Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Hack turns GIMP into Photoshop Look-alike

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Mar 31, 2005 06:39 PM
from the reduced-learning-curves dept.
Mr_Silver writes "One of the many complaints about the GIMP is that of its user interface and how it should be more like Photoshop. If you feel that this is true then Scott Moschella has hacked together GimpShop which turns GIMP's user interface into something more akin to Photoshop for OSX. However, if you're not running that operating system, fret not, because there is a version for Linux too."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:40PM (#12105480) Homepage Journal
    and take it out to dinner, it's still a pig in a dress, not a girlfriend.
    • by Rei (128717) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:42PM (#12105500) Homepage
      Honestly, I like Gimp fine the way it is. I think this case is more akin to putting a girlfriend in a pig suit. ;) Reasonable people's opinions will differ, of course.
      • Seconded (Score:5, Insightful)

        by leonbrooks (8043) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:00PM (#12105666) Homepage
        Looking for a hack to make PhotoShop look like The GIMP. Tearoff menus would be a nice start.
                • by masklinn (823351) <[ten.nnilksam] [ta] [gro.todhsals]> on Friday April 01 2005, @01:19AM (#12108038)
                  The problem is that most people learned graphism on softwares like PSP or Photoshop, very centralized applications with a single monolithic window holding all the informations&options.

                  Gimp has a nice interface in itself, but when you switch from PSP/Pshop (or to them, as uncle), the softwares are so many worlds apart UI-wise that you're plain and simply lost.

                  And you therefore consider the new software (whichever it is) to be "a damn load of crap cause i can't find any of the tools/options/boxes of chocolate i'm looking for"

                  In a nutshell, the interface elements people don't like in The Gimp (when they have issues with the interface) are: all of them, because they're too different from Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro's
    • by Tackhead (54550) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:44PM (#12105513)
      > and take it out to dinner, it's still a pig in a dress, not a girlfriend.

      Zed: his .JPG of you says you don't got no purty mouth.

      Maynard: Bring out the GIMP.

      Zed: The GIMP's sleeping.

      Maynard: Well I guess you'll have to kill - SIGALRM it, won't you?

    • by daeley (126313) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:06PM (#12105713) Homepage
      and take it out to dinner, it's still a pig in a dress, not a girlfriend.

      Maybe, but if the pig won't charge you $500 for the privilege of taking it out to dinner... ;)
    • by hawk (1151) <hawk@eyry.org> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:25PM (#12105877) Journal

      Not even in Arkansas?

      :)

      hawk

      • Sheesh! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ta bu shi da yu (687699) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:42PM (#12106013) Homepage
        Well, considering that it was a Mac user who did this, and then a Linux user ported it, I think the question should be: why aren't Windows users bothering to port it themselves?

        Don't just expect people to do this for you. Those who run Linux and OS X have no real need for Windows. It might be frustrating, but, well, tough.
        • Re:Sheesh! (Score:5, Funny)

          by Daengbo (523424) <daengbo@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:54PM (#12106102) Homepage Journal
          Because they've all pirated Photoshop already.
          • by Moraelin (679338) on Friday April 01 2005, @01:31AM (#12108089) Journal
            Believe it or not, even by BSA's numbers, piracy in the western world isn't that high. No, seriously, look at their breakdown by states in the USA, for example. You'll notice that no state exceeds some 40% and some are in the single digit range.

            And bear in mind that the BSA is basically a sock-puppet that exists only to whine about piracy, and how some chinese kid pirating 3DSMax to mod a $40 game actually represents a $6000 loss for a company. (Surely _everyone_ would pay $6000, even in countries where it means 6 years' salary, to mod a $40 game, if it wasn't for piracy. Not.)

            BSA's only reason to exist is to cry wolf. So they do it lots. The'll even classify the neighbour's dog as a wolf because it sorta looks like it. Or as I usually say, there's a reason there's BS in BSA.

            So if even their inflated numbers don't say 100%, sorry, I don't believe the fallacy that goes "they've all pirated <insert software title>".

            The fact which some people fail to understand is that a helluva lot of us actually pay for software. Or, to open that can of worms too, for music.

            Why would someone in their right mind pay for commercial software instead of (A) using some free crap, or (B) pirating it?

