What is Digg?128 Comments
- XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -16/+141It's not the part that it's not powerful that bugs people, it's the fact that the user interface is crazy...
- msikma, on 10/12/2007, -6/+58This was exactly what I thought when I saw this story. GIMP is actually pretty powerful, or so I've found after tinkering with it for a while, but I just really find the user interface to be appalling. Sure, there's a mod that makes the interface work like Photoshop, but Photoshop's interface isn't perfect either. They should just focus their minds on making it much, much better. I'm sure there are design professionals willing to help out.
- Desolite, on 10/12/2007, -10/+54replace the G with a P
- halik, on 10/12/2007, -7/+41But guys you can write scripts to make graphics!! Why have user interface when you can you can CODE art!
/sarcasm - halik, on 10/12/2007, -9/+40It's got nothing to do with what you've used before, GIMP is simply unfinished. Try resizing a canvas and see what happens. (it resizes the canvas, but not the layers...so you can't actually use the extra space).
Little stupid quirks like that make it complete pain to use. Even image resize works funny - if you hold the aspect ratio, it doesn't update the value in the other dimension (im talking about the dialog box), so more often than now you resize the image wrong. - shmatt, on 10/12/2007, -8/+31If by "powerful" they mean "able to output CMYK," then no, GIMP isn't even close. No, plugins don't count, I expect my IMP to have native color spaces.
Sorry folks, but for a graphics professional, GIMP is about as useful as MS Paint. - eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -7/+29names:
Photoshop - self-explanatory
GIMP - terrifying - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -7/+28Photoshop:
Use the Ellipse tool, hold shift, draw your perfect circle.
Done. - bart9h, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21GTK was born from GIMP.
G.T.K. == "GIMP ToolKit" - int19h, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22From http://www.netads.com/~meo/gimp/faq-user.html:
How can I draw a circle with the GIMP?
Use the elliptical select tool, hold down CTRL key to constrain as circle, fill the selected area with new color, right click on selected area, choose SELECT, SHRINK, shrink selection by whatever number of pixels you want your circle width to be, right click again in selected area, choose EDIT, CUT. Voila, one beautifully antialased circle. - llbbl, on 10/12/2007, -13/+29They seriously need to come up with a better name.
- somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Lets see;
ellipse tool,
hold CTRL,
draw circle...
That would be "none", wouldn't it? - bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20What on earth has happened to digg?
please don't digg this down until you read this if you actually care about keeping digg usable as a tech site...
Above there are a number of comments including an *actual* discussion about the gimp vs photoshop. The only reason I can see for these posts being dugg down are that they aren't trolls or fanboy comments, they don't contain lame 5 year old recycled slashdot jokes, but are instead polite discussion about the actual topic at hand.
Digg is ill. The comment system seems to be geared toward controversy and drama, while real posts are getting modded down or ignored... - bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20thats fckin hilarious, but unfortunately it's not far from the way the opensource/linux community seems to look at things...
We need usability... even prettyness! users will come for bouncy graphics & flashy demo images, and they'll stay for power... they won't find out they even needed the power though until months - even years into using the product... it's not a selling point...
UI, appearance and demo images are how you'll win users (and having a functional product is handy too from what I hear about the GIMP) - MillenniumX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14GIMP's interface has greatly improved since the 1.0 days, but it still has a very long way to go.
- aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19There is of course GIMPShop which changes a lot of the interface to things we are more familiar with. But it's still not up to the user friendly level. I use it because it's all I can afford as a student right now, but I don't see myself using GIMP forever.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16It might be powerful, but the interface is antiquated, the interface is cludgy, and it uses GTK, which is pretty slow (on Windows at least).
- Ragzouken, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12The single most annoying thing about the GUI is that they all use different focus and it's horrible to get them all back after switching windows.
- BT-Wang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12that's what imagemagick is for.
- Langford, on 10/12/2007, -20/+30It's just what you are used to using that determines whether Gimp is easy or hard to use. I used Photoshop originally, and it was tough getting used to Gimp when I first tried it, but even though it's interface is different it has a consistency that makes it very usable. Now that I am used to Gimp, using Photoshop doesn't even cross my mind.
- xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13I hate The Gimp for anything other than simple photo leveling but it isn't because of it's lack of power! Heck even the scriptability of the Gimp goes way further than what Photoshop has BUT compare this:
Macros (actions):
Photoshop: click record, do a few actions, hit stop
Gimp: open a python editor, script your actions, add them to the menu
People should not have to know how to program to do macros in their photo editor. The Gimp team really has to adopt an MDI so people feel at home and organise their menus the way that photoshop did.
