Chapter 1.  Introduction

Revision History
Revision $Revision: 2355 $ 2005-11-01 j.h

GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

One of The GIMP's strengths is its free availability from many sources for many operating systems. Most GNU/Linux distributions include The GIMP as a standard application. The GIMP is also available for other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OS X (Darwin). The GIMP is a Free Software application covered by the General Public License ( GPL license). The GPL provides users with the freedom to access and alter the source code that makes up computer programs.

The GIMP Documentation Team and other users have provided you with the information necessary to understand how to use GIMP. The User Manual is an important part of this help. The current version is on the web site of the Documenation Team in HTML format. The HTML version is also available as context sensitive help (if you installed it) while using GIMP by pressing the F1 key. Help on specific menu items can be accessed by pressing the F1 key while the mouse pointer is focused on the menu item. Read on to begin your GIMP journey.