--- title: "GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/gimp-gnu-image-manipulation-program-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Photo Editing Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/photo-editing/) / [GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/gimp-gnu-image-manipulation-program-profile/) / GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/gimp-gnu-image-manipulation-program-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/gimp-gnu-image-manipulation-program-profile/alternatives/) # GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.4/5 - Total reviews: 3,500 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.9/5 - Customer support: 4.0/5 - Value for money: 4.8/5 - Functionality: 4.3/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 1,878 reviews (54%) - 4 stars: 1,244 reviews (36%) - 3 stars: 332 reviews (9%) - 2 stars: 37 reviews (1%) - 1 star: 9 reviews (0%) ### Most mentioned pros - There are so many options that I can customize my editing experience to fit exactly what I need. Whether I'm just doing some quick touch-ups or diving into more complex projects, I feel like I have all the tools at my fingertips. - Overall, it can be challenging at times to work with (since I have the muscle memory of Adobe Photoshop), but the best replacement out there. - The most obvious thing that I like about GIMP is that it's free. But, despite that it also offers a lot of powerful features like the healing tool, scripts, batch processing etc. ### Most mentioned cons - Others say customer support may be slower to answer and deal with payment-related features or extensions could require technical expertise not best suited for active freelance studios. - For advanced photo editing, GIMP lacks some high-end tools that Photoshop offers. - The learning curve is steeper than expected, mainly because the interface isn’t as intuitive as paid solutions. ## GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 3,500 (page 1). ### Great graphic design software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Public Relations and Communications - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2026 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I'm not a graphic designer so I use it to edit my website photos. It does a great job. I'm happy with it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros GIMP is my favorite free graphic design program. It can handle all my photo editing needs without the heavy price tag so I see no sense in using something else. #### Cons Sometimes it's hard to update the program. A recent update caused computer system problems. I had to downgrade back to the version I was trying to update. --- ### GIMP, a free wholesome graphics manipulation program - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Robert B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have enjoyed using it and while I have other options, the fact that it is free means we can deploy it on all our computers and that is what our students are not using for all their graphics work and no one has complained about it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The biggest advantage to GIMP is that is that it is free and a worthwhile alternative to Photoshop and illustrator. #### Cons IT can be heavy on the system and so it tends to be slow. Also, if one is not used to the interface, it takes some getting used to work with it. #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) We wanted a free alternative to Photoshop that still gave us the same options and tools that photoshop has. --- ### Average - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Tomas R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Gimp has a lot of capabilities to extend its basic functionality with plugins #### Cons Its user interface is not very friendly and could use a redesign --- ### GIMP (GNU Image Management Program) review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Deepak M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros GIMP is very powerful and can do just about everything that other raster image manipulation software can do and more. It is free to use, since it is open source software. There are plenty of videos and tutorials available to help the user achieve a particular effect. The software can read a large number of formats. Plug-ins to achieve specific results are easily available online and are easy to install. #### Cons The program takes a bit of time to load. If load time can be improved the software will be truly amazing. #### Reasons for choosing GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) GIMP is free to install and use and has all the features required for general image manipulation. Plug-ins are easily available for additional uses. Text tutorials and videos are available for users to achieve various effects. --- ### Great free to use editing software!!! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Taher A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Gimp is a great free to use open source application, that is available on all desktop operating systems and is a great tools for quick And simple photo editing and content creation. Photoshop is more in depth with a lot more variety of features but that is to be expected with the large subscription price. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Gimp is a good open source alternative to Photoshop, it has most of the traditional Photoshop features that users of Photoshop would be able to migrate to. It has good UI/UX and is user friendly. It might be difficult at the beginning for users who don't know the basic layout of photo editing software, but so is the case with Photoshop. #### Cons It is lacking new features, such a AI image fill and other AI features. There are ways of adding these through plugins, but finding the right plugins is difficult and quite difficult to implement for anaverga person without technical knowledge. Also the model would run natively on the machine, which means it's would require powerful hardware for efficient use, and also mean you would be unable to run it on laptop or mobile device. Here photoshop take a clear lead, with better cloud services. --- ### Cost-effective content creation for small studios. