GIMP And OS X

mblase writes: "A MacCentral article talks about progress being made on the MacOS X conversion of GIMP; they hope to have the installer ready by the MacHack conference at the end of June. This is great news for this open-source graphics editor; making it available under MacOS X puts it in front of thousands of Mac-based graphic designers who have only had access to Photoshop for years." There are some things PhotoShop can do which The GIMP so far cannot (color separation stuff, for instance), but for online publishing and correcting amateur digital photos before burning to CD-R, it's a great tool. Cross-OS, cross-platform is a nice trick, too.

Comments

Re:Inroads

[Chris Johnson]

Well, that's the thing- Photoshop is that entrenched. Why? Because _certain_ _versions_ of it have been phenomenally good, just fantastic. I think Photoshop 3 and 4 may have been the best in terms of being lean mean wildly capable programs.

Note that I'm not citing recenter versions! It's pretty widely accepted that there's been little for Adobe to DO anymore to the program, so they add pointless web crap that is irrelevant to the serious digital artist, and was always available by third party extensions anyway. In doing so, they lose some of the impressive focus Photoshop had.

Here's the deal: the GIMP is open source, but Photoshop is not. I'm not sure if the source for Photoshop 3 even exists, for instance- it's privately held and could have been discarded at some point. In order to take Photoshop to OSX, the only option is to take THE MOST RECENT one to OSX. Not some older better-loved version, but the feature creep version! This is a competitive disadvantage.

I would say that the GIMP needs to evolve a NATIVE Aqua version, or even a Cocoa version. Count on it, there's someone out there writing an OSX application like that, and it may eat both the GIMP's lunch and Photoshop's if done properly. You need it to not be a downgrade- for instance, Photoshop does internal calculations in LAB color (Luminance/A/B) which is a broader colorspace than RGB (If you don't understand that part, you're not competitive with Photoshop no matter how fast your app is- this is about writing the highest of high end digital bitmap editing, it's _specialized_). Those basics have to be in place or it's like running GNU apps on a windows kernel- unclear on the concept.

However, there is no reason whatsoever this can't be done. My personal suspicion is that Open Source and Free software will gradually, steadily overtake proprietary software, because software is functional ideas and cooperative idea-developing only needs continued new sources, which is happening, and time, which is passing.

So, this is only a bare beginning. I am delighted to see it happening! :)

Re:GIMP has it's work cut out for it...

[Chris Johnson]

What _version_ do they run? I run Photoshop 4 and can still do some things you can't do on the GIMP (can you import a PhotoCD image from YCC space into LAB colorspace and run an unsharp mask filter- or highpass- on the luminance channel alone? Don't try and outgeek a Photoshop GFX geek, you don't even know what you don't know... maybe the guys in your office are Photoshop lusers and don't know how to use it to its limit)

Oh, by the way, I _also_ write open source software- Free software, to be specific, GPL. So you should be _happy_ that there are people out there who know more about Photoshop than you do, because some of them are on your side- and in the long run, they will bring everything that they talk about to GIMP, or to some comparable program that will arise.

I wouldn't want to see GIMP evolve to match Photoshop 7 or 12 or whatever it's up to. I choose not to buy those for a REASON- they're bloated, less stable, too big. I'd like to see GIMP evolve to match Photoshop _4_. And while I can still use Photoshop 4 itself, when I move to OSX (as I'm eager to do, I like the concept), I won't have that as an option (not _native_). And that's when I'll be looking at what else is out there, and I suspect most of the options will be really dumb toys for lusers with digital cameras.

But there's always free software- meaning that if I have no other choice, I can _take_ something and Do It Myself.

That's the future.

stiff competition

[Chris Hanson]

Not only does GIMP have Photoshop for competition on the Macintosh, it will also be competing with tools like TIFFany3 from Caffeine Software.

It should be good for innovation, though the results of the competition between the three may surprise some GIMP advocates.

(Hint: User-centered design is paramount on the Macintosh. Focus on what users want and need and how they work with their tools if you want to gain any share.)

--
Chris Hanson
bDistributed.com, Inc.

I don't think so

[Malc]

I don't think it will make much difference. If the GIMP people want to increase their market share they need to fix the UI, and make it feel like a native app. I've tried the Win32 version of the GIMP, and the UI is dreadful. If I find it bad as a computer guy, you can't bet your bottom dollar that graphic artists are going to hate it. Once the UI has been fixed, then documentation needs to be re-written so that it's not orientated towards computer geeks. To many people, it won't matter whether it's free, or whether it supports the same features of a commercial product from Adobe that is far more polished.

