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The Gimp from the Eyes of a Photoshop User
Eugenia writes "Many in the F/OSS community are raving about the Gimp, however pros who have actually used Photoshop think differently: This Mac professional designer goes through the steps of getting Gimp 2.0 up and running on his Mac, only to get baffled by the chaotic interface in general and its non-standard UI compared to other Mac apps, its slowness to open large files and to apply filters, the unintuitive tools that accompany it and its very visible bad quality of text and lines/shapes. That designer even bought a 'supported' version of MacGimp by an OSS-Mac company, Archei, but he never heard back for his support requests (free Gimp for Macs here). I think that's one of the best-written articles I've ever read about the reality of most open-source geek-driven projects vs their equivelant professional/proprietary ones. Personally, before I get persuaded to use Gimp again for my photography projects, I would need --in addition to the author's peeves -- full 16-bit per channel support, high-quality scanning/printing drivers with integrated GUI (a'la SilverFast), and a 'crop and rotate' feature (as seen in PS/PSE). Besides, both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements cost bellow $100 (with PS Elements getting bundled with most scanners/printers/digital cameras, albeit without the much needed 16bit support either)."
We use photoshop here at work (digital-based photography business) all day long, and a few of us have tried using GIMP for image editing. We all found it fairly awkward. I've tried using it more than everyone else and I just find the whole "right-click to do everything" approach fairly disorienting.
(donning asbestos underwear)
FYI, I am a programmer and web app designer, not a graphics artist. That being said, I feel that any GUI application with a well-designed interface should be fairly intuitive and I should be able to get up to speed in a few minutes (I learn quickly).
I tried The Gimp on Linux. I tried The Gimp in Windows (the new native version). I still cannot get it. I try Photoshop and I can be halfway productive instantly. The result suck, remember I am not a graphics designer and I cannot even write legibly let alone draw with a pencil or a mouse, but I can get around the filters, tools, etc.
My experiences with other peoples' work proves that The Gimp is capable and powerful. My experiences with my own work proves that The Gimp has a steep learning curve mostly due to its odd interface.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the author here. Most applications in the OS world are obvious in the sense that they are written by Developers (apps that I work on included). That is probably one of the biggest things missing in the OS world - UI people. People who understand how to ogranize all the options / bells&whisttles / etc into something meaningful and intuitive to the average 'joe' user. While there are definitely great strides towards creating more UI friendly apps, it is still one of the gravest detriments to our community as a whole.
Carl P. Corliss
I do my image stuff with Paint Shop Pro - but I was wondering about a post effect software (like Adobe's package - like Photoshop for film). I'm pretty sure I remember reading about a film version of gimp - anyone had experience with it and know if it's any good?
One of the really cool things you can do with adjustment layers is work with an image you're turning into black and white and make it look like an honest-to-God black and white image (as opposed to merely a desaturated color image). In some ways, it's almost like taking an internal picture of your subject and adjusting the tones and hue on the fly, which can turn out some very nifty results. In GIMP, you just don't have that flexibility.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Gimp 1 had a terrible interface. No bones about it. Gimp 2 however, has a decent UI. It's not super amazing, but its good enough, above average.
The problem is that these Photoshop users are used to photoshop. Any other UI no matter how slick and perfect will be worse for them. They are trained on photoshop so well that using anything else kills their efficiency. Like driving stick for the first time after driving automatic your whole life.
I'm no graphic wizard, just a programmer. And I recently got gimp 2 for windows and linux. I couldn't do fancy things right away, but its not because I couldn't find the buttons or they were in bad or hidden places. It's because I don't know anything about making graphics. If graphics people start out on the gimp instead of photoshop they will be just as good on that.
So don't try to convert people to gimp. Just get new people who are about to pirate photoshop for the first time to use gimp instead.
That's about it...
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The Gimp is good for what it is: a small app for doing simple graphics work, like cropping photos, simple website graphics etc. Who in their right mind claims that Gimp can compete on any level with Photoshop?
