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GIMP 2 for Photographers
Jon Allen writes "A glance through any photography magazine will confirm that Adobe Photoshop is the accepted standard image editing software, offering almost unparalleled power and control over your images. However, costing more than many DSLR cameras, for non-professionals it can be a very hard purchase to justify (and of course for Linux users this is a moot point, as Photoshop is not available for their platform). Luckily, the free software community has provided us with an alternative. The GIMP, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program, offers a huge amount of the power of Photoshop but is available at no cost. Additionally GIMP is cross-platform, available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix." Read below for the rest of Jon's review.
GIMP 2 for Photographers
author
Klaus Goelker
pages
185
publisher
Rocky Nook / O'Reilly
rating
9/10
reviewer
Jon Allen
ISBN
978-1-933952-03-1
summary
A great book for anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos
The one downside to using GIMP is that most magazines and photography books use Photoshop in their articles and tutorials, so if you do choose GIMP there's a bit more of a learning curve. Now once you're used to GIMP you'll find that many of Photoshop's features have equivalents, albeit with a different user interface, but getting that initial level of experience and familiarity with the software can be rather difficult. The GIMP does come with a manual, but it is really more of a reference guide and while very comprehensive it is not particularly friendly for new users. GIMP 2 for Photographers aims to rectify this.
Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.
Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.
I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.
The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techie' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.
As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.
Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday).
I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever received with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.
As for the book itself, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.
These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the techniques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting color balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.
Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, tool bars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.
Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticeable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.
In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase.
You can purchase GIMP 2 for Photographers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.
Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.
I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.
The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techie' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.
As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.
Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday).
I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever received with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.
As for the book itself, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.
These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the techniques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting color balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.
Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, tool bars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.
Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticeable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.
In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase.
You can purchase GIMP 2 for Photographers from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
You just have to look at it from programmer's point of view. For example, there is no separate commands to draw geometric shapes. Instead you define a selection and then stroke or fill it. The upshot is that it's much easier to, for example, draw an intersection of two shapes. Default settings in photoshop also leave much to be desired. For example, only several undo levels are enabled by default. In Gimp you can review a long undo history and snap your project back to any point.
I am sure PS is a great tool for professional artists, but it's horrible for programmers who want to do a little icon drawing. On the other hand, price of Photoshop and lack of Pen tool in Photoshop Elements make it unsuitable for most hobbyists and shareware authors.
Picasa is good enough for my photo needs (i.e. straightening, lightening) and it is free too.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
No 16bit support on Gimp, and so it's NOT a good solution for prosumer or pro photographers. And Cinepaint has forked a long time ago and so many other features are missing from it, so don't even mention it as an alternative. 16bit support on Gimp was first promised in 2002, but it's still not here...
I would imagine that a large number of photographers have switched over to Adobe Lightroom. It's tailor made for photo work (workflow, organization and processing). It's a very nice piece of software and a lot cheaper than PS CS3!
1. How do you change the shape of your selection outlines, or make small adjustments to it? In Photoshop, as they're defined by vector shapes, you can do this.
2. Photoshop has the history palette (and even history branching, if I'm not mistaking, in the later versions)
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Comparing GIMP to the full version of Photoshop is a straw man argument. Compare it instead to Photoshop Elements. Elements is about $100, not about $700.
I have used both Elements and GIMP and find Elements much more intuitive. This is even though
I used GIMP first. Elements also supports the RAW mode for my Nikon D70.
I now only use GIMP when I don't have access to my home machine, where the one licensed copy I have is installed.
Elements also allows you to organize your photos into categories without having to create a directory structure. It has built in partial and full backup functions.
Of course, YMMV.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Actually GIMP's support for raw files has improved dramatically in the last few years. Install the UFRaw plugin, which most Linux distros package up and which supports the D70 as well as many others.
