Rather than reply to individual posters all I can do is shake my head at the all-to-predictable lack of vision and Fear Uncertainty and Doubt by users in face of moving away from the methods Adobe has foisted upon them.
Also, Adobe has never really "foisted" a user interface on anyone. It's not like they are some tyrant that says, "You will do it my way or there wil be dire consequences!". They actually listen to the users unlike, say, Quark who is still stuck in the dark ages of System 7 UI design. Quark has never advanced in terms of advancing the uiability of their applications. Macromedia has made some progress, especially with the release of their MX series of products, but they still don't compare to the streamlined finesse of the standard Adobe UI. (And no, I work for Microsoft (as a contractor), NOT Adobe) And pretty soon, working in an MS application will mean just pressing buttons on the nine million layers of toolbars that clutter the screen and obscure the work area.
And the GIMP has vision? It's breaking paradigms? Sure thing, buddy. It's interesting in it's software development model, but that's about it. Right now it's just a knockoff of photoshop with some added scriptability and a noticeable lack of CMYK and Spot Color support... not too mention very little support for Postscript level 3 vector and transparency effects... live, editable type layers.... throw on top of it all a UI that is more of an afterthought than anything else.
Think I'm going to download the latest version of MacGIMP and give it another shot. See if it is a "paradigm shifting" application that flies in the face of "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt" and thwarts the perceptions of "users in fear of moving away from the methods Adobe has foisted upon them".
I've been down this road many times before.... and when it comes tim to get some serious work accomplished... I always end right back in Photoshop.... waiting for the next big GIMP flamewar to start here... then I jump back into the GIMP for a while.... right back to Photoshop.
I'm not afraid to use the GIMP, I just don't like it at this point.
Hey, if the OSS world can get their act together and create a user friendly version of the GIMP that offers all the flexibility and features of Photoshop and surpasses them, then I'm on board. I've been a contract designer for years and I've always had to adapt to new situations, new workflows, new programs on an almost weekly basis. Don't give me the "dominant paradigm" garbage either. That's just your college sociology course still haning on and it's a catchy buzzword among kneejerk college liberals.
The next generation of designers "who have a new fresh approach to design and who are untainted by pre-conceptions about how a particular program should behave" are going to be taught Adobe and Macromedia products in school. They will use them on their first jobs and after. There will be no revolution among the next generation of designers unless there is something truly better to supplant the current crop of tools.
Your Chomskyesque tyrade holds no water until you can prove that something better is actually in the making. I've said it before and I'll say it again. GIMP's UI and feature set are not even close to being ready for prime time production use. I'm not saying it will never happen, but until the codeheads actually start listening to their end users and not just their other codehead friends... only codeheads will want to bother learning The GIMP.
There is nothing revolutionary or new about The GIMP other than it's price tag. There is nothing you can do in the GIMP that I couldn't do eight different ways in Photoshop 10 times faster. To those of you out there working on the code of the GIMP, go grab a veteran Photoshop user and pick his/her brain about what professional graphics people WANT and NEED out of an image editor. Go talk to, shudder, pre-press people, talk to photographers and painters and illustrators and physicists. Talk to graphics production people... and not just your buddies over in the web design department. Graphics production for the web is child's play. Trust me, I do it for a living primarily... the paychecks are good, but the work is mind numbingly simple.
Get out of your command line and talk to the people who use image editors and find out what they want. If it continues to be treated like a Computer Science final project, it will forever be for the geeks and never for the vast majority of people who would use it professionally.
Right wing is more of a pejorative than anything else these days. Conservative isn't a dirty word, but right wing conjures images of Crhsitian Fundamentalist wingnuts with bad hair, neo-nazis, and anti-government miltias with guns and bombs at their disposal.
Do you really mean to brag about being right wing? Or are you really a very conservative Republican?
I disagree, it's used by my many graphics professionals, especially 'film gimp', it's very much a pro tool - for example it can handle file sizes much larger than Photoshop.
Aha! Film Gimp and GIMP serve two totally different purposes. Video files are WAY MORE HUGE than simple still image files. I can see where the scriptability and flexibility of Film GIMP can come in very handy as a tool in film and video post-production. Used in tandem with other post production tools, a very powerful combination can be made.
However, the GIMP as a stand alone productivity tool in a commercial graphic design environment just isn't up to snuff yet as far as featrues and usability go.
A serious attempt to kill off the Mac platform would be a simple refusal to release a Windows only version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign.
D'oh! What I meant was, if they refused to release a Mac version of one of their flagship products and went Windows only. (Sorry, the Linux versions aren't coming ANY time soon... unless the Mac users all switch over to Linux!)
