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I've been using Gimp for many years now, and it serves me well. I learnt Photoshop at university, on a Multimedia Tech course. Whilst Photoshop is a fine piec

I've been using Gimp for many years now, and it serves me well. I learnt Photoshop at university, on a Multimedia Tech course. Whilst Photoshop is a fine piece of software, it is overkill for most users. Gimp might be hard to get to grips with for long-time Photoshop users, but it isn't hard, it just takes some muscle-memory adjustment. For users who have never used either, Gimp is a great piece of software to use from the get-go. I've also used Krita of late, and that too is a very good piece of software worth checking out if you want to do photo-editing and digital painting.

jfaucett 10y ago
here's the problem. Photoshop blows gimp out of the water in every way that is important to designers. GIMP is quite adept at simpler tasks/flows i.e. the stuff most people might want to do to an image, crop, put some text, etc. really no major diff here between it and ps. and this is why i teach it to relatives/friends who want to edit their images on a budget. But it is very difficult to make professional grade designs/templates/mockups with gimp (i would venture impossible but im sure someone could do it given enough discipline just as someone could build a httpserver in pure x86 if they really wanted to) source: long time Gimp and Photoshop user, have worked professionally as a UX/UI/Graphic designer and software developer, and have really tried to get on board with gimp bc its open source, saves $50 monthly, and is hackable all unlike ps, it even has a lisp scripting language! I couldnt do it even with that much goodwill so i honestly cant see any less motivated designer using it. EDIT: of course designers or a ps alternative might not be gimps market at all, and instead just normal end users, in which case gimp should definitely not be criticized. I think people (unjustly perhaps) want gimp to be a ps alternative for designers, its not. plain and simple.
- beefsack 10y ago
  Parent commenter mentioned "most users," designers are the power users in this vertical and wouldn't constitute the majority.
  - xsmasher 10y ago
    It's fine for most computer users, but not most Photoshop users.
    - jshevek 10y ago
      Most designers might be photoshop users, but its not true that most photoshop users are designers.
- cocotino 10y ago
  No layer styles for example makes GIMP unusable for me.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Last time I tried, GIMP couldn't even import a layered image. It just flattened it. Useless. I have Gb of images; I can't even begin to use GIMP unless my investment is preserved.
    - prokoudine 10y ago
      > Last time I tried, GIMP couldn't even import a layered image. Glad to see you are back to GIMP for the first time since 1998.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        Be fair. Since about 2 years ago. Just installed latest (2.8), and I see it has a new menu item - Open as Layers. So cool. And also to be fair, from my perspective that leaves GIMP only a few years behind other packages.
        prokoudine 10y ago
        Be fair. 'Open as Layer' has been around since 2004: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=37912655f2073068e73dc30b620c427b41f177f6 https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=37912655f207306... :)
        JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        So all this time I just missed that menu item? Believable; I am pretty dense sometimes. Gotta wonder why though, with a 'flatten' option already there, there's need for two versions of 'Open File', one that screws you and one that works, but that's probably history. I admit I use GIMP all the time, and have for years. It has a scripting language (ok just Lisp but with image-processing primitives) that I use to generate hundreds of images for card games. Photoshop has some arcane scripting ability but they sell it. My game club didn't want to pay, which is reasonable. So GIMP has been useful to me for years.
- groovy2shoes 10y ago
  > someone could build a httpserver in pure x86 if they really wanted to You mean something like this? http://asm32.info/index.cgi?page=content/0_MiniMagAsm/index.txt http://asm32.info/index.cgi?page=content/0_MiniMagAsm/index.... EDIT: Scratch that, it's just a CGI application and not an HTTP server on its own. Still, I think it's pretty neat :)
vmarsy 10y ago
The issue is Gimp tries to look like Photoshop very hard, so people tend to compare the 2. But if we compare 2 Free popular painting software: MS Paint and Gimp, then Gimp is awesome, for non professional use I love Gimp. If I were a professional image editor I would buy Photoshop. On my windows 10 machine, I hope I'll be able to run Gimp. I don't know if the Linux Subsystem makes it possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ea4w4/fyi_you_can_run_gui_linux_apps_from_bash/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ea4w4/fyi_you_c...
- jdboyd 10y ago
  On more than one Windows 10 machine, I have no problems running Gimp 2.8 build for Windows supplied straight from https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ It also works well on Windows 7. I can only assume that means it will probably work OK on the versions between 7 and 10.
  - Nexxxeh 10y ago
    I've experienced weird behavior with GIMP on Windows. It mangled my clipboard usage with Teamviewer (wth?), tablet support is hit and miss, and other just plain odd behavior. That's not a complaint, I've no right to complain as I've not documented and raised the bugs.[1] I've just worked around them, which I appreciate is selfish. But it works just as well/badly on 7, 8.1u1, and 10 in my experience. And it's still my go-to image editor for anything that Irfanview can't do. [1]https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&classification=Other&op_sys=Windows&order=Importance&product=GIMP&query_format=advanced https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRME...
- camclay 10y ago
  They've had a long history of building or other users compiling versions for Windows - https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - has Windows and Mac OSX as options, as well as Linux.
- newscracker 10y ago
smrtinsert 10y ago
gimp can't even begin to compare with Photoshop on a filter level, especially in areas like burn/dodge. I don't know how it applies it but Photoshops application of filters is much more intelligent. Not to mention Gimp has an absolutely baffling ui philosophy (paste as layer/yellow square/brushes not painting) while Kritas seems sane at least, mimicing popular photoshop features and even improving it in some cases. In an ideal world, gimp is retired and Krita becomes the Photoshop alternative and the community can focus on really getting behind Krita.
- buovjaga 10y ago
  That goes against the product vision of Krita, though. Krita is a painting application, not a photo editor. The defining of the vision was a Eureka moment for the developers. http://blog.mmiworks.net/2010/03/working-on-vision-with.html http://blog.mmiworks.net/2010/03/working-on-vision-with.html

jfaucett 10y ago

here's the problem. Photoshop blows gimp out of the water in every way that is important to designers. GIMP is quite adept at simpler tasks/flows i.e. the stuff most people might want to do to an image, crop, put some text, etc. really no major diff here between it and ps. and this is why i teach it to relatives/friends who want to edit their images on a budget. But it is very difficult to make professional grade designs/templates/mockups with gimp (i would venture impossible but im sure someone could do it given enough discipline just as someone could build a httpserver in pure x86 if they really wanted to) source: long time Gimp and Photoshop user, have worked professionally as a UