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GIMP

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For other uses, see Gimp.
GIMP
Developer(s)The GIMP Team
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
Available inMultilingual[1]
TypeRaster graphics editor
LicenseGNU General Public License
Websitehttp://www.gimp.org/

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics. The project was started in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis and is now maintained by a group of volunteers; licensed under the GNU General Public License, GIMP is free software.

Overview

A screenshot of GIMP version 2.2.8 running under X11 on Mac OS X

GIMP is used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format. It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries.

History

GIMP originally stood for General Image Manipulation Program. Its creators, Spencer Kimball and Petter Mattis, initially started GIMP as a semester-long project for a class at the University of California, Berkeley. Both were integral members of experimental Computing Facility, a student club at Berkeley (the GIMP's file extension, XCF, is taken from the initials of this club). In 1997, after both Kimball and Mattis had graduated from Berkeley, the name was changed to GNU Image Manipulation Program when it became an official part of the GNU project.

Features

Brushes and painting tools

Brushes dialog in GNOME

GIMP comes with 48 standard brushes, plus facilities to create new ones. Brushes can be used in hard-edged, soft-edged, or eraser modes, be applied at different opacities, or used with different modes for composition.

Color selection

GIMP also has a Palette with RGB, HSV, colour wheel, CMYK, and mixing modes, plus tools to pick colours from the image with various averaging options. There is support for hexadecimal colour codes (as used in HTML). While 'CMYK' is offered in the Palette, GIMP, by default, works only in RGB, grayscale and index color modes.

Gradients and patterns

Gradients dialog in GNOME

GIMP also supports gradients, which integrate into its other tools (such as brushes and fills) to shade image areas with automated color blending. It includes a variety of built-in gradients, and as with the brushes, also allows the user to customize and create their own gradient fills.

Selection and masking tools

GIMP can perform rectangular or circular selection, freehand selection, and "by color" selection. Alternatively, the Smart Selection tool, known as the "Magic Wand", can be used to select contiguous regions. The Intelligent Scissors (iScissors) tool can be used to auto-create paths between regions defined by strong color-changes.

Layers, channels, and transparency

Animation showing three docked and tabbed dialogs: layers, channels, and paths.

GIMP has support for layers, including transparent layers, which can be shown, hidden, or made semitransparent. It also supports transparent and semitransparent images. Channels add different types of opacity and color effects to images.

Paths

Paths containing line segments or bezier curves can be made. Paths can be named, saved, and painted (or "stroked") with brushes, patterns, or various line styles. Paths are also a useful selection tool, allowing you to create complex selections.

Effects, scripts and filters

GIMP has approximately 150 standard effects and filters, including Drop Shadow, Blur, Motion blur and Noise.

File:Padlock2.png
A padlock
File:Padlock3.png
The same padlock after being touched up with the clone tool

Scripting

GIMP operations can be automated with macro programs. A Scheme interpreter is built in, or external Perl, Python, or Tcl can be used. Ruby support is in experimental development. These scripts and plugins for GIMP can be used interactively, or combined non-interactively. For example, images for a webpage could be generated on the fly using CGI scripts, or a large number of images could have their color corrected and format changed. For simple automatable tasks, a package such as ImageMagick might be faster, but GIMP has much more powerful features.

Development

The GIMP's user interface is built using GTK+, the GIMP ToolKit. The GTK+ library was initially a part of the GIMP source tree, but has since been refactored due to its usefulness outside the scope of the GIMP. GTK+ is also used as the widget toolkit for the GNOME desktop environment. GTK+ was intended as a replacement for the proprietary Motif toolkit, which GIMP originally depended upon. GIMP and GTK+ were originally designed for the X Window System running on Unix-like operating systems, but have since been ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and SkyOS.

The current stable version of GIMP is Template:Latest stable release/GIMP. Major changes compared to version 1.2 include a more polished user interface and further separation of the user interface and back-end.

Also, an unstable 2.3.x version is being updated by GIMP developers, with new versions being available every few months.