            Well, point A is easy: because often we actually don't find the free one to do the same, or have the same usability. Sometimes it's cheaper to pay for something than to spend weeks making the free version work, or learning its quirks. Time is money, and mine is pretty expensive.

            Point B actually boils down to personal ethics: either you're a thief or you aren't. If you are, I don't expect you to understand why someone would prefer buying stuff if shoplifting it was easy. If you aren't, then you can understand that most people wouldn't shoplift even if shops were completely non-supervised.

            It also illustrates another point: true, not everyone can afford Photoshop. So some buy Paintshop Pro instead.

            The world isn't made of only extremes. In the real world there are a lot of shades of grey in between owning a Ferrari and walking to work.

            The same applies or rather should apply to software too: there are (and should be more) choices between the most expensive version (even by piracy) or something free (again, sometimes "free" via piracy, as in using a SN generator on a shareware version.) Paintshop is just one such example of an in-between piece of software. Others include, for example, using Milkshape instead of 3DSMax.
        • Re:Sheesh! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Vaughn Anderson (581869) on Thursday March 31 2005, @11:24PM (#12107399)
          Don't just expect people to do this for you. Those who run Linux and OS X have no real need for Windows. It might be frustrating, but, well, tough.

          I am sure you aren't trying to be rude, so I will try as well.

          Your response is at the social edge of the uppity 133t h4x0rs out there that think we should all pitch in a help, and if we don't we are a bunch of lazy leacher punks.

          I simply have no skills in programming this kind of thing what so ever. Period. And there are a ton of people that use OSS every day that would never in a million years _ever_ be able to help port anything.

          So you know what I and every other lazy bastard out there that "expect people to do this for us"? A user base that makes OSS work.

          Without a userbase, there lacks popularity, without popularity there lacks the free advertising, marketing, etc.. that drives new programmers, bug testers, quality feedback, etc.. back to the those "that can do this for us".

          Yes it's free software, and guess what? That's the only reason I use it. Call me selfish, but I'm a spokesman and advocate of OSS to the normal schmoes. I defend our rights with my speech. I encourage non-techie users to use OSS. I feel that I, and many others, that can't "do this for ourselves" add a huge aspect to the OSS community that the core programmers perhaps take for granted.

          If only people that could compile linux used it, it would absolutely pathetic community supporting by comparison to the current reality.

          • by ta bu shi da yu (687699) on Friday April 01 2005, @12:54AM (#12107916) Homepage
            I was more responding to the original poster who seemed to think it was his God given right to have a port done for Windows. My response is that people who run Windows should do the port, not people who don't even run that operating system!

            C'mon already. If a Linux user said that to a person who solely compiles an OSS app in Visual C++, what sort of answer do you think they would give them? Personally, I think it's pretty good that they have stuff already.

            I can't understand the argument that people who write free software (free as in beer and free as in speech) should HAVE to do a port to Windows! They don't get paid for it, they don't have a responsibility to any of you! It's a priviledge, not a right to have this stuff.

            Hence my sheesh.
  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender (555885) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:40PM (#12105484)
    Now if only someone would hack it into a photoshop do-alike.
  • by chrispl (189217) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:41PM (#12105493) Homepage
    from Adobe lawyers in three, two, one....
  • YAY! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jefedesign (869140) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:42PM (#12105497) Homepage
    Gimp: New and improved. I love the photoshop look and feel. Now I can enjoy the look of photoshop with the functionality of Gimp.
  • Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geneing (756949) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:43PM (#12105502)
    For those who don't follow gimp development, I think this has been one of the often requested "features" for many years. Gimp developers usually say if you want it - do it yourself. Finally someone did.
    • by Rahga (13479) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:48PM (#12105555) Homepage Journal
      Actually, for this particular one, they tend to say "NOTABUG" or "WONTFIX".
        • Re:Finally... (Score:5, Informative)

