GIMP & Photo Manipulation (The Basics)
No it is not something about a person in a mask but a free, yes that is right, free photo manipulation/editing package. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring
Several excellent articles have been done for Adobe Photoshop, and also for the other free package out there called Infanview, although the best is Photoshop it is an expensive package and as everybody likes something for free I thought I would put together a quick article on the basics using GIMP.
Downloading the files
First off you will need to download the software, this can be done from the following link for windows users http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html the main download will give you two zipped files and you will then need to download the help files should you decide you want these as well. having gone through this step you should now have 2 or 3 zipped files, GTK+, The GIMP and the Help file. These files will now need to be unzipped before they can be installed, several programs exist for doing this.
Installing GIMP
After unzipping the files the next step is to install these files, this is fairly straight forward, make sure you install the GTK+ program first before you attempt to install anything else.
Once GTK+ is installed you can then install The GIMP and towards the end of installation of this file you will be given options to add short cuts on the desk top and quick launch bar, it is up to you if you take these options.
Lastly install the Help files if you chose to download them and choose the languages that you wish to install with the Help files. As with a lot of programs these days the Help files contain a lot of information on how to use GIMP should you choose to advance past this little tutorial I have put together or if you get stuck at any stage so I hope you chose to download and install it 
Using GIMP
Launch GIMP as you would any other program i.e. from the icon or the start/all programs menu or clicking on the short cut on your screen. This will put two windows onto your screen one called The Gimp the other Layers, channels, paths...
By selecting the file menu on The GIMP window we can choose open and select a photo that we wish to use. For this I have chosen one of the shots of Libby the Barbarian Queen. You should then end up with 3 windows on your screen as below.
Adjusting the Levels
The file I have used is straight from the camera so first off we are going to adjust the lighting levels.
From the menu on the picture window, select Tools then choose Colour Tools and Levels (Tools/Colour Tools/Levels) this brings up another window called levels which we can use to adjust the levels of the photo (see below). Its looking a bit crowded on the desk top but that is because I have set my windows to one side to avoid the clutter of files an my desk top, you can arrange your GIMP windows as and how you please.
As you can see from the levels window below there are several bits to play with, for now we will do this the simple way and click on the button labeled auto and if you happy with the changes it has made to your photo click on the OK button on the levels window and it will close.
You can play around with the other settings in your own time and as you aas you feel more confident using this program.
You should now have something like the photo below. (No silly not the same photo as me).
We now have a photo that looks good enough to send to CMON but not quite, there is a few other things we need to do.
One of which is to crop the photo to get rid of the areas such as all that excess blue space to the left and right as well as some of the bits above and below our subject.
