GIMP2 – more than an awful name

As this blog is renovated, the customized banner, created and manipulated by the talented Elizabeth Stewart, is trying very hard to fit into its space. We’re working on it. I swear those aren’t devil horns. You’ll see the whole thing soon. Although I should not play with her graphic art, I could not resist wanting to pull it into some photo editing software to take a look (I should really leave it to the professionals). The problem was that I did not have any photo editing software on my computer. I took my access to PhotoShop for granted in my previous employment … and now I missed it. With some trepidation, I set out to see if there was any free or low-cost photo editing software out there that was worthwhile. Knowing you usually get what you pay for, I typed “free photo editing software” into the Google search bar, hit enter, and closed my eyes. Opened eyes. And there it was, consistently named as “top pick” among free photo editors: GIMP. GIMP? Actually, GIMP2 (new and improved). Once I downloaded it, I found that it is very similar to PhotoShop. If you’ve used PhotoShop, you should have no difficulty using GIMP2. If you haven’t, you might need some assistance getting started. If you want to try it, follow these steps:

• For Windows: Go to http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html. First download GTK +2 Runtime Environment (currently the second item on the page). Older versions of Windows need the version of the runtime environment listed below that one. Then download The GIMP for Windows.
• For the Mac: Go to http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ and download from that page. GIMP is only for OS X, not for earlier versions.
• You can also download a version for Unix systems. See http://www.gimp.org/unix/.
• Take a look at the User Manual: http://docs.gimp.org/en/.
• Here are some tutorials: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/.
• Just Google it and you’ll find all kinds of resources.

Whether you are working on web pages, trying to create a T-shirt for your SL avatar, creating a logo, or just trying to crop some photos, I’d suggest giving GIMP a try. What the heck: it’s free.