For the future it is planned to base GIMP on a more generic graphical library called GEGL, thereby addressing some fundamental design limitations that prevent many enhancements such as native CMYK support. Implementation of this plan was continually put off from 2000 until October 2006, when developer Øyvind Kolås demonstrated a limited working version of GEGL, including a new graphical interface, that had been developed by Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, and Kolås.[2]

Comparisons with other graphics editors

Features Similar or identical to features in Adobe Photoshop include:

  • Intelligent Scissors are similar to the Magnetic Lasso
  • rectangular, elliptical and lasso features are identical
  • dropper, fill, gradient, pencil, paintbrush, eraser, airbrush, clone stamper, blur or sharpen, smudge, and dodge or burn features are identical
  • flip, rotate, scale, crop, zoom, move, foreground+background color swatch, layers, history, gradients, and drop shadow features are identical

Missing features include:

Benefits of the GIMP system include:

  • Free software; can be installed, shared, or redistributed on any number of computer systems with zero licensing costs
  • Open source; is freely developed and supported by a community of users and is available on many different operating systems
  • Plug-in development is not limited by developers (by comparison, access to Adobe Photoshop's SDK requires authorization [1])
  • Using the GIMP Portable version of GIMP, the GIMP can be carried on a thumb drive and used on any computer.

File types

GIMP can open and save the following file formats: [2]

GIMP can import (open but not save) the following formats:

GIMP can also export to (save, but not open) the following formats:

Availability, versions, and forks

See also: fork (software development)

Linux distributions

GIMP is included as the standard image editor on most general purpose Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, SUSE, and Fedora.

GIMP for Windows

GIMP for Windows is a port of the GIMP (along with the GTK+ toolkit) to the Microsoft Windows platform. The project was started by Finnish programmer Tor "tml" Lillqvist 1997.[5]

Currently, the Windows port is practically identical to the original version in terms of features and stability. The installation has been tremendously eased with the introduction of the binary installers[6] compiled by Jernej Simoncic.[7]

The number of windows used by GIMP's interface can cause desktop clutter. This is not only because the GIMP uses a (controlled) single document interface, but also because it uses multiple windows for its tools, color palette, etc. (unlike many competing graphics programs, which use a multiple document interface or an SDI with integrated toolbars).

GIMP Portable

GIMP Portable is a repackaged version of GIMP for Windows, which can be run directly from media without installation. It is intended to be carried on a USB flash drive, or similar portable storage device e.g. USB hard drive or digital audio player. It does not require administrator privileges and thus can be used in restricted (e.g. work) environments without troubling a network administrator. Also for Mac OS X is available Portable Gimp.app — packaged as portable application for external drive.

Gimp.app for Mac OS X

Gimp.app provides a self-contained application bundle of GIMP for OS X. Gimp.app has many features that Seashore does not have, but being built upon the GTK for its GUI features, it requires a version of X11 to run it,[8]Gimp.app requires Apple's X11.app. Gimp.app is packaged by Aaron Voisine. However, there has been no more update since the release of version 2.2.11 in April 2006 so that the project may have been abandoned.

Seashore for Mac OS X

Seashore is a program based on GIMP for Mac that uses the native Cocoa interface in OS X. The program is currently in beta (0.1.9) and includes only a small subset of the many filters available in GIMP.

Native GIMP for Mac OS X

osx-gimp provides native builds of GIMP on MacOS X using GTK+ built for Quartz. It is mostly functional, but there is currently limited support for the Quartz backend of GTK+, and it is considered Beta.

GIMPshop

GIMPshop is a modification to GIMP, rearranging its user interface to mimic that of Adobe Photoshop

CinePaint

CinePaint, formerly known as 'Film Gimp', is a modification (forked from v. 1.0.4) basically used for frame-by-frame retouching of feature film. The present 'Film Gimp' version supports up to 32-bit IEEE-floating point color depth/channel. Unlike the Gimp, CinePaint has support for color management, HDR, and much more. CinePaint is used primarily within the film industry.

GIMP Animation Package

The GIMP Animation Package (GAP) simply adds the function of being able to create (and modify) animations.

See also

References

  1. ^ See List of available languages of the user manual
  2. ^ The GIMP's next-generation imaging core demonstrated. http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/1342216
  3. ^ There is a plugin called PSPI for Windows and Linux versions of the GIMP, which allows the use of the 8bf Adobe Photoshop filters in the GIMP. It however requires the Adobe Photoshop SDK to compile, the use of which must be requested from Adobe, but pre-compiled versions are freely distributable.
  4. ^ "LittleCms, Great color at small footprint". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ "Tor "tml" Lillqvist". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ "GIMP - Windows installers". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ "SourceForge.net: Developer Profile". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: The GIMP
Wikimedia Commons has media related to GIMP.
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