GIMP vs Photoshop

[krissuba]

Hey friend,

does anyone know if there is any outdoor shooting organised by any company. say photographic club or something? I am interested in night outing so I can improve. so is my friends here. Everyone can learn how to shoot a good photo. many people have difficulty mastering night photoshoot because the scene is different, the color tone is different. day photogrpahy is very straight forward. pretty easy.

 

[Amaury]

Gimp user here forever. It has all I need and runs natively on my favorite platform (Linux). I especially enjoy using the Lomo script once in a while. FYI, dodge, burn, heal and stuff are all available in Gimp, if you feel that a few hours of learning are worth saving the price of photoshop (whatever it is Singapore, 1k+ euros here) then you should probably at least give it a try.

 

[ST1100]

A quick question for GIMP/PS users: if i already own Photoshop and am somewhat proficient in it, is there still a reason to pick up GIMP? In other words, does GIMP bring anything to the table that PS doesn't? Is GIMP just playing perpetual catchup with PS?

 

[LittleWolf]

In other words, does GIMP bring anything to the table that PS doesn't?

GIMP runs on platforms that Photoshop doesn't. Having to boot another operating system just to run photoshop is a productivity killer.

 

[Amaury]

It's also somewhat less resource-intensive than Photoshop. Apart from that there are quite good foreground select and perspective cloning tools (not sure if these are available under PS), there's also stuff to remove vignetting... See demos here : http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4-videos.html

I personally appreciate the fact that I can easily write my own plugins in a simple PL as well (though I have no idea how it's done in PhotoShop, it might be just as easy)

 

[StreetShooter]

A quick question for GIMP/PS users: if i already own Photoshop and am somewhat proficient in it, is there still a reason to pick up GIMP? In other words, does GIMP bring anything to the table that PS doesn't? Is GIMP just playing perpetual catchup with PS?

The short answer is yes.

I picked up the latest version of GIMP because my PS 4.0 was beginning to get long in the tooth. Hangs often even after a re-install (probably because of too many Windows updates).

Not sure whether the latest PS has an alignment tool where you can align and distribute different layers (eg centre a text layer), but this is one of the tools that I find useful.

I often used PS actions, but script-fu is just as good if not better, because you can specify the exact parameters to use for each step you use. You can also run batch files to process, of course. Then there's the dynamic keyboad shortcut mode, where you simply navigate to the menu item you want and press the key you want to use to activate it. So simple.

The user interface is very much closer to PS than it used to be, so much so that GimpShop has stopped development because there's no need for it anymore. I daresay a PS user would nowadays be able to find his way around GIMP quite easily.

Finally, you have to pay to upgrade your version of PS. GIMP is free. That, to me, is a very compelling reason to become familiar with GIMP.

Want to learn script-fu? Start with this:

http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/files/script-fu-template.scm

It's just a small template. You can fill in the blanks by calling the procedures shown in Xtns > Procedure Browser in the GIMP main window. Just insert the procedure with brackets and fill in the parameters you want. It's that easy. You can also call plug-ins and other script-fu scripts as well.

 

[serametin]

i have been using photoshop, only today started trying out gimp. so far so good... :thumbsup:

 

[luvgreenery]

I've been using Photoshop for years to creat web/digital graphics, so I'm used to the Photoshop workspace and how it functions.

By the way, Adobe recently released the Adobe Photoshop Express Beta. Has anyone tried it yet? Here's the link - https://www.photoshop.com/express/

 

[slaam]

I've been using Photoshop for years to creat web/digital graphics, so I'm used to the Photoshop workspace and how it functions.

By the way, Adobe recently released the Adobe Photoshop Express Beta. Has anyone tried it yet? Here's the link - https://www.photoshop.com/express/

yups tried it.. minimal features as expected but nice idea but they weren't the first to do it actually.. web image editors have been around for quite a while.. mostly using java on webservers
but their version does look snazzier and surprisingly still quite fast..

 

[jsoldier]

I've been using both PS and Gimp. Used PS only at work though, cos I don't think it's worth buying PS for my own use at home.
So far Gimp is good enough for me, healing brush, dodge and burns, shadow/highlight plugin and all this for free.
Another advantage of Gimp is that I can use it both in my windows desktop and my linux laptop and hopefully soon in my Mac

It took me some getting used to it when I started with Gimp few years ago (I start with PS first), but I find both are equally easy to use if you use it often enough.

 

[adept1]

The GIMP is crap in my opinion - the Unix style interface is just not nice at all on Windows or Mac. If you want a free alternative to Photoshop on Windows try Paint.net. It's much easier to use than the GIMP.

 

[slaam]

The GIMP is crap in my opinion - the Unix style interface is just not nice at all on Windows or Mac. If you want a free alternative to Photoshop on Windows try Paint.net. It's much easier to use than the GIMP.

define "not nice at all on Windows or Mac" :think:

 

[adept1]

define "not nice at all on Windows or Mac" :think:

Since the interface is basically a direct port from Unix with the X11 windowing system, the GUI is not familiar at all to Windows or Mac users.

