It's ideal for people who are skinning, (slightly less ideal for wallpaperers) as it is packed full of features, and, like so many other things to do with skinning, it costs nothing more than the download.

I use The GIMP. I really like The GIMP. In fact, I would almost go as far as saying that the weird kinda relationship I have with the program borders on the fetishistic. For some reason, it seems to inspire a weird kind of devotion in a lot of people who use it.

I used the GIMP to create all the skins and graphics I've ever made, apart from some icons, although I use it for those now as well! And if my recommendation is not high enough, I know of many skinners who have tried The GIMP, many who like it, some who love it, and one very-well respected skinner who practically swears by it.

• Loadsa tools - Paintbrush, airbrush, dodge/burn (that crudely speaking, is lighten/darken), gradient/pattern fill. All the standard stuff.
  
  
• Ability to create, and subsequently use, custom gradients, custom patterns, custom brushes, custom pallets, custom advanced macros (Script-Fu).
  
  
• Support for all the major graphics formats, including BMP GIF JPG PSP PSD and PNG. So yes, you can open files made in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and the layers are still there for you to work on. So as you might guess, The GIMP's native file format, .xcf, also supports layers.
  
  
• Filters. Yes lots of filters. More created all the time. And, you can use Photoshop Filter Factory Filters! How cool is that?
  
  
• Full alpha channel support.
  
  
• A screen capture utility and thumbnail image viewer built in.
  
  
• You can apply gtk themes to it! YES! - The GIMP is skinnable! Although this support is limited in the windows version.
  

The easy way to install The GIMP is by getting it from the Win32 GIMP downloads page.

Beware, the download on the www.gimp.org page is not the same as the one on the link above. What's the difference? I hear you ask. Well, the one I've directed you to, is an auto-installer, the windows version. The other one, at gimp.org, is the GNU/*nix program, so don't even bother d/l ing it! Unless you are a Linux user of course!

Here's a step by step install guide:

a)  Download the software. Note where your saving it to.

b)  Double click on the file from wherever you saved it to. Your unzip program should open. Unzip the single executable to a new location.

c)  Double click this new executable. The Install program should now start. This may take a while, so after it's started, go and put the kettle on, or get a cold one out the fridge, or crack open a bottle. You won't have time to finish it before the program finishes installing.

d)  When you're prompted to associate files with The GIMP, take a moment. Consider the following: On my Pentium II 450Mhz with 64Meg RAM, GIMP takes approx 12 seconds to load. If I'm just viewing attachments, or browsing for an image, I don't want to have to wait ages just to take a quick peek. MOST, and I mean most, not all, skins are created using .bmp and not .gif or jpg. MOST, and I mean most, not all, of my attachments are .gif or .jpg, and not .bmp. In short, it is not often I want to open a .bmp without editing it in some way, ad it is not often I want to open a gif or jpg to do much else than view it.

Therefore, what I tend to do is associate .bmp and all the other file formats with Gimp, but associate .gif and .jpg files with a viewer which is quick to open, e.g. IrfanView, which you can download from www.irfanview.com. Obviously this setup will not work for everybody. If you use graphics frequently, you'll know what will work best for you, and should be able to set up accordingly.

e)  You should be ready to rock and roll! Create a shortcut to the file .../Gimp/bin/gimp.exe on your desktop, or wherever you want it, run it, and hooray! It should be up and running.

If you're getting weird lines across your display while gimp loads, or if you have a problem writing in text boxes, (ie, you click in one to enter a value, the existing value disappears, and then the program crashes) then check to see what video card you have. I'll put money on it being an Ati Rage card. If this is the case there is a fix. It involves a simple system file edit. Now look, messing with entries in your system files can seriously damage your computers health. So, BACK-UP any important files first. All you are doing is adding ONE line to the system.ini file, and you'd have to be a bit stupid/accident-prone to do anything seriously damaging if you follow the instructions below to the letter. BUT I will not take ANY responsibility if you damage anything on your computer by doing the following. So do the sensible thing, and back-up first ok?



a) Go to your start menu, and select "Run".

b) Type
sysedit

and hit "OK"









c) Select the window marked
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI

d) Scroll down until you find a section marked
[display]

e) Directly below this, type
DEVBMP=0

f) Close the sysedit window NOW, saving the changes on prompt. Restart GIMP. Any better?

