Introduction to GIMP
GIMP is a raster graphics editing software that is open source and free software and works on the manipulation of the image that includes retouching, editing of images in the form of free drawing, and transcoding that means an easy exchange between file formats of image. Initially, it was established in Feb 1996, and its original authors’ were Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. You will get a high level of retouching results by this software and allow you to mass production of the image when you render it. The most important and point about this software is that it has a very user-friendly user screen.
Why do we use GIMP?
As we know, it is raster graphics editing software the same as Photoshop, so we use it for a high-quality image retouching process, free from drawing of image for a different purpose; we can also work on different file formats by using this software easily as it has expendable quality so you can expand its working feature by adding different plugins software with it. The most important thing for why we use it is that it is open-source and free software for all.
How GIMP works?
It works on image editing, so it uses different photo editing tools and techniques for doing its work. For editing purpose, it offers us a different form of brushes, and they are preset during painting purposes; we have layer and channel panel with different retouching tools, for color grading, it offers curve as well as colors/exposure, and many more things you can have which helps it in its image editing work.
Features
Features are a very important thing of any software that defines how effective any particular software is, so let us discuss some important features of GIMP software to have an idea about the range of manipulation or tasks it can do easily.
1. Supports and compatibility of the system
This software is compatible with Linux, Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows. One should keep in mind that image size does not extend more free space of disk, but you can easily open the number of images during your working. You can go to www.gitlab.gnome.org for having this software.
2. Painting with GIMP
For painting in this software, you will have a handful of painting tools such as basic sketch tools, including brushes, airbrush, clone tool, pencil, and others. You will also have a gradient editor and blending tool for the effective presentation of chosen colors. Despite this painting tool, you will also get a custom brushes option for making your own brush preset.
3. Highly powered Manipulation techniques
It offers several tools that we need for good and effective manipulation of the image during our work, such as you can have editable layer and channel panels, free transform feature with different sub transform options that are rotated, flip, scale, and so on. It also allows you are making a mask in a very quick manner for editing parameters of the selected image.
4. Different File format supported
You can easily load and open different file formats and convert them into a different format and save them with this software. The file formats that it supports are gif, jpeg, png, bmp, tiff, tga, xpm, etc. You can easily export and import the SVG path in it.
There was some useful feature of this software, and you will find more features once you start exploring this software. For getting good knowledge about this software, we must go through the pros and cons of this software. So have a look at them.
Advantages
We have several advantages of this software because of its easy and quick handling features, but today we will discuss some of the important advantages of this article. Let us have a look.
- It is Expendable and Extensible, so you can expand its working area by using plugins as well as use different file format extensions for a variety of work.
- Due to the advanced user interface screen, you can easily do a variety of manipulation in it, whether it is a simple image or a complex image.
- If you never touch Photoshop, which is a raster image editing software too, then due to a simple and friendly user interface, it will most helpful to you in learning image manipulation and graphic design.
- It is the most powerful software because you can handle large and professional video games in it.
Disadvantage
As we know, this is the universal truth that everything has drawbacks too in spite it has very useful and effective features, so let us go through the disadvantage of this software.
- It creates a problem if you use a very big image for editing or use several layers during the editing of any image.
- You might not get your desired results because it offers you limited access to third-party plugins.
- You will also face some difficulties in making effective arc artwork in this software.
- You will have limitations of options during the development of 3d designs.
Career path for GIMP
If you have a quick look around you, you will find several things that have graphics design element on them. These graphics can do with a different type of graphics software, and GIMP is one of that software through which you can do this type of graphics work so it has very broad career opportunities in graphics design, and with your graphics skill you can do a lot of things with this software then career achievement becomes easy for you.
Conclusion
Now your understanding of GIMP software is clear, and you better understand is the purpose of raster image editing software. You can easily analyze the pros and cons of this software at your personal level for getting knowledge about that is it helpful to you or not? I will suggest you use it once for a proper understanding of it.
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This is a guide to What is GIMP. Here we discuss How GIMP works along with the features, advantages, and disadvantages. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
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