Unless the ones that are available in the web, Linux users have not much options in terms of photo editor. For over 20 years GIMP has been serving open source communities in retouching and editing photos.

Nevertheless, GIMP is basically not specialized for Linux. Mac and Windows users can also use this image editor as a free alternative to Photoshop and other paid tools. GIMP has tens of tools to enable you beautify your photos to get the better result, not too different to Photoshop. But, no human creation is perfect, including GIMP.

For instance, by default GIMP has no capability to open a RAW file. Luckily, open source communities have fixed the lack by developing a plugin so we can still rely on GIMP to open and edit RAW file.

Speaking of plugin, GIMP allows the users to install additional plugins to get the tools and functions that GIMP doesn’t have.

Install GIMP plugins in Linux

In Linux, most GIMP plugins are written in Python. There is no hassle to install GIMP plugins in Linux.

• Prepare your plugins.
• Copy your plugins to the plugin folder of GIMP which is located in the following path.

/home/$USERNAME/.gimp/plug-ins

• If your file is zipped, just unzip it inside the plugin folder of GIMP.

In Linux, a folder/file with a dot symbol meaning that it’s a hidden folder/directory. So, you need to activate the show hidden files options in your file explorer (if you use GUI).

By the way, we have an article of how to install Instagram effects plugin. If you don’t mind, you can go for it to make everything clearer 🙂