We often think in stereotypes, and the software market is no exception. Besides Windows, there are many interesting operating systems, documents do not have to be typed in MS Word, and photos can be processed not only in Adobe Photoshop.
Processing raster graphics at a professional level – the domain of expensive, powerful software. However, today digital image processing is used not only by professionals and amateur photographers, but also by a wide range of users who are far from this “labor” segment.
What does the average user need? Everyone wants to have a simple, easily mastered program that works stably and allows you to perform all the necessary operations.
The word “GIMP” stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The graphic editor, distributed under a free license, has a funny logo with a devil, which appeared not accidentally, because the name of the product contains the anagram “imp”. GIMP works in all popular operating systems: Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. GIMP is included in almost all popular Linux distributions, so it does not require a separate installation. If the program does not appear in the start menu of your environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.), then it simply needs to be installed from the distribution disks using standard tools (for example, in SuSE, YaST2 is responsible for installing the software). Installing the editor on Windows requires the GTK+ library. You can download the library (3.7MB) and the editor (7.8MB) from the GIMP for Windows page. The library and editor have international modules and do not require additional russification downloads. GIMP has rather modest system requirements compared to other graphic editors, successfully running even on outdated computers with 128MB of RAM. The minimum requirements for the processor make the older generation hit a distant memory: Pentium MMX. But even though the actual system requirements of the software are always much higher than the officially stated minimum, GIMP will feel confident on all workstations built in the current millennium.
The editor’s interface seems unusual, to say the least. Instead of the usual program window with an extensive main menu and toolbar, we have a tiny concentration of buttons. But when you open an image, the situation becomes more or less clear – documents are opened in independent windows with the main menu already present. The start window acts as a kind of quick access panel, where all the most frequently used functions are collected. The other tools can be called in several ways. The first, the most guessable method, is traveling through the main menu of the document working window. The second is by using the right mouse button. Instead of the usual call to the properties of the current object, you will be offered a full list of editor functions, duplicated by the main menu.
And, finally, the third way – hotkeys. Call the program settings from the main window and go to the “Interface” tab. Enable the “Use hotkeys” and “Save hotkeys on exit” options. This will allow you to assign hotkeys directly while the editor is running. The most commonly used functions can be invoked using hotkeys initially. But if your priorities differ from the developers’ idea, why not add your own combinations to the list? Besides, you can reassign existing hotkeys. In order to assign/reassign a keyboard shortcut, you need to get to the desired menu item, but not select it. Stop the mouse cursor on it and press any keyboard shortcut. A pointer appears to the right of the item name, saying that this combination is now bound to the current tool.