If every car maker reinvented the user interface of their cars to their flavor we'd be dashboarding it instead of flooring it. I personally love consitent UIs across different platforms unless it proves superior. So far the Gimp has not shown any superiority. - filmtex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11I started using GIMP about half the time, several years ago. It is a bit different than Photoshop, but it works pretty well. There are some projects that I keep GIMP for exclusively. For the price, it's pretty sweet. And I've had the opportunity to recoomend it to folks who absolutely could not afford to buy Photoshop, at least they ended up wiith software that worked, at a price they could afford.
- hockey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Without GTK though it'd be a beast to make cross platform even with the other cross platform GUI API's out there. GTK is so simple and easy that it makes cross platform coding a breeze.
- prammy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7People bitch about Gimp not being as powerful as Photoshop but for _most_ people who put pirated copies of Photoshop on their machines, Gimp would work just fine.
The issue is that the interface is similar enough to photoshop's that people think that they don't need to re-learn the application and its different enough to where people do actually have to re-learn the application, and ends up frustrating many people.
Gimp is getting better and better. But in the end you use what you have to use. Whether it be Photoshop or Paint shop or Gimp. - timxpx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9it's not that i don't use gimp because i don't think it's powerful. i don't use gimp because work gives me a perfectly good photoshop license for free.
- strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Great... how many extra (and non-obvious) steps did that involve versus how many steps it did in Photoshop?
- MrFusion, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9The Photoshop version of Circle creation is exactly the same as GIMP (apart from the hotkey) its just the GIMP version created a stroked circle, ie outlined, the PS version was just a circle shape.
When gimp can provide the "Stroke" option like photoshops Blending options then i'm switching, but Im happy to pay the money for the power and ease of use with PS - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Ok :p Well, Photoshop isn't a casual program, really. Its overkill for casual use, but critical for graphics professionals-and $850 isn't a lot to pay for a professional software tool that your business depends on, imho.
- codyfrisch, on 10/12/2007, -13/+19Of course from those tutorials, it shows nothing Photoshop didn't do when I was 12 (25 now). So comparatively those tutorials show how little power it does have.
- whiteguysamurai, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Photoshop has had the benefit of years of working with graphic professionals, for and by professionals to maximize work flow.
Gimp has not this benefit and only exists to fill i niche, and it's developers are not troubled by visuals.
So it's a waste of time to compare them. - bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9maybe when it first came out a new name would have been in order, but everyone knows the GIMP now...
we're destined to spend our working time with a gimp and our recreation playing with our wii's... might as well get used to the idea... - Ascus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I use Gimp and Love it, I am application developer. My daughter laughs a Gimp, she uses Photoshop, she is a graphics designer. For the little bit of work I do in graphics, Gimp is great, IMHO, its far better (read more powerful) than any package at the $100 and under market.
But its interface is something only a techie could love. - 2Wrongs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Everyone seems to have "that one thing" that annoys them about Gimp. Mine is adjustment layers. I love having a layer that adjusts levels, one for saturation, etc and I can go back and tweak them at any point during the retouching. The only thing close I've been able to do is duplicate a layer, change the level, then change opacity.
That and layer modes (brighten, screen etc). - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I think what he meant by "crazy" is that the interface was developed after limited, bare-bones research in usability. As such, people who don't care about usability and are more interested in what the software is capable of doing on the backend will not care (this actually describes quite a few supporters of GIMP and other open source projects). Unfortunately, people who are used to using software whose interface has gone through significant usability research will not want to "learn" something that, to them, feels counter-intuitive.
In other words, there's a reason for why things in Photoshop and other expensive software packages look the way they do, and why specific features can be accessed by following specific steps. In the case of GIMP and many other open source projects, there is often NO reason for why things look a certain way, or the reason is so abstractly defined that regular people will not understand the benefit of it. - fredclown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Not to mention the kind of people who tend to do photo editing aren't the programming type.
- strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -7/+12But can I draw a circle?
- AdmJollyRoger, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12I don't think the interface is all that bad (although MDI would make it soooo much easier). My only complaint is lack of CMYK. Seriously, do they not understand that people need to print their work? GIMP is very nice for photo retouching and web art, but you can't use it professionally for print work (e.g., brochures, posters, CD covers, inserts, etc.).
I think GIMP is an appropriate name--it is gimped by it lack of color management. Zing!!! - grinin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I agree... Everyone is used to the Photoshop interface, so when something doesn't work or act the way it does in photoshop, its discouraging. It is very powerful though, and I for one do have it installed.
- inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I agree with the comments about the interface. I've tried the GIMP many times over the last few years, each time hopeful that something has been done about its awful interface but it's always the same. I'd love to use it, but the developers have to accept the fact that an overwhelming majority of users out there want Photoshop-like. They seem to be mired in this mid-90s approach to even the basic concepts of selection tools.
I read a comment from one of the developers who took offense at the idea of making it more like Photoshop which is really too bad. It shouldn't be a religious issue to them. If they would get over this aversion to copying Photoshop's superior interface, they would be what Firefox is to Explorer--a free competitor that people would take seriously.
