There are lots more dialogs, filters, and other such tools to get your digital photographs and images just the way you want them. For example, in the Tools > Color Tools sub-menus you also will find dialogs to adjust color hue, saturation, balance, and more. There are lots of goodies in the Filters and Script-Fu menus too. Play around with these tools on your own to see what they can do and to learn how to use them.

You will find brief introductions to many of these tools in Chapter 17, Image Menu: Colors, Part VI, Filters, and Chapter 42, Script-Fu: Description and Function in Karin and Olof S. Kylander ' s book, Gimp User's Manual. The Gimp User's Manual is online and there is a free-download link in the Resources section at the end of this article.

Version-wise, Gimp User's Manual is somewhat outdated. It is about GIMP 1.0.x. The current stable version of GIMP is 1.2.5 and the current developer version is 1.3.x. Moreover, GIMP 2.0 is expected to be released soon.

Nevertheless, you may freely download the Gimp User's Manual. That makes it a very good deal and well worth using to learn how to use the GIMP. The main point of this versions discussion is to let you know that GIMP has lots more features and many user-interface improvements since Gimp User's Manual was published.

About the Geese Photo

The geese photograph was shot with a Casio 2.11 Mega-pixel QV-2300UX LCD Digital Camera with a 3X optical zoom at f/2.8 and 1/355 second. The original image size is 1600x1200 pixels. The Casio 2.11 Mega-pixel a very nice camera, by the way.

GIMP v Photo$hop

GIMP looks and feels much like Adobe Photoshop (GIMP = GNU Image Manipulation Program). Unlike Photoshop, the GIMP is free (as in beer) and does not need to be registered or activated.

There are desktop and user interface (UI) differences between GIMP and Photoshop that take some getting use to if you already are familiar with Photoshop. Traditionally, Photoshop has had an easier to use desktop and user interface. However, the GIMP 1.3 desktop and UI changes all that. GIMP now is as easy to use as is Photoshop perhaps even easier.

GIMP does not have all the advanced, commercial, pre-press features that Photoshop does have. However, it comes pretty close to Photoshop with actual photo editing and image manipulation. Moreover, GIMP has some features that Photoshop does not have.

In short, unless you are a professional photographer or image editor who needs Photoshop's advanced or prepress features, you likely can do just about everything that you need or want to do with GIMP instead of Adobe Photoshop. That is particularly true where digital photography and editing photos and images for Web pages are involved.

Moreover at Photoshop's $649 price tag ($169 for upgrade from a licensed copy of Photoshop 7 or earlier) there are 649 more good reasons to use GIMP instead of Photoshop.

Photoshop has a greedy and consumer-unfriendly end-user license agreement (EULA). GIMP is free and has a very consumer-friendly license known as the General Public License (GPL). Please see the Adobe Photoshop & GIMP Licensing Note in the right-hand sidebar.

Additionally, Photoshop has a horrible and very anti-consumer Product Activation requirement. GIMP has no such crap! Please see the Adobe Product Activation Note in the sidebar.

A very nice thing about GIMP is that you can try it without paying a cent. Moreover, if you try the GIMP and like it, you do not have to pay a cent to keep on using it. If you are a Linux user, chances are that you already have GIMP installed on your Linux-based computer.

If you are a Microsoft Windows user, chances are that you do not already have the GIMP installed. Nevertheless you can download a Windows version of GIMP, free, and easily install it yourself. If your Linux distribution did not come with the GIMP you also can download a free Linux version of the GIMP. Download links are in the Resources section at the end of this article.

Conclusions

The GIMP is an excellent image, graphic, and photo editing program for the Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms. It also can be used to create graphics and drawings from scratch.

Four basic digital photo and image editing tasks are cropping, scaling, brightness adjustment, and contrast adjustment. In today's tutorial you were introduced to these tasks and GIMP tools that help you to do those tasks.

The coverage in today's tutorial is just the tip of the iceberg, even for just cropping, scaling, brightness adjustment, and contrast adjustment. It's a start in learning the mechanics of editing digital photographs and images with the GIMP.

In order to get good at creating stunning photos and graphics, you need to learn, in depth, how to use the tools covered today plus all the GIMP tools. Much of that learning is a matter of experimenting with the tools and much of it is a matter of gaining experience using the tools.

Don't forget that creating stunning photos and graphics is more than merely the mechanics of using the GIMP tools. Artistry is very important. A good way to learn the artistry is to take a studio art course.

If you are looking for a first class image, graphic, and photo editing program, give the GIMP a spin. Considering that the GIMP is a free download, that should be a very easy thing for you to do.

GIMP often is referred to as an Adobe Photoshop clone because it has pretty much the same collection of features and functions that Photoshop has. However, it appears that rather than thinking of GIMP as a Photoshop clone, it would be more appropriate to think of the GIMP and Photoshop as similar software products of comparable quality.

On the other hand when it comes to pricing and licensing, Photoshop falls woefully-far short of the GIMP. GIMP is free compared to the $649 list price for Photoshop. Moreover, GIMP's licensing is very consumer/user friendly. Adobe is very deficient in this arena, too. Adobe Photoshop licensing is extremely consumer/user unfriendly. Moreover, Photoshop licensing imposes Adobe's horrible Product Activation mechanism.

Unless you are a professional photographer or image editor who needs Photoshop's prepress features, you likely ought to us the GIMP rather than Adobe Photoshop. Considering that the GIMP is a free download, that should be a very easy thing for you to do.

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