Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why GIMP is Inadequate

troy-sobotka.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 108 posts

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#31

Post by ZenzerNet »

_delirium wrote: post #14
furbearntrout wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 user…

Photoshop Elements is reasonably priced at £58 on Amazon as of right now. The people you're talking about do not NEED the full $1000 package.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#32

Post by dkersten »

cookiecaper wrote: post #26

There are several good alternatives to GIMP depending on what you're doing. GIMP is probably the best for traditional photo editing, but there seems to be more programs oriented toward illustration. In particular, I like Krita. I don't really know what the deal is with the low development interest in GIMP. I think maybe it's that Photoshop's professional niche generally isn't comprised of big fan of computers in the…

I don't really know what the deal is with the low development interest in GIMP. I think maybe it's that Photoshop's professional niche... ...use what they're used to; they're hostile to any change from the start.

I don't know about the developers and why more people aren't interested in helping out (though I suspect for a lot of people its a mixture of the difficulties of getting established in a large codebase and the beurocracy involved in a large project), but from a user point-of-view I think GIMP has a few problems.

I've used GIMP exclusively for many years (but I'm not a graphic designer, so my use of image editing software was never terribly heavy) and I used photoshop for the first time last summer. My transition to photoshop was a very pleasant one as, IMHO, photoshop has a much simpler and more productive interface (buttons are easy to access, convenient keyboard shortcuts, interface is not too cluttered); it has a larger range of (more advanced, generally) filters and tools; and it seems a lot faster to me too (definitely when applying filters to a large image. This can be, in my experience, quite slow in GIMP, but in photoshop most filters are almost instantaneus for me).

I can only assume that many other people feel the same and I imagine this may make it less desirable for people to work on GIMP, especially if there is (perceived) resistance from the GIMP developer community for GIMP to move in the direction that newcomers feel it should (eg, does GIMP still have that horrible multi-window interface? Most people dislike it (though since I started using a tiling window manager on windows it actually becomes much more usable!)).

Having said all that, from a user point of view, unless you make a reaosnable amount of money with your photo-editing, it is still hard to justify photoshops high price tag. GIMP being free is definitely a big plus point for it for casual use.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#33

Post by machrider »

julian37 wrote: post #25
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…

> so if you're doing work targeted at a computer screen, it probably doesn't matter anyway Actually, it matters regardless of output device. With higher bit depths, less rounding errors accumulate over time as the image is processed, for example when effects are applied, yielding higher overall output quality. Here is an example, although after many iterations quality loss can be much more dramatic than visible in th…

Yes. It matters a great deal if you're trying to recover information from underexposed or nearly overexposed regions of an image. Adjusting the levels of an image is something photographers do all the time, and having 14bits per channel allows you to do it without producing a grainy-as-hell image. Throwing away almost half of the information on the initial import is unforgivable and relegates GIMP to being merely a toy.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#34

Post by coffeeaddicted »

Having only 2 principal developers left which have little time sounds to me like the biggest problem. That's not enough manpower to compete with Photoshop in the long run. One reason for that might be that Gimp already does the stuff most coders need from an image manipulation tool, so maybe there's not enough itches to scratch left to get more talent interested in developing for it.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#35

Post by damncabbage »

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, hand on my heart, swear that, as a programmer, I don't think GIMP's UI makes a jot of sense.

A week away from GIMP to mess with Photoshop had me converted after the first couple of days, sadly. Photoshop is both a blessing and a curse for OSS.

(A blessing that it's a nice shiny target. A curse in that the target is half-way to the moon.)

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#36

Post by njharman »

as far as gimps usefulness to profesionals the movie version fork cinepaint, is good enough for making Harry Potter and other movies I question authors knowledge of / authority to speak for artistic professionals.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#37

Post by damncabbage »

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…

Even if you don't care about the GIMP/Photoshop comparison, make sure to check it out if you're a GIMP user. It has a bunch of little tips as to how to get photo and retouching done with GIMP; I've used GIMP for years now, but had never realised what Selective Gaussian Blur was really useful for.

(These sorts of tutorials are very thin on the ground on the GIMP side, and this provides some real examples of how to more-or-less pull off the effects Photoshop tutorials tend to talk about.)

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#38

Post by dfhrhfergjy »

Click on our website:

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

Gold autumn, personality Mes clothing + Shoes, Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet Free transport

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

=== http://goo.gl/l5v0b ====

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#39

Post by rythie »

Surely the underlying problem is that GIMP is and has been underfunded for years. Where as Photoshop costs $100s, GIMP presumably has very little revenue if it can only pay for two developers.

Firefox is able to develop quickly due to the deal with Google, maybe GIMP needs something like that, e.g. a app-store for plugins or a kickstarter funding drive.

Post reply on HN