Old Software or Open Source?

Pakled writes "I teach a high school multimedia course. We were scheduled to get new software this year but due to several pointy haired bosses, no software was ordered. The software I have to teach is Flash 5, Dreamweaver 2000, Photoshop 7 and (god help me) Movie Maker. The question is: is it better to teach old commercial software or their open source counterparts (Komposer, Gimp, etc.)? Is the steep learning curve and slightly less uniform design worth a little student frustration to teach them software written in the past 5 years?"

Comments

Teaching Graphic Design

[king-manic]

Although Gimp resembles Photoshop it isn't the same. Some skills are transferable but if you are teaching graphic design it's silly to teach anything other then what industry uses. It means they must relearn many skills once they enter the job market. If your teaching at a higher more theoretical level then it might be acceptable because more of it transfers. But if it's a trades school or technical college you're better off teaching the actual industry tools regardless of cost.

With Gimp and Photoshop, there is little question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp clearly cannot compare with Photoshop, and you'd be hard pressed to find Gimp in any professional office. If these students intend to find work with their skills, then Photoshop by far is the best option of the two.

Re:Wake up

[compro01]

If the UI were fed into a chipper-shredder and some good human interface designers stepped in that's being done for 2.6. they've hired a UI design company called MMIWorks to redesign the GUI.

and the switch to GEGL will take care of the 8-bits-per-channel limit.

then again, this all could be excessive optimism and nothing will really change in 2.6.

Concrete examples of GIMPS flaws

[BcNexus]

I can't easily draw outlines of geometric shapes such as circles and squares. Right click menus aren't very context sensitive.