New to GTK; some beginner questions.

[Amit BHATNAGAR <abhatnag mda ca>]

Hi all.

I am considering using GTK+ to develop an app for Solaris 8, and I 
could use some help in answering some of my questions that would allow
me to make a decision on whether or not to use GTK+. I have searched
the FAQ & online docs, however if any of my questions have documented
answers that I failed to find, please point me in the right direction.

The app that I would be creating would largely deal with viewing radar
images, and I would require to do some image manipulation, (zoom, pan, 
filtering, contrast, brightness, display multiple images, edge detection,
mirror, etc). I would like to use GTKmm (and Glademm) as C++ would be
my primary development language of choice.

#1 Does GTK provide an API that I can use to perform the above operations? 
Since GTK is closely connected with GIMP, is it possible to use GIMP to 
achieve this? (assuming that GIMP has an API). I have read the documentation
for GtkImage and even GdkPixmap, but nothing would suggest that image
manipulation is possible from these. 

#2 Is my only other alternative to use a library like ImageMagick to 
perform these operations? Is there a GTK(mm) interface for this? I have
found GDKMagick but this seems to be very old (obsolete?). There is also
Magic++, but again I don't know how this integrates well within a GTK app.
Is there any better alternative than ImageMagick?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

amit.