Introduction to GIMP
Get To Know this Powerful Open-Source Image Editing Program
Do you wish you could afford a high-end image editor? Do you want to be able to touch up photos before you post them online? This free program is your answer.
Need a high-end image editor but don't want to pay big bucks for Photoshop? Try GIMP. It's powerful, easy to use, and best of all, it's free.
The letters of the name stand for GNU Image Manipulation Program. GNU itself is an open-source computer operating system. It is also an ambitious project and a deeply felt cause, created by a community of software designers who believe that open-source software is the truest way to realize the original promise of the internet. To learn more about their ongoing creation, and all the GNU programs, you can visit the Wikipedia entry on GNU.
What Can GIMP Do?
GIMP can do nearly all that Adobe Photoshop can do. You won’t notice the differences between these two programs unless you are a graphics professional, and in that case you likely have access to Photoshop anyway.
GIMP can do almost anything you can imagine to a photograph: Its most exciting capabilities for the non-professional user lie in how it can select complex areas of an image and then edit them. You can take a photo of the car you’re trying to sell, and remove the distracting background. You can rescue over- and under-exposed snapshots. You can sharpen small photos before you post them online, and you can choose one single part of a photo and put it against a transparent background. In fact, this program can do so very much that it can be daunting to a novice user. But you can get comfortable with it surprisingly quickly.
Why Isn’t GIMP Famous?
Open-source software, of course, does not have an advertising budget. It relies on word of mouth. The early versions of GIMP were not easy to download or to use, and its devotees had to be way more computer-savvy than the average user. However, GIMP’s creators are continuously simplifying and updating it, and the program is now easily accessible to anyone who is familiar with the basics of how to move files around in their computer.
One Trick for Success with GIMP
Do not be intimidated by the parts you don’t understand. You can gain a working knowledge of a few basic tools and enjoy great success with GIMP, just by using about 5 percent of its capacity.
How Do I Download GIMP?
When you go to the GIMP website, it gives you a couple of downloading options. As mentioned above, do not be put off when you encounter peculiar computer geek-speak such as “tarballs” and “mirrors”. Just follow the link they recommend to the page where you can download a working version of the newest stable release.
In that page, there are two steps to the complete download:
1) Click on the word "download" in the lower left corner of the grey blue box at the top of the page, which is entitled "GIMP for Windows, version 2.4.2"
2) Scroll all the way to the bottom of the second grey-blue box, which is entitled "Gimp Help 2 (version 0.13). At the very bottom of the box, click on the word "download" which is for English language only.
Is This a Safe Download?
Yes, it is entirely free of adware and malware. Gimp is not supported by any type of advertising. It is purely a cooperative effort at engineering software which can be used entirely free.
Are There Simple GIMP Tutorials?
Further GIMP tutorials will be provided here on Suite 101 in the near future.
