GIMP

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GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Ohloh Analysis Summary

Updated 17 May 2008 03:04 UTC

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Based on 180 user ratings.

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11 months ago Avatar
GIMP Lover

  by shakyone

I love digital photography, and I really like being able to do some advanced functions with digital images. I mainly take pictures of my children, and when I get a good picture that I decide to print I like to clean it up for the large print format. I hate having some piece of food on their face, or a slightly off-color image. I got tired of using Microsoft PictureIt! The software version I had was buggy and frustrating. It also had a ... [More] limited feature set. I felt cloning was a basic digital photo editing function, and hardly any basic photo editors have it as an available function. I was open to something better, however I was not in the mood to drop another hundred on software that may or may not work out. The IT guy at work mentioned trying GIMP. He knew of it, though he didn't use it himself.

Around 2003, I installed GIMP 2.01 on my PC, and abruptly got frustrated by the advanced interface. I gave it up for a month. I searched the web a little for tutorials, and I was not disappointed. I finally linked to the GIMP basics tutorials from the www.gimp.org website, and I was rolling.

Once I learned all the basics of resizing, cropping, and cloning, I was ready to expand my skill set with more advanced functions. After some more time learning and doing, I read through the GIMP user Manual. I downloaded the PDF and I was impressed at how much of a well written document it is for the GIMP user. I found the software even more usable after that.

Now I have learned most everything I wanted to get from photo editing, and I hardly scratch the surface of capabilities in the GIMP. Yet I continue to learn more, just to keep sharp and further improve my obsession. There is never a shortage of tutorials available from other users. I have enjoyed the images I created with it. My wife is extremely happy with how our pictures around the house look. I proved my ability enough to justify the move to the Digital SLR and the GIMP keeps up with the new gear just fine.

GIMP is not dumbed down for the novice photographer that wants to be a hacker at photo editing. You do have to do some homework to learn how to use it. Once you learn a few of the basics, it really starts to become a pleasure to use.

I highly recommend it to anyone willing to put a little effort into learning photo editing. If you are not willing to learn, stick to Google Picasa and its peers. Taking candid pictures of small children is a challenge. Usually I find the picture with the expression I wanted, but I rushed the picture so something had to be corrected before printing. I have learned that images reflect the effort you put into them. I now know what I want, and have the discerning eye that can appreciate good photography. GIMP enables me to take photo editing to the next level where my large prints look phenomenal on a wall. My co-workers are always impressed by my picture taking skills. I even have a competition (as lame as that sounds) going with another co-worker that sells his images as a side business. He pays for Adobe Photoshop and all the bells and whistles that go with it. I cannot justify that expense for a handful of large print and framed photos that we put on walls around the house. I seem to continue to impress him and a professional photographer friend of mine. GIMP is my friend, and I will continue to spread the word on its greatness whenever I can.

Also, if you do not administrator rights on your computer, download the portable version from www.portableapps.com. You can install most plugins to this one as well. Not to mention you can run it from either a USB drive, or a folder in "My Documents." Enjoy. [Less]

6 of 6 users found the following review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? |

5 months ago Avatar
GIMP is great for novices

    by Alison Heittman

I've been spreading the gospel of GIMP for years to novice website owners/updaters. GIMP is easy to obtain (providing your IT people don't block you!) and even easier to use. It contains the basics that are needed for quick and dirty image editing (resizing, cropping) for the web, and will keep an advanced user happy, too. GIMP is definitely a great complement to content management software, empowering anyone on a budget to be a more effective website manager.

1 of 2 users found the following review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? |

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    GIMP 2.5 Development Snapshot

    Posted about 1 month ago

    GIMP 2.5.0 is the first release from the 2.5 development series. It gives developers and interested users a view into the current development towards GIMP 2.6. If you want to give this release a try, please make sure you read the Release Notes for GIMP 2.5.

    GIMP User Manual 2.4.1 released

    Posted about 1 month ago

    A new release of the user manual is available:

    new translations: Lithuanian, Polish

    new content, spelling and grammar fixes for German, French, Italian, Norwegian, Korean, Spanish, Russian, English

    updated quick ... [More] reference translations: German, English, French, Russian, Swedish, Italian

    The source files of gimp-help-2.4.1 can be downloaded from ftp.gimp.org. You will notice that the tarball is a lot smaller than the previous releases as we optimized the screen-shots.

    Users should wait until this release has been packaged in a pre-compiled form for their platform. Find more information about our goals and how you can help at docs.gimp.org. [Less]

    Libre Graphics Meeting 2008

    Posted about 1 month ago

    The 3rd annual Libre Graphics Meeting will be held in Wrocław, Poland May 8 - 11. The conference brings together developers and users of free software graphics applications, such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, Krita, the Open Clipart Library ... [More] and more.

    We are trying to raise USD$ 20,000 in the next 16 days before Friday, April 18th in order to support the conference and to help developers with travel and accommodation costs. [Less]

    Libre Graphics Meeting 2008

    Posted about 1 month ago

    The 3rd annual Libre Graphics Meeting will be held in Wrocław, Poland May 8 - 11. The conference brings together developers and users of free software graphics applications, such as GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender, Krita, the Open Clipart Library ... [More] and more.

    We are trying to raise USD$ 20,000 in the next 16 days before Friday, April 18th in order to support the conference and to help developers with travel and accommodation costs. [Less]

    User Manual 2.4.1- Special Release

    Posted about 1 month ago

    After four months of hard work we are proud to announce a special release of the user manual for GIMP. This release features a significant change in the internationalization strategy of the user manual.

    This manual is entirely written in ... [More] Esperanto, including all screenshots.

    The releases for the manual became too large. In particular the large number of screen-shots of the same dialog in all the different languages consume a lot of space. Additionally, the various translations became hard to maintain. Rewriting the manual in one, universal language was the only way to solve those problems.

    The release can be downloaded from ftp.gimp.org. We encourage everyone to download this release, because it will only be available for download on 1st of April 2008. [Less]

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