GIMP is a free software
raster graphics editorA raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to paint and edit pictures interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many popular “bitmap” or “raster” formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF....
. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.
In addition to detailed image retouching and free-form drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image editing tasks such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, photomontages combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create animated images in many formats such as GIF and MPEG through the Animation Plugin.
GIMP's product vision is that GIMP is a free software high-end graphics application for the editing and creation of original images, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.
History
GIMP originally stood for the
General Image Manipulation Program. GIMP's original creators,
Spencer KimballSpencer Kimball is a computer programmer most notable for his early work on the GNU Image Manipulation Program .In 1995, while students at the University of California at Berkeley, Kimball and his classmate Peter Mattis developed the first version of The GIMP as a class project...
and
Peter MattisPeter Mattis is a computer programmer most notable for his early work on the GNU Image Manipulation Program .In 1995, while students at the University of California at Berkeley, Mattis and his classmate Spencer Kimball developed the first version of The GIMP as a class project...
, began developing GIMP in 1995 as a semester-long project at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. The first public release of GIMP (0.54) was made in January 1996. In 1997 GIMP became a part of the
GNU ProjectThe GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
, and the acronym GIMP was changed to the
GNU Image Manipulation Program. Currently GIMP is maintained and enhanced by a group of volunteers under the auspices of the
GNOME ProjectGNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
.
GIMP was originally created for
UNIXUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
systems; GNU/Linux, SGI
IRIXIRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
and
HP-UXHP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on UNIX System V and first released in 1984...
were supported in the first release. Since the first release GIMP was rapidly adopted and a community emerged consisting of users who created tutorials, artwork and shared techniques. Since the initial release, GIMP has been ported to many operating systems, including
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
; the original port to the Windows 32-bit platform was started by Finnish programmer Tor Lillqvist (tml) in 1997 and was supported in the GIMP 1.1 release.
GIMP has used three graphical user interface (GUI) toolkits since its inception; GIMP originally used
MotifIn computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
on the first public release (0.54). Eventually, Peter Mattis became disenchanted with Motif and developed his own GUI toolkit named the GIMP toolkit (
GTKGTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
); GTK had successfully replaced Motif in the 0.60 release of GIMP. Finally GTK was re-written to be object oriented and was renamed GTK+; this was first visible in GIMP 0.99.
User interface
GIMP uses multiple
windowsIn computing, a window is a visual area containing some kind of user interface. It usually has a rectangular shape that can overlap with the area of other windows...
to contain all of GIMPS' functionality, including opening each image in a separate window. By default tools and tool settings and other dialogues are on the right. GIMPs dialogues are re-arrangeable and by default less commonly used dialogues are not shown.
This windowing format has been criticised and users have been vocal about GIMPS' interface, this has led the maintainers of GIMP to oversee the formation of a usability team and the redesign of GIMPs UI to provide a Single Window mode to be released in GIMP 2.8.
In order to construct its interface GIMP uses the
GIMP tool kitGTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
(GTK+). GTK+ was designed to replace
MotifIn computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
, a
proprietaryProprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
toolkit upon which GIMP depended. Originally GTK+ was a part of the GIMP source tree, but has since been made into a standalone library. While originally being designed to run on
Unix-likeA Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s, GIMP and GTK+ have been ported to Microsoft Windows,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and other operating systems.
GIMP usability team
GIMP contributors signed up to join the
OpenUsabilityOpenUsability is a project to help usability experts coordinate with open source software projects to improve the software's interaction and usability. They have worked with projects such as GIMP and KDE.-History:...
project. Since then a dedicated usability team has been established to guide the future of the GIMP interface. A user interface brainstorming group was created for GIMP, where users of GIMP can send in their suggestions as to how they think the GIMP user interface could be improved.
Single window
GIMP 2.8 is planned to be released capable of single-window and multiple window modes, with single window mode being default. There are presently over a dozen other types of dialog used by GIMP at different times, and users typically open them when needed and close them afterwards.
