GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is an open source program that users can use to retouch images and also create their own drawings; it is a complete painting tool.

Remember a picture where you wished that you could crop out unnecessary object that spoils the whole picture? Now you can do exactly that, or even better make that picture your piece of memory with beautiful effects.

Throughout the book, I will use GIMP Version 2.8.2, installed on Windows 7. GIMP is available for Windows, Linux, or Mac machines; all of these are free.

The user experience should be equivalent between Windows, Linux machine, and Mac. I often take pictures with my digital camera or my phone. When I come home, I just plug the device into my Linux machine and transfer my pictures to the USB drive. I might use it on my Linux machine to retouch pictures or work on some designs and later bring the USB drive to my personal laptop to continue working on it. GIMP enables you to bring your work around without any problem.

I even use GIMP at work. I don't have to worry about licensing or service subscriptions. You may read them at http://www.gimp.org/about/COPYING. What makes GIMP so usable is that I can perform certain tasks faster. I work with lots of images to be inserted into websites or documents. I have experienced working with thousands of images that need to be edited before submission. At times like these, there is no room for trial and error. GIMP allows us to perform scripts (known as Script-Fu) by which I can do a 5-minute job in a matter of seconds. I will tell more about this later in this book.

GIMP is also available as a portable app, where you can copy data into an USB drive and open it in any Windows machine without installing it. This book, however, does not cover the portable app.