And for those of you recommending GimpShop, that doesn't address this. GimpShop looks more like Photoshop but it doesn't change how the tools behave which is also part of the UI (a more important part, quite honestly.) - darkchild, on 10/12/2007, -9/+14I don't think the name is that bad. GIMP = GNU Image Manipulation Program. Its the user interface that I think is terrible and causes a lot of clutter on the desktop. Krita is a good alternative to the GIMP, but currently it doesn't have as many third party plugins as GIMP.
- dhughes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7 Joking that I don't have $850 to casually spend on a computer program? No I'm not joking. I have the $850 but it's for other things like food, heating fuel and rent.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Buried for use of "foolio".
- robber49, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7GIMP 2.4 is also shaping up to be very nice. They've made some improvements to the interface, added color management, added some new tools, and it is also using much nicer tango icons for everything. I would recommend anyone that wants to check out the GIMP use the development version and not the stable version.
- sonaro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Every time I hear the word GIMP I think of the guy in leather from Pulp Fiction. It just bothers me.
http://www.piscitella.com/pulp/images/thmb/thmb_pulp_fiction-mpg196.jpg - crizo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Separate doesn't solve the problem. If you've ever worked on a high-quality print job where color is critical, you would know the difference. You need to work in CMYK from the start, not just convert the finished product to CMYK. There are ranges of the RGB spectrum that can't be represented in CMYK, and likewise. It's called gamut. And this plugin doesn't seem to take that into account. And there are places where you want full control over the CMYK levels. It's a bit like trying to do printed color matching in Microsoft Word. Because word only knows about RGB, forget it. You can spend all day tweaking RGB values, and the printed output won't even be close to what you want. Any professional with professional rates would waste enough time playing with this to be able to buy a new copy of Photoshop.
- BlueTide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I work with Photoshop daily and have tested waters with GIMP every now and then. At home my workstation actually runs Linux, so it's not that I would not wish to use GIMP.
But really, those that say the interface complaints only come from Phtososhop users should get a reality check. I am sure there are people who genuinely like GIMP and the interface, but some usability studies ought to be done. And also to form a stand if GIMP is for hobbyist or for professionals. If for hobbyist, I could just shut up. I take the stance it thinks to be a proffessional tool, given all the glory it has received.
There are things that are unquestionably more usable in Photoshop, colour management as one major area. To me personally even a bigger deal is the speed and the ability to learn. With GIMP, it feels that you are re-learning all the time, things are found from illogical places. And I hear the same from less (graphics-wise) professional Linux gurus around here. The interface windows fight you, you have a lot of wasted screen space, menu widths are inconsistent, labels look and feel as if some are just hacked together. And this is not even mentioning that in actual use, in the simple things that you do all the time, PS feels (since I have no proof) much more efficient and I get so much more done with it that it is actually cheaper than GIMP. Yes, GIMP may be free, but for me PS is cheaper still. Some of that comes from being used to PS, but somehow I have found it much more easy to switch between Maya and XSI than with GIMP and Photoshop. Surely that tells something.
There is also a simlar debate about ZBrush interface, for those whore are interested. Many seem to be willing to prefer more traditional and easier UI and thus invest to another program for the mere merit of it being easier and thus faster to use (not all agree with this either).
I don't expect GIMP to be a Photoshop clone, it needs not to be. But what really irks me is the denial of the developers that there is something wrong with the interface and lack of any will to actually listen the userbase they seem to wish to associate with. The general developer attitude has put me down from really giving them any feedback for that matter, it only seems to get labeled as whining from a Photoshop user. - PiEp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think kevin45 meant to point us at the application called 'Pixel', which is available at http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12
It's actually quite powerful, cheap and very similar to Photoshop. Some features are lacking, but the developer is rapidly catching up. If you are looking for an affordable Photoshop alternative that runs on virtually every OS you may be using, go check it out! - codyfrisch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Right seems like the GIMP programmers are more concerned about programming than making it functional for a professional who has no concern about programming.
Unfortunately so many programmers forget programming is not for programming sake, but for the sake of the user of the product.
Of course since GIMP is "free", the user doesn't matter, its a project driven by the programmers for the programmers that happens to have the outside appearance of being an image editor. It's pretty much just their hobby. - codyfrisch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No my argument was the submitter made the point that GIMP was so powerful using the linked tutorials as "proof" of their statement. Considering the tutorials only showed things that Photoshop has done since I was a child, this article only proved GIMP is as powerful as Photoshop was a decade ago.
I know Photoshop books contain just as simple of stuff, and often very little much more complex. So one could argue that is all Photoshop can do. That wasn't my point.
My point was simply that if the submitter of the story wanted to prove GIMP to be powerful, they should have actually shown something that isn't old news to Photoshop. - angulion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Do you imply that Photoshop manuals doesn't show you how to do basic stuff nowadays?
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