Viewing And Editing Pictures
As of DAMTP Windows Image 1.4, in addition to the two picture editing programs (Microsoft Imaging and Microsoft Photo Editor), Gimp v1.2 has been installed. Gimp is provided on the DAMTP Unix system but the Windows pcs have the Windows ported version so subtle differences exist. GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
A few points worth mentioning....
- Gimp is a freeware GNU program so is not without its problems. These problems are hardware dependent so it may work fine on one pc but not on another.
- You can open GIF files but you can't save them. Because of patent issues with the LZW compression algorithm the installer does not install the ability to save GIF files. To be able to do this, you need to be in a country where Unisys doesn't have a patent on the LZW algorithm, or that you have a license from Unisys: we don't!
- It's not the easiest program to use, some people find the number of opened windows a bit confusing. Stick with it, it is a good package but CO support is limited mainly because it does so much. For help and assistance, look at http://www.gimp.org/
Another graphical editing software, Paint Shop Pro 8.0 is available to all members of the department on the new public windows pcs. This will be in addition to web authoring tools and movie watching/editing programs.
Paint Shop Pro 8
A couple of useful PDF files to look at explaining how to use PSP8
