Hobart John
The Gimp Image Editing Application
Edited
This is part of my DEN #3
March 2005. The latest version is V2. It has many new features so go to
their web site to see for
yourself
The GNU Image Manipulation Programme is a fantastic piece of software or app that one uses to edit images. Photos, graphics that can be worked on available from a floppy disk, a CD ROM, an E-mail message, a WEB site or scanned by a scanner.
All such images can be edited. Change the electronic/digital size, change the physical size, crop a part, change colours, change brightness and contrast, add text to an image, use layers to do hundreds of effects to an image.
The list is in the hundreds.
I have conducted a couple of Winter/Summer schools about this subject.
It is very fascinating but also quite time consuming and difficult at times. But the effort is rewarding. The photo prints, slides, digital camera outputs and so on should be just the start for *you* to work on. *You* can make that particular image into something really good.
The image editing app that comes with W95/W98 called Imaging by Wang is very very basic and so does not allow one to do very much.
I have used my registered version 3 of Paint Shop Pro for almost ten years but is now showing its age.
I also have older versions of Corel and Adobe PhotoShop which at the time they were released cost hundreds of dollars. Present day versions are about $1000, yes a thousand dollars. Even the latest version of Paint Shop Pro is about $200.
There is an alternative.
The GIMP.
The GIMP was written under the GPL licence which is an open source application, it's written within the framework of Copyleft or in other words no copyright. It is entirely free. It was written for the very stable Operating System (OS) called Linux. I have used GIMP under Linux on some of my computers for about three years. I'm still finding out what all the filters and so on do. This is a subject that can't really be described with words but one has to do the job and see the result.
Now for all M$ Windows users, GIMP can now be used directly in the Windows OS.
The writers of GIMP Version 1.2 have ported the Linux GIMP to M$ Windows. It is available on various computer magazines, mine from PC Active March 2001. Yes over a year old.
GIMP is a real competitor to the $1000 (thousand) image editing apps and it is entirely free. It is not shareware, there are no popup advertising boxes, it is free under the GNU agreement.
Perhaps if people would like to install GIMP I could lend the CD ROM to them.
I did send an E-mail out a year or so ago about an Australian book showing how to work GIMP but it seems to have disappeared but there is a more expensive coloured one written by someone else, not the GIMP team and is available at Gordon and Gotch book stores. I saw it a couple of weeks ago (July 2002).
For those with an Internet connection GIMP could be downloaded but is fairly big so could take an hour or more to download depending on the Internet and computer connection. At the time I type this, July 2006, The GIMP has gone from strength to strength so challenging those “other” imaging apps which cost hundreds of dollars.
The GIMP Web site URL is; www.gimp.org/ Click here
There is a really good manual in PDF form from the GIMP doc page which is 7.2mbytes big but worth the time.
Of course the GIMP Web site has a lot of help files on it that can be printed out, it's up to *you*.
The version I have on PC4 under Linux is V1.1.25.
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