Are you someone who is desperate for Photoshop but can’t afford to pay the hefty price tag? Don’t worry, if you have been looking longingly at your computer and hoping that a photo and graphics editing program will somehow magically appear, you may just have found the solution. Gimp is an open source program that has an amazing amount of functionality considering that it is completely free. It does take a bit of time to learn how it works but once you do it is an absolutely invaluable tool, and also used by event photographers and industry professionals alike.
Here are some basic tools:
Fuzzy Select & Colour Select: You can use these tools to quickly select and edit certain parts of images. If there are certain colours that you want to change or parts that you want to cut out then you can use these tools to make the relevant selections as opposed to doing a freehand select which is much more time consuming.
Colour Picker: This is a great tool that allows you to add some colour continuity to your graphics and images. Select the colour picker tool and click on the colour in your image that you want to duplicate. It will store that colour for you and allow you to use it again for text and backgrounds.
Crop: This is a simple little tool that does exactly what it says; it crops images, layers and sections of layers.
Transform Tools: The transform tools are made up of flip, rotate, sheer, perspective and scale. These tools are very helpful when you are positioning text or images on to a flyer or piece of artwork. You can re-scale your layers and pasted sections to get them to the right size for your overall image and you can change the perspective of certain element too.
CloneTool: This is a really useful tool if you are editing images of people. If there are spots or other blemishes that you want to get rid of then select your clone tool and hover over a section of skin that is perfect. Press Ctrl + C and the clone tool will store a copy of that piece of skin as a paintbrush. You then click on the spot or problem area and the clone tool will use the clone it has just taken to cover over the blemish.
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