About Gimp

Gimp is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Gimp is software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It's capabilities as a image manipulation programs makes it a worthy contender to other similar programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint.

The biggest advantage that Gimp has is that it is a free program, and it can be downloaded from the Internet. But even more importantly, it's not freeware. Gimp is an OSS (Open Source Software) program covered by the GPL license, which gives you the freedom to access and also to change the source code that makes up the program. This is how and why Gimp is constantly being developed and improved.

A Brief List of Gimp Features and Capabilities

° Full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an airbrush, an ink tool, and cloning.
° 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.
° Layers and channels.
° Advanced scripting capabilities provided by a procedural database so you can call internal Gimp functions from external scripts, such as Script-Fu, Perl-Fu (Perl scripts) and Python-Fu (Python scripts).
° Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space).
° Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.
° File formats supported include GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others.
° Load, display, convert and save to many file formats.
° Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, paths and intelligent scissors.
° Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new functions, new file formats and new effect filters.

Therefore the whole Gimp developer team is welcoming you to the wonderful world of Gimp.

About the Help System

The Gimp Help System will provide you with the necessary information how to use all the functions provided by Gimp. It will do so in a short and effective way so the best way to describe it is as a extended quick reference to Gimp. The difference between the Gimp help system and a pure quick reference is that the help system will describe the functionality and how to use the function in a productive manner.

How to Use the Help System

The built in Gimp help browser (which we hope that you are using) has three note book tabs. The one that you are reading this text in is the main note book tab in which all help texts are displayed. The Context note book tab will show the context of the help system and the index note book tab will show the index of the help system. The advantage of the built in help browser is that you can easily navigate the help system in e.g the Context note and display the help text in the main note book tab.

What to Expect of the Help System

Besides the description of the functionality of the functions in Gimp. You will also find descriptions of how to organize your work with Gimp, how to setup Gimp, various tips and tricks, quick reference page of short cuts and modifier keys, News of Gimp 1.2 for old Gimp users, etc. You will find all this extra information in the Context note book tab, since they are general help items and not specific to a special Gimp function.

You will also find links to the Gimp Users Manual and the Gimp Users Tutorial to where you will find more in depth information of the function and how to user the function when you work in Gimp. We hope that you will find the links useful and that they will enlighten you and give you an extended and professional understanding of Gimp, image manipulation and art.

So Happy Gimping

The Gimp Development Team

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