Media attention
As a popular application, GIMP is regularly reviewed. The reviews often examine the fitness of GIMP for use in professional environments; as such GIMP is often cited as a replacement for
Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
. Even though comparisons to Photoshop are of regular occurrence, the maintainers of GIMP state that GIMP does not aim to replicate Photoshop.
GIMP 2.6 has been reviewed twice by
Ars TechnicaArs Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
. In the first review, Ryan Paul noted that GIMP provides "Photoshop-like capabilities and offers a broad feature set that has made it popular with amateur artists and open source fans. Although GIMP is generally not regarded as a sufficient replacement for high-end commercial tools, it is beginning to gain some acceptance in the pro market." While previously it had been recognized that GIMP had extensive capabilities, few reviewers have cited GIMP as a tool used in professional environments. Dave Girard also reviewed GIMP 2.6, specifically with the aim of testing GIMP's fitness for professional tasks. He noted at the beginning that GIMP was a high-end tool, but the review conclusion noted that although many of GIMP's tools were of high quality, he felt that it lacked in some areas such as
non-destructive editingNon-destructive editing is a form of editing signals where the original content is not modified in the course of editing—instead the edits themselves are edited by video editing software on a non-linear editing system ....
, tools such as a saturation brush.
Features
Tools used to perform
image editingImage editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs, or editing illustrations with any...
can be accessed via the toolbox, through menus and dialogue windows. They include filters and brushes, as well as transformation, selection,
layerLayers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
and masking tools.
Color
- GIMP has several ways of selecting colors including palettes, color choosers and using an eyedropper tool to select a color on the canvas. The built-in color choosers include RGB
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light is added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors...
/HSV selector or scales, water-color selector, CMYKThe CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key...
selector and a color-wheel selector. Colors can also be selected using hexadecimal color codes as used in HTML color selection. GIMP has native support for indexed color and RGB color spaces; other color spaces are supported using decomposition where each channel of the new color space becomes a black and white image. CMYK, LABA Lab color space is a color-opponent space with dimension L for lightness and a and b for the color-opponent dimensions, based on nonlinearly compressed CIE XYZ color space coordinates....
and HSV (hueHue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...
, saturation, value) are supported this way. Color blending can be achieved using the blend tool, by applying a gradientAn image gradient is a directional change in the intensity or color in an image. Image gradients may be used to extract information from images....
to the surface of an image and using GIMP's color modes. Gradients are also integrated into tools such as the brush tool, when the user paints this way the output color slowly changes. There are a number of default gradients included with GIMP; a user can also create custom gradients with tools provided.
Selections and paths
- In GIMP, tools for creation of selection
In computing and user interface engineering, a selection is a list of items on which user operations will take place. The user typically adds items to the list manually, although the computer may create a selection automatically. A precision pointing device or by hand on a touchscreen device is...
s include a rectangular and circular selection tool, free select tool, and fuzzy select tool (also known as magic wand). More advanced selection tools include the select by color tool for selecting contiguous regions of color and the scissors select tool which creates selections semi-automatically between areas of highly contrasting colors. GIMP also supports a quick mask mode where a user can use a brush to paint the area of a selection. Visibly this looks like a red colored overlay being added or removed. The foreground select tool is an implementation of Simple Interactive Object ExtractionSimple interactive object extraction is an algorithm for extracting foreground objects from color images and videos with very little user interaction. It has been implemented as "foreground selection" tool in the GIMP , as part of the tracer tool in Inkscape , and as function in ImageJ and Fiji...
(SIOX) a method used to perform the extraction of foreground elements, such as a person or a tree in focus. The Paths Tool allows a user to create vectors (also known as Bézier curveA Bézier curve is a parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. Generalizations of Bézier curves to higher dimensions are called Bézier surfaces, of which the Bézier triangle is a special case....
s). Paths can be used to create complex selections around natural curves, paths can also be named, saved, and painted (or "stroked") with brushes, patterns, or various line styles.
