GIMP (GNU GIMP Image Manipulation Program) works on all popular operating systems: Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. GIMP is included in almost all popular Linux distributions, so it does not require a separate installation. But Windows users are not so well aware of it. I took it upon myself to test the new release of Gimp in Windows Vista. The new stable version of GIMP had to wait more than two years: version 2.3.0 was released back in 2005.
GIMP can be used both as a drawing editor and as a photo editing tool. When drawing, you can use a lot of tools: a brush, pencil, airbrush, stamp, and others, with all the drawing tools being flexibly adjusted (line thickness, shape, transparency, etc.). All known tablets and scanners are supported. There are layers, editing of individual channels is allowed, there is support for the alpha channel. There is animation, you can work with animation frames as with separate layers of the image. GIMP supports extensions and external modules, and several dozen are already included in the package. There are good opportunities to work with text, a whole set of transformation tools (rotation, scaling, tilt and reflection, and others like them), work with exposure (curves, histogram and other controls).
And what's new in the 2.4 branch?
Of the amenities, I will note the following:
- When installing from scratch, everything is done automatically (without intrusive dialogs).
- Floating panels appear and hide together with image windows and are not displayed in the list of windows and on the taskbar, with open/save dialogs and extension dialogs, this happens anyway (conveniently).
- Now, instead of “ok”, appropriate actions have appeared in the dialogs (for example, «resize ») (very convenient).
- The status bar has become more informative for hints. If the status bar is disabled, then a progress indicator appears during filter processing (useful for beginners).
- A new set of Tango-style icons and new menu items (beautifully).
The following changes affected the functionality:
- Advanced color management and color profiles have appeared.
- A great print dialog has appeared.
- Improved tools for saving files in various formats.
- Improved loading of broken PNG files.
- 16/32-bit BMP files are supported, as well as the alpha channel in them.
- Added support for Adobe Photoshop brushes in ABR format (v2, v6).
- You can open and save 24-bit icon files and Windows Vista icon files.
- Layer masks are now also saved in PDF, there is support for long layer names in PSD.
In fact, there are a lot of changes, I have not described everything, and they will not leave indifferent even professionals working in similar programs. I enjoyed working in this wonderful, free program. Will you try?
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