My wife got a fancy camera for Christmas and it has peaked her interest in being able to edit the photos. Photoshop is pretty much out on cost alone so I guess my real question is about the abilities of GIMP vs Elements.

Anyone use either for photo editing rather than just kitbashing? She's looking for something pretty intuitive to use so the easier the interface, the better.

Also, how is Elements a viable alternative for kitbashing?

I bought PSE a few years ago for scrapbooking purposes, and I have found it to do pretty much everything I've asked it to. Lots of online tutorials for using it too.

I do also own PSE and I'm pretty hapy with it, except for the grouping of layers, which is not possible with PSE (and I do have a few PS files with grouping )

PSE 6 (Mac version) allows layer merging and linking; just double checked.

There is also photogimp. This is a version of gimp designed to look more like photoshop so it is the easiest to use of the gimps. IT is probably on par with elements, but depending on what you want to do may or may not be equal to the full photoshop. I have found it up for all my needs. IT is "free", so you can always test it out.

I've been using G.I.M.P since 1999 @ version 0.99
G.I.M.P has changed alot but the lack of raw support and 12/16bit tiff is a pain but if you know what your doing then It's no biggy.

the only advice for G.I.M.P I will give is - Use Levels NOT Brightness to lighten images!

I use a Sony A230 SLR (bottom of the range a few years back but still good)

All my photo's @ Are processed with G.I.M.P
I don't posses a tilt shift lens bit GIMP was able to adjust my image for the desired effect (less then 5mins processing and saving!


How ever many beginners are put off by its interface. If that's the case then I recommend Serif Photoplus X5 (I don't work for them but I'm willing to try anything for a discount on there stuff)
It very powerful and apparently (so there site says) it is currently passing PSE!

There's a RAW plugin/software for GIMP that opens the RAW file first for editing and then exports it to GIMP as a 8bit image.

Best thing about GIMP is that it's free. It may be a bit more difficult to use, is bit more flexible in some aspects and a bit less flexible than PSE in some others. Haven't used PSE so I can't really say.

GIMP is adequate for kitbashing, if you know what you're doing.

Thanks for the replies everyone. We have a 9 month old son and a 2 1/2 old daughter so my wife's time is pretty limited so this is more a project for a little down the road, but I wanted to have answers for her when she was ready.

Some of the stuff was over my head, but as it happens a project came up at work that is giving me a chance to play with GIMP...which isn't going well. What I need to do is take PDFs of technical drawings which we print on 11x17" paper delete some of the information, then save it again preserving the resolution so we can print it on 11x17 without losing quality. I haven't been able to manage this in paint and we only have full Adobe on one computer which I don't have access to.

I've opened the PDF with GIMP and changed the resolution to 300 pixels an inch. I've figured out how to edit it easily enough, though printing has been a nightmare I'll worry about that later. What I'm running into is that the PDF seems to be at a higher resolution, zoomed in at 200% I get a much clearer image in Adobe than I do in GIMP. The file sizes are way different, I tried saving the GIMP version as a jpg and it is nearly 4 times the size. I'm assuming the file size goes down when I convert it back to a PDF, but I'm not sure one that.

My next issue is that I don't have Open Office (I tried looking at the kitbash guide here which said to open a drawing in Open Office) is there a way I can convert the jpg to PDF in MS Office?

Thanks for any and all help.

Hmm, well I've already started editting a jpg version. My boss has the full Adobe and as a test he took a jpg photo which was 26MB and converted it to PDF. The final size was way smaller so I'm going to keep plugging away and see if it works.

Yeah, I went ahead and installed Open Office. When we tried using Adobe to convert the pictures went from just under 4MB to 4.5MB. Open Office took it from 4MB to 1.8MB...it's strange but I'll take it. I was trying to limit how much I installed on this computer, cause we're just contractors here (basically permanent). GIMP was only 18MB and Open Office was 151 so it was a pretty big difference and I wasn't sure how closely IT watches that stuff. In the end, we needed it though.

Thanks again for all the help so far, and I should thank work for getting me to actually start using a program I'll no doubt use for kitbashes eventually.

I use cutePDF ( free link: )
Basically you complete your work the send to Print.
CutePDF is one of your selected printer.
The program will then convert your work (doc, jpg, open office, libre office) to a PDF document.
this document can be read by any PDF reader.
No I not employed or get any commission for this promotion and I have been using this product since 2001. (A PDF odyssey). pun intended.

I second cutePDF. Great program.

One more for CutePDF!

Yep, CutePDF is a handy little program to have. Another is . With it you can combine multiple pdf's into one multi-page pdf file or separate a multi-page pdf file into separate pdf pages.

+3 for CutePDF. I used that for years before finally picking up a commercial PDF creator.