0 Comments Art Review: GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program

Program - GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program (The GIMP Development Team)
Tested version - v2.8.22

Price - Free, open source
Systems - Windows 7/8.1/10, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris
Official website - https://www.gimp.org

Raster or Vector - Raster

Ease Of Use - Really easy to get started, but if you use Photoshop shortcuts you are in for a shock.

Sure a few shortcuts respond as you would think; however, many are vastly different (if there is a default shortcut for some things at all). I remember this vividly being a issue when I first started using GIMP several years ago due to what some of those shortcuts did. For example using CTRL + D to deselect in Photoshop, but in GIMP it will duplicate the image into a new tab (layers and all) and switch to it. GIMP uses the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT +  A to deselect.

Online manual, and help/tutorials online as well. A great site for tutorials, videos, and forum is GIMPusers.com. There is a Help menu, but it accesses it from online and is slower than a browser. The manual can be downloaded and put into GIMP separately, but required much searching - here it is to download (and the source see bottom labelled Official Releases).

* Update the help installer is also found in the download section, under the section GIMP User Manual. Either way once downloaded and installed, it has to be manually switched on too... In the Preferences window (menu item Edit -> Preferences, then in the new window select Help System and change the User manual to the option Use a locally installed copy. The help does not have a search function however.

All software is subjective to hardware installed, so with that in mind here is my current workhorse PC (A updated HP Z200 Workstation) specs I used for testing with all updated drivers...

CPU - Intel Core i5 CPU 660 @ 3.33GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads)
Memory - 12 GB DDR3 total
Graphics - EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti SC (Superclocked GM107) 1 GB (DDR5 memory)
Space - 2.5 TB hard drive disk space
System - Windows 8.1 Pro

Program Speed - Quick and responsive with no lag unless working on really huge projects, or a bunch of other programs are running in Windows. In that regard in over 8 years of use I've had very few problems or a rare crash that occurred.

Page Options - Maximum size is 3640.889" x 3640.889" (at 72 ppi), with maximum resolution of 65536 ppi (4" x 4" image). Both size and resolution affect each other proportionately and will decide the maximums. Page crop and bleed options are nearly non-existent and you are best off using ruler guides manually - see topic here.

The page color options are RGB or Grayscale. There is no CMYK support officially, using a plug-in and manual work you may have good results, see topic.

File Formats - Truly a massive amount of formats supported. Thankfully GIMP defaults to All images when opening or saving work. When exporting, change the file extension for it to save properly, or select the format from the drop-down list.

• Open - XCF (GIMP XCF), PIX/MATTE/MASK/ALPHA (Alias Pix), FLI/FLC (AutoDesk FLIC animation), XCF/BZ2/XCFBZ2 (BZIP archive), DESKTOP (Desktop link), DCM/DICOM (DICOM image), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), FIT/FITS (Flexible Image Transport System), G3 (G3 fax), GIF, GBR/GPB (GIMP brush), GIH (GIMP brush animated), PAT (GIMP pattern), XCFGZ (GZIP archive), JP2/JPC/JPX/J2K (JPEG 2000), JPG/JPEG/JPE (JPEG), CEL (KISS CEL), ICO (Microsoft Windows icon), WMF/APM (Microsoft WMF), ORA (OpenRaster), PSP/TUB/PSPIMAGE (Corel PaintShop Pro), PSD (Photoshop), PNG, PNM/PPM/PGM/PBM (PNM image), PDF (Portable Document Format), PS (PostScript document), DATA (RAW image), SGI/RGB/RGBA/BW (Silicon Graphics IRIS), IM1/IM8/IM24/IM32 (SUN Rasterfile), SVG (SVG image), TGA/VDA/ICB/VST (TarGA), TIF/TIFF (TIFF), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM/ICON/BITMAP (X BitMap image), XPM (X PixMap), XWD (X Window Dump), PCX/PCC (ZSoft PCX)
• Save - XCF (GIMP XCF), XCF/BZ2/XCFBZ2 (BZIP archive), XCFGZ (GZIP archive)
• Export - PIX/MATTE/MASK/ALPHA (Alias Pix), FLI/FLC (AutoDesk FLIC animation), XCF/BZ2/XCFBZ2 (BZIP archive), C (C source code),  H (C source code header), XHTML (Colored XHTML), DCM/DICOM (DICOM image), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), FIT/FITS (Flexible Image Transport System), GIF,  GBR (GIMP brush), GIH (GIMP brush animated), PAT (GIMP pattern), XCFGZ (GZIP archive), HTML/HTM (HTML table), JPG/JPEG/JPE (JPEG), CEL (KISS CEL), ICO (Microsoft Windows icon), MNG (MNG animation), ORA (OpenRaster), PBM (PNM image),  PGM (PNM image), PSD (Photoshop), PNG, PNM (PNM image), PDF (Portable Document Format), PS (PostScript document), PPM (PNM image), DATA (RAW image), SGI/RGB/RGBA/BW (Silicon Graphics IRIS), IM1/IM8/IM24/IM32 (SUN Rasterfile), TGA (TarGA), TIF/TIFF (TIFF), BMP (Windows Bitmap), XBM/ICON/BITMAP (X BitMap image), XPM (X PixMap), XWD (X Window Dump), PCX/PCC (ZSoft PCX)

Plug-in Support - Yes. Plug-ins are developed in C (Script-Fu), and a version of PERL or Python (tailored to GIMP). Many plug-ins though are individual/community made as GIMP is open source, no money to be made, so plug-ins are not as numerous or usually polished as those in Photoshop.

