GIMP; that does it!

[MaxElmar]

I've made a pretty good effort at using the GIMP - at least twice in the last decade. Just couldn't make it the interface work for me.

PS is horridly overpriced - but not for me. Academic pricing makes it very reasonable. Software companies are very smart to cut deals with the academic world... all my software is legal.

 

[robbeiflex]

I use GIMP for some simple rotating, cropping and editing. I don't contribute to it nor do I pay for it, but it keeps me from pirating PS so I'm happy with it. The Ubuntu Linux OS I run it on is much better than the Windows Vista it replaced, which is how I discovered it. After reading the above I might look into other options though. Thanks for the info!

Usually you get what you pay for, but in this case you get more. Whether it's what you wanted is up to you.

 

[wgerrard]

I don't like GIMP and use photoshop but it broke my heart when adobe made MDI support for photoshop under macosx. It has no logic behind it except to make win->mac switchers happy with their bad habits.

Agreed, seconded, and thirded. PS on a Mac breaks a lot of Apple interface rules.

I used GIMP before I used PS, and gave up on it because I didn't like the interface. Meaning: I am not criticizing GIMP because it doesn't work like PS. I'm criticizing GIMP because I don't like the way it works.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

PS is horridly overpriced - but not for me. Academic pricing makes it very reasonable. Software companies are very smart to cut deals with the academic world... all my software is legal.

Same here--I can only afford PS because I'm a perfesser. I got Lightroom 2 for $35 and PS CS3 for $110.

I do wish GIMP were better.

 

[rxmd]

It has such UI (3 windows) because linux and most of other systems than windows have workspaces. MDI (big window with nested windows inside, like in photoshop) sucks because it workarounds absence of workspaces in operating system.

I guess the problem people have with GIMP'S UI is not the fact that not everything is in a single big window, rather that the whole thing is inconsistent. When you have GIMP open with a number of images, you have a whole lot of big windows and one small one with the tools and menu. This small window looks and feels like what would be just a toolbar in other programs. However to GIMP this is the heart of the program, and if you want to close the toolbar the whole program shuts down. On Windows and Unix at least, on the Mac I don't know, but since it uses X Windows it's probably the same. This is just about as un-Mac-ish as MDI.

I know that this is how some programs were organized back in the 1980s when graphical Unix workstations were cool and the alternative were UIs like what you see today in Blender. However it's 2010 now. Even on Unix they're getting away from it, with both KDE and Gnome. I install GIMP regularly every year or so and then uninstall it again and go back to Photoshop and Paint.Net when I notice things haven't really changed. If you raise the point about interface consistency all you get from the GIMP crowd is a big "We don't want MDI! Nonononono!", as if that was the only thing to be said about GUIs. And from then on it's all zealotry and lack of ideas.

 

[kmerenkov]

I was referring to people being scared from the first sight when they saw GIMP 🙂
Because it IS different.

And yes, it's UI sucks in a lot of other places (like canvas resizing dialog).

 

[Ferentix]

Personally, I've been using The GIMP for years, and generally don't think much about the interface anymore. PS, on the other hand, I have used extremely rarely and found confusing and weird because it simply wasn't what I was used to. I'm not saying GIMP's interface couldn't be improved, just that I'm used to it to the point where it's almost second nature to find any of the tools I use regularly. It didn't take all that long to get the gist of things either, but then again I was probably in my early teens when I started using it, my mushy kid brain ideal for soaking up new things 😛

GIMP is far from perfect, but it suits my needs just fine. It does the things I personally need it for competently; for me, the price of PS just wouldn't justify the improvements I might see using it. Finally, I wouldn't really want to install Windows just for one program.

EDIT: This is my first post? I'd swear I posted in one of the other forums already...

 

[N. Bruce Nelson]

GIMP is getting a new graphics engine (GEGL) that will support 16 bit. The interface will also have major changes. When 2.8 comes out, it might be worth trying again for many people.