Adobe hasn't just made Photoshop well, but they also have quite a few professional tools that I don't think I could live without.
Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, and Acrobat(files) are other leading softwares that are essential for me (as a graphic designer). And once you get used to the way Adobe feels and organizes tools, you get accustomed to it, so much so that it becomes a pain to try to use other non-Adobe programs. This familiarity comes in handy, however, when you think to yourself, "How would I do [x] in InDesign or AfterEffects?" and the first thing you think of, it's there.
Adobe has a monopoly on my graphics editing.
When I was primarily a Linux user, I used GIMP for many hours out of each day, tinkering with my photos, working on images for web sites, etc. It is a good tool, and it has a lot going for it. The new interface is nice, but... in so many regards, GIMP is no Photoshop. I quickly realized this after I got a Power Mac and Photoshop 7.
Even though I do not use Photoshop in any professional context, it is a phenomenal product even for my personal use. Here are the major things that keep me from using GIMP on the Mac beyond occasionally playing with it:
Don't get me wrong - GIMP is a nice program, and for the price it absolutely kicks ass. But just that handful of problems listed above will be enough to turn off serious photo/graphics folks. Hell, I'm a geek that has used Linuxy and UNIXy stuff for years, and I am seriously bothered by those issues I listed, among other nit-picky ones.
Adobe doesn't have much to worry about at the moment. But if an Aqua native version of GIMP came out and could offer similar performance on high-powered Macs, then they might have reason to start sweating.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
I wouldn't go with all the caps, but you're right on target -- though I'd argue that with the gimp, you get well more than you pay for.
From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, I'm sure an free illegal version of photoshop is more useful than a free legal version of the gimp, but if people would use gimp instead at least then we'd hear one fewer company whining about people infringing on their copyright and about how it cost them $X million a year.
GIMP = GNU Image Manipulation Program
Anyway, many linux apps' names are a play on words, so I don't see why GIMP ought to have a different name. Plus the GUI is all GIMPed up anyways. Oooo.. *slaps knee*
And write "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned." 100 times.
I swear, I feel like forming the AAAAI (American Association Against Abusing "Intuitive"). Our slogan: "Come join Aiyeeee!!!"
</RANT>
That said, I hate the multiple window thing too. It's ugly and cluttered. (yeah,I understand that GTK doesn't do MDI... it should.)
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Alot of people have animosity towards Adobe, myself included over various issues, but there is one thing that Adobe has that nobody else can hold a candle to: Photoshop.
Also Illustrator, InDesign, and a little thing called the Adobe Type Library.
Photoshop is a wonder, yes, but it's not the only horse in Adobe's barn. Hell, in my opinion it's not even the best one. InDesign 3 takes that accolade. (Optical kerning: hellooooo, nurse.)
I write in my journal
I am not familiar with MSWindows, but can't you have single windows span multiple monitors? I.E., what is to stop you from taking Photoshop's single big MDI window and expanding it to the right until it more or less fills both monitors? That would be clumsy, but hey, I consider MDI inherently clumsy anyway.
Considering it's on GIMP's website in modular form, I wouldn't say that's exactly scouring the web. I imagine it's just not included because they don't consider it 100% yet.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
I often find myself holding the space bar and trying to pan down a Web site or a list of files in Explorer, or trying to use Alt to grab a colour in Paint/Flash/whatever, or trying to use X to switch colours. :/
That's not to say that i don't have problems with Photoshop (and/or Adobe in general). One of my biggest problems with Photoshop (for Windows, at least) is that the program doesn't seem to save its settings in an INI file (or, if it does, it does it extremely poorly). So if i log out of Windows without specifically going into Photoshop and hitting the close button, or if Photoshop crashes for some reason (rare, but it has happened), or whatever -- if Photoshop isn't absolutely perfectly shut down the proper way, it resets all of its settings. It's extremely annoying.
The slow progress with Photoshop is getting a little ridiculous too. I definitely like CS, of course, and i can appreciate not adding every single little thing that comes along, but i think they could stand to add more useful features than ever-improving image browsers.
