Gimpinator EX — Installation Instructions

GIMP 3.x plugin · rebuilt and corrected 24 Oct 2026

What it does

Gimpinator EX lets you generate AI images directly inside GIMP from a text prompt. It supports two backends:

• Stable Horde — free, community-run, just needs an API key.
• Local — advanced; needs your own image-generation server already running on your machine.

Installation

1. Download the plugin

Download gimpinator_ex.zip

2. Unzip and move it into place

Extract the ZIP to your GIMP plug-ins folder:

• Windows: C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\GIMP\3.0\plug-ins
• Linux / macOS: ~/.config/GIMP/3.0/plug-ins/

This creates a folder named gimpinator_ex inside the plug-ins folder. Keep that exact folder name — GIMP needs it to find the plugin.

Inside that folder you should have:

• gimpinator_ex.py
• gimpinator_config.json (optional)

3. Unblock the files (Windows)

Right-click each file → Properties → uncheck "Read-only" → click "Unblock" if that button is there → Apply. Do this for every file in the folder. Windows sometimes flags downloaded files as untrusted, which can quietly stop GIMP from loading them.

4. Get a free Stable Horde API key

1. Go to stablehorde.net
2. Click "Login" (top right) and sign in with Discord, GitHub, or another method
3. Click your username, then "Account"
4. Copy your API key from there

5. Save the API key into the config file

Open gimpinator_config.json in Notepad (or another text editor) and replace "your-key-here" with your real API key:

{ "api_key": "your-key-here", "default_model": "SDXL", "default_sampler": "k_dpmpp_2m" }

Save it with that exact filename, in the same gimpinator_ex folder.

6. Install Python (if you don't already have it)

Go to python.org/downloads, install Python 3.10 or higher, and check "Add Python to PATH" during setup.

7. Install the required package

Open Command Prompt and run:

pip install requests

If "pip" isn't recognized, Python isn't on your PATH yet — reinstall it and make sure "Add Python to PATH" is checked, then restart your computer.

8. Try it

Restart GIMP. Open an image, then go to Filters → Gimpinator → Gimpinator EX. Type a prompt, leave Backend as "horde", and click OK.

Advanced notes

The "Local" backend is for advanced users only. It expects an image-generation server you're already running, listening on http://127.0.0.1:8000/generate and returning a path to the generated image. If that doesn't mean anything to you, use Horde instead.

Tested on: GIMP 3.0 with Python 3.13 on Windows 11.

24 Oct 2026: earlier versions of this plugin required typing your Windows username into the plugin file by hand, had dialog fields that were locked and couldn't be changed, and included two backends (Recraft, AIML) that never worked. All of that has been fixed — see the repo for details.

Gimpinator EX is based on the original Gimpinator plugin by PCOW, licensed under the MIT License. Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.