A few days ago, I asked GIMP News readers to tell me how they used GIMP in the real world. The response has been really good. Here are a few of the ways people responded.
How am I using GIMP?
I use it a lot for touching up scanned photos, and with the recent upgrades to the GIF plug-in I've done all the animated banners for my company's web pages (http://www.easysw.com) using the GIMP. Of course, all the graphics on my GIMP page use it...
Most recently I used it to debug my EPSON Stylus Color 600 driver - I took the output from my driver, decoded and saved it as an SGI image file (5760x7200 pixels, or about 112M), and then looked at it using the GIMP. It was the only software that I had that could efficiently handle images of that size!
How I use Gimp.....
I of course just play with it for fun now and then, but the most interesting thing that I've done for it is design a splash screen for one of the apps that we're developing at the college where I work. We were talking about needing a splash screen and I think that I volunteered to try to make something and see what people thought of it, so I played with Gimp (0.54) at home one night and came up with a logo that everyone liked (our college district logo in the background with the app's name in the foroground in translucent blue shadowed text...). Gimp sure is a lot more cost effective than paying ~$800 ($900?) for photoshop or the like.
GIMP seems way easier to use, and to me way more powerfull than any photoshop / whatever tool I tried to use back in the windoze days... I don't do much graphics, but even for an artistic illiterate as me, it's possible to do fairly good looking stuff. Looking forward to see 1.0 !
I have been using GIMP since it was first released. I have used it to develop several web pages, including one for my friend who is a newspaper photographer. We used The GIMP to touch up all of his photos and to create all of the graphics and logos on his web page. I also used The GIMP to create a photo page about my recent trip to London. I absolutely *LOVE* The Gimp. It has made my life so much easier. Who can afford something like Photoshop for Unix. Without The GIMP I would be unable to create any of the webpages that I have. I am curerently using 0.99.10 with all the plug-ins from the registry.
Bob Luckey's Photo
Gallery
My London
Trip
I used Adobe Photoshop 3.0 with Kais Power Tools and Alien Skin Black Box a lot for Web Design. Since 1993 my heart beats for Linux. So I was very happy to give my lecture on multimedia in education to students with demonstartions ans practice in Linux, no more Windows required (and cheaper too).
We've recently discovered and installed gimp here at FSI. (Flightsafety International - the visual simulation systems group. We make flight simulators.) While we are just getting up to speed, there are already plans for auto-mip mapping and rip-mapping plugins, a plugin for our internal graphic formats, and I know it will be used to help manage our aerial photography images. The gimp is QUICKLY replacing photoshop and will become our main instrument for image manipulation. In the meantime, we are all getting real cool looking web pages. ;)
"Gimp Changed My Life"
by Brian Degenhardt
I used to be 450 pounds until I found The Gimp, but now, I grew 3 inches lost 250 pounds. Without The Gimp, I would still be embarrased when I go to the beach. I used to be clumsy and bad in sports until I found The Gimp. It even took a few strokes of my golf game. And if I ever get confronted in a bar, they think twice after I warn them that I know Script-FU. Yes, ladies adore me once they see that I slaved for hours drawing their name in Chrome. "You must really care about me! Oh and it's so beautiful!" they exclaim. What they don't know about Net-Fu can't hurt them. Or can it? Without the Gimp I wouldn't be the sexy, healthy, popular millionare I am today. I would probably still be the same loner, trying to draw anything useful with tgif and xpaint.
Thank you GIMP!
From: Bartosz Budrewicz I'm proud gimp user for about half year. I must say that there's
absolutely no other drawing tool, that let's you improve it so easy. Well
I'm programmer, and if there's somenhing wrong, they blame me. I used to.
That's the reason I hardly ever use tools without sources. Well you know,
nowdays noone is guru. Everything is so complicated. You must be really
inside project to know (almost) everything. Must? Well gimp has really
great docs. About two versions gimp ago (0.99.8 or .7) I discovered,
I couldn't write text in my native language (Polish ;). After 1 hour,
without even understanding the main idea of drawing text, I was able to
do my job. You say - nothing special, I say _this_ is shomething I'd like
to have in commercial products. And as I can see commercial means -> you
re on your own (without sources), where free means -> if someone will have
time, he'll surely help, or do it by yourself (_with_ sources). That's the
way I think of it.
You probably already know this, but I'm
using the GIMP to do the cover art for the November Linux
Journal Graphics issue. When I get around to updating all
my GIMP pages (soon, I hope) I'll put up some samples of
images similar to what will be on the cover.
orange and i have done all the graphics at www.hellyeah.com with GIMP.
well. almost all of them. :) the entire front page and main index to
the site are Powered by GIMP and I have to say, coming from a
MacOS/PhotoShop background... GIMP is very, very good. :D
I'm new to The GIMP, but it has already kinda' "saved my butt..." I
had an assignment for school to create 4 images using the techniques in
Chapter 8 of the Photoshop WOW book. I started the first one in
Photoshop (that's what we have at school), and it took a relatively long
time to do...so, I just went to the Script-FU section on The GIMP's home
page, and several of them had been implemented as scripts! :) So
anyway, the point is, I had The GIMP do in a couple of minutes what
would have taken me many times as long to do in Photoshop, and I got to
go home and play with The GIMP some more while everyone else was wasting
time with Photoshop. <grin>