When it comes to photos, perfection is key to everything about them. We all know that pictures are worth a thousand words, and images profoundly affect our brains. From helping us freeze memories to advertisement, to fun aesthetics, the usefulness of photos has increased since their invention, and we have come to accept that we can’t do without them.

In this craze for pictures, it’s not hard to see why photo editing apps and software are becoming greater and greater, and we are coming to rely on them more and more nowadays to help us add perfection to these pictures of ours.

From the popular ones like Photoshop, CorelDraw etc., we have a suite of them that are designed to cater for your needs and today; we would be comparing two of them, namely, GIMP and GIMPshop.

We will compare and contrast these two photo-editing apps to find out which one is better, the advantages, drawbacks and all there is to know about the two apps. I implore you to pay attention to this article to decide the one you will prefer to use if ever given a chance to choose.

So, let’s get into it. Let’s start with GIMP

GIMP OverviewGimp overview

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, an open-source image editor program supporting almost every popular image format. Developed by Free Software Foundation (GNU), GIMP is a photo editing software released in 2006 to create a low space-consuming version of Photoshop. GIMP is quite popular as a free photo editing software that’s amazingly efficient. It’s a favourite among many photographers as it offers an easy way to edit pictures without hassles for the whole process and is relatively easy to learn and use.

Advantages of GIMP

Beginners Can Try Out Their Editing Skills free:

Photoshop, as we know, like all Adobe products, used to be very expensive. The only conceivable way to use the programme was to buy a one-time licensing fee of $700. Now that Creative Cloud has taken over, you can subscribe to Adobe products for as little as $10 a month.

However, GIMP is free to use. Although only saving around $10 a month compared to Adobe subscriptions, GIMP gives you a chance to try out editing without commitment; this is why GIMP is an excellent choice for low budget photographers and people in low-income countries as it offers them the feel of Photoshop. This way, you can decide if you are willing to purchase software like Adobe or not.

Takes up Less Storage Space:

Many photographers use older laptops and desktop machines to edit images, as they do not deem it fit or do not have the money to buy costly computers to edit their pictures. By no means is this a problem until you try to download a huge computer programme like Photoshop.

Not only does Photoshop take up a lot of space, but it also needs an ample buffer space to allow you to edit your images. Therefore, if you are conscious about space or do not have enough room for your design, then Photoshop may not be for you.

Photoshop currently recommends more than 4 GB of available hard disk space. However, GIMP can take up as little as 200 MB. This, as you can see, means that GIMP is faster to download, setup, and doesn’t eat away at precious space on your hard drive and RAM, unlike its compact cousin Adobe Photoshop.

User Friendly and Easier to Learn:

Photoshop isn’t only for digital photographs. It covers all aspects of designing, illustrating, and many other disciplines that are too numerous to list. Unfortunately, this means that Photoshop has many tools that you will never use, and this takes up space and makes the learning process much more confusing and downright disturbing and annoying.

GIMP, on the other hand, was built with digital photography editing in mind. Therefore, you can cut to the chase and do away with the unnecessary tools from the mix and speed up your learning and editing process. As a result, it’s faster, and you’re less likely to do something that you have no idea how to fix.

Thus, GIMP is easier for non-professionals and beginners who are just learning or are new to the digital photography experience.

Customisable and Flexible Interface:

GIMP not only works on UNIX systems but also is fully customisable for use. Therefore, you are free to move and push away tools and areas you will not require. This is great for keeping only the things you need and speeding up your workflow, thereby reducing redundancy.

It is flexible enough to suit your needs and allows you to re-create keyboard shortcuts as you see fit, making GIMP very unique.

Modifiable Because it’s Open-Source:

GIMP is an open-source program, which means you can modify features if you know how to change the operating code. Don’t be afraid; this isn’t illegal. On the contrary, it is encouraged and was set up for this purpose by the software designers. The tools that are not immediately apparent or available on GIMP are possible through plugins or changing the core code.

For example, the useful ‘Content-Aware Fill’ feature in Photoshop isn’t part of GIMP as standard. However, you can download the ‘Heal Selection’ plugin (aka Smart Remove) and use it as if you were on Photoshop to your advantage.

Offers Superior Batch Processing:

Photoshop can batch process images, but it takes a little getting used to; you could set everything up using actions, wait an hour and find out something didn’t set up correctly.

GIMP is superior in batch processing images. It will let you do repeatable actions to large groups of images. This alone is a great reason to choose GIMP over Photoshop and makes it a favourite of many photographers and designers.

GIMPShop OverviewGimpshop

GIMPshop was a modification of the free and open-source graphics program – GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. GIMPshop is a modified version of GIMP designed to make the users feel like they are using Adobe Photoshop. GIMpshop, I must mention, is a tad lower in authenticity, feel than GIMP, and hasn’t been updated ever since due to an issue with its launch and the stealing of the software by competitions. This has led to a low user index of GIMPshop and its relegation to the background while its cousins are preferred above it.

Is GIMP better than GIMPshop?

In a word, yes. GIMPshop is a novel idea, but it’s based on a very outdated version of GIMP from 2006 and hasn’t been updated since. The official version of GIMP has released several significant updates, the latest as recently as October 2020 with more on the way, which is a sharp contrast from GIMPshop, which continues to use its somewhat outdated interface until today.

GIMP has also massively redesigned its user interface since GIMPshop was first created and almost turned itself into a Photoshop clone, whether that was the intention or not. A recent update also included the ability to create custom themes that can alter the layout, even more, offering more freedom to the user. So Yes, GIMP is better than GIMPshop.

GIMPShop vs GIMP Feature comparison

Feature GIMPshop GIMP
Image Editing Yes Yes
Customizable Yes Yes
Layer manipulation Yes Yes
Support for Layers No Yes
Photo effects Yes, Yes
Editing photos Yes Yes
Advanced brush settings No Yes
Resizing dpi Yes Yes
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions No Yes
Minimalistic UI No Yes
Non-destructive editing Yes Yes
Raw Photo processing Yes Yes
Infinite canvas No No
Colour blending No No
Drawing Yes No
Fullscreen support Yes Yes
Browser-based No No
Custom overlays No Yes
Due Diligence Management No Yes
Gradients Yes Yes
Web-Based No No
Open PSD files Yes Yes
Vectorize raster images Yes Yes
Sketch to PSD Yes Yes
Healing brush No Yes
Multiple Font Colors Yes Yes
Retouch photos Yes Yes
Color correction Yes Yes
Lossless quality Yes Yes
Merge photos No Yes
Morphing No Yes
Multi-choice brushes Yes Yes
Blending brushes Yes Yes
Category filters Yes Yes
Batch image manipulation No Yes
Layers support Yes Yes
Ad-free Yes Yes
Advanced crop and layer management Yes Yes
Animation Yes Yes
Blur Filter Yes Yes
Built-in Color picker Yes No
Colour to Alpha Yes Yes
Cross-platform Yes Yes
DRM Free Yes Yes
FOSS No No
High-resolution images Yes Yes
Image Masking Yes Yes
Keyframe animation Yes Yes
Lossless Cropping No No
Portable No Yes
Scalable Yes Yes
Scripting support Yes No
Symmetry brush Yes Yes
Digital Drawing Yes Yes
Watermark images No No

Last Updated on August 30, 2021 by RichTechy

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