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Revision History
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| Revision $Revision: 1.79 $ |
2005-11-01 |
j.h |
The GIMP is a multiplatform photo
manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for
GNU Image Manipulation Program. The
GIMP is suitable for a variety of image
manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and
image construction.
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.
One of The GIMP's strengths is its free
availability from many sources for many operating systems. Most
GNU/Linux distributions
include The GIMP as a standard application.
The GIMP is also available for other
operating systems such as Microsoft Windows™
or Apple's Mac OS X™
(Darwin). The
GIMP is not freeware. It is a Free Software
application covered by the General Public License (GPL license). The
GPL provides users with the freedom to access and
alter the source code that makes up computer programs.
The first version of the GIMP was written
by Peter Mattis and Spencer
Kimball. Many other developers have contributed more recently, and
thousands have provided support and testing.
GIMP releases are currently
being orchestrated by Sven Neumann and Mitch Natterer and many other
people called the GIMP-Team.
1.2.
The GIMP-Help system
The GIMP Documentation Team and other
users have provided you with the information necessary to understand
how to use The GIMP. The User Manual is
an important part of this help. The current version is on
the web site of the
Documenation Team in HTML format. The HTML version is also available
as context sensitive help (if you installed it)
while using GIMP by pressing the
F1 key. Help on specific menu items can be accessed
by pressing the F1 key while the mouse pointer is
focused on the menu item. Read on to begin your
GIMP journey.
1.3.
Features and Capabilities
The following list is a short overview of some of the features and
capabilities which GIMP offers you:
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A full suite of painting tools including brushes, a pencil, an
airbrush, cloning, etc.
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Tile-based memory management, so image size is limited only by
available disk space
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Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high-quality
anti-aliasing
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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
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Multiple undo/redo (limited only by disk space)
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Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
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File formats supported include GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG,
PS, PDF, PCX, BMP and many others
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Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier
and intelligent
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Plug-ins that allow for the easy addition of new file formats and
new effect filters
