GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free and open-source raster graphics editor available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It handles photo retouching, image composition, layering, and graphic authoring for a wide range of creative work.
The official site offers stable and development downloads, platform-specific installation notes, a comprehensive user manual, tutorials, and links to plug-in and brush collections. Release notes document new features and changed behaviour between versions.
It suits independent designers, photographers on a budget, students learning image editing, and small teams producing web graphics, mockups, or icons without subscription fees. Script-fu and Python-Fu batch scripting also help automate repetitive editing tasks.
Compared with subscription-based professional suites it costs nothing and runs on modest hardware, while offering layers, masks, paths, and colour management; compared with lightweight viewers it has a steeper learning curve and a less conventional interface.
Download installers only from the official site or verified mirrors, match plug-ins to your major version, and keep non-destructive working copies in the native XCF format before exporting flattened images for the web.
