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)."
I agree... (Score:3, Interesting)
Interface (Score:5, Interesting)
(donning asbestos underwear)
FYI, I am a programmer and web app designer, not a graphics artist. That being said, I feel that any GUI application with a well-designed interface should be fairly intuitive and I should be able to get up to speed in a few minutes (I learn quickly).
I tried The Gimp on Linux. I tried The Gimp in Windows (the new native version). I still cannot get it. I try Photoshop and I can be halfway productive instantly. The result suck, remember I am not a graphics designer and I cannot even write legibly let alone draw with a pencil or a mouse, but I can get around the filters, tools, etc.
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.
UI in the OS world (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone used that Film Gimp? (Score:3, Interesting)
Adjustment Layers (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the really cool things you can do with adjustment layers is work with an image you're turning into black and white and make it look like an honest-to-God black and white image (as opposed to merely a desaturated color image). In some ways, it's almost like taking an internal picture of your subject and adjusting the tones and hue on the fly, which can turn out some very nifty results. In GIMP, you just don't have that flexibility.
Re:I agree... (Score:5, Interesting)
But when it comes to working with images I still have to run Win4Lin to open a Win98 session and run Paint Shop Pro. The interface on The Gimp is just unusable to me. And maybe it has all the same features as Paint Shop Pro, but at least with PSP I can find them.
gimp not bad anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that these Photoshop users are used to photoshop. Any other UI no matter how slick and perfect will be worse for them. They are trained on photoshop so well that using anything else kills their efficiency. Like driving stick for the first time after driving automatic your whole life.
I'm no graphic wizard, just a programmer. And I recently got gimp 2 for windows and linux. I couldn't do fancy things right away, but its not because I couldn't find the buttons or they were in bad or hidden places. It's because I don't know anything about making graphics. If graphics people start out on the gimp instead of photoshop they will be just as good on that.
So don't try to convert people to gimp. Just get new people who are about to pirate photoshop for the first time to use gimp instead.
That's about it...
The Gimp is competing with MS Paint not Photoshop (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
Adobe hasn't just made Photoshop well, but they also have quite a few professional tools that I don't think I could live without.
Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, and Acrobat(files) are other leading softwares that are essential for me (as a graphic designer). And once you get used to the way Adobe feels and organizes tools, you get accustomed to it, so much so that it becomes a pain to try to use other non-Adobe programs. This familiarity comes in handy, however, when you think to yourself, "How would I do [x] in InDesign or AfterEffects?" and the first thing you think of, it's there.
Adobe has a monopoly on my graphics editing.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was primarily a Linux user, I used GIMP for many hours out of each day, tinkering with my photos, working on images for web sites, etc. It is a good tool, and it has a lot going for it. The new interface is nice, but... in so many regards, GIMP is no Photoshop. I quickly realized this after I got a Power Mac and Photoshop 7.
Even though I do not use Photoshop in any professional context, it is a phenomenal product even for my personal use. Here are the major things that keep me from using GIMP on the Mac beyond occasionally playing with it:
Don't get me wrong - GIMP is a nice program, and for the price it absolutely kicks ass. But just that handful of problems listed above will be enough to turn off serious photo/graphics folks. Hell, I'm a geek that has used Linuxy and UNIXy stuff for years, and I am seriously bothered by those issues I listed, among other nit-picky ones.
Adobe doesn't have much to worry about at the moment. But if an Aqua native version of GIMP came out and could offer similar performance on high-powered Macs, then they might have reason to start sweating.
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:3, Interesting)
From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, I'm sure an free illegal version of photoshop is more useful than a free legal version of the gimp, but if people would use gimp instead at least then we'd hear one fewer company whining about people infringing on their copyright and about how it cost them $X million a year.
Re:change the name! (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, many linux apps' names are a play on words, so I don't see why GIMP ought to have a different name. Plus the GUI is all GIMPed up anyways. Oooo.. *slaps knee*
Goddamnit, go to the chalkboard... (Score:2, Interesting)
I swear, I feel like forming the AAAAI (American Association Against Abusing "Intuitive"). Our slogan: "Come join Aiyeeee!!!"
</RANT>
That said, I hate the multiple window thing too. It's ugly and cluttered. (yeah,I understand that GTK doesn't do MDI... it should.)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also Illustrator, InDesign, and a little thing called the Adobe Type Library.
Photoshop is a wonder, yes, but it's not the only horse in Adobe's barn. Hell, in my opinion it's not even the best one. InDesign 3 takes that accolade. (Optical kerning: hellooooo, nurse.)
