Posted on June 10, 2013
by Jeremy 
0 About Me
The curse of a child who loves that which is not profitable, should he do what he enjoys or go to law school? What seems be an increasingly unfulfilling and, at times, rather disturbing decision, I chose law school. More specifically, after a few years at a community college taking photo classes and working for the campus paper, I went to a large university to pursue a degree and career in photojournalism. At some point, I lost my way, dropped my all-but-completed photojournalism degree, and graduated with political science. I then went on and earned a master’s degree and went to law school. Currently, I’m an attorney at a small firm. Although I have great bosses and a good work environment, I, like so many, dream of one day having a personally fulfilling career. In the meantime, I spend as much time as I can with my wife and kids, while worrying about bills and learning to be content. I have a good life, but I also dream of one day making a living by doing what I love. At times it seems possible, but usually it seems like nothing but a pipe dream.
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I found GIMP. Recently, I lost my access to Photoshop and found myself searching the internet for free alternatives. What I found is, so far, is pretty great.
Now, I am not the most advance user of Photoshop. Basically, I would crop, adjust levels, do some basic color correction (i.e. saturation, brightness, contrast, color balance), clean up any dirt spots and such, and, at times, use layers. However, when I knew I was not going to have access to Photoshop and because I don’t have $600 just lying around, I turned to Google. It seemed the consensus as to the best free photo editing program was heavily in favor of GIMP. So, naturally, I downloaded a copy and was pleasantly surprised. Obviously, GIMP and Photoshop are not identical. There is some getting used to and searching that will take place when making the transition, but at a savings of $600+ it is definitely worth it.
I’m a firm believer in not re-inventing the wheel, especially when I’m not the best wheel maker. So in the GIMP’s site’s own words:
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.
And, in the spirit of not re-inventing the wheel, here are some links to some quality reviews on GIMP:
So, basically, if you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket, buy Photoshop, but if you need something with similar tools, and don’t have $600 lying around, GIMP is a great FREE alternative. With GIMP, we may have found an exception to the rule that you get what you pay for.
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