Photoshop "skin" for Gimp
Image editing applications have been coming and going on my desktop for some time now. I used to be a Photoshop user, but I decided to give free software a chance and after going through Paint.net and Gimp, I finally decided Gimp was for me. However I have since missed the intuitive menus in Photoshop and for me some of Gimp's naming conventions are a bit weird.
You can get the best of both worlds though with a nifty addon to Gimp called Gimpshop. This reorders your menus and restructures them to resemble Photoshop's, and very closely at that. Many items that have caused mix-ups have been changed, for example Gimp's convolve tool has been renamed to "blur/sharpen", something actually understandable.
Menus have been reordered to, so if you've grown accustomed to Photoshop, you'll feel right at home in Gimp too. I'm sorry to say there is no Windows version yet, only Mac and Linux, but there is one on the way! If you're a developer you can grab the source from the homepage though. I like many-many things in Gimp and I'd rather support free software which is as good as its $600 counterpart, so it's Gimp with Gimpshop for me!
The best way to get started is to download Gimpshop from the website listed above. Once you have installed it on your system, you should check out the tutorials section that is available on the project website. Here you find lots of tutorials on how to do things in the program, from creating a logo to enlarging images with liquid rescale or creating desktop backgrounds. It is a great place to learn and get used to the program at the same time.
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It isnt working, cause there is an error loading all dll’s. Till it’s better done, bad idea to download it … for XP
Gimpshop IS way old and back level.
Gimp itself is regularly updated. Latest release is 2.4.6 with the binary dated 5-30-2008. But it is still a bear to use with the default UI and the help file is obtuse, out-of-date and difficult to use, with no search functionality built-in.
Just last evening, I needed to massage some photo’s and turned to PhotoFiltre which is the free version of PhotoFiltre Studio. The author is apparently from France.
PhotoFiltre is a very powerful photo retouching program with a lot of functionality that is easy to use. It’s missing a few functions in the free version like a clone tool. Bu there are a lot of free add-on filters and plug-in’s to play with.
Check PhotoFiltre out here:
http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm
There actually is a windows version. I’ve tried it before.
From the page you linked to:
“Windows users can download an installer for GIMPshop 2.2.8 (7.5 MB). Thanks Dakira!”
There is a Windows version, it’s just a bit older:
http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml
Is this still being developed? The last update was from over two years ago. I tend to find the development of Gimp generally very slow. I do like the Gimp, and it is a decent free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, although not a replacement for serious developers. For the home user, it is cool, but imho, the gui needs a serious overhaul.