Software Sunday: Gimp

Maybe it's an unfortunate name, but it certainly isn't an unfortunate application.  GIMP actually stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.  If there was ever an understatement, it is, "but it's much more than that".

This is one of those programs that, it is really unfair to compare it to commercial products, such as Photoshop.  The reason being, because GIMP really is as good, and better, than it's commercial counterpart.

In this week's Software Sunday, we will examine how that bold statement can actually be made.

First, let's just get the "better" out of the way.  GIMP, like most Open Source software packages, is completely free.  As in freedom AND beer.  We will move on to the "is as good" part.

If you have invested in Photoshop plugins, chances are, you might be able to use them with GIMP.

Now, the image to the left may not have used plugins from a different raster graphics program, but it certainly was made with GIMP.  If you like that work, check out other images from this artist that are made with GIMP.  There are many, very talented artists that are using this free, Open Source program to create professional quality images from scratch, as well as to manipulate digitized photos or other graphics.

GIMP started life in 1996 and was already a good quality application, which has only become better with age.  GIMP has the (shortened) following features, as described in the introduction page:
This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features. You can also have a look at the illustrated features overview.

• Painting
  • Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
  • Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
• Advanced Manipulation
  • Full alpha channel support
  • Layers and channels
  • Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
  • Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
• Animation
  • Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
  • MNG support
  • Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
• File Handling
  • File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
  • Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
  • SVG path import/export
• Much, much more!

As shown in the picture on the right, GIMP is able to touch up and manipulate photos (as described above) and also create photorealistic images.

As indicated on the wikipedia article for GIMP, it is not just able to run on Linux, OS/X, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and AmigaOS 4, but it is available in 52 languages with 37 full translations.

OK, it probably is necessary to put in the one, most important disclaimer in this article about GIMP.  It WILL NOT make you a good photo editor or graphics artist.  Sorry.

Joking aside, if you are used to, and prefer, simply image editing programs with only a select few, easy manipulation menu items and buttons, then this application is not for you.  This is a full function tool which consists of a professional grade toolset, including at least two separate window frames, not included the window frame of the image you are working on.

On the other hand, if you are ready to really get deep into professional grade photo and image creation, manipulation, and editing, then get GIMP and enjoy.