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Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro

rileybrandt.com

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

#101

Post by elclanrs »

I was a Photoshop user for a long time, but haven't looked back since I moved to Linux full time a few years back. The challenge was to use libre software for everything and reduce my business' expenses. It's been 4 years since then and I don't miss Photoshop. I realized in the process the I was terribly misusing it. It was my goto tool for everything, from web design, to photo retouch, to vector, icons...

I have a background in 3D & VFX but my work today is mostly web development, and opensource software covers all my needs. MyPaint for free drawing like brainstorming, illustrations, and blueprints. Inkscape for vector graphics like icons, logos, layouts, mockups. Darktable for simple photo editing. GIMP for heavy photo retouch, and well, it's still my goto tool for those quick screenshots, image cropping jobs. And Blender for 3D work of course. I hardly do print, but when I do I use Inkscape, HTML and CSS.

TLDR; Photoshop isn't the best for every task. There are free software alternatives for everything. Using them all together provides me with all that I need, so I no longer miss Photoshop.

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

#103

Post by SiVal »

jordigh wrote: post #89
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…

I hear this stuff all the time. So this is my own canned response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675258 > it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user: [list of features snipped out] As an Octave developer, I frequently hear exactly the same things about Octave vs Matlab, and if I listen too closely, I fin…

Instead of the GIMP limping along behind PhotoShop, both dragging their decades-old legacy baggage, monolithic architectures, 1990s pricing models, etc., into the foreseeable future, I wish we had something more like Octave, SQLite, or Python: a powerful, faceless dev platform on which to build graphics-processing apps.

Basically, a runtime that holds a GPU-optimal image model (raster layers, vector layers, non-destructive edit management, multi-session undo, etc.), a set of APIs for sending memory-protected commands to the model, and a growing standard library of routines that have proven useful (network comms for offloading some processes or results to "the cloud", input/output codecs, CSS3, whatever). It would have a relatively easy to use scripting language with some built-in data types such as layer, region, vectorPolygon, gradient, font, etc., plus the usual lists, dicts, first-class functions, etc. Scripts that get a lot of use could be reimplemented in C, etc.

Developers could wrap whatever GUIs they wanted around this engine, creating easy consumer apps such as a slideshow or a camera-to-computer file importer with a magnifying glass and a keep/delete shortcut, all the way up to building clones of PhotoShop, Illustrator, resurrecting Fireworks, and so on.

Maybe someone would build a GUI builder for it that let you drag image rectangles and buttons into a window and script the whole thing, so non-programmers could create lens comparison apps, blink comparators for comet hunting....

I'd so much rather have a platform like this, where the hardest part--the image engine--would be done by experts, and the apps themselves, the feature sets, the UIs, could then be built by hordes of amateurs.

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

#104

Post by yaur »

thinkersilver wrote: post #56
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…

Ex-Gimp User here. The article does point out that most photographer workflows are in their raw editors. You get Non Destructive Editing with tools like Darktable in Linux. Non destructive editing helps to improve your productivity. It's similar to making code changes knowing you have a revision system behind and to when you don't. That being said non destructive doesn't make you a better retoucher, it's there to sav…

Another huge problem is that if I'm working with a "real" designer its exceedingly unlikely that they are going to have GIMP or be willing to learn it, and without pixel perfect rendering of PSDs (which it doesn't have) if I need to make buttons, etc I have to use Photoshop.

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

#105

Post by pekk »

thinkersilver wrote: post #56
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…

Ex-Gimp User here. The article does point out that most photographer workflows are in their raw editors. You get Non Destructive Editing with tools like Darktable in Linux. Non destructive editing helps to improve your productivity. It's similar to making code changes knowing you have a revision system behind and to when you don't. That being said non destructive doesn't make you a better retoucher, it's there to sav…

"Usability" never seems to mean anything specific, but rather whatever the speaker has in mind as a personal taste. In this case, my best guess is that you mean "UI works exactly like Photoshop"

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

#106

Post by mirkules »

jordigh wrote: post #89
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…

I hear this stuff all the time. So this is my own canned response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675258 > it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user: [list of features snipped out] As an Octave developer, I frequently hear exactly the same things about Octave vs Matlab, and if I listen too closely, I fin…

I just want to let you know that I did my entire masters thesis/project using Octave (sound signal processing). Please keep up the good work. :)

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

#107

Post by tavoe »

dperfect wrote: post #78
tavoe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ve…

Well, you're right. That sounds awesome.

