The Gimp from the Eyes of a Photoshop User 1199
Eugenia writes "Many in the F/OSS community are raving about the Gimp, however pros who have actually used Photoshop think differently: This Mac professional designer goes through the steps of getting Gimp 2.0 up and running on his Mac, only to get baffled by the chaotic interface in general and its non-standard UI compared to other Mac apps, its slowness to open large files and to apply filters, the unintuitive tools that accompany it and its very visible bad quality of text and lines/shapes. That designer even bought a 'supported' version of MacGimp by an OSS-Mac company, Archei, but he never heard back for his support requests (free Gimp for Macs here). I think that's one of the best-written articles I've ever read about the reality of most open-source geek-driven projects vs their equivelant professional/proprietary ones. Personally, before I get persuaded to use Gimp again for my photography projects, I would need --in addition to the author's peeves -- full 16-bit per channel support, high-quality scanning/printing drivers with integrated GUI (a'la SilverFast), and a 'crop and rotate' feature (as seen in PS/PSE). Besides, both Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements cost bellow $100 (with PS Elements getting bundled with most scanners/printers/digital cameras, albeit without the much needed 16bit support either)."
Missing (Score:4, Insightful)
GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:5, Insightful)
Enthusiasm for the GIMP reminds me of Samuel Johnson's famous comments on women preaching [samueljohnson.com].
Historical sexism aside, his point was that when we see something hard being done by someone unexpected, we sometimes fail to notice how poorly it's actually being done.
In the OS community, everyone gets so excited about having a "free" (as in beer) app which potentially replaces an expensive commercial app, that we get a bit carried away in our enthusiasm.
Its like the do-it-yourself TiVo's that aren't really anywhere near as convenient or feature rich as the real deal.
GIMP gives us a glimpse of the tremendous potential of Open Source software, but anyone who thinks its "as good as PS," isn't a serious Photoshop user.
GIMP is FREE (Score:5, Insightful)
You get what you pay for. It's that simple. And considering The Gimp is free it's a GREAT DEAL!
If they would be honest A LOT of home users SHOULD use the GIMP instead of using an illegal version of Photoshop.
A long way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some major beefs that graphic designers and Photoshoppers have with the GIMP:
(1) The interface sucks. Nobody likes working with 16 different open windows
(2) The interface sucks. Nobody likes menus in different windows and toolbars
(3) No 16-bit/channel color support
(4) No [good] CMYK support = will never be used in prepress[1]
(5) Repeat (1) and (2)
(6) [Lack of] Speed
(7) Dependencies (GTK+, etc.)
Most importantly, I think, the GIMP community needs once again to have its teeth kicked in for its idiocy in choosing the name 'GIMP.' Yes, we here on Slashdot all know that it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and we've all heard how it's "just an acronym" and not supposed to mean anything. But for reasons of political correctness, common decency, etc. the program's name will continue to be a major reason that it never sees any serious adoption.
So, GIMP developers, clean up the interface and change the product name, and your program has a decent chance of seeing the light of day in the real world.
[1] In the GIMP developer's defense, most/all of the CMYK process is patent protected.
heh, he screwed something up (Score:5, Insightful)
s/UNIX/OS-X
Yeah
Sunny Dubey
Linux user's perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
Complain about usability all you want, I'd rather have an app that functions.
PhotoShop Killer? (Score:1, Insightful)
Photoshop and professional users (Score:3, Insightful)
Not Biased... no, REALLY.. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's always humorous to me when trollers go after an opensource project that offers an excellent (albeit different) solution than a commercial closed source project. Do they ever compare apples for apples? How many free plugins/styles/scripting languages do you get with photoshop? what is the price tag again? I've used both, photoshop is better.. but Gimp is excellent and more than "good enough" for most projects (without being closed source or having a high price).
You shouldn't complain! (Score:2, Insightful)
Gimp is done by people who love to give back to the community. If you look at what has been done, it is an awesome project. If you don't like that it's not a Photoshop Killer, then pitch in and pay the salary of a couple of the GIMP programmers so they can dedicate their undivided attention to the project and I guarantee you that you'll get what you ask for.
For where this product comes from, it is great. It shouldn't be looked at as a Photoshop replacement for professionals, but as a Photoshop replacement for those of us who can't afford Photoshop.
Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. If you don't like the product and don't want to contribute to make it better. Go buy Photoshop.
Otherwise, get your hands dirty.
Great quote... (Score:1, Insightful)
*sigh* too true.
Stunning conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of quality apps with a GUI for Linux. That The Gimp is free is no excuse to have a crappy interface that is completely unintuitive.
Re:GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's not that the dog talks well, it's that it talks at all."
This is the problem with a lot of open source: people are happy that it talks at all. Maybe someday they'll get around to talking well?
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we'd have a usefull free program. But no, for some reason the designers of GIMP just will NOT listen. They like their crazy interface, regardless of how many professions tell them it's crap.
Re:FreeType for GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think if you keep using it you'll start to appreciate the right-click-on-the-image deal. Say if you want to select a region and apply a sharpen filter, you can draw your box, then at the location, bring up the menu and select sharpen. Instead of having to go up to the top of the screen.
Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking of which, useless novelty crap has the same rank in the right-click hierarchy as bread and butter functions (there's probably hotkeys or some configuration crap I can do to fix this - but I'm ranting here). Beginning users are helplessly confused by the selection/anchoring setup. The Channels/Paths thing is just messed up, and I bet most users just steer clear of the whole thing and just implement what they can with layers and fudging. Lots of the subtools lack the features that would be required to make them useful, and are far too customizable in only the ways I couldn't care less about. Or are just pretty much useless novelty doodads.
Still, I use it because it's a free way to do some common picture operations (like fudging color) on my work computer.
You can't really complain too much about a free product - but you can certainly wish it had had a usable (and here I mean more than "it's possible to use") interface.
Re:gimp not bad anymore (Score:1, Insightful)
The original article spends quite a while complaining that the GIMP is different, and then lists some "problems" that I've never seen on the Unix side. Are these MacGimp problems? When the image is at a high enough resolution and zoomed out, I don't see stepping on Solaris or Linux. And the typesetting example he has may be due to using different fonts for "Helvetica." Mine doesn't look that bad. All the tool icons have tooltips, and the help pops right up. All but the help could be explained by a poor X server on his Mac.
And then there are all the complaints that it doesn't look like a "native Mac" application. Ok. It isn't a native Mac application. Looks perfectly native on my machines. The apps that try to look like Mac apps drive me nuts. It's a different perspective.
Re:Stunning conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:2, Insightful)
There is also the economic factor. If a commercial app sucks, it does not make money and the company drops it (or the company drops).
With OSS, there is no economic filter. People just keep working at it. The only feedback loop is user comments. If those comments are not taken into consideration, well, the app is still there.
Note: I am NOT saying that all OSS is bad, nor that all money making commercial s/w is good. There are always exceptions to every broad statement.
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A long way to go (Score:3, Insightful)
And just to tweak the nose of a few people here even further, I like to compound the GIMP's "many open windows" interface with focus-follows-mouse, which allows me to be MUCH more productive in GIMP (you should see me race my mouse around the screen) than in Photoshop, especially when doing complex manipulations.
I do still have to use Photoshop, though, because:
1) GIMP's unsharp mask can only go down to radius 1.0.
2) GIMP has no 16-bit and no Adobe RGB support.
But other than these two things, I far and away prefer GIMP to Photoshop.
Not unreasonable but a little off the mark... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The author is a moron. (Score:5, Insightful)
All he does need to know is how to do his job: designing.
and Gimp failed on this, so whatever you say, it's useless. The guy is a pro designer, and found the Gimp inadequate. Deal with it.
Re:Missing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a review by someone who uses image editing program professionally, so to her, time is money. She may save herself quite a bit of money, but she would have to spend a large amount of time to learn the program before she can utilize it for work. All that time is lost revenue for her. In addition to the steep learning curve, she is complaining about the quality of the resulting images from GIMP - this would be a big no no for someone who does graphics editing professionally. If she can't produce top quality work, how is she suppose to satisfy her clients? In another words, more lost revenue. Pretty soon the lost revenue should equal to or surpass the money she saves from not buying PhotoShop.
-B
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missing (Score:4, Insightful)
You may or may not know this, but open source does not mean 'free'. Sure the GIMP is 'free' but open source in no way means it is free.
2. I don't have to shell out some money for paint shop pro...
Time is, literally, money. If you spend 100 hours using the GIMP in a month, but doing the same task in PSP, PS, etc, would take 70 hours you'd have saved 30 hours. In this 30 hours you could could do casual work in the local gas station, bar or mall earning at least mininum wage (say $7ph) which works out as $210 in those 30 hours - that is OPPORTUNITY COST! By buying a product you have made money! Needless to say, if you were a graphic designer or used graphics anywhere near regularly you'd use such a program for more than a month (the opportunity cost of $210 only refers to a month, besides your hourly wage would probably be more the $7ph). A layman using such a program for a year would also save big-time!
That is the meaning of opportunity cost and TCO. You may pay for a product, but if that product is superior you may easily end up saving. Photoshop (and PSP maybe - don't have much eperience with that compared to PS or the GIMP) is a demonstration of that principal.
just because the GUI != PS doesn't make it bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the comments posted have also ignored some of the Gimp's strengths, such as its scripting language and plugins, which give Gimp many features that Photoshop does not offer. I can understand how a professional would have gripes with it, but I believe it to be an excellent software package, even if its UI is vastly different than Photoshop.
No, YOU go to the chalkboard... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "subjective intuitivity" argument is a very valid response against people complaining "but it's not what I'm used to". But this is not what is happening here. The "subjective intuitivity" argument cannot be used as a shield to protect applications that-- rather than unfamiliar-- are simply poorly designed.
No, there is technically no such thing as a naturally intuitive interface. However, there is such a thing as a naturally unituitive interface. The Gimp is one. Just because some amount of learning is requisite in using an application like Photoshop (in that it requires a basic familiarity with the graphical computer interfaces popularized in the last 20 years) does not change the fact that the GIMP's UI blows goats.