Re:UI in the OS world (Score:4, Interesting)
As I mentioned previously, there are definitely strides being made towards improving the UI in OS apps - Gnome, for example, has made some good headway due to their GNOME Usability Project. Other projects are progressing as well. However, for the most part, OSS is still very developer (/engineer) centric.
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FreeType for GIMP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
I often find myself holding the space bar and trying to pan down a Web site or a list of files in Explorer, or trying to use Alt to grab a colour in Paint/Flash/whatever, or trying to use X to switch colours. :/
That's not to say that i don't have problems with Photoshop (and/or Adobe in general). One of my biggest problems with Photoshop (for Windows, at least) is that the program doesn't seem to save its settings in an INI file (or, if it does, it does it extremely poorly). So if i log out of Windows without specifically going into Photoshop and hitting the close button, or if Photoshop crashes for some reason (rare, but it has happened), or whatever -- if Photoshop isn't absolutely perfectly shut down the proper way, it resets all of its settings. It's extremely annoying.
The slow progress with Photoshop is getting a little ridiculous too. I definitely like CS, of course, and i can appreciate not adding every single little thing that comes along, but i think they could stand to add more useful features than ever-improving image browsers.
I also hate that gAMA bug Photoshop has with PNG. I know this isn't really Photoshop's fault, per se, but i wish there were a more graceful way of dealing with it within the program. Having to run pngcrush -rem gAMA in.png out.png every time i save a PNG in Photoshop is kind of annoying. :(
Also, maybe it's just the CS version, but ImageReady is a buggy piece of shit. It's usable, but i constantly have problems with it, like the screen not redrawing when i zoom in, or the options bar getting stuck in random places, or various windowing glitches. Also annoying is that fact that disabling anti-aliasing on the Magic Wand in ImageReady does not actually disable anti-aliasing. But maybe this is just my copy, heh.
Gimp is a great program (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to use Gimp an awful lot before I found Photoshop. Photoshop was bliss compared to the Gimp's UI. I then heard that Gimp 2 would fix a lot of the UI issues. However I was very disappointed when I tried Gimp 2.
I had been led to believe that this version would fix all the UI issues with the previous one.
The new text tool was so deficient that I was longing for the old text tool back. The UI was meant to be dockable
The Gimp can't be fixed. It needs a whole new front-end designed in collaboration with the users. A few prettier icons doesn't fix it.
Re:GIMP is like Johnson's "woman preacher" (Score:2, Interesting)
Its like the do-it-yourself TiVo's that aren't really anywhere near as convenient or feature rich as the real deal.
Sorry, I was 100% with you until I saw this line that almost blew me off my chair.
I built my own PVR and it runs MythTV [mythtv.org], and it lietrally blows TiVo out of the water.
Does TiVo have a web interface where I can adjust scheduled recordings anywhere, anytime? Can I watch the recorded programs on any computer in the house ( or TV with a MythFrontEnd box ) ? Can I transcode the recordings to DivX for storage on DVD? Can it play DivX and MPEG videos and fetch information on them from IMDB automatically? Can you edit recorded shows in real time.. can you play SNES, PSX, etc. video games on it, can it be an MP3 jokebox, can you browse your photo collection, can you surf the web on it with a remote control... ?
I can do all this with MyTh, out of the box. And a bozo could install it, you just boot off the KnoppMyth CD and go.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. Photoshop has gotten a lot of attention [slashdot.org], and it's payed off.
And let me just say that, as a graphics editor, I find myself using GIMP more and more. I still, easily, use PS quite a bit more than the GIMP. However, GIMP continues to pile on desirable features, and at the very least, I am compelled to save all my final works using GIMP's superior compression for JPEG, and PNG (and probably more).
Even though I love my photoshop, I hope to one day see it replaced with GIMP or another Free Software (RMS' definition [gnu.org]) solution.
A fundamentally dangerous mantra (Score:5, Interesting)
Read that again. Once more. Think about what you are saying.
Consider the degree of difficulty necessary to achieve making something that is free a "great deal."
If we in the open source community are to satifsfy ourselves with having given value by creating something that doesn't have negative utlility, then its time for us to stop the madness entirely.
We must do great work with our energies, or spend the time doing something else. Imagine that Steve Jobs or the corporate slavedriver of your choice were constantly riding you to make "art rather than crap." Imagine that your livelihood depended on making it great, and that you were worthless if it weren't. Otherwise, don't bother.
