GIMP Review: A Free, Full-Featured Photoshop Replacement (original) (raw)
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is the longtime open-source photo editing alternative to Adobe’s category-leading Photoshop. It includes many powerful Photoshop-like capabilities, such as layers, plug-ins, painting, text, filters, selection, and masking. But if you use GIMP, you miss out on Photoshop’s polished interface, along with cutting-edge features such as Neural Filters, raw camera file editing, and Smart Objects. GIMP doesn't perform nearly as well as competitors, either. It's worth exploring if you want beyond-basic photo tools at no cost (it wins our Readers' Choice award for free desktop photo editing software), but Photoshop remains our overall Editors' Choice winner in this category, thanks to its superior usability.
Yes, GIMP is totally free. The application is what’s known as FOSS—free and open-source software. It’s free to download and use, and developers can even create new software that uses its code. If you truly love it and want to support its development, you can donate to its developers via Patreon or its open-source equivalent, Liberapay. For comparison, you must pay at least the equivalent of $19.99 per month for Adobe Photoshop for as long as you plan to use it.
Other software is less expensive than Photoshop and doesn’t require a subscription. Perhaps the closest (and one of the most affordable) options is Corel PaintShop Pro, which, at $79.99 for a permanent license, performs a surprising number of Photoshop's same functions and includes vector editing.
Because GIMP is open-source, you can find photo editing apps that are offshoots of GIMP, such as PhotoGIMP and Krita. These two programs may appeal to you more than GIMP, as they offer different design options. For example, PhotoGIMP attempts to mimic Photoshop more closely, while Krita focuses on drawing rather than photography. Another great option is Photopea, a web-based application that offers a surprising number of Photoshop-like features.
GIMP runs on more desktop platforms than most other photo applications. It supports GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows, and a dozen other operating systems. All the versions are available for download from gimp.org or via BitTorrent. GIMP is also available in the Windows 11 App Store and now supports Apple silicon-based Macs. Just make sure to download the version that matches your CPU hardware. The app is not as resource-intensive as Photoshop, requiring less than 1GB of disk space at installation.
I last tested GIMP version 2.10, and it's now at version 3.06. The interface hasn't changed much, but here's a rundown of the new features (in order of importance) since the time of my last review:
- Nondestructive editing that works with most common filters
- Support for high-DPI displays
- Performance enhancements
- Improved color space management allows GIMP to more accurately convert colors internally and introduces support for CMYK
- A template selector in the Canvas Size menu means you can now choose from among standard document sizes for your projects
- Better format support, including for JPEG XL exports, TIFF reduced image previews, and transparent PDFs
- Automatic layer expansion means paint tools don't have to stay within the bounds of the canvas
- More text options, including bevels, outlines, shadows, and more
- Multiple layer selection for moving or transforming them together
- A new flattened program icon
The GIMP interface still looks as dated as ever. The good news is that it's more responsive, thanks to a rebuild of the underlying code on the GTK3 UI framework. All the same panels, menus, and buttons are still present. Here's the previous user interface:
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
And here's the updated one:
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
It’s functional and not wildly dissimilar from Photoshop in its basiclayout. A toolbox on the left has Move, Crop, Select, and Paintbrush tools, while tool options are below them (they appear across the top in Photoshop). A menu runs across the top, while panels for brushes, layers, and other features are located on the right side. There are no Hand or Pointer tools, however, which may throw off Photoshop converts.
You can customize the interface colors with themes. The first thing most people will want to do is change from the glaring Light mode to the Dark theme so that photos and images take center stage. Even though I prefer to work in the Dark theme, one problem is that the black text in menus is difficult to read. You can further customize the app by toggling panels.
Support for high-DPI displays is supposed to be one of the big new changes with the latest version, but menus and panels were still initially tiny on one of my test systems. On another PC with a 4K monitor, the interface elements were readable.
The welcome panel's Personalize section offers font and icon scaling options to help you resize those elements. Previously, you had to locate and edit configuration files to achieve the same result. Photoshop has just two size options, suitable for HD and 4K displays, which are good but not great for in-between QHD monitors. Fellow FOSS software RawTherapee lets you set the interface font size.
The layout is highly configurable, but I miss Photoshop’s workspaces, which let you set the interface based on activities such as drawing or photo editing. GIMP allows you to save your panel layout, but switching among layouts is not as easy as in Photoshop. To display the desired panels in the interface, navigate to the Windows > Dockable Dialogs option.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
As the word "dockable"implies, you can also undock these panels. From here, I turned on the Gradients panel, which provided me with some lovely presets to choose from after I had floundered with simply trying the Gradient tool from the left toolbar. In Photoshop, you get well-designed presets from the top toolbar automatically when you choose the Gradient tool—no hunting through menus required.