Re:gimp not bad anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Read one of the above complaints that mentions not liking "menus in the windows". I hate to break it to you, but that's not a GIMP paradigm--that's a is-not-a-macintosh paradigm.
I also don't buy the right click thing. I use right click religiously and find it infinitely more useful that having to go all the way up to the top of the window just to select a menu option.
The interface (in those respects) doesn't suck, it's just different.
As for CMYK, patents aside, it's scheduled for next release, we'll see about it all then.
Also, if you haven't tried it since 1.0, look again. 2.0 uses the new GTK and it's a hell of a lot smoother. I really think next version will be serious-production-useful.
That said, I use it more or less daily and can vouch for one thing it does well that Photoshop (even with the right plugins) does horribly--Scripting.
If anyone read the comments in the article about Scribus, they noted one of the QuarkExpress guys raving about how it could autogenerate their catalog based on a database.
Gimp does this sort of thing insanely well. Between Gimp-Perl and Gimp-Python (and Script-Fu in general), you can automate processes in Gimp in insane ways. Automated photo-processing can be awesome.
As for "people who prefer Gimp to PS aren't serious PS users", I'd have to call BS on this one. After working with PS on OSX (even with OSX's crispy Unixness) actually seems to crash more. It also has issues of not really being able to tweak extensions (in OS9 you could turn them on and off in the extensions folder, now you can't, that can suck).
Similarly, I have problems getting PhotoShop, OSX, Postscript, and HP Designjets to kick out the correct colors. It does badness.
In short, PS has its share of problems as does Gimp. I would also argue that PS's interface has some serious suckage to it as well. The only thing I miss about it is the space-bar as a shortcut key--that was handy.
I think with the completion of 16-bit buffers and CMYK, you'll see a lot less complainers next version.
The thing to remember is that it's free (not beer-free, freedom free). That means that every advance it makes stays with it. It can't go out of business or get "phased out" with the next release. It's there for you, as long as you need it. When Microsoft buys the DOJ, SEC, and FCC and then Adobe, the PS people will have a rude awakening about exactly why Open Source is good. For that matter, if Apple bought Adobe, they might find out as well...
In parting, I'd remind all of you PS users that Adobe themselves pioneered the legal doctrine that copying look and feel is not copyright violation. If we reskin GIMP to look EXACTLY like PS, would that make you happy?
Re:Stunning conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be fair to OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS isn't always harder to use than commercial software. The Gimp has ALWAYS had its UI as a major complaint. KDE isn't harder to use than Explorer. Kopete isn't harder to use than ICQ. VNC isn't harder to use than PCAnywhere.
The Gimp is damn hard to learn and use.
Ouch... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bar chart at the end should be a wake-up call to developers; the reviewer rates the 'features' at 80%, yet the 'value' is 10% and the 'must-have factor' at 1%. It doesn't matter how many features you've crammed in, if you hide it in a confusing interface and the overall product takes up more time than saves, it's just not worth bothering with.
Backwards! (Score:4, Insightful)
My impression of *NIX type OS's has been that if you ask it to point a gun at you and pull the trigger, it'll do so without a second thought (cough)rm -r *(cough). He seems to have confused the "imaginary" file system that is his OS X folders, with the actual file system underneath. Funny how people see the system they're accustomed to as being "real" even after it has had reality abstracted away to another system underneath it.
Let's go through this (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that is not the point. You know what I do if I want to install gimp?
apt-get install gimp
That's it. That covers installation and download. I don't need to start some nonstandard installer program or reboot my machine like on Windows (I guess on MacOS I would have to drag and drop something, as that seems to be the way Apple likes to do everything). If that's not "ready to roll" I don't know what that is.
Open source developers primarily support the platforms they work with -- mainly Linux and FreeBSD. If you use a proprietary platform like MacOS then don't whine that there are no ready-made binaries for whatever you want to do.
The point of open source (or free software) is freedom - even if you never touch the source code, you know that no single company has control over what you can or cannot do, can decide to suddenly remove certain features or add certain requirements -- if that happens, and the majority of the community doesn't agree, then the program will be forked, i.e. someone will create THE BLIMP, the truly free alternative to THE GIMP. This is what just happened with X-Window, and it could never happen if a single company had control over the source code. If you don't care about freedom, don't use open source software.
Opening MacGimp for the first time was like stepping out onto the surface of an alien planet
That's because that is exactly what you are doing. MacOS is not Linux, it has its own proprietary desktop. If you take software that was developed under completely different conditions - one key condition being that the programmer doesn't know and doesn't need to know what underlying desktop the user works with (there's that pesky freedom again) - and you thrust this software into a proprietary environment where these choices do not exist, then yes, that's like stepping on an alien planet.
Most of the complaints of the author are the result of two things:
The few complaints that are valid (chaotic menu structure, lack of previews) can only be addressed through contributing money, code, or detailed ideas. Whining about open source software is like complaining about the quality of a Wikipedia article.
So: Mac user rambles about obscure GIMP port to MacOS not being like other MacOS applications. Nothing to see here - move along.
Re:Missing (Score:2, Insightful)
I do. That's why GIMP exists. If you don't like open source, noone is forcing you to use it.
photoshop stagnating (Score:4, Insightful)
In the long run, there is no question, what will prevail. Photoshop is 14 years old, the gimp 7 years. Photoshop 2 was already a good project and I preferred photoshop 3 for many years since it was much faster then the photoshop 4/5 hogs under the old Mac OS. Having seen Adobe pulling Premiere from the Mac platform, I would not even bet on whether Photoshop will exist on the Mac in 10 years. The sudden death of closed source projects makes me nervous. The sudden disappearance of applications like Adobe dimension or Canoma is something which should make you think. I have more faith in open source projects. The gimp steadily improves while photoshop essentially stagnated.
Yes, the Gimp has a different user interface, but this is a minor issue. What is important for me is that the application is stable, also with memory intensive tasks, that it starts up fast and I'm done quickly also with working on hundreds of files at once "gimp *.jpg" My experience is that the gimp on linux starts a multiple times faster then photoshop or the macromedia fireworks on a mac with a similar CPU. The slower Gimp OSX performance might be related to the fact that X applications still run way too slow on the Mac. But this is steadily improving.
Author of article has some wrong ideas.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having to click on buttons several times to active is also a symptom of running under X11. I have GIMP2 on my powerbook and it's *horrible* to work with because of the way that focus works in a mac so each time you click from window to window in the gimp you have to click once to give the window focus, and then again to activate the menu/tool/etc.
Tools probably aren't grouped in the best way, but they are grouped with reasonably. The selection tools, manipulation tools (rotate, scale, etc), fill tools, and drawing tools. Again, they aren't perfect, but they are definately not "thrown down".
The open dialoge is standard GTK and if you were running in GNOME under linux, would look the same as the rest of your desktop. It doesn't look like your standard open dialoge because it's GTK, not aqua!
Some of the performance issues again are no doubt due to the emulation, again, same with the font handling. Try it on a real linux computer.
Also, GIMP isn't trying to be photoshop, I don't think, it's the poor man's photoshop. Hopefully now that 2.0 is out the devs will be able to concentrate on polishing the UI, adding in some of the niceness that is in elements, etc.
Re:GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a friend who uses Photoshop on Mac, and of course he's told me about how he's tried Gimp a little, but it just doesn't compare to all the stuff you can do in Photoshop. And of course, we have all these professional graphics gurus on here saying the same thing.
Personally, I don't care that much. The only thing I really need a graphics manipulation program for is some occassional minor editing of digital photos I've taken, or some graphics for my (small , simple, and not professional) website. I'm not about to shell out hundreds of dollars for a professional graphics program, or even $99 for a mediocre one, just to do this kind of simple stuff. So for me, the GIMP is great, because it's free, it does all the stuff I need it to do, and even better, it has a lot of extra stuff I can play with if I like. I really don't care if some professional can get 20% better productivity with with PS full-time as opposed to GIMP, and frankly, I'm a little sick of hearing about it.
As far as I'm concerned, the only useful comments here are from people offering valid, constructive criticisms of GIMP, in an effort to help improve it for the entire community. People who just whine that it's not as good and they'd rather spend the money on PS are just wasting everyone's time. If your time is SO valuable that working with GIMP would lose you money, then why are you wasting your time ranting on Slashdot about it? You've already made up your mind, and have nothing constructive to offer anyone, so please leave.
Re:FreeType for GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. The problem with articles like this falls under not understanding the material under review (e.g. expecting it to be a Photoshop port to Linux) and not doing research before proudly exclaiming that "Gimp Sux0rs!"
A competant review includes things like "There was a plugin for it which I found eventually, but it's a bit silly that the default text tool is so poor."
I feel that Gimp has a long way to go, but with script-fu it has some serious potential and can already make a lot of sweet images. Photoshop is still better for professional work I'd venture, but Gimp surely does not suck.
And I still fail to see why the user interface is perplexing. Confusing for a new user, sure, but if you can't understand anything that isn't presented to you in the same fashion as every other app you use, I won't feel any pity, especially when you're dealing with such a powerful tool. Powerful tools can justify (and often require) a non-standard interface to be useful.
That's my rant.
Cheers
The article is NOT Gimp bashing: (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not take such reviews as constructive criticism? It's actually good for programs like gimp that professionals or people who can influence the professionals have started to pay attention to free software.
So don't take it personally, guys. It's a good sign
Unfortunately (Score:1, Insightful)
However, it's just the normal linux/UNIX GIMP. It doesn't really have any conception of the fact that it's existing on a macintosh. This gets problematic becuase it goes ahead and acts like, well, it's in UNIX. This is a problem becuase some things, like the way the filesystem is laid out or the interface conventions, are different in OS X than vanilla UNIX. Many of the author's complaints stem from this problem.
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
MDI has got to be the lamest interface idea ever. And what is MDI anyway? It's Microsoft's workaround to put the menu bar where it belongs: At the top of the screen, for all windows in a single application.