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Kate B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Photography - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. GIMP allowed White Pine Photography to create logos, photo editing, and branded content on a low budget, enhancing client work and studio advertising with robust editing capabilities. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Free, adaptive design and graphics creation abilities of GIMP and slim design, along with quick rendering of intuitive controls, all allow photographers to produce content and manipulate images without cost. #### Cons Others say customer support may be slower to answer and deal with payment-related features or extensions could require technical expertise not best suited for active freelance studios. --- ### GIMP: Full-Bodied Image Editing Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Caleb D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Writing and Editing - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I only have positive things to say about GIMP. It's a useful image editing software that has a ton of features. It's a bit complicated to wrap your head around it at first, but there are plenty of tutorials online to get you started. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I use GIMP to clean up low-quality images we receive from our clients. I remove blemishes and smooth out lines as needed, and make the colors flow more naturally. My favorite part about GIMP is that you can quickly and easily change one color in an image to another color, without messing up the other colors in the image. It's very handy for quick fixes and color blemishes. I appreciate that GIMP gives me exactly what I need quickly after I fire up the application. It's free and receives regular updates, and it's more user-friendly than comparable apps (looking at you, PhotoShop). I also appreciate that GIMP can export to PNG, JPEG, and other, more obscure file extensions. (I don't use them, but I might have to some day!) #### Cons GIMP has a ton of features, and some of them are buried deep in the software menus. Luckily there are guides online to help you find what you need. Additionally, technically, you can edit photos on GIMP, but that isn't the primary purpose of the software. Still, I wish GIMP had some basic photo editing capabilities, or an option to turn on "photo editing mode." It's great having easy access to image layers, color gradients, and shape manipulation, but it'd be nice to have a simple "Exposure" slide bar I could use for editing photos. --- ### GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Haley R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Hospital & Health Care - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: April 2026 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. GIMP has been a fantastic addition to my digital toolbox, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a versatile and powerful editing program without breaking the bank. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros I recently started using GIMP for my photo editing needs, and I have to say, it's pretty impressive for a free tool! As someone who's always been a bit hesitant to invest in expensive software, finding GIMP felt like a real win. What I love most about it is the extensive toolset. There are so many options that I can customize my editing experience to fit exactly what I need. Whether I'm just doing some quick touch-ups or diving into more complex projects, I feel like I have all the tools at my fingertips. #### Cons I spent some time using GIMP for a photo editing project, and while I really appreciate its powerful features and how flexible it is, I did notice one thing that could be improved: performance. When working with larger files, things definitely slowed down quite a bit. --- ### basic image editing - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Rafia R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: January 2026 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered GNU Image Manipulation Program is a useful open-source tool for basic image editing and quick visual adjustments. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It’s free and surprisingly powerful for photo retouching and simple design tasks. For small teams or occasional use, it can cover many essential needs. #### Cons The interface is not very intuitive, and the workflow can feel less polished. It’s not ideal for high-end branding or collaborative design projects. --- ### Easy to handle program - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I use it when I want to introduce changes to my pictures for my blog rapidly without spending too much time. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It is easy to install on my Windows computer, easy to start and works smoothly without delay. #### Cons Sometimes it takes a little time to figure out how to change a picture. Specially with the layers. --- ### Good Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Caroline O. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered It's good. I mainly get done what I need to get done. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros I like that I can edit any photos, especially removing the background from photos which is why I mainly use it. #### Cons It doesn't have as many features as Adobe Photoshop so is lacking. #### Reasons for choosing GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Adobe Photoshop was too expensive at the time. --- ### great for editing images - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: kirstie m. