GIMP Gradient file format (.ggr)

GGR files are used to store GIMP gradients. A gradient consists of a series of consecutive segments spanning the range from 0.0 to 1.0. Each segment has the following attributes:

Left Endpoint coordinate: (double)
Left Endpoint color (RGBA color)
Right Endpoint coordinate (double)
Right Endpoint color (RGBA color)
Midpoint coordinate (double)
Blending function (enum; values are:
                   0 = "linear"
                   1 = "curved"
                   2 = "sinusoidal"
                   3 = "spherical (increasing)"
                   4 = "spherical (decreasing)"
                   5 = "step")
Coloring type (enum; values are:
               0 = "RGB"
               1 = "HSV CCW"
               2 = "HSV CW")
Left and right Endpoint Color type (enum; values are:
                                    0 = "fixed"
                                    1 = "foreground",
                                    2 = "foreground transparent"
                                    3 = "background",
                                    4 = "background transparent")

A GGR file is an ASCII file structured as follows:

Line 1: "GIMP Gradient"
Line 2: "Name: " followed by the name of the gradient
Line 3: the number of segments

The remaining lines consist of segment specifications. There must be one line for each segment. Each line contains 15 numbers – the first 11 are floats, the remaining 4 are ints. Here is what each field encodes:

Field      Meaning
  0          Left endpoint coordinate
  1          Midpoint coordinate
  2          Right endpoint coordinate
  3          Left endpoint R
  4          Left endpoint G
  5          Left endpoint B
  6          Left endpoint A
  7          Right endpoint R
  8          Right endpoint G
  9          Right endpoint B
 10          Right endpoint A
 11          Blending function type
 12          Coloring type
 13          Left endpoint color type
 14          Right endpoint color type

The left endpoint coordinate of each segment must equal the right endpoint coordinate of the preceding segment.

Note 1: This is a description of the new gradient file format. In earlier versions of GIMP a different format was used.

Note 2: In GIMP versions prior to 2.3.11 the file format didn’t contain the color types of the endpoints, thus it was impossible to get the behavior of the special “FG to BG” etc. gradients in custom gradients.

Note 3: Starting with version 2.1, GIMP now has the ability to load gradients in SVG gradient format, if the file is placed in the user’s personal “gradients” directory, or some other location in the gradients search path.