I also hate that gAMA bug Photoshop has with PNG. I know this isn't really Photoshop's fault, per se, but i wish there were a more graceful way of dealing with it within the program. Having to run pngcrush -rem gAMA in.png out.png every time i save a PNG in Photoshop is kind of annoying. :(
Also, maybe it's just the CS version, but ImageReady is a buggy piece of shit. It's usable, but i constantly have problems with it, like the screen not redrawing when i zoom in, or the options bar getting stuck in random places, or various windowing glitches. Also annoying is that fact that disabling anti-aliasing on the Magic Wand in ImageReady does not actually disable anti-aliasing. But maybe this is just my copy, heh.
but that article author is entirely correct.
... well, with a fuck load of effort I got separate windows to dock into the main toolbar. In other ways it was an improvement over Gimp 1 though, with brush preview and all that. Shame that this is all stuff that DPaint had in the 80's.
I used to use Gimp an awful lot before I found Photoshop. Photoshop was bliss compared to the Gimp's UI. I then heard that Gimp 2 would fix a lot of the UI issues. However I was very disappointed when I tried Gimp 2.
I had been led to believe that this version would fix all the UI issues with the previous one.
The new text tool was so deficient that I was longing for the old text tool back. The UI was meant to be dockable
The Gimp can't be fixed. It needs a whole new front-end designed in collaboration with the users. A few prettier icons doesn't fix it.
Its like the do-it-yourself TiVo's that aren't really anywhere near as convenient or feature rich as the real deal.
Sorry, I was 100% with you until I saw this line that almost blew me off my chair.
I built my own PVR and it runs MythTV, and it lietrally blows TiVo out of the water.
Does TiVo have a web interface where I can adjust scheduled recordings anywhere, anytime? Can I watch the recorded programs on any computer in the house ( or TV with a MythFrontEnd box ) ? Can I transcode the recordings to DivX for storage on DVD? Can it play DivX and MPEG videos and fetch information on them from IMDB automatically? Can you edit recorded shows in real time.. can you play SNES, PSX, etc. video games on it, can it be an MP3 jokebox, can you browse your photo collection, can you surf the web on it with a remote control... ?
I can do all this with MyTh, out of the box. And a bozo could install it, you just boot off the KnoppMyth CD and go.
Indeed. Photoshop has gotten a lot of attention, and it's payed off.
And let me just say that, as a graphics editor, I find myself using GIMP more and more. I still, easily, use PS quite a bit more than the GIMP. However, GIMP continues to pile on desirable features, and at the very least, I am compelled to save all my final works using GIMP's superior compression for JPEG, and PNG (and probably more).
Even though I love my photoshop, I hope to one day see it replaced with GIMP or another Free Software (RMS' definition) solution.
considering The Gimp is free it's a GREAT DEAL!
Read that again. Once more. Think about what you are saying.
Consider the degree of difficulty necessary to achieve making something that is free a "great deal."
If we in the open source community are to satifsfy ourselves with having given value by creating something that doesn't have negative utlility, then its time for us to stop the madness entirely.
We must do great work with our energies, or spend the time doing something else. Imagine that Steve Jobs or the corporate slavedriver of your choice were constantly riding you to make "art rather than crap." Imagine that your livelihood depended on making it great, and that you were worthless if it weren't. Otherwise, don't bother.
Anything less, and you are a poser wannabe.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Nothing we do is a "great deal" because its free. It should be a great deal at any reasonable price, and an astonishing piece of wonder because it is free (both in terms of price and liberty).
And for the record, that reviewer paid for the software, and found it wanting at any price. It had negative utility for her, and frankly, that sucks -- notwithstanding the wonder and excellence of the effort.
Its ok to say, "hey, that's not for you, sorry it didn't work out for you." But to say, "hey, its free, what did you expect?" Sorry, it just ain't the hacker ethic.
I'm not really up on the Gimps' licensing status, but assuming it's OSS, why is it that one of the complainers doesn't just build the Gimp a new GUI?