Take a look at the GIMP Plug-in Registry for a list, or search online. Many however are for very specific versions of GIMP and may not be compatible with new(er) releases.

Customizable Shortcuts/Menus/Icons - Yes keyboard shortcuts are customizable. Docked windows can be moved around as well. See my huge time saving tip near the bottom of this article.

Layer Options - 21 layer Blending options, Opacity adjustment, Lock pixels (layer), Lock alpha channel (transparency), New layer, New layer group, move layer, Layer duplicate, Anchor floating layer, and Delete.

Color Selection - Color wheel, sliders, palettes (can create new custom ones), numerical input, and more. The color selection types are kept in tabs (I combined four for the first image), and if the selected color is clicked twice (in the tool area) it brings up a more precise window input.

* Most of these things are turned off by default, and have to be enabled from the GIMP menu Windows -> Dockable Dialogs.

Brush Options - Many settings available, but the more advanced options are hidden in Dynamic presets (see below). The options are Paint Mode (23 blending modes), Brush texture, Size, Aspect ratio, Angle, Apply jitter, Smooth stroke (works with graphics tablet or mouse) with Quality and Weight, and Incremental.

Dynamic presets have many advanced settings that can simulate traditional medium. The default presets can not be deleted or altered however. You can create a new Dynamic preset and adjust settings such as Opacity, Size, Angle, Color, Hardness, Force, Aspect ratio, Spacing, Rate, Flow, Jitter - with advanced settings.

Brush textures (referred to simply as brushes) can be created and imported for more options as well. By default whatever is copied to the clipboard becomes a overridden brush texture, but can be saved for future use too. That option though makes altering things quick and easy without having to make a new brush when a simply copy to clipboard does it.

Common Necessities - Other tools that are primarily tools, and is surprising lacking in some software making it necessary to include them briefly.

Paint Fill - Options are Paint Mode (23 blending modes), Opacity, Fill type (FG color/BG color/Pattern), Affected area (Fill wholes section/Find similar colors), Finding similar colors (Fill transparent areas/Sample merged (Threshold amount)/Fill by (Composite/Red/Green/Blue/Hue/Saturation/Value)).
Eraser - Includes Opacity, Brush (texture), Brush size, Aspect ratio, Angle, Dynamics (like in brushes), Apply jitter, Smooth stroke (works with graphics tablet or mouse), Incremental, Hard edge, Anti-erase.
Image Zoom - Onscreen list presets, shortcut controls, menu controls, and fullscreen mode. Zoom range 0.391% to 25600%; although, in most programs that largest would be called 3000% or so (it is not one pixel filling the screen at 25600%...)
View Rotate - No - it is slated to be released in a future GIMP release (v2.10)
Selection Tools - Standard rectangle, ellipse, lasso, and Fuzzy Select Tool (Magic wand).

Text/Font Options - The tool area view shows the typical Font selector (which includes a search function), Size, Use Editor (see below), Anti-aliasing, Hinting (adjusts font outline for crisp view), Color, Justify/Align (Left, Right, Centered, Filled), Indention of first line amount, Line spacing/Alignment (leading), Box Dynamic/Fixed (how text should flow), and Language.

When the mouse is clicked on the image to inset/edit text a floating tool window gives options on the Font used, Size, Style (Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough), Change baseline (leading) of selected text, Change kerning of selected text, and Color.

The Text Editor options include Open (Load Text from file - no idea...), Clear, LTR (From left to right), RTL (From right to left), Font name (type to change), Size, Style (Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough), Change baseline (leading) of selected text, Change kerning of selected text, and Color.

Drawing Aids - Few if any, but GIMP is primarily a photo editor. The few I could find that may be of any use is Grid, Page ruler, and Guides.

Extras - Saveable page templates.

* A great alternative was a forked project that was called GIMP-Paint-Studio to make it much more art friendly. The author however ended the project back in 2011.

Huge Time Saving Tip - When you are working with multiple layers or simply pasting in elements/references/etc. GIMP uses the CTRL + V key to paste the clipboard as a "Floating selection (layer)".

Then before you can do anything else you have to "anchor" the layer to another (merging them together), or create a new layer for it.

Honestly 100% of the time I want it pasted as a new layer, and if I want to "anchor" it I will use the merge layer option myself - why are we forced to do extra work with each and every paste? I have to explain this to anyone I have talked to about installing GIMP, they don't understand the "Floating" option either.

The trick is to remove the "Floating" stuff altogether! Go to the menu Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts and select the Edit option, and then scroll down to the option Paste. Click the shortcut for Paste (which is CTRL + V by default) and press your Backspace key - that will remove the shortcut and "Floating" pastes.

Now to replace the CTRL + V option with what every other program in the world does, select Layer (that is two lines down). Click it and press CTRL + V and next click the window Close button, done!

Pros -

• Uses plug-ins, but few are of any real use for drawing
• Docked tools/windows since v2.8 (menu item Windows -> Single-Window Mode) - I really dislike floating tools, and hate multiple windows
• Nearly no program lag with mouse or tablet
• Completely free
• Great for working with images, I use it for my screenshots and other tasks. 😃

Cons -

• Very few (if any really) drawing aids or extras
• If you want anything more than customizable brush you are better off using another program

Recommended Use - For scaling/cropping/etc art to upload online, or opening image formats to save to another format. Great for an all around image editor with color levels and much more too.