GIMP Review — Is It Really a Free Photoshop 7.0 Replacement?

By the Photoshop 7.0 Hub editorial team · Updated May 17, 2026 · 14-minute read · Tested on GIMP 2.10.36 / Windows 11 23H2

What Is GIMP?

GIMP — the GNU Image Manipulation Program — began in 1995 as a university project by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis at UC Berkeley. It is now maintained by a worldwide community of volunteer developers under the GNOME Foundation and shipped as free software under the GNU General Public Licence version 3.

The current stable release is GIMP 2.10.36 (March 2024). A major new release, GIMP 3.0, has been in development for years and is expected sometime in 2026 — it brings a modernised core, native Wayland support on Linux, and significantly improved colour management. Most of this review applies to 2.10.x because that is what most users run today.

Installing GIMP

Download from gimp.org. The site offers official builds for:

• Windows — 32-bit and 64-bit installers, ~250 MB. Works on Windows 7 and later.
• macOS — 64-bit DMG, signed and notarised. Works on macOS 10.12 Sierra and later.
• Linux — most distributions package GIMP. On Ubuntu, sudo apt install gimp. The official Flatpak build always has the newest version.

The installer is straightforward. After install, GIMP launches in three to five seconds on a modern PC.

First Impressions — the Interface

This is where most Photoshop 7.0 users hesitate. By default, GIMP opens with three separate floating windows: the main toolbox, the docked panels (Layers, Channels, Paths), and the image window. Photoshop merges all three into one application window. The first thing to do is switch GIMP to single-window mode:

1. Windows → Single-Window Mode (tick it on).

Now GIMP looks much more like Photoshop — toolbox on the left, image in the centre, palettes on the right. The remaining differences from Photoshop are mostly terminology (GIMP calls "Levels" exactly that but calls "Hue/Saturation" by the same name; clipping masks are called "Layer Groups + alpha"; and the Layer Styles dialog is replaced by a separate set of filters under the Filters menu).

Feature Comparison

PSD Compatibility

This is GIMP's most-asked-about feature, and the honest answer is: partial. GIMP 2.10 reads .psd files but with the following caveats:

• Basic layers, masks, groups, and pixel content import correctly.
• Most Photoshop layer styles (Drop Shadow, Stroke, Outer Glow, Inner Glow) do not import — they are flattened into the layer pixels or stripped entirely.
• Smart objects flatten on import.
• Adjustment layers are converted to a one-time pixel adjustment.
• Text layers usually import but the font must be installed on your system.
• 16-bit and 32-bit PSDs open correctly.

For 7.0-era PSDs (which never used most of these features) compatibility is essentially complete. For modern CC-era PSDs heavy with smart objects and live layer styles, expect to lose 20–30% of the editable structure on import. If you need 100% PSD compatibility, use Photopea instead.

Keyboard Shortcuts

GIMP's default shortcuts overlap significantly with Photoshop but with surprising exceptions. The good news is GIMP lets you remap every shortcut. To match Photoshop:

1. Open Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts.
2. You can manually remap individual commands.
3. Easier: install a community "Photoshop keymap" — search GitHub for "GIMP photoshop shortcut keys" and a popular preset is at gimp-ps-keys. Drop the included .scm file into your GIMP scripts folder, run it once, and most Photoshop shortcuts now work.

After remapping, Ctrl+J duplicates the active layer (in default GIMP it does not), Ctrl+T opens Free Transform, etc.

Performance

GIMP is a native desktop application written in C. It is faster than Photopea (browser-based) and dramatically faster than modern Photoshop CC at launch. On a mid-range PC (Ryzen 5, 16 GB RAM, SSD):

• Launch time: 3–4 seconds (vs Photoshop CC's 15–25 seconds).
• Open a 24 MP PSD: 2 seconds.
• Apply Gaussian Blur with radius 20: 1 second.
• Memory use: idle at ~250 MB, scales with image size.

GIMP uses multi-threading on most operations — so unlike Photoshop 7.0 (single-threaded), it benefits from modern multi-core CPUs.

The Plugin Ecosystem

GIMP has the largest free plugin ecosystem of any image editor. Through its .gp, Script-Fu, and Python-Fu plugin formats, you can install thousands of free plugins covering:

• G'MIC — a single plugin containing 1000+ artistic filters, deblurring, denoising, and AI-based effects. Free. Genuinely transformative — install it before doing anything else.
• Resynthesizer — content-aware-fill-style hole removal. Predates Photoshop's own Content-Aware Fill and remains competitive.
• Liquid Rescale — seam-carving content-aware image resize.
• BIMP — batch image manipulation. Apply the same operations to a folder of images.

None of these are available in Photoshop 7.0; some are available in Photoshop CC only with a paid license.

Where GIMP Falls Short

1. No native CMYK. GIMP works in RGB only. For print production you need the third-party Separate+ plugin, which is decent but not as smooth as Photoshop's built-in CMYK. Photopea has native CMYK; if you do print, Photopea wins here.
2. Camera Raw is a separate program. GIMP cannot open camera Raw files directly. You install RawTherapee or Darktable as a companion, edit the Raw there, then pass to GIMP for compositing. Workable but two-app workflow.
3. Layer styles are clunky. GIMP has the same effects (Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Bevel, etc.) but as separate filters that are applied destructively. You cannot enable/disable them after the fact like in Photoshop.
4. The UI is dated. GIMP 2.10 still uses GTK 2 widgets on Windows. GIMP 3.0 will fix this with GTK 3, but for now the interface looks like a 2008 application.
5. Learning curve. Most Photoshop tutorials online assume Photoshop. Translating each step into GIMP terminology takes effort. There are GIMP-specific tutorial sites, but the volume of free GIMP content is much smaller than for Photoshop.

When to Pick GIMP Over Photopea

• You want a true desktop application with no browser tab.
• You need to work fully offline regularly.
• You use Linux (where Photoshop has no native build and Photopea-as-PWA still requires Chrome/Firefox).
• You want the largest free plugin ecosystem of any editor.
• You are willing to spend two weeks learning a new interface.

If none of those apply, Photopea is the easier switch from Photoshop 7.0.

Verdict — 4.2/5

GIMP is the most capable free desktop image editor available in 2026. For users who can put in two weeks of adjustment, it provides ~95% of Photoshop CC's feature set at zero cost. Where it loses to Photopea (the only free editor that scores higher in this niche) is in the smoothness of switching from Photoshop 7.0 — Photopea works the same way; GIMP makes you relearn parts of your workflow. The two are different answers to the same question, and which one is right depends on whether you prefer a familiar web app or a powerful desktop app.

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