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GIMP development - What’s the point?

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Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#101

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work…

For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?

I use Photoshop regularly (over 18 years) and earlier this year I gave GIMP another honest 2-3 week try. There are some big conceptual differences, but the small things like it not remembering what folder you last loaded images from slowed me down too much.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about php is like complaining about an axe: Yes, it might hurt incompetent people but the people who master it have a truly nifty tool at their disposal.

Complaining about PHP is sanity of someone who learned more than one language.

As someone who has coded in c, java, javascript (before it was cool), perl, python, visual basic I still see a clear niche for php even though I don't use it anymore.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#103

Sorry to say I don't think GIMP is the best example of a great FLOSS project. Many other projects are very competitive (or better) than commercial options but GIMP is not even close. They just released support for 16bit/32bit/c color last year which is needed for so many scenarios. The unified transform tool mentioned as a highlight is really a pretty simple thing to code. They are 5-10 years behind what you get in P…

"The unified transform tool mentioned as a highlight is really a pretty simple thing to code." So you contributed to its development, right?

I thought we left the idea of "you can't complain about something unless you built it yourself" way behind us. That's not a constructive way to talk about anything.

I can't write a "hello world" in Clojure, but I still know it's a trivial thing to do. If someone was bragging to me about their hello world and I said "that's really simple", should they respond back "So you contributed to my hello world, right?" I'm not the one claiming I'm a great developer. I don't have anything to prove.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#104
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?

I recently tried PS for the first time after using Gimp for almost 20 years. My images I work with are about 40"x40" at 600-1200 dpi. First impressions was that PS was a somewhat faster (about 25%) for certain operations like duplicating layers and it's interface was intuitive after using GIMP for so long, but the advantages I saw aren't enough to convince me to switch on OSX.

I've used PS for ~5 years for hobby work, but I've also spent a fair amount of time in GIMP while using Linux.

GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools.

PS also works much better for shapes/paths than gimp, given its superior set of effects that can be added to shapes.

There's also a few not-so-important bells and whistles, like the photomerge script in PS, which makes it really easy to generate a panoramic image.

Overall, GIMP works great for simple projects, but it's missing so much of the functionality of PS that I honestly never use it if I have the option to use PS.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#105
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still possible ...and Adobe PS is not one of them! People tolerate its UX/I because the functionality is unequaled and, after you commit to visual and muscle-memory all the shortcuts and locations of commands and options, you can be extremely productive despite the UX/I. Also, people coming from the "physical arts" category are kind o…

Totally agree PS has its own UX issues. My personal favorite: different key combinations for the first time you undo and the second time you undo.

>different key combinations for the first time you undo and the second time you undo.

That's not what's going on. Ctrl+Z is an undo/redo toggle, Ctrl+Shift+Z steps back in the document history. You shouldn't do Ctrl+Z followed by a series of Ctrl+Shift+Zs. Just do Ctrl+Shift+Z.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#106

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work…

> I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work on GIMP eventually came out with a single window layout. Ironically enough, Photoshop itself used to have a multiple-window layout, in its Unix versions: http://i.imgur.com/Lzlbyp9.jpg . (That's an IRIX system, see author…

I remember this. I used to have an SGI O2 and had PS3 installed. It was multi window, which was incredibly annoying, but it was pretty much how most IRIX UI worked back then.

I did one of my first paid graphic design assignments on it. It was an A2 poster for a circus, and I remember it took forever to render filters – blurs in particular! These days you can do all your work on low resolution copies and just apply the transforms to higher resolution when you need it, but you couldn't then. Or at the very least, I didn't know how to.

The suspense in waiting for that progress bar to reach the finish line...

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about PHP is sanity of someone who learned more than one language.

As someone who has coded in c, java, javascript (before it was cool), perl, python, visual basic I still see a clear niche for php even though I don't use it anymore.

Indeed. It's just that it's not a good language (like Visual Basic).

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#108

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work…

For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?

And follow-up, why is it so hard (for volunteer contributors) to implement those missing features and functionality?

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#109

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work…

I used GIMP in 1996 and it was great! I got it going on a Sun Sparcstation 20 running Red Hat 2.0 Linux.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#110
A big thanks to the GIMP devs for providing us with a powerful image editor! It's one of my favorite tools on Linux. I'm currently using it for gradient generation and texture editing for a game. Obviously PS is king in this domain, but the "point" is that many people don't need the full corporate lab when the garage workshop will do.
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