Anything less, and you are a poser wannabe.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Nothing we do is a "great deal" because its free. It should be a great deal at any reasonable price, and an astonishing piece of wonder because it is free (both in terms of price and liberty).
And for the record, that reviewer paid for the software, and found it wanting at any price. It had negative utility for her, and frankly, that sucks -- notwithstanding the wonder and excellence of the effort.
Its ok to say, "hey, that's not for you, sorry it didn't work out for you." But to say, "hey, its free, what did you expect?" Sorry, it just ain't the hacker ethic.
So why doesn't someone build Gimp a new interface? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the source is all OSS, wouldn't it just be a matter of someone just putting their skills to work, and creating a new GUI in which to house the Gimps functionality?
I'm not a Gimp user myself (I've used it, but my opinion of the GUI is the same as a lot of others: Too many open windows and right click menus), but I don't see any reason that the existing functionality of the Gimp couldn't be tied a new interface rather easily (be it a Photoshop clone, or some new and unique look).
Obviously I'm over-simplifying this a bit, but the average GUI is simply a bunch of controls which tell the backend functions what to do. How hard could something like this be if someone put their mind to it?
rolling a better gimp? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interface (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just plain not true. I'm not putting Photoshop down, but I struggle to find what I want when I have to use it. To me, The GIMP is much more intuitive and natural. Everything is just in the place I expect it to be. Yes, I know that puts me in a minority, and I accept that at least part of that will be learned behaviour -- GIMP and Photoshop are different, and I'm far more used to GIMP, so it's only natural that Photoshop feels alien to me. But it does, and I struggle to use it comfortably. And the MDI interface on the Windows version sucks. I mean, really, really sucks.
Offtopic (Score:3, Interesting)
Early Photoshop (Score:5, Interesting)
The hot "paint" program back then was something called "PixelPaint" and it seriously grabbed the Architecture and Industrial Design students of the day. Everyone wanted it because of it's large pallete size, gradiant fills, and razor-like precision.
One day, a program called PhotoShop showed up in the labs (legally installed by a student who forgot to delete it before s/he left). It was cool, but PixelPaint still out classed it. Every line you drew was "fuzzy". The pallete size was so big, that it was hard to select a particular color. And overall, things just seemed blurry even when printing or copy/pasting to another app.
The designer's names were in the about box and I actually saw the lead developer post to the comp.sys.mac.* usenet newsgroups so I wrote him some email to complain about this horrible little app in both it's interface and ability.
He actually responded to my critiques and spent some time explaining just how programs like "PixelPaint" could really only make good-looking "on-screen" graphics due to low colors and resolutions. His app "PhotoShop" was aiming at photographic images where razor-sharp lines looked fake. He even replied about my suggested interface improvements and told me what they had planned for the next version which was even better than what I suggested.
This really impressed me. I know that this type of interaction between commercial programmer and user doesn't exist anymore, but it was amazing the patience that he used to point out my misunderstandings (and I wasn't even a real customer at the time).
The interaction I've had with the GIMP community hasn't impressed me. I'm a little more technically savvy than some of the Mac users out there, but getting the GIMP installed and usable is a pain. The GIMP is capable of a lot of things, but its defaults really don't impress me. I feel like I really have to work to get it out of PixelPaint mode into Photoshop mode (and I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say that I get those changes right). The online communities just aren't as open or friendly to answer the questions that I've asked even if I've tried reading TFM and FAQ.
If I were tight for money, I think I'd pay my bucks for GraphicConverter (a Mac shareware app that has a similar PixelPaint feel) rather than waste the time on the GIMP.
I'm a big supporter of Open Source software, but I've thought for a while that a group of people really need to decouple the engine from the interface and produce a "better" photo manipulation software in the way that Camino (and later Firefox) successfully rebuilt alternative user experiences on the Mozilla web-browsing engine.
Color Calibration (Score:3, Interesting)
Kerning and such (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't think of many applications that kern based on metrics except where you want them to.
That said - the 'Optical Kerning' method may take a while, but I'd have to ask this : does it store the resultant kerning data for re-use ?
Does it cache at all ?
If not.. no wonder it's slow.
It should be entirely feasible, after all, to build a kerning table for all possible letter/glyph/etc. combinations in a single run, and re-use that when needed. It's not like the font morphs over time.
just my 2cts
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a scripting system for photoshop - but it is lame and incomplete.
For example layer objects in Photoshop have no size or position properties under the automation interface.