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Arts and Crafts - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered good. does what it is supposed to, just a steep learning curve #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Great alternative to paint for image editing #### Cons difficult to use at first. needed to look up how to do some things with it. #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) more editing tools & does more than paint does --- ### Gimp > photoshop - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Abe N. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Utilities - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: January 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall my experience has been positive and more than satisfied. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I appreciate the tools it offers for free unlike adobe so I can choose if it’s the right editing software for me. #### Cons I would like more tutorials to be available but other than that, no complaints. #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Price was drastically different compared to features that I use. --- ### GIMP at a glance - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: James C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Construction - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I use GIMP on a daily basis. It comes in very handy since I work with a lot of images. This is a hobby of mine #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like the thousands of tools and images offered.I like the ease of use The help files and the tutorialThe fact that it is free and a very good competitor to Adobe Photoshop #### Cons The loading time that it takes the program to open. That is the only thing I dislike about GIMP.It is basically a very good program #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) The features included with Photoshop and GIMP are almost identical except for one important fact.Adobe Photoshop cost $35.99 on Adobes website compared to GIMP which is free. --- ### Incredibly Useful and Powerful - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Diane B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Arts and Crafts - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I use GIMP for both my own art business and for my work at a water utility. The art use is obvious. The water utility has to apply for county permits when fixing or installing service lines. The county requires drawings and images of both the site and the locations of construction signs. GIMP allows me to easily fulfill these requirements without purchasing software. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The in-depth ability to edit images is essential. Additionally, the capacity to convert documents and images to various formats (such as PDF to JPG) is valuable. #### Cons More quick-and-dirty guidelines for small jobs and basic edits would be helpful. The huge flexibility of GIMP is great but can be a bit overwhelming. --- ### I really love it - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Rebecca R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: January 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I was pleasantly surprised by GIMP. It's a powerful tool with a lot of advanced features, and I love that it's free. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I really like the range of tools, including things like layer masks and bezier curves. It lets me achieve professional results for my design projects. The interface is customizable, which is helpful. #### Cons It took me a little time to get used to the interface. It's not as intuitive as some other programs, but there are tutorials available. --- ### Fanatics free image editing software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Retail - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Very good experience and is a exellent alternative to paid for image editing software #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Extremely easy to use with the user interface being simple to find tools you want to use when editing images. #### Cons Its difficult to find something to dislike about a program which is free, however, the only items which isn't ideal is when working with layers, you have to select the layer you wish to save as the image. --- ### The Best Free Alternative of the past Decade to Any Commercial Image Editing Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Sébastien L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The fact that GIMP is freely available on all major operating systems ensures that you can work seamlessly from any computer in the native format provided (XCF) or any other supported format. I have used GIMP many times to edit PDF files, either to add annotations or to conceal confidential information, which is easy to accomplish with a filter such as "Pixelize". For certain programming tasks, it came handy to create paths with the Bezier tool, exporting the information to the SVG format, which can be read with a programming text editor in a breeze. I have also benefited from its great stability, once creating more than a hundred layers on a single image. Since it can handle as many layer groups and layer masks as you wish, it is possible to iterate over one idea over and over again, discarding only specific modifications. There is also a useful "Undo history" tab that takes a visual snapshot of the state of the image at each particular point in time and gives a meaningful name to each step, facilitating the retrieval of a desired state. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros GIMP really has it all: apart from being open source (free) to start with, it supports a plethora of image formats, including animated GIF, PDF, PS, RAW, TIFF and even text (TXT). It features a single-window mode, which is convenient when working with only one monitor, while the multi-window mode is incredibly useful to divide any work being done on two different monitors. It offers many filters and third-party extensions to ease some more tedious aspects of image manipulation. If you are into programming, then you can even take advantage of the exposed libraries, which allow you to programmatically modify images with any tool available in GIMP using Python or Scheme as programming languages. It is also customizable to the core: you can add and remove menus and icons on the fly; you can define the exact resource consumption of the application by specifying details for memory usage and even the number of CPU threads to use; you can have completely distinct configurations for normal mode and full-screen mode; you can create brushes or import from existing creations available online, the same being true with textures; you can configure and add keyboard shortcuts for almost any action you may require to perform and configure many settings to correspond to the default behavior you want in most situations. #### Cons GIMP wasn't made to work with Photoshop images (PSD). It does support them, but the experience isn't as good as with Photoshop. Some types of filters apply many different steps and can't easily be undone, which is sometimes frustrating. Unless you are an expert, the Script-Fu Console is not intuitive at all for newcomers and makes it hard to guess what you can actually do. Some filters and effects won't have a complete description immediately available explaining how the image is expected to be modified. This can be inconvenient when trying out new things, as a few filters take a long time to run and may cause the system to hang for a while depending on how the system allocates priority to the application. On the same subject of filters, it is also hard to guess how long a specific effect may take to render as many filters apply a number of steps in a row, resetting the progress bar at each step. Some filters may also have corner cases to consider, for instance when working on a very large image resolution: when rendering a pattern, it can show signs of incongruence if the image isn't scaled down a bit first. --- ### GIMP Rocks My World Everyday, and It Will Do the Same For You, Too! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Robert F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Online Media - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I click on the GIMP icon on my laptop taskbar everyday, and that takes about ten seconds for GIMP to be ready to go. I can pop an image in with one Control V, and I am ready to go. Or I can bring up a project with one click. It is super easy to use. And there is some serious functional power under the hood of GIMP. Yes, there is a learning curve, like I've mentioned, but it just is not that big a deal, at least for me...and I am not some super brain, either. Okay, so I give GIMP my Two Thumbs Up Award for what I do. I use it a lot, and if you haven't been using GIMP, load it up and start using it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros What I like about this software is I can use it on my own laptop and it doesn't require a huge amount of storage space and it is freeware, and I love all the stuff I can do. I keep finding out things I can do that make me one happy image creator. I work a lot with images and so one thing for sure is how I can quickly and efficiently remove backgrounds or grab part of the image that I want to use. GIMP gives me at least five different ways I can do this. I can go on and on about what I can do with GIMP when it comes to taking an image and layering other images, and coming up with some fairly decent and unique designs. #### Cons Hmmm. Well, the there is a learning curve. And, yeah, I'd love it if I could just wave my magic pen and, hey, presto! --- the job was done exactly the way I want. But part of the process of creating images is inside the process of using the tools, and finding new and super cool ways to do something. What I mean is that by getting deep into GIMP and messing about, I have stumbled on some results that have made me some original images that help me get eyes on the prize...you know, converts visitors into return visitors, and into customers. --- ### Good news about Gimp - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Nana Twum A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Say I had to give this a total rating out of 10, from the standpoint of a freelance designer I am coming in around 8.4. The only things to not like about this software is it is not adobe and that's fine! You can design edit photos, draw, do digital illustrations ,and also make professional promotional pieces for both web and print. This software is free and has great midrange where a creative person should be ale to get the job done. If had to relate it to a car, randomly because I love cars this software is like a modded Mazda speed 3 manual transmission. So that being said it's not the BMW but punches well, easily acceassible (again a free software) has all you need and win race in it's class, and also a sleeper underdog when set against subscription services. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros There are a lot of features about this soft ware or platform that I can highlight from the perspective of a Designer .I have a design business and I just recently started playing around with canvas as a tool but GIMP has most of what anyone doing photo manipulation would need. What I like best about Gimp is primarily, that it is a free software. As far as free there are plenty of brushes ie that come stock, as well as it being easy to download brush bundles, unique brushes online, The software in easy to use and it mimics photoshop in a lot of ways so the software is easy to navigate. The Gimp community has done an amazing job actually making learning forums and tutorial. Gimp also. has it's own plug ins available for download and you can look online and find blogs, q and a posts, and how tos relatively quickly. Within the platform there are wide range of edits and effects you can add to your photos and also very important is that Gimp is not made as. Stand alone product, the software is receptive to other software so your not cut off as a designer and have to do your whole project from beginning to end in that software. I think it's a great free source where you can