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Meet the GIMP

By Clayton E. Crooks II

The General Image Manipulation Program (or GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and robust program for image manipulation that runs on a variety of platforms. Shortened to simply "the GIMP," there's a general consensus that it's the first—and perhaps most successful—productivity application ever developed under a free software licensing arrangement. If you've worked with Adobe Photoshop, you'll definitely be impressed by the GIMP's features.

A Humble Beginning

The GIMP began as a school project for two students, Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, at the University of California at Berkeley. After they finished their CS164 compilers course and released the software under the GNU Public License, programmers from around the world started adding features, fixing problems, and improving the software's overall quality. The dedicated work of hundreds of developers has molded the GIMP into a complete graphics editor.

Because the software was released under the GNU Public License, you can always obtain the source code, which is constantly being updated, without charge (see " Online"). The downloaded program runs on a wide variety of Unix platforms including Linux—even a Windows version exists.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)