Corel by contrast has supported objects with usual properties under automation since 1995 - that's almost ten years before Photoshop and they still haven't caught up.
The argument that nobody uses scripting is lame - since it doesn't work - its a given that it won't be used - so nobody uses it - so it - the point is that its in there. Actions have been an important part of Photoshop for a lomng time - but actions are limited - they can't do referential manipulation (reduce resolution on n number of dissimilar images).
They can't be data driven.
and they support no logic whatsoever.
Pretty silly overall.
AIK
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Linux is more than an OS. It is part of an ideology as well. Perhaps Open Source fits the poster's philosophy of life or maybe they just want to save some bucks. It's doubtful any of those things would apply to someone moving in the other direction (unless you're a programmer who sees Open Source as taking bread from their hungry children's mouths or something).
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.
The key here is your first two words. Hey, if it works for you, great! I started with the GIMP and thought it was wonderful. Then I got ahold of a copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 and all I could do was say "Wow". I was so impressed I bought a copy. I've since tried Photoshop 7.0 and been even more impressed. However I'm not impressed with the cost of entry. For that reason I'd love to have GIMP come up to speed. So, put me in the column with the parent (except that I already use Linux) in wanting certain things to work better than they do now.
Re:Interface (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides that, what's the other problem? They don't have the right click only method anymore, with a menu at the top of every image's window, and yet they still have the right click menu for those that found it a lot easier than moving your cursor all the way to the top of the screen to access the menu. You could just right click, and the menu was there for you.
The problem with GIMP isn't with GIMP, but rather that people expect GIMP to work just like Photoshop.
After learning how to use the GIMP, I find that for many things, it's easier to do in GIMP than Photoshop.
This is not to say that GIMP is the end all of the Image Manipulation world. However, I find it odd that people complain that GIMP is not like Photoshop. If you want Photoshop, pay for it and be happy. Those of us who find it easy to use GIMP will continue to do so, and will save $$$ in the process.
gimp could use work (Score:3, Interesting)
- the Gimp may be free, but since it's being compared to PS so much (by users) it deserves this kind of reviews.
- there are only two useful viewpoints here: either you don't care, Gimp/PS does it for you and there's no incentive to change or you do care and then there are quite a few actions worth taking. Bitching about your choice isn't constructive.
1) GUI gripes: Since theming is such fun in Linux, I don't see why FOSS programmers and some good Linux or OS X gui designers can't work together to make Gimp acceptable on various platforms and have those themes as defaults depending on the platform.
A theme doesn't equal a good GUI but it goes a long way. This would charm many amateur users on various platforms, not only mac users are gui-anal, they however are very vocal
After all, this is hardly a new gripe. Now that there's an excellent OS X package available that installs like a charm on Panther, you'll hear more gripes than before, maybe, but still...
2) Professional gripes: IF, and that's a big if, the Gimp has professional ambitions, start working with professional designers already and find out exactly a) what results and kinds of output they desire and b) how to offer this gui-wise. Someone here remarked that indeed if the result is good enough, any gui can be learned, but it would help to make things easy from the start.
All the rest is just typical
Re:Backwards! (Score:3, Interesting)
"MacOS has this wonderful habit of trying to protect users from their own stupidity, and thus ensures that they remain stupid and completley dependant on it."
Re:I agree... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And before anyone brings it up--multiple monito (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example, have a look at Lotus Notes.
An email/database/whateveryouwanttocallit software package that intentionally or not breaks almost every windows style-guide because the authors thought "they knew better" and programmed it "their way". And because of that, the program is widely recognised by nearly everyone who has used it as an unusable piece of crap, regardless about how anything under the hood might work.
I havn't tried GIMP, so I don't know if it falls into that category or not, but if the UI was designed to function in the same method as common Windows or Mac graphics applications (read Photoshop or PSP), I doubt people would complain. Like it or not, that's GIMP's competition and they need to recognise that they need to make it easier for people to move to their product, not harder. If that means replicating a recogniseable interface, then by all means, do it!
Before anyone flames away on me, you might want to take a moment and stop and consider what I said.
Infact, I don't at all think that Linux and Linux applications themselves are what's holding back public acceptance, I think it's programmers and designers who havn't decided on a single "everyone needs to stick to it!" GUI style guide for the operating system as a whole.
Heck, I'm to blame myself, I HATE writing GUIs with a passion, but I love coding the guts where you can have fun optimizing code. GUIs are a chore that nobody likes. Unfortunately, they're also what the user utilizes and what they evaluate your program based-on.
N.
