GIMP. The best things in life are free.

Published on February 7, 2004 By kongit In WinCustomize News

From GIMP's website:
"This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

* Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone,etc.
* Tile based memory managent so image size is limited only by available disk space.
* Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
* Full alpha channel support
* Layers and channels
* A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
* Advanced scripting capabilities
* Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
* Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
* Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool.
* Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format.
* Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.
* File formats supported include gif, jpg, png, xpm, tiff, tga, mpeg, ps, pdf, pcx, bmp, and many others.
* Load, display, convert, save to many file formats.
* Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent.
* Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.
* Over 100 plugins already available.
* Supports custom brushes and patterns
* Much, much more! "
http://www.gimp.org/the_gimp.html

At first the interface is confusing, but after you figure out the right click menu and the selection quirks you should be set.

Carey Bunks "Grokking The Gimp" is very good: http://www.gimp-savvy.com/
but as I write this its website is down for repairs due to a hard drive crash.

other good places to learn more about GIMP are:
http://gug.sunsite.dk/
http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/
http://www.rru.com/~meo/gimp/

Now GIMP to your heart's content.

Comments

Aleatoric

on Feb 08, 2004

Here's a link to the development version of gimp, ported to windows. Much improved UI, and quite a few new features.

Still under development, so may not be quite as stable, but it works well for me

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html

kongit

on Feb 08, 2004

wow that is much nicer.

Needmorezelda

on Feb 08, 2004

I, personally, do not like The GIMP. I found it hard to work with, largely because of it having no "real" window, but rather a bunch of seperate windows that you must bring up individually. I like having a large "container" window with all of my seperate graphic files in, with toolbars & tool windows spread around in. Another problem I have with The GIMP is how it's Linux based, so it doesn't have most of the common Windows keyboard shortcuts. I just don't like the layout at all. I find it confusing & hard to work with. I can't say how much it compares to Photoshop in terms of image quality & flexability, because I couldn't get around the horrible layout.

Use it if you like it, otherwise go get Photoshop (or Paint Shop Pro for a [much] cheaper alternative).

Drop125

on Feb 08, 2004

Okay that install is scaring the hell out of me..No thanks..

monde

on Feb 08, 2004

Gimp would be a lot more useable if it just had a menu bar like every other program instead of that galling right-click centered interface. I know, I know you can tear off the menus, but then I have torn-off menus lying all over the place which really gets in the way of whatever I am working on. Photoshop is still the only program with that wonderful "Fade Undo" feature - and that keeps me pretty much glued to it as a graphics editor. But if Gimp took PS plugins AND got rid of the right-click interface and replaced it with something more conventional in useability, then I'd actually be able to make the leap once in for all and get out of Bill Gates' Empire - which I really want to do, and would if not for my need for a graphics editor that makes sense and is featureful.

Aleatoric

on Feb 08, 2004

Actually, I use both (not that I'm all that good

). Photoshop still gets the final nod, just because it can do quite a bit more, especially as regards to printing (which is what I do for the most part).

I don't mind the right click interface, but gimp 2 (the development version) also has a standard menu bar on the image editing window.

BTW, you can use PS plugins with Gimp (I don't know for sure if every one works, but I have used quite a few of them with good success).

Thing is, unless you need the PS specific features (or are used to PS, and / or don't mind the cost of PS), then the gimp is an excellent choice for a graphics editor, and it's improving quite solidly as it goes.

kongit

on Feb 09, 2004

I agree that ps is better than gimp, but for the price of gimp (free) its hard to complain about it.

smoke-tetsu

on Feb 09, 2004

I myself like how The GIMP has seperate windows rather than being in an MDI window. It makes it more like the mac version of PS. Although if PS got an option to put a full screen MDI with a transparent (to the desktop) background that is objectbar compatible I wouldn't complain.

One other reason why I like The GIMP is it's bezier selection tool. It's like the lasso, except you can adjust the curve to make perfectly curvey well... curves. Check out tigert.gimp.org for examples on art that you can make using this with The GIMP's other tools.

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