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Office stuff, Graphics etc
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Free Productivity Software Page 2

Graphics (photo/image manipulation)

With digital photography being so accessible now everyone wants the ability to edit and touch up their photographs. There are many photo editing programs available with the industry standard Adobe Photoshop leading the field in terms of price if not in features. There are also some considerably cheaper programs that are comparable to Photoshop such as Jasc’s PaintShop Pro and PhotoImpact from Ulead. Both these are very capable in their own right and sell for a fraction of the price of Photoshop.

But what's the free alternative?

The Gimp is a strangely named and strange looking but feature rich and totally free (open source) image-editing program.

The interface is designed for maximum work efficiency but it might take you a bit of getting used to (especially if you're a photoshop user) as it is made up a number of freely floating windows.

However...

In spite of its peculiarities The GIMP is comparable with the three programs mentioned above and can take care of all your image editing needs. If you are used to working with Photoshop and want to make the switch then you’ll be pleasantly surprised with GIMPshop. GIMPshop is a hack originally by Scott Moschella of the GIMP to make its menus, dialog boxes and naming conventions more like those of Photoshop. If you are a Photoshop user then this makes your transition so much smoother. You can get it from Scott’s blog at http://plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241.

Although the GIMP should run on Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP it is recommended to use an NT-based version of Windows (NT4, 2000 or XP). A minimum of 128 MB of RAM is recommended but, as with most imaging software, the more RAM the better.

The Gimp is multiplatform with versions available for Windows, Linux/Unix and MacOS

Download it from: http://www.gimp.org

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