and more can be organized by as few or as many tags as you'd like them to be. With any number of extra assets like fonts, brushes, and pallettes able to be downloaded and installed easily, keeping things organized is key.

Also, note that while we'll be using the Brushes dialog specifically for this tutorial, any dialog that contains the filter entry at the top can be organized in exactly the same manner.

There is one primary difference with the Brushes dialog, and it's the reason we are using it as our example in our tutorial. Unlike the other dialogs, it already has a few tags made and assigned out of the box. You can tell this by the inclusion of a drop-down arrow on the right.

These tags, Basic, Fun, Legacy, Media, Sketch, Splatters, and Texture, serve as a perfect starting point to talk about using and making your own tags in GIMP.

Let's start by opening our Brushes dialog. If your GIMP doesn't show the Brushes dialog, you can show it by clicking on Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Brushes.

Note that depending on how you've customized your own GIMP setup, your Brushes dialog may not look exactly like the one below. But don't worry. It won't change the steps that we take in creating tags.

Now that we have the Brushes dialog open, click on a few brushes while paying attention to the labels along the bottom and how they change as you browse. This is where we assign, create, or change our tags.

Our label for that brush should now show "Fun" and "Splatters", separated by a comma.

As we saw above, there is no limit to the number of tags you can assign to a brush. So let's add some custom tags that we'll then use to sort our brushes in the next section.

If we've done everything correctly, the tags on our three brushes should look similar to those in the screenshot.

So now that we have our brushes tagged, how do we make use of them? For this, we use the filters drop-down at the top of the dialog.

Functionally, filtering tags works in the same way as creating them. You can either bring up the existing list and select individual tags by clicking on them. Or you can type the tag in the box itself and hit enter to search.

So, why does the number of brushes decrease as you add more tags? The answer to that is that GIMP's tagging system is additive, something that can be confusing if you're not expecting it.

Basically, adding new tags won't show you brushes with ANY of those labels. Instead, it will show you brushes that have ALL of those labels. This can be a powerful tool to de-clutter your brush list, especially as it grows larger as you grow comfortable and learn how to download and install new brushes of your own.

GIMP's tagging system is one of its most powerful features, second only to the program's robust plugin ecosystem.

It receives very little fanfare or discussion when talking about GIMP's other strengths, like its plugins or its customizability.

Nonetheless, its scope, both in terms of how deeply you can narrow your tool lists—and in terms of working with the majority of GIMP's tools—makes it essential to upping your GIMP game to new levels.

Paul has trained as a video editor for the past five years in between his work as a writer, news reporter, photographer and voice talent at his local radio station before moving on to other endeavors.Experienced in DaVinci Resolve for the past three years, and the Adobe Creative Suite for more than a decade, Paul nevertheless spends the bulk of his time and expertise working with various Open Source tools such as Kdenlive, Scribus, GIMP and LibreOffice.