GIMP
GIMP, The GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a popular raster graphics editor application which supports also basic vector graphics.
Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball started writing the first version of GIMP (a bitmap editor) as a semester-long project for a class back in 1995 when they were still Berkeley students. After twelve years there are millions of GIMP users worldwide and many programmers working on its development. These efforts are led by Sven Neumann and Mitch Natterer who together with other enthusiasts form the GIMP-Team.
GIMP can be used to process digital graphics and photographs: create pictures, resize and crop photos, combine multiple images, convert different image formats etc. It also allows creating simple animations in GIF format.
Program offers full suite of painting tools (including brushes, pencil, airbrush, cloning tool, etc.), layers and channels, transformation tools (rotate, scale, shear and flip), selection tools (like rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy), path tool and supports many file formats, e.g. GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF, PCX, BMP. Great amount of plug-ins is available, which enables to experiment with different filters. GIMP functions can be called from external programs (such as Script-Fu) what enables automating often repeated or very complicated activities.
GIMP has been translated to various languages and ported to many operating systems (including both the most popular Windows or Mac OS X and some of the more exotic ones like i.e. AmigaOS 4). It is one of the flagship apps proved with most GNU/Linux distros.
Program is often referred to as F/OSS equivalent of the popular Adobe Photoshop software package. It is one of the flagship apps provided with most GNU/Linux distros.
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