No, this is not about the leather-clad freak from Pulp Fiction. The Gimp, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program, is a graphics editing tool similar to Adobe Photoshop. Originally created for Gnu/Linux, it has been ported to Windows and MacOS and is released under the Gnu General Public License.

Gimp Windows screenshot

First of all, I’m gonna make one thing clear: unlike what’s often claimed, The Gimp is not Photoshop! Although it is quite powerfull and has lots of features, it misses some of the most usefull things Photoshop has. One of these things are layer effects like bevel & emboss, drop shadows, glow, etcetera. Many of these effects can be replicated by other means or are available as macros, but it’s something that takes a bit getting used to.
Another thing that I found a bit annoying is the fact that the application itself puts two buttons on the taskbar when it’s launched. The main application window and the window for layers, channels and paths behave like two separate applications! Also, every document window you open puts an additional button on the taskbar. When you have lots of applications open all the time, this quickly becomes confusing.
But enough negative stuff, already. Let’s forget about Photoshop and focus on The Gimp. For a free program, the features are still very impressive. It has many of the options expensive applications have, such as layers, paths, channels and plugins. If the interface and the overload of windows it puts on your desktop bothers you, there’s a modified version of it called Gimpshop, wich was designed to resemble Photoshop as much as possible, including shortcut keys. There’s also a gigantic user community. You should have no problem at all finding tutorials, plugins and macros.

Positive:

  • free
  • huge user base, easy to find tutorials
  • quite impressive features for a free program

Negative:

  • unlike what some claim, no competitor for commercial programs
  • somewhat clumsy interface