GIMP

BRING OUT THE GIMP

This page starts off with me blathering on about Photoshop and GIMP, but the plan is to have some simple basic notes about using GIMP further down.

ESCAPE FROM PHOTOSHOP

Like many people who longed to escape the deep state spyware mind control mess that is modern Microsoft, and go on over to the Linux side, by 2024 there was really only one program keeping me using Windows, and that was Photoshop.

I got my first pirated copy of Photoshop (PS4) in 1999, and thought it was awesome. But I thought versions 5, 5.5, and 6 where all crap, and stuck with 4 until 7 came out. 7 was the first real upgrade from 4, and I used that for 10 years (2002-2012) because I thought the first five later Creative Suite versions (CS1-CS5) all sucked.

But I quite liked the the last CS version (CS6 aka PS13) and had been using it since it came out in 2012. Hell could freeze over before I'd pay Adobe for any sort of subscription for anything, so that version was the end of the line for me. Adobe are Nazi woketard dickheads and I can proudly say I have downloaded a pirated copy of every version of Photoshop they released from PS4 to CS6. Good job I wasn't buying them, because I only liked three out of 14 versions (My picks were PS4, PS7, & CS6).

As of 2025 Microsoft are over and out for me, and I'm using Linux Mint now, so I needed to replace Photoshop with GIMP. I'm not a tech geek and find learning complex new programs a massive challenge. A great thing about Photoshop, was that I've been using it for 26 years, and had been using the same version for half that time. So I was fairly comfortable with it. 

GIMP is not the same, the menus are different, and it has different ways of doing things. But I don't plan to stress out or try to learn it in a day. I just want to gradually learn the basics like I did with PS4 all those years ago. And I want to take notes as I go. So this page is my notes. How hard can this be? One step at a time.

 

INSTALLING GIMP 3

First I had to install it - I already had GIMP 2 (Versions of GIMP 2 have been around for over 20 years) installed, but GIMP 3 was released in March 2025, and I wanted to learn to use GIMP with this latest version which I've heard is really good. It wasn't included on the Mint 22 software package manager even by May 2025, so I downloaded it from the GIMP website. I installed the flatpack version following their instructions (yes, I had to use terminal) but it all worked fine.

Initial install on my Mint Cinnamon 22 PC

SET UP GIMP

Personalisation - I didn't change it much, I just made the icons "large" and ungrouped them because I want to see all the available tools, displayed with big easy to see icons.

CROPPING

Using the CROP tool - the difference here is that rather than just saving the cropped image like in P-Shop, it needs to be exported, and I'm also manually changing the default .png's to .jpg files.

PAINTBRUSH TOOL

This is pretty much the same as the one in P-Shop, but again remember to EXPORT the image, and to save it as a .jpg version.

There are an eclectic range of effects options over on the top right window. Some of them look useful, like the star one I used in the image above, but some of them are bizarre and probably pointless, like the last one that inserts a small green capsicum anywhere you click on. But why?

PENCIL TOOL

The pencil tool (right next to the paintbrush tool) is very like the paintbrush tool but with harder edges. It has the same range of eclectic filter options including the essential green capsicum.

 

More to come!