The GIMP Image Editor
The GIMP image editor, available from the Applications → Graphics menu (but see the section What’s New in 10.04?), is an incredibly well-featured and powerful image editor, championed by many people as the Linux equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. It does take a little getting used to, not least because it divides its components up into separate windows on your desktop (see Figure 14-7).

Figure 14-7. The GIMP opens several windows on the desktop
But if you are used to an environment in which your graphic editor takes up the entire desktop, and prefer not to be distracted by any other open windows, you may wish to click the bottom-left icon of your desktop to hide all open windows, and then click the tab in the bottom status bar representing the GIMP. This will ensure only GIMP windows are visible.
Learning How to Use It
Teaching you how to use an image editor as powerful as the GIMP is beyond the scope of this book, so you’ll need to browse through the various menus and try out options to acquaint yourself with the program’s full capabilities.
Having said that, though, the Help menu brings up a comprehensive tutorial that takes you through every aspect of the program (see Figure 14-8). Because the GIMP shares the desktop with other windows and doesn’t hog the whole monitor to itself, you can open up the help next to the GIMP editor and try out features as you read.
Figure 14-8. The ...