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Why GIMP is Inadequate

troy-sobotka.blogspot.com

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Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#101

Post by nailer »

unwind wrote: post #51
nailer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I used GIMP exclusively between 1999 and about 2009. There was always something coming in the next version that would fix GIMP. Color profiling, single window, better text tools, etc. They never did. GIMP doesn't even bother subscribing to GNOME's HIG. It's cast adrift in the world of Linux, and after a decade of using it I'm now happily on Pixelmator on OS X.

As far as I know (and I've lurking on the gimp developer list for 10+ years), GIMP has never been a GNOME application. So, from that point of view, there's no particular reason to expect it to conform to GNOME's human-interface guidelines, is there?

> There's no particular reason to expect it to conform to GNOME's human-interface guidelines, is there?

How about 'not being weird?' Asides from the already mentioned historic background, GNOME is the most popular OSS Unix desktop.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#102

Post by pbhjpbhj »

damncabbage wrote: post #37
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 mor…

>never realised what Selective Gaussian Blur was really useful for

This is probably the filter I use most - basically it smooths colours that are close positionally and colourwise to avoid graininess. A good way to clean up images quickly though it can look unnatural if done too much.

I often use a little SGB and then a little Unsharp Mask when touching up images for low-res or online output.

I'm not professionally trained but do use this for commercial purposes and have for some time.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj »

retube wrote: post #30

Another missing feature for me is lack of a CYMK color palette. Vital for sending images to the printers.

>Vital for sending images to the printers.

Not entirely, I get away with it as the publications ultimately use low quality reproduction and so they don't match anyway. It's certainly better but the main issue for me sending RGB is brightness and I've learnt to adjust for it. The consumer doesn't know what it's supposed to look like colour-wise, they're probably reading in non-optimal conditions, possibly colour-blind.

Given what gets put on the cover of professionally produced work (http://www.psdisasters.com/) this almost seems the least thing to worry about (yes I'm exaggerating).

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#104

Post by true_religion »

_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…

At my school students recieve Photoshop for free if they are in a class that requires it, and if not they can buy it at deeply reduced rates---about ~90-120 for CS4 if I last recall.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#105

Post by ondra »

Groxx wrote: post #96
bobds wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> almost all monitors display 32-bit color anyway Actually, I was surprised to find out that this is not the case. "The inexpensive twisted nematic display is the most common consumer display type." "Also, most TN panels represent colors using only 6 bits per RGB color, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available from graphics cards." http://en.wi…

Any idea how most modern CRTs handle color? I'm not seeing anything specific on Wikipedia's CRT page...

CRTs will show what the RAMDAC on the video card feeds them. They shouldn't have limitations like this.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#106

Post by tzs »

njharman wrote: post #36

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.

Uhm, Cinepaint is a point in favor of the author's conclusions about GIMP. One of the reasons for Cinepaint is to fix the color depth problem the author wrote about.

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#107

Post by atesting »

arethuza wrote: post #61
sgift wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think anyone doubts that for things like OS kernels, database engines, web frameworks, browsers, libraries, editors etc. FOSS software easily wins. But for end-user applications where you pay for the competition and where the typical end-users are not developers, or similar, (e.g. MS Office, PaintShop, most games) then FOSS versions seem rather poor by comparison.

Have you ever tried MyPaint?

IMO a good example of a software which does its tasks very well (I'm no (digital) painter, but I've heard about graphic artists seriously thinking about switching to it... if it only had a Mac version...).

Re: Why GIMP is Inadequate

#108

Post by pistacchio »

Gimp is one of the main reasons why I left Linux. After years of Windows I finally gave Linux a chance and immediately fell in love with it. Being a programmer it gave an incredible boost to my productivity and creativity. Having a proper shell, for example, or a real ssh client (not some half baked solution like putty).

As I also work with media (graphics and music), I find the lack of any semi-professional software for producing music (nothing to be compared with Cubase, Ableton Live or even Fruity loops) nor programs to make graphics (Inkscape is not close to Illustrator and then Gimp...).

So I had to constantly keep a virtual machine for those (read: running in a virtual machine the most resource expensive programs) or another partition for dual boot and I ended up having two PCs.

I sold them both and bought a Mac where I can have Photoshop in a window and a terminal with a proper unix machine on the other.

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