The Gimp

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

GIMP is often described as "Photoshop on Linux" but in fact is available to run on many different operating systems. I'll assume for this page that you will be wanting to run it on Windows.

As I've said elsewhee in this site, free software is often used by large companies and GIMP is a shining example of this. It was actually used by Los Angeles post-production studio Rhythm & Hues when they animated a very famous dog for Warner Brothers studios.

Of course I'm referring to none other than Scooby Doo in the 2002 live-action movie. For more information here is a rather in-depth article.

Getting and installing the GIMP

The GIMP should run on Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP but NT4, 2000 or XP are recommended The amount of memory can be an important factor, especially if you intend to work on large images.

A minimum of 128 MB of RAM is recommended, but the more RAM the better.

Some people find it a bit confusing to get all the needed parts of the GIMP so here are simple instructions..

First, Download the Windows version from

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

TIP– Sourceforge is a really great place to find free software. It's a sort of meeting place where free software developers hang out and share projects and it acts as a centralised control when many individual developers are working on a project. When you have some time take a look at http://www.sourceforge.net

You will need to download

• GTK+ 2 for Windows, which is something called a "runtime" - like a foundation
  
  and
  
• The Gimp for Windows

I would also recemmend that you download the GIMP help package and the Animation package avaliable from the same page.

Then simply run the downloaded files to install the program.

When you start the GIMP for the first time it is normal to go through a calibration stage that will ask you about screen resolution. The easiest way to do this is in fact to have a ruler ready and simply measure the on-screen bars and enter the result into the boxes. This will ensure that the pictures you see on screen are as close to real as possible.

The next step is the GIMP tutorials and they are available here.

Have fun and if you get stuck (which can be fun in iteslf) make sure you use the tutorials and the help package that you downloaded earlier.