Re:Let's go through this (Score:3, Interesting)
That statement WOULD be valid EXCEPT that the OSS community as a generality likes to proclaim as loudly as possible on whatever soapbox they can get that Linux is the Way and the Light and that FOSS will usher in a new era of bliss for everyone smart enough to use it, and if your too dumb to realize the benefit than you shouldn't be allowed by law to use a computer anyway.
A little too harsh? I don't think so. That's the impression that too many people have of Linux and the OSS community as a whole, which is really unfortunate because there's a bunch of really good folks involved, but they tend to get drowned out by the much more vocal minority that gives off all the bad vibes.
If your going to take on the dominant proprietary companies and say that your offering can take the place of what the corrupt big boys are offering, than these types of comparisons become 100% valid to make, and if you don't like the negative feedback, too bad, you invited it on yourself by telling us how great your contributions to society are.
Yes, before we started hearing all this chatter about Linux taking over the world, your statement would have rang true, but not any more. You want to play with the big boys, there is a whole new set of standards you have to meet. Deal with it.
Unhelpful Reviews (Score:2, Interesting)
Ahh yes, the eternal GIMP vs Photoshop debates.
I find these kinds of "reviews" really not so interesting. As a professional DTP IT consultant, I use most all of these tools daily: Photoshop et al..
Where I find these reviews lacking is:
Running apps in less than ideal conditions. Fink is a nice and very useful bridge to enable lots of excellent FLOSS to run, but it is not really fair to compare GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape or any other comparable Linux app when it is not run on its native platform. It would be the same having an experienced Unix/Linux tester, familiar with apps like development tools and then switching to a Mac. There are things I find incredibly frustrating when switching to a Mac too.
The reviewers overlook or miss things which show a lack of knowledge about other OS's. To me this review shows someone who has used nothing but a Mac and is clueless about other paradigms in computers.
The reviewer, in his or her ignorance completely overlooked some of the less obviously superior features of GIMP: Scripting in Python, Perl or Scheme come instantly to mind. The GIMP also has PNG support which is far better than Photoshop.
*Sigh* - It gets tiring hearing from both FLOSS bigots and Adobe fanboys who are so blind to their own zealotry.
That said, I use both and both have their strengths. Which one is better ? Neither. Both have their place and I confidently install GIMP right besides thousands of dollars of high end DTP apps including Photoshop.
GIMP 2.0 is a dramatic improvement which shows, IMO just the start of GIMP reaching a new level in image editing. The release of 2.0 will be followed by 2.2 sometime we hope, this summer. The hard under the hood work has been done, from which the GIMP team can build more functionality and refinements like substantial color management support.
The UI has been dramtically improved. There is a "small" theme for those who work on smaller monitors. Yes, there is a help system and other add-ins which extend GIMP like the freetype tool and GAP (GIMP Animation Package).
The GIMP authors and programmers are part time volunteers who do this for the joy of programming and probably a hundred other reasons... They should simply ignore this nonsense and keep on coding. Photoshop is one of the prize jewels of Adobe and is a wonderful program - but it is far from perfect.
If you really know both programs, you will learn NEITHER is better - they are different.
Re:GIMP is FREE (Score:3, Interesting)
"Why use Photoshop? GIMP is just as good. Prorietary programs suck. Blah blah blah."
If you don't like the critisicm, don't go pushing your products on people.
A) There are consumers. They don't care about open source. They want something that works.
B) Many many many Linux people go on and on trying to convince people of type A to use open source. Type B people also tend to go on and on about how open source is 'as good' or 'better' than all proprietary programs.
Result) People of type A finally listen to all the nagging, go try some open source app that isn't up to it's proprietary counterpart, then go "GIMP sucks, I'd rather pay for Photoshop than use GIMP for free".
So you see, these complaints are largely due to the community pushing things on people of type A before they are ready.
A small portion of the people may also complain becasue they see a program with many usefull functions being completely ruined by a bad interface. They are frusterated that the developers will not listen to their opinions.
Sure, maybe they have no right, but isn't one of the great things about open source supposed to be feedback from "many eye's"?
Re:Interface (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a programmer, server-side developer (Cocoon 2), graphic designer and site designer.
Operating Systems I learned include HP-UX, IRIX for Wavefront during Animation at WSU while persuing second B.S. in Cptr Science. First was in Mech. Engineering (I understand Design applied to Systems and Machines), NeXTSTEP(self-taught, loved it so much left my second B.S. behind to work at NeXT Software), Mac OS 6 - 9 (Used it sparingly while working at Apple focused on Rhapsody than OS X), Windows(95/98/NT/2k/XP), worked with various graphics applications on various operating systems.