They aren't interested in killing the Mac off either since such a huge portion of their sales are to Mac loyalists who would rather use Linux than switch to Windows on basic principal.
Over the years, Adobe has made it easier and easier for me as a Mac user to enjoy their products and be productive on my platform of choice. It's only gotten better since their products went OS X native.
Conclusion, THEY AREN'T TRYING TO KILL OFF THE MAC OR WINDOWS. They are trying to increase sales on both platforms.
This PC's are faster article, which is just bad, biased reporting anyway, is not a serious attempt by Adobe to kill off the Mac platform. Hopefully it will serve as a fire under Apple's ass to put out the PPC 970's and improve their benchmark numbers. Get that FSB speed up, etc.
A serious attempt to kill off the Mac platform would be a simple refusal to release a Windows only version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign. But then Macromedia or some OSS solution would jump in and go for the gold. 'Twould be a seriously stupid move on their part. Smaller overall marketshare, but there are still millions of designers, artists and video people who will not give up their Macs at any cost. The design realm is still primarily a Mac stronghold. Hell I'm writing this in Safari on OS X.2.4 from within the walls of MS while InDesign 2.0.2 is busy exporting a high res PDF to ship off to a PostScript 3 compatible print shop using a PDF only direct to plate workflow. Even MS knows that publishing and design are still ruled by the Mac platform. If MS realizes this, trust me, so does Adobe!
In essence, your extrapolations are pretty far fetched.
They sell as much mac software (unit per unit) as they do Windows products... except for maybe acrobat.
Mac Photoshop makes up the bulk of Photoshop registrations at Adobe. Sure millions of pirates out there probably have Windows copies of Photoshop, but the Macheads usually pay for their software and Adobe only really cares about the people who pay for and register their products.
"Therefore, the only solution to Linux getting desktop users on its side is to almost completely mirror Windows, at least for the time being. Unfortunate, but I think it's true." See, OSS developers can do it. Look at Gnome. Look at KDE. They understand that a familiar interface breeds aceptance. Why must the GIMP suffer with such a hellish, uninspired, counterintuitive interface when it has a perfectly respectable reference UI?
Look at Macromedia. The ape Adobe's interface at every chance they get. Good software with an interface consistent to what the market expects makes MM a viable competitor to Adobe. I'm still pretty firmly in the Adobe camp, but Dreamweaver made me switch from GoLive. A fmailiar interface on a superior product. It can happen.
Years ago I gave X-Res and Corel Photopaint their day in the sun, but you know what? They were just garbage compared to Photoshop. I tried Painter for a while. A very powerful, expressive program, but way too palette heavy, even by Adobe standards. I never really grasped the program, but many people with traditional media backgrounds did and they saw it as a complement to Photoshop rather than as a competitor. It lives in on to this day in pretty much the same fashion... though having gone through like 8 owners.... one of which was Corel. Shudder.
So an underdog can steal the crown, but that underdog had better have some mad skills. The GIMP isn't even close to being there. It's the genius, harelipped, buck toothed uncle of the digital imaging world that all the pretty people in the family don't deign to talk to. Clean up the interface and put in the features and capabilities that the design market wants and duke it out that way.
Claiming that The GIMP is ready to topple the Photoshop crown right now on Slashdot is just ludicrous. The app has potential, but it needs to grow up and mature a great deal before taking on the throne.
I think a lot of graphic designers have grown up on Photoshop and maybe have forgotten how hard it was to learn how to use Photoshop properly and get use to it. I think this is why many existing graphic designers may not want to switch (developers stuffer from the same issue when new languages come out - there is a productivity trade off to be made by sticking with what you areadly know vs. learning a new technology).
Ok, here's where your point goes astray. Learning the interface of Photoshop is a breeze. Hold your cursor over a tool and a little yellow tab appears that tells you what tool it is. In all of the menus there is a key command designation next to most commands. There is a very helpful "help" feature and there are hundreds of thousands of photoshop users crawling the web helping each other with Photoshop problems. If you need support it's either in the app itself, on the web or help is available from Adobe tech support or one of hundreds of books on the program.
learning the toolset is a different story. I've been playing with PS for 9 years and I still learn something new every time I use it. A little productivity tool, a shortcut, a helpful but unexpected filter effect. You name it. Learning Photoshop is a career long adventure requiring knowledge beyond the app itself. Understanding additive and subtractive color theory and practice. The in's and out's of various file formats and which are geared toward which application thereof. Knowing how to make an animated GIF does not make one a digital imaging wizard. I've checked out a bunch of the "Made with GIMP" sites.... and trust me, these pages were made by developers who discovered the joys of filter effects for the first time.... not graphic artists.
