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GIMP Not Enough for Linux Users?
nursegirl writes "Novell has been running a survey about apps that people need in order to convert their data centers or desktops to Linux. The online survey has been running since Jan 13, and Adobe Photoshop was at the top of the list as of February 1. Desktoplinux.com has an interesting article about why the existence of the GIMP isn't enough for many professionals."
As powerful as GIMP is, I find myself struggling to complete tasks that would be easier in Photoshop. More frustrating, however, is having to compile my own plugins. I still have not managed to compile one successfully (and I've been working with Linux since Red Hat 7.3).
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Maybe this is because GIMP has one of the most god-awful GUIs known to man. I mean seriously, it seems to be designed to hide functions and impede work, not t'other way round.
Then...Photoshop is a SDI application on the Mac. SDI vs MDI is hardly the reason professionals will not switch to The GIMP.
Like the article mentions, it's all about colour management and plugins. The former could be solved with code, but the latter is very much chicken/egg; third-parties won't write GIMP plugins until companies start using it, and companies won't start using it until their plugins are available.
Not to mention all the licensing fun of releasing closed plugins for a GPL application. That'd be fun...
>99% of business desktops don't have Photoshop, let alone whatever a "datacenter" involves. If Photoshop is at the top of Novell's list, all it shows is that if you have an open web survey and ask Teh Community for responses, you get replies from 15-year-olds.
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If Adobe figured out some way to lock down Photoshop so that it couldn't be pirated as commonly as it is currently. I know tons of people who use Photoshop and praise it to the heavens, but not a single one of them actually put the money down on it. I work in a university environment, so there're lots of legal copies of Photoshop around, but a lot of people work with their own hardware, so many copies that get used for preparing images for publication aren't legitimate.
I use the GIMP for the same tasks, and get results that are just as good, though. I think that for most image processing, the GIMP does everything the average user needs it to do, and more. I'm not denying that it doesn't meet the needs of certain professionals. However, if people weren't able to get pirated copies of Photoshop readily, they'd find that the GIMP does the job they need it to do.
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This really is the key. GIMP will never have more than a marginal user base because they don't understand their users. Their users--nearly all of them--are Photoshop users (or potentially ex-Photoshop users).
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does. Not because that way is better or makes more sense, but because that's what the user expects you to do, and any deviation from those expections means your app is "broken" in their eyes.
Competing on features in this sort of market is futile. Your program may be able to give me the moon on a stick; but if I can't easily make it work, it might as well do nothing at all. The success stories--those projects that have managed to supplant a deeply-entrenched competitive offering--have always acknowledged this fact and have modified the behavior of their own product to compensate. The failures in this arena (GIMP being the most famous) always refuse to acknowledge the effect on their users' expectations caused by their competitor's dominance. For projects like the GIMP, it seems a matter of pride to not be influenced by such an unworthy competitor.
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I must say, well said. I don't agree with much of it, but you make your point well. I think the failings are in Linux and OSS and not in society. People often better themselves, the problem is that time is a limited resource, and which topic they choose to better themselves with is frequently an exclusive option. Given a 4 hour time block, a typical artist might have a choice... they can dive into one of their projects, add shadows, retouch some photographs... or they can spend it learning a new application. Most people will choose to better themselves by refining their ability to do what they already do well. Maybe using the GIMP would be a marvelous idea that enables them to surpass their wildest creative dreams. But there's really no way to know that before doing it. A person is just as likely to spend hours a day for a few weeks learning a new program only to discover it doesn't offer some core functionality they already had in an existing program.
People aren't stupid. The elitests who believe the average user, and average person, is a gibbering idiot is usually just as dumb when they are confronted with tasks outside their element. A Linux guru might wonder why everyone else is just too dumb to use all the wonderful CLI tools and scripting capabilities, yet when confronted with an automechanical problem, the mechanic is chuckling to himself about how Mr. Linux Guru is too dumb to even perform basic maintenance on his own car.
Like I said, time is a limited resource. Everyone can't spend all their time being an expert at everything.
I'm a pretty advanced Photoshop user - I use it for both print and digital purposes and I've been doing so for over 10 years now. I like Linux and I'd really like to be able to switch to a Linux desktop completely one day. That said I'm giving GIMP a try every once in a while. People say it rocks once you clear the Photoshop mist and once you get familiar with the somewhat weird GUI you'll find it, well, awesome.
My conclusion so far is that while GIMP has a Photoshop resembling toolset it's really not a Photoshop competitor. Really. While Photoshop is overkill for John Doe, especially regarding the price (yeah, most people pirate it, I know), GIMP is quite sufficient. It's an awesome tool for removing red eyes in photos, fixing resolutions, brightness/contrast and stuff like that - but it's not competing with Photoshop. It's obviously not made for print due to the lack of CMYK-support, and for web production.. well, compare Photoshops "Save for web"-module vs GIMP's "Select a JPEG compression percentage please"-prompt.
I've seen work by one or two people who do some seriously impressing stuff with GIMP - and that's it. Those two people also seem to have been involved in the GIMP project since the dawn of mankind, might be a good indicator on how much time you need to spend before being able to use it fluently enough.
Some people who doesn't work with graphics professionally (or claim GIMPs awesomeness without even using it) will probably disagree with me and claim that I'm wrong. But hey, at least I've TRIED to use it. It's just completely pointless for me to even spend time with it when I have access to a (legal) Photoshop license. I don't think the GIMP project is useless though, as I said - it's good enough for the average guy, even though I think the UI could improve tremendeously.
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The mailing lists don't just have the developers biting at each other, but some of the higher up gimp people biting at users and potential users. I dared to compare a feature of Photoshop's clone tool with one on GIMP, and wished for some of the photoshop-like functionality on the gimp, and gimp's resident defender Carol started on with the nasty emails. It was six repetitive emails abusing me, my relationships with women, abusing me for being a control freak and how, by insisting gimp wasn't good enough, I was calling all gimp users morons for using substandard software and she wouldn't stand for that. That's borderline stalking behaviour.
What happened 3 months later? My graphic designer gf got exactly the same treatment in email off list for asking how to do something in gimp that she could do in photoshop, except carol added in the accusation that she could only afford photoshop if she's sleeping with the boss so she didn't have time to speak to people like her. That didn't stop her sending another couple of abusive emails.
This is an open source software mailing list, not a vicious political shitfight where nobody's allowed to question or suggest the slightest thing is wrong with Gimp. Works more like the latter from my experience.
Krita, the painting and image editing application for KOffice is probably a better alternative to Adobe Photoshop on the Linux desktop. It is nicely integrated in KDE and its codebase is cleaner than that of GIMP, so it is easier to add features at a fast rate. In fact, even GNOME devs have been amazed by how fast it's growing.