GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It is an extremely capable piece of software with many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, a expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, a image format converter, etc.

GIMP is extremely expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plugins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

• Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone,etc.
• Tile based memory managent 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
• Layers and channels
• A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
• Advanced scripting capabilities
• Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
• Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
• Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool.
• Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format.
• Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.
• File formats supported include gif, jpg, png, xpm, tiff, tga, mpeg, ps, pdf, pcx, bmp, and many others.
• Load, display, convert, save to many file formats.
• Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent.
• Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.
• Over 100 plugins already available.
• Supports custom brushes and patterns
• Much, much more!

The GIMP was written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball. Many, many other developers have contributed plugins. And thousands have provided support and testing.

GIMP releases are currently being orchestrated by Manish Singh.

A few interesting reviews of GIMP .99.x/1.0 from the press.

A Quick Start Guide to the GIMP

"It has been a long time coming, but the wait is over: Linux has its first real end-user power tool. It's not for administrators. It's not for network hacks. It's not another developers tool. It's for artists. It's for media managers and graphics nuts. It's for fun. It's for real. It's the GIMP. "

-- Michael Hammel
Linux Journal
November 1997

An Introduction to the GIMP

"The GIMP is a free, robust, powerful program for painting, image processing, and manipulating pictures. If you enjoy using Adobe's Photoshop program, you'll love the GIMP."

--Matt Cutts
ACM Crossroads
Summer 1997