If the source is all OSS, wouldn't it just be a matter of someone just putting their skills to work, and creating a new GUI in which to house the Gimps functionality?
I'm not a Gimp user myself (I've used it, but my opinion of the GUI is the same as a lot of others: Too many open windows and right click menus), but I don't see any reason that the existing functionality of the Gimp couldn't be tied a new interface rather easily (be it a Photoshop clone, or some new and unique look).
Obviously I'm over-simplifying this a bit, but the average GUI is simply a bunch of controls which tell the backend functions what to do. How hard could something like this be if someone put their mind to it?
OK, probably a dumb question. I'm no developer. But why hasn't anyone taken the source code for Gimp, and made something with a really smooth, intuitive UI? Or taken the code over and made it a standard Cocoa app?
This is just plain not true. I'm not putting Photoshop down, but I struggle to find what I want when I have to use it. To me, The GIMP is much more intuitive and natural. Everything is just in the place I expect it to be. Yes, I know that puts me in a minority, and I accept that at least part of that will be learned behaviour -- GIMP and Photoshop are different, and I'm far more used to GIMP, so it's only natural that Photoshop feels alien to me. But it does, and I struggle to use it comfortably. And the MDI interface on the Windows version sucks. I mean, really, really sucks.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I never realized before, the GIMP slashdot icon is animated. Is it the only animated category icon, or are there more?
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
In the early 1990's, Mac's ruled my university's computer labs. Though I used vector programs for my engineering studies, my roommate was Industrial Design major so he was always talking about the paint apps.
The hot "paint" program back then was something called "PixelPaint" and it seriously grabbed the Architecture and Industrial Design students of the day. Everyone wanted it because of it's large pallete size, gradiant fills, and razor-like precision.
One day, a program called PhotoShop showed up in the labs (legally installed by a student who forgot to delete it before s/he left). It was cool, but PixelPaint still out classed it. Every line you drew was "fuzzy". The pallete size was so big, that it was hard to select a particular color. And overall, things just seemed blurry even when printing or copy/pasting to another app.
The designer's names were in the about box and I actually saw the lead developer post to the comp.sys.mac.* usenet newsgroups so I wrote him some email to complain about this horrible little app in both it's interface and ability.
He actually responded to my critiques and spent some time explaining just how programs like "PixelPaint" could really only make good-looking "on-screen" graphics due to low colors and resolutions. His app "PhotoShop" was aiming at photographic images where razor-sharp lines looked fake. He even replied about my suggested interface improvements and told me what they had planned for the next version which was even better than what I suggested.
This really impressed me. I know that this type of interaction between commercial programmer and user doesn't exist anymore, but it was amazing the patience that he used to point out my misunderstandings (and I wasn't even a real customer at the time).
The interaction I've had with the GIMP community hasn't impressed me. I'm a little more technically savvy than some of the Mac users out there, but getting the GIMP installed and usable is a pain. The GIMP is capable of a lot of things, but its defaults really don't impress me. I feel like I really have to work to get it out of PixelPaint mode into Photoshop mode (and I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say that I get those changes right). The online communities just aren't as open or friendly to answer the questions that I've asked even if I've tried reading TFM and FAQ.
If I were tight for money, I think I'd pay my bucks for GraphicConverter (a Mac shareware app that has a similar PixelPaint feel) rather than waste the time on the GIMP.
I'm a big supporter of Open Source software, but I've thought for a while that a group of people really need to decouple the engine from the interface and produce a "better" photo manipulation software in the way that Camino (and later Firefox) successfully rebuilt alternative user experiences on the Mozilla web-browsing engine.
I've used the gimp off and on, but I always come back to the color calibration bug. PS and most of the other commercial packages offer this features, but Gimp is still out in the cold. I understand that the ICC profile system may not be "free" to implement, but it's a critical part of the commerical world of photography. I still have hope, but until that day, I need to use PS.
CLASSIFIED
Kerning is typically defined in the kerning table of a font file (truetype, opentype) by the author as being the most visually pleasing.
