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Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux
S point 2 writes "Google has announced that they have hired Codeweavers, maker of the popular Wine software to make Photoshop run better on Linux. 'Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area.' It is unknown whether or not the entire Creative Suite will be funded for support, but for the time being it seems Photoshop-on-Linux development is getting a new priority under Google."
For some professionals, there are tools that do not yet exist in gimp that they cannot be without (cmyk, layer grouping, adjustment layers, the list goes on).
However, gimp is good enough for many amateur and some professional uses.
While I like the gimp for what I do, my father who does photo retouching prefers photoshop.
If having photoshop work better(I believe it was bronze on winehq.com a little while back) helps make people make the move to linux, I'm all for it.
While we're at it... how about premiere too? Linux video editing doesn't even have a gimp equiv (kino doesn't give me enough control, cinelerra crashes, kdenlive has a few bugs and not enough effects yet...)
They sell a version of Wine. They are also company that will gladly take Google's money to do work on Wine. They are the same ones who helped make Google Maps and Picasa run on Linux.
We're the largest single contributor to Wine. We host the Wine web
site, employ the Wine maintainer, and do much of the 'heavy lifting'
required to keep Wine moving. Of course, many others contribute as well,
so we're certainly not the sole maker, but we very much play a vital
role in the making of Wine.
I can see this as valuable if it will allow a greater number of Windows applications to run on Linux and improve wine as a software program. Wine itself needs more funding since currently it does a dismal job of running many Windows programs. But the focus needs to be on improving compatability with all programs. If all this is going to do, is make Photoshop run better, it would be better to spend the money improving the performance of the Gimp and other open source programs. But making all Windows programs run on Linux, over 99%, would be a major accompishment that would hurry up the acceptance of Linux as a complete Windows replacement. There will also be those who say that it would be better to get people to use open source alternatives to windows programs than to use windows programs on linux, although, while we should improve open source programs, since having windows programs run on Linux would help many people move to Linux and would eliminate the main thing that keeps microsoft dominate, I think that improving wine to 99% compatability would also be very valuable as well. Remember as well, that a large number of Windows programs are custom apps for very specific purposes. I used custom windows only programs used by a company I worked for. These are not general purpose programs that I can just replace with open office. So its not necessarily just word processing programs and general windows programs one may need to run on linux that one can just get an open source replacement for, but highly specialised programs for which there is no Linux replacement and might only be used inside a company and no where else. I have had to have Windows XP in addition to Linux because of these custom special windows programs. I would just love to get rid of XP and run them all on Linux. The other major area that would be very useful is funding a compatability layer to support Windows hardware drivers on Linux, if we have millionaires reading this that want to fund something that would speed up Linux adoption, that would be the surest way of getting hardware support on Linux. I agree that open source drivers are always best but still this layer would be essential, especially until open source drivers are written, There is always a long lag between hardware becoming avialable and driver avialability on Linux because the drivers have to be written through back engineering and it takes quite a while, and there is always more resources put by companies on Windows. Linux is always on the back burner. This layer would also make it much eisier as well to backengineer hardware protocols by watching the communication between proprietary drivers and the hardware, a compatability layer for hardware drivers could speed up open source driver development
The Gimp DOES have CMYK support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#Color_support
From your link. Yey for reading!
"Note that 'CMYK' colors are immediately translated into RGB when used; GIMP does not have any built-in support CMYK mixtures that cannot be represented in RGB, such as rich blacks, though they can be simulated to a limited extent with third-party add-ons.)"
Preamble: I'm a photographer needing to process tens of thousands of photos relatively swiftly. The functionality I need isn't all that advanced (curves, levels, an occasional straighten horizon (measure + arbitrary rotate), crop, unsharp mask, and sometimes an action to find edges, feather and apply unsharp mask on that), but being able to access and apply this functionality swiftly is an absolute must because of the volume of photos I deal with. Photoshop is optimized to perfection to allow a swift workflow, while the gimp seems optimized to perfection to hinder it. Focus is never where I need it, shortcuts to access tools don't work depending on which sub-window has focus, etc. So yes, I really need Photoshop.
