Gimp

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free software program that includes tools for photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It has many capabilities, amongst which are a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, and an image format converter.

Students of all levels can use this software from the most simple tasks and the most practical procedures to professional standard image design and manipulation.

Projects can include:

• Crop or colour correct your pictures
• Quickly resize images to output smaller versions to the Web
• Make banners for websites
• Add logos or text to your photos
• Create titles and graphics for video
• Prepare images for presentations and web publishing

GIMP features include:

· Many different painting applications

· GIMP can open virtually unrestricted number of pictures at the same time.

· Supports many different file types, including , gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, and xpm.

· Transformation applications include rotate, scale, shear and flip.

· GIMP can be used to make short animations (using ‘GAP’ – the GIMP Animation Package plug-in – you can download it from here).

GIMP offers much of the same functionality and features of the most widely used commercial graphics programs, and there are many plug-ins which can help close the gap in areas that might not be quite up to the commercial products.

There are many valid reasons for using GIMP in schools – one of the most compelling being because the software is free – not only for students to use in the classroom but also at home. GIMP is becoming more widely used in the workplace making it a highly relevant program to teach over some other similar commercially available programs.

For more information about using GIMP in education, visit Wikibooks ‘Transformative Applications in Education/GIMP’.