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A Gimp In Photoshop's Clothing
comforteagle writes "Scott Moschella, from Attack of the Show!, set out to make The Gimp a little friendlier with a simple UI make-over, creating GimpShop. Despite an outcry from some developers, users have picked it up with passion. Howard Wen has interviewed Scott about why he did this. From the interview: 'I've always thought that GIMP was just as powerful as Photoshop. My way of proving it was to make GIMP work as close to Photoshop as I possibly could, given my limited programming experience.' As more Windows/Mac users discover powerful open source applications are they bound (slashdot disc.) to make more discoveries of this kind?" Update: 09/16 18:48 GMT by Z : Some users have pointed out this is basically an update to a previous discussion we've had. Link added for the sake of completeness.
I love gimp but I always felt that the interface was a little strange. I am glad that somebody is looking into making using the gimp a little more user friendly. However I don't think ripping off PhotoShop is the best way to do that as I'm not super fond of the PhotoShop interface either.
My way of proving it was to make GIMP work as close to Photoshop as I possibly could, given my limited programming experience.
/passes out
With Photoshop weighing in at over a thousand dollars Canadian, let me just say that anything that resembles it moderately, without the strange behaviour of PaintShop, is welcomed. Free too?
It's funny because I can remember thinking about this the other day, and wondering when companies are going to start investing in the future of office systems, to help reduce their own long-term bottom line. If everyone donates $100 to the Gimp/Gimpshop project(s), just imagine the money saving that would come out of it! I would be willing to bet that if this happened, in less than five years open source would outpace Adobe in quality and reliability. The reason most people use Photoshop is for quality and reliability -- not necessarily features as you might expect. It does what I need better than anything else yet, but with some time, effort and financial backing, we'll see superior products come out of the open source community.
Open source needs a well of cash to draw from. I suggest a foundation be made to fund open source projects better than we've seen. Apply and they bankroll your project if you've got something hot. I'd like to see that work on a large scale and I often wonder why SourceForge doesn't take that approach, in favour of small donations to each project on a case-by-case level. I'd love to apply for financing for my crazy open source ideas! It's the money factor that slows me down. I don't have time to pursue it very well because I have to pay bills.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
To borrow a quote from elsewhere: "If you build it, they will come."
One of Adobe's Lawyers (from their Barrel O' Lawyers): Your Honor, in the defendent's own words:
Judge: I have no recourse other than to find for the plaintiff and wreak all sorts of havoc with Open Source Development.A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Opposite is true for me. I've only ever used the Gimp for image stuff and when I try photo shop I stuble and fall and can't seem to get anything I'm tring to do done.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I don't get it, why does it seem so many alt-os projects are forever trying to emulate the look and feel of a Windows environment?
Linspire, KDE, GIMP, and others, if you spent the time improving, not cloning, your application, perhaps you'd get more users.
I mean really, if your app is going to look, feel, and function, like a Windows one, why should I use yours??
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Yes, so far I've been very unimpressed by Macintosh and OSX. If you don't run a stricly Mac app it is slow as hell. With my ubuntu desktop I can't usually tell the diffrenct betweenn remote and local apps. They are all very fast. On OSX remote apps are painfully slow.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Only zealots should be complaining over this - especially since you can still use the Classic GIMP Interface if you wish.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Are you on Windows? You have to bare in mind that the GIMP interface was mostly designed for focus-follows-mouse, the traditional focus policy on X11. I have used The GIMP on Windows and it is a pain compared to Linux/X11 because of the different focus policies. It also helps if you have multiple virtual desktops, so you can have a seperate, clean desktop (or several) for working with The GIMP and not clutter the image windows with lots of other windows. I guess this is why people keep whinging for an MDI interface.
The gimp pretty much pisses all over the gnome HIG. I think it is very difficult to use for newbies and/or people used to use photoshop. They seem to completelly ignore all we know about usability and human computer interfaces.
This development and the reaction that people are having to it can be a wake up call for the gimp developers. They may realize their interface could use some work. Kind of like KDE is reacting now that GNOME is doing so well on usability. In my mind, this should benefits the gimp
I really hope they take a constructive attitude towards this one and take a look at why people are liking this.
