The Open Source Answer to Photoshop

The real sign of a piece of tech's success is when it makes the transformation from being just a product to a verb used to describe the very action it does.  Take Google for example.  It started out as being one of a number of search engines available to internet users to find content on the web.  However, due to its popularity it quickly became a replacement for the verb search.  In this day and age we no longer search for something on the internet we "Google it."  While Google is synonymous with search, Photoshop is synonymous with image editing.  The phrase "I photoshopped it" pervades in both television and movies.  While Photoshop is the most popular image editing choice it is not cheap and a license for Photoshop costs seven hundred dollars.  Luckily as with most programs, the open source community has provided a free and reliable alternative in the form of GIMP.


GIMP is an open source program available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  It comes in a number of languages and offers its users almost all of the features available in Photoshop with no investment on their end.  Simply go to the GIMP team's website and download the program for your platform of choice, install it, and get started.  Two of Photoshop's most useful features that are included are an undo history and the option to use layers when editing an image.  Both of these features are very useful and are part of the reason consumers choose Photoshop over the stock image editing software preinstalled on their computers such as paint on Windows.  Another great feature about GIMP is the fact that all of your favorite Photoshop projects and plugins are compatible with GIMP.  There are even add-ons available which allow you to customize the look and feel of GIMP to more closely resemble Photoshop.  Personally I highly recommend Gimp over Photoshop for its value especially since Adobe is constantly updating Photoshop and charging its users two hundred dollars to update to the latest release.  Also all of the images on this blog that are not direct screenshots from Android programs have been made using GIMP.  In the end its your choice as a consumer.  Should you pay the extra amount for the name brand of a product when the open source version is available for free?

GIMP