I can't think of many applications that kern based on metrics except where you want them to.
That said - the 'Optical Kerning' method may take a while, but I'd have to ask this : does it store the resultant kerning data for re-use ?
Does it cache at all ?
If not.. no wonder it's slow.
It should be entirely feasible, after all, to build a kerning table for all possible letter/glyph/etc. combinations in a single run, and re-use that when needed. It's not like the font morphs over time.
just my 2cts
The thing that has me unable to switch to Photoshop is its hopelessly borked automation.
There is a scripting system for photoshop - but it is lame and incomplete.
For example layer objects in Photoshop have no size or position properties under the automation interface.
Corel by contrast has supported objects with usual properties under automation since 1995 - that's almost ten years before Photoshop and they still haven't caught up.
The argument that nobody uses scripting is lame - since it doesn't work - its a given that it won't be used - so nobody uses it - so it - the point is that its in there. Actions have been an important part of Photoshop for a lomng time - but actions are limited - they can't do referential manipulation (reduce resolution on n number of dissimilar images).
They can't be data driven.
and they support no logic whatsoever.
Pretty silly overall.
AIK
I don't post to slashdot saying "I would move to Windows if..."; why should you?
Because Linux is more than an OS. It is part of an ideology as well. Perhaps Open Source fits the poster's philosophy of life or maybe they just want to save some bucks. It's doubtful any of those things would apply to someone moving in the other direction (unless you're a programmer who sees Open Source as taking bread from their hungry children's mouths or something).
For me, the GIMP works well enough (I don't see anything wrong with it) and hey, it's $0 and I can see the source code. For that reason (the source code) it will ALWAYS be better than photoshop.
The key here is your first two words. Hey, if it works for you, great! I started with the GIMP and thought it was wonderful. Then I got ahold of a copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 and all I could do was say "Wow". I was so impressed I bought a copy. I've since tried Photoshop 7.0 and been even more impressed. However I'm not impressed with the cost of entry. For that reason I'd love to have GIMP come up to speed. So, put me in the column with the parent (except that I already use Linux) in wanting certain things to work better than they do now.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
OK, at the risk of being redundant here, I want to point out some pretty obvious things here.
;-)
/. fun...
- the Gimp may be free, but since it's being compared to PS so much (by users) it deserves this kind of reviews.
- there are only two useful viewpoints here: either you don't care, Gimp/PS does it for you and there's no incentive to change or you do care and then there are quite a few actions worth taking. Bitching about your choice isn't constructive.
1) GUI gripes: Since theming is such fun in Linux, I don't see why FOSS programmers and some good Linux or OS X gui designers can't work together to make Gimp acceptable on various platforms and have those themes as defaults depending on the platform.
A theme doesn't equal a good GUI but it goes a long way. This would charm many amateur users on various platforms, not only mac users are gui-anal, they however are very vocal
After all, this is hardly a new gripe. Now that there's an excellent OS X package available that installs like a charm on Panther, you'll hear more gripes than before, maybe, but still...
2) Professional gripes: IF, and that's a big if, the Gimp has professional ambitions, start working with professional designers already and find out exactly a) what results and kinds of output they desire and b) how to offer this gui-wise. Someone here remarked that indeed if the result is good enough, any gui can be learned, but it would help to make things easy from the start.
All the rest is just typical
I think, therefore I am...I think.
"MacOS has this wonderful habit of trying to protect users from their own stupidity, and thus ensures that they remain stupid and completley dependant on it."
Ah yes, but there are certain style-guides which have been established for years by all major operating systems. They're what users are used to, and wanting to be different because the GIMP authors think they've made a better choice just isn't a good enough reason. There has to be an overwhelmingly good reason to force people to learn a new interface, and so far, nobody has come-up with that reason in a satisfactory way.
As an example, have a look at Lotus Notes.
An email/database/whateveryouwanttocallit software package that intentionally or not breaks almost every windows style-guide because the authors thought "they knew better" and programmed it "their way". And because of that, the program is widely recognised by nearly everyone who has used it as an unusable piece of crap, regardless about how anything under the hood might work.
