Do you like the idea of tinkering with images and cleaning up your family vacation photos, but find the price for Adobe Photoshop to be a bit too steep? Have you always liked the idea of open source software, but never really had the opportunity to become competent with it? If so, it may be time for you to download GIMP. It’s open source, free to download online, has a cute little mascot named Wilbur, and it’s good for all the basic tasks of photo editing and more. And if you want to move on to something a step further, look into the free 3D graphics application Blender.
The first release of GIMP came in 1996, protected under the GNU general public license, and since then, an active community users has formed. Though developed for UNIX, it is now available for all major operating systems, though some have noted a bit of performance lag on MAC OS. It comes standard on several distributions of Linux. It can store or import using a wide variety of file formats, and has it’s own file format, XCF, that will store all the GIMP specific information about an image as well.
Because the licensing explicitly allows anyone to use the source code as they see fit, there are several variants available, all still open source and free. Some of them mimic the interface of Photoshop so that it’s easier for users to transition between the two programs. Others seek to improve the adaptation of the program to MAC OS, or to create a version that can be played with on mobile devices. GIMP paint studio is a variant for graphic designers, which includes a variety of tools, and a greater ability to save settings and when you combine it with the free program 7 Zip you can compress and share your files easily. It generally helps with repetitive tasks. Cinepaint allows you to retouch film one frame at a time. The Animation Package is an advanced plugin package that enhances the program’s animation capacities. So far, all 64-bit versions are experimental.