A Photoshop competitor for free! (Gimp)

Name: Galloway

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Product:	Gimp
Date:	17/08/01 (5039 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, Powerful, Professional Quality

Disadvantages: , No Documentation, Incomplete help files

Gimp is a free image program for Linux systems. GNU Image Manipulation Program (Gimp) is the premier Image editing and painting software available for Linux under the GPL open source licence.

When Gimp opens, it starts off in two or three separate boxes or windows, scattered freely across the desktop, not tied to within one overall window as many ‘Microsoft Windows’ applications are. The amount of boxes at start-up varies in slightly newer and slightly older versions.

One box contains the usual tools, zoom, crop, resize image, perspectives, fill, draw, paintbrushes etc, another has a list of layers, colour channels and paths. An image will open in a separate window. With a potential for half a dozen open boxes and windows on screen at once, the higher the screen resolution the better.
Gimp is not only an Image Editor; it is also a full Drawing and Painting program as well.

So what features does it offer, well a full suite of painting tools including, brushes, a pencil, airbrushes, colour fills and sampling and cloning.
Anti-aliasing, yes its not just used for games. Full alpha channel support, transparencies and layering.
Transforming tools include rotation, which allows rotation of the image to any angle, scale and shear. The usual cross platform file formats are supported, as well as Microsoft ones and of coarse the common Linux picture file formats as well.
Bezier curves, smudging and measuring distances and angles.

Once an image is loaded, right clicking on it brings up a menu giving access to a range of new tools and special effects. There’s layer control, a huge range of filters for adding distortions such as engrave, emboss, scratches, ripples etc, artistic effects like canvases and oil painting effects and glass effects plus loads more.
Bump mapping is supported, as is the capability of adding lighting effects. Full control over all effects is they’re making this a very powerful
program.

Animation tools are included as well as a set of video editing tools. Making it excellent for creating animations and for editing home movies.

Gimp is not aimed at the beginner, it is a professional quality package aimed at the more experienced user. On the version I currently run (version 1.1.25) the help index is not complete, so don’t expect the help files to always be of much help or any help at all as is often the case, nor will the program hold your hand in any way as you use it.
If you are used to using professional quality image software you will no doubt understand what most of the features do and how to use them, but otherwise understand that this is a free program so no documentation is supplied for it and you are realistically on your own.

This program is unquestionably a power packed; it competes on the level of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photopaint, packages that cost hundreds of pounds to buy for a Microsoft windows system, and yes its free and that good.
If you are after this level of software its worth installing Linux just to use it, especially as a full major Linux Distribution costs around £30 and will most usually include Gimp in it, not to mention getting it of a magazine disk for even less.

Update:
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The Gimp is now also availiable for Windows. It is also free and is a complete port of the Linux version. It runs happily on Windows 95,98 and ME and so far it has been stable while I have been using it. Download from the same website.

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