The main argument in favor of the GIMP seems to be that the proponents know how to use to a certain functional extent and have no idea how deep photoshop goes and how powerful it really is and that there is always another trick to learn no matter how well you think you know the application.
I won't use the GIMP until it surpasses PS in terms of power, stability, ease of use and overall productivity. GIMP is free, but lacking in features and usability. Why would I use it? What does it offer me RIGHT NOW that Photoshop doesn't other than a discount?
I still get excited every time I launch PS. I know I'm going to be having fun. Most graphic artist feel something similar. When the GIMP gets THAT, then I will be impressed.
In the professional graphic design world, there are only a handfull of people that use the GIMP. It's a beast to work with because it doesn't adhere to any of the User Interface guidelines that designers are used to. It is definitely a Freeware UNIX App?! It has the potential to be very powerful, but it suffers from the "UI's are for sissies, real users use a CLI" mindset.
learning the interface of any Adobe app is pretty damned easy. Learning the tool sets is quite another matter. Photoshop and Illustrator are not for mom and pop who want to design a family newsletter. They are geared toward working professionals in the graphic arts, web design and film/video indutries. People who are trained to learn and use software effectively. People who, in general, don't have the time or energy to spend fussing about with a free program whose capabilities don't even come close to matching that of Photoshop yet. I know, I've been using Photoshop for 9 years and I've spent about a year studying The GIMP and basically, it's a productivity nightmare. It will remain a novelty for some time until someone or some group decides to really dig in and fix the app's interface and start putting in some of the features that present day users of Photoshop now EXPECT of an image editor. Live, editable type layers. CMYK and Spot Color support, ColorSynch support. Slicing and rolloover capabilties from and easy to use palette. PostScript Level three layer and transparency effects. The list goes on and on and on.
I hope GIMP development keeps advancing because that will keep Adobe on their toes. Maybe Apple will pull another Safari and make an image editing app based off of the GIMP codebase and REALLY give Adobe a run for their money.
Sorry to say it, but GIMP ain't ready for prime time production use yet and anyone who says it's in wide use commercially is out of their mind. It simply isn't true. They don't teach the GIMP at art & design schools where the new generations gain their application and design experience and designers are mostly a non-technical bunch. The GIMP is still an app for technically minded folks.
Now if you read that book cover to cover and STILL insist that the GIMP is as full featured and intuitive as Photoshop I will have to call the funny farm on you.
I have to disagree with the Illustrator crack.Up until version 8 I would have agreed, but 8, 9 and 10 have been rock solid in my experience.... as long as you don't have 9 gazillion fonts active. That's the only time I've had Illustrator give me any grief.
And since version 7 (where Illustrator took a huge leap from version 4 to 7 on the Windows side), it's been fairly comparable across platforms. The Mac usually has an edge because it's just better at dealing with fonts and font management. Illsutrator 10, running under OS X has been absolutely marvelous for me.... especially with a Quartz Extreme graphics card under the hood. Hideous redraw times are a thing of the past!
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I use Final Cut Pro extensively, but I teach FCP and Premiere. Usually during my Premiere classes people ask me what I think of the program and I tell them that Premiere has it's uses but it is not widely used in broadcast television or film production at all. It is used mostly by home users on Windows or by Multimedia houses who don't need all the bells and whistles that Avid, Media100 or FCP offer.
I don't actually discourage them from using Premiere. It has it's uses. But if they're serious about video editing for broadcast or for film I recommend FCP on the Mac or Avid on the PC side. Premiere is just too slow and inflexible for harcore, deadline intensive efiting. Plus, exporting an EDL usually results in a total system crash!
To really sell people on FCP I just show them how FCP treats and handles a leyered Photoshop file and they just go nuts... and usually end up signing up for my next FCP class!
But, man. Freehand is seriously showing it's age. It's print capabilities haven't really changed at all in almost a decade. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it still doesn't sport a PostScript 3 rendering library does it?
Illustrator trounces it at everything except for Flash integration. And Fireworks... HA! What a freaking joke!
Now Flash and Dreamweaver... this is where Macromedia shine. They trounced GoLive long ago and LiveMotion was never ablet o take off, sad. 'Twas a cool little app. then there's the venerable Director. I thought it was dead in the water with all the advancements in Flash, but look, there it is with a brand spankin new MX deignation.
