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Getting the jump on GIMP

wilber Wouldn’t it be great if there were a freeware version of Photoshop. Many point to GIMP as the answer, but there hasn’t exactly been a stampede in that direction. One reason is because you need to have X11 running at the same time. With Leopard this isn’t quite the nuisance it used to be, because X11 is now pre-installed. And it should be pointed out that even with X11 running, the interface — while not perfect — still looks pretty good.

Luckily, progress is being made on making GIMP more Mac-friendly over at the Wilber loves Apple project. Installation is easier and there is an active forum to help you along the way. They say a native version is in the works, but there is no word on when it will see the light of day.

Perhaps most daunting of all is that GIMP has a reputation for being hard to learn. Mac users are accustomed to jumping in and intuitively figuring out a program. You likely won’t be able to do this with GIMP, but there is help for those willing to persist. Tutorials and support forums abound, and you can find a good roundup of them at Techzilo. The tutorials are aimed at everyone from the beginner to the expert looking to create special effects.

Posted Saturday, July 19, 2008 in

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  1. GIMP is very easy to learn if you’ve never used Photoshop or other editors before. I personally found it easier to learn GIMP, and when I tried Photoshop, it was much harder. My guess is that the people who claim that GIMP is very hard has done the opposite, and it is only natural that they found GIMP difficult to pick up.

    Thanks for the link :)

    Sumesh

  2. Gimp isn’t really that hard to learn, especially if you’ve used photoshop before. The main thing I had to figure out was that most of the commands I use are now placed in a menubar that’s on top of the WINDOW holding the image you’re working on, NOT the Mac’s menubar at the top. Once I figured that out, it was easy.

    old cuss





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