As Adobe's Photoshop 5.0 gears up for release later this year, another image-editing application built for the Unix platform is gaining momentum as it readies for its Net debut next week. The GNU Image Manipulation Tool - otherwise known as the GIMP - is a powerful image creation and manipulation application which is part of the growing free software movement on the Web.
"GIMP offers a real alternative to Photoshop in a free package," said Zach Beane, moderator of the GIMP News page and programmer at The Maine InternetWorks. "The biggest advantage that GIMP has is that the development is open and anyone who wants a feature is free to add it."
And for a homebrew application that is still in beta release, the GIMP has already built an impressive user and support base. Scott Goehring, GIMP developer and founder of WilberWorks, Inc. - a company formed to support GIMP - said that a recent version of the program was downloaded by more than 1,900 users in one week alone. Goehring estimates that there are at least 50,000 individual GIMP users.
"My desktop computer runs Linux so I don't have to kick someone off the Mac to do graphics now," said Beane. "In fact, I've got people kicking me off my computer to use GIMP."
Just about everything in the GIMP is made to work as a plug-in, including the file formats that it recognizes and the tools used to manipulate images. Plug-ins include fractal fills and "lens flare" filters, typical of medium-to-large image manipulation tools, and a filter to embed hidden digital signatures. The Stegano filter lets you hide text messages in an image, which are retrievable by other users who have the Stegano filter. If you know C, writing a GIMP plug-in is trivial; the GIMP Plugin Registry already holds over 150 of them.
One of the GIMP's most powerful features is its scripting extensions, which allow macros to be created to automate tasks that would normally be executed by hand. The first and most prominent extension, Script-Fu, has been extended with a Java-powered counterpart called Net-Fu, which is a Web front-end for servers running GIMP and Script-Fu. What this means is that anyone with a Java-enabled Web browser can use the GIMP over the Web to create on-the-fly, custom images without having to run a Unix-like operating system.
Bryan Livingston offers exactly this service, having just opened cooltext.com - a free, advertising-driven site that lets you create custom logos over the Web. You choose a typeface and an effect, enter some text, and out comes your logo.
Manish Singh, current head of GIMP development, said that the GIMP was originally written in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, then students at the University of California at Berkeley who began the project as an independent study for class credit. Their early releases, though unpolished beta versions, started turning heads.
The program was becoming a showcase of the free software movement, but development went in limbo last May when Kimball and Mattis both graduated - the project could not support them financially, and they were forced to abandon it upon getting day jobs. Development froze until a new core of developers took over. Now, Singh and the GIMP development team are preparing to release GIMP 1.0, which they say should happen next week.
But its multitasking capabilities, constant stream of new plug-ins and versatility aside, this free program won't be a Photoshop killer just yet.
Its fatal flaw is how it handles color - the GIMP developers don't have access to the proprietary color-matching information that is a must for professional pre-press work. So unlike Photoshop, which was designed for film and print output in mind, GIMP's usefulness is mostly regulated to photo editing and Web work.
"Improving the Gimp for pre-press work is something many of the current developers are very interested in, as a goal," said GIMP developer Larry Ewing. "Our ability to work on this is hampered by the fact that there are several patents covering the area, and few (if any) of us have the proper hardware to test our work. Despite the obstacles it is safe to assume that there will a continuing improvement in this area."
