Although I do professional video editing from time to time to earn some extra cash I never was too much into graphics and photo editing. I've tried Adobe Photoshop and I found it to be too f..ing expensive and too much of a resource eater. Today I decided to try GIMP, or if you want to call it the long way, "The GNU Image Manipulation Program". It's free as the air and might be enough for my photo editing needs. Let's try it.
I've made a quick photo of one of my speakers and opened it with GIMP. Let's see what I can do with it in a couple of minutes.
First of all, let's cut out the cigarettes and all that stuff, let's leave only the speaker. Cropping the image works like a breeze, it takes only a few seconds. Now I'll add some black brush strokes on the edges.
Okay, now let's blur out the "Philips" logo, they didn't pay for the advertising :P
Well, that might not be professional graphics, but it took me only two minutes to play around with my photo and get this output. I found the interface very intuitive and logical, and the whole program seems user friendly. Of course, this open source program has many more features. Let's try to make a list:
Photo Enhancement - Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens' barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.
Digital Retouching - GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.
Supported File Formats - The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in. You can find some rare format support in the GIMP plugin registry. To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.
Overall I found it to be a very good freeware that suits my needs. I think that even professional photo editors can find it very useful, instead of paying loads of money for fancy software. You can download this little gem from here, it's free!
If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I'll help you out!
I've made a quick photo of one of my speakers and opened it with GIMP. Let's see what I can do with it in a couple of minutes.
First of all, let's cut out the cigarettes and all that stuff, let's leave only the speaker. Cropping the image works like a breeze, it takes only a few seconds. Now I'll add some black brush strokes on the edges.
Okay, now let's blur out the "Philips" logo, they didn't pay for the advertising :P
Well, that might not be professional graphics, but it took me only two minutes to play around with my photo and get this output. I found the interface very intuitive and logical, and the whole program seems user friendly. Of course, this open source program has many more features. Let's try to make a list:
Photo Enhancement - Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens' barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.
Digital Retouching - GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.
Supported File Formats - The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in. You can find some rare format support in the GIMP plugin registry. To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.
Overall I found it to be a very good freeware that suits my needs. I think that even professional photo editors can find it very useful, instead of paying loads of money for fancy software. You can download this little gem from here, it's free!
If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I'll help you out!
