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The GIMP is a multiplatform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU or General Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.
One of The GIMP's strengths is its free availability from many sources for many operating systems. Most GNU/Linux distributions include The GIMP as a standard application. The GIMP is also available for other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows™ or Apple's Mac OS X™ (Darwin). The GIMP is not freeware. It is an Open Source Software application covered by the General Public License (GPL license). The GPL provides users with the freedom to access and alter the source code that makes up computer programs.
The GIMP is the most widely supported image manipulation available today. The platforms that The GIMP is known to work on include GNU/Linux™, Apple Mac OS X (Darwin)™, Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT4, and 2000™, OpenBSD™, NetBSD™, FreeBSD™, Solaris™, SunOS™, AIX™, HP-UX™, Tru64™, Digital UNIX™, OSF/1™, IRIX™, OS/2™, and BeOS™.
The GIMP can easily be ported to other operating systems because of its source code availability.
The GIMP-Help system provides you with the information necessary to understand how to use The GIMP. Read on to begin your GIMP journey.
All being well, GIMP detects the system language. This may fail on some machines and you may want use another language. It is possible to change the language:
Under LINUX: in console mode, type "export LANGUAGE=en &&gimp" replacing en by fr,de... according to the language you want.
Under WINDOWS: you have to create an environment variable giving LANG for Name and fr or de... for Value.
Under Mac: Go to System Preferences, click on the International icon and in the Language tab, the wanted language must be the first in the list.