The “Break it Down” Blog

First off, if you are a professional photographer you probably have a Mac and probably have Photoshop on it. But if you aren’t a professional, are just getting started or don’t want to pay Adobe more than your camera is worth for photo-editing software… this might be for you.

GIMP is the “Gnu Image Manipulation Program”. It has been around forever and is the reason the GTK toolkit was spawned (which used to be called the “Gimp Toolkit” and was a widget library created in order to create GIMP).

Unfortunately GIMP has always been “pretty good” for most folks and “not even close” for professional photographers, but recently, as with the rest of Linux, it’s gotten a lot better with the major 2.4 release looming any day now meaning some major improvements.

These changes are all coming together to create a really valid excuse not to go dropping hundreds of dollars on Photoshop at least for most folks that don’t know Photoshop in and out and just need some good editing capabilities.

As Jon pointed out, you might want to pick up the GIMP 2 for Photographers book to help get up to speed quickly with GIMP 2 and photo editing.

One of the biggest benefits of GIMP, at least one for me, is that it’s also available cross-platform. There are of course releases for Unix/Linux, but you can also get GIMP for Windows and Mac, allowing you to work with your preferred software suite regardless of platform.

There have been some pretty good GIMP vs Photoshop comparisons recently. While GIMP doesn’t support some of the more advanced/crazy features of Photoshop, it does support a mass majority of the features that I think 70-80% of folks would use which might make a good fit for you.

Here are some links to dig into if you are curious (NOTE: If you go article-hunting on your own, make sure the comparison is relatively new so you aren’t reading a GIMP 2.1 versus Photoshop article for example):

• Gimp vs Photoshop (Rea Maor)
• Gimp vs. Photoshop (GRIMTHING)
• Photo Editing Software (ConsumerSearch)