Image editingImage editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs, or editing illustrations with any...
- There are many tools that can be used for editing images in GIMP. The more common tools include a paint brush, pencil, airbrush, eraser and ink tools used to create new or blended pixels. Tools such as the bucket fill and blend tools are used to change large regions of space in an image and can be used to help blend images. GIMP also has a selection of smart tools, which are tools that use a more complex algorithm to enable a user to do things that otherwise would be time consuming or impossible; these smart tools include the clone tool that copies pixels using a brush, the healing brush which copies pixels from an area and corrects the tone and color where it is being used. The perspective clone tool works in a similar way to the clone tool previously mentioned but also allows a user to correct for distance changes. The blur and sharpen tool is a brush that blurs and sharpens. Finally, the dodge and burn tool is a brush that makes target pixels lighter (dodges) or darker (burns).
A list of GIMP transform tools include the align tool, move, crop, rotate, scale, shear, perspective and flit tools.
Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
, layer masks and channels
- An image being edited in GIMP can consist of many layers
Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image...
sitting in a stack. The GIMP users' manual suggests that "A good way to visualize a GIMP image is as a stack of transparencies," where in GIMP terminology, each transparency is a layer. Each layer in an image is made up of several channels. In an RGB image there are normally 3 or 4 channels, each consisting of a red, green and blue channel. Color sublayers look like slightly different gray images, but when put together they make a complete image. The fourth channel that may be part of a layer is the alpha channel (or layer mask), this channel measures opacity where a whole or part of an image can be completely visible, partially visible or invisible.
- Text layers can be created using the text tool, allowing a user to write on an image. Text layers can be transformed in several ways, such as converting them to a path or selection.
Automation, scripts and plug-ins
- GIMP has approximately 150 standard effects and filters, including Drop Shadow, Blur, Motion Blur and Noise.
GIMP operations can be automated with scripting languageA scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
s. The Script-Fu is a Scheme based extension language implemented using TinySchemeTinyScheme is a free software implementation of the Scheme programming language with a lightweight Scheme interpreter of a subset of the R5RS standard. It is meant to be used as an embedded scripting interpreter for other programs...
. GIMP can also be scripted in PerlPerl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, PythonPython is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
(Python-fu), or TclTcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
. New features can be added to GIMP not only by changing program code (GIMP core), but also by creating plug-ins. These are external programs that are executed and controlled by the main GIMP program. MathMap is an example of a plug-in written in C.
- GIMP has support for several methods of sharpening and blurring images including the blur and sharpen tool. The unsharp mask tool is used to sharpen an image selectively — it only sharpens areas of an image that are sufficiently detailed. The Unsharp Mask tool is considered to give more targeted results for photographs than a normal sharpening filter. The Selective Gaussian Blur tool works in a similar way, except it blurs areas of an image with little detail.
GEGL
- The Generic Graphics Library
The Generic Graphics Library is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed for GIMP in order to bring support for higher bit depth images than GIMP currently supports, as well as non-destructive editing...
(GEGL) was first introduced as part of GIMP on the 2.6 release of GIMP. This initial introduction does not yet exploit all of the capabilities of GEGL; as of the 2.6 release, GIMP can use GEGL to perform high bit-depth color operations; because of this less information is lost when performing color operations. When fully integrated, GEGL will allow GIMP to have a higher color bit depth and also a better non-destructive work-flow.
File formats
- GIMP supports importing and exporting with a large number of different file format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s, GIMP's native format XCF is designed to store all information GIMP can contain about an image; XCF is named after the eXperimental Computing Facility where GIMP was authored.
!
!File formats
|-
!Import and export
|GIMP has import and export support for image formats such as BMP,
JPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, PNG, GIF and
TIFFTIFF is a file format for storing images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and both amateur and professional photographers in general. As of 2009, it is under the control of Adobe Systems...