I've used a modified version of GIMP called GIMPShop that tries to be more like a normal Windows/Mac application, but I still never really liked the feel of it.

I think most Windows users would greatly prefer Paint.NET as a free Photoshop replacement. The truth is nothing can really touch Photoshop, but it's hard for a non-professional user to justify the expense.

GIMP is a powerful piece of software and can do a lot of the same stuff as Photoshop (if you ignore professional printing colorspaces). I just don't like the feel of it.

 

[Amaury]

You don't sound like you know what Unix or X11 are. For that matter, Gimp never uses X11 when you run it on Windows, GTK+ calls GDI+ directly, and you can also use a native GTK+ version on Mac OS (though not enabled by default right now). Gimp UI style has nothing to do with either Unix (on which it most probably never ran by the way) or X11 (its default backend, but not the only one), it just happens to be this way because the people who designed it meant it to be this way.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter.

 

[qing02051981]

Try an alternative to photoshop. Almost similiar interface
http://www.getpaint.net/

 

[Churchwolf]

I much prefer photoshop. While the program itself it probably a little difficult if one doesn't have much experience with it, there is pretty much nothing you can not do with it. I use PhotoShop CS3 and LightRoom 1.2. Those two combined are, IMHO, unbeatable.

 

[slaam]

Since the interface is basically a direct port from Unix with the X11 windowing system, the GUI is not familiar at all to Windows or Mac users.

I've used a modified version of GIMP called GIMPShop that tries to be more like a normal Windows/Mac application, but I still never really liked the feel of it.

I think most Windows users would greatly prefer Paint.NET as a free Photoshop replacement. The truth is nothing can really touch Photoshop, but it's hard for a non-professional user to justify the expense.

GIMP is a powerful piece of software and can do a lot of the same stuff as Photoshop (if you ignore professional printing colorspaces). I just don't like the feel of it.

hmm would changing the skin help?
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/tutorial-changing-The-Look-Of-Your-Gimp-154-1.html

fyi there's ALOT of X11 window managers all with a different feel. so its not really X11's fault . I often have to teach photoshop to others.. so IMHO ps isn't as intuitive as most ppl say it is. BUT once u are used to PS the rest of the advanced things fit in easier. That being said I often wonder if I had to teach a newbie i would prefer to teach him/her gimp so that they can go home and install it in their home computers.

 

[adept1]

You don't sound like you know what Unix or X11 are. For that matter, Gimp never uses X11 when you run it on Windows, GTK+ calls GDI+ directly, and you can also use a native GTK+ version on Mac OS (though not enabled by default right now). Gimp UI style has nothing to do with either Unix (on which it most probably never ran by the way) or X11 (its default backend, but not the only one), it just happens to be this way because the people who designed it meant it to be this way.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter.

I guess all those years I've spent with Solaris and Mac OS X have been wasted

I never said GIMP uses X11 on Windows - I said it's a port of a Unix/X11 application. I should have said Linux. Excuse me.

Bottom line is most Windows and Mac users are accustomed to MDI style applications with one menu bar at the top of the screen that controls the foreground window, and this is not the way GIMP behaves.

 

[slaam]

You don't sound like you know what Unix or X11 are. For that matter, Gimp never uses X11 when you run it on Windows, GTK+ calls GDI+ directly, and you can also use a native GTK+ version on Mac OS (though not enabled by default right now). Gimp UI style has nothing to do with either Unix (on which it most probably never ran by the way) or X11 (its default backend, but not the only one), it just happens to be this way because the people who designed it meant it to be this way.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter.

haha oops dint c ur reply.. if i saw wont have bothered to explained that part.. oh well at least he bothered to google for info to give a less vague reply..

 

[slaam]

I guess all those years I've spent with Solaris and Mac OS X have been wasted

I never said GIMP uses X11 on Windows - I said it's a port of a Unix/X11 application. I should have said Linux. Excuse me.

Bottom line is most Windows and Mac users are accustomed to MDI style applications with one menu bar at the top of the screen that controls the foreground window, and this is not the way GIMP behaves.

Mac OS X .. hmm if ppl wanna run X11 on that i guess there are ppl who like X11 then? :bsmilie:
strangely, when i used PS I kinda arranged the toolbar outside of the app window so that part of the pic doesn't get hidden behind the toolbar. its one of those quirks in PS i never understand. When i used GIMP it dawned on me I wasn't the only one with that problem. having the toolbar as a separate window saves me the trouble of pressing tab to hide them when i need to work on the image. .. alas gimp is not perfect.. often times i wish the darn toolbar window is smaller like PS's.. but at least its resizable lah..