I appreciate that GIMP has tooltips that explain interface items when you hover the mouse over them, and that you get context-sensitive help by pointing at an item on-screen or tapping F1. The program supports a large number of keyboard shortcuts, and you can even create custom ones. A final small interface touch that I appreciate is that the image you’re working on appears in the program’s taskbar icon.
As with Photoshop, you can open just about any image format in GIMP, including Adobe’s PSD format, which preserves layers for editing. It also supports dragging and dropping images from your OS’s file manager. You can start with a blank canvas by either choosing document dimensions (and optionally resolution and color specifications) or one of more than 30 templates for common document and device sizes. GIMP presents templates in a standard drop-down list, though, whereas Photoshop’s thumbnails are spiffier. You can create custom templates via GIMP's template panel.
GIMP doesn't have organizational features such as color coding, keyword tagging, or ratings, but I don't expect these features in a pure image editing application. Photoshop is the same in this regard. You can, however, add comments in an image's Properties dialog in GIMP.
To open raw camera files (those that contain all of a camera’s sensor data, such as Canon’s CR3 or Nikon’s NEF files), you need to install a separate workflow app, either RawTherapee or Darktable. Both are open-source, Linux-friendly applications. After you install one, when you try to open a raw file in GIMP, the separate workflow app opens with the image, and when you close it, it opens in GIMP. When I tried this, GIMP needed to convert the image’s color space to its own for a test raw photo. GIMP doesn’t have built-in lens profiles to correct distortions such as chromatic aberrations, geometry, and vignetting, but you can install the GimpLensfun plug-in to get them.
GIMP’s toolset includes options for cropping, rotating, and transforming an image’s geometry. However, it took me a while to discover some of the most basic photo editing tools, such as brightness and contrast. It turns out they are located under the Colors menu, which makes some sense, but those options are typically organized in sections called Light or Adjustments in most apps. The Colors menu also has a lot of useful, basic image adjustments (in order)—Exposure, Shadows, Brightness, Levels, Curves, Color Temperature, and more.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
You don’t get clarity, dehaze, texture, or vibrance tools as you do in Photoshop and other commercial products, though you can create custom presets for all these adjustments.
Most modern photo apps can attempt to correct color and lighting automatically. GIMP's Levels dialog does have an Auto Input Levels button, which corrected some of my test photos. But you don't get anything similar for the Exposure and Saturation dialogs.
GIMP offers a range of Photoshop-like effects, including Blur and Sharpen, Dodge and Burn, and Smudge. A panoply of filters is also available across 14 categories: animation, artistic, blur, distort, edge detect, enhance, light and shadow, noise, and render, among others. Each filter lets you create presets for its adjustments. The app does have a noise reduction filter, but it’s a very blunt instrument that can’t compare with commercial tools from DxO and Topaz.
This example of the Cubism filter below shows that the software's effects aren't as sophisticated as those from top competitors. Still, you get some control over the look they produce:
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
GIMP features an impressive array of layer modes—38 in total. That beats Photoshop’s 27. You get layer grouping, duplicating, merging, and masking features. In fact, the layer buttons at the bottom of the panel seem more user-friendly to me than those in Photoshop. Even so, you don’t get Photoshop’s Artboards, which divide the canvas into multiple sections for projects that need more than one image size. Nor do you get Photoshop’s Smart Objects, which allow nondestructive editing of layer content.
Selection Tools Are Years Behind Photoshop's
GIMP includes the traditional selection tools: color, free, fuzzy (equivalent to Magic Wand), oval, and rectangle. The program also has Intelligent Scissors, which is equivalent to Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso in that it clings to the edges of a shape as you draw with it.
The spiffiest selection tool that approaches the smarts of Photoshop’s automatic Subject select is Foreground Select, but it’s not a one-click solution. You have to draw a line around the object, close the selection, hit Enter, and then you see the part outside your selection shaded—but the selection isn’t yet just the foreground object. And if you lift the mouse button during selection, you get line segments with vertices. Once you’ve close your selection and hit Enter, you can check the Preview Mask option in the small dialog in the top right corner of the image. You then scribble lines inside the object you want to select and press the Select button.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
After about ten seconds, the selection appears tight around the object. Below is the result after several rounds of adding to the selections of missed parts of the deer.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
You refine the selection by drawing inside the desired selection area or erasing outside it, but the process is time-consuming, particularly when considering that Photoshop can select a subject nearly instantly with far greater accuracy. Here's the selection Photoshop produced for the same photo in about a second, with no futzing required whatsoever:
(Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
Next, you tap Select, and you end up with the image showing the selected area with "marching ants" around it.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
This whole business is a far cry from Adobe’s automatic subject selection, which can even select multiple subjects separately in one operation. You also miss out on Photoshop’s Refine Mask options, which are useful for small, complex details like hair.