All my graphics are now done with the following products:
What they all have in common is I run them on Debian GNU/Linux via KDE 3.2.2 along with GNOME and GNUstep.
When I use OS X which is becoming more often doesn't mean I'm going to not use Linux. I'll leverage them both and make myself as productive and useful as my damn mind can handle.
Stop fucking whining, become a Keith Ohlfs and contribute your ideas of UI Design so that people can benefit from these vast wellsprings of insight.
I see a need I research tools available and I learn new skills. Jack of All Trades, but I tell you my M.E. background has taught me to produce first rate results and learn on-the-fly.
The GIMP needs a more cohesive UI but if you can get your Mind around Photoshop you can get your Mind around the GIMP. User Tutorial Documentation also needs to be massively increased. If one doesn't know Python the odds of fully leveraging the GIMP with scripts on Images is very remote.
On OS X I will reach for the Stone Design CD, use Create and all the other apps that come with it, and continue on my merry ways.
The Best Applications on OS X aren't the ones from Adobe, Macromedia, etc... They are from the Minds of Developers who had the headstart of Getting Cocoa and its Capabilities. Apple is making it clear how to do it, finally!!
Personal observation after having to downgrade from working at NeXT to merging with the Zealots at Apple, YOU WASTED 4 YEARS WHINING AND WHAT WE HAVE IN A BEAUTIFUL OS IS NOT EVEN WHERE IT SHOULD BE. BUT COMPROMISE IS A BITCH AINT IT?
Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting)
That's been pretty much my take on MDI for many years. MDI was, as far as I can tell, Microsofts attempt to imitate the Macintosh layout in a multiple-window environment. Just maximize an MDI window and, apart from the title bar at the top and the main window covering everything else, you pretty much have the Macintosh style.
Now, IMNSHO, perhaps one of the main reasons the Macintosh did things this way was to save screen real estate. The original Mac was 640x480 or less, on a tiny 12 or 13 inch screen. Keeping one menu for all your windows saved space. With large screens and higher resolutions being so common nowadays, I think this style of screen layout is less justified. It's a style and some people like it, yes. There's just less of a reason to do things that way. And, once again IMNSHO, the Microsoft Windows method of having one window covering everything is just plain ugly and clumsy.
Give me virtual desktops, lazy focus-follows-mouse, and multiple top-level windows please. That's the way I like to work. Then again, I am a long-time Linux geek and my name's (still) in The Gimp credits. I may be just a little biased :)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:1, Interesting)
Simply untrue. I use the gimp and i make money from its use. You simply have no curve and are trapped in a microsoft-world. You refuse to even give something else a try. Nothing wrong with that, just don't go slamming something you don't know intimately.
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason you might not see a bunch of "I would move to Windows if...." stories is probably because most people use Windows. Most by a LARGE margin according to this [google.com]. Check out the "Operating Systems Used to Access Google" image.
What I find annoying is people who don't use Linux telling everyone else they should.
Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason to put the menu bar at the top of the screen hasn't changed. It's based on solid research, and a little principle called Fitt's Law. [asktog.com]
And a hefty helping of Kudos to you for contributing your time and skills to freeasinbeerandfreedom software, but if you think good interface design is "...a style and some people like it, yes - then you're part of the problem. The user interface matters and too many programmers - Open Source and commercial - treat it as though it's just a matter of personal preference, or worse, as though it doesn't matter at all. And I'm not just talking about GUIs.
Gimp 2 UI (Score:2, Interesting)
To let it fully replace Photoshop for me it still needs higher bit color, adjustment layers, healing brush, and proportional crop.
Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm, I was discussing the single-menu Macintosh interface. You made a guess as to why Apple did it that way, concluded that it was no longer necessary, and implied that it only persists because some people like the "style."
I posted a link to an article which includes the reason why Apple did it that way, and why it's arguably and measurably superior to the way Windows does it - even with the MDI - written by the original lead Mac UI designer and researcher. Your "NSHO" is wrong, and I'm telling you why, and pointing you towards a resource which might just teach you something useful.
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.
Nope, the first half of my post would have been identical even without your "little $0.02 comment at the end." And as for "out of context," the bulk of your reply was a rant on something you yourself admit that I didn't even say! Guess what - I agree with your rant about "intuitive" interfaces!