Is it really surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The total users for that tool
2. The fraction of users developing that tool.
Everybody needs a basic kernel, word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program etc. Many users, low percentage develops but still many developers.
Geeky stuff like a regex parser may have few users, but relatively many developers.
A professional class graphics tool? Few people need it, the "professional class" at least. Few geeks are really great artists, and so relatively few developers. A low-low score = bad.
The only reason Photoshop comes up more often than other software is that users need the basic features, and well - if they're first going to pirate something, they go for the top product.
Yes, if I was doing graphics professionally, I would most likely get a professional tool, just as if I was doing movie editing, audio editing, 3d modeling or just about any other job.
If that is what you do for a living, simply do the math. How much time would it save you, or how much would it increase the quality and value of your work. If it's above sales price, buy.
I don't expect a bunch of programmers to sit down and make something for me that they don't need themselves - or well if they did, it would be because I'm paying them, which is indirectly what I do when I buy software. Obvious, isn't it?
Kjella
Re:Interface (Score:5, Insightful)
My experiences with other peoples' work proves that The Gimp is capable and powerful. My experiences with my own work proves that The Gimp has a steep learning curve mostly due to its odd interface.
I think you're confusing "easy to learn" with "easy to use". An interface that is simple and intuitive can often get in the way of productivity. Often used functions that are easy to find may take several mouse clicks to use when a keyboard command, while not intuitive, would make it much easier to do the same thing. Blender [blender.org] is a great example of this. "Intuitive" is the last thing I would call the interface, but once you learn it it's incredibly productive. Whether or not Gimp falls into this category, I don't know as I'm not a graphic designer nor do I have much experience with either Photoshop or Gimp. But how easy it is to learn should not be the sole, or even primary, metric on judging an interface. For serious work, where someone is going to take the time to learn the application beyond the hobby user level, how easy it is to perform common tasks is going to trump easy to learn every time.
Re:just because the GUI != PS doesn't make it bad (Score:2, Insightful)
The advocates of PS by-and-large rail against TheGIMP's UI. Understanding the UI is by-and-large a personal problem, and certain UI's appeal to certain personalities naturally. But I suspect that the vast majority of the critics, as per human nature, simply do not wish to change their current UI. Even for one that is inherently better.
UI design is an advanced concept, and it seems that even many professional software designers do not understand the concepts. The vast majority of website designers clearly do not understand the concepts. How can we expect the end users to either?
The challenge here is to
(1) admit that the current interface you use is not perfect
(2) learn an entirely new interface, deploy it professionaly, and compare it with the old one
If you are too stubborn to actually learn a new UI, of course your criticism of the program will be "it has a poor UI." Which of course means, "I couldn't/wasn't willing to figure it out."
So why bother posting about it here?
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very good question. What CAN you actually do with PS (or the Gimp for that matter)? Seriously, I'm fairly clueless about photo editing software, can someone explain this simply to me? From what I've read, PS is mainly interesting if you're producing pictures for publication, a fairly small niche. But from some posts around here it sounds almost as if it's a truely essential piece of software.
Re:FreeType for GIMP (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok troll I'll bight, the reason that using the Gimp in OS X or in Windows is a bad idea is that in both cases the window management sucks. The Gimp is designed to take advantage of the capabilities of the typical window manager under X. The idea is that you open a fresh desktop for the gimp and any other programs that you are using to work on the image/files with, and use the window manager to switch between windows. When you switch to another task you switch desktops. Yes I know that there is a powertoy for virtual desktops in Windows, but it is a poor implementation of the idea.
This way of working allows for a much more flexible way of placing windows than the monolithic interface of Photoshop and your typical IDE. So the Gimp interface is great for Unix users but sucks for Windows and Mac users. Similarly the Photoshop interface is great for Windows and Mac users, but gets in the would get in the way for Unix users.
I think the problem with GIMP is because.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly Graphic Designers are NOT programers. There visual people who like pretty things and easy to use GUI's - thats why Apple is a great platform for us
Theres no need for me to write a script or make sure I have some other dependency programs/file sinstalled. The Program works exactly like the other programs I use in the print industry Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign - they all use a similar UI.
Theres no reason for a graphic designer to touch linux ever. Maybe a windows machine, always an apple, but never linux.
The makers of GIMP are open source programmers who know nothing about graphic design in the professional world. Look at the prettines of their site compared to adobe's. The GIMP could have millions of dollars of money put into it and never be as good as phhotoshop, because they don't know or understand that CODERS ARE NOT GRAPHIC DESIGNERS and vice versa.
Different mind sets... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said... OS projects involving the arts, need to get more artists to participate. More right brained thinking folks involved who will ultimately be using the applications. The kind of people who write code, typically want tools who's UI is consistent with the environments they use. These prople have tremendous mental muscles in those linear skills usually associated with coding and designing software. In applications whose ultimate user base will be artists, those considerations are second to having a tool which elegantly allows them to visualize, create, give birth to artistic expression. Powerful file handling features are great for somebody intending to perform batch operations on a slew of graphics files... however more photographers are looking for ways to get a clear sense of their work, and how to improve it. Most don't care what algorythms the programmer chose to operate on the graphic... they just want to see the operation quickly so they can compare this or that.
WIRED did a great article on OS last November... at OS as it's beginning to influence law and science. We need to have a fair representation of all human endeavors involved in this movement, so they can cross pollinate and create the kind of tools, resources, and infrastructure needed to grow a distinctly different kind of culture. One that is more interested in the common good, the general benefit to all, than the need to control or own one another. A shift from the an 18th century mentality to a truly third millinium mindset. I look forward to the evolution of OS... I see it as an underlying force for expressing what's best in being human.
Genda
Re: UI in the OS world (Score:5, Insightful)
Half of UI design is simply forgetting what you know about computers in general, and your bit of software in particular. You'd think it'd be easier to forget than to learn! You just have to step back and ask questions like: what's the user trying to do here? What mindset will they start off with? What will they expect? How can we make it easy for them? How little do they need to learn to do it?
Yes, sometimes coming up with the right UI will involve lots of UI experience, having learned techniques and tools, or having that mindset. But I reckon half the time it's simply down to caring about the UI, stopping for a moment and asking whether this whizzy bit of code you're keen on is really the best thing for the user, or whether something simpler or less clever will be better.
The other thing you need is discipline. Sometimes providing two different ways to do something is worse than just providing one, especially if neither do it properly. Sometimes you need to keep things simple and uncluttered -- having to shoe-horn stuff together that doesn't naturally fit is often a sign of deeper problems in your underlying model. Sometimes you need to restrict what your users can do. After all, it's better to do one thing really well than several things badly. And sometimes you need to respect platform/system/community standards, even if you don't like them.
As usual, I've rambled too long. But if all developers cared about their user interfaces, and had the discipline to do what was needed, then all software would benefit.
Re:Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
Only real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
But to be able to cope adequately with scanned images it really really needs 16-bit depth support. I know filmgimp supports it but the interface on that is really clunky (yes, even by GIMP standards!) and I've never managed to get xsane working happily with it. I don't care about ELQ's proposed spiffy scanner interfaces - xsane does everything I'll ever need, though I wish some of the ranges would revert to +/-400% rather than +/-100%. lcms colour management would be nice, but for home users (ie most users) it's not a can't-live-without feature. 16 bits-per-channel support is; I know there are plans to support it in future releases via libGEGL, but progress on this seems achingly slow. There seem to be plans to polish gimp-2.0 and release a 2.2 later in the year; I'd far rather that was shelved and the developers worked on libGEGL as the basis of a new GIMP core.
Re:FreeType for GIMP (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny that this is the argument for using Mozilla/Opera/whatever browser over IE. I have popup blocking, mouse gestures, Google search bar, etc out of the box with them. With IE you have to hunt down the add-ons.
And I do use the Gimp, because I don't muck with photos that much. It is good enough for me. The pros use pro tools. It is always about the right tools for the job.
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, one can always fork the project and design a good interface.
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(URL in sig is temporarily geek.is-a-geek.org [is-a-geek.org]
Money is not the only kind of cost. (Score:5, Insightful)
I made a concerted effort to start using the Gimp, beginning with the assumption that anything about the interface that didn't feel right to me was merely becuase I wasn't used to it and that once I got used to its idiom I would be as efficient with it as I would be with Photoshop. This turned out not to be the case.
What I would consider an acceptably designed tool is that once you are familiar with it, it just melts away into a comfortable sort of overlay where what you find yourself thinking of is what you're doing, not thinking about how to make the tool do what you want. It turns out that the Gimp interface, with its tools which do not work in logical or naturally synergistic ways and its interface consisting entirely of totally unrelated features scattered over a huge mess of heirarchal menus that seem to have the features sorted into them in random order, was just something I cannot get into a comfortable state with, no matter how much time I spent fighting with it. In fact, it was bad enough I couldn't actually manage to complete a single attempt at an image, no matter how small, to my satisfaction. The interface just got in the way too much. I would posit that this is the Gimp's fault, not mine.
Now, given, this was Gimp 1. The new Gimp that came out a couple weeks ago, I haven't used. But to be firmly honest I see no reason why I should. These people have given me no reason to believe they can design a useable interface. Installing this software would be a mere matter of typing "sudo emerge gimp" into my Gentoo box at home before I go to bed and letting it grind for the next day and a half. However, it would require a large investment of time in terms of learning, testing and playing with the Gimp2 interface, and I simply lack any reason to believe that there will be any sort of worthwhile payoff for this cost of time. I would prefer to continue with my current situation of using imagemagick to convert formats and only being able to edit images while in a computer lab on campus. To be honest, while I am somewhat embarrased to be saying this, if I DO eventually try out Gimp2, it will be for the sole reason that once I do so I will be able to respond to Slashdot discussions about it like this one in an informed manner. The software program itself simply does not offer anything I am interested in using.
If they would be honest A LOT of home users SHOULD use the GIMP instead of using an illegal version of Photoshop.
