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GIMPThe GNU Image Manipulation Program or just GIMP is a free bitmap graphics editor, a program for creating and processing raster graphics. It also has some support for vector graphics.

 

GIMP can be used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, changing colors, combining images using a layer paradigm, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create simple animated images.

 

Some of GIMP's features include:

 

Brushes, colors, and painting tools

  • 48 standard brushes, plus facilities to create new ones
  • Brushes can be used in hard-edged, soft-edged, or eraser modes, be applied at different opacities, or used to apply various effects
  • Palette with RGB, HSV, colour wheel, CMYK, and mixing modes, plus tools to pick colours from the image with various averaging options. Support for hexadecimal colour codes (as used in HTML)


Selection and masking tools

  • Selection of rectangles, circles, similar colors, or freehand selection
  • Smart Selection tool, known as the "Magic Wand", used to select contiguous regions


Layers, transparency

  • Support for layers, including transparent layers, which can be shown, hidden, or made semitransparent
  • Transparent and semitransparent images
  • Channels available to add different types of opacity and color effects to images


Paths

  • Support for paths containing line segments or bezier curves. Paths can be named, saved, and painted with brushes, patterns, or various line styles


Effects, scripts, and filters

  • Approximately 150 standard effects and filters


Scripting

 

As well as interactive use, GIMP can be automated with macro programs. The built-in Scheme can be used for this, or alternatively Perl, Python, Tcl and (experimentally) Ruby can also be used. This allows the writing of scripts and plugins for GIMP which can then be used interactively; it is also possible to produce images in completely non-interactive ways (for example generating images for a webpage on the fly using CGI scripts) and for batch color correction and conversion of images. For simple automatable tasks, a package such as ImageMagick is likely to be quicker, but GIMP has much more powerful features.