That will become your reference for the cloning. Now you just select an area using Alt + click. Obviously, the smaller the blemish the smaller brush you will want. Then pick the appropriate sized brush to use for removal. To begin, select the little stamp in the toolbox (that is the clone tool). This allows a user to remove unwanted little blemishes. Just click on colors > desaturate.Ī tool I really, really like with GIMP is clone. The second method is through desaturation. This just uses the pathway of image > mode > grayscale. There are actually two different ways to accomplish this.
Incidentally, you may also rotate layers for those more advanced or experienced users out there.Ĭhanging a color image to black and white is another photo shop like trick which can be accomplished on the GIMP software quite easily. From here you may select the number of degrees to rotate the image, use a slider to do it yourself, or just click directly on the image until it rotates to the place you wish. You can do this by clicking on the layer, then transform and then arbitrary rotation. You can choose to set this guide by either percent (which can further be specified as horizontally or vertically), by pixels or just by clicking on a spot in the image itself.Īnother cool feature involves rotating the images. This is usually done when you want to mark the halfway point of an image or when aligning text (it can also be a step in helping to correct a horizon). Another really cool trick is to add a guide. Crop and scale photos, adjust the brightness and contrast for better looking images is just the beginning. However, given that you would need to shell out several hundred dollars for photo shop, why not start off using a tool which is free, and still gives an incredible amount of functionality?įor starters, GIMP allows you to easily do all of the basics. There is no question that Photo Shop still reigns as the king of graphics and photo editing programs. For starters, it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even Unix platforms.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite it being free, do not make the mistake of thinking that GIMP is a cheap little piece of software that is not worth very much.
Granted, there is a fair amount of coding involved, but it will certainly allow you to be able to take greater advantage of the capabilities of your computer and printer.Īnother aspect to this is that you are able to integrate it with GIMP, which is a free and open source graphics editing program. Using a software program like GhostScript can really allow you to have an incredible amount of control over your printing and even display options. Visit the GIMP project homepage for details.
There is a Windows version available now, which is making it a lot more accessible to the average designer (although most professional designers are on Mac’s – which also has a GIMP version). However, it’s not known as the most user-friendly alternative to Photoshop. Used to Photoshop, or just starting off with GIMP and having trouble? GIMP is an excellent, open source (free) alternative to Photoshop that is constantly getting better.
To install GhostScript for Windows and GIMP, you’ll want to download a Windows distribution with an installer (.exe), and follow the installation instructions. GhostScript for Windows supports PostScript (.ps) and Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) files. To sustain this free service, we receive affiliate commissions via some of our links.