I disagree. There are other free and inexpensive alternatives to the Gimp that perform their jobs far better. One that comes to mind is GraphicConverter, a very cheap shareware graphics app for OS X that I used for years (though I haven't used it much since the OS X switch) that while by no means professional is totally acceptable for a large variety of applications. It doesn't have as many OH SUPER LEET TEXT EFFECTS as the Gimp does but I or anyone else could sit down, immediately understand how to do what they want, and perform tasks of relative complexity without being stymied by the interface. The same is not true of the GIMP. I am not familiar with windows freeware but I would imagine a similar situation exists there.
Once again, wishing I could moderate the article. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most open source apps?
I agree with the assertion that GIMP has got absolutely squat on Photoshop. Honestly. That's why I see no problem in dropping the big bucks on PS. But MOST open source apps being the same? Highly doubtful.
OpenOffice handles legacy Word documents better than the "latest and greatest" from Microsoft. Heck, I've had compatibility problems between the equivalent versions of Word for Windows and Word for Mac that have been resolved just by opening the document up in OO.
Bash rocks cmd's socks off. If geeks do one thing exceptionally well, it's command-line tools.
Ogle vs. Any DVD player for Windows: Killer. Just learn your bloody keyboard mappings already (not that hard to find) and it's exactly the same as any given DVD player except no lock-outs, so you can skip all the bullshit previews the companies decide to force feed you with (also, you've read the FBI Warnings before, and if you haven't, you're not about to start now. Suffice it to say you saw the FBI warning, can you please skip it already?)
Like I said, GIMP definately has serious disadvantages over Photoshop. But a lot of the other tools that are out there are not as lacking. 99% of the stuff I use that's open-source is in most cases as good as and in many cases better than its proprietary counterpart. The one thing people seem to forget is that in the geek world aesthetics take a back seat to functionality. I don't mind learning curves myself so I find myself able to do a lot more with a fully open source system over a system loaded with its proprietary counterparts.
Will the Photoshop Users please provide a UI spec? (Score:3, Insightful)
By that I don't mean 'Rip off everything about Photoshop's UI and make the GIMP a lawsuit target', but rather start a project which provides a detailed set of interface conventions, specifications and mockups that will provide an easy way for the existing GIMP team, or a new team to put an artist-friendly face on the GIMP, and to serve as a guideline and UI spec for other atrist-friendly Open Source tools to conform to.
If the name should be changed, then suggest a new name as part of the project , instead of just saying 'The GIMP's name sucks, you should use something else'
Personally, I find GIMP 2.x quite usable, but Open Source is not about providing you a product, its about you participating in making a product.
If you don't realise that, or can't understand that, then i feel sorry for you, but you're whining is worthlesss if you can't even frame your complaints in a way that might get noticed by the GIMP developers (e.g. on the gimp-users mailing list)
Please shut up and go use photoshop.
If you don't want to help, then you really are better off paying for, or stealing a commercial product.
Gimp is good enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Once you learn to use gimp, it's powerful. It's damn good. It's not like it's got all the big, flashy features of PS though. Hey, here's an idea: stop whining about what gimp doesn't have, and hit the gnome bugzilla at http://bugs.gnome.org/ and ask for these things. 24 bit color per channel, 24 bit alpha channels (opacity), better image editing structure (tree based image editing instead of layer based), vector layers, take a look around and ask for what's not bugged on the list. If something DOES have a bug for it, reply to the bug to show that it's a popularly desired feature.
Don't go slamming OSS because it doesn't have everything you want, or doesn't blast the $500 alternatives. You have to make it better. Not by coding, as some of these big-headed programmers would like to force you to believe; but by demanding the features you need. Someone will code it if they actually care about the project.
Re:The article is NOT Gimp bashing: (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome to Slashdot.
Re:I agree... (Score:1, Insightful)
Nevertheless, considering the stated point of the article was to be a review of the macintosh version of Gimp, they were certainly valid criticisms from the reviewer's perspective. It is not the reviewer's fault the slashdot blurb misrepresented her purpose.
Re:UI in the OS world (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OK, a few thoughts here: (Score:2, Insightful)
Not always. Photoshop is also a port. It has ports on Windows, and even the OSX version is a port over the very old 68k API. So, what's your point now?
Also, the version of Gimp that guy used was COMMERCIAL, and IF that port was "bad", then it shouldn't have being sold in the first place.
> Who's going to buy it? Photography and graphic design types. Why? Because they ALWAYS throw huge amounts of money at stuff.
Wrong. They buy it because it DOES stuff they need, not because they want to "throw" money. The Gimp simply CAN'T do some stuff they need.
>Is it worth blowing a thousand bucks and locking yourself into Mac just to have prettier buttons and menus?
Haha! You really don't get it, do you? When we are talking about the "UI" we don't talk about nice buttons and colors, we talk about FREAKING USABILITY. Something that Gimp LACKS.
>why the hell does everyone get so hell-bent for leather about comparing every single open source project with an expensive proprietary alternative
Because people use software in order to do their jobs. The fact that something is open source or not, is IRRELEVANT for 99.9% of the people. What matters is how each tool can help the user to do his/her job. The rest political philologies don't matter.
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, most professional designers have not only spent days or weeks dedicated just to studying/learning Photoshop, but also read User's Manuals and tutorials, and many have also gone on courses to learn Photoshop, and have continued to learn Photoshop in the process of using it on the job and also learning tips from colleagues that you work with.
Now somebody like that picks up the GIMP and expects to be able to be just as fluent but with only a miniscule fraction of the effort put into learning it. They play with it for a few hours, perhaps a few days at most, struggle to figure out how to do things they already know how to do on PS, and then give up, blaming the GIMP.
I've never met one single Photoshop user who tried GIMP who was fair enough to put in anywhere near as many hours learning GIMP as they had already put into learning PS before criticising GIMP. Basically their main criticism usually boils down to "hey, this isn't Photoshop".
I'm not saying that GIMP is at least as good as PS, just that virtually no reviews are being done fairly.
Gimp ain't no Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
Setting up Photoshop is a piece of cake but then getting the Gimp going was not brain surgery either. In either case, if you are going to be making money or doing a lot of work with digital images then Photoshop is the only way to go.
Photoshop has been around longer than any other graphic app of its kind so the tool set cannot be beat. While the Gimps tool set is very workable it is not even close to Photoshop in the Human Interface department. The other reason Photoshop is the hands down winner is the support of third party plug-ins making the program very extensible. The Gimp being open source should have Photoshop beat in this department but I know of no third party Gimp plug-ins. Even many shareware photo editors support Photoshop plug-ins. Until Gimp supports its own and someone starts writing them Gimp will be an also ran.
If you don't have a lot of cash and your needs are modest then the Gimp is a great program with a lot of power under the hood. If you are a power user then Photoshop is the only choice. I hope someone takes the Gimp to the next level, better tools, a better UI and plug-in support and people writing those plug-ins could make the Gimp a real contender. As it stands now compared to Photoshop the Gimp is aptly named.
Re: Stunning conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, no one's claiming that the GIMP is no good to anyone. Nor that it's not a decent achievement, nor that it might not be the best value-for-money for many folks.
But if open source software is to live up to some of the hype that its own community generates, then it should also stand some comparison on merit, regardless of cost.
In some cases, it does -- LilyPond [lilypond.org], for example, delivers the best-quality music engraving I've seen on any consumer package, better than what I've seen of Sibelius, and certainly better than my copy of Cubase (which excels at other things, of course). And of course, we all know how well it does at OS-level and similar software. In other cases, it's near enough for many people.
But if we're going to take the attitude that "It's free, so it doesn't need to be much good", then we're falling far, far short of our potential.
Re:I agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that and find this argument a little boring, to be honest. Everytime someone talks about usability of an open source software, the OSS community unite itself under the voice of "That's because you're not used to it".
I didn't have to get used to Photoshop, I just found all the stuff I needed naturally.
Now The Gimp is another matter altogether. I don't know anyone that got used to its clumsy 12 windows that fill in your task bar. None of the user interactions are standard (Like Esc to simulate "Cancel", Tab, Space, Enter,
Image editing for the masses (Score:2, Insightful)
But this elitist drivel is just the type of crap I've come to expect from certain quarters after 5 years of avid browsing. The reason the article drives me nuts really comes down to cost. (FYI) The submission here pretty much sums up the article except to leave out all the sarcasm and jibing.
Sure, commercial users who are able to purchase $3,000 worth of hardware without bumping up the mortgage probably 'can't understand why anyone would want to go to so much effort for so little reward'. They probably do honestly think that at $99 Photoshop Elements is 'cheap, painless and produces high quality results'.
So who cares about the unwashed personal use throng?
The cost of obtaining a great quality Digital Camera has made all the difference over the last couple of years. It's one of those cases (like digital music) of people getting a chance to take a part of their real life and combine it with their interest in computers or email or the internet or even just a penchant for electronic wizardry, at a price and personal cost that really is cheap and effortless. My point here is that personal users do matter - more each day in fact.
Whilst I know I am not a GIMP zealot [sunsite.dk] I have used the WIN32 off shoot [arnes.si] (The GIMP windows version incidentally, doesn't have to be compiled in an end user sense it comes as an installer executable). As an end user however I am relatively motivated by the general ideas and beliefs of the open source commnuity and in that domain the GIMP is the anti-candle.
Then there is the issue of breaching the User License. For all you folks who don't taint your pure selves with the concerns of warez and all that - Adobe [adobe.com] (for as long as I can remember) has always produced software that seems to be notoriously easy to crack. So I guess, sadly, that gives users such as myself another option, that no-one ever seems to acknowledge.
Hmm.. I guess no image editor war is ever going to start here (for the time being), right? Let's be honest - it's like comparing a foot massage with a ho down in the holiest of holies. Everyone knows that.
