GIMP Photo Editing Software – Comparison with Adobe Photoshop

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Whether you want to change your editing platform from Photoshop, or run out of money, and stopped subscribing to Adobe’s online cloud service, you should consider GIMP Photo Editing Software as your next alternative. 

GIMP is a free, open-source, image editor. The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) has always been a go-to tool for regular Linux users for several years.

Difficult to use including a high learning curve. Also, it lacks many of Adobe Photoshop’s advanced delicate features. Reality has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. 

GIMP now has one of the most competent user interfaces. It also has included an extensive powerful set of features. In some cases, it outshines Adobe Photoshop like its extensive photo editing algorithm which subtly enhances images according to its AI.

We will take a deep dive into the current version, GIMP 2.8 in this article, to help you figure out whether GIMP is the right photo editor for you.

GIMP Photo Editing Software

Key Factors

  1. After first loading GIMP 2.8, you may think that you fired up an alternate UI for Photoshop. 
  2. There are familiar panels for Layers, Brushes, Tools, Paths, and much other plenty of tools are available. 
  3. Individual tabs can be torn off using a command on the palette menu instead of Adobe’s more intuitive action, so you can tweak GIMP UI just about as much as you can Photoshop’s.
  4. The Gimp UI isn’t as elegant and attractive as Adobe Photoshop but contains most of the same components in terms of usability and features.
  5. Menus are also closely similar to Photoshop’s including File, Edit, Select, View, Image, Filters, and Help serving the same functions which are self-explanatory (although in a slightly different order). 
  6. The Colours and Tools tabs are unique to GIMP. Colors menu pulls together operations that affect image content (that are usually found under the Image > Adjustments menu in Photoshop). 
  7. The Tools menu pulls together some additional features of the same tools that are there in the Toolbox. Though Adobe puts in the Image menu, like Crop, GIMP has its own way of displaying icons. 
  8. It also provides you a window into some of the very powerful and extensible scripted images transforms that GIMP allows. These are pretty confusing stuff for beginners. But if you’re a professional, you are going to love these!
  9. Unfortunately, some of the icons, like the one for the crop tool shown, are different from the ones used by Photoshop, so finding your favorite may take some hunting.
  10. GIMP also misses the Text menu, which is a hint that its Text capabilities are not very competent and as feature-rich full-packed as Photoshop’s. 
GIMP Photo Editing Software

Some More Features

  • Some of the fancy layout options are missing. Also, all the built-in effects and warps from Photoshop are missing over here. The good news is that there are separate GIMP plug-ins available which can restore many of the missing features if you feel you are missing out on some of the major features of Adobe Photoshop.
  • The 3D commands menu which is there under Photoshop’s Extend and Creative Cloud editions is also not part of GIMP. Some of the available GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) scripts are helpful in performing similar operations in GIMP. 
  • These scripts are one of the coolest features of GIMP. This makes it an open platform for image processing developers. This amazing functionality is not specifically there in Adobe Photoshop. So If you are using GIMP, you are having a lead. 
  • While Photoshop can be scripted, most image transforms are either “black box” plug-ins or actual built-in commands.
  • GIMP also lacks Photoshop’s powerful Adjustment Layers feature. It helps you to separately apply edits through a different additional layer and allows you to quickly switch between the edited and original images. 
  • You can make a new layer, apply a Filter, and then tweak the opacity or blend mode, but it is a full image layer. 
  • There are some plans to try to offer equivalent functionality to Adjustment Layers through GIMP but isn’t an ideal workaround for the issue yet. 
  • GIMP History feature is also much less powerful than Photoshop’s. You can go back through your History to the previous edits as you might in most software. Essentially a graphical list of possible Undos is displayed. But unfortunately, you can’t play around with your History or use a History brush as you can do in Photoshop.

Pricing and Availability

If you want to hear the good news, it’s completely free. There is no such concept to use as a free trial and a further priced pack. You get all of it free of cost. 

All you have to do is download it from their website. It is available for your Mac OS and Windows. It is still not available for tablets and Android phones, though. So if you are wondering to use GIMP on your iPhone or iPad, you have to wait till they make the grand announcement!

Conclusion

So after analyzing all the pros and cons of the software, we can say that GIMP is best for On-premise graphics manipulation that enables graphic designers, photographers, and others to create design elements, icons, scripted images, and many more using various programming languages.

If you are a tech geek, you are going to love it!!

Comment your opinion!

Happy Editing!

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