GIMP
GIMP delivers powerful functionalities for photo retouching, image composition, and format conversion. As a versatile tool, it serves as both a simple paint program and a high-end retouching suite, and offers batch processing for mass image tasks in an accessible open-source platform.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Snapcraft
- Flathub
- PortableApps.com
- Haiku
- Flatpak
- AmigaOS
Features
Properties
- Customizable
- Scalable
- Privacy focused
- Lightweight
Features
- Support for Layers
- Photo effects
- DRM Free
- Ad-free
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- High-resolution images
- Retouch photos
- Image Processing
- Open PSD files
- Dark Mode
- Color to Alpha
- Works Offline
- Select by Color
- Built-in Color Picker
- RAW Photo Editors
- Portable
- No registration required
- Image Masking
- Color correction
- No Tracking
- Batch image manipulation
- Custom Brushes
- Lossless Cropping
- Non Destructive Editing
- Color Picker
- Blur Filter
- Batch Editing
- Drawing Tablet Support
- Batch Rename Files
- Pressure Sensitivity
- Keyframe Animation
- PDF annotation
- Hardware Accelerated
- WYSIWYG Support
- Support for scripting
- Symmetry brush
- Gtk
Tags
- Photo Editing
- Animation
- architectural-photography
- shift-lens
- image-authoring
- perspective
GIMP News & Activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about Inkscape
Beyond Adobe's pricey products: my graphic designer’s toolbox on LinuxI've spent years polishing my craft with Adobe’s heavyweight suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesig...
- POX published news article about GIMP
GIMP 3.2 RC2 brings restriction removal, improved SVG paths, faster startup time, and moreGIMP has reached a major development milestone with the availability of its second release candidat...
- POX published news article about GIMP
GIMP 3.2 RC1 launches with proper SVG export, improved text editor, and UI enhancementsGIMP 3.2 Release Candidate 1 is now available, marking the next step for this open source image edi...
Recent activities
Featured in Lists
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What is GIMP?
GIMP is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, and more.
GIMP Videos
GIMP information
Developed by
Free Software Foundation Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.3Alternatives
190 alternatives listedNews
17 news article related to GIMPSupported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
They'll have 1 thing in common - they all got used to Photoshop first.
GIMP isn't perfect. It's got rough edges. It is developed by volunteers, it is not backed by a huge commercial effort like Photoshop nor is it sold for a huge price tag.
Considering that, for 98% of image editing requirements GIMP is just as good as Photoshop. Only if you are in an elite upper tier of artists would it actually be inadequate.
If you are used to Photoshop, you'll find GIMP horrible to use. The same is true in reverse. They are difficult applications with different structures and different approaches to many tasks. It's like going from a Mac to Windows and vice versa. You have to unlearn what you know and relearn something else, and for many that is too much to ask.
However to lack the perspective to understand this basic principle - that you prefer what you know - and lay into the work of the GIMP developers with very unconstructive criticisms is hardly helping anybody. Given it is open source, why not engage them, or why not try to implement improvements? Oh, that would take effort. Trolling online takes no effort whatsoever!
The GIMP has a ton of great features, is constantly improving, and is never going to cost you money. It will just cost you a bit of your time to learn how to use it.
It also doesn't help that you're categorizing everyone into one title.
No, you don't have to be in an elite upper tier of artists for it to be inadequate. Rotating text really doesn't qualify as being "elite upper tier" artist.
Pretentiously mocking some imaginary character for not knowing programming, which you classify as "little effort" appearently, does not achieve anything either.
Used Gimp years ago, because I love open source and like to donate to projects I use. But every time Gimp doesn't do what I want. For even the simplest thing, you need to dive in the manuals because it's all so confusing. So I stopped using it, because working with it is so frustrating. I saw this week version 3 is there, so I gave it another shot. Took a beginners course on YT and started with Gimp again, But I came in bugs and non-working stuff, right away. Even a simple task, like making a text layer over a photo, is really hard. Without the manual, and chatgtp asking for help, it's still a mess. I stop using Gimp version 3
I love GIMP because it's open-source and easy to use.
Poor man's
Adobe Photoshop. But oh boy, is it good at that. Fully free and open source.
I’ve tried GIMP multiple times in the decade since I first came across the program….and every time I went back to editor I was already using within a hour flat — the UI is a bloated unintuitive mess that hasn’t been changed since 2013, same goes for the few existing resources (patterns, brushes, etc.) which are thus incompatible with the recent versions of the program, the editing resources are destructive making refined editing impossible and the program itself is riddled with bugs and glitches.
People who recommend GIMP as a Photoshop alternative have never tried either program as GIMP offers none of the features found in Photoshop.
What’s worse is GIMP’s userbase refuses to see the flaws in the program and instead points finger at whoever dares to criticize it, which heavily hinders any real improvement and development in the program that might happen.
Finally someone! Thank you for your comment! I really have experienced the same and while absolutely love open source as a philosophy and all, I hate gimp so much. How can this shit software have such a large fanbase?!
Doesn't work on Macbook Pro anymore. I don't know if it's GIMP or if Apple is now disallowing it to run. I didn't update GIMP and all of a sudden it won't open.
Found it - I installed GIMP 2.10 and it works. GIMP 3.0 broke something such that it won't run on a Mac.
Gimp vs PhotoScape: Brave AI: GIMP has layers, masks, and paths, which are not available in PhotoScape. GIMP has plugins. PhotoScape doesn't. Animated GIF Creation: PhotoScape does animated GIFs, GIMP doesn't. PhotoScape has Face Search tool to find similar faces online, GIMP lacks.