Is there a free Imaging software equivalent to Photoshop? What is GIMP?

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Is there a free Imaging software equivalent to Photoshop? What is GIMP?

For handling images in computers most of us use Adobe Photoshop. There is no doubt that Photoshop gives unlimited features for creating and handling images. Printing works, Banners and magazine designs all need images. Photoshop is widely used for all these. But Adobe photoshop is not free. It is illegal to use pirated copies of the software. However a free software is available which can do most of the things photoshop can do. It is called GIMP.

GNU Image Manipulation Program is the full form of GIMP. This is a very popular free open source software that runs on many operating systems and can create, edit and manipulate images much like photoshop. You can download this GIMP software freely from http://www.gimp.org  for Windows, Linux, Mac Os or Linux Os.

Do not just download the software from the above website. You can also get details from there about how to install, how to use GIMP from this website.

What is GIMP?

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Some call it as General Image Manipulation Program.

To draw images, to handle images, to enhance images GIMP is very useful. Almost everything you do in Photoshop can be done using GIMP. And it is Free. Free software foundation has released this software under the GNU (General Public Licence). Therefore you can even view the source code of this software freely. You can also copy this software and distribute it freely.

How to install GIMP?

If you want the full source code of  GIMP and want to compile it yourself then goto www.gimp.org  and download the appropriate file for your operating system. Then install it on your computer. Instead if you want the pre-built binary packages of GIMP,  download the latest installer from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login . (recommended)
In Windows, installation is very easy by running the executable file. Let us see how to install GIMP in linux. Give this command in your computer.

tar-zxvfgimp-2.0.1.trar.gz

Now the compressed files will be extracted. Now goto the extracted folder and give the following three commands.

/ Configure

make

make uninstall

What are the features available in GIMP?

There are many tools available in GIMP. Paintbrush, airbrush, ctone, blur, sharpen are tools related to painting. There are tools to handle text too. Other tools to change images such as rotation, scaling, flipping, sheearing are also available. Selection tools such as square, oval or freehand tools are available. GIMP can handle image formats such as Tiff, Gif, Jpeg, Bmp, PPm image formats. You can convert images from one format to another format. Other tools such as layers, transparency and scripts are also available.

You can create images according to your imagination. You can get tools from the menu bar or right click and choose from the shortcut menu.

You can convert the created image to CMYK format to print. Colour mixer is another important feature.

As noted above, GIMP has many features as in Adobe photoshop and is freely available. However, GIMP is inferior it photoshop