 

[payasam]

I have used the GIMP for years and do not propose to change. I do not find its interface any worse or any better than that of any other software. It is no more than something to be learnt. I grant that there are those who never learn.

 

[M4cr0s]

I can understand you guys stating you have no problem with the interface because you've gotten used to it. One can get used to or learn almost anything with a little effort. For instance I prefer the old-style Windows start menu having used it since '95. In the beginning I didn't like it at all after DOS and Win 3x. Nowadays Windows 7s "modern" start menu variety freaks me out (they removed the ability to switch to "simple".). Classic example of force of habit 😉

However, Adobe is not just Photoshop, but a wide range of applications, all with a pretty similar interfaces and "logic", especially after CS3/CS4 came. Many do already use other Adobe products professionally even if they are not photographers so adopting to using PS for their photo hobby might be quite easy (this can obviously go the other way too, from PS to other Adobe applications).

Mac

 

[rxmd]

I have used the GIMP for years and do not propose to change. I do not find its interface any worse or any better than that of any other software. It is no more than something to be learnt. I grant that there are those who never learn.

It is probably also a question what to compare it with. For example, I started using the word processing and the typesetting system I use because back then the mainstream word processors like WordPerfect and Word didn't support what I needed. So I was quite eager to embrace the learning curve, in spite of the software being quite arcane. I guess if GIMP was without alternative in my personal usage I would have been more be more willing to see it in terms of embracing a learning curve, rather than seeing it as a problem of questionable software design.

 

[payasam]

Philipp, I know of no equally capable and free alternative to the GIMP.

 

[rxmd]

You're right, if "free" is a criterion. That's why I wrote about my personal usage; for me PS usage is free because I can use a university license, so that's my reference for comparison.

On Windows, if "free as in beer" is free enough as opposed to "free as in speech", Paint.NET has been coming along very nicely, in terms of features, stability and user interface. For day-to-day task such as basic resizing, cropping, colour correction etc. I prefer it to the GIMP.

On Linux or MacOS I know nothing similar.

 

[wgerrard]

I used GIMP before I used either PS or PSE, so my frustration with it wasn't a matter of "It doesn't copy PS".

I didn't find the GIMP interface to be especially daunting. I actually prefer its basic structure more than PS's monolithic take-over-my-screen approach. What I did find daunting was not the mechanics of using the interface, but understanding what each capability could do for me. E.g., what's a layer? Why would I want to create one? Knowing how to use an interface to complete a task is pointless if you don't know why you'd want to do that in the first place.

PS and PSE have an abundance of after-market books and sites to hold the hands of neophytes. In my experience, that support is barely visible for much open source software. I suspect GIMP was very consciously coded as a direct alternative to PS. Perhaps there is room for photo manipulation software, commercial or open source, that takes an entirely different approach.

 

[payasam]

For Windows there are many free alternatives: Arcsoft, XNView, IrfanView, PhotoFiltre, a Chinese product whose name I forget and one written by an Indian.... Each is good for certain things, but none even approaches the power of the GIMP. I have to put IPTC metadata into photo files, and that is something the GIMP cannot do: so I use Digikam or Gwenview for that job. XNView through Wine is an option which can be used with TIFF files also, unlike the others, which are JPEG-only.

 

[rxmd]

For Windows there are many free alternatives: Arcsoft, XNView, IrfanView, PhotoFiltre, a Chinese product whose name I forget and one written by an Indian.... Each is good for certain things, but none even approaches the power of the GIMP. I have to put IPTC metadata into photo files, and that is something the GIMP cannot do: so I use Digikam or Gwenview for that job. XNView through Wine is an option which can be used with TIFF files also, unlike the others, which are JPEG-only.

Yes, I was mainly thinking of the editing aspect. For cataloguing I largely use XNView myself. Note that XNView doesn't support writing 16-bit TIFFs, it will cut off the upper 8 bit if you save any changes to the file.

 

[payasam]

Not a problem <grin> because the GIMP is 8 bits only.