How dare you make OSS usable by normal people? If you do that, normal people might start using and then it will become widely used and even popular and that would be SO un-cool.
Keep OSS like it is: by programmers who like to read 1MB man file and memorize obscure commands to use counterintuitive interfaces, for programmers who like to read 1MB man file and memorize obscure commands to use counterintuitive interfaces.
I think its ability to crash nearly every 15 minutes of use is probably the best thing it ever added to the mix.
I also enjoy how many of the toolboxes have close buttons that resemble the actual close buttons of most UIs, and one of them closes the whole app.
Also the wealth of not-that-attractive filters, as well as the number of broken filters that exist gives it a dramatic edge over the competition.
Seriously though... the Gimp is a nifty piece of software, but it is being vastly overrated on this board. It has the potential to be great, but programmers without direction from experienced graphic designers (not all, but some) generally don't create the greatest of apps for other designers.
Give it some time though. Eventually it will be just as aggravating (and as well as powerful) as Adobe's flagship product is.
Well, for one thing, the Gimp has lousy colour support. No CMYK, no spot channels, and does it even yet colour profiles yet?
The tools don't work as well as they should. I tried once to do some simple selections, fill them, and add some blur. Gaussian blur didn't work with partial alpha transparency correctly at all. I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted to do.
The Gimp does not have a usable workflow. It's hard to explain unless you're a designer, but you need to have certain tools work in a certain way to connect all the steps in making a design.
Those are just a few complaints.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
It's worse than that. While I'm usually not a fan of changing things around for the sake of being PC, calling a program "The Gimp" is downright offensive. This is particularly a problem when needing to describe or advocate for the program to health professionals (particularly those in the mental health or rehabilitative fields).
The shame of this is that those very people are working with tax payer money which would be better spent on something other than photoshop, but are going to be turned off by a name such as "The GIMP", just as they would be if it was called "The Cripple" or "The Retard"
A little recognition that users matter would go a long way. I'd be willing to try alternative skins on top of GIMP.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Would it be more accurate to say that I removed my illegal, pirated version of Photoshop now that I have GimpShop?
Makes more sense than saying I threw away my $800 legal copy of Photoshop now that I have GimpShop for free.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's worse than that. While I'm usually not a fan of changing things around for the sake of being PC, calling a program "The Gimp" is downright offensive.
You sound like the people calling for firing the official in DC who used the word "niggardly".
Do you also object to the phrases "spic and span" and "a chink in the armor"?
"gimp" means beautiful or attractive, and has meant that for far longer than it's been used as slang for the handicapped. Presumably the makers of an image manipulation program had that meaning in mind.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
No, it is not at all rediculous, on two points:
Number one, the term, regardless of permanence, is one which puts down and degrades a person or group of persons for a physical infirmity. That is the common meaning, that is the association which will be on the mind of any decision makers who are told about this free photo-shop like program called THE CRIPPLE^W GIMP.
Secondly, the program is commonly referred to by it's initials, and it is those initials which is what it will be judged by ("the cripple? WTF?")
Third, it is this unwillingness to empathise and understand the point of view of the mainstream world and corporate/government users which is what will keep Free Software in the fringes, which means that collary issues (DRM, DMCA) are also kept to the side as well.
Lastly, everyone is so caught up in seeing this as an attack on some bizarre free speech issue that they are ignoring the fact that they are arguing for a name which actively and needlessly is insulting.
I mean, fine, have your GIMP, use it with your RETARD gui on your NIGGER OS; but don't be surprised when people object to the name and decide to use closed-source applications which do not feel an adolescent need to "stick it to the man" by choosing application names which are inherently offensive.
Yes, it is an acronym. The program name was either formatted purposely to get comething the originator(s) thought was cute, or, when the acronym was pointed out (probably immediately on naming) to them, went, "Hehheh, Cool" and ignored it.
If I came up with a mathematics program, and called it "Coordinated Unit Normalized Tester" and then expected colleges and corporations to adopt it, you'd laugh. Why is this different?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
"gimp" means beautiful or attractive, and has meant that for far longer than it's been used as slang for the handicapped. Presumably the makers of an image manipulation program had that meaning in mind.
