Photoshop vs GIMP

Photoshop is used by professionals everywhere. It is taught in classes, used by artists and is even used by medical professionals. If you've seen a magazine ad featuring a model, you've probably seen the effects of Photoshop. You won't be alone when using Photoshop. The internet is full of tutorials and videos on how to use Photoshop. This fact, coupled with the trove of plugins available for Photoshop means you can use it it to make the professional looking or artistic images you need.

Photoshop is the most fully featured image editing software available today allowing you to perform highly advanced image manipulation.

On top of that it offers features beyond the realm of typical image editing software tools such as support for video editing, 3d elements and 3d printing among others.

Photoshop includes content-aware tools such as content-aware fill that can fill in a select area based on what surrounds it.

Lightroom is another image editing software from Adobe that's specifically designed for photo editing and managing of large quantities of digital images.

A stripped down version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Elements can be bought as a standalone application for $100.

There's a free mobile app available for iOS, Android & Windows Phone.

There's a huge number of both free and paid tutorials available online. Websites like Lynda.com offer premium high-quality, in-depth tutorials, but there are plenty of free alternatives to be found on YouTube, blogs and specialized sites on the Internet.

GIMP is completely free and open source, meaning you can use GIMP and all of its features without spending a penny. This makes it an excellent case for artists or designers who may not have the budget to spend over 700 USD on Photoshop. It is also available for free on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It's licensed under GPL with source code available here.

GIMP is the most feature rich free image editing tool. It has most image manipulation and workflow tools that you would expect from an image editing software and what it lacks it makes up with plugins.

There's a content-aware fill plugin available for GIMP.

By default GIMP splits out each window, but you can check to use the one screen mode in options if you prefer.

Compared to to other photo editing software, GIMP is very light weight. In addition it isn't very resource-intensive, meaning you can put it on a flash drive and have it with you to load up on just about any computer.

Gimp has less features than programs like Photoshop, but for a beginner, or someone not needing complicated options, Gimp is the perfect choice. It allows you to quickly do basic photo manipulation so you can easily get the product you need without having to worry about complicated features getting in the way.