For the past two years or so, I’ve taken an interest in learning more about photography.  I’ve been reading books, and countless online articles, tutorials, and forums on this subject in order to better understand how to take better, more artistic pictures.  The only problem was, much of what I was reading was geared towards cameras that had just a few more features than what my Sony “point and shoot” type camera had.

That all changed Christmas Eve when I was given a Canon 40D dSLR camera and lens!

I’m finally able to put into practice all I’ve been reading about regarding photography, and it’s been such a joy!  I quickly realized however, that the ability to edit my photos was going to be just as important as taking those photos in the first place.  My first thought was:  “Photoshop.”  My second thought upon looking at the price was “That’s pretty expensive to buy right now.”  Then a thought occurred to me:

A friend had told me awhile back about a program called “Gimp“.  Supposedly, “Gimp” was a “Poor man’s Photoshop”; an open source program that boasted many of the same features and editing abilities as Adobe Photoshop.  I decided to download it, and I’ve been overwhelmed with all of the bells and whistles that this open source (i.e., free) program has!  There are a myriad of Gimp “how to’s” that can be found on the web, so there are no worries on trying to learn the program.  You can download Gimp by going here.

Gimp is available for both PC and Mac.  You can find the Gimp User Manual (English) right at the Gimp site. 

If you’ve been considering getting into Photo Editing, before you run out and buy Photoshop, I’d highly recommend checking out Gimp for your photo editing needs.  Economic times are a bit tough right now, and we recognize that here at PrintMyThing and PrintMyRibbon.  All the best to you in 2009!