One final layer feature I miss in GIMP compared with what's available in Photoshop is the Place tool. This menu option allows you to select a file from your storage and insert it as a smart object, enabling you to transform it non-destructively. You also lose Photoshop's super-helpful Context-Aware Toolbar.
For drawing and painting, GIMP has Airbrush, Ink, Paintbrush, Pencil, and (the fanciest of them all) MyPaint brushes. You can download the MyPaint brushes from GitHub and place them in the correct paintbrush folder. Some clever MyPaint brush examples are included with the standard GIMP download. I’m not a painter, so the image below is just to show you what drawing in the interface looks like.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
Even with the MyPaint brushes, GIMP doesn't provide anywhere near the choice of and control over brushes that you get in Photoshop. For example, you don't get watercolor brushes that splatter like the real thing or pencil tips that erode the way physical pencil tips do. That said, you might find that the drawing and painting tools on offer are sufficient.
GIMP includes a Path tool that works similarly to the one in Photoshop; however, it lacks shape primitives, such as circles, ovals, or rectangles. You can, however, get these shapes using the selecttools.
You get a good assortment of fonts with GIMP, and you can extend the collection because the software supports FreeType, OpenType, and TrueType. You also get hinting, justifying, and kerning tools, but you have to go out to FontForge, an open-source font editor, for detailed glyph editing. It's also possible to place text along a curve, too. I found working with text directly on images easy and intuitive in GIMP, including changing the font, moving it around, and resizing it.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
Although GIMP can import native Photoshop PSD files, it saves your edited image documents in its own format, XCF. You can, however, export your edited images to PSD and other standard formats, including JPG (with control over compression and metadata), GIF (including animated), PNG, TIFF, HEIF, and WebP. What’s more, you can extend the export capabilities using plug-ins. Still, I wish the PNG export option let you remove transparency and set transparent areas to the background color, as you can do in Photoshop.
Unlike a lot of photo editing programs, GIMP can't share directly to online storage or social media sites.
When you print from GIMP, you get a basic options dialog in which you can choose from multiple printers and the color mode (black and white, color, or grayscale, depending on your printer's capabilities). If you need additional printing options, you can install plug-ins to support them. A separate Page Layout dialog allows you to set paper size and margins, but you can't set up layouts for features like contact sheets without a plug-in. The print dialog is more basic than what appears in the GIMP documentation, which includes tabs for settings such as layout, color, and more.
GIMP is noticeably slower than commercial photo editing apps, even for basic tasks such as starting the app or opening the Preferences dialog. It feels a little snappier than it did in the past, but some tasks still take significantly longer than in Photoshop. Exporting is one such activity. Applying auto white balance took several seconds, which is instantaneous in other apps. The program occasionally stopped responding during my testing, though I didn't experience a complete shutdown. The release notes for the latest version mention possible bugs and crashes.
Part of the slowness comes from the lack of graphics hardware acceleration. You can get it by enabling the experimental Playground option when opening GIMP from the command line. The reason it’s not in the menu by default is that it’s considered too unreliable. Most commercial photo software now supports reliable GPU acceleration. Frankly, an app that performs intensive graphic operations in this day and age needs to include graphics hardware acceleration. Without this, it's not practical for professionals.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: GIMP)
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
The extremely extensible GIMP provides a wealth of image editing tools at no cost, including advanced features such as filters, layers, and masking. In fact, it’s so stocked with features that our review barely scratches its surface, passing over topics like its scripting languages. That said, the program has major drawbacks in finesse, performance, and usability compared with Adobe Photoshop, our Editors’ Choice winner for photo editing software. If you can afford it, Photoshop is your best bet. If you can't, GIMP is a suitable, completely free alternative.
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About Our Expert
Michael Muchmore
Contributor
Experience
I've been testing PC and mobile software for more than 20 years, focusing on photo and video editing, operating systems, and web browsers. Prior to my current role, I covered software and apps for ExtremeTech and headed up PCMag’s enterprise software team. I’ve attended trade shows for Microsoft, Google, and Apple and written about all of them and their products.
I still get a kick out of seeing what's new in video and photo editing software, and how operating systems change over time. I was privileged to byline the cover story of the last print issue of PC Magazine, the Windows 7 review, and I’ve witnessed every Microsoft misstep and win, up to the latest Windows 11.
I’m an avid bird photographer and traveler—I’ve been to 40 countries, many with great birds! Because I’m also a classical music fan and former performer, I’ve reviewed streaming services that emphasize classical music.
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