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Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

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Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#71

Post by dfc »

Joeboy wrote: post #12
jordigh wrote: post #3

This reminds me of the endless bug reports we're getting right now about the Octave GUI not being indistinguishable from Matlab. Makes me wish people weren't so inflexible about the tiniest UI differences. It's difficult to please the converts.

> Makes me wish people weren't so inflexible about the tiniest UI differences. It's difficult to please the converts. I replaced Photoshop with Gimp years ago, but I still find Gimp incredibly painful to use. It accounts for a tiny proportion of my software use, but a massive proportion of my swearing. I use to think it was just down to being familiar with Photoshop, but I think I can only excuse it on that basis for…

In the past GIMP was the winner of my personal disproportionate swearing award. That all changed when I started to use Calibre for ebook management. Calibre is far and away, the worst UI for "best in class open source software."

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#72

Post by coldtea »

jebblue wrote: post #68
dperfect wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-destructive editing has been on the list of GIMP feature requests and roadmaps for many years. I may be wrong, but it sounds like the problem is more a misalignment of project goals with target user requirements rather than a sheer lack of development resources at this point (since so many other features have been implemented in the meantime).

I could be wrong too however we are both just stating opinions and mine is proven to work eventually so why am I being downvoted?

Because "code it if you know how or pay someone to code it" is not an answer when talking about software and lack of features, even if it's OSS.

OSS software is built by its community of developers, not by its community of users (even if those overlap a little, the second is many orders of magnitude bigger). So when someone criticizes it that it lacks feature X, telling them to "code it" themselves is not really helpful. They already know they have this option. If they had the knowledge, inclination, interest and time, they would have done it already. Not to mention that even if they tried, community politics and roadmaps might be against their wanted feature.

Can we accept that someone is free to criticize a piece of OSS software without being obliged to fix it himself?

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#73

Post by coldtea »

k__ wrote: post #37
dperfect wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop are not just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new"; it's the fact that without real non-destructive editing features, GIMP is basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive ed…

Shouldn't you know what you want to to, if you're a professional? If you don't know what you want to accomplish, you need to experiment. This is when those non-destructive features come in handy, but if you know the goal and how to achieve it, they aren't necessary.

No, you shouldn't. That's spoken like someone who has never worked in graphic design.

For one, professional graphic design is still an art. An applied art, but an art nonetheless. And as in all art, experimentation and happy accidents are essential. (And of course Photoshop/GIMP are also used by digital artists, not just graphic designers).

Second, (and I feel like I'm stating something beyond obvious), people make mistakes and people change their minds, even if they are professionals. Here, non-desctructive saves many hours.

Third, you obviously forgot that clients also change their minds, and can demand this or that change. Again, here, non-desctructive saves many hours.

Fourth, it's not different than say, the ability to revert a repo to a known state, that a SCM system gives, something that professional programmers consider essential.

What you say basically amounts to: who needs SCM and good prototyping features like a REPL. A professional should just start coding and already know his goal and how to achieve it (rolls eyes).

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#75

Post by tavoe »

dperfect wrote: post #32
pessimizer wrote: post #25

This is like using Vim-mode to switch to Emacs, or installing Lindows. If people could accept the trivial conventions of the software you're moving to ("How can I use GIMP? The hotkeys are different!") and stop treating it like a free badly-executed Photoshop clone, they might realize that it's really nice to work in. My problems with GIMP were the CMYK stuff and a few terminology issues. I really love the GIMP inter…

The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop are not just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new"; it's the fact that without real non-destructive editing features, GIMP is basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive ed…

I'm totally ignorant in this field.

If you're worried about messing up a file, why not just make a copy of it before you edit it?

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#76

Post by windsurfer »

neovive wrote: post #64
windsurfer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inkscape is actually very good, and certainly comparable to Adobe Illustrator, if not superior nowadays. The main problem I see people have with Inkscape is when they have a MacOS computer, the only available build is from 3 years ago.

