Since this site is very much concerned with digital photography of wildlife and the enhancement of resulting images, i've made a few mentions of my favourite graphics app, The GIMP, in related topics but thought that it would probably be more helpful to actually write up a brief explanation in the correct forum category.
The GIMP is a Free and Open Source, Multiplatform Graphic Manipulation program, It's suitable for use in a variety of tasks, including image compositing, photo retouching and manipulation. The program is developed by a group of volunteers from around the globe, collaborating via the internet to provide the Free software community with a quality product.
While the GIMP is developed primarily for and on Linux, it's very portable and builds are available for Mac OSX and Windows users too.
If you'd like to give the GIMP a go and you're running Windows then the following page should help you out.
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
The installation may, at first, seem daunting but it's really quite straightforward. The GTK and GIMP installers are the two files that you must download, if downloading through sourceforge click on the appropriate links and choose a mirror near you to continue to the download page.
once in posession of both files you'll need to unzip them and install GTK followed by the GIMP.
Mac users can get The GIMP through Fink and Darwin ports, or from http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/, I'm afraid that i'm unable to provide any more advice for Mac users.
Linux users, if there are any of you here, your distribution should come with the GIMP, if you haven't installed it already you can probably find it on your installation discs or the package repository for your distro.
post installation, it's really a case of getting settled into the program. Reading the free ebook 'Grokking The GIMP' available at http://gimp-savvy.com/ is a helpful introduction, despite the fact that this guide is written for GIMP 1.x it is still largely relevant. If you'd rather have the book available offline you can download a tarball from gimp-savvy or, alternatively, download this installer.
further useful content can be found at:
GIMP.org
The GIMP User Group
if any of the above fails to make sense, and i'm sure some of it will, let me know and i'll try to help.
The GIMP is a Free and Open Source, Multiplatform Graphic Manipulation program, It's suitable for use in a variety of tasks, including image compositing, photo retouching and manipulation. The program is developed by a group of volunteers from around the globe, collaborating via the internet to provide the Free software community with a quality product.
While the GIMP is developed primarily for and on Linux, it's very portable and builds are available for Mac OSX and Windows users too.
If you'd like to give the GIMP a go and you're running Windows then the following page should help you out.
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
The installation may, at first, seem daunting but it's really quite straightforward. The GTK and GIMP installers are the two files that you must download, if downloading through sourceforge click on the appropriate links and choose a mirror near you to continue to the download page.
once in posession of both files you'll need to unzip them and install GTK followed by the GIMP.
Mac users can get The GIMP through Fink and Darwin ports, or from http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/, I'm afraid that i'm unable to provide any more advice for Mac users.
Linux users, if there are any of you here, your distribution should come with the GIMP, if you haven't installed it already you can probably find it on your installation discs or the package repository for your distro.
post installation, it's really a case of getting settled into the program. Reading the free ebook 'Grokking The GIMP' available at http://gimp-savvy.com/ is a helpful introduction, despite the fact that this guide is written for GIMP 1.x it is still largely relevant. If you'd rather have the book available offline you can download a tarball from gimp-savvy or, alternatively, download this installer.
further useful content can be found at:
GIMP.org
The GIMP User Group
if any of the above fails to make sense, and i'm sure some of it will, let me know and i'll try to help.
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