GIMP - a free world class digital photo editor
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program - is one of the best photo editors in the world. It is free software and by that we mean free as in speech, not in beer, and you can do what the heck you like with it. It is far more customisable than any other photo editor and it's sheer power comes from it's user community who are always writing and contributing free plug-ins and scripts to make GIMP do even more that what it does straight out of the box
GIMP is designed for editing photographs and it also used for creating web site graphics. It does what it says on the tin and there is no confusion about what it is and what it isn't. It has a simplicity of purpose but it is a real powerhouse in terms of the flexibility it offers in meeting the needs of the increasing number of Photographers who are now are using GIMP for professional work
With GIMP you get all the tools you need to turn ordinary photographs into extraordinary pieces of digital art and with it's drawing tools you can use it for digital painting, sketching, diagramming and creating full blown web pages
GIMP has one or two minor limitations that are always highlighted in the online GIMP v Photoshop wars but these are of no concern to me personally and it is enough to say that if GIMP was not good then there would be no need for these silly phoney wars. There, I've mentioned Photoshop but don't expect to hear any more about it. This is about GIMP pure and simple
GIMP started out as a college project and is currently written and maintained by volunteers. You are encouraged to share it with your mates and join any of the online communities where gimpers, as they are known, talk about all the things they use the program for. Many of these people found GIMP after trying out other photo editors and fell in love with it. Some even hated the thought of using GIMP owing to it's supposedly crap user interface but after they sat down and tried for more that 5 minutes they copped on that GIMP's interface and usability is in fact superior to other photo editors
So lets get to the point. What does it have that makes it a serious contender for the worlds best photo editor? Well here is a wee list of GIMP features to begin with:
GIMP 2.6 Features
- Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux Computers
- Colour Management
- Layers and Channels
- Drawing Tools - create you own or use photoshop brushes
- Selection Tools - Rectangle, Ellipse, By colour, Fuzzy select
- Transformation tools - rotate, shear, flip and scale
- Colour tools - Replace, Balance, Hue-Saturation, Brightness-contrast, Levels
- Filters - Lighting effects, Artistic, Rendering, Enhancement, Noise, Blur, Distort and so on
- Animation
- File Handling - jpeg, tiff, png, psd, xcf, bmp, pdf, svg and more
A new version of GIMP (version 2.8) is planned for release in the first quarter of 2011 and it will have some great new features:
GIMP 2.8 Features
- Improved user interface within a single window (optional of course)
- Layer groups - a great new feature for web developers
- Rotatable Brushes
- Improved brush dynamics
- Support for 16 bit RAW import
- Non destructive editing of high bit depth images
GIMP just gets better all the time and by the time version 2.8 hits the streets you can expect more people to use it as their first choice editor for digital photography and web page graphics. It takes time to master for sure but that is only to be expected from such a capable and flexible graphics editor. In the hands of a real craftsman GIMP has the ability to do everything rival applications can do and then some.
GIMP links
GIMP home page download gimp
GIMP review on CNET
Meet the GIMP Video Tutorials - hint, search using the tag cloud in the sidebar
GIMP tutorial site
GIMP user community