I havn't tried GIMP, so I don't know if it falls into that category or not, but if the UI was designed to function in the same method as common Windows or Mac graphics applications (read Photoshop or PSP), I doubt people would complain. Like it or not, that's GIMP's competition and they need to recognise that they need to make it easier for people to move to their product, not harder. If that means replicating a recogniseable interface, then by all means, do it!
Before anyone flames away on me, you might want to take a moment and stop and consider what I said.
Infact, I don't at all think that Linux and Linux applications themselves are what's holding back public acceptance, I think it's programmers and designers who havn't decided on a single "everyone needs to stick to it!" GUI style guide for the operating system as a whole.
Heck, I'm to blame myself, I HATE writing GUIs with a passion, but I love coding the guts where you can have fun optimizing code. GUIs are a chore that nobody likes. Unfortunately, they're also what the user utilizes and what they evaluate your program based-on.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
"Whining about open source software is like complaining about the quality of a Wikipedia article."
That statement WOULD be valid EXCEPT that the OSS community as a generality likes to proclaim as loudly as possible on whatever soapbox they can get that Linux is the Way and the Light and that FOSS will usher in a new era of bliss for everyone smart enough to use it, and if your too dumb to realize the benefit than you shouldn't be allowed by law to use a computer anyway.
A little too harsh? I don't think so. That's the impression that too many people have of Linux and the OSS community as a whole, which is really unfortunate because there's a bunch of really good folks involved, but they tend to get drowned out by the much more vocal minority that gives off all the bad vibes.
If your going to take on the dominant proprietary companies and say that your offering can take the place of what the corrupt big boys are offering, than these types of comparisons become 100% valid to make, and if you don't like the negative feedback, too bad, you invited it on yourself by telling us how great your contributions to society are.
Yes, before we started hearing all this chatter about Linux taking over the world, your statement would have rang true, but not any more. You want to play with the big boys, there is a whole new set of standards you have to meet. Deal with it.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Ahh yes, the eternal GIMP vs Photoshop debates.
I find these kinds of "reviews" really not so interesting. As a professional DTP IT consultant, I use most all of these tools daily: Photoshop et al..
Where I find these reviews lacking is:
Running apps in less than ideal conditions. Fink is a nice and very useful bridge to enable lots of excellent FLOSS to run, but it is not really fair to compare GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape or any other comparable Linux app when it is not run on its native platform. It would be the same having an experienced Unix/Linux tester, familiar with apps like development tools and then switching to a Mac. There are things I find incredibly frustrating when switching to a Mac too.
The reviewers overlook or miss things which show a lack of knowledge about other OS's. To me this review shows someone who has used nothing but a Mac and is clueless about other paradigms in computers.
The reviewer, in his or her ignorance completely overlooked some of the less obviously superior features of GIMP: Scripting in Python, Perl or Scheme come instantly to mind. The GIMP also has PNG support which is far better than Photoshop.
*Sigh* - It gets tiring hearing from both FLOSS bigots and Adobe fanboys who are so blind to their own zealotry.
That said, I use both and both have their strengths. Which one is better ? Neither. Both have their place and I confidently install GIMP right besides thousands of dollars of high end DTP apps including Photoshop.
GIMP 2.0 is a dramatic improvement which shows, IMO just the start of GIMP reaching a new level in image editing. The release of 2.0 will be followed by 2.2 sometime we hope, this summer. The hard under the hood work has been done, from which the GIMP team can build more functionality and refinements like substantial color management support.
The UI has been dramtically improved. There is a "small" theme for those who work on smaller monitors. Yes, there is a help system and other add-ins which extend GIMP like the freetype tool and GAP (GIMP Animation Package).
The GIMP authors and programmers are part time volunteers who do this for the joy of programming and probably a hundred other reasons... They should simply ignore this nonsense and keep on coding. Photoshop is one of the prize jewels of Adobe and is a wonderful program - but it is far from perfect.
If you really know both programs, you will learn NEITHER is better - they are different.