I'm definitely more of an Adobe loyalist, but, man, Dreamweaver and Flash are impressive apps.
I have plenty of options as to what software I use on my Macs. I have plenty of options for peripherals. Too many!
How much choice do you people need? Why don't you just admit that you simply want CHEAPER hardware and software and leave it at that.
I have several dozen programs on my Mac that I almost never even use on a regular basis and about 2 dozen that I use on a fairly frequent basis and about 10 that I use daily if not hourly.
Why would I possibly want more than this? I have more than I could possibly need! Yeah, some of the games on the PC side would be nice, but they're simply distractions that delay my real work.
XPress 5 wasn't even carbonized. It's a Classic app. Meaning it will only run in OS 9 or in Classic in OS X. Heaven forbid you should go that route! You're in for file corruption hell should Quark crap out on you... and it will!
A cocoa version of XPress would require an entire rewrite of the application... something Quark would be very hesitant to do. Just look at their interface. They're still using System 7 conventions!
XPress 6 will be a carbonized version of XPress, meaning it will run natively in OS X and get 90% of the goodies that come with OS X; protected memory etc. But none of the goodies afforded to Cocoa apps. True, native OS X apps. Just having access to System Services is awesome. Safari is a kick ass browser for the very fact that it can access System servcies like spell checking, speech, etc.
Do yourself a favor. Get a copy of InDesign. Import layered AI and PSD files. Import PDF's? Sure! Eight bazillion ways to handle image masks. And it runs natively in OS X.
The funny thing is that I wrote this from within MS on a G4 running OS X in safari. In this dept., we're all Mac all Adobe! All Postscript!
Well, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro don't compete with any existing Adobe products. Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express don't really compete with Premiere, they kick it's can out of the water!
I love Adobe. Photoshop & Illustrator are my life's blood. After Effects is a great prosumer level motion graphics and compositing app suitable for broadcast video and even for film, but Shake is even more capable at what After Effects does best. Then you have Flame and Inferno which just kick serious booty.
Avid is steaming over Final Cut Pro & Express. Apple is doing really well in the video editing market. iPhoto will never ever be a competitor to Photoshop. Adobe is just peeved because I think they're now starting to realize that Premiere is pretty much a low end app that's about as user friendly as your garden variety Windows app. They need a scapegoat and they're taking it out on the wrong people.
If they want video editing marrketshare, they'd better do a total overhaul. One of my film production teachers laughs at the students who use Premiere. He says you're better off with an iMac running iMovie. Frankly, i agree. It's easier to use and you can export to just about any of the same video formats. Video transitions on one video track? Gimme a break!
Let's face it, Premiere is a joke. Adobe is capable of better. It's a sad day when Apple's programs more efficiently handle native Adobe file formats better than Adobe programs do. (Import a layered photoshop file into FCP and you'll see what I mean!)
Sometimes difficult to get working properly? I've been using Pagemaker since version 1 and have never had this sort of a problem "getting it working". Your font issue may be more Windows related than it is PageMaker related. Hint: Ditch TrueType!
On the Mac side of things, getting an Adobe app is as simple as double clicking the installer icon. The most difficult thing about installing an Adobe app is typing in the 3 kazillion character initialization key.
Until the GIMP supports layer styles, CMYK and the bells and whistle (not to mention good old productivity enhancers!), I'm going to stick with Photoshop on Mac OS X. Thankyouverymuch.
No. iPhoto doesn't even come close to being as capable as even Photoshop Elements. If all you want to do is resize an image or remove redeye, iPhoto is great. If you want to do any sort of image manipulation at all, but don't want to pay for PS, get Elements.
Speaking as a member of the left, the script kiddies are not my heroes and will not be considered such until they can take down Exxon and Shell's websites. I'm no hacker, so someone get out there and deface the oil corporations! This war benefits them more than anybody else!
I never mentioned anything about a republic versus a democracy. We live in a rapidly crumblic democratic republic. Democracy tends to survive better in smaller communities where the populace can actually get together to discuss the issues at hand that affect their communities. Republics occur to manage for the shear geographical size of a large populace.
Rome was a republic and look where that got them! And let's face it, we're the New Rome?!
Slashdot Mirror
Right on! I'm with ya, man! Wish I had some moderator points right now!
Rather than reply to individual posters all I can do is shake my head at the all-to-predictable lack of vision and Fear Uncertainty and Doubt by users in face of moving away from the methods Adobe has foisted upon them.
