Get to Know the GIMP

If you have not heard of GIMP by now, this tutorial will introduce you to it. GNU Image Manipulation Program, also known more commonly as GIMP, is an free open source program for creating and editing bitmapped images, which are images that are great for editing your digital photographs and creating graphics that we can use on our websites. GIMP also allows you to make some really nice drawings.

If you have not heard of GIMP until now, you probably have heard of PhotoShop. GIMP is like PhotoShop except unlike PhotoShop, GIMP is free. As you move through the different sections that I will point out to you, I want to encourage you to fool around and play with it on your own so you become more comfortable. This tutorial serves to only introduce you to the program with some of the basic tools you will need to start playing around on your own. In the future, it is my plan to develop my tutorials on GIMP, but for this tutorial, I want to teach you the basics.

History of the GIMP

In 1995, two computer science students developed GIMP as a class project. Their names were Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. Within a year, this small class project had grown in popularity and became an open source project with users and contributors world-wide.

Today, this program runs worldwide by countless people. You can use GIMP on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. etc.

Go to GIMP now to get started.

Please Note.....

In this tutorial, I am using GIMP 2.8, but depending on when you access this tutorial (down the line from today) you may be using a more advanced version and some of the screenshots may not be accurate.