The irony here is that your own intuition sucks. Apple didn't make their UI design decision for the reason you think they did; and I didn't say anything about, imply, or even glance in the direction of "intuitive" interfaces. Did you follow the link and read it? You should. Fitt's law is about speed. "Intuitive" is irrelevant.
But since you brought it up (really!), just because you can make a case that there's no such thing as an "intuitive" interface does not imply that a UI doesn't need to be logical. Tools for similar functions and tasks should be grouped together. Something I use all the time shouldn't be buried three dialog boxes deep. Those sorts of things appear to be consistent criticisms of The Gimp.
Can people be a little more constructive and descriptive in their criticisms of The Gimp?
Just so we're straight on this, I defy you to show me where I've criticized The Gimp - in this thread or in any other post anywhere. I was criticizing you.
If you demonstrate your ignorance of well-known UI principles in a thread where people are criticizing an application for having a deficient UI, and then go on to claim credit as a programmer for that application, you need to be a little less thin-skinned when reading a reply which is intended to help enlighten you.
Unfortunately, it is clear that you must have taken my Kudos comment as sarcasm, which is regrettable, because I was entirely sincere. I respect and appreciate the contributions made by people like you. But I don't believe that the fact that you're contributing work for free means that you are above criticism. It certainly doesn't work that way for any of the volunteer efforts I'm involved in.
I've never used The Gimp. I did use Photoshop on a daily basis starting from version 1.0 up until a couple of years ago, but that's not really relevant. What is relevant is that I use Open Source software on a daily basis that is as good as or superior to highly priced commercial applications, both in performance and feature sets. So it demonstrably can be done. But the the areas where Open Source software is consistently deficient are
in the UI - because most programmers have no UI design training, and/or don't think it's important, and because many of these projects begin as something that the programmers wrote for themselves. Naturally, it makes sense to them. To the larger audience, "intuitive" means "works like something I already know," exactly as you say. Certainly, ignore convention if you wish, or especially if you think you have a better idea, but don't be surprised when the great unwashed masses slam your "confusing" interface.
the documentation - most programmers are not writers, and even if they can wri
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's like whinging that a desktop calculator is totally evil by comparison with Mathematica. Different product, different purpose.
Every time a thread comes up regarding the GIMP, it gets flooded by the Photoshop zealots generating more heat than light. In the original submission, Eugenia makes her own wishlist known, but I have seen no evidence that she is in any way up to making any significant use of those capabilities, and present incarnations of the GIMP are probably in fact quite sufficient.
Given that Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars, and the GIMP costs no more than the time you take to download it, any comparison is invidious.
Re:A long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
You are correct in saying that in the US design world you won't get anywhere without Pantone but there exists other systems in other countries and other areas, For example the ultimate reference to colour in the scientific world is not Pantone, is CIE [cie.co.at].
CIE were the first to conduct scientific colour perception experiments 90 years ago way before the first computer, and now they are the ISO colour standardization body.
I'm not sure how well PS supports the CIE standards but at least the Gimp supports CIE-Lab.
Time is on the Gimp's side (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Time is on the Gimp's side. Graphics, just like text editing and operating systems, has a point where things are "good enough" -- OpenOffice.org, for example, has reached that point, which is why it is starting to slowly but surely eat into Microsoft Office. Once the Gimp reaches that point, and it will, Adobe will have a problem charging its insane prices
2.The Gimp is good enough for semi-professional use, and with this price tag, it is going to attract a lot of attention and get a lot of feedback. Feedback is the life-blood of Open Source. And there are always a lot more people who are semi-professionals than professionals.
3. Ease of use isn't everything. Mac users (for the record: I own an iBook, too) love to go on and on about how their interface is standardized, easy to use, etc. True, but if that were to translate into sales, the world would have been dominated by Macs even before OS X came along. People can and will cope -- heck, they piced MS DOS over the Mac. If Gimp can do 80 percent of what Photoshop can do for free with whatever interface, Adobe is toast.
We'll see where we are in five years.
the other application is a disaster (Score:2, Interesting)
Photoshop acts like every other app on OSX. The Gimp is a frankenstein child of linux and windows, and not just because it's under X11. I'd say the photoshop users are *exactly* the people the Gimp designers should be listening very hard to. There is a reason people are willing to pay good money for photoshop, and a lot of that reason is the interface, which tries hard to fit in and at the same time extend the host OS. Looking at the Gimp one on OS X, it has some serious problems:
There are two file menus, one in each document window too (If they're going to use the broken 'menu in the window' idea they could at least get it right).