Yes it will! 
Because of the whole gif copyright thing (see here for more details ), you'll need a plug-in to be able to start working with gifs effectively. After obtaining your license from Unisys, download the file lzw-plugins-20001023.zip from the normal GIMP for Windows download page. Unzip the file and extract the files to your plug-ins folder (usually C:/Program Files/Gimp/plug-ins/) then restart GIMP and you should be giffing away quite happily. 
 

Cor blimey you want it all don't you?
On windows 95, there is a known bug that the system icon for GIMP, a cute character lovingly referred to as Wilbur, does not show on the taskbar, or in explorer. Or anywhere basically. This is what he looks like:  
A quick, satisfactory work-around can be achieved by right clicking on your GIMP icon on the desktop (if you have one!) and selecting "Change Icon" then browsing to your GIMP plugins folder and pointing the shortcut to one of the plugins, whose icons you'll note, display correctly.

Please note, My GIMP is shown here with the WindowBlinds skin, K-Gnome by KanedA. Obviously this is not going to look the same as yours if you have a different Windowblind skin, or no skin at all. [Heh, and here's something ironic - K-Gnome is a custom Linux GUI. I've skinned a Linux program that has been ported to windows, with a WB that has been ported from Linux. In fact I could be running Linux and you'd never know hahaha].

It would be a bit silly of me to explain each of the tools in turn, but ones which you should familiarize yourself with early on are the
Rectangular select ,
Circular select ,
Magic wand (which selects areas of the same colour),
Paintbrush ,
Pencil ,
Pattern/colour fill ,
and Gradient fill . Photoshop users may notice that The GIMP replicates each of their tools almost exactly (up to version 5 at any rate).

The basic premise of The GIMP is this, you paint with the left mouse button, and access menus via a right click on the image you are editing/creating/viewing. If you find a menu is hidden quite beneath a load of others (I don't think any are more than 4 layers away though), and you use it a lot, well click on the top line of the window, which looks like this --------- and voila! a tear off menu to place any where on your desktop. Also, if you want to create a Hotkey for any of the menu commands, just highlight the relevant menu entry, and then press the desired key-combo - as simple as that!

How to draw a straight line. not as stupid as it sounds, this is something many Photoshop users miss the first time round, as there is no seperate straight line tool in GIMP. Just read, and learn. 

GIMP for Windows FAQ. This new site as well as holding useful answers to commonly asked questions, allows you to submit your own question and answers if you think there's something missing. A good indication of the sense of community that exists amongst GIMP users. 

Tiger t's Layers tutorial. This should be the first stop you make after you download the GIMP, if you've never worked with layers or anything like that before. Shall I put that another way? GO THERE NOW!I followed this article to the letter, and was immediately much more at home with the GIMP! It is a fantastic tutorial. His site is full of lots of other cool stuff too, like a history of the splash screens.

The GIMP manual This hefty tome is now missing a few plugins and script-fu documentation. But, as long as you remember that The GIMP is NOT a native windows program, you'll be fine, and will no doubt recognize this for the valuable resource that it is.

Grokking the GIMP A more recent and more newbie-friendly book. Excellently written with tutorials, examples and lots of pictures. The site also features a fantastic public domain photo archive. Help index it!

Gimp.org Tutorials Go here for some official GIMP tutorials! Great for getting you started...

The GIMP for Windows Page. Visit it, read it, repeat as necessary.

The WinGIMP user mailing list. About the single most useful help resource for WinGIMP users. A lot of the information from the article has been collected and/or verified by reading the list and asking pertinent questions. As with most e-mail lists, make sure you at least TRY and find your answer in the docs I've pointed you too before making a fool of your self on the list! There's nothing to be scared of, the people on the list are great, friendly, enthusiastic, and include the Tor Lillqvist, who did the porting, and who contributes almost daily to the list.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all who have helped bring the GIMP to windows. The main man is obviously Tor, and kudos and respect, as well as deepest thanks go out to him. Like the original GIMP, his development started as a part-time project, and has since spiraled into something bigger. Many thanks to him for all his continued hard work.

If you have ANY questions about the GIMP or this article, please e-mail me. In fact if you have any other newbie, or GIMP orientated questions, please e-mail me, and I will endeavour to help you as quickly as possible. Any questions which I think would be valuable to a wider audience will be included in the next issue of Teknidermy.

**Since the main body of this article was written, a new build of GIMP for windows has been released. This version has no new features as such, but there are great improvements on stability (which I and many others still maintain was excellent beforehand) and other small bug-fixes.