, along with the file formats of several other applications such as
AutodeskAutodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
flic animations,
Corel Paint Shop ProPaint Shop Pro is a raster graphics editor and, later in the series, a vector graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software. In October 2004, Corel Corporation purchased Jasc Software and the...
images, and Adobe Photoshop documents. Other formats with read/write support include
PostScriptPostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
documents,
XThe X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
bitmap image and Zsoft
PCXPCX is an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, although it has since been succeeded by more sophisticated image formats, such as GIF,...
. GIMP can also read and write path information from
SVGScalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...
files and read/write
ICOThe ICO file format is an image file format for computer icons in Microsoft Windows. ICO files contain one or more small images at multiple sizes and color depths, such that they may be scaled appropriately...
Windows icon files.
|-
!Import only
|GIMP can import Adobe
PDFPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
documents and the
raw image formatA camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
s used by many
digital cameraA digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
s, but cannot save to these formats. An open source plug-in,
UFRawUFRaw is an application which can read and manipulate photographs in raw image formats, as created by many digital cameras. UFRaw is available both as a stand-alone utility, as a GIMP and CinePaint plugin, and in F-Spot via the DevelopInUFRaw extension...
, adds full raw compatibility, and has been noted for being quicker than Adobe in updating for new camera models, several times.
|-
!Export only
|GIMP can export to MNG layered image files (GNU/Linux version only) and
HTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
(as a table with colored cells),
CC is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
source code files (as an array) and
ASCII ArtASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...
(using a plug-in to represent images with characters and punctuation making up images), though it cannot read these formats.
|}>
Derived applications
Several variations and derived graphic applications exist today. These applications can exist because GIMP is released under the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, GPL, which specifically allows anybody to take the
source codeIn computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
and use it as they see fit, so long as they follow the rules laid out in the license. GIMP is available on many popular operating systems; even so, some variants of GIMP exist for OS-specific modifications.
The GIMP website only offers source code downloads; executable versions of GIMP are made available by other sources.
CinePaintCinePaint is an open source computer program for painting and retouching bitmap frames of films. It is a fork of version 1.0.4 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program...
- Formerly "Film Gimp", this is a fork
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of GIMP version 1.0.4, used for frame-by-frame retouching of feature film. The present version supports up to 32-bit IEEE-floating point color depthIn computer graphics, color depth or bit depth is the number of bits used to represent the color of a single pixel in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer. This concept is also known as bits per pixel , particularly when specified along with the number of bits used...
per channel. CinePaint supports color management and HDRIn image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods...
. CinePaint is used primarily within the film industryThe film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
due mainly to its support of high-fidelity image formats. The current release supports BSDBerkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X.
GIMP classic
- is a patch against the 2.6.8 GIMP source code that was created to undo the changes made to the GIMP user interface between the 2.4 and 2.6 versions. A build of GIMP classic for Ubuntu is available. As of March 2011, a new patch can be downloaded from the sourceforge site that patches against the experimental 2.7 version of GIMP.
GIMP on OS X
- is a project that provides pre-built and easy to install application bundles of GIMP for Mac OS X. These include Universal binaries
A universal binary is, in Apple parlance, an executable file or application bundle that runs natively on either PowerPC or Intel-manufactured IA-32 or Intel 64-based Macintosh computers; it is an implementation of the concept more generally known as a fat binary.With the release of Mac OS X Snow...
for Tiger (10.4.x) and Leopard (10.5.x), as well as IntelIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
binaries for Snow Leopard (10.6.x) systems. These require X11XQuartz is Apple Inc.'s version of the X server, a component of the X Window System, for Mac OS X. The current version of XQuartz is a DDX included in the X.Org Server and implements support for hardware-accelerated 2D graphics , hardware OpenGL acceleration and integration with Aqua, the Mac OS...
to run.
GIMP Portable
- is a portable version of GIMP that can be installed on a USB hard drive such that brushes and presets are the same from one computer to the next. GIMP Portable is only portable between different computers running Microsoft Windows (XP or later).
