Software Download of the Week : GIMPshop

GIMPShop : - An Alternative to Adobe Photoshop on Linux

If you are Graphics Designer and moving from Windows to Linux and want to use Linux for Graphics editing there are basically two options available to you : -

• You can use Codeweaver Crossover Office to run Adobe Photoshop on Linux
  

• Use free Linux native application GIMP/GIMPShop instead
  

Now while most people would prefer the first option since learning new application takes a significant amount of time , however this option has disadvantages first of all both Crossover Office and Adobe Photoshop are commercial product and would require you to purchase licenses and secondly Windows applications running on Linux are not very stable , yes people claim they work flawlessly but i have found that they are somewhat unstable especially when it involves a lot of computation , and photoshop is very resource hungry application .

Now for second option , Gimp or GNU Image Manipulation Program-GIMP is a raster graphic application with support for vector graphics . GIMP can be used for creating logos , animated gif , powerful image manipulation ,removing unwanted image features , altering colors ,converting between different image formats and numerous other purposes . Now it is very powerful and an ideal replacement for commercial Adobe Photoshop . However many people while switching from Adobe Photoshop to Gimp face problem of adjusting to different user interface and this is precisely the problem GIMPshop tries to solve .

GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source graphics program GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.

This is what developer had to say : -

"My original purpose for GIMPshop was to make the Gimp accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there. I hope I’ve done that. And maybe along the way, I can convert a Photoshop pirate into a Gimp user."

GIMPShop tries to replicate Photoshop's interface as close as possible , hence many tutorials designed for Adobe Photoshop could be followed for GIMPshop !! . Now besides all the interface change it adds naming convection similar to photoshop to Gimp . Other than this all the features of GIMP are preserved .

Like GIMP which is crossplatform and runs on Windows , Linux , OS X ,Solaris GIMPshop too is crossplatform .

Since GIMPshop is based on GIMP so it has all the features of GIMP .



Some of the features similar with Photoshop and Gimp are : -

Features Similar or identical to features in Adobe Photoshop include:

• Intelligent Scissors are similar to the Magnetic Lasso
• rectangular, elliptical and lasso features are identical
• dropper, fill, gradient, pencil, paintbrush, eraser, airbrush, clone stamper, blur or sharpen, smudge, and dodge or burn features are identical
• flip, rotate, scale, crop, zoom, move, foreground+background color swatch, layers, history, gradients, and drop shadow features are identical

File Format supported by GIMP are : -

GIMP can open and save the following file formats: [2]

• GIMP XCF, the native format (.xcf, or compressed as .xcf.gz or .xcf.bz2)
• Autodesk flic animations (.fli)
• DICOM (.dcm or .dicom)
• PostScript documents (.ps, .ps.gz and .eps)
• FITS astronomical images (.fits, or .fit)
• Scalable vector graphics for exporting paths (.svg)
• Microsoft Windows icon (.ico)
• Microsoft Uncompressed AVI Video (.avi)
• Windows bitmap (.bmp)
• Paintshop Pro image (.psp or .tub)
• Adobe PhotoShop Documents (.psd, .pdd)
• PNM image (.pnm, .ppm, .pgm, and .pbm)
• Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format images and animations (.gif)
• Joint Photographic Experts Group Images (.jpeg, .jpg, or .jpe)
• Portable Network Graphics (.png)
• Tagged Image File Format (.tiff or .tif)
• TARGA (.tga)
• X bitmap image (.xbm, .icon, or .bitmap)
• X pixmap image (.xpm)
• X window dump (.xwd)
• Zsoft PCX (.pcx)

GIMP can import (open but not save) the following formats:

• Adobe PDF files (.pdf)
• Raw image formats (many extensions)

GIMP can also export to (save, but not open) the following formats:

• HTML as a table with coloured cells (.html)
• C source files as an array (.c or .h)
• Multiple Network Graphic layered image files (.mng)
• ASCII Art or HTML, with characters and punctuation making up images

GIMP can also be extended to support various other features by using plugins . GIMP has approximately 150 standard effects and filters, including Drop Shadow, Blur, Motion blur and Noise. and has advanced features like Layers , Transparency and channels .


Now there is no need to install GIMP as most linux distributions comes preinstalled with GIMP however GIMPshop is not installed by default . Now since i am running Ubuntu Linux so am giving instructions on installing GIMPshop in ubuntu .

sudo wget http://www.plasticbugs.com/blogimg/gimpshop_2.2.11-1_i386.deb




and

sudo dpkg -i gimpshop_2.2.11-1_i386.deb

After completing the above steps launch GIMPshop by typing

gimp

in the terminal window.

Splash Screen of GIMPshop

GIMPshop in Action (Note this screen shot was taken from GIMPshop website and running on Mac OS X)

In short GIMPshop is a good alternative/addon package to GIMP providing new user migrating from Photoshop to GIMP easy transition .


Article Written by Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj(at)gmail.com)
For Linux on Desktop blog , http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
(C) 2007 , Ambuj Varshney