          by nathanm (12287) <nathanmNO@SPAMengineer.com> on Thursday March 31 2005, @09:58PM (#12106853)
          Which exposes the elitist behavior of (some? many? nearly all?) linux programmers.
          As opposed to the non-elitist behavior of commercial software developers? If someone asked Adobe to change their interface to match some other software, they'd have a similar response. At least the GIMP source code is available so this was possible.
          I think it's a shame that it took a Mac user to make Gimp REALLY popular.
          What? The GIMP was already popular. It might win a few converts from existing Photoshop users who don't want to pay for future upgrades (or people using pirated copies), but I doubt it will popularize the GIMP much more than it already is. GIMPshop was only released yesterday, so only time will tell what kind of an impact it'll have.
          Something to ponder on: "Works for me" is NOT a good attitude. There's always room for improvement.
          What's wrong with that attitude? If it works for one person and they release it, it'll probably work for other people. Software can always be improved, but at some point there must be a feature freeze and debugging or it'll never be released. One of the best aspects of free/open source software is that people can add to it or change it if they want, unlike proprietary software.
          Now, I haven't RTFA (/.'ed), but I wonder if the GIMPShop can fully be turned into a cross-platform app by using WxWidgets... how much it would take to modify it?
          The GIMP was already cross-platform! You can download binaries for Windows, MacOS, and several kinds of Unix and Linux; or download the source code and compile it yourself. I'm assuming GIMPshop is still just as portable. The Linux version was released by somebody else later the same day. It probably just needs to be compiled for other platforms.
  • by ubiquitin (28396) * on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:43PM (#12105504) Homepage Journal
    The MacGIMP [macgimp.org] web site has the download link for the MacOSX disk image here [macgimp.org].
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:43PM (#12105509)
    Yeah, but too bad that The Gimp does not support 16bpp (no, CinePaint does not do what I want) and it doesn't support "Crop and Rotate" the way Photoshop does (very convenient trick to implement both in a single keystroke). These two features are what keeping me back from using Gimp for my photography.

    Until that day comes, Photoshop it is.
      • Wish granted (Score:5, Informative)

        by leonbrooks (8043) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:42PM (#12106015) Homepage
        Sven Neumann AKA neo [advogato.org] is working on [gnome.org] real Colour Management as one of the many, many plates he has in the air. Expect to see it surface before GIMP 2.4.

        Arbitrary colour channel depths is something of an elephant in the room at the moment. It was supposed to be inherent in a particular supporting library, but development on that library seems ot have petered out.

        The people who are actually doing stuff do have this in mind, though, and regularly get asked about it, so it will happen, even if only to stop the whining.
  • Fanstistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:44PM (#12105516)
    This is really fantastic. A windows port is an obvious need.

    Actually totally copying photoshop is taking things pretty far! I'd have settled for a simple normal window model for each platform. Cool though.

    This WILL reduce barriers to entry very dramatically. Always was curious that GIMP put together a nice package, but made it so awakward to use.
  • by soupdevil (587476) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:45PM (#12105529)
    is cmyk. My boss is ready to buy 5 licenses for Adobe CS2, and I'd love to save him a few grand.
    • by G-funk (22712) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:12PM (#12105755) Homepage Journal
      My boss is ready to buy 5 licenses for Adobe CS2, and I'd love to save him a few grand.

      This my friends, is how you get your ass beaten by every beret-wearing latte drinking graphic designer in the building.
        • by snuf23 (182335) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:07PM (#12105718)
          Pantone is not a color model like CMYK. Pantone is a method of insuring consistency in color.
          There is a Pantone Process series which IS CMYK based (CMYK are process color inks vs. spot color inks). There is a conversion between Pantone spot colors and Pantone process. So that if your company logo uses a particular spot (custom mixed ink) color, you can find the closest approximate to use in a process (4 color CMYK) print job (i.e. a magazine ad).
  • Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Auckerman (223266) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:47PM (#12105545)
    Certainly a step in the right direction, only in the sense from what the page says, it's a vast improvement in the interface over gimp. That being said, it does fall into the same trap as other OSS project like to be in, mimicking. If a developer wants his/her project to be noticed not only does it have to do what the competition does, it has to have some added value over the competition. Price isn't necessarily a good way to standout, people are more than willing to pay for something they perceive as better. It would be nice if there were more publicly done research into interface design, OSS projects would benefit greatly from it.

