The Features of GIMP! With Quattrochi

GIMP, otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is an open-source graphics editing software that is available to the public for free. As a program under the GNU development license, this means that the public is also free to contribute to GIMP's perpetual and continual development as they will to the best of their abilities. This highly successful system of "give and take" has resulted in one of the most valuable resources freely available to anyone in the creative industry.

The software is absolutely free, and there is no risk in trying it out at all. I've provided the link up above to their official website, where you may find more information from the developers themselves.

I thought it would be nice to have a few thoughts from an artist who was familiar with GIMP, however. Quattrochi of the art community website deviantART is well experienced with many different creative software programs, GIMP and Photoshop among them.

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We were introduced by a friend in a chatroom

Between Photoshop and GIMP, which program do you use more often?

<Quattrochi>
Gimp pretty much all the time
the only thing I really use photoshop for is animating

What are some of the advantages GIMP offers over Adobe Photoshop?

<Quattrochi>
Well for one thing gimp is free
photoshop is really expensive
Gimp's a bit bulky but Photoshop's a heavyweight
it has an issue with my graphics card or something
it's worked better on my computers than Photoshop in general
it gets REALLY fussy when I try to use transparency
...and I'm also recalling that, where Photoshop has the "open stuff as layers"
as a script, Gimp has it as a regular feature

What version of Photoshop do you have?

<Quattrochi>
CS6

What is one of your favorite things about GIMP?

<Quattrochi>
Oh, also, do you know about Gimp's Color to Alpha function?
Ok
Turns whatever color you declare into transparent pixels
and declare "white" to be the color
boom, white is instantly gone, you're left with beautiful lineart.

Quattrochi probably became busy at this point as they became less-than-responsive.

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Although I appreciate Quattrochi's input about their experience with GIMP, my interview intrigues me enough that I'd like to go do a little more research on my own. Perhaps try out the software myself someday? Again, if any of you would like to try the software out yourself, the program is absolutely free, and there is no risk, especially if you download from the official website in the link I provided. Besides my most recent conversation with Quattrochi, I have heard many other positive comments about GIMP in the past. If any of you would like to offer me more insight to this open-source creative software, feel free to leave a comment below. Perhaps I might even be able to arrange an interview with you!

On a side note, the little trick Quattrochi was explaining at the end--the trick to translate white pixels into transparent pixels via GIMP's Color to Alpha function--is also applicable to Photoshop. And it just so happens that I know how to do it! The trick is especially useful for those wishing to retain the lines of an actual traditional image scan in a digital format as lineart.

Stay tuned, I'll explain more in the near future.

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1. Quattrochi. (5 April 2013). Online real-time correspondence. Her deviantART site at http://quattrochi.deviantart.com