Gimp vs. Photoshop
Jul. 6th, 2009 08:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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purpledumbass than anyone else, but you're welcome to read along it you like.
It was recently suggested in your journal that you try out Gimp on your new(ly upgraded) Mac. PDA, you already own a copy of Photoshop CS4 if I remember right.
You indicated in your journal that you had no compelling reason to switch. Good.
In many books on the subject, the claim is made that Harland & Wolff describes the Titanic as "unsinkable." This claim is not true. They touted the double-hull construction, and then the media of the time took that ball and ran with it: it was the press that called the great ship "unsinkable."
Likewise, the Gimp team has never suggested that The Gimp is a Photoshop replacement. Bloggers and the rest of the open source community did that for them.
They're wrong, in any case.
I like the idea of open source software, but, taking Gimp as our example (and, by extension, Inkscape), its single biggest advantage is that it is free. That's where the Yellow Brick Road ends.
So, as I said, Gimp is marketed - as much as anything open source is marketed - as a Photoshop replacement. Let's accept that, then, midguided as it is, and look at a few key areas where such an assertion is patently wrong.
If you do a Google search on "gimp vs. photoshop" you'll get more than seven million results. Of those, let's say half are legit and/or not repeats. Of those, let's say that just over three-quarters are whining about how the interface is different. Well, no shit. Different software, different interface. Let's get qualitative:
1. You can't nest layers, so organizing your graphic is pretty tough. No, scratch that. In real practical terms, it's impossible.
2. Adjustment layers. One of Photoshop's most powerful features. Gimp doesn't have them.
3. Stroked paths that curve, pixelate and do weird shit with the stroke width. Gimp can make Web2.0 style buttons and frames, but only if you're willing to put up with awkward looking corners.
4. Text rendering is sloppy, with similar symptoms as issue #3: curves pixelate. You can get around this somewhat by creating your text huge and scaling it down, but that's a real pain in the ass. You can also drop into Inkscape* to do any work with curves, but then you have to deal with differences in scaling between the two applications, likewise a real pain in the ass.
These are HUGE failings that Gimp is going to have to overcome before it will ever seriously compete with PS.
...which it isn't officially trying to do anyway.
* Inkscape is also a serious memory hog, and if you have anything visual going on - hulu.com in another window, for instance - the Inkscape interface just stops refreshing. Maybe that would go away with a better video card, though it irks me that I'd have to upgrade what's already a higher-than-baseline PC.
purpledumbass than anyone else, but you're welcome to read along it you like.It was recently suggested in your journal that you try out Gimp on your new(ly upgraded) Mac. PDA, you already own a copy of Photoshop CS4 if I remember right.You indicated in your journal that you had no compelling reason to switch. Good.
In many books on the subject, the claim is made that Harland & Wolff describes the Titanic as "unsinkable." This claim is not true. They touted the double-hull construction, and then the media of the time took that ball and ran with it: it was the press that called the great ship "unsinkable."
Likewise, the Gimp team has never suggested that The Gimp is a Photoshop replacement. Bloggers and the rest of the open source community did that for them.
They're wrong, in any case.
I like the idea of open source software, but, taking Gimp as our example (and, by extension, Inkscape), its single biggest advantage is that it is free. That's where the Yellow Brick Road ends.
So, as I said, Gimp is marketed - as much as anything open source is marketed - as a Photoshop replacement. Let's accept that, then, midguided as it is, and look at a few key areas where such an assertion is patently wrong.
If you do a Google search on "gimp vs. photoshop" you'll get more than seven million results. Of those, let's say half are legit and/or not repeats. Of those, let's say that just over three-quarters are whining about how the interface is different. Well, no shit. Different software, different interface. Let's get qualitative:
1. You can't nest layers, so organizing your graphic is pretty tough. No, scratch that. In real practical terms, it's impossible.
2. Adjustment layers. One of Photoshop's most powerful features. Gimp doesn't have them.
3. Stroked paths that curve, pixelate and do weird shit with the stroke width. Gimp can make Web2.0 style buttons and frames, but only if you're willing to put up with awkward looking corners.4. Text rendering is sloppy, with similar symptoms as issue #3: curves pixelate. You can get around this somewhat by creating your text huge and scaling it down, but that's a real pain in the ass. You can also drop into Inkscape* to do any work with curves, but then you have to deal with differences in scaling between the two applications, likewise a real pain in the ass.
These are HUGE failings that Gimp is going to have to overcome before it will ever seriously compete with PS.
...which it isn't officially trying to do anyway.
* Inkscape is also a serious memory hog, and if you have anything visual going on - hulu.com in another window, for instance - the Inkscape interface just stops refreshing. Maybe that would go away with a better video card, though it irks me that I'd have to upgrade what's already a higher-than-baseline PC.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 17:38 (UTC)I love the use of adjustment layers in Photoshop. I've been using them for years for color correction and I'd feel that my right arm was amputated without their use for that purpose. Paths are another feature that I use quite a bit, too. I'd be frustrated with such functionality hindered.
I've been using Photoshop on any mac I owned for years, and the only thing that would be semi-compelling for the use of Gimp is if I'm on a PC and don't have Photoshop available at the moment. I've considered downloading Gimpshop to my flash drive for those few instances when i would need simple functionality for resizing a graphic or such, but it isn't a priority when I'm not regularly using a PC (as I was for some of my CAD classes last semester). As I said in my LJ post-- I DO have Photoshop CS4 on my mac, so I don't know that there is any reason to go to Gimp. Yes, I've supported another "evil empire" by giving Adobe money, but there IS a reason why it's the industry standard. At least they gave me a student discount on it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 09:04 (UTC)I hope you'll head over to the GNOME Bugzilla and submit bug reports/enhancement requests as appropriate.