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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
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...
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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
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 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.
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?
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
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.
That's been pretty much my take on MDI for many years. MDI was, as far as I can tell, Microsofts attempt to imitate the Macintosh layout in a multiple-window environment. Just maximize an MDI window and, apart from the title bar at the top and the main window covering everything else, you pretty much have the Macintosh style.
Now, IMNSHO, perhaps one of the main reasons the Macintosh did things this way was to save screen real estate. The original Mac was 640x480 or less, on a tiny 12 or 13 inch screen. Keeping one menu for all your windows saved space. With large screens and higher resolutions being so common nowadays, I think this style of screen layout is less justified. It's a style and some people like it, yes. There's just less of a reason to do things that way. And, once again IMNSHO, the Microsoft Windows method of having one window covering everything is just plain ugly and clumsy.
Give me virtual desktops, lazy focus-follows-mouse, and multiple top-level windows please. That's the way I like to work. Then again, I am a long-time Linux geek and my name's (still) in The Gimp credits. I may be just a little biased :)
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.
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The reason to put the menu bar at the top of the screen hasn't changed. It's based on solid research, and a little principle called Fitt's Law.
And a hefty helping of Kudos to you for contributing your time and skills to freeasinbeerandfreedom software, but if you think good interface design is "...a style and some people like it, yes - then you're part of the problem. The user interface matters and too many programmers - Open Source and commercial - treat it as though it's just a matter of personal preference, or worse, as though it doesn't matter at all. And I'm not just talking about GUIs.
Umm, I was discussing the single-menu Macintosh interface. You made a guess as to why Apple did it that way, concluded that it was no longer necessary, and implied that it only persists because some people like the "style."
I posted a link to an article which includes the reason why Apple did it that way, and why it's arguably and measurably superior to the way Windows does it - even with the MDI - written by the original lead Mac UI designer and researcher. Your "NSHO" is wrong, and I'm telling you why, and pointing you towards a resource which might just teach you something useful.
Instead you seemed to have reacted to my little $0.02 comment at the end and have even quoted parts of my post out of context.
Nope, the first half of my post would have been identical even without your "little $0.02 comment at the end." And as for "out of context," the bulk of your reply was a rant on something you yourself admit that I didn't even say! Guess what - I agree with your rant about "intuitive" interfaces!
The irony here is that your own intuition sucks. Apple didn't make their UI design decision for the reason you think they did; and I didn't say anything about, imply, or even glance in the direction of "intuitive" interfaces. Did you follow the link and read it? You should. Fitt's law is about speed. "Intuitive" is irrelevant.
But since you brought it up (really!), just because you can make a case that there's no such thing as an "intuitive" interface does not imply that a UI doesn't need to be logical. Tools for similar functions and tasks should be grouped together. Something I use all the time shouldn't be buried three dialog boxes deep. Those sorts of things appear to be consistent criticisms of The Gimp.
Can people be a little more constructive and descriptive in their criticisms of The Gimp?
Just so we're straight on this, I defy you to show me where I've criticized The Gimp - in this thread or in any other post anywhere. I was criticizing you.
If you demonstrate your ignorance of well-known UI principles in a thread where people are criticizing an application for having a deficient UI, and then go on to claim credit as a programmer for that application, you need to be a little less thin-skinned when reading a reply which is intended to help enlighten you.
Unfortunately, it is clear that you must have taken my Kudos comment as sarcasm, which is regrettable, because I was entirely sincere. I respect and appreciate the contributions made by people like you. But I don't believe that the fact that you're contributing work for free means that you are above criticism. It certainly doesn't work that way for any of the volunteer efforts I'm involved in.
I've never used The Gimp. I did use Photoshop on a daily basis starting from version 1.0 up until a couple of years ago, but that's not really relevant. What is relevant is that I use Open Source software on a daily basis that is as good as or superior to highly priced commercial applications, both in performance and feature sets. So it demonstrably can be done. But the the areas where Open Source software is consistently deficient are
in the UI - because most programmers have no UI design training, and/or don't think it's important, and because many of these projects begin as something that the programmers wrote for themselves. Naturally, it makes sense to them. To the larger audience, "intuitive" means "works like something I already know," exactly as you say. Certainly, ignore convention if you wish, or especially if you think you have a better idea, but don't be surprised when the great unwashed masses slam your "confusing" interface.
the documentation - most programmers are not writers, and even if they can wri
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.