I last tried Photoshop 7 under wine about a year ago. It was functional to an amazing degree (for someone who'd never seen or used wine before), but the rough edges were slightly too rough for me to be able to switch to Linux fulltime. I could trigger a dozen crashes in Photoshop at will just by resizing panels and doing other simple things like that, the program didn't feel native (alt-tabbing would keep the panels in the foreground, obscuring other programs), and focus sometimes strayed, amongst other lesser (but still annoyingly noticeable) issues.
I just tried the latest wine with these Google sponsored improvements, and wow. This is an amazing difference. Every single issue I saw a year ago is gone. Photoshop feels as responsive as it does under Windows (perhaps even more so), and I went through an hour long editing session without being slowed down or annoyed even once.
As far as I'm concerned, Linux is now ready to become my main OS.
Google: I don't like your lack of respect for my privacy, but for this work on Wine, I can say from the bottom of my heart: Thank you!
The linux release of Picasa is how Google got into the Wine game in the first place. Picasa for Linux is simply the Windows version packaged with a custom build of Wine.
On that note: thank you to Google and to Codeweavers.
Off the top of my head, GIMP needs:
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I would add to that Acrobat (full version), and really don't personally see how Photoshop is so much more valuable than the rest of the Creative Suite, but I defer to the fact that everyone else thinks it is, but Ghost Script is no Acrobat Distiller, and GhostView no Acrobat Professional. And then we add in the proprietary features and it is a must.
I can fake Photoshop (GIMP), InDesign/Quark for simple things (Scribus, which is even decent in making PDFs), Illustrator (InkSpace), but I cannot fake a signed PDF without the recipient knowing (I can sign it with PGP, but that is useless). The PDF optimizer and pre-flight tools are worthwhile too, as is the full fledged form editor.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Now I do graphic design for a living. The tools that I use are: Scribus, Inkscape, and the Gimp. Honestly, I've been told by the boss that I can, but i have absolutely no desire to, switch over to Adobe products. In fact if i was forced to switch, the quality of my work would most certainly go down.
I've been given the blessing to go out and spend whatever I want on a photoshop/illustrator combo and whatever fancy pants Mac rig i want...but the truth is that my commodity Dell box, running these great open source solutions is every bit as good (and in my eyes better) than really ANY other combo i could come up with.
Frankly, the Community could start charging for this software and my company would gladly pay whatever they asked. These three programs are absolutely invaluable to us.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
The people that I know that do 3D animation do it for Computational Fluid Dynamics. They use OpenGL. They use Unix (or Linux). Depends on what you are doing which platform is a toy...
Krita has all the tools. Even tablet support.
Both of course!
All the work we did for Google was committed straight to the Wine repository. But that's just business as usual for us: we already submit 99% of the changes we make to Wine. The remaining 1% are those hacks that are rejected as too ugly by Alexandre (the Wine leader) but which we keep as a temporary fix / workaround.
See, the thing is that improving Wine is so central to our business that it's just part of our mission statement:
MissionTo transform Mac OS X and Linux into Windows®-compatible operating systems.
To help our customers leverage Windows technology on non-Windows operating systems.
To promote the growth of Free Software by supporting and extending the Wine Project.
GIMP opens psd files already. I'm not an artist by any means, nor do I aspire to be one, but I haven't had any problems with it.
Actually, Kuickshow can open psds too, although Kuickshow doesn't support layers and other useful features, but it's quite sufficient if you only need to view psd files and not edit them...
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Open source != developers working for free.
Quite a large number of developers writing OSS software are paid to do so by companies who use the software. And the reverse is also true, a number of closed source freeware applications are written by developers who are not paid in any way.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Say hello to Gentoo or even Linux From Scratch
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Unless you plan to sit for a couple of days waiting for your procedural materials to render, you use 2d images mapped onto a 3d surface wherever you can get away with it, no matter which 3d application you use. Photoshop is one of the biggest tools in a 3d designers toolbox, to the point where a lot of designers will have photoshop and their 3d app open side by side.
Realistically, the gimp is good, its fantastic. But photoshop is better in a lot of cases
A.I. Research. The peculiar science in which we know the question and we know the answer, but can't show the working
Well, if you have a relatively common color probe, X-Rite, Gretag-Macbeth or a Spyder 2, you're welcome to use ArgyllCMS, which does a great job calibrating your screen exactly as you want it. http://www.argyllcms.com/