The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The Gimp works on many operating systems, in many languages.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, 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 extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms.

Here are some key features of "The Gimp":

Painting

· Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
· Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
· Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
· Supports custom brushes and patterns

System

· Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
· Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time

Advanced Manipulation

· Full alpha channel support
· Layers and channels
· Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
· Editable text layers
· Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
· Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy and intelligent
· Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
· Transformable paths, transformable selections.
· Quickmask to paint a selection.

Extensible

· A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
· Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
· Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
· Over 100 plug-ins already available

Animation

· Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
· MNG support
· Frame Navigator (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
· Onion Skin (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
· Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)

File Handling

· File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
· Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
· SVG path import/export

What's New in 2.4.5 Stable Release:

· fixed a regression introduced by the brush cursor optimization (bug #514309)
· fixed bug in transform tool preview (bug #340965)
· fixed PSD export of images with layer masks
· fixed base64 encoding routine of the Mail plug-in
· use the correct background color when creating a new image (bug #514082)
· explicitly link libgimpthumb with GLib (bug #515566)
· improved selection of the font sample string (bug #514021)
· unified handling of "Enter" and "Space" keysyms (bug #516544)
· fixed bug in the Glossy script when used with a pattern (bug #517285)
· correctly record dimensions in Exif data when saving as JPEG (bug #517077)
· fixed sensitivity of plug-in menu items (bug #517683)
· fixed potential crashes in Wind, Warp, Small Tiles and Apply Canvas
· plug-ins (bug #516369)
· added default keyboard shortcut for "Paste As New Image" (Ctrl-Shift-V)
· added default keyboard shortcut for "Copy Visible" (Ctrl-Shift-C)
· fixed missing preview update in Curves tool (bug #518012)
· fixed a bug in the Frosty Logo script (bug #472316)
· fixed backward transformations using the PDB (bug #518910)
· translation fixes and updates (de, eu, eo, fr, he, hu, it, ja, ko)

What's New in 2.5.0 Development Release:

Core:

· improved rectangle tool drawing for narrow mode
· ported lots (but not all) drawing code to Cairo
· optimized image rendering by using pre-multiplied alpha
· use new GLib features such as GRegex
· use new GTK+ features such as the new GtkTooltip API
· much improved GimpCurve object
· cleaner and smaller tool options
· enable brush scaling for the Smudge tool
· added debugging framework that can be enabled at run-time
· depend on GEGL and use it optionally in some color operations
· optional GEGL processing for all color tools
· add proper settings objects for all color tools
· add list of recently used settings to all color tools
· added experimental GEGL tool to use arbitrary GEGL operations
· event filtering and smoothing for better paint tool performance
· added motion constraints in the Move Tool
· some operations do not any longer automatically add an alpha channel
· some preparation for tagging resource files
· cutting a selection doesn't clear the selection any longer
· added new polygon select tool
· load brushes and other data files recursively (search through subdirs)
· started work on language selector for the text tool (unfinished)
· allow to set opacity of the transform tool preview
· merged toolbox menu into the image menu
· always keep an image window around
· improved image statusbar
· dropped 'documents' in favor of ~/.recently-used.xbel
· started to work on text box functionality in the text tool
· numerous bug fixes and cleanups

Plug-ins:

· dicom: improved handling of 16 bit image data
· help: use GIO to access the help index
· print: moved Page Setup out of the Print dialog
· psd-load: rewritten, cleaner and more features
· randomize: added previews
· ripple: added a Phase Shift control
· screenshot: optionally add the mouse cursor image on an extra layer
· uri: use GIO/GVfs where available
· whirlpinch: allow a larger range for the whirl angle

Python binding:

· allow to specify colors using CSS color names
· added new method Image.new_layer()

Script-Fu:

· enforce R5RS syntax for 'let'
· improved Frosty Logo script

PDB:

· added new text layer API
· added gimp-vectors-export-to-file and gimp-vectors-export-to-string
· added procedure to test for existance of a procedure in the PDB
· improved error handling for procedures

Libraries:

· added some Cairo utilities
· allow to use markup in tooltips
· libgimpthumb doesn't any longer depend on other GIMP libraries

Miscellaneous:

· use the gimptool program on Unix, too, instead of the gimptool script
· create the list of supported MIME types at compile-time
· gimp shows library versions when called with '--version --verbose'

Contributors:

· Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, Martin Nordholts, Bill Skaggs, Øyvind Kolås, Manish Singh, Kevin Cozens, Alexia Death, Tor Lillqvist, Marcus Heese, John Marshall, Joao S. O. Bueno, Jakub Steiner, Simon Budig, Tom Lechner, Hans Breuer, ...