Re:I don't think so

[AMuse]

If I find it bad as a computer guy, you can't bet your bottom dollar that graphic artists are going to hate it.

That remains to be seen. The mindset of a "computer guy" and the mindset of a graphic artist are completely different.

After all, you'd laugh if I said "I find the interface and operations of Windows HORRID as a computer guy, so you can imagine how cold a response it'll get from the average joe...."
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The GIMP needs a bundling deal

[Malc]

I bought a scanner. It came with an Adobe product that does a lot of what the GIMP already does. Why would anybody go out looking for the GIMP when they're already been given something for free when they bought something like a scanner? Try convincing Epson or HP to bundle the GIMP with their scanners...

Why Photoshop still 0wnz Gimp

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Gimp is quite impressive, but, aside from lack of color matching and color separation features, there's one big problem with using Gimp for professional non-web graphics.

Here's a way to see for yourself. Open Gimp and Photoshop on 2 boxes with identical hardware (Gimp in any OS it works on, Photoshop in NT or Win2k). Now open a 3000x3000 image in each program and observe the performance differences. Gimp's tile cache and memory management code just isn't optimized for large images, while Photoshop's is. Photoshop doesn't perform noticeably differently when editing a 300x300 image or a 3000x3000 image, while Gimp slowly cranks and grinds through the larger one (and a 3000x3000 image isn't exactly huge... think a 300dpi for-print image at 10"x10"). For reference, my box is a 350mhz P2, 384MB of RAM. Photoshop tested in Win2k Pro, Gimp in Linux 2.2.19 and 2.4.0-test5 (this was awhile ago :) and FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE.

I heard a few months back that Gimp's tiling cache and memory management code were in line for a complete rewrite, but I don't know if this has happened yet. I haven't heard anything about it, so I'm going to assume that the situation is still the same. If anybody knows differently, please correct me.

Heh, while I'm on the subject... will somebody please write an Adobe Illustrator-type program for Linux that doesn't suck? Or at least make KIllustrator suck a bit less...
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Cross-platform thanks to Apple...

[BAM0027]

Kinda nice to have the OS come to you, dontcha think? If Apple had maintained reliance on OS9.x, then Gimp wouldn't have any opportunity for placement in front of "thousands of Mac-based graphic designers".

Just trying to give credit where credit's due. Apple had some forethought in migrating their OS and OSX is (going to be, real soon now) hot stuff, IMHO.

cross-os is nothing new.

[def]

Cross-OS, cross-platform is a nice trick, too

Photoshop already does this. I've used it on Mac, Windows, and SGIs.

But the fact that GIMP is free is a huge bonus.

Inroads

[Moridineas]

It will be interesting to see what sort of inroads this "new" software makes into traditional Mac software markets. I work at a publishing company (though I don't manage the macs), and I can tell you that first of all, no one wants to switch to OS X, and no one wants to try anything but Photoshop.

The reasons for this aren't fear of the new and uncertain or what not, but simply that they Photoshop,Illustrator,Quark, and a couple other high-end publishing tools are simply so standard that switching would be foolish. Supportwise, they can't be beat. And then of course comes the deal of having to learn new software.

Of course, pricewise, there's no fight (licensing for some of these products = $$$!!!) :) An interesting comparison nonetheless.

My personal bet would be that very, VERY few mac users who had previously used photoshop or other Adobe tools switch. Especially once Adobe releases native versions of their software.

Scott

Gimp

[Auckerman]

Although I'm all for more software and competition within a specific market, I don't see this is a significant port.

1. It requires one to install X-Windows on MacOS X. Although this is not a difficult process, the final result could never be called transparent. Classic in MacOS is far more a transparent setup than Tenon offering or the patches to X-on-X. X-Windows apps are all grouped togethor. They don't use MacOS menus at all. They require a seperate xterm (as opposed to Terminal) for interaction with X-Win specific prompt commands.

2. It's currently not very fast

3. GrapicCoverter is much more "Mac Like" and significantly easier to use.

4. You need both the Ram and Memory over head of X-Win and gtk to use it.

and finally....5. Gimp really isn't that good for professional work. It lacks ColorSync support. Lacks a decent interface. Lacks 3-d party support.

All in all, its the tool of a hobbiest who is interested in the novelty of Gimp on X-Win on Darwin running "rootless" in Aqua.