You might be intrested in GIMPShop. I've never used it, but it is a modified version of GIMP designed to have an interface that is closer to that of Photoshop. There is some Photoshop fuctionality that is missing in GIMP, and this does change that, but it might help long-term Photoshop users become comfortable with GIMP faster, especially if you're in a situation where you need to use both. Again, I've never used it, so I can't speak as to how much it helps.
I do not understand the fascination with GIMP. I have used Photoshop for basic editing for years, and found GIMP to be a nightmare when I tried it.
Paint.net, on the other hand, is easy to use, works in basically the same way as Photoshop (many of the shortcut commands are even the same), and is free. I now use it almost every day at work for basic web stuff - resizing, erasing undesirable elements with the clone brush, converting formats, etc.
Maybe I misunderstand GIMP (maybe because I'm running XP), but you know Photoshop and you're looking for a free version, Paint.net will be a much easier transition.
This is a new feature in the soon to be released Gimp 2.4, check the release notes at:
http://next.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html
I'll give you two features that alone make Photoshop easier to use:
... give it a couple years.
- Unified move/scale/rotate/perspective/etc tool with transparency. Want to paste a person on top of a building? A flower on a hat? Paste your logo on a billboard on a photograph? You move, scale, rotate and do everything else in one shot until it looks right. Scale a bit, move, scale, move, rotate, rescale, change transparency, doesn't match quite right, rescale again... ok. On the Gimp, you have to do scaling and rotation separately, which is harder to get right and you lose quality, especially if you do it repeatedly. The best I found was to use the measuring tool on an axis on both source and destination, and then calculate scale and rotation and enter it on the two dialogs, then move. Even the transparent move wasn't implemented until recently, and you have to make sure to disable visibility of the layer before you move. (Or at least you did a month ago)
- Adjustment layers: Nondestructive editing is good. Adjust the colors. Adjust the colors of another layer. Doesn't look quite right? Readjust the colors of the first one. In the gimp I end up making copies before a color adjustment so that I can redo it if I need to.
Notice I'm not talking about high powered features, or 256 bit color in YMCA palette or whatever. I'm talking about every day things. Even the layer grouping in Photoshop is very useful even if you don't put in the layer blending effects, making it easy to implement.
There are a couple features from the Gimp I miss when I'm using Photoshop, but the end balance is in photoshop's favor.
For simple editing the Gimp is good. If you don't have Photoshop, the Gimp is good. One-on-one comparison
"...which costs an arm, leg, and both testicles..."make money. (I'm not implying that you couldn't with the GIMP, but arguably, you could go farther down that route with PS.) If anybody's curious, the educational version is $300. That's hardly the cost of an arm, leg, and both testicles, especially for a group of people already invested in hardware.
"...and doesn't run on anything but the crappiest of platforms."
Right, because ameteur photographers are all running Linux. Photoshop runs on Windows and Mac, plus it's possible to get it running in WINE. This is such a non-point it's not even funny.
The GIMP is fine for amateurs. Fine, we get that. It's still not Photoshop. If those amateurs want to one day be professionals, that's going to become an important point.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
GIMP is getting support for deep colors and multiple color spaces as part of the new graphics engine, GEGL. GEGL was supposed to be part of GIMP 2.4, but it wasn't quite ready so it's been pushed back to 2.6. I don't imagine we'll see GIMP with GEGL before 2009, but it is coming. The new engine will also make lots of things much easier to implement, and much faster and more RAM-efficient, in spite of the hugely-expanded dynamic range.
Of course, you can't edit your photos with GIMP 2.6 right now, so if you need deep colors, at present you're pretty much stuck with Photoshop. You could also try Krita, but it tends to crash a lot.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If you edit that document and save it, you'll see those changes propogated through every instance you used it in your main file. This means you can clone that image around as many times as you like, then change it later. I don't know if I'm explaining this very clearly or not. The simple version is that it's another non-destructive mode Photoshop has. It's relatively new to PS, but man, I cannot live without it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)