These complaints are for the most part in direct response to all the "Linux is the only way" people's continual chant of
"Why use Photoshop? GIMP is just as good. Prorietary programs suck. Blah blah blah."
If you don't like the critisicm, don't go pushing your products on people.
A) There are consumers. They don't care about open source. They want something that works.
B) Many many many Linux people go on and on trying to convince people of type A to use open source. Type B people also tend to go on and on about how open source is 'as good' or 'better' than all proprietary programs.
Result) People of type A finally listen to all the nagging, go try some open source app that isn't up to it's proprietary counterpart, then go "GIMP sucks, I'd rather pay for Photoshop than use GIMP for free".
So you see, these complaints are largely due to the community pushing things on people of type A before they are ready.
A small portion of the people may also complain becasue they see a program with many usefull functions being completely ruined by a bad interface. They are frusterated that the developers will not listen to their opinions.
Sure, maybe they have no right, but isn't one of the great things about open source supposed to be feedback from "many eye's"?
you can make a living using Photoshop...you'll go hungry using gimp
Simply untrue. I use the gimp and i make money from its use. You simply have no curve and are trapped in a microsoft-world. You refuse to even give something else a try. Nothing wrong with that, just don't go slamming something you don't know intimately.
You're seeing this because Linux users are very often telling everyone on the planet how great it is and how much Windows sucks. The more open minded Windows (and Mac) users are giving it a shot and sharing their reservations in an open community forum. Many see this as an effort to better the Linux OS.
One reason you might not see a bunch of "I would move to Windows if...." stories is probably because most people use Windows. Most by a LARGE margin according to this. Check out the "Operating Systems Used to Access Google" image.
What I find annoying is people who don't use Linux telling everyone else they should.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
I think Gimp made huge strides with the UI in Gimp 2. It now can use a permanent menu, dockable windows, and Utility Window Type Hints. The Gimp developers have done tremendous work. With all of these improvements I think UI criticism should stop.
To let it fully replace Photoshop for me it still needs higher bit color, adjustment layers, healing brush, and proportional crop.
3 things: 1) GIMP is still in dev, first step was to put into it any feature any sane (and some slighlty twisted) artist could ask for, done (I think), Speed optimization will be next surely, and subailty is the last step (you can't make a killer interface if it has no features in it yet). You have to understand that they ware A LOT of features, it took a lot of time, patience, usability is sure to come... 2) Usability wise, photoshop sucks... it IS the best there is but still it sucks, Macromedia Fireworks has a better understanding of the art of GUI design, (tho they still hasn't learned that the properties pane is a problem child). Of course it is much more complicated but it is meant to do much more than adobe anyway. 3)Whatta?... "and Photoshop is but the tip of the iceberg in the world of what Linux will never be able to do natively - screw emulation...this work is already slow enough without another layer interfering you can make a living using Photoshop...you'll go hungry using gimp" I see nothing but hate in you, why bash an entire OS? it isn't hurting you anyway, it just tries to make this a better world for everyone, not just for the rich, does this threatens you in any way?
But... the future refused to change.
It's like whinging that a desktop calculator is totally evil by comparison with Mathematica. Different product, different purpose.
Every time a thread comes up regarding the GIMP, it gets flooded by the Photoshop zealots generating more heat than light. In the original submission, Eugenia makes her own wishlist known, but I have seen no evidence that she is in any way up to making any significant use of those capabilities, and present incarnations of the GIMP are probably in fact quite sufficient.
Given that Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars, and the GIMP costs no more than the time you take to download it, any comparison is invidious.
That's nice, except it's not quite true. The whole Pantone schemozle is a great system for colour referencing and colour calibration, but even *with* it there can be no guarantee that the output of the printing process matches what you see on your screen. It depends on the observer and on the lighting conditions, for a start. No such guarantee is possible.
You are correct in saying that in the US design world you won't get anywhere without Pantone but there exists other systems in other countries and other areas, For example the ultimate reference to colour in the scientific world is not Pantone, is CIE.
