I can’t remember exactly when and where I met Kristarella, but she has since become a regular commenter here on Creative Curio. Whenever I write about Photoshop, she always lets us know whether The GIMP, an open source (read “free”) alternative to Photoshop, can do the same things and if not, then she looks into an alternate way to accomplish a similar technique. She is a self-taught designer, though she is majoring in biology at her university in Australia. I asked Kristarella to guest write for Creative Curio and enlighten us all with a peek into the GIMP. Kristarella has quite the passion for digital graphics: design and photography. She has her own blog at kristarella.com.
by Kristarella
What is the GIMP?
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is an open source program that can be run on Windows, Linux and Mac. It has a lot of tools, filters and can be extended using scripts.
Some of the tools
As a bit of an introduction I thought I’d go through some of the tools and tell you why version 2.4 is the best yet.
Selection tools
The release of GIMP 2.4 saw a huge improvement in the versatility of the selection tools. Previously when making a selection I had to watch the co-ordinates of my mouse to make sure my selection was correct.
Now, I can create a selection anywhere, move it, resize it by dragging the corners or edges, and use the settings to create round corners, feathered edges, fixed size/height/width/aspect ratio.
You can also select with the freehand lasso, fuzzy select, by colour, magnetic select and the new foreground select feature 
.
The foreground select tool is pretty spiffy. It basically involves three steps: freehand select the area you want — the “background” appears dark blue; mark the foreground so the GIMP knows what you think is the foreground, which it then extracts — I only had to select the small section shown to get the result shown above; then you can refine the selection by adding more foreground or marking out the background.
Bezier path tool 
There’s a bezier path tool, which I haven’t used much, but am starting to use more. I think it might be easier to use than it used to be. I’ve found it very useful for creating unusual and curved selections.
Measure tool 
I find the measuring tool especially useful when I need to straighten a horizon. In the above example I was taking photos on New Year’s Eve from a rather awkward spot; the Harbour Bridge was obviously crooked. By measuring the angle along the bottom of the bridge I could more accurately rotate the image.
Transformation tools
I most commonly use rotate, scale and sometimes flip. However, more exciting for difficult images, the perspective and shear tools. They change the perspective (obviously!) and angle of objects.
Painting tools
Naturally the paintbrush is one of my favourite of the colouring/filling tools. There’s a vast array of brushes that can be downloaded. You can change their opacity, spacing, and new in 2.4 you can resize brushes.
You can also fade out/apply jitter/incremental/use colour from gradient… but, I’ve never used them. I might not have noticed they were there if LaurenMarie hadn’t written her post How to customize photoshop brushes!
Heal and clone tools 
I had no idea how to use them until reading Heal, clone or copy?
Since then I’ve started to use them a fair bit. Sometimes to excess, just for fun…
More about the GIMP
There are other tools, colour tools, layer tools and a bunch of filters. If you’d like to learn more about the GIMP I plan to write about how I go about processing photos, how to follow Photoshop tutorials using the GIMP and maybe more at kristarella.com.
The GIMP can be downloaded from the official website. Linux users may be able to install the GIMP via a package manager if you use one. For mac users I recommend the distribution from Wilbur loves Apple.
On Monday Esben will show you how to make an RSS icon in Illustrator, the next tutorial in his series on Illustrator. Subscribe to Creative Curio by RSS or email be notified for free when the next article is up!
In case anyone’s interested… There’s a cool Gimp hack called Gimpshop that emulates Photoshop’s layout in Gimp: http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294
Mmmm….the GIMP. I like the GIMP a lot. I think it’s biezer tools are a LOT easier to use than Photoshop’s. They might not be more powerful, but for simple selections and path creation, they work great.
I’ve done some blogging about the Gimp UI and how, imho, it’s substantially better than Photoshop (at least on Windows…I can’t speak to Mac)
Photoshop’s better if you’re a wicked serious designer or if you’re going to print. But for us everyday folks who enjoy design but aren’t crazy, the GIMP’s where it’s at.
@Alec
For once Im actually glad that the open source community don’t make a “look alike”, as they have done with open office. I personally don’t believe that Adobe, MS or Apple have found the holy grail in UI design.
@Kristarella
Are you also going to make small tutorials in “the GIMP”? My pixel skills are rusty ehmm, no existing
Esben - do you mean “small” as in pixel art. Or do you mean short tutorials on working in GIMP (as opposed to Inkscape or Illustrator)?
I have a couple of posts about working in GIMP that I’m working on. They’re not particularly short though. I’m happy to take requests. :)
oh, I wish Photoshop had a measuring tool - especially useful when getting some padding and margins on a web site close to the actual PSD design.
I tried installing GIMP once on my Mac, but I had some issues with it - couldn’t find some necessary supporting applications, and I gave up. I think it was X11. Recently I did manage to get my X11 working, so I should try installing GIMP again.
Though I have to admit, it’s hard to switch to GIMP from Photoshop.
However, I too would love to read some GIMP tutorials from you, Kristarella. Simply the entire design process of a small project (say a greeting card).
Vivien (ib),
I use it for straightening scans. In PS CS2+ you can use the measure tool, then go to Edit>Rotate Arbitrary and it will plug in the measure so all you have to do is click ok and viola! Straight scans!
Photoshop does have a measure tool! It’s located under the Eyedropper
oh, really? I work with PS CS at home and it doesn’t have any measure tools, but somehow never paid attention to it at work where I have CS3. I’ll look at it on Monday. Thanks, Lauren.
I tried using Gimp I’m in the process of learning right now. I actually used photoshop during work and at home. But it seems interesting.
Hey Kristarella
I was actually thinking like something like “psdtuts.com”.. those would become quit handy.
inspirationbit - I will definitely do some tutorial-like posts, keep an eye out! I’ve never done a greeting card before, will think about that one
Mchilly - that’s very cool that you have access to PS, but want to learn to use GIMP anyway. I think this software is quite a feat for open source and community collaboration.
Esben - I don’t know where your more recent comment about psdtuts.com has gone (edit: oh, there it is, mustn’t have reloaded the page!), but that is a cool site. I will be writing some tutorials and I’m going to see if there’s a site like psdtuts for GIMP, because that would be cool.
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