GIMP
GIMP >rogram) is a program for editing digital images in the form of bitmaps, both drawings and photographs. It is a free and open program. It is part of the GNU project and is available under the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License.
It is the graphics manipulation program available on more operating systems (Unix, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and macOS, among others).
The GIMP interface is available in several languages, including: Spanish, English (the original language), Catalan, Galician, Basque, German, French, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Korean and Dutch.
GIMP has tools that are used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, resizing, cropping, collaging, converting to different image formats, and other more specialized tasks. You can also create animated images in GIF format and animated images in MPEG format using an animation plugin.
The GIMP developers and maintainers strive to maintain and develop a high-quality, free software graphics application for editing and creating original images, photos, icons, graphic elements for both web pages and websites. artistic user interface elements.
History
The development of GIMP was started in 1995 by students Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis as a semester exercise at UC Berkeley student computer club. The first version of GIMP was initially developed on Unix systems and was specially designed for GNU/Linux as a free tool for working with images.
GIMP initially stood for General Image Manipulation Program”, but in 1997 it was changed to GNU Image Manipulation Program" ("GNU Image Manipulation Program"). GIMP is an official part of the GNU Project.
GIMP is used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing, cropping and modifying digital photos, modifying images, mixing and altering colors using a layering paradigm, removing or altering unwanted elements in images or conversion between different image formats. GIMP can also be used for creating simple animated images, vector manipulation, and advanced video editing.
GIMP is also known for being perhaps the first great free application for non-professional or expert users. Earlier free products, such as GCC, the Linux kernel, etc., were mainly programmers' tools for programmers. GIMP is considered by some to be proof that the free software development process can create applications that ordinary users can use productively. In this way, Gimp paved the way for other projects such as KDE, GNOME, Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org and other later applications.
Wilber
Wilber is the official mascot of the GIMP project. It was created on September 25, 1997 by Tuomas Kuosmanen, better known as tigert. There are other GIMP developers who have contributed additional plugins. Images of this mascot can be found in the "Wilber Construction Kit", included in the GIMP source code within the Wilber archive. Wilber was drawn using GIMP.
Features
GIMP is an image manipulation program that has evolved remarkably over time. It has been supporting additional formats, its tools are more powerful, and it is also capable of working with extensions or plugins and scripts. For a long time it can also be used with digitizing tablets.
GIMP uses GTK as a graphics control library. In reality, GTK was originally simply a part of GIMP, originating from replacing the commercial Motif library initially used in early versions of GIMP. GIMP and GTK were originally designed for the X Window graphics system running on Unix-like operating systems. GTK has subsequently been ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, macOS, and SkyOS.
GIMP allows the treatment of images in layers, to be able to modify each object of the image in a totally independent way to the other elements in other layers of the image. Layers can also be moved up or down, in a stack, to make image work easier. Each layer has its own visibility and degree of transparency, and in addition, there are a number of ways to combine the relationships between layers. The final image can be saved in the original GIMP format that supports layers, or in many flat formats without layers, such as png, bmp, jpg, GIF, PDF, etc.
With GIMP it is possible to also produce images in a fully automated non-interactive way (for example, generate images for a web page on the fly using CGI scripts or scripts) and also perform batch processing that changes color or converts series of images. For simpler automatable tasks, it's probably faster to use a package like ImageMagick.
The name of GIMP in Spanish is formed with the initials of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, read backwards.
Supported formats
GIMP reads and writes most graphic file formats, including; JPG, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, bmp, pix and also most psd (from Photoshop) as well as having its own open file storage format, XCF. It is also capable of importing and exporting pdf and postscript (ps) files. It also imports vector images in SVG format created, for example, with Inkscape. Gimp also writes and reads images in the ora format (OpenRaster format, open binary format), which makes it possible to easily transfer graphics with, for example, Krita, another open source graphics editing program.
Tools
GIMP has many tools, among which are the following;
- Selection tools (rectangular, spherical, manual (lasso), magic wand, by color, by investment, juxtaposition, addition, elimination),
- Smart scissors.
- Painted tools like: brush, brush, airbrush, filling, textures, degraded, etc.
- Extendable set of brush shapes to be used with previous tools.
- Modification tools for scale, tilt, deformation, rotation
- Flat cloning tools, cloning in perspective and cured brush (to correct small defects).
- Text creation and manipulation tool.
- Creating and editing degraded colors.
- Modification of colors by levels, posterization, modification of brightness, contrast, tone, saturation, investment, alterations of the color range, decomposition in channels, desaturation, etc...
- It also has many tools or filters for the manipulation of colors and the appearance of images, such as focus and blur, removal or addition of stains, shadows, color mapping, etc...
- It also has a menu with a catalog of effects and treatments (filters) of the images.
- Assistants for fast creation of buttons, logos and other simple images from preset elements.
- Creation, editing and manipulation of specific layer masks.
- Creation, editing and handling of routes.
- Measurement and simple calculation of lengths and angles.
- Menu to undo all manipulations made in a session (except some irreversible), to correct errors or to test.
Macro
In addition to interactive use, GIMP also allows the automation of many processes through macros or scripts. It does include a language called Scheme for this purpose. It also allows the use of other languages such as Perl, Python, Tcl and (experimentally) Ruby for these tasks. In this way, it is possible to write scripts and plugins for GIMP that can then be used repeatedly.