I use InkScape on the Mac. To get the most recent builds running, you need install XQuartz which is not bundled with recent OS X versions.

Even the latest XQuartz install appears to be 3 years old. Were you able to find a more recent one? I would be very interested if such a build existed.

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#77

Post by orkoden »

tavoe wrote: post #75
dperfect wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop are not just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new"; it's the fact that without real non-destructive editing features, GIMP is basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive ed…

I'm totally ignorant in this field. If you're worried about messing up a file, why not just make a copy of it before you edit it?

over 9000 files names like myfile.backup.old.xcf myfile.other_edit.xcf myfile.tried-some-filter-10.xcf

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#78

Post by dperfect »

tavoe wrote: post #75
dperfect wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop are not just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new"; it's the fact that without real non-destructive editing features, GIMP is basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive ed…

I'm totally ignorant in this field. If you're worried about messing up a file, why not just make a copy of it before you edit it?

It's not about a fear of losing the original, but losing each step in the process (which may be thousands of steps), having flexibility, and maintaining pixel information/quality throughout multiple edits.

Another way to think about it (in terms of programming) would be editing some code in an existing project, compiling it, and then losing the source code for your edits. Sure, you could keep patching the compiled version (not very easy) or use some kind of instrumentation to wrap/modify existing behavior, but if you can't easily modify the source of your past work (or just a single revision along the way), then all you're doing is piling more patches (in compiled form) on top of old work - not very efficient, and you lose flexibility.

In a non-destructive workflow, you may (for example) adjust the color balance of a single object in the scene, keep working, and then realize that the color adjustments are out of place. Since that adjustment is preserved and editable at any time independently of all other edits, then it only requires an adjustment of the parameters - and you don't lose any information.

If you were to do that kind of edit directly to the pixels (even if they're on a separate layer for the object in question), then each time you adjust color/levels/etc, you're losing information that was originally there. Similar to resizing an image very small and then trying to enlarge it to original size, destructive color edits will start producing nasty artifacts like color banding (you'll start seeing a "combing" effect in the histogram when adjusting color even after a single previous color adjustment).

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#79

Post by unhammer »

dperfect wrote: post #32
pessimizer wrote: post #25

This is like using Vim-mode to switch to Emacs, or installing Lindows. If people could accept the trivial conventions of the software you're moving to ("How can I use GIMP? The hotkeys are different!") and stop treating it like a free badly-executed Photoshop clone, they might realize that it's really nice to work in. My problems with GIMP were the CMYK stuff and a few terminology issues. I really love the GIMP inter…

The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop are not just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new"; it's the fact that without real non-destructive editing features, GIMP is basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive ed…

> Non-destructive editing is not a "nice to have" feature. It's quite literally a fundamental shift in methodology - and one that apparently the GIMP devs seem to be ignoring.

It's on the http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap , UI designer Peter Sikkings has written a lot about how one might do it http://blog.mmiworks.net/search/label/GIMP%20redux and one of the main selling points of the move to GEGL is non-destructive editing. And all the focus now is on the move to GEGL.

Re: Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

#80

Post by BashiBazouk »

jjcm wrote: post #62

This was posted to reddit a couple weeks back, and I'll repeat the same comment I made there. "I spend about 90% of my time in Lightroom and only 10% in Photoshop." This is why he was able to do this. He isn't using the functionality that Photoshop provides, he's using the functionality that Photoshop Essentials provides. Look at his parity instructions - every feature is found in Photoshop Essentials. If that's all…

Worse, lightroom is an adobe application. I no longer use Photoshop because I use another Adobe tool more often... Makes the switch to GIMP kind of pointless. Not that I should talk, I hardly use Photoshop any more either, but that's because I live in Illustrator.

My problem with open source graphic tools remains the same. I'm in the print world, either it supports Pantone or it's not that useful of a tool.

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