GIMP

Commentaires: It's fairly easy to use if you've used and are familiar with Photoshop and the like. We use it for all of our image and graphic manipulation. It's fast, easy and free. For our needs I could never justify paying several hundreds of dollars for Photoshop (industry leader or not).

Avantages: Gimp can do almost everything that Photoshop can do for free. I'm not much of a power user but it's amazing what it can do. I often look for features to use just because I can and because the visual effects can be so interesting. It has really evolved over the years with features and improvements in ease of use. With the last update to v2 it runs much faster on Windows 10 and is more efficient with computer resources than it ever used to be.

Inconvénients: Being an open source application means that bug fixes and updates come slower than they would from a for-profit company (like Adobe). But since it's free, who really cares? For a small business like ours it's perfect and it does everything we need to (and more).

Commentaires: For me, GIMP was a replacement for Photoshop. That being said, I've been totally impressed by the way GIMP has grown over the years. In its current iteration, GIMP can accomplish any image editing task I've thrown at it -- often, this required me to spend time learning how to best accomplish that task in GIMP, but that time has always been rewarded with high quality outputs. Still, I have probably spent as much time fumbling around in confusing with GIMP as I have actually working.

Avantages: Unlike a number of other free image manipulation programs, GIMP is both extremely powerful and (relatively) simple to use. Users of Photoshop will not find it to be the most difficult transition. GIMP has just about every feature an average or casual user could want from an image editor. GIMP works well not just for editing photos, but also for digital drawing and graphic design. In most regards for most users, GIMP can do whatever Photoshop or other commercial programs can. That being said, the functionality of GIMP should not be perceived as Photoshop lite. GIMP offers more tools, brushes, presets, etc than an average will ever need, and that's before installing any extensions. My current work requires minimal graphic design work -- largely infographics and visual representations of data -- and GIMP has every tool I could possibly need to produce data visuals / improve those produced by other software.

Inconvénients: While GIMP has become more user friendly over the years, there are two points new users may find intimidating. First GIMP -- as the full name suggests -- is part of the GNU/Linux lineage and ethos. Users unfamiliar with all this will probably be confused, especially as it relates to saving proprietary formats. Beyond that, amateur image editors will probably find themselves overwhelmed by all of the tools offered by GIMP. Some of these basic tools work in unexpected ways based on prior knowledge of other software -- on its face this isn't problematic, but the different way of operating sometimes isn't logical. New users will likely find themselves bewildered by the breadth of menu options, and the sub-options that go with them. I am certain of this, being that I've been using GIMP for years and I still occasionally find myself confused.

Commentaires: Whereas some people consider GIMP as a toy software, or a cheap (free) Photoshop replacement, it is not. Instead, GIMP has proven to be a capable, professional software that does not want to be a mere Photoshop clone. On the contrary, they do have their own roadmap, own shortcuts and
their own user interface, and even some successful plugins and features of its own (such as resynthesizer) have been later integrated in Photoshop. Whereas some consider it as being difficult to learn or not user-friendly, it is in fact a proof that it follows its own path to success.
While I admit that from time to time I do miss some of Photoshop features, like non-destructive operations or basic vector operations, I am confident that GIMP fits in the great majority user cases without compromising final results.

Avantages: I have been using GIMP for many years for my image editing projects (both, pet projects and professional projects) and I have come to realize that it features such an enormous variety of toolboxes, filters, options... that allow any type of image editing, even really complex ones, with impeccable results. Consequently, there is no need to switch to other software like Photoshop or the like. Not to mention that it is a multi-plattform Free/Libre OpenSource Software. Some features I like the most of GIMP
- Multi-plattform: available for Linux, Windows, Mac, portable...
- FLOSS
- Customizable user interface
- Selection and manipulation tools (like Unified Transform tool)
- Real-time edition
- Professional results Additionally, recently GIMP has seen a major improvement on user interface that makes it even easier (and appealing) to use.

Inconvénients: - Small development team with small budget: as a result development happens at a slow pace, even though developers do have great ideas and roadmap.
- Lacks non-destructive filters/effects like in Photoshop
- Lacks some vector operations (only works with bitmaps)
- While there is plenty of documentation and tutorials, most image editing tutorials and manuals are addressed to Photoshop only, and whereas in most cases the same techniques can be reproduced/adapted, it requires extra effort that some users do not want to make.
- The fact that it is not so broadly used as Photoshop may be a problem if collaborating with others, even though GIMP opens and saves Photoshop's native file format (although, admittedly, some filters/effects may be lost).

Commentaires: Overall, I have had nothing short of an enjoyable experience using GIMP over the past few years. It is versatile enough that I can use it for everything from making flyers and posters to making thumbnails and title card art for YouTube and Facebook videos.
For someone with a limited budget and even more limited technical knowledge when I began, I could not be happier with GIMP and still use it to this day for ninety percent of my projects.

Avantages: GIMP offers quite a bit as far as options and competes with some programs out there that can cost sixty dollars or more. When I began using the program, I was brand new to graphic design and generally making artwork and editing visual media on a PC. Through the use of tutorials and other sources that I was able to find on the official forums for GIMP, I was able to learn the program in about half of the time that it has taken me to learn other, lesser programs.
Along with great customer support and tutorials, the interface on GIMP is much easier to get the hang of for beginners and the more time that you put into learning the various functions, the more GIMP grows with your skill level and on top of providing various tutorials, the GIMP community is one of the best communities that I have ever interacted with. Amongst the free editing programs that I have used and even amongst ones that I have paid for, GIMP has been by far the easiest and most reliable one. All of the work that I produce with it has a consistent level of quality and a lot of the functions provided by GIMP have been helpful in helping me to understand more about using techniques. All in all, I would say that for the price, GIMP is an amazing program for a beginner or someone on a budget.

Inconvénients: The thing that I like least about GIMP is probably that in a recent update, a few of the features that I had grown to depend on were taken out which resulted in taking the time to figure out how to proceed. It wasn't a deal-breaking feature, just something that I liked to save time but being that I didn't use it outside of one or two occasions months apart, it wasn't anything that I was willing to stop using GIMP over and I found out how to proceed and get what I needed to do accomplished through searching for help amongst the forums that are set up.

Commentaires: With Gimp I am creating weekly flyers with products from our company. We can save an enormous amount of money by doing this by ourselves and not some external design company.

Avantages: Gimp is an open-source image manipulation program what means it is absolutely free to use. Also, you will receive regular updates which add new features and fixes bugs including security issues. It has all the abilities that for example Adobe Photoshop and other commercial programs have. It can offer even more because it is easily extensible and flexible for every environment with lots of great community plugins and scripts.

Inconvénients: The user interface of Gimp is not the most beautiful one but its function is very good. It has a lot of menus and submenus so for beginners it may be a little harder to achieve some more complex operations such as retouch of a face or double exposure. Also, compatibility with Adobe file formats exists but don't except that it works perfectly. Most of the time it works flawlessly if you are opening the document from older versions of Photoshop because newer version needs some updating and updates occur approximately every 2 months which is still faster than what Adobe is doing with their Photoshop.