Yes and a swastika is a harmless religious symbol and it has been for longer than it has been a symbol of hate. But, it doesn't get used by the general public or big business a whole lot these days because language is a part of culture and so it changes as the people and culture do.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
The industry standard is Photoshop. You can choose to emulate the interface that everyone uses or you can choose to be locked out faster than a CBC employee.
Note to OpenOffice/StarOffice evangelists: this is also why your apps will never be mainstream.
Yeah, right.
I just recently bought CS2 (after using elements for a while) so my list won't for sure be exhaustive.
= adjustment layers (this feature alone makes gimp a toy in my book)
= healing brush/spot healing brush (use it all the time)
= adobe bridge + adobe camera raw (and don't tell me there are other apps to do this, I know there are, but acr+bridge is amazing in CS2)
= liquify
= 16 and 32 bit/channel images (I do all my editing in 16 personally)
= CYMK/LAB/... color spaces
= color profiles (so I can soft-proof exactly what my print will look like when printed at the lab *AND* can use their profiles instead of having to limit myself to sRGB)
= vanishing point (ok, gimmicky but it's quite useful sometimes)
= multiple easily placeable color samplers
= an actually good UI without 250000 extra windows: in PS I can just press 'tab' and work on the imace on an empty screen, 'tab' again and all my palettes are back where they were.
= history brush
= better support for my wacom tablet (although the gimp is not totally bad, it's still nowhere near as good)
= meaningful keyboard shortcuts for everything.
and the list goes on and on and on. I am very much pro open source, but when it comes to the Gimp the people that say that it's as good as PS strike me the same way as the people that say that their webserver written in perl in a CS class is as good as Apache.
Sure, the gimp is fine for the 'resize the pic for the web and maybe correct some red eye' crowd, but as soon as you have to do something more involved even the humble (and cheap) PS Elements is light years ahead.
-- the cake is a lie
That would make sense if the program's long name was: Crafty Retrograde Improved Picture Publishing Landscape Editor. or Reliable Editor That's All Right, Dude! --- But it's a GNU Image Manipulation Program. --- If it makes it better for you, call it that or call it GNUIMP.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Unfortunately most GUI apps are poorly designed such that the front-end and back-end code are tangled together. If programmers would create the back-end as a discrete entity GUI apps would be much more flexible and stable.
One thing I really hate is when you load a big file and the entire interface freezes while the file loads. Argh! ICQ always did that on my contact list. Horribly coded.
There is no reason why a well designed app shouldn't be portable to different UI's ranging from text based on up. Why not have a text-based version of GIMP or OpenOffice that lets you manipulate the files using command-line commands? Functionality should not be based on the UI.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Open source developers at their finest. No wonder we have Gnome's Epiphany browser (gecko based) using the same interface as Netscape 4. Most developers in the open source world just don't care about decent GUIs and (as we see) will fight to preserve their old ways, ignoring the new. Whenever they try to break from Windows or OS X knockoffs, they just create a horrible mess, like Blender or the Gimp.
If you don't want to run primarily Mac (as opposed to X11) applications on OS X, there's really no point in using OS X. This isn't meant to be a provocative statement, just fact. I'd like X11 to be in a happier state on the Mac, but this is mostly academic; the only X11 application I run is XEmacs, and that pretty rarely. (If the XEmacs Carbon port stabilizes, which will probably involve getting a somewhat less prickly maintainer, even that will go away.)
:) OS X also supports VNC and, wouldn't you know it, Apple Remote Desktop, although that's not a free solution.
Is there anything like X11 or rdesktop/NX that Macs support?
Whether you like Apple's implementation or not, X11 is an awful lot like X11.
Incidentally, Quartz != "DisplayPDF." It gets described that way a lot (including by Apple fans), but it's not true. I'm happy for GTK that it supports Cairo, but I suspect it's a matter of (long, torturous) debate as to whether the design philosophy behind Cairo is better, worse or just different than that behind Quartz.
A year ago [Macs] were still using bitmaps on the dock, and when it scales, it looks damn ugly.
Only if the icon is ugly to start with. Most of the icons on my dock are quite nice-looking.