Also, Adobe has never really "foisted" a user interface on anyone. It's not like they are some tyrant that says, "You will do it my way or there wil be dire consequences!". They actually listen to the users unlike, say, Quark who is still stuck in the dark ages of System 7 UI design. Quark has never advanced in terms of advancing the uiability of their applications. Macromedia has made some progress, especially with the release of their MX series of products, but they still don't compare to the streamlined finesse of the standard Adobe UI. (And no, I work for Microsoft (as a contractor), NOT Adobe) And pretty soon, working in an MS application will mean just pressing buttons on the nine million layers of toolbars that clutter the screen and obscure the work area.
And the GIMP has vision? It's breaking paradigms? Sure thing, buddy. It's interesting in it's software development model, but that's about it. Right now it's just a knockoff of photoshop with some added scriptability and a noticeable lack of CMYK and Spot Color support... not too mention very little support for Postscript level 3 vector and transparency effects... live, editable type layers.... throw on top of it all a UI that is more of an afterthought than anything else.
Think I'm going to download the latest version of MacGIMP and give it another shot. See if it is a "paradigm shifting" application that flies in the face of "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt" and thwarts the perceptions of "users in fear of moving away from the methods Adobe has foisted upon them".
I've been down this road many times before.... and when it comes tim to get some serious work accomplished... I always end right back in Photoshop.... waiting for the next big GIMP flamewar to start here... then I jump back into the GIMP for a while.... right back to Photoshop.
I'm not afraid to use the GIMP, I just don't like it at this point.
Well someone has been reading their Chomsky!
Hey, if the OSS world can get their act together and create a user friendly version of the GIMP that offers all the flexibility and features of Photoshop and surpasses them, then I'm on board. I've been a contract designer for years and I've always had to adapt to new situations, new workflows, new programs on an almost weekly basis. Don't give me the "dominant paradigm" garbage either. That's just your college sociology course still haning on and it's a catchy buzzword among kneejerk college liberals.
The next generation of designers "who have a new fresh approach to design and who are untainted by pre-conceptions about how a particular program should behave" are going to be taught Adobe and Macromedia products in school. They will use them on their first jobs and after. There will be no revolution among the next generation of designers unless there is something truly better to supplant the current crop of tools.
Your Chomskyesque tyrade holds no water until you can prove that something better is actually in the making. I've said it before and I'll say it again. GIMP's UI and feature set are not even close to being ready for prime time production use. I'm not saying it will never happen, but until the codeheads actually start listening to their end users and not just their other codehead friends... only codeheads will want to bother learning The GIMP.
There is nothing revolutionary or new about The GIMP other than it's price tag. There is nothing you can do in the GIMP that I couldn't do eight different ways in Photoshop 10 times faster. To those of you out there working on the code of the GIMP, go grab a veteran Photoshop user and pick his/her brain about what professional graphics people WANT and NEED out of an image editor. Go talk to, shudder, pre-press people, talk to photographers and painters and illustrators and physicists. Talk to graphics production people... and not just your buddies over in the web design department. Graphics production for the web is child's play. Trust me, I do it for a living primarily... the paychecks are good, but the work is mind numbingly simple.
Get out of your command line and talk to the people who use image editors and find out what they want. If it continues to be treated like a Computer Science final project, it will forever be for the geeks and never for the vast majority of people who would use it professionally.
Right wing is more of a pejorative than anything else these days. Conservative isn't a dirty word, but right wing conjures images of Crhsitian Fundamentalist wingnuts with bad hair, neo-nazis, and anti-government miltias with guns and bombs at their disposal.
Do you really mean to brag about being right wing? Or are you really a very conservative Republican?
Right on mom!
I disagree, it's used by my many graphics professionals, especially 'film gimp', it's very much a pro tool - for example it can handle file sizes much larger than Photoshop.
Aha! Film Gimp and GIMP serve two totally different purposes. Video files are WAY MORE HUGE than simple still image files. I can see where the scriptability and flexibility of Film GIMP can come in very handy as a tool in film and video post-production. Used in tandem with other post production tools, a very powerful combination can be made.
However, the GIMP as a stand alone productivity tool in a commercial graphic design environment just isn't up to snuff yet as far as featrues and usability go.
A serious attempt to kill off the Mac platform would be a simple refusal to release a Windows only version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign.
D'oh! What I meant was, if they refused to release a Mac version of one of their flagship products and went Windows only. (Sorry, the Linux versions aren't coming ANY time soon... unless the Mac users all switch over to Linux!)
They aren't interested in killing the Mac off either since such a huge portion of their sales are to Mac loyalists who would rather use Linux than switch to Windows on basic principal.
