The GIMP is a very powerful application which has many uses.
The GIMP's main use is for the creation and editing of bitmap images. This ranges from the touching up of digital photographs to the creation of digital art or the authoring of logos.
The other common method of handling images is by using vectors. A vector image is made up of primitives such as lines, curves, circles, rectangles and fills. The GIMP has some support for vector drawing in the Gfig plug-in, and the path tool , but these do not provide a complete editing environment and are not well suited to the creation of complex vector diagrams.
The GIMP also offers some image editing features, which are mainly useful for creating small animations because the editing is done on a frame-by-frame basis. The GIMP supports reading and writing AVI and GIF animation formats and can also read MPEG videos.