21 October 2011
When you add pictures to your website they need to be cropped so they appear quickly and cleanly, looking as good as they can with as small a file size as possible, to enable them to 'load' without delay. This is becoming more important as google now measure your page load speed and take that into consideration when deciding the page rank of your website. Many clients find this a challenge because of the cost and complexity of professional image manipulation software. Gimp is free software that can be downloaded and installed simply, enabling you to crop images successfully.

We are very aware that many people are frustrated by the learning curve and cost of using professional image manipulation software like Photoshop.

Now there is the GNU Image Manipulation Programme, which goes by the handy acronym of GiMP – ignore the name, this product will deal with most simple tasks that you need to perform, which are usually around how to crop a photograph to the right shape and then save it at the right resolution for best use on your site.

GiMP doesn't do everything that Photoshop does and it doesn't work on MACs, but for most of you it will adequately enable you to do what you need to do with your pictures.

Yes, we do websites has recorded a couple of tutorials for you on how to download and install the programme and then takes you through an example of how to crop and re-size a picture.

You can view these tutorials by going to http://yeswedowebsites.co.uk/knowledgebase and typing Gimp into the filter. There are two videos;

1. Downloading and installing GiMP on your PC and
2. Cropping and Re-sizing a photograph for your website using GiMP.

GiMP is an open-source software programme published on a GNU v2 license - ie, it is free for you to use for your own purposes. If you would like to make a donation to the group that produces it then there is a button on the site that you can use.

Yes we do websites has no financial interest or relationship with GiMP.