save some money and produce some work. #### Cons Cons A obviously there are some negatives but I think they are fair being that its a free software. My main problems with it are, of course, it is not adobe and doesn't offer a cloud experience meaning that I can access other work I do a vector design or something but then have to, drag and drop it in, and have it open in another window rather than just to upload it from the saved works. Another problem I guess you could highlight is, some of the plugins and fonts don't work 1-1 with adobe so you might have to find a group of fonts that work well with Gimp. Importing fonts can have the size of your son change, you might be missing some symbols or, you might fonts that aren't supported displays as code. I think that the fact that its free you take The salt with the sugar, and you work around what you have to. Now, it can be frustrating, due to the fact that it is not the industry standard so sometimes it's harder to print Gimp files, but to make up for that, newer versions of Gimp actually allow you to export as a PSD. The brushes are not the same as photoshop and the the effects are very similar but not the same. --- ### My experience with GIMP has been great, very professional image editing with impeccable results - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Aníbal M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. GIMP has brought me many benefits in recent years, I have edited in record time images for the websites that I have designed, I have made business cards for professionals, being a web programmer knowing that GIMP has complemented me allows to offer web pages without having to always resort to a professional designer, which reduces the costs of my projects for the end customers, in my work in the company has served me to perform specific tasks when working with web pages. I am very happy with this software that has been very useful for years and has taken me out of trouble. My bosses and clients are happy with my work. Surely I will continue using GIMP for many years. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I have been using this software for many years to edit images and perform work at the request of my clients in my work as an independent professional, retouching images, banners, logos, among many other things that I have been able to do without complications with GIMP, this application is free , I can use it perfectly without cost, this advantage is very important for me, I love that there are versions for Windows and Linux, since it is possible to install it from repositories, it is easy and it does not waste time searching the Internet, it has many options that include the possibility of programming your own filters this option Although it is very advanced for me, it seems excellent for the future. Another thing that I like about this software is light, I have been able to run it without problems on computers with very few resources, this has got me out of trouble on more than one occasion. It is important that there is a good amount of extras, like filters and brushes, that can be downloaded from the Internet completely free, I like that a lot. #### Cons What I like least about GIMP is that the existing documentation is very little in English and even less in Spanish, most of its users are German or Russian and the information you have is not good for me, the GIMP community is very small . It is difficult to find someone who will really help you if you have a problem or do not know how to do a particular task. The additional components that can be downloaded from the Internet are free, but not many. It is necessary to perform a manual work in other applications are performed automatically. It has functions that are very advanced and not very intuitive, it has cost me to discover some functions on my own. The graphical interface seems a little sloppy, this could improve to make it more attractive for a larger group of people. --- ### Lots of capability for no money at all - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. For business applications, it's hard to recommend GIMP for any serious work. While capable, investing in more user-friendly and functional software would be better overall. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros GIMP is an image manipulation program in the same vein as Adobe Photoshop, with many of the same features and tools to allow you to get very similar results to its more professional counterparts. There are many benefits to being free open source software. On top of serving GIMP for free, the code freely available for viewing and modification. Having many decentralized developers means that many improvements such as features and bug-fixes happen quickly. So long as there are people passionate about the project, development will continue. Also, documentation and tutorials are plentiful for GIMP, as the community for this program is very passionate. Simple searches will yield basic start-up tutorials as well as advanced tutorials for more complicated tasks. GIMP development stagnated for a few years, but with more recent development GIMP has made strides to become more modernized and easy to use. In earlier days of GIMP, it wasn't even possible to draw a circle without a significant number of steps, but this and much more has been added to the program! #### Cons GIMP is not as intuitive as competitors like Photoshop, requiring scripting and additional steps to accomplish certain functions. If you plan to become a designer or graphics artist and need to do image manipulation professionally, then GIMP will hinder your abilities to do so. Software parity is important in the professional world, and while GIMP can handle .PSD files it would be better to just use the first party application that the rest of the industry is using. GIMP gains a lot of leeway for being free, since there is no development being backed by a major company. The UI is comparatively clunky and features less accessible compared to paid alternatives. Do not think that you'll be getting the same results as easily in GIMP as you would in other programs. --- ### Take the time to learn, and GIMP is rewarding - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Research - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. For me, GIMP was a replacement for Photoshop. That being said, I've been totally impressed by the way GIMP has grown over the years. In its current iteration, GIMP can accomplish any image editing task I've thrown at it -- often, this required me to spend time learning how to best accomplish that task in GIMP, but that time has always been rewarded with high quality outputs. Still, I have probably spent as much time fumbling around in confusing with GIMP as I have actually working. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Unlike a number of other free image manipulation programs, GIMP is both extremely powerful and (relatively) simple to use. Users of Photoshop will not find it to be the most difficult transition. GIMP has just about every feature an average or casual user could want from an image editor. GIMP works well not just for editing photos, but also for digital drawing and graphic design. In most regards for most users, GIMP can do whatever Photoshop or other commercial programs can. That being said, the functionality of GIMP should not be perceived as Photoshop lite. GIMP offers more tools, brushes, presets, etc than an average will ever need, and that's before installing any extensions. My current work requires minimal graphic design work -- largely infographics and visual representations of data -- and GIMP has every tool I could possibly need to produce data visuals / improve those produced by other software. #### Cons While GIMP has become more user friendly over the years, there are two points new users may find intimidating. First GIMP -- as the full name suggests -- is part of the GNU/Linux lineage and ethos. Users unfamiliar with all this will probably be confused, especially as it relates to saving proprietary formats. Beyond that, amateur image editors will probably find themselves overwhelmed by all of the tools offered by GIMP. Some of these basic tools work in unexpected ways based on prior knowledge of other software -- on its face this isn't problematic, but the different way of operating sometimes isn't logical. New users will likely find themselves bewildered by the breadth of menu options, and the sub-options that go with them. I am certain of this, being that I've been using GIMP for years and I still occasionally find myself confused. #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Current organization doesn't support Photoshop and I have no desire to pay for it when a free alternative exists. --- ### The best competition to adobe photoshop - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Akash T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Education Management - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, GIMP is a great image editing software that offers a wide range of features and is suitable for both beginners and advanced users. Its open-source nature makes it an accessible and cost-effective option for those looking for a powerful image editor that doesn't require a subscription. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Despite all the features available, it is surprisingly free and open source. so, obviously, it's the price that I like the most. It's price is the biggest feature. That's why it is priceless. #### Cons GUI can be better like Adobe Photoshop. One of the downsides of GIMP is that it can be somewhat resource-intensive, particularly when working with large images. This may cause the program to run slowly on older or less powerful computers.Also, it does not have some of the advanced features as some paid software for professional use, such as 3D editing or motion graphics, but it is a great tool for basic and advanced photo editing. #### Reasons for switching to GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) because of pricing --- ### GIMP Review - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Research - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I'm a happy and frequent user of GIMP especially after some experience using photoshop as well. It is important to clarify that GIMP is the kind of software that does not try to compete or overpower Photoshop. The most important aspect is that it is not developed commercially and it's free and open-source, unlike Photoshop. All its updates are also free and you can have it on as many computers as you want. It provides with a bunch of free plugins and I even had the chance to play around with the source code of some. GIMP also has its source code available to compile and that makes it available to wide range of systems that Photoshop might not support. Installation is as easy as it can get and runs smoothly even on older computers. I also enjoy the flexibility on keybindings, it can make the work process much faster. The settings being portable to different workstations makes it even more convenient. #### Cons The interface can be a bit confusing (I never liked so many floating windows) but that's the case with o lot of similar software too. There is a deep learning curve that is accompanied with not the best documentation, but once you get familiar with it, it shouldn't be a problem. In terms of usage from professionals, there are a few limitations so it shouldn't be considered as a strict replacement for Photoshop. It lacks a few features like CMYK, but there are several plugins to overcome those. Some points that mainly come along with the fact that it is a free open-source piece of software include that it can be buggy sometimes as there is no official quality assurance team. The user community is responsible for reporting bugs and updates and fixes can consequentially take sometime. It can also be a bit slow, but at least it is not as resource-hungry as other alternatives. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/gimp-gnu-image-manipulation-program-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice