Gimp Free image manipulation program

	Gimp - Free image manipulation program
	Discussion by hanorotu with 14 Replies. Last Update: February 20, 2011, 12:18 pm

hanorotu

The GNU Image manipulation program (GIMP) is a free software raster graphics editor. It strongly resembles photoshop. You can download photoshop brushes online and use them for GIMP. I use GIMP to make high resolution pictures and edit camera taken ones. It is very easy to use. Just about anything you can do in photoshop you can do in GIMP.

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Mon Jun 15, 2009 Reply New Discussion

akashi

yep, I've used it before. But not all of us need such software, especially when you just need to resize, crop, etc. You can try faststone which is (maybe) similar to ACDsee. Visit their site at :

http://faststone.org/

You can also put frame, batch process, etc using this software.

Tue Jun 16, 2009 Reply New Discussion

wutske

It's not extactly true that the GIMP can do everything that Photoshop can, it's for example not possible to apply effects to layers as a mask (non destructive way of adding effects). Photoshop is also a lot more powerfull, supporting nvidia CUDA to speed up things by using the shaders from the graphics card(s).

Even tough it's definitly not as powerfull and enhanced as photoshop, it's still a nice and free (!) program for editing photos.

Tue Jun 16, 2009 Reply New Discussion

TavoxPeru

I agree with wutske, The Gimp can't do every thing that Photoshop can, but still it is an excellent software that i used in the past, one thing that i don't like about it is the way it organizes the user data.

Also, i agree with akashi, for simple image manipulation tasks like color adjusting, cropping or resizing images you don't need that kind of software, is enough to do this tasks with software like ACDsee, IrfanView or Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

BTW, i will try the FastStone software you suggest.

Best regards,

Wed Jun 17, 2009 Reply New Discussion

takerraj

GIMP has been a big puzzle ever I started to use it. I never understood those technical stuff like brushing, gradient..... I rarely use it but most of the times I stick to Irfanview.

Wed Jun 17, 2009 Reply New Discussion

wutske

QUOTE (takerraj)

GIMP has been a big puzzle ever I started to use it. I never understood those technical stuff like brushing, gradient..... I rarely use it but most of the times I stick to Irfanview.
Link: view Post: 137688

If you don't understand it, it means you don't need it and apps like Irfanview are what you need.
The GIMP becomes usefull compared to other application when you need to work with layers (like putting some images on top of each other and still being able to edit every image apart).

@TavoxPeru: Faststone has some great applications, I use both MaxView (image viewer, much faster than windows preview and has some basic color adjustments + it works with RAW images) and ImageResizer (batch image resizing, cropping, adjusting (very basic), watermarking, ...). Both are free and work excelent !

Wed Jun 17, 2009 Reply New Discussion

TavoxPeru

QUOTE (wutske)

Yeap, i just download and install both applications and in both cases work very well, i just test the watermarking functionality to see how well does it works and the results are great.

Best regards,

Wed Jun 17, 2009 Reply New Discussion

surfermac

gimp is like an advanced version of paint brush and does not hold all the capabilities of the Adobe photoshop
Adobe photoshop is a lot more superior software when compared to gimp
I use both of them so i prefer gimp for drawing and photoshop for editing it

Fri Aug 14, 2009 Reply New Discussion

infotornix

I uses paint dot net.
It has some features like photoshop,well just a little upgrade version off gimpp.
But if you are want some really good work use photoshop cs5 awesome is the word for it.

Fri Feb 18, 2011 Reply New Discussion

grim reaper1666

i personally find gimp to be too complicated when you compare it to programs such as firefox, which perform the same functionaltily but quicker and alot of people like the idea of being able to do things quickly. but i think for general purposes gimp is ok. and a good thing is by having more than one monitor you can put all of the different window things from gimp on different screens. this frees up your image modification space and also allows you to access different tools quicker than you would if you only had the one monitor.

Fri Feb 18, 2011 Reply New Discussion

Ahsaniqbal111

QUOTE (grim reaper1666)

did you mean mozilla firefox? I didn't get it. Mozilla firefox is not an image editor. Its an internet browser. How can you compare firefox with GIMP. Its like comparing computers with oranges.

Sat Feb 19, 2011 Reply New Discussion

yordan

QUOTE (Ahsaniqbal111)

did you mean mozilla firefox? I didn't get it. Mozilla firefox is not an image editor. Its an internet browser. How can you compare firefox with GIMP. Its like comparing computers with oranges.
Link: view Post: 152892

You are right : you can eat on orange, you should not try to eat a computer !

Besides that, maybe this guy was talking about the image rising plugins for Firefox ? Zooming for instance is sometimes interesting when you are surfing on a website where a small detail could be interesting but should be enlarged.

Sat Feb 19, 2011 Reply New Discussion

Ahsaniqbal111

QUOTE (yordan)

You are right : you can eat on orange, you should not try to eat a computer !

There might be a lot of plugins for firefox but after all the genre is different. If I put an LCD screen on my orange, it would give reflections similar to all other LCD screens but is never going to give display like them. So no matter how much plugins are developed, firefox would remain an internet browser and is never going to be converted into an image editor.

Sun Feb 20, 2011 Reply New Discussion

grim reaper1666

i meant fireworks sorry.

Sun Feb 20, 2011 Reply New Discussion

wutske

QUOTE (grim reaper1666)

i meant fireworks sorry.
Link: view Post: 152904

You're kidding, Fireworks is like the most crappy photo editing software I've every used before. Plus you can't compare the Gimp with Fireworks since it's not fair comparison. The GIMP is a (free) Photoshop alternative, trying to offer the most interesting things from Photoshop, but at no cost.
Fireworks is more like the basic image editing program of which there are 13 in a dozen (and it's a crappy one too).

Besides that, I do like the GIMP for doing some more 'advanced' stuff like playing with layers, brushes, effects, ... but it's definately not suited for doing simple 1...2...3... edit because it does take a while to start the application. For that there are much better applications with a much smaller footprint (like for example, Paint.Net, which also offers layer and some nice filters, is a lot faster, but imho isn't as handy to work with because I'm not used to it

Sun Feb 20, 2011 Reply New Discussion