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Hack turns GIMP into Photoshop Look-alike
Mr_Silver writes "One of the many complaints about the GIMP is that of its user interface and how it should be more like Photoshop. If you feel that this is true then Scott Moschella has hacked together GimpShop which turns GIMP's user interface into something more akin to Photoshop for OSX. However, if you're not running that operating system, fret not, because there is a version for Linux too."
is cmyk. My boss is ready to buy 5 licenses for Adobe CS2, and I'd love to save him a few grand.
Certainly a step in the right direction, only in the sense from what the page says, it's a vast improvement in the interface over gimp. That being said, it does fall into the same trap as other OSS project like to be in, mimicking. If a developer wants his/her project to be noticed not only does it have to do what the competition does, it has to have some added value over the competition. Price isn't necessarily a good way to standout, people are more than willing to pay for something they perceive as better. It would be nice if there were more publicly done research into interface design, OSS projects would benefit greatly from it.
As a OS X user, I would also say anything that requires X11 is not a native OS X application. With no core OS X technology support (little things like colorsync, quicktime, etc), Gimp will really never take off on OS X. I personally will stick to using photoshop.
Burn Hollywood Burn
This should help the GIMP gain greater acceptance. Rather than getting a Photoshop-oriented book, and then translating the lessons into Gimpese, users can go directly. Hopefully this will encourage more people to try, use, and promote The GIMP, while producing better photos in the process.
Ob. Disclaimer: I've used the GIMP since 0.54 on SGI, and think it hit a peak of usability somewhere around 1.1. The newer features are nice, but I'm glad someone took a stand and wrote an alternative. With this interface, it's a great alternative to Elements, and will hopefully cause Free Software to be used in more environments than before.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
What about us poor Windows users? There are quite a lot of us, and I'm sure you would want to educate us heathens to the benifits of open source software. Somebody please port it!
There's a Fedora Core 2 RPM here:
:-/).
Code Mills
Good luck with anything else (the site with the source is slashdotted now
I beg to differ.
.... I WANT A GODDAMNED FOSS PHOTOSHOP CLONE. >:|
:P
It's the only piece of pay software I use, and it's been UNuseable for my needs since v.6 came out- and it keeps getting more bloated, slower, and less useable as time goes by. It really burns my ass that they changed a lot of the key bindings (FOR NO REASON) with v.6 and give the user NO way to actually edit a key config for themselves. Games have been doing this for years and MS Office is extensively customizeable... you'd think Adobe would get on board but NOOOOOO.
I absolutely hate Adobe The Company, and I absolutely cannot use anything that doesn't open at least ps5.5 documents- GIMP'll do it, but kill your blending modes, masks, and fonts goodbye. Guess what I use a lot of.
So I'm stuck getting humped in the ass by Adobe's PCP-laced view of What Photoshop Should Be. Programmers- picture your text editor changing keybinds and workflow with every revision, and you CAN'T CHANGE IT. You either wouldn't upgrade or you'd switch, wouldn't you?
Anyway. I want a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. I don't care if it's slightly different so long as the interface remains the same- six years of using Photoshop 5.x has given me the ability to weild the program without even thinking about it, and one of the things that frustrates artists (aside from being forced to use shitty software) is having to learn NEW software. We just want to make art. You can't expect us to learn perl or ruby or whateverthefuck GIMP script-fu uses instead of making actions, document compatability is a must (if I'm to get rid of photoshop, GIMP needs to be able to handle a few thousand photoshop files with all kinds of funky blending modes and layer effects and so forth and it needs to be able to handle it all perfectly (especially text).... and it's a long way from doing so.).
There's also the meta key thing. Using control as a meta for a longtime mac user is like trying to answer the phone with your foot- it Does Not Work. That's gotta be my biggest complaint about these so-called X windows "ports" to MacOS X - it ain't a port if it ain't localized as much as you can make it.... and OS X (and MacOS) apps use the apple key as the meta key, dammit. It's right next to the space bar- makes it real easy to hit both with the thumb, etc, etc.
I could keep going, but I just came off an Enemy Terrirory server that got swarmed by a dorm full of teamkilling assholes, so now's a good time to stop.
But having said that, The Gimp is great if you need only the features of Photoshop 4 or 5. Photoshop has come a long way since then. Anyone who compares the two as "comparable" has not spent more than a few hours with the latest releases of Photoshop. There are definitely some cool things about process and detailed editing that The Gimp doesn't even come close for.
And I suspect this will continue to be the case. I'm willing to pay $800 to get today's tools, even though tools from five years ago are available for free.
However I think the single biggest boon to Gimp would be if Adobe found a way to stop PhotoShop piracy, and chose to do so.
