Tech Talk

You can tell how much technology has insinuated itself into our lives by the number of tech terms that have become verbs: two of the best known examples are the use of the words “photoshop” and “google”, as in the sentences, “You can just photoshop yourself if you want to lose three inches in the waist,” and “I googled my name and found out that I don’t exist.” What does this have to do with GIMP? Well, GIMP is the poor person’s photoshop.

What is GIMP then? It’s an image manipulation program that is absolutely free. And, if you follow this blog at all, you know that I love free software. With GIMP you can work on photos, you can paint, you can create designs for blogs and websites, and it’s all free.

I tried GIMP a few years ago and found it difficult to use, but when I downloaded the latest version last week, I found it to be very similar to Photoshop. Is it better? I don’t know is my honest answer. I’m not a professional photographer or designer. In fact, my friends and students tell me that my design sense is somewhat lacking, but GIMP does serve my limited needs quite well. There are forums that you can check to read all the arguments for both programs, but for me, the Photoshop/GIMP and Word/OpenOffice debates are somewhat pointless. If there is free software that can take care of beginner and intermediate level user needs, then that’s what I use. Why pay hundreds of dollars for a programs that give you more bang than you need?

And for schools, GIMP is a great tool because it’s free and easy to teach. I wish that I had come across GIMP while I was still teaching, because I would opt for that rather than spend money on Photoshop.

So what are a few things that GIMP does?

• GIMP is customizable so you can use set it up to suit your needs.
• You can enhance your photos with the great set of tools that come with GIMP.
• You can do advanced retouching. I used GIMP to restore some old ruined photos of my wife’s family.
• You can save your work in a variety of formats like JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIFF.
• GIMP comes with a set of plugins to give you more options in your manipulations and retouches.
• You can load and save files from remote locations using FTP, HTTP and SFTP/SSH.
• You can compress files to save space using ZIP, GZ or BZ2.
• GIMP works on most operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux, Sun OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD.

There are many tutorials out on the Web. A few are:

• Creating a Fancy Website Layout
• GIMP Tutorials
• GIMP Tutorials/ Design Links
• 30 Exceptional GIMP Tutorials
• Recoloring Eyes for GIMP

So if you are looking for an alternative to Photoshop, you should check GIMP out. If you are a technology coordinator with less money than you would like, you might want to try GIMP and save yourself some money. I’ll be adding GIMP to my growing collection of free software. How about you?