Over the years, Adobe has made it easier and easier for me as a Mac user to enjoy their products and be productive on my platform of choice. It's only gotten better since their products went OS X native.
Conclusion, THEY AREN'T TRYING TO KILL OFF THE MAC OR WINDOWS. They are trying to increase sales on both platforms.
This PC's are faster article, which is just bad, biased reporting anyway, is not a serious attempt by Adobe to kill off the Mac platform. Hopefully it will serve as a fire under Apple's ass to put out the PPC 970's and improve their benchmark numbers. Get that FSB speed up, etc.
A serious attempt to kill off the Mac platform would be a simple refusal to release a Windows only version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign. But then Macromedia or some OSS solution would jump in and go for the gold. 'Twould be a seriously stupid move on their part. Smaller overall marketshare, but there are still millions of designers, artists and video people who will not give up their Macs at any cost. The design realm is still primarily a Mac stronghold. Hell I'm writing this in Safari on OS X.2.4 from within the walls of MS while InDesign 2.0.2 is busy exporting a high res PDF to ship off to a PostScript 3 compatible print shop using a PDF only direct to plate workflow. Even MS knows that publishing and design are still ruled by the Mac platform. If MS realizes this, trust me, so does Adobe!
In essence, your extrapolations are pretty far fetched.
They sell as much mac software (unit per unit) as they do Windows products... except for maybe acrobat.
Mac Photoshop makes up the bulk of Photoshop registrations at Adobe. Sure millions of pirates out there probably have Windows copies of Photoshop, but the Macheads usually pay for their software and Adobe only really cares about the people who pay for and register their products.
"Therefore, the only solution to Linux getting desktop users on its side is to almost completely mirror Windows, at least for the time being. Unfortunate, but I think it's true."
See, OSS developers can do it. Look at Gnome. Look at KDE. They understand that a familiar interface breeds aceptance. Why must the GIMP suffer with such a hellish, uninspired, counterintuitive interface when it has a perfectly respectable reference UI?
Look at Macromedia. The ape Adobe's interface at every chance they get. Good software with an interface consistent to what the market expects makes MM a viable competitor to Adobe. I'm still pretty firmly in the Adobe camp, but Dreamweaver made me switch from GoLive. A fmailiar interface on a superior product. It can happen.
Years ago I gave X-Res and Corel Photopaint their day in the sun, but you know what? They were just garbage compared to Photoshop. I tried Painter for a while. A very powerful, expressive program, but way too palette heavy, even by Adobe standards. I never really grasped the program, but many people with traditional media backgrounds did and they saw it as a complement to Photoshop rather than as a competitor. It lives in on to this day in pretty much the same fashion... though having gone through like 8 owners.... one of which was Corel. Shudder.
So an underdog can steal the crown, but that underdog had better have some mad skills. The GIMP isn't even close to being there. It's the genius, harelipped, buck toothed uncle of the digital imaging world that all the pretty people in the family don't deign to talk to. Clean up the interface and put in the features and capabilities that the design market wants and duke it out that way.
Claiming that The GIMP is ready to topple the Photoshop crown right now on Slashdot is just ludicrous. The app has potential, but it needs to grow up and mature a great deal before taking on the throne.
I think a lot of graphic designers have grown up on Photoshop and maybe have forgotten how hard it was to learn how to use Photoshop properly and get use to it. I think this is why many existing graphic designers may not want to switch (developers stuffer from the same issue when new languages come out - there is a productivity trade off to be made by sticking with what you areadly know vs. learning a new technology).
Ok, here's where your point goes astray. Learning the interface of Photoshop is a breeze. Hold your cursor over a tool and a little yellow tab appears that tells you what tool it is. In all of the menus there is a key command designation next to most commands. There is a very helpful "help" feature and there are hundreds of thousands of photoshop users crawling the web helping each other with Photoshop problems. If you need support it's either in the app itself, on the web or help is available from Adobe tech support or one of hundreds of books on the program.
learning the toolset is a different story. I've been playing with PS for 9 years and I still learn something new every time I use it. A little productivity tool, a shortcut, a helpful but unexpected filter effect. You name it. Learning Photoshop is a career long adventure requiring knowledge beyond the app itself. Understanding additive and subtractive color theory and practice. The in's and out's of various file formats and which are geared toward which application thereof. Knowing how to make an animated GIF does not make one a digital imaging wizard. I've checked out a bunch of the "Made with GIMP" sites.... and trust me, these pages were made by developers who discovered the joys of filter effects for the first time.... not graphic artists.
