When you first hear the word GIMP it sounds more like something out of a Hollywood fantasy flick for children rather than the raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs that it actually is. GIMP or GNU Image manipulation Program is tool whereby you can make or alter graphics, logos and also do the kind of editing for pictures which you can do by using Adobe’s Photoshop. You can interchange picture formats using this, you increase or decrease size and dimensions, switch colors, collate more than one image and effect a whole lot of alterations to pictures. If you want of alter certain properties of images or even create simple animations, this is a handy tool. While it can be used instead of Adobe in most circumstances, such as when you want to retouch photos and create images, it scores over Adobe in the fact that this is free software.

A distinctive coyote is this program’s symbol. He is a smiley guy called Wilber. Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis created the GIMP program in 1995 and its latest update was in November 2007. The new upgraded version comes with certain refinements that make is better and more comparable with Photoshop. The upgrade has a smarter interface and other improvements. You can have a lot of fun with GIMP (or get a lot of work done, depending on your requirements). The program has 48 brushes and you can customize some of your own too. These can be can be used either in hard or soft modes and you can also erase material. You can also render transparent or opaque modes as may be required. As in Photoshop, GIMP has layering filtering and masking tools.

So how does free software GIMP compare the formidable Photoshop which has a cult following? While Photoshop won’t support the XCF format that GIMP uses, you can read and write PSD (the Photoshop format) files with GIMP. Some functions are alike in both programs; many basic tools and filters work the same way in both. There are some advantages and additional features in Photoshop that GIMP cannot match, such as color management and support for floating point images and for the Panton color matching system. There are also several other features such as gamma correction support and other filter. Further GIMP’s design is less user friendly in the sense that it requires a person with knowledge of programming.

You can do layers with GIMP including transparent layers, which can be shown, hidden, or made semitransparent. Opacity and color effects can also be altered. GIMP has about 150 standard effects and filters and has some very interesting features like Drop Shadow, Blur, Motion blur and Noise. GIMP was at first developed for the X Window System, and so it uses multiple windows for its functions.