## Chapter 1. Introduction

## 1. Welcome to GIMP

GIMP is a multi-platform tool to create and edit images of all kinds. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program.

GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, a tool to create digital art, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and custom data to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be scripted.

GIMP is a Free Software application covered by the General Public License version 3 [GPL]. The GPL provides users with the freedom to access and alter the source code that makes up computer programs.

### 1.1. Known Platforms

One of GIMP's strengths is its free availability on a wide range of operating systems and architectures. Most GNU / Linux distributions include GIMP as a standard application. GIMP is also available for other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Apple's macOS (Darwin). The platforms on which GIMP has been known to work include:

GNU/Linux, Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Digital UNIX, OSF/1, IRIX, GNU/Hurd, OS/2, BeOS, and its successor Haiku.

GIMP is easily ported to other operating systems because of its source code availability. For further information visit the GIMP developers homepage. [GIMP-DEV].

### 1.2. History of GIMP

The first version of GIMP was written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball in 1995. Over the years many other people have contributed by helping with development, testing, providing support, translating and writing documentation. A short history of GIMP is available online.

### 1.3. GIMP's Help system

The GIMP Documentation Team provides the information that tries to help you understand how to use GIMP. The User Manual is an important part of this help. The latest version is always available on the website of the Documentation Team [GIMP-DOCS] in HTML format. When using GIMP, context sensitive help is available by pressing the F1 key while the mouse is on top of a menu item or other part of GIMP's interface. Most dialogs will also show a help button that you can use to access the relevant part of the manual.

The manual in HTML format can also be installed locally on your computer. Installers are available for Windows, and on Linux your package manager may have a gimp-help package available. Though if your internet speed and bandwidth allow it, using the online manual is recommended since it is usually more up-to-date. When installing the local manual, you will have to adjust your help preferences to make use of the local copy.

### 1.4. Features and Capabilities

The following list is a short overview of some of the features and capabilities which GIMP offers you:

- A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, cloning, etc.

- Tile-based memory management, 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 for working with transparency.

- Layers and channels.

- A procedural database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs, such as Script-Fu.

- Advanced scripting capabilities.

- Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space).

- Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.

- Support for a wide range of file formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, PSD, DDS, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others.

- Selection tools, including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and scissors.

- Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.

Part I. Getting Started |  | 2. What's new in GIMP

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