The article mentions the problem with the help system. (I vaguely remember discovering a fix at some point.. can anyone help?) In any case look no further than here [gimp-savvy.com] for what I consider to be a remarkable effort, all things considered. It really sums up to me why I (but more importantly GIMP developers) go to all the effort for 'so little reward'. The author of the article says in respect of the MacGIMP [macgimp.org] that he thought he'd have a look. I guess then he thought he'd wipe his MacNIKEs on the hard and thankless labour of others. Have some respect fulla...
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Insightful)
Starting from the bottom, I'll first mention that while Acrobat is simply a reader, which many hundreds of alternatives exist for, it's primarily the .pdf files that it's based around that are so important. I'll admit pdf's aren't an exclusive Acrobat format, but they are very handy to export data to, as a universal file format. While most printer's will accept just about any files you need, the reproductions stand a chance of being wrong if opened on the wrong software. Pdf's are extremely versatile, which has led me to use them anytime I send anything to the Newspapers or Printers. So, yes Acrobat itself isn't that great, but the native file format is.
As for AfterEffects, I've seen plenty of competition, even from Premiere, as well as many apps for the Mac, not just Motion.
I agree wholeheartedly that Quark is InDesign's rival, and would go a step further to note that Quark has been the industry standard for many years, but I have never met one person who actually liked it. It's a terrible program that has far outlived its usefulness, especially since InDesign has now become the favorite of most every print designer, and kicks so much ass.
I've heard from several people I respect that they prefer Freehand to Illustrator, and I don't doubt that it is the best for them. But those people are almost always Macromedia people, the ones who publish to the web and interactive cd's more than to print. While I also use most of the Macromedia products, I still prefer Adobe for any use I can get away with, which brings me back to my original point.
Adobe has made excellent products that work with each other in an intuitive fashion, and it is extremely easy to get to know it in a way that makes you never want to use other programs, regardless of near-equal rivals.
Re:Let's be fair to OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
So is Photoshop. Go to any bookstore and there are more photoshop books than any other book. Photoshop isn't easy or intuitive at all.
Every graphic designer has spent hundreds of hours learning photoshop.. so when they use any other application, their first complaint is "this isn't photoshop".
That's not to say that the gimp couldn't use a lot of UI work, but any complaint from a photoshop user should be taken with a grain of salt.
I'm always reminded of the battle between Lightwave and Maya users. Each set swears up and down that their application is easier, and that the other application is a disaster.
Re:GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason I'm reading the article is because I'm actually interested in the photoshop user's experience with GIMP, since I thought he might have some insightful comments and valid complaints. I'm not a heavy-duty graphics manipulator, but I do find discussions like this of open-source software interesting. And of course, I read through the comments because I'd like to read other people's valid, constructive criticisms of GIMP. This I have no problem with, and this feedback is actually very useful to the open-source process.
However, what I object to is all the useless, nonconstructive comments (bashing) that I see here. Of course, there's some of this in any story on open-source software, usually from MS astroturfers and the like. But for some reason it seems to get out of hand when the GIMP comes up, and it usually seems to involve either religious professionals who love Photoshop and go on and on about how much their time is worth, or nonprofessionals who just pirate PS and complain that GIMP isn't the same, or other nonprofessionals who use Paint Shop Pro or something similar and have to tell the world how it's wonderful and they'd never use the GIMP. The bottom line: if you don't like GIMP, and have nothing to offer besides an unpaid advertisement for something else, then go away.
Are you going to tell me now that you actually like reading this stuff?
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
You only expect them there because you are used to it. It's the same thing with window focus. The MS way (click-to-focus) seemed a lot better to me until I had more experience with Linux. Now I hate click-to-focus and I dread using a Windows computer for that reason alone. It's the same thing with right-clicking the image in the GIMP. It makes a hell of a lot more sense too. You are manipulating that image. It is also more productive to right click on it than to drag your mouse to the top of the screen to the menubar. It's the same thing with keyboard shortcuts. They are much quicker than buttons or menus. They are harder to learn initially, but are much easier to use once learned, which is usually the preferred method by professionals.
I think the biggest problem has been, and will continue to be, that people don't spend enough time with these programs. They just try them, decide that they don't work in the same way as a comparable propietary solution, and toss them. Then we get awful articles like this one.
Re:Interface (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missing (Score:3, Insightful)
Programmers? Fork? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that, while we're extolling the virtues of open source, we're missing one of its main virtues: open code. If we don't like the GIMP interface why are we relying solely on the GIMP team to change it? Why don't we form a team and fork a project specifically to redesign the UI to a more professional standard? I mean, why gripe about it like there is just no solution outside of the main GIMP team?
Re:And before anyone brings it up--multiple monito (Score:4, Insightful)
All this article tells us is that the author is too inflexible to make an informed or useful comment. If this were to be taken seriously, all the people who have been coming up with great ideas for desktop usabilility should just hang up their keyboards and let Redmond dictate what we are supposed to like.
Re:And before anyone brings it up--multiple monito (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, if you don't like The GIMP, don't use it. No gun to your head. For me, the GIMP works well enough (I don't see anything wrong with it) and hey, it's $0 and I can see the source code. For that reason (the source code) it will ALWAYS be better than photoshop. IANA
Honda from the eyes of a Harley rider (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, if you post something like this on a gearhead site, you'll get laughed off the internet. Why is the same sort of stuff can be passed off as constructive criticism when it's about open-source software? The Gimp was never meant to be a Mac app. If it works, that's a nice bonus, but please don't expect it to be neatly integrated with a platform that it only runs on because of a third-party porting effort.
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes GIMP 2.0 has SOME issues but they are nothing like these photshop lovers whine about... It is 90% interface and command familiarity and that is it.
It's like a Premiere user bitching about how AVID sucks because it doesnt work like Premiere... yet AVID is 900,000 times the program that premiere could ever dream of being. Also Graphic Arts people do tend to be more "cranky" and "whiney" as we put it at work. they are the ones that bich for weeks after the new Photoshop release is out because of the changes Adobe made, they are the ones that bitched for months when we switched from Lightwave to Maya.. one of them even said that Maya was crap compared to lightwave... something that made me laugh almost uncontrollably during that department meeting.
People complain about change, and Gimp is VERY different from Photoshop in many ways. I also would kill to be able to simply click on a text layer and change it by simply typing the new text... but it doesnt work that way, so I delete the layer and re-make it... an extra 3.7 seconds and 4 clicks... oh well.. and I see LOTS of artwork made with GIMP online that makes the photoshop artwork I see here at work look almost kindergarden-like.
The GIMP is very capable. Just like blender. it's those willing to take some time and learn the new interface that will benefit the most for the early adoption of it... the rest will simply have less skills because they refuse to take the time to learn.
am I saying GIMP is perfect? Nope. It's a tool, and the best learn to use the tools available instead of complaining about them.
Re:I agree... (Score:1, Insightful)
Gee, I wish we could all be just like you. Never have to learn anything, just know our way like we were born to it.
If you haven't used a graphics editing program before, how do you know what you need? You make it sound like Open Source have some conspiracy to keep Photoshop down. I like both programs. I am not a professional graphics artist. If you don't like GIMP, don't use it, but don't bash those of us who prefer to have some kind of freedom in what we use instead of being told how we must do it. For those of use who don't want to mortgage our house everytime Adobe comes out with a 'new' version (of course following the 'amount_of_$_we_want_to_make/estimate_of_#_of_use
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Insightful)
Additionally, Photoshop is not very script-able. The GIMP runs automated on my machines for many tasks, including automated map generation and such. I'd like to see Photoshop doing
Powerful tools do not warrant confusing interfaces (Score:3, Insightful)
Burn my Karma, but frankly its attitudes like this which leave a lot of OS projects forever in the "also ran" category.
I don't care if its free.
I don't care if its open-source.
I don't care it is not Microsoft/insert-evil-of-week
I care that it is intuitive
I care that it follows standard conventions
I care that they look forward to implementing things better
I care that they look forward to adding that feature that makes product-X so great
I care that what I need to make it work is easy to find, as in linked from one place.
These professional packages did not become the dominant players by just passing themselves off as "assuming a competent user". They did their time of ass kissing to the consumer for many years to earn their reputation as the best or most used packages.
Tell people that they need to put forth more effort to get something to work like they are used to the competition working is the same as saying, don't bother, we don't care.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
I had to chuckle reading the various comments of how intuitive or nonintuitive the UI is, because I'd always thought Photoshop's UI wasn't all that intuitive, having first used Paint Shop Pro.
I kind of forced myself to learn PS, which I'm fairly comfortable with now, (not a pro by any stretch) and to an extent, the Gimp, but I'd have to agree that da Gimp does have a strange UI, for any app.
I was slightly panicked the first time I tried to save my file by clicking on "File" in the main (?) menu but didn't see the usual fare in the drop down menu.
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Design software tends to have certain standard interface decisions. Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and many other developers seem to have settled upon some rough standards as to the way things work. Somone familiar even with MS Paint could begin to find their way around Photoshop and maybe even Illustrator. If you know some film editing or even sound recording software, you could begin to work your way around Flash. Etc.
There is more than a mere familiarity issue here. Design professionals who routinely learn new design software have a very difficult time learning GIMP. GIMP deviates from interface conventions SIGNIFICANTLY. It isn't just a "this isn't like Photoshop" issue, it's a "this isn't like ANY OTHER DESIGN SOFTWARE ON THE MARKET" issue. Perhaps there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason to change the interface paradigm of design software, but I don't see it. I've used GIMP enough to know how to do most of what I want to do with it, and I don't find it any easier or faster than Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop.
In a project requiring the use of multiple pieces of design software, switching from one application to GIMP requires a mental leap that switching between any other two applications does not. This doesn't really get easier with famiarity, there's still always that moment of "OK, I'm doing THIS now" and your assumptions from using other software don't really go away.
GIMP badly needs, at the very least, an option to make it behave like normal design software.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that we all should be allowed to gripe about things like this on Slashdot because we're humans, and humans like to communicate.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way, no one is really 100% concerned with what the masses want, since some of the desires of the public are at cross purposes, but they will certainly want to know what the public wants so that they can emphasize those areas where their will and those of the masses coincide. These become obvious areas of strength.
