A Full Photo And Drawing Studio That Costs Nothing
This site is a reader-built handbook for people who run GIMP on a Windows PC. We explain where the installer comes from, how the setup wizard behaves on Windows 11, and what to click once the program finally opens. Nothing here is a sales pitch, and nothing is locked behind a sign-up form.
GIMP is an open source raster editor. You get layers, masks, adjustment curves, selection tools, paint engines and a plug-in system, all under a license that lets you inspect and reshare the code. On a Windows machine it behaves like any other desktop app: one installer, one Start menu entry, no subscription and no account.
Photographers use it to clean up portraits and correct color. Illustrators use it as a drawing canvas with pressure-sensitive brushes. Web and product teams use it to cut icons, banners and mockups. Start with the GIMP download for Windows page, then follow the Windows installation walkthrough.
Start Here
Retouch Photos Down To The Pixel
Recover a blown-out sky, erase a distracting sign, warm up a dull portrait, or rebuild a torn family scan. Non-destructive adjustment layers and precise masks keep the original pixels intact while you experiment. See the photo editing workflow.
Draw And Paint With A Tablet
Pen pressure, tilt support, customizable brush dynamics and a symmetry painting mode turn a Windows laptop and a drawing tablet into a portable studio. Explore the drawing setup.
Build Icons, Banners And Mockups
Snap-to-grid guides, path tools, text on a curve and batch export make short work of app icons, social banners and interface comps. Meet the toolbox.
Automate Repetitive Edits
Resize four hundred product shots, stamp a watermark, or convert a folder to WebP with a short script instead of four hundred clicks. Python and Script-Fu both ship in the Windows build.
Fits Into A Wider Windows Toolkit
Raster editing is only one part of a design job. Color-managed exports from GIMP drop cleanly into page layout and vector apps, so a poster can start as a retouched photograph here and finish as a print-ready spread elsewhere. Two open source companions Windows users pair with it most often:
Add-Ons Grow With You
The plug-in system is the reason long-time users stay. Drop a Python file into your user folder and a new menu entry appears the next time the program starts: film emulation, frequency separation, sprite sheet exporters, resynthesized object removal.
Brushes, gradients, palettes and fonts install the same way, by copying files into your Windows profile folder. Nothing needs administrator rights once the program itself is in place. Version choices are covered on the GIMP 3 guide and the GIMP 2.10 guide, and a no-install option is described under portable setup.
Header artwork and every illustration on this page were produced for GIMP Windows Hub and are free to reuse with a link back.
Independent resource. We are not the GIMP development team and we do not host installers ourselves; we point you at the project's own release channels.
Questions? The frequently asked questions page covers licensing, file formats, hardware requirements and Windows-specific quirks.
Something wrong or out of date? Tell us and we will fix the page.