GIMP FAQ

**Can I use GIMP commercially?**

Yes, you can. GIMP is free software, it doesn't put restrictions on the kind
of work you produce with it.

**What's the GNU GPL license, and how do I comply with it?**

* You are free to use GIMP, for any purpose
* You are free to distribute GIMP
* You can study how GIMP works and change it
* You can distribute changed versions of GIMP

In the last case you have the obligation to also publish the changed source
code as GPL.

**Someone sold or tried to sell me GIMP on a 3rd party website. Is this 
legal?**

Yes, under terms of the General Public License this is perfectly legal,
provided that the seller also gave you the source code of GIMP and any
modifications he/she introduced.

**When will GIMP support HDR imaging and processing in the 16bit per color 
channel mode?**

GIMP 2.10 will be the first version to feature processing with precision of
16, 32, and 64bit per color channel. This version is currently in the works,
and this particular feature has already been implemented.

**When will GIMP support any kind of non-destructive editing like adjustment
layers, layer filters, and/or full-blown node-based editing?**

Currently the plan is to introduce non-destructive editing in GIMP 3.2. This
is a huge change that will require rethinking the workflow, designing a new 
file format for GIMP projects etc.

**Will GIMP open raw (.NEF, .CR2 etc.) files from my camera?**

Currently you need to install [UFRaw](http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/) to open 
raw files. It's both a standalone application and a GIMP plugin for opening 
and processing raw images.

**Why can't you announce dates of future releases?**

We are a team of volunteers with day jobs, families, and personal interests
beyond development of software. Given that, we try to avoid the situation when
we cannot deliver a release, because something else at work/in family came up.

Instead we provide a [feature-based roadmap](http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap) 
that roughly outlines, in what order we will be implementing various popular 
requests made by users.

**Aren't you interested in doing paid development of GIMP via crowdfunding?**

We already have jobs we love. However we actively encourage personal
fundraisers by trusted contributors. If you are willing to launch a campaign
and develop some features for GIMP, talk to us about changes you are about to
propose. We'll help you to flesh out your idea and promote it to a larger
community.

**My graphic tablet doesn't work on  Windows/Mac. Does GIMP support advanced
input devices such as Wacom?**

Yes, GIMP does support graphic tablets and maps pressure, stroke speed and
other events to its advanced brush engine properties. However, the version of
the user interface toolkit that  GIMP currently relies on (GTK+ 2.x) is broken
beyond repair on Windows and Mac with regards to supporting advanced input
devices such as Wacom's.

To fix this, we need to port GIMP to GTK+3 where everything works as expected.
Some work on that has already been done in the
[gtk3-port](https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/log/?h=gtk3-port) Git branch.
However we won't have time to give this our full attention until GIMP 2.10 is
out. We encourage interested developers to either work on the GTK+3 port or,
better yet, help is finish GIMP 2.10.

**Why can't you just copy Adobe Photoshop to make GIMP usable?**

In the past, the development in the project was somewhat erratic with regards
to taking usability into consideration, which is rather typical for free
software projects, but inexcusable for a hi-end image editor that GIMP aims to
become.

Between 2006 and 2013, we worked with Peter Sikking of Man+Machine Works, a
professional usability architect, who helped us shape the project vision for
GIMP, interviews professional users to better understand their workflows and
demands, and wrote functional specifications for various GIMP features.

[This collaboration]() resulted in major improvements of GIMP's usability, in
particular: the rectangular-based selection/cropping tools, the unified
free/polyline selection tool, the single-window mode, the upcoming unified
transformation tool etc.

While working on functional specifications, Peter researched how various
features are implemented in applications with a partially matching feature set
(such as Adobe Photoshop), but the final design was made to help actual users
complete their tasks as fast as possible. This is exactly the kind of approach
to designing interfaces that we consider to be superior to merely copying user
interaction decisions.

**I don't like the name GIMP. Will you change it?**

No. We've discussed this numerous times, and we don't think this is really all
that necessary. We understand that some people feel offended by the colloquial
meaning of the name GIMP, but we cannot please everybody and should not
attempt to do so.

**I don't like some changes you introduced in recent GIMP versions. Why can't
you add a checkbox to disable them?**

We realize that some changes are disruptive to some groups of users,
especially those who got used to GIMP as an image editor for doing quick fixes
to lossy files such as JPEG, PNG etc. (i.e. files that cannot store layers,
masks, custom channels, paths).

However, adding a switch for every change we make adds numerous levels of
complexity that we'd rather avoid. Additionally, it would lead to dramatically
changing the way we mean GIMP to work. Hence we respectfully disagree to make
extra behaviour switches.

At the same time, if you don't wish to abandon GIMP completely, we recommend
having a look at the [Saver and Save/export clean plug-ins]
(http://www.shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/) by Akkana Peck, as well as
at various GIMP forks on GitHub, although typically they aren't maintained up
to date with regards to bugfixes.

**I'm a developer. How do I help you?**

Great! Please check the [wiki](http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&from=Hacking%3A&namespace=0) for introduction 
on GIMP development and talk to us on [IRC](http://www.gimp.org/irc.html).

**I'm not a developer. Can I still help you somehow?**

Absolutely! Here are some of the ways you can help us:

* Post awesome art online and tell people you made it with GIMP.
* Help new GIMP users in an online forum you visit.
* Write a great tutorial on getting something done with GIMP and post it 
online or submit to [GIMP Magazine](http://gimpmagazine.org/).
* Do a GIMP workshop in your local community.
* Improve translation of [GIMP](https://l10n.gnome.org/module/gimp/) and/or its 
[user manual](http://docs.gimp.org/) into your native language (read [this page]
(https://wiki.gnome.org/TranslationProject) to find out, how).