Photoshop is clearly one of the killer apps of all time. It was even ported to one or two kinds of Unix (likewise, FrameMaker) due to the fact that there was no (and still is no) superior product, and at the time Unix workstations were more powerful than PCs. Those days are gone, and so there is little to no motivation to develop new versions of Photoshop for Unix systems. On the other hand, Linux market share is growing, and people are starting to demonstrate a willingness to pay for software which runs on Linux. Not just corporations mind you, but also individuals and small businesses.
So, not only is it a waste of your time to complain about people complaining about the one last thing missing from Linux, but your will actually runs counter to the companies pumping money into Linux, or put another way, the hand that's feeding you.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Insightful)
you know, GIMP has delivered on its claims. However, its claims are pretty modest: it aims to be an image editing program similar to Photoshop. I think the GIMP developers are aware that it is definitely not in the same league as Photoshop yet, but, speaking literally, it is 'similar' to Photoshop: it has layers, rubber stamps, histogram functions, filters, etc.
By the way, if you have modest needs, you can make plenty of money using GIMP. It's an integral part of my graphic design business. I design simple stuff primarily for the Web, and I don't need ICMs or CMYK or any of that jazz.
Never say Never again (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux already has a market share the size of Apples (OS wise). At some point, there will be enough graphic design folks who have migrated from the windows side that Adobe will make a linux native version of Photoshop.
I think it would be **foolish** to ask someone to wait for that day. Because it won't be soon. But that day is comming.
Linux is not going away. Windows holds 95% of the market. But only 10% of the world is using computers. China, North Korea, Brazil have all decided Linux is the way to go. If in the next 5 to 10 years, 2 out of every 3 new computer users outside of the developed western nations chose Microsoft, and the other 1 chooses Linux. We will soon be living in a world where Linux will hold 10-25% marketshare.
Unless Adobe is going out of business, I would not say "Never"
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gimp's interface is designed around a 'sloppy' focus model instead of a click to focus model, Of course PS has tons of windows too they just get contained in a big one. Do you need to go to the taskbar to use PS? If not why do you need to go to the task bar to use Gimp?
And space, enter, tab and escape work just like you say they should on Gimp and just like they do in any GTK application (ie just like windows).
Oh what am I doing, its way too late to feed the trolls.
I'm impressed with the effort but not much else. (Score:3, Insightful)
My workflow has changed over the years and I'll use the best tool for the job regardless of cost, maker or platform. From PC Paintbrush, Pixel Paint, Painter, PhotoPaint, Photoshop, NeoPaint, etc etc etc over the past 15 years in digital illustration.
First off, I feel that GIMP's interface is inefficent. True, if you get used to it, it's not such a big deal, shaving off seconds here and there not having to rely on the interface at all is what makes for an effective working enviroment. No windows in view, just full screen, just you and your cursor brush. Right+click contextuals should be all that is necessary.
Why? Window clutter distorts your perception of light/dark. Put a dark grey square in the middle of a very light grey flooded field and the smaller dark square looks darker than it really is and the same is true for the lighter grey field. Windows floating around give the same effect.
Being able to control everything you need via contextuals limits the time and visual distractions. It's a fickle complaint I realize, but it's these little nuances that impair the using experience. When this sort of application is pretty much all you ever use a computer for, it becomes a greater issue.
Interfaces can make or break an applications success in my opinion (however welcome it may be). PhotoPaint by Corel has had this issue, some versions of it had great interfaces, others had not. The few that were very comparable to Photoshop (tho not mimicing) and others were haphazzard and impaired my interest which sent me back to other versions or back to Photoshop.
Painter is another such example, from 7 to 8 were big improvements in terms of interface. Greatly increasing my desire to use the application and thus greater understanding of how to empower myself with the applicaiton.
I won't bother to rehash the technical limitations nor shall I embark on repeating the voices of others regarding the spirit/ethics/cost of GIMP vs *.
It all really depends on what you do with the application and how. Personally, given the choice of any appliation for photo restoration, I'd opt for Photoshop and it's healing brush. If I had to batch process a few thousand images, depending on what's ncessary I could use Photoshop or I could use GIMP. When it comes to natural illustration, it's either Painter or Photoshop.
Right tool for the job, sometimes you don't need a Cadillac to do a Chevy job. Sometimes you do...
Cost... (Score:2, Insightful)
The author is prepared to pay ~$250 for PhotoShop (or perhaps ~$100 for Elements) instead of paying nothing to use GIMP. To this user, payment is not a barrier to use (and, conversely, zero upfront dollar cost and access to the source code are not suitable motivators for use).
The two common counter-arguments I hear in this thread are (1) "you can't complain if it's free" and (2) "if you don't like it, why don't you fix it". These arguments can be mounted with any open source software product.
The cost of acquisition issue shuts down both of these arguments - the busy user doesn't have time to "fix it", and they won't bother complaining. They will simply go and spend the $250 it costs to acquire a program which meets their needs.
Re:I agree... (Score:2, Insightful)
Adobe Photoshop is highly overrated, and I doubt people would be singing the praise about it if they actually bought the $700 package.
I am totally hooked on gimp. I used photoshop for a few years in the mid 90's. Once I learned my way around gimp, I could never go back to photoshop (and I've tried). I don't need photoshop. HOWEVER, if you need photoshop, $700 is nothing.
Is a SCSI RAID overrated vs a single IDE drive for a server because my laptop uses a single IDE? Fer kripes sake, my desktop doesn't even have a SCSI raid. Let's get rid of those overpriced RAIDS?
My dad only uses his computer to play solitaire. That's a video game. He doesn't need a high end video card. Good video cards are useless for video games?
Insert your favorite example here of comparing chickens and oxen.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
The real irony here, of course, being that the MacOS's single menubar at the top of one screen is *awful* for use with multiple monitors.
Re:Interface (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the toolbars on the mac are all "floaters". They use the Mac OS's nice, working support for the concept of windows which cannot accept the focus but which remain always accessible and "on top" and which are associated with an application rather than a file. As a result, the class of problems that make the many-windows approach of GIMP happen just aren't there.
You don't have to feel like you're managing all these windows because you aren't, just floaters. You can move them around or windowshade them without taking focus away from the file you're working on. You can close them,forget about them, and a minute later go back to the "windows" menu and resurrect it, and it will appear in the same position it was in before. (This is how floating palettes work in virtually every mac app.) You can go to another app, and come back, and they'll all come to the front at once along with the application, so you don't have the potential problem in linux where you have a gimp window with all these palettes but then you accidentally open four xterms and the palettes are kind of scattered all between them. You don't have to keep track of what file each palette belongs to, since the palettes just send their events to whichever file window has the focus. And since managing layered windows isn't such a chore, you can just open a bunch of stuff and not think about it as opposed to having to elaborately arrange all your windows and palettes in some convenient arrangement within your various virtual desktops. Also-- though this isn't just a Photoshop thing, this was a fad in graphics apps for awhile-- photoshop has this neat "docking" feature where you can pile multiple palettes into one tabbed megapalette and then tear them back out at will... It's just that in the photoshop implementation the many-windows approach is natural and in the gimp implementation it interferes with you.
Note, the above is based on experience using Gimp 1 on the OS X X11 some time ago. If GTK has managed to get some kind of intelligent floating palette support in since then, I wouldn't know about it. However, it is my understanding that the floater interface concept is still more or less still lacking good support in UNIX, and even if they did add it to recent GTKs or something, it would seem that it could only correctly operate on certain "blessed" window manager / OS combinations, or else the WM wouldn't know how to deal with all these quasianonyous windows. And the lack of decent "layering" in X (bring a window frontmost, all its palettes come frontmost) would still be a problem, it would seem to me. But the point is, X11 floaters didn't exist in any form on my primary OS when I used GIMP last, and they probably didn't either for the vast majority of the people complaining about the GIMP the last time they used it.
The problem with GIMP isn't with GIMP, but rather that people expect GIMP to work just like Photoshop.
If that's the case, then why don't we have these sort of interface complaints popping up about Corel Draw, or Painter, or.. well.. anything? There's a lot of graphics programs that aren't photoshop. but the sorts of complaints you hear from quite a lot of people about the Gimp just don't show up for other programs to anywhere near the same degree. "Well, it didn't have all the features photoshop did.", yeah, I hear that one sometimes, but generally not the constant Gimp complaint of "the interface was clunky and I couldn't figure out how to do what I wanted". You think there's a reason for that, maybe?
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, thank you for missing the main point of my post. My aim was to simply discuss the single-menu Macintosh interface and Microsofts MDI. Instead you seemed to have reacted to my little $0.02 comment at the end and have even quoted parts of my post out of context. Lovelly. Well since you brought it up, here's a little rant about interfaces.
People should never forget:
Intuition n. (power of) knowing without learning or reasoning.
Intuitive adj., intuitively adv.
I think people often get mixed up when they talk of intuitive interfaces. I know you didn't mention the I word, but it sounded like you were coming close. When people talk about something being intuitive, they really mean that it's familiar. They've already used something that looks or acts like this new thing and they can carry over their experience. That's all. The human brain is a wonderfully flexible thing. Just look at how far our science and technology has advanced in a few thousand years with little to no biological evolution. I seriously doubt there's anything hard-coded into our hunter-gatherer brains that prefers MDI over multiple top-level windows. Or any other GUI element over another. How can it be anything else than preference and experience? Unless things are very different in your part of the world, there's nothing else in real-life that looks or operates anything like an image window. Or a drop-down menu. Or bucket fill. Or scroll bars. Or even a mouse for that matter. People developed these things over time and we learned how these things operate. Get over it.