Adobe doesn't care about piracy that much, it's just education to them until someone gets a good job or black bottom line. Smart marketing ploy an old co-worker of mine told me about.... If you only pick on people with money that aren't paying their fair share, you're going to end up with more money in the end because eventually, people who like your software will buy it and use it, and if it's good software they will make money doing so.
My little site.
Sometimes those reasons are economic, rather than technical. I can't answer for why the OP has switched back and forth, but I've sometimes used photoshop because a client specifically wanted me to - they wanted not just complete illustrations but some of the seperate layers and intermediate work files to pass on to others, plus assurance these would look right/work in photoshop. In the end, a requirement such as that means it's simply easier to do the whole project start to finish there.
Also, there are lots of often pricy special filters that are not part of photoshop itself, but were made by third party developers specifically as add ons for it, and if you want to use one of these, it pretty much dictates using photoshop. Most of this can be avoided by writing your own filter params for freeware programs, but a.) you have to know how, b.) it can take a little time, and deadlines don't care, and c.) some shops' legal types are actually worried this skirts too close to violating a EULA clause against reverse engineering.
(I also started doing illustrations using a bunch of small, limited freeware tools, and often had to switch twenty times between three or four of em to finish a single small project, so I've gotten strongly biased against swapping partially completed files around, probably more than most - maybe this colors my opinions above).
Who is John Cabal?
I like the GIMP. I use it for cropping, touching up, and compressing-for-email photos, and for general doodling, and while (several) years ago I used to use Photoshop for some low-grade graphic design work, I'm now much more used to the GIMP; that Photoshop is both expensive and unavailable (barring workarounds like Codeweavers' Wine) unavailable on my platform of choice probably has a lot to do with this. Playing with the GIMP is more fun than most of the built-in timewasters that Linux distros have so cruelly includeed (even kbounce).
:)
Further, I like the GIMP's interface, at least in general. I like using the right button to reach nearly any option quickly, and being able to do that from anywhere. I don't know about the Windows version of Photoshop, or any recent Mac ones, but the last version I used with OS X sill had all menu items only at the top, which (to my GIMP-adjusted self) suddenly seems archaic and inefficient.
I do have some complaints about the GIMP's interface, too -- there are lots of tasks that I don't know how to do with it, and I'm not a serious enough user to chase them down too hard; if I needed to do them badly enough, I guess I would
Bearing all of the above in mind, I really like this project -- answers lots of objectors' main objection (though no good deed goes unpunished).
However, what I'd like to see more than this fully reworked version of the GIMP is for the GIMP itself to be able to accept "personalities" (themes / styles / whatever you want to call them), so that people could say "This set of keybindings and menu orders works well for me / my style of working / my company's workflow [etc]" -- and then let people download and try them out.
A sane set of default settings (and Yes, I think the current defaults are fine and sane; YMMV) is important, but beyond that, it would be nice to be able to quickly try out other set-ups as easily as it is to switch themes in a window manager.
Just an idea --
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I agree. I find the irony of Windows users screaming for ports of Linux software quite amusing, considering that it was only a few years ago that the situation was quite different (Linux users were screaming for Windows ports of software).
Payback sucks, huh?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ok, all trolling aside, it's been said before many times that while Photoshop has many great features that PSP lacks (and I've experienced that first-hand), PSP has, arguably, the better (in this case, more intuitive) interface.
On one hand, PS keeps adding very cool features to each new version, while PSP keeps adding improved interface functionality to each new version. MY point is... how 'bout a program that has both?
I can't speak for PS because I haven't used it in nearly a year, but PSP includes a great deal of UI customization via Python language, as well as the ability to record (albeit limited) macros using that same language.
While it seems that PSP is (very slowly!) catching up to Photoshop's feature set, Jasc is, more importantly, making great strides in the UI of their flagship program.
Now if only someone could come up with a way to create new programmable layer classes in PSP...
Any Gimp coders willing to take up that challange?
"So some buy Paintshop Pro instead." - more probably pirate it.
Photoshop is an awkward price, some amateurs could afford it, 3DS is just insane, and out of the price range of virtually any amateur.. which is a shame. But I havn't heard either moaning too much about piracy, they probably know that there never going to sell vast numbers to the home user market and are more keen on protecting there commercial customers who might be spending $500k on equiping there office with the latest versions of Max.
Though it would be nice if they could both provide fully functional versions at a decent low price, with the only restriction that no profit can be made using it, I know most game modders probably couln't afford to dig into there pockets for $6000, but a few might concider it around $300, even if they can't sell there work without a upgrade.
Another way to look at it would be, if all the game modders know Max, there going to have Max on there CV when they apply for jobs in the game industury, if everyone in the industury knows Max, there going to sell more.