Once again, I’m back with another freeware suggestion for your consideration.

Here’s an opinion of mine, feel free to disagree, just know you’re wrong. EVERYONE needs a good graphics manipulator. It’s true. It’s undeniable. Even if it’s just resizing digital images, cropping, or changing file formats, everyone needs to edit pictures at some time.

Far and away, Adobe’s Photoshop is the world leader in image manipulation. Its cutting edge tools are impressive there is no doubt about it, and I wouldn’t consider doing my job without it. But the fact is this top of the line software isn’t cheap. Actually, I would say it isn’t even affordable. At $649 for CS3 and a whopping $999 for CS3 extended, alternatives become pretty enticing. Adobe itself offers an “elements” edition for most of its products. This version is severely dumbed down, and even so will still put you back a cool hundred bucks. Enter, the GIMP.

The GIMP is a graphics manipulator similar to photoshop which is absolutely, and completely free. Grab your free copy here at gimp.org. If you are already familiar with graphic manipulators you’ll probably be able to adapt to the GIMP interface. If not, check out the beginning tutorials (text with pictures) or any of the video tutorials on youtube (like this one).

Remember, whoever you are, you need a graphics manipulator.  Do yourself a favor, download this program, take a look around.  Try it out.  Don’t get frustrated, I’ll be back to show you around next week.  Until then, good luck.