</rant>
On a more constructive note: Can people be a little more constructive and descriptive in their criticisms of The Gimp? Saying that PS is a more positive experience or somesuch doesn't really help. For me, all the negative posts here just sound like a bunch of whingers. wah, it's not like PhotoShop! To hear a lot of people complaining with little or no detail doesn't help. Not one bit. Provide some constructive help or STFU.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither barney the purple webdesign website nor slashdot are the right place to reach either of these groups. (sorry couldn't resist the Barney thing, that website looks like it should be seeing feminine hygene products not giving advice on web design)
"The latter group, including companies like Adobe, are interested in what Linux users want for two reasons."
A little offtopic wouldn't you think, since the parent wasn't talking about linux users, he was talking about non-linux users saying they'd use linux if it weren't for this or that.
Also because this article was written by a MacOSX user, NOT a linux user. 99% of the things he complained about were really one thing, it didn't have an OS X interface, it's designed for X11.
"So, not only is it a waste of your time to complain about people complaining about the one last thing missing from Linux, but your will actually runs counter to the companies pumping money into Linux, or put another way, the hand that's feeding you."
That hands that feed the linux community are open source developers. While some of those are being paid by corporations, for the most part they are not. Corporations having money only means so much in this crowd, after all while there are exceptions, they've managed to produce mostly crap. Look at Microsoft for instance, they've managed to produce ONLY crap and they've got more money than any of the others.
"Photoshop is clearly one of the killer apps of all time. It was even ported to one or two kinds of Unix (likewise, FrameMaker) due to the fact that there was no (and still is no) superior product, and at the time Unix workstations were more powerful than PCs. Those days are gone, and so there is little to no motivation to develop new versions of Photoshop for Unix systems. On the other hand, Linux market share is growing, and people are starting to demonstrate a willingness to pay for software which runs on Linux. Not just corporations mind you, but also individuals and small businesses."
A piece of killer app proprietary software is great for linux adoption which ultimately ends up being good for the community, since it helps yield more open source developers to work on things like gimp so it eventually can get that proprietary app out of our otherwise clean open system. A better solution of course would be for Adobe to open the photoshop sourcecode.
Since I don't see that happening, opening the Acrobat reader source would be nice. The linux version of Acrobat reader is pretty shoddy to say the least, it's ugly, unpolished, and bugridden. If Acrobat reader were opened then we could either fix it (if it was worth fixing) or get a look at it's pdf handling, since actually opening and rendering the pdf is the only thing it does in a superior way to the other dozen pdf reading linux apps. AR is faster and has better print options. I think it could be salvaged myself, open source would quickly eradicate the bugs and fix the UI.
Anyone notice... (Score:3, Insightful)
... that there's been a bunch of these ``Experienced [application-name] user tries Linux program and doesn't like it.'' articles? Could this be a little astroturf activity? I wonder how bad the criticism would have been if they discovered that, say, the GIMP's menus were exactly like Photoshop's. (``Well, these Linux programs aren't original. They just copy other software.'') And if the Linux program is different in some way from a Windows product or some other commercial software package, well that's a negative as well. There's just no pleasing some people, eh?
Any more, I see these articles and laugh. This one, for example, could have been titled: ``Long-time Photoshop user discovers that the GIMP isn't Photoshop!''. Might have been a more accurate headline, IMHO.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about the ability of OSS to compete well in the marketplace. And it doesn't. People devote their spare time to OSS, and people who make so much anyway they're busy 60-80 hours a week churning out hot apps are not going to have any time.
How many of the Quark/Adobe team do you think are moonlighting working on projects like GIMP?
Companies with a need for financial success will, if they're lucky, have that success, and through hard work. OSS is so different. But if OSS is to succeed, it must also be able to do this.
It's not the shoes! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's another World. I just can't understand why anyone would want to go to so much effort for so little reward. It's like scaling a craggy mountainside and getting to the top to find that there's no view!
I'd say he did not give the tool a fair chance. First, he used it on the wrong platform. Then he did not use it much before giving up. There are good reasons for making and using a free photo editor / paint program.
Gimp is free software and it works best on Linux and BSD, where the developers are and have better access to the works.
What exactly did the reviewer do? All he tells us is that he opened one image, drew one line and typed one bunch of text. I doubt he spent more than a day at it. Some mountain climb there.
The reason for making the GIMP is simple, it's free, won't go away and is flexible. Anyone with an itch can program it, as the makers of Scooby-Doo did. Hopefully, they will share that work back but they don't have to. Because the Gimp is free, I know that it will never die. I'll always be able to get a copy and it will always work as well as I remembered or better. Non-free software is rented at best and has a tendency to go away. The Gimp is a combination of other free software and bits and pieces can be pulled out to use in other places, like the Image Magic project.
The Gimp is a tool. Some people have made professional use of it and have gotten superb results. What you get out of a tool is a combination of your imagination and what you put into it. A person who's not used anything would be better off learning to do things with the Gimp. There are plenty of tools to take care of what the Gimp lacks and the Gimp does what it does way better than this reviewer saw in such a brief evaluation.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if every utility started using MDI, it would be bad. But for my IDE, for my SQL work, heck even for my graphics, I LIKE having MDI. When I switch tasks, I immediately get all my windows for that task right back where I can see them.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
The interesting thing was that I then recently tried out Photoshop CS to see what all the fuss was about, and I could not use it. I couldn't find how to do anything! So my point of view was that Photoshop had the unusable interface, because I was used to the GIMP.
Granted, I'm not someone who does image stuff professionally, so there's a lot of things I'm gonna be unaware of that others might gripe about (as is seen in this thread).
But still... it's all about what you are used to. I can understand that when you are used to Photoshop you can't get the GIMP to work the way you want to (as the submitter and article writer), and the other way around (as I have experienced).
Gotta give some credit to adobe (Score:3, Insightful)
Hats off to them. I would glady give them some money to use their excelent software. Anyone who has taken a University level Computer Science Graphics course has got to appriciate what they do.
That all being said, I am not big into photo editting or graphic design, so I use gimp because thats what there is available on my BSD box. It's alright. But it's no photoshop. I've tried some of other free image/graphic editors that were in my ports directory. They weren't very good at all.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does every post advocating a "get off your lazy ass and fork it" point of view get modded up? Yes, that CAN be a strength of opensource, but it is also a WEAKNESS.
Companies survive on the strength of their products--many take user feedback VERY seriously. Photoshop is such a program that has evolved over the years to the highly polished program it is.
I would go so far as to say that the "No, we're not listening to your suggestions, do it yourself" is a severe WEAKNESS in OSS, as has been reiterated by this article and the comments here, designers and users are not the same.
Yes, lets stop and consider what you have said. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lotus Notes has lost most of the usability problems that people disliked about it over the last couple of major revisions. Regardless of that, I would dispute that it is "widely recognised by nearly everyone who has used it as an unusable piece of crap." On the contrary, I think the majority of people who use it for more than a couple of weeks find its interface to be quite effective.
GUI style guides are great for helping people to use an unfamiliar program, but slavishly following any guidelines can quite easily make regular usage a pain in the neck. For example, all serious Notes users quickly decide to turn off the "welcome page" layer that gives Notes a more "standard" interface for mail. It only gets in the way for power users.
The Gimp diverges from standards to give icons on the system bar for its separate dialogs, which is actually exactly what you need when working on large images that cover the entire screen.Ever tried to switch to a diffent app and go back to a Windows File Properties Dialog?
Many of the UI problems being discussed about the Gimp are referring to the previous version. The latest version is looking much nicer, and is also closer to style guidelines.
The article complains about the fact that it doesn't use the Mac guidelines, which is hardly surprising, given that it hasn't been ported to the Mac! If he wants his X11 apps to look like Mac apps, he'd need to talk to the person writing the X11 interface for the Mac.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in freedom". That's what I think your parent poster meant. And Photoshop is a long shot from free as in freedom (or beer, for that matter.) As an example, look at how they do things like try to stop people from editing currency images. The answer to that problem is not to try to take away the digital tools (it's inevitable that people will get them...) but rather for society to move to more secure form of currency than pieces of paper.
Also, while I don't doubt you can control all of Photoshop from Javascript, that doesn't stop me from saying that I think JavaScript sucks. I don't know what you mean by "cludgy C", but the Gimp supports more than one powerful language for scripting including Python, Guile (Scheme), and Perl. JavaScript sucks as an API compared to all of those.
I think Photoshop is a far superior application to the Gimp, too. It's definitely better as far as ease of use and clean GUI design. But I do NOT think it wins on either of the points your parent poster made (scripting and freedom).
GIMP is FREE-So's P2P (Score:1, Insightful)
Or download it off a P2P network, or "borrow" a friends copy. So why are we having this conversation, again?
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
The only things that dont need to be learned in a baby are crying, peeing, pooping and sleeping, and I'm not sure about the last item.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:4, Insightful)
As a bonus, just for jrockway, here is something else you might think works better than photoshop. It is pretty crappy for graphics, but you can see the source code. ;-)
In the real world, when your living is on the line, the best tool you can afford is the one you use. Whether you can see the source code or not doesn't even come into the picture. 99.999% of computer users can't do anything with the source code anyway.Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Insightful)
On the rare occurance that I need to boot into my WindowsXP partition (to deal with braindead helpdesk drones, or to convert some MSProject or Visio files to a usable format) I always marvel at the fact that Notes runs twice as fast on Windows as it does on Linux. Of course, Wine = Wine is not an Emulator also translates to WinW = Wine is not Windows. To promise performance parity for Wine with Windows is plain stupid.
It is people like you making wildly inaccurate statements about stuff that make my job (convince enterprise customers to use Linux) so difficult. Being honest and open about the capabilities, strenghts and weaknesses of the platform we love so much is more likely to win people over - after all, they get enough lies and deceit from the proprietary side of the fence, don't they?
Setting unmatchable expectations to potential new users is only going to end in dissapointment. If you think that they will be so dazzled and blinded by the cool shit that is happening now that they run Linux, you are sorely mistaken.
Do all of us a favour - you and all your "Linux has no flaws - it is perfect" brigade - and get real, and set real expectations for new users. It is hard enough to fight the MS FUD, I don't need a whole set of Linux propaganda to fight through as well.