There doesn't appear to be any consistent ordering for the buttons in windows, and why are their buttons to perform actions anyway? Are these dialogs or palettes? The palettes are all too large and the arrangement of tools is not at all intuitive. Why the huge patterns palette is shown by default I have no idea, because it was 'cool'?
The popup menus are enormous (sometimes for stuff like 'px' which should be in the prefs anyway) and some buttons are half-hidden by the bottom right corner of windows. The default for the layers palette appears to be not to follow the selected document, and there is a little 'auto' button for choosing this option (??!?!!?!?! Shouldn't auto be, you know, automatic?).
So, in general, the interface feels like a historical accident that no one wants to clean up, and unfortunately that history is on another platform, making it appear even uglier to someone used to native OS X programs. If it was the sort of program that you just set up a few options and leave to do its thing (rendering, batch image processing etc) that'd be acceptable, but in a graphics program where you spend all day choosing options and tools, it just can't work.
If it took over the screen and imposed its own paradigm so that you forget the rest of the system (like many 3D apps) that'd be another way round it I guess, but at the moment it looks like it's trying to fit in and failing miserably.
The default install also leaves several invisible files in your user folder, so you'll have to go through and try to delete them if you choose to remove it.
This is ignoring the fact that on a default install of X11 you have to click twice on windows to actually choose a tool - though not strictly a Gimp problem, most new users would get stuck right there. If it's going to see any adoption on OS X someone needs to do a port using carbon or cocoa and throw away the horrific front end. For now I'm happy paying for photoshop. I had a quick look at the code, and boy do they have their work cut-out if they want to separate the back end from the interface. Perhaps that's why they're loath to change it?
Re:One thing about photoshop! (Score:2, Interesting)
>performance parity for Wine with Windows is
>plain stupid.
bzzt. Try again.
http://www.winehq.org/site/myths#slow
If you experience slow performance with Wine, and you use it only for photoshop, try the following:
-Compile with -O2 -Os
-Strip debugging messages from the build
-Strip debug info from the dlls
-Ensure you are using an accellerated X server
This will radically improve the speed of most desktop applications. Wine by default builds with lots of debug info so that apps that don't work can be debugged.
Thanks for using Wine, please remember to report any bugs and suggestions at winehq.
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the original Mac interface was a tour de force when it came to balancing practical considerations (such as limited screen resolution) and HCI considerations. As such there is seldom a single simple reason for doing things a particular way, as you suggest. In fact if you read their old (and still excellent) HCI guidelines, you wouldn't have to speculate about the reasons certain things were done a particular way.
I'd say there are several sound HCI reasons for the Macs handling menus as they do. One is the famous principle that larger an object is in a GUI, the faster a user can hit it, and menus glued to the top of the screen have in effect infinite vertical size. ONce the Mac gained the ability to run multiple applications, this was a fortuitous choice, not just because of real estate issues, but because it reinforced the (admittedly weak) desktop metaphor: if you have several documents open, there is no concept of an "application" that the user has to navigate around. Making users deal with "applications" on the computer is like making them have to handle paper documents differently depending on the mill the paper came from. The ultimate in moving in this direction was the late, lamented OpenDoc, in which the "Application" as a user interface element withered away to next to nothing. The end of OpenDoc was the end of Apple as an HCI driven company. That's not to say HCI isn't important, but I'd say it's safe to say that Apple considers itself enough better on this count that there is not much marginal competitive benefit to be found over putting the same effort into styling. It's an economicly rational position to take, but Apple will not become HCI driven until somebody in open source bests them on this factor, which is still a ways off.
MDI is something that those of us who came out of the Unix world are all to familiar with: a technical hack that was allowed to bleed through into the user interface because nobody really thought very much about what the user was trying to do. In Windows (possibly OS2 too), user events like mouse clicks and key presses have to be routed to a window to be handled. Naturally as programmers we're mainly interested in applications, not documents, so we just throw all our documents inside our application's window: voila! problem solved. Users can adapt to this, but it is totally unnatural. OLE mitigates this piece of stupidity somewhat, but the application window is pretty much a useless evolutionary vestige.
Microsoft pretty much follows the same faultless economic logic that Apple does on user interfaces. They can't do much better (whereas Apple knows it won't do much better) in terms of market share by making complex and disruptive user interface improvements. So they tinker a bit here and there to improve it, slap a lot of chrome on, and are done.
There really is NO hope for fundamentally better user interfaces until the day open source operating systems become competitive on the desktop.