CIE were the first to conduct scientific colour perception experiments 90 years ago way before the first computer, and now they are the ISO colour standardization body.
I'm not sure how well PS supports the CIE standards but at least the Gimp supports CIE-Lab.
1. Time is on the Gimp's side. Graphics, just like text editing and operating systems, has a point where things are "good enough" -- OpenOffice.org, for example, has reached that point, which is why it is starting to slowly but surely eat into Microsoft Office. Once the Gimp reaches that point, and it will, Adobe will have a problem charging its insane prices
2.The Gimp is good enough for semi-professional use, and with this price tag, it is going to attract a lot of attention and get a lot of feedback. Feedback is the life-blood of Open Source. And there are always a lot more people who are semi-professionals than professionals.
3. Ease of use isn't everything. Mac users (for the record: I own an iBook, too) love to go on and on about how their interface is standardized, easy to use, etc. True, but if that were to translate into sales, the world would have been dominated by Macs even before OS X came along. People can and will cope -- heck, they piced MS DOS over the Mac. If Gimp can do 80 percent of what Photoshop can do for free with whatever interface, Adobe is toast.
We'll see where we are in five years.
I assume you're not comparing the 'Gimp' (what's with that juvenile name/acronym?) with Photoshop on OS X?
Photoshop acts like every other app on OSX. The Gimp is a frankenstein child of linux and windows, and not just because it's under X11. I'd say the photoshop users are *exactly* the people the Gimp designers should be listening very hard to. There is a reason people are willing to pay good money for photoshop, and a lot of that reason is the interface, which tries hard to fit in and at the same time extend the host OS. Looking at the Gimp one on OS X, it has some serious problems:
There are two file menus, one in each document window too (If they're going to use the broken 'menu in the window' idea they could at least get it right).
There doesn't appear to be any consistent ordering for the buttons in windows, and why are their buttons to perform actions anyway? Are these dialogs or palettes? The palettes are all too large and the arrangement of tools is not at all intuitive. Why the huge patterns palette is shown by default I have no idea, because it was 'cool'?
The popup menus are enormous (sometimes for stuff like 'px' which should be in the prefs anyway) and some buttons are half-hidden by the bottom right corner of windows. The default for the layers palette appears to be not to follow the selected document, and there is a little 'auto' button for choosing this option (??!?!!?!?! Shouldn't auto be, you know, automatic?).
So, in general, the interface feels like a historical accident that no one wants to clean up, and unfortunately that history is on another platform, making it appear even uglier to someone used to native OS X programs. If it was the sort of program that you just set up a few options and leave to do its thing (rendering, batch image processing etc) that'd be acceptable, but in a graphics program where you spend all day choosing options and tools, it just can't work.
If it took over the screen and imposed its own paradigm so that you forget the rest of the system (like many 3D apps) that'd be another way round it I guess, but at the moment it looks like it's trying to fit in and failing miserably.
The default install also leaves several invisible files in your user folder, so you'll have to go through and try to delete them if you choose to remove it.
This is ignoring the fact that on a default install of X11 you have to click twice on windows to actually choose a tool - though not strictly a Gimp problem, most new users would get stuck right there. If it's going to see any adoption on OS X someone needs to do a port using carbon or cocoa and throw away the horrific front end. For now I'm happy paying for photoshop. I had a quick look at the code, and boy do they have their work cut-out if they want to separate the back end from the interface. Perhaps that's why they're loath to change it?
>WinW = Wine is not Windows. To promise
>performance parity for Wine with Windows is
>plain stupid.
bzzt. Try again.
http://www.winehq.org/site/myths#slow
If you experience slow performance with Wine, and you use it only for photoshop, try the following:
-Compile with -O2 -Os
-Strip debugging messages from the build
-Strip debug info from the dlls
-Ensure you are using an accellerated X server
This will radically improve the speed of most desktop applications. Wine by default builds with lots of debug info so that apps that don't work can be debugged.
Thanks for using Wine, please remember to report any bugs and suggestions at winehq.