I am sure this will be modded flamebait by some kneejerk reactionary moderator, just the other reply to the parent, but what the hey......
Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
What? One of the things Slashdotters complain most about Linux is the lack of marketing. Yet marketing is for a large part based on lying.
So when people are honest about Linux and it's development, Slashdotters will complain about:
- Conflicts between groups. If you tell them that companies have internal conflicts too (it's just that they don't let anybody know), they'll tell you that Linux will fail on the desktop *because* conflicts are public.
- Lack of marketing.
- Security vulnerabilities. Linux doesn't hide it's vulnerabilities. Yet more and more people are constantly nitpicking on Linux, saying "Look! Linux is more insecure than Windows!", while not even looking at the fact that Microsoft hides a lot of bugs from the public. Linux developers release information about new vulnerabilities so admins are aware of it, yet Slashdotters abuse it to claim that Linux has "failed".
Obviously being honest about this has done Linux more harm than good. Yet if we're *not* honest about it, people like you complain about lack of honesty?! Damned if you do, damned if you don't?!
"I am sure this will be modded flamebait by some kneejerk reactionary moderator, just the other reply to the parent, but what the hey......"
No it won't, I'm sure it will get modded up, like all other similar posts. Slashdot is not a pro-Linux anti-MS place! Heck, I'd even argue criticism against Linux is often overrated - it's like people mod it up even when it's not true, like it's a divine thing or something.
Linux must be one of the most hated things in existance. People do nothing more than insulting it and claiming it's defeat. People are constantly belittleling Linux developers. I'm working hard to write software to make Linux better, yet all people do is insulting me and telling me how much everything sucks?! Even the Windows community is better than the Slashdot crowd!
Re:I agree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's because that's a valid reason? You people are always so fast to dismiss any criticism against you.
The first time I started using Paint Shop Pro, I only had experience with MS Paint. PSP confused me. All the menus/buttons/tool windows/etc. didn't make any sense to me. At first I wasn't productive in PSP at all - I thought MS Paint is better.
Only after having worked with PSP for a few months, I was able to work well with it.
Same for Gimp. Now that I've gotten used to Gimp, I find it much better than Paint Shop Pro! I reboot back to Linux just to be able to use Gimp.
Yes I know there's Gimp for Win32, but Windows's window management sucks compared to Linux; no magnetic window snapping and no virtual desktops.
"Now The Gimp is another matter altogether. I don't know anyone that got used to its clumsy 12 windows that fill in your task bar."
I'd much rather have 12 items in my task list than 12 menu entries in the Window menu! What's a faster way to switch to another image window, click Window->Image6, or just clicking on Image6 on the task list? Heck, this even allows you to Alt+Tab between image windows!
If you're concerned about mixing up Gimp windows and other apps, then use virtual desktops. I find that this works much better than the Win32 window-in-window approach.
Heck, the praised-by-all MacOS X also works like that. Photoshop opens tons of image windows and tool windows.
Gimp 2.0 has a new flexible docking interface. You can put all the tool windows in one single window if you want (I have 2). Your arguments are quite outdated. Heck, almost all arguments against Gimp on Slashdot are outdated.
"None of the user interactions are standard (Like Esc to simulate "Cancel", Tab, Space, Enter,
What are you talking about?
Esc in Windows exits a dialog - same in Gimp. Open the Preferences dialog and press Esc.
Tab in Windows moves the focus to the next control. Same in Gimp.
Space and Enter in Windows activates the focused button. Same in Gimp.
Re:Never say Never again (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux already has a market share the size of Apples (OS wise). At some point, there will be enough graphic design folks who have migrated from the windows side that Adobe will make a linux native version of Photoshop"
What you are missing here is that these are generally users who refused to switch to Windows because the Macintosh is a superior OS from a usability standpoint. The graphics art/advertising community is the most loyal base that Apple has, and the only thing that will "make" them switch to Linux is when Apple switches their OS away from the BSD kernel to the Linux kernel.
Besides, other than the Apple proprietary add-ons (Finder, etc.) seems to me like Apple users who use OS/X are already in the NIX-like camp. As for Apple charging for the features they add to the BSD kernel, well, Crossover Office is not free, nor is Veritas, nor are a number of GNU/Linux tools. Quite frankly, compared to KDE or Gnome, the price of OS/X is worth the cost three times over.
A typical situation (Score:3, Insightful)
The only realistic way to make a software used by everyone is either to utilise monopoly tactics or to spend years on incrementally improving it with every subsequent release. There are already thousands of people whose needs are perfectly met by Gimp. With time more features will be added, interface will be improved and more and more users will be converted (because their uniqie needs will be met).
Taking a stance like the critics often do is silly. It's like refusing to play Unreal Tournament until they add a clown player model. OK, they added that, but now I need a model of Kermit the frog.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there are performance problems with Notes (6.5.1 at any rate) on Wine, but they are not severe. I find it perfectly usable.
Regardless, you cannot draw conclusions based on your experiences from one (1) app run under Wine to all apps. I also run Office XP on Wine and it runs just as fast as it does on Windows. The same is true of Photoshop.
They are different programs, work in different ways, and use different codepaths. It's not surprising they run at different speeds.
Teaching GIMP to Windows users (Score:2, Insightful)
We warned them that they would find the GIMP odd, and that the windows version was likely to crash on them, but to say to themselves "it's free, it's free." Some will use it, others will not.
Some observations:
Gimp vs. Photoshop (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think I actually ever bothered to steal a copy of Photoshop, so for most of my uses when I was largely a Windows guy I would use Irfanview [irfanview.com], which kicks ass if you don't have much to do, and crappy old MS-Paint.
When I finally needed to move out of kindergarten and get a "real" graphics program, I started playing with the Gimp - only because it came with a linux distro I was fooling with at the time.
Thus, the Gimp was my first exposure to "real" graphics programs.
On the Gimp, I learned how to use layers. I made my first gradient. I stopped downloading desktop pics from Spymac or wherever and started making my own. I eventually grew into a fairly solid artist. I'm considering making a huge piece and putting it in the local art show next year in the mixed media category. I think I could win.... The Gimp really has done everything I could ask of it.
When I tried my dad's Photoshop, I couldn't find my way around, because I was used to the Gimp. I thought PS was laid out badly, because I was used to the Gimp. I couldn't do much at all, I was stumbling around, spending most of my time searching for things like how to draw a straight line in PS, because I was used to the Gimp. A lot of my time was spent mumbling, "hmm... that's stupid!".
I find that the layout might matter the first little while you're using an app, but once you get used to it, all apps approach the same natural level. My friends who use WindowsMediaPlayer are as fast and efficient in it as I am in iTunes. I struggle with apps my dad zings around in, and he struggles with the ones I'm awesome in. But our effectiveness at getting our various jobs done is roughly the same.
It's like learning a language: I am *fluent* in the Gimp. I barely speak "tourist" Photoshop. And sitting at Photoshop thinking "this would be so damn simple if I was on my OWN computer using the Gimp" is frustrating. It takes me a lot longer to get things done.
The Gimp can do everything I ask of it, and when I think it can't and want to be surprised, I simply
Re:And before anyone brings it up--multiple monito (Score:3, Insightful)
- The tools are not grouped in a coherent manner
- The interface is littered with icons where none are necessary, making the application appear more complex than it is
Neither has anything to do with Photoshop--other than that Photoshop does things the better way. Both criticisms speak directly to why the GIMP puts off new users: the lack of coherent groupings makes it harder to learn and remember what each tool/function does and where to find it, and the cluttering of the interface puts off newbies by making them sort through more visual 'noise' to find whatever it is they're looking for.In both cases, the GIMP interface increases the learning curve with no corresponding benefit to power users--a lose-lose tradeoff and just plain bad design.
Beyond that, he also makes some pretty painful observations about the quality of the GIMP's output--or is he perhaps just being closed-minded about he intrinsinc beauty of misshapend letterforms?
All your post tell us is that you're either not willing to read criticsms of the GIMP or are not interested in considering them on their merits.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me of the vending machines where I work. These machines are owned by Aramark, a large company, not some small-time operators. Anyway, they came in one day and added little red check-mark labels to many of the selections in the food/candy vending machine, and a big banner on the top of the machine proclaiming these as healthy "balanced selections" because they had less than 30% of their calories from fat. So what got the check marks? Twizzlers, and basically any candy that's mostly sugar and has no chocolate.
Does anyone want to actually claim that Twizzlers are healthy? This is lying, plain and simple. And of course, this is marketing.
Not as advertised (Score:3, Insightful)
70% of the article is "Wah wah, it doesn't look like I expect, the menus are all in non-Mac places, it doesn't use native widgets, it doesn't use native dialogs, waaah!"
Admittedly some criticisms were constructive: perhaps there should be some kind of grouping to the tool icons in the tool selector. I, for one, have never liked the "icon only" approach and would welcome some labels.
The context menu in the canvas acting as your main menu thing
A review of Linux which stated "There wasn't a button labeled 'Start' anywhere!" or something would be laughed at, as this 'review' should be.
So the scripts were sub par. A valid criticism. When I've used the GIMP they've always seemed to be handy, useful things. Perhaps a mention of what scripts SHOULD have been included would help?
This person seems largely hung up on the GIMP being not-Mac and not-Photoshop. "Some features in different places" is called "disorienting". Well you know what? Different programs are different. This is not news.
The slowness criticism was good, the notes about line-jaggedness and antialiasing were good. I disagree, but that was some good reviewing.
The misrepresentation of the GIMP as an app which can either be built by hand from sources (which it is implied is too hard for an average person to do) or purchased for an outrageous amount is simply a lie. The GIMP can be had in a precompiled for for OSX from a couple of different sources.
I'll bet a GIMP pro who had never used Photoshop or OSX would be almost as annoyed and baffled if they were plunked in front of OSX, given an installer, and old "Tell us how you think this compares to the GIMP."
Real reviews concentrate on function.