GIMP.app
- is a distribution of GIMP built for Mac OS X. It has all the features of the default GIMP distribution. GIMP.app has a version using X11, and a version native to the Mac, but the latter is considered experimental.
GimPhotoGimPhoto is a modification of the free and open source graphics program GNU Image Manipulation Program , with the intent to be a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop....
- has a similar aim to GIMPshop, but has been made using a more recent version of GIMP. GimPhoto is targeted toward photographers who have previously used Adobe Photoshop. It is available for both Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux.
GIMPshopGIMPshop is a modification of the free and open source graphics program GNU Image Manipulation Program , with the intent to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP...
- is a derivative of GIMP that re-arranges the user interface to mimic Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
. This is achieved by modifying menus and user interface items. GIMPshop is released on Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Solaris. The project is stagnant and has not been updated since 2006.
Instrumented GIMP (ingimp)Instrumented GIMP is a special edition of the GIMP application which reports real-time usage data to the project's servers for the purpose of improving GIMP usability....
- was created at the University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
to track and report user interaction with the program to generate statistics about how GIMP is used.
osx-gimp
- provides a Mac
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
-native beta build of GIMP 2.2.14. It uses GTK+ built for Quartz. It is mostly functional, but support is limited for the Quartz back-end of GTK+.
SeashoreSeashore is an image editor for Mac OS X, which was influenced by the GIMP and written using the Cocoa API. Seashore uses GIMP's native file format, XCF, and has support for a handful of other graphics file formats, including full support for TIFF, PNG, and JPEG, and read-only support for BMP, PDF...
- is a program derived from GIMP running in native Mac OS X. The program is currently in beta and includes a subset of the tools and features in GIMP.
Extensions
GIMP Animation Package (
GAP)
- is an advanced plug-in for GIMP for creating animations, extending GIMP's normal capabilities. GAP can save animations in several formats including GIF and AVI. The animation function relies on GIMP's layering capability. Animations are created by placing each image on its own layer (in other words, treating each layer as an animation cel), then placing and rotating the layers within time constraints. The resulting project can be saved as an animated GIF or encoded video file. GAP also provides programmed layer transitions, timing, and move paths, allowing the creation of sophisticated animations.
GIMP Paint Studio (
GPS)
- is a collection of brushes and accompanying tool presets for GIMP aimed at artists and graphic designers. It speeds up repetitive tasks and allows tool settings to be saved between sessions.
Mascot
The official
mascotThe term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
of GIMP, "Wilber", was created by Tuomas Kuosmanen (
tigert) at some point before 25 September 1997; since then Wilber has received additional accessories from other GIMP developers. Accessories for Wilber can be found in the
Wilber construction kit, included with the GIMP source code.
Wilber is also used as a free software cultural reference outside of GIMP, for example Wilber can be played as a racing car driver in
SuperTuxKart SuperTuxKart is a Mario Kart-inspired arcade racing game featuring the Linux mascot Tux. The game was originally conceived as an enhanced fork of TuxKart, but with other internet mascots by the Game of the Month team consisting of Ingo Ruhnke, Charles Goodwin, and several others, eventually...
along with other free software cultural icons, as well as in WarMUX . In addition to being referenced in other software projects, Wilber has been shown on the side of the
Bibliothèque nationale de FranceThe is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
as part of
Project BlinkenlightsProject Blinkenlights was a light installation in the Haus des Lehrers building at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that transformed the building front into a giant low-resolution monochrome computer screen. The installation was created by the German Chaos Computer Club and went online on September...
.
Development
GIMP is primarily developed by volunteers. The GIMP project has a development branch, unstable branches and stable branches. New features are added to the development branch of GIMP, when the developers decide that there are enough new features they begin the process of creating a release. The process starts off by creating an unstable branch from the development branch; this unstable branch will be stabilized and will receive bug-fixes until it is ready to replace the existing stable branch. GIMP has adopted a scheme also used by many other
FOSSFree and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
projects: the second number in a version (for example, the "6" in 2.6.11) denotes whether a GIMP release is stable or unstable. An odd number means an unstable version and an even number means a stable version. The final number represents the number of bug-fix releases after a stable or unstable branch is released. , the current stable version of GIMP is 2.6.11.
