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Why GIMP is Inadequate

troy-sobotka.blogspot.com

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Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#11

Post by Natsu »

joakin wrote: post #9

I expected this to be a rant or flame, but in fact he has described wonderfully what needs to be said. Besides from all this pro features that GIMP lacks, in my opinion its biggest flaw its the UI. Its poor and raw, and makes sense if you are a programmer... Mainly this is what keeps it far from the regular users I know. Hope It doesnt die, its a very good open source multiplatform editing tool...

I use and love it, but I sincerely wish they'd change the name and the UI. I'm a programmer, but even I didn't realize how much they were hiding in context menus at first until I had to search online to find documentation on how to do the few simple things I can do.

The multi-window thing I really don't have much of a problem with, though, even if it was hard to get used to at first. I don't have much use for the higher bit depths and such, but I can see his point about quality and why others need it.

Incidentally, a lot of programs have problems with gamma. I think this link has been on HN a few times: http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#12

Post by sgift »

webuiarchitect wrote: post #3
healthyhippo wrote: post #2

I don't know much about photo editing, but I've used Gimp for a little while along with Inkscape for editing. I use it for simple stuff- drop shadows, minor logo work, etc. Is there a noticeable difference vs. photoshop on that level?

Yes, the noticeable difference is Gimp sucks!! Hats off to the Gimp development team for pulling off so many features and above all having an open-source product out there. But the problem is PhotoShop has set the expectations way too high. And I'm afraid, a non-commercial product will never be able reach that level.

Are there any arguments why a non-commercial product (not necessarily Gimp) will never be able to reach "that level"? This looks suspiciously like "open source software is always worse than closed source!!!!!" which has been refuted more than once.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#13

Post by wazoox »

joakin wrote: post #9

I expected this to be a rant or flame, but in fact he has described wonderfully what needs to be said. Besides from all this pro features that GIMP lacks, in my opinion its biggest flaw its the UI. Its poor and raw, and makes sense if you are a programmer... Mainly this is what keeps it far from the regular users I know. Hope It doesnt die, its a very good open source multiplatform editing tool...

People keep talking about the GIMP UI, I find it quite good. I love the concept of "everything available from a right-click", alla Maya -- the top menu bar is a kludge that was added quite recently.

The technical aspects mentioned in the article are more serious.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#14

Post by _delirium »

furbearntrout wrote: post #10
healthyhippo wrote: post #2

I don't know much about photo editing, but I've used Gimp for a little while along with Inkscape for editing. I use it for simple stuff- drop shadows, minor logo work, etc. Is there a noticeable difference vs. photoshop on that level?

Not really. The nice folks at Adobe would have you believe otherwise, but at low color depths, low image sizes, low skill levels; the difference isn't worth 5$, much less (googles) 999$ (before 100$ rebate. Unless you are making a lot of images, _and_ relying on them to make money, gimp is more than enough.

> the difference isn't worth 5$, much less (googles) 999$ (before 100$ rebate).

I think Photoshop, like Windows, is a beneficiary of piracy in this respect: if there were no way to get Photoshop for less than $999, there would be a lot more people using alternatives for a lot of niches where Photoshop isn't absolutely necessary. But students, people starting out, small-time freelancers, and even some random home users editing their Christmas photos just pirate Photoshop. Although, Paint.NET is gaining some market share in the home-user category.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#15

Post by billhasmail »

"Important progress towards high bit-depth and non-destructive editing in GIMP has been made. Most color operations in GIMP are now ported to the powerful graph based image processing framework GEGL, meaning that the internal processing is being done in 32bit floating point linear light RGBA. By default the legacy 8bit code paths are still used, but a curious user can turn on the use of GEGL for the color operations with Colors / Use GEGL." http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.6.html

Clearly this artist was not a curious user.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#16

Post by samdk »

The 8-bit color limitation issue is well-known and has been for a long time. The solution is GEGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL), which has been under development for a (very) long time now and is partially implemented in GIMP 2.6, the latest stable version. It is a problem, but it's important to put it into perspective: almost all monitors display 32-bit color (EDIT: or less) anyway, so if you're doing work targeted at a computer screen, it probably doesn't matter anyway. If you need to do work at color depths higher than 8 bits per pixel (that is, if you're doing serious print work) then yes, you need to be aware of these limitations. If you're almost everyone else it's probably not an issue. (I don't mean to imply that it's not a problem at all, but I think it's important to keep it in perspective.)

For the people here asking whether GIMP is good enough for what you're doing: Ars Technica did an excellent review of GIMP 2.6 about a year ago (EDIT: 2 years, but it's still the same major version). It's long, but well-worth reading and will answer your questions. It's written from the perspective of a professional who uses Photoshop, but does an excellent job of remaining balanced. This quote summarizes the review (and also my opinion) pretty nicely, I think:

    I may seem to skew negative since I talk so much about what's missing, but
    it's hard to dwell on what a program does well and not sound like a fawning
    idiot. Most people who sit down to get image editing work done with GIMP 
    will not be disappointed. There is a ton of room for advanced work here.
It can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/01/gimp-2-6-...

While I don't follow it closely enough to really discuss GIMP's current development status, development does seem to have slowed significantly (purely from a user's perspective) in recent years. This is a real shame, since I think that for the most part it's an excellent program and in general I much prefer to work in GIMP over Photoshop. For all of its many flaws, I think it's a fantastic piece of software.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#17

Post by gsivil »

I would be curious to see similar posts for Octave and OpenOffice. I am really happy that they exist but "inadequate" would be a fair word to describe both. Comparing of course with Matlab and MS Office .

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#18

Post by w1ntermute »

samdk wrote: post #16

The 8-bit color limitation issue is well-known and has been for a long time. The solution is GEGL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL ), which has been under development for a (very) long time now and is partially implemented in GIMP 2.6, the latest stable version. It is a problem, but it's important to put it into perspective: almost all monitors display 32-bit color (EDIT: or less) anyway, so if you're doing work t…

> Ars Technica did an excellent review of GIMP 2.6 about a year ago.

From the article, seems like it was 2 years ago: "Last updated January 13, 2009". Might seem like an insignificant detail, but 2 years is an eternity in OSS. Are you sure things haven't changed significantly since that review?

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#19

Post by sovande »

joakin wrote: post #9

I expected this to be a rant or flame, but in fact he has described wonderfully what needs to be said. Besides from all this pro features that GIMP lacks, in my opinion its biggest flaw its the UI. Its poor and raw, and makes sense if you are a programmer... Mainly this is what keeps it far from the regular users I know. Hope It doesnt die, its a very good open source multiplatform editing tool...

> UI... makes sense if you are a programmer...

Nope, maybe if you are the programmer of Gimp

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#20

Post by juiceandjuice »

samdk wrote: post #16

The 8-bit color limitation issue is well-known and has been for a long time. The solution is GEGL ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL ), which has been under development for a (very) long time now and is partially implemented in GIMP 2.6, the latest stable version. It is a problem, but it's important to put it into perspective: almost all monitors display 32-bit color (EDIT: or less) anyway, so if you're doing work t…

Actually most monitors are 18-24 bits. Tons of cheap TN panels are actually 6 bits with dithering to emulate a 24 bit panel. There are 10 bit and extended gamut panels, however.
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