Painting tools

GIMP – free and open-source raster graphics editor

GIMP stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program, a freely distributed program for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has a large feature set. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. It also makes the task of screenshots easy.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions.

The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Features include:

  • A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, cloning, etc.
  • Digital retouching.
  • Tile-based memory management, so image size is limited only by available disk space.
  • Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality anti-aliasing.
  • Full Alpha channel support for working with transparency.
  • Layers and channels.
  • Scalable Brushes.
  • Fullscreen Editing.
  • Color Management and Soft-proofing.
  • A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-Fu.
  • Advanced scripting capabilities.
  • Multiple undo/redo.
  • Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.
  • File formats supported include GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others.
  • Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent.
  • Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.
  • Support for vector layers using the GFig plug-in.
  • Support for various input devices out of the box. Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers.

Website: www.gimp.org
Support: Documentation
Developer: First version written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball. Thousands of individuals have contributed since.
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Linux for Starters - GIMP
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GIMP is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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