Each year GIMP applies for several positions in the
Google Summer of CodeThe Google Summer of Code is an annual program, first held from May to August 2005, in which Google awards stipends to hundreds of students who successfully complete a requested free or open-source software coding project during the summer...
(GSoC), to date GIMP has participated in all years except 2007. From 2006 to 2009 there have been 9 GSoC projects that have been listed as successful, although not all successful projects have been merged into GIMP yet. The healing brush and perspective clone tools and
RubyRuby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
bindings were created as part of the 2006 GSoC and can be used in the current version of GIMP, although there were three other projects that were completed and are not yet available in a stable version of GIMP; those projects being Vector Layers, and a
JPEG 2000JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...
plug-in. Several projects were completed in 2008, but none are yet a part of a stable release of GIMP.
Libre Graphics Meetings
The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is a yearly event where developers of GIMP and other projects meet up to discuss issues related to free and open source graphics software. The GIMP developers take the opportunity to hold
birds of a featherIn computing, BoF can refer to:* An informal discussion group. Unlike special interest groups or working groups, BoFs are informal and often formed in an ad-hoc manner...
(BOF) sessions at this event.
Distribution
GIMP is released under the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(version two or later) as
free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
. The current version of GIMP works with numerous operating systems, including
GNUGNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
/
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
,
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Microsoft Windows. Many GNU/Linux distributions include GIMP as a part of their desktop operating systems, including
DebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and
FedoraFedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
. Due to file size constraints,
UbuntuUbuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
no longer includes GIMP by default as of Ubuntu 10.04, but it remains available for installation via the package manager.
A port of GIMP to Microsoft Windows was started by Tor Lillqvist in 1997. The GIMP website links to binary installers compiled by Jernej Simončič for the platform.
MacPortsMacPorts, formerly called DarwinPorts, is a package management system that simplifies the installation of software on the Mac OS X and Darwin operating systems. It is a free/open source software project to simplify installation of other free/open source software...
is listed as the recommended provider of recent Mac builds of GIMP. MacPorts also provides builds of other
free and open source softwareFree and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
applications and provides tools to make doing so simpler. GTK+ was originally designed to run on an X11 server. Because Mac OS X can optionally use an X11 server, porting GIMP to Mac OS X is simpler compared to creating a Windows port.
There is no stable 64-bit Windows distribution version of GIMP available as of March 2011, although there have been experimental 64-bit versions like GIMP 2.6.10 for Windows.
See also
- Comparison of raster graphics editors
- List :- General information :Basic general information about the editors: creator/company, license etc.- Operating system support :The operating systems on which the editors can run natively , meaning which operating systems have which editors specifically coded for them - List :- General...
- Image editing
Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they be digital photographs, traditional analog photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs, or editing illustrations with any...
- Libre Graphics Meeting
The Libre Graphics Meeting is an annual convention for the discussion of free and open source software used with graphics; The first Libre Graphics Meeting was held in May 2006. Communities from Inkscape, GIMP, Krita, Scribus, sK1, Blender, Open Clip Art Library, Open Font Library, and more come...
- Linux color management
Linux color management has the same goal as the color management systems for other operating systems: to achieve the best possible color reproduction throughout an imaging workflow from its source , through imaging software , and finally onto an output medium...
- List of raster graphics editors
External links
- GIMP news, and news aggregation
- Wilber (the GIMP mascot) links
- Wilber images at the GIMP homepage (near bottom)
- Wilber on the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
(photo taken at a Project BlinkenlightsProject Blinkenlights was a light installation in the Haus des Lehrers building at the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that transformed the building front into a giant low-resolution monochrome computer screen. The installation was created by the German Chaos Computer Club and went online on September...
installation in ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
)