GIMP Reviews

Summary: GIMP is probably the best free photo editing software available. While its interface is not very intuitive and looks ugly, it packs a lot of functionality into a small package.

Positive: - fairly large image editing feature set
- small download size
- available on both Linux and Windows
- completely free of charge

Negative: - interface is quite old looking and not as intuitive as Photoshop or other competitors
- doesn't have many of Photoshop's "intelligent" selection tools or shortcuts
- fairly steep learning curve for advanced functionality

Summary: GIMP is not just a free alternative to Photoshop, it is more of a competitor. Although the interface is not polished and few professional features still missing, it is a good software for most image editing tasks.

Positive: Open Source and Free.
Great image editing feature - Photo retouching.
Good documentation / tutorials on website.
Available across OS.

Negative: Interface is not as refined as Photoshop so not as easy to use, especially if you have used PS already.

Summary: GIMP is an excellent free photo-manipulation and graphic design program that's amazingly powerful if you can get past the steep learning curve involved in using it.

Positive: I've been using GIMP for over a decade, and I love how the app has grown. One of its biggest strengths is that it's open source. If someone has an idea for a useful or interesting graphic effect, someone else will make a plugin that does it. It's the best PhotoShop dupe out there and can do almost anything the very expensive program offers.

Negative: GIMP has a steep learning curve, and for some people it's too steep. But if you're willing to put in the time and watch a lot of YouTube video tutorials, you'll have a powerful program at your disposal. The biggest lack I've found is no good support for the YMCK colors needing for print applications.

Summary: Overall this software is great! Full of features and at no cost. Who could not recommend this software?

Positive: I find this software is so much like photoshop, I don’t miss a thing. Best of all, it is a free solution.

Negative: The software can be buggy at times, but so can Photoshop.

Summary: Overall, GIMP is an excellent free and open-source tool comparable to Photoshop. You definitely should try GIMP.

Positive: GIMP has a lot of features that are on Photoshop, but GIMP is free, contrary to Adobe's Photoshop. It also is open-source software, so you can customize it at your own will.

Negative: I haven't found much problems while using GIMP, only that some things are hidden in the menus.

Summary: Hands down a powerful and amazing and powerful photo/graphic editor. This program is 100% worth trying out...

Positive: This is an amazing program for free. I've used Photoshop for years and when I could no longer get it through work I moved to GIMP. Photoshop is crazy expensive and for the photo manipulation I was doing, GIMP worked perfectly.

Negative: This is a powerful program with a lot of options. It isn't an easy program to learn however get a book or an online training from your library and you'll be good to go.

Summary: It's an excellent graphics designer tool for website layouts. Overall I use GIMP to design attractive templates. It's very easy to use as compared to adobe photoshop tool. That's why I love this.

Positive: It helps me to design beautiful and attractive templates using its simple designing platform. Easy to understand interface with lots of online tutorials. High-resolution quality support.

Negative: Overall it's an outstanding platform.

Summary: I have been using GIMP fairly often for years now. It's a nice tool with a lot of useful features, and because it is free and open source software these few faults and shortcomings are in no way a reason for new users not to give it a try. Recommended.

Positive: GIMP has a wide range of features, can do almost whatever Photoshop can. If it were a paid product I would likely give it four stars for features and functionality but since it's free I have difficulty finding anything much to complain about as far as GIMP is concerned.

I currently use both Photoshop Elements and GIMP, for image editing, plus a few standalone utilities and GIMP extensions, in place of a full version of Photoshop.

Between these different apps, GIMP and its extensions among them, I have found it possible to do almost everything Photoshop can do, only far cheaper.

Negative: GIMP is a little clunky with an unpolished UI, and it took a while to get used to it. But GIMP is well worth it if you get past these initial hurdles.

Summary: GIMP is a powerful tool for image editing. Even though GIMP lacks some features and polish, it is open-source, light, cross-platform and free which makes it stand its ground as one of the best graphics editor.

Positive: Open-source & Lightweight.
Customizable interface.
Good use of layering.
Available across platforms.
Great active community.

Negative: Limited export format options.
Support can take time to respond.

Summary: This is a great alternative to Photoshop if you need to draw a simple banner or edit a photo a bit. And it's free.

Positive: Gimp is a very powerful graphic editor and it's free. It has almost the same functionality as its big brothers (like Photoshop).

Negative: Some functions are hidden and sometimes it's hard to understand the interface.

Summary: Overall, GIMP is a solid image editing tool in need of a major user interface rework. If you are looking for a good freeware image editing program this is a fine solution, but I would recommend also trying Paint.net and making the decision for which works better for your needs yourself. I personally experienced a variety of issues with the software, but I know some graphical artists who are quite fond of GIMP and given it is a freeware solution it is worth a consideration.

Positive: GIMP is a freeware image editing program. The main benefit of GIMP for myself was it was the only freeware tool to have extensions to support texture packing for animation files. With that said, the software has pretty much all options one would expect in an image editing service. Without extensions I did not notice anything in this that could be uniquely only done in GIMP on a high level.

Negative: The user interface of this image editor versus the closest competitor, Paint.net is severely lacking. The ease of use and finding features is exceedingly difficult as well. I also have noticed the performance for this tool is substantially worse in my experience then other comparable image editors. GIMP also natively does not support DDS files which was a problem for my project.

Summary: It's good to have free alternatives. GIMP was the first program I downloaded long ago when trying to learn to digitally paint. I stuck with it for a while, but I will admit in many ways Photoshop is superior and at this point, there are better free and low cost alternatives out there as well. Still, it's not bad and if you don't have much money to spend or want to support more free software out there, it's not bad. Just don't expect to have as many resources out there like Photoshop users get.

Positive: This is a free alternative to Photoshop. While you can't do everything you can in Photoshop, you can do most of what you can without having to pay anything. You can definitely make some really nice pieces in GIMP. I'd recommend it most for digital painting, but you can do photo editing in here and other graphic design related projects.

Negative: GIMP has effectively been abandoned, and it works in ways often the exact opposite of Photoshop. Users coming from one will have to essentially unlearn everything and work in reverse mentally. The community is waning, and it'll never have as many free resources as you can find for Photoshop.

Summary: A friend of mine who is an avid user of Photoshop referred me gimp when I was beginning to learn image editing. The file size being a mere 20 MB in LINUX surprised me.

At first glance, the UI looked to be cluttered with large number of tools on screen which made me feel a bit overwhelmed. I preferred a cleaner and more basic interface and still prefer it now. With the help of him and some tutorials, I managed to find with some difficulty, I adjusted theme and icon sizes to my preference. My first 'Hello world' kind of project is to remove background from a picture and felt so proud about that output.

Moving on, after months of editing photos and creating signatures for an online forum, I felt so attached with GIMP such that even after I was able to pay for Adobe Photoshop, I only used this. My only gripe is that it is more difficult to do my printable works than in Photoshop as CYMK mode is missing.

Overall, apart from advanced users, mainly for those who are making their baby steps into the world of Image editing, GIMP offers you the best unlimited free trials.

Positive: (+) Great range of tools for photo editors.
(+) Being a free and open source software, it is an excellent product for beginners and hobbyists alike.
(+) Smaller size.
(+) Offers good amount of personalization options to change how UI looks.

Negative: (-) UI could be simplified.
(-) Requires separate plugin for editing in CYMK.
(-) Relatively less amount of tutorials available online which could make beginners of image editing feel a bit overwhelmed.