GraphicsGale vs GIMP
When comparing GraphicsGale vs GIMP, the Slant community recommends GIMP for most people. In the question“What are the best pixel art / sprite editors?” GIMP is ranked 4th while GraphicsGale is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose GIMP is:
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](http://www.gimp.org/source/).
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful animation tools
The animation tools in GraphicsGale are very easy to work with. Furthermore, the live preview helps clean up the animations in real time without a hitch.
Pro Offers a great palette tool
With GraphicsGale, the user can save and load palette, create gradation, and make color uniform.
Pro Free
Graphics Gale used to cost money but recently the program switched over to a free license.
Pro Pretty easy to learn the UI and the tools you have to work with are fantastic
Pro Works really well under Wine
Wine can help emulate Windows on non-Windows systems. You can get Graphics Gale running anywhere Wine can run. See WineHQ for more details.
Pro Free, open source and cross-platform
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.
Pro Powerful
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.
Pro Content-aware tools with a plugin
There's a content-aware fill plugin available for GIMP.
Pro Modular & single-window interface options
By default GIMP splits out each window, but you can check to use the one screen mode in options if you prefer.
Pro Lightweight
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.
Pro Beginner-friendly
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.
Pro Full channel support
Cons
Con Only available on Windows
GraphicsGale is only available on Windows.
Con UI requires a lot of clicking
The UI windows not very nice and requires a lot of clicking. For example mouse wheel is not useable at all to zoom in and out in main window.
Con Unintuitive interface
GIMP doesn't embrace OS X application design, thus Mac users might have a hard time wrapping their heads around GIMP's interface.
Con Less features than other programs
Being a free program, it shouldn't be surprising that it has limited features. For those needing more advanced features for something more professional, GIMP just isn't for you.
Con Lacks adjustment layers
Adjustment layers offer a non-destructive way of combining different photo manipulations. Without adjustment layers the only way to see changes is by irreversibly editing the image.
They are promised in future updates.