The main argument in favor of the GIMP seems to be that the proponents know how to use to a certain functional extent and have no idea how deep photoshop goes and how powerful it really is and that there is always another trick to learn no matter how well you think you know the application.
I won't use the GIMP until it surpasses PS in terms of power, stability, ease of use and overall productivity. GIMP is free, but lacking in features and usability. Why would I use it? What does it offer me RIGHT NOW that Photoshop doesn't other than a discount?
I still get excited every time I launch PS. I know I'm going to be having fun. Most graphic artist feel something similar. When the GIMP gets THAT, then I will be impressed.
In the professional graphic design world, there are only a handfull of people that use the GIMP. It's a beast to work with because it doesn't adhere to any of the User Interface guidelines that designers are used to. It is definitely a Freeware UNIX App?! It has the potential to be very powerful, but it suffers from the "UI's are for sissies, real users use a CLI" mindset.
7 64 53694X/qid=1048869038/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-397569 9-8879107?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
learning the interface of any Adobe app is pretty damned easy. Learning the tool sets is quite another matter. Photoshop and Illustrator are not for mom and pop who want to design a family newsletter. They are geared toward working professionals in the graphic arts, web design and film/video indutries. People who are trained to learn and use software effectively. People who, in general, don't have the time or energy to spend fussing about with a free program whose capabilities don't even come close to matching that of Photoshop yet. I know, I've been using Photoshop for 9 years and I've spent about a year studying The GIMP and basically, it's a productivity nightmare. It will remain a novelty for some time until someone or some group decides to really dig in and fix the app's interface and start putting in some of the features that present day users of Photoshop now EXPECT of an image editor. Live, editable type layers. CMYK and Spot Color support, ColorSynch support. Slicing and rolloover capabilties from and easy to use palette. PostScript Level three layer and transparency effects. The list goes on and on and on.
I hope GIMP development keeps advancing because that will keep Adobe on their toes. Maybe Apple will pull another Safari and make an image editing app based off of the GIMP codebase and REALLY give Adobe a run for their money.
Sorry to say it, but GIMP ain't ready for prime time production use yet and anyone who says it's in wide use commercially is out of their mind. It simply isn't true. They don't teach the GIMP at art & design schools where the new generations gain their application and design experience and designers are mostly a non-technical bunch. The GIMP is still an app for technically minded folks.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Now if you read that book cover to cover and STILL insist that the GIMP is as full featured and intuitive as Photoshop I will have to call the funny farm on you.
I have to disagree with the Illustrator crack.Up until version 8 I would have agreed, but 8, 9 and 10 have been rock solid in my experience.... as long as you don't have 9 gazillion fonts active. That's the only time I've had Illustrator give me any grief.
And since version 7 (where Illustrator took a huge leap from version 4 to 7 on the Windows side), it's been fairly comparable across platforms. The Mac usually has an edge because it's just better at dealing with fonts and font management. Illsutrator 10, running under OS X has been absolutely marvelous for me.... especially with a Quartz Extreme graphics card under the hood. Hideous redraw times are a thing of the past!
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I use Final Cut Pro extensively, but I teach FCP and Premiere. Usually during my Premiere classes people ask me what I think of the program and I tell them that Premiere has it's uses but it is not widely used in broadcast television or film production at all. It is used mostly by home users on Windows or by Multimedia houses who don't need all the bells and whistles that Avid, Media100 or FCP offer.
I don't actually discourage them from using Premiere. It has it's uses. But if they're serious about video editing for broadcast or for film I recommend FCP on the Mac or Avid on the PC side. Premiere is just too slow and inflexible for harcore, deadline intensive efiting. Plus, exporting an EDL usually results in a total system crash!
To really sell people on FCP I just show them how FCP treats and handles a leyered Photoshop file and they just go nuts... and usually end up signing up for my next FCP class!
But, man. Freehand is seriously showing it's age. It's print capabilities haven't really changed at all in almost a decade. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it still doesn't sport a PostScript 3 rendering library does it?
Illustrator trounces it at everything except for Flash integration. And Fireworks... HA! What a freaking joke!
Now Flash and Dreamweaver... this is where Macromedia shine. They trounced GoLive long ago and LiveMotion was never ablet o take off, sad. 'Twas a cool little app. then there's the venerable Director. I thought it was dead in the water with all the advancements in Flash, but look, there it is with a brand spankin new MX deignation.
I'm definitely more of an Adobe loyalist, but, man, Dreamweaver and Flash are impressive apps.
I'm just glad MM sold Final Cut to Apple!
TROLL! TROLL!
I have plenty of options as to what software I use on my Macs. I have plenty of options for peripherals. Too many!