    As a OS X user, I would also say anything that requires X11 is not a native OS X application. With no core OS X technology support (little things like colorsync, quicktime, etc), Gimp will really never take off on OS X. I personally will stick to using photoshop.
      • by barfy (256323) on Thursday March 31 2005, @08:13PM (#12106222)
        Yeah I understand hating a piece of software that makes you more money than it costs. That does things that no other piece of software does...

        But anyways. Under the Edit menu you can change your keyboard shortcuts to whatever the "F" you want. And you could always change the keyboard shortcuts if you put as much research into it as you do into bitching about it.

        And oh yeah, there was that whole Illustrator/Indesign rationalization for making the same type of keyboard shortcuts the same in all of the apps. So that the learning impaired would only have to learn them one last time.

        So young to not be able to learn... Maybe we should start a foundation...
      • by cei (107343) on Thursday March 31 2005, @08:19PM (#12106249) Homepage Journal
        Repeat after me:
        1. Open Adobe Photoshop CS
        2. Select "Keyboard Shortcuts" from the Edit menu
        3. Shut the fuck up about not being able to change keybindings
        If you're still using Photoshop 5.5 on a Mac OS X box, no wonder you're not happy.
  • For better or worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Frumious Wombat (845680) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:51PM (#12105586)
    This should help the GIMP gain greater acceptance. Rather than getting a Photoshop-oriented book, and then translating the lessons into Gimpese, users can go directly. Hopefully this will encourage more people to try, use, and promote The GIMP, while producing better photos in the process.

    Ob. Disclaimer: I've used the GIMP since 0.54 on SGI, and think it hit a peak of usability somewhere around 1.1. The newer features are nice, but I'm glad someone took a stand and wrote an alternative. With this interface, it's a great alternative to Elements, and will hopefully cause Free Software to be used in more environments than before.
  • Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jozer99 (693146) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:52PM (#12105597)
    What about us poor Windows users? There are quite a lot of us, and I'm sure you would want to educate us heathens to the benifits of open source software. Somebody please port it!
  • by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:56PM (#12105624) Homepage Journal
    Here [igtc.com]
  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by LogicX (8327) * <slashdot@@@logicx...us> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:06PM (#12105709) Homepage Journal
    Feel free to snag the files from me (can handle a few hundred GBs)

    GIMPshop.dmg.tbz [logicx.net]
    GIMPshop-source-2.2.4.tbz [logicx.net]
  • Hello negativity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pherthyl (445706) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:12PM (#12105753)
    It's really quite amazing how negative many people are.

    User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't look like photoshop!"

    Dev: "Here, we recreated the photoshop interface for Gimp. You may be more comfortable with it now"

    User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't act like photoshop!"

    Holy shit people. The Gimp rocks, be thankful for that. Yes it doesn't have some of photoshop's features, but most people don't need those features anyway. You can't tell me most people are professional graphic artists or work in a print shop. For those people, get Photoshop, for everyone else, get the Gimp. Would you rather spend 700 bucks, or an extra 5 minutes figuring soemthing out?

    Unless of course, you have no ethical problem with illegaly copying software, in which case you might as well get Photoshop for your l33t h4x0r graphics.
    • by dasunt (249686) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:45PM (#12106030)
      User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't look like photoshop!"

      Dev: "Here, we recreated the photoshop interface for Gimp. You may be more comfortable with it now"

      User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't act like photoshop!"

      Dev: "Here's a version of GIMP that acts like photoshop."

      User: "Wahhhh! Why can't the Open Source community ever do anything innovative instead of just copying commercial software!"

  • Adobe's interface (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MenTaLguY (5483) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:24PM (#12105861) Homepage
    Adobe's interfaces tend to be pretty bad, actually, but they are an improvement on the GIMP's in some respects. I wonder if GimpShop really manages to incorporate the subtle things that give Photoshop an advantage, though...

