Sunday, October 12, 2025

How to draw arrow in GIMP using plugin

GIMP is a great image editing program that allows us to alter images and better convey our intentions. I like using GIMP for tasks such as resizing, changing formats, or cropping images. In this article, I will explain how to draw an arrow in GIMP.

First, download the arrow.zip which contains two Scheme script files. There should be 3 files in total. Below is a summary of the files:

  • ArrowScriptNotes.pdf : description of the arrow.
  • arrow.scm            : Scheme script file for gimp version 2.x
  • arrow_V3.scm         : Scheme script file for gimp version 3.x
Depending on your GIMP installation, copy the appropriate file to the GIMP script directory and then make it executable. For example , I'm using GIMP version 3.0.4-3 so I would do the following:

$ cp arrow_V3.scm $HOME/.config/GIMP/3.0/scripts
$ chmod 770 $HOME/.config/GIMP/3.0/scripts/arrow_V3.scm
$ # for GIMP version 2.x
$ # cp arrow_V3.scm $HOME/.config/GIMP/2.10/scripts

Restart GIMP if it is already running. I also created a YouTube video demonstrating how to draw an arrow using this plugin.