Image via Wikipedia

When people think of editing photos they immediately think of the software Photoshop. In fact the term 'image manipulation' has been replaced by “photoshopped”. While this particular commercial piece of software is well known because of how good it is, many of you probably can't afford to buy it and may be uncomfortable pirating it. This is where Open Source software comes into its own and in this article I will be discussing GIMP.

What is Gimp?

GIMP stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program” which is freely available under an Open Source licence. The program is developed by many skilled programmers who donate time to writing code and testing features for free in order that a program like this can be used freely by everyone. The real beauty of it is that people with little or no money to buy graphics programs now have access to what is essentially a 'free' version of photoshop.

Gimp vs. Photoshop

While it is apples and oranges comparing free software with commercial software the gap has certainly closed between the quality of free software. It used to be the case with free software that they were developed by one or two programmers and it has only been since the advent of the Open Source doctrine that hundreds of programmers and users can provide input

Because of this input GIMP has progressed into a highly functional graphics program able to do simple edits right through to complex graphics. Whether you use it for web images, photography or for advertising it has essentially the same features as its expensive counterpart photoshop. As an artist myself I use it for art photography editing as well as for images for the internet.

If you want to try out a free image manipulation program it doesn't hurt to try GIMP and it can be downloaded for free here.