Learning the GIMP
Gimp is an opensource (free) image editing application that contains much of the functionality of Photoshop. For many of us aspiring or hobbyist photographers who can’t afford Photoshop, Gimp is a fantastic alternative.
Gimp can do 75% of what Photoshop can do (I just made up 75% - since I don’t have Photoshop I don’t know exactly, but 75% is what I’m guessing based on what I’ve read about and what others have said) and likely most of what you would need for basic and many advanced editing tasks.
Since image editing can really be complex, and therefore the tools to do it are complex, the Photoshop training industry has become quite a popular and lucrative business. If people (most of whom are professionals) are spending $600 for the application, it’s likely they will spend a few hundred dollars for more training.
Not many people are willing to pay for training to learn a free application, however, so writing about Gimp isn’t as lucrative as writing about Photoshop. But, there are several resources available to learn Gimp.
Chris at MyAppleStuff recently reviewed “Gimp 2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software” by (Klaus Goelker). It looks like a great way to learn to use Gimp just like you would use Photoshop. See his review for more details.
Grokking the Gimp, by Carey Bunks, is another book that I have gone through to learn the Gimp. Although this one is a couple of years old, the concepts and principles haven’t changed and most of the tools work just the same way as he describes them. Grokking the Gimp is free to read online, or you can purchase a printed version.
GIMPguru.org also contains a wealth of tutorials and tips for Beginning and Advanced tasks. I love this site and have used it often.
Finally, GIMP.org has a nice tutorials section as well that I refer to from time to time.
You can see more GIMP resources and links by looking at the ma.gnolia.com bookmarks tagged with GIMP.
If you haven’t tried GIMP yet, I suggest you do. It’s available in binaries for UNIX and Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. You can also download the source and compile it yourself.
0 Responses to “Learning the GIMP”