How much choice do you people need? Why don't you just admit that you simply want CHEAPER hardware and software and leave it at that.
I have several dozen programs on my Mac that I almost never even use on a regular basis and about 2 dozen that I use on a fairly frequent basis and about 10 that I use daily if not hourly.
Why would I possibly want more than this? I have more than I could possibly need! Yeah, some of the games on the PC side would be nice, but they're simply distractions that delay my real work.
Man, I wish I had the statistics handy! But several years ago, Mac versions of photoshop accounted for 70% of all registered versions of Photoshop.
This coming from 3% of the computing market! Ha!
I'll bet anything that there are still Quadra 840's out there running Photoshop 3 as scanning stations!
XPress 5 wasn't even carbonized. It's a Classic app. Meaning it will only run in OS 9 or in Classic in OS X. Heaven forbid you should go that route! You're in for file corruption hell should Quark crap out on you... and it will!
A cocoa version of XPress would require an entire rewrite of the application... something Quark would be very hesitant to do. Just look at their interface. They're still using System 7 conventions!
XPress 6 will be a carbonized version of XPress, meaning it will run natively in OS X and get 90% of the goodies that come with OS X; protected memory etc. But none of the goodies afforded to Cocoa apps. True, native OS X apps. Just having access to System Services is awesome. Safari is a kick ass browser for the very fact that it can access System servcies like spell checking, speech, etc.
Do yourself a favor. Get a copy of InDesign. Import layered AI and PSD files. Import PDF's? Sure! Eight bazillion ways to handle image masks. And it runs natively in OS X.
The funny thing is that I wrote this from within MS on a G4 running OS X in safari. In this dept., we're all Mac all Adobe! All Postscript!
Well, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro don't compete with any existing Adobe products. Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express don't really compete with Premiere, they kick it's can out of the water!
I love Adobe. Photoshop & Illustrator are my life's blood. After Effects is a great prosumer level motion graphics and compositing app suitable for broadcast video and even for film, but Shake is even more capable at what After Effects does best. Then you have Flame and Inferno which just kick serious booty.
Avid is steaming over Final Cut Pro & Express. Apple is doing really well in the video editing market. iPhoto will never ever be a competitor to Photoshop. Adobe is just peeved because I think they're now starting to realize that Premiere is pretty much a low end app that's about as user friendly as your garden variety Windows app. They need a scapegoat and they're taking it out on the wrong people.
If they want video editing marrketshare, they'd better do a total overhaul. One of my film production teachers laughs at the students who use Premiere. He says you're better off with an iMac running iMovie. Frankly, i agree. It's easier to use and you can export to just about any of the same video formats. Video transitions on one video track? Gimme a break!
Let's face it, Premiere is a joke. Adobe is capable of better. It's a sad day when Apple's programs more efficiently handle native Adobe file formats better than Adobe programs do. (Import a layered photoshop file into FCP and you'll see what I mean!)
Sometimes difficult to get working properly? I've been using Pagemaker since version 1 and have never had this sort of a problem "getting it working". Your font issue may be more Windows related than it is PageMaker related. Hint: Ditch TrueType!
On the Mac side of things, getting an Adobe app is as simple as double clicking the installer icon. The most difficult thing about installing an Adobe app is typing in the 3 kazillion character initialization key.
Until the GIMP supports layer styles, CMYK and the bells and whistle (not to mention good old productivity enhancers!), I'm going to stick with Photoshop on Mac OS X. Thankyouverymuch.
No. iPhoto doesn't even come close to being as capable as even Photoshop Elements. If all you want to do is resize an image or remove redeye, iPhoto is great. If you want to do any sort of image manipulation at all, but don't want to pay for PS, get Elements.
Speaking as a member of the left, the script kiddies are not my heroes and will not be considered such until they can take down Exxon and Shell's websites. I'm no hacker, so someone get out there and deface the oil corporations! This war benefits them more than anybody else!
Oh please comparing hackers defacing corporate website to terrorists who blow up buildings and take human life is absurd!
Yes, it may be juvenile and not terribly productive, but calling them terrorists is just misinformed and ignorant.
Maybe these corporations should spend a bit of money and manpower on securing their sites. Ever think of that?
I never mentioned anything about a republic versus a democracy. We live in a rapidly crumblic democratic republic. Democracy tends to survive better in smaller communities where the populace can actually get together to discuss the issues at hand that affect their communities. Republics occur to manage for the shear geographical size of a large populace.
Rome was a republic and look where that got them! And let's face it, we're the New Rome?!