    Also, can we PLEASE get a name that doesn't contain the world "GIMP"? Pretty please? Pleeeease?
  • Jokes aside... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaveJay (133437) on Thursday March 31 2005, @08:26PM (#12106287)
    Jokes aside, if you've invested years of effort into Photoshop at work, this is a nice way to carry that deeply-ingrained UI comfort into a tool that is free in both senses of the word. I use GIMP once and a while, but the UI differences between it and Photoshop (which I must use for work) are too jarring, so I end up booting my work laptop instead.
    • Re:Open Source (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:49PM (#12105562)
      Yes, GIMP is open source (GPL)

      The project has to accept the changes, my guess is they didn't want to have a photoshop clone interface. But that doesn't mean you cannot release a patch yourself, which is what happened here.
    • Re:Does... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jon3k (691256) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:50PM (#12105568)
      Yes - they do share a lot of the features.

      But take it from someone who's been using photoshop since around version 4.0 (which begat 5, then 5.5, then 6, then 7, and now CS, just FYI), it is still drastically different.

      I personally can't use it, because I use so many keyboard shortcuts, within a matter of about 15 seconds of using the gimp, I'm so violently frustrated I want to punch a hole in my monitor.

      So, with that said - I need to give this a try :)
      • Re:Does... (Score:5, Informative)

        by TheMMaster (527904) <hp@DALItmm.cx minus painter> on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:13PM (#12105768) Homepage
        you might want to check here [freeshell.org]
        have fun!! :)
          • Re:Does... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Artifakt (700173) on Thursday March 31 2005, @09:16PM (#12106613)
            Sometimes those reasons are economic, rather than technical. I can't answer for why the OP has switched back and forth, but I've sometimes used photoshop because a client specifically wanted me to - they wanted not just complete illustrations but some of the seperate layers and intermediate work files to pass on to others, plus assurance these would look right/work in photoshop. In the end, a requirement such as that means it's simply easier to do the whole project start to finish there.
            Also, there are lots of often pricy special filters that are not part of photoshop itself, but were made by third party developers specifically as add ons for it, and if you want to use one of these, it pretty much dictates using photoshop. Most of this can be avoided by writing your own filter params for freeware programs, but a.) you have to know how, b.) it can take a little time, and deadlines don't care, and c.) some shops' legal types are actually worried this skirts too close to violating a EULA clause against reverse engineering.
            (I also started doing illustrations using a bunch of small, limited freeware tools, and often had to switch twenty times between three or four of em to finish a single small project, so I've gotten strongly biased against swapping partially completed files around, probably more than most - maybe this colors my opinions above).
    • Re:Does... (Score:5, Informative)

      by timeOday (582209) on Thursday March 31 2005, @06:56PM (#12105622)
      The most common complaint I've heard is that Gimp is limited to 24 bpp RGB colorspace.

      Does that matter? Well, it does to some.

      A bigger factor I think is the interface. I doubt one user in 10 could figure out how to draw a line in the Gimp without looking it up. (Anti-Hint: there's no line tool!)

      However I think the single biggest boon to Gimp would be if Adobe found a way to stop PhotoShop piracy, and chose to do so.

      • Re:Does... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mr. Underbridge (666784) on Thursday March 31 2005, @07:09PM (#12105740)
        A bigger factor I think is the interface. I doubt one user in 10 could figure out how to draw a line in the Gimp without looking it up. (Anti-Hint: there's no line tool!)

        What do you mean there's no line tool? You click on the little thing that looks like a "pencil." Then you "draw" with it.

        If you want your line straight, hold down Shift while you do the above.

        Admittedly, the gimp interface isn't simple. I'd complain more about drawing an empty rectangle: select "region" tool, select a rectangular region, then "Edit->Stroke". Not easy to figure out the first time.

        • Re:Does... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by NotoriousQ (457789) on Thursday March 31 2005, @08:00PM (#12106147) Homepage
          Let me tell you a story. My dad asks me if he should pirate photoshop. I told him no, said the reasons for why most ways of pirating are bad (possible trojeans, lawsuits, etc). So he asks me what should he do. So I told him about GIMP. His response was why would he use inferior tools. So I said what about paint shop pro. He responded inferior and costly. So I told him about the low cost version of photoshop (stripped down a bit). He looked at it and his response was that important features are missing from it. I told him he does not need those features, and his response was what if I do.

          Basically Adobe runs into the problem where every person that wants to do image editing is now thinking "photoshop or bust". And all of those types will end up pirating it or not doing any image editing at all. I think my dad went the no editing at all route, because he wanted to only use photoshop for editing (not that he knows how).