Is there a good reason gimp doesn't support that? You make it sound like common sense.

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

#108

Post by jawngee »

I suppose it depends on what you consider a "pro" or not, and what you are using Photoshop for to begin with.

I started out 20 years ago as a retoucher and digital pre-press. 20 years later, I'm back in the publishing game, but publishing on the tablet. The magazine I am producing as the "eat your own dog food" test run of our bootstrapped tablet publishing tools (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22qqsFHH1HY or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlHFhbqzHU for more info) is almost entirely photography and video. Guess who is doing the "pre-press" work? Yeah, that's me.

So let me run you through my typical retouching workflow I use to retouch a fashion photo (discussion about perpetrating negative stereo types of female body types ignored for the sake of this conversation):

    - Open the image in Photoshop
    - Duplicate the background to a new layer and convert to smart object
    - Open up the smart object into a new document
    - Liquify, patch tool, liquify, patch tool
    - Hair, pimple removal with clone stamp
    - Masked adjustment layers for very slight color correction, typically make up and teeth and eye whitening
    - Save smart object
    - Go back to original document
    - Duplicate smart object twice
    - Highpass filter + overlay blend mode on top most smart object copy
    - Smart blur on smart object copy beneath high pass
    - Mask the blurred smart object and start painting in skin smoothing on the channel mask
    - Now at this point, I might have gone back to the smart object and made some more clean up and liquify tweaks
    - Manual corrections done, I move onto color grading and color correction
All of this is done with a wacom tablet, which afaik, GIMP still has issues with (usable but not on the same level as photoshop). Liquify tool in gimp is a horrible joke. No smart objects.

Can you do this process with GIMP? You can. I have. It's not as easy or straight forward as it should be though. It can't be stressed how important Smart Objects are to the modern photoshop workflow.

So as someone who uses Photoshop not only for app design, but actual honest to goodness professional retouching, I have to say if this guy is only using Photoshop 10% of the time, he's probably not even the target market for it. Will GIMP ever make it to actual competion for Photoshop on the professional level? I sure hope so, but not anytime soon. Photoshop CC (I've been using Photoshop since 2.5 on a Mac Quadra 950) is the best version ever. I know I sound like an Adobe shill, but I have extensive expertise that goes back decades now.

Now you damn kids get off my lawn.

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

#109

Post by CommanderPirx »

Glyptodon wrote: post #91
dperfect wrote: post #14

If you're using Photoshop for the purpose it was designed for (editing photos, not illustration/painting from scratch), then GIMP is absolutely inferior in its current form. If you're making edits directly to source pixel layers (or even making duplicate flattened layers and working on those), you're doing it wrong. Photoshop is designed for non-destructive editing. An essential part of that is adjustment layers. Man…

Photoshop might be called photoshop, but I don't get why anybody would edit photos with Photoshop, Gimp, or any other similar editor rather than a decent RAW editor, be it Lightroom, Darktable, Aperture, or AfterShot.

Because editing photos goes way beyond adjusting color balance or overall brightness?

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

#110

Post by virtualwhys »

Man, breath of fresh air, have never bothered tweaking GIMP as out of the box it's usable but frustrating compared to photoshop or fireworks (yes, I've got the latter running in a Windows VM).

On Fedora here so GIMP is what I've been using for quick image optimizations when I can't be bothered to fire up a virtual machine.

Am definitely going to integrate some of the suggested tips, thanks to whoever posted this...

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