Interface

GIMP – which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program – was first released by two Berkeley students in 1996 and since then, this free open-source program has matured into a powerful professional image editor. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems including Linux, UNIX, Windows and Mac. It's developed a fairly large user base over the years and it has been ported to multiple platforms, including Windows. The latest release, The GIMP 2.0, has a completely revamped interface that makes it a more legitimate player in the world of mainstream image editors – competing mainly on its price, even though it still lacks some of the high-end features available on other professional image editors.

The last generation of GIMP has many of the features you get in an application like Adobe Photoshop such as layers, channels, paths, and a wide range of painting tools. It is refreshing to see what GIMP has done in the way of palettes. First off, the new tabbed palettes are nestable and dockable, making GIMP more streamlined while also making more efficient use of screen space. A Histogram palette displays a constantly updated graph of the brightness levels in the current image, and a handy Navigation palette helps you steer your way through an image when you've zoomed in to work on details. Meanwhile, the new Fonts palette lets you choose a typeface for use with GIMP's new editable text tool.

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 course the common Linux picture file formats as well. 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 a professional quality package aimed at the more experienced user. It is unquestionably a power packed tool that competes on the level of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photopaint without the hefty price tag – or rather without any price tag at all.