There has never been a better time to be interested in digital photography. Not only do inexpensive digital cameras offer great high-resolution photos, but they come with very advanced feature sets. Over the years on OStatic, we've also covered a huge number of open source applications that can make editing, organizing and adding effects to digital photos much easier. If you're under the impression that you must have Photoshop to be a top-notch photo editor, think again. The open source applications that are available are beyond robust. Here is our updated collection of great tools for the digital photographer--and all of them are free.

Although the manuals and documentation you get with many open source applications and platforms can be beyond underwhelming, the good news is that there are a lot of free, online books on open source topics available. We round these up on a regular basis here at OStatic, and in this post you'll find our latest updated collection of online books that you can get comfortable with quickly. They introduce essential concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and much more.

If you spend working with graphics you're no doubt already familiar with GIMP, one of the very best open source graphics applications. OStatic has covered GIMP on a number of occasions, and the active community that drives the application forward continues to deliver improved versions.

Now, after years of development, GIMP 2.8 has been released, filled with major improvements. Here are the details on what's new, and some useful resources for getting started with GIMP if you're new to the application.