Plugins or extensions
GIMP plugins can prompt the user to enter parameters into operations, be interactive, or not. There is an extensive catalog of official plugins and there are also user-created ones that complement GIMP's functions in specific ways. These plugins are comparable to the extensions of other programs, such as those of the Mozilla Firefox or Libreoffice browser.
Some of the plugins are incorporated into new versions of gimp as part of the program itself, once they pass the necessary stability and usability tests.
Versions
GIMP was initially developed for GNU/Linux systems, and from the very beginning of its development it was ported to Windows and Mac OS operating systems. Its latest versions are available for these and many other operating systems.
Branch 0.x
In January 1996 Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis released version 0.54, which already supported extension by plugins that allowed you to design all kinds of effects, filters, and additional tools. Memory management was improved in version 0.60, while Peter Mattis was developing the free GDK/GTK toolkit.
Version 0.99 was released on February 26, 1997, and version 0.99.10 was released on June 1997
Branch 1.x
GIMP version 1.0 was released on June 5, 1998.
Version 1.2 was released in January 2001, includes measurement tools, a new image viewer, etc.
Version 1.2.5 was released in August 2003.
Branch 2.x
In March 2004, GIMP 2.0.0 was released, showing the switch to the GTK 2.x toolkit.
Version 2.4 was released in May 2008, and major changes from version 2.2 include a reworked, more polished interface, greater separation between the user interface and the back-end, improvements in many of the tools such as selection tools, and some new ones such as perspective cloning.
GIMP version 2.6 was released in October 2008.
GIMP version 2.8 was released in May 2012. Version 2.8.0 includes the ability to have a single global window that contains all image windows, tools, brushes, tool options, etc...(a la Photoshop), and also other new features such as the ability to group layers into folders, the ability to write text directly on the image instead of on an intermediate subwindow, a new tool for three-dimensional cloning ("cage" 34;), new brush sets and presets taken from Gimp Paint Studio, tool parameter selectors via sliders and also by typing in numerical values, and many other improvements, bug fixes, and a few other tweaks.
Gimp version 2.10 was released in 2018. It incorporates 6 years of improvements. For example, the new universal transformation tool, which combines several of the existing ones into one, a better color management tool, improvements in color precision (up to 32 bits with floating point), improvements in the preview of the results of the filters, before executing them, on the work area or canvas itself, new additional brushes (from My Paint), ten additional new ways of combining the layers, improvements in the control of the gradient tool, new tools (such as for example Handle), image and layer resolution management, new UI presentation themes, new optional icons, among many others. The version available in October 2019 is 2.10.12, in which more improvements have been included (for example, CMYK mode management) and bugs have been fixed. There is a version of the help in Spanish to complement the installation and you can also view the online help. The gimp 2.10 manual in Spanish is also available at https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/es/.
Gimp's own xcf file format has been changed in version 2.10 and therefore files saved in 2.10 cannot be read by Gimp 2.8. The Gimp 2.10 save files menu provides the alternative of saving files in a format readable by Gimp 2.8.
With the evolution from version 2.8 to 2.10 some of the many plugins do not work in this latest version. For users of specific plugins this can present a difficulty. There are also 2.8 plugins that continue to work in 2.10. For example, popular plugins like G'mic, or darktable work. Over time, plugins that don't work in 2.10 are likely to port to this version and incorporate GEGL and BABL.
Branch 3.x
Since October 2019 the developers are working on the development versions for version 3. The development version at the moment is 2.99.1. For version 3.0 it is planned to finish moving GIMP fully to the graphics library GEGL.
Derivations
Gimpshop
Gimpshop was a modification of GIMP with an interface (windows, position of commands in menus, terminology, etc..) to make it more like Adobe Photoshop. The latest version is 2.8.0 and is based on GIMP version 2.8.0.
Gimphoto
GimPhoto is another GIMP modification whose interface has been tweaked to resemble Adobe Photoshop. The latest version is 1.4.3 and it is based on GIMP version 2.4.3.
Seashore
Seashore is a GIMP-based program designed for the Mac OS operating system, which natively uses the OS X Cocoa interface. This program is currently (Dec 2008) at version 0.1.9 and includes at the moment only a limited set of filters available in GIMP.
It currently has the basic elements of GIMP: Rectangular, elliptical, lasso selection tools; color tools with brush, brush, fill, text, eraser, color picker, gradients, smudge, clone, zoom. It uses layers like the gimp, with the same possibilities of mixing, overlapping and sets of opacity and transparency between them.
It has color management (including the possibility of using CMYK) much more integrated into Mac OS than GIMP, since Seashore communicates directly with Coloursync, while Gimp uses communication with the operating system through the graphical environment Windows X11 Intermediate.
Seashore writes files in the Gimp format, xcf, and also in jpeg, jpeg2000, gif, png and tiff. It is capable of additionally reading pdf, ps. It is faster and lighter than GIMP due to its greater integration into the operating system and its fewer capabilities.
It has versions in several languages, including Spanish, its main developer considers that the early stage of development it is in means that the translation still requires many changes.
Seashore can be used for simple tasks that don't require advanced filters, and it appeals to Mac UI fans because of its good integration with it, when they need to mix different images by using layers.
It does not have advanced Gimp tools like perspective cloning, scaling as a tool (although it can scale with its own menu), rotation, and other tools. Seashore does not have the ability to use routes and masks.
CinePaint
CinePaint, formerly known as Film Gimp, is a GIMP modification that adds support for 16-bit depth per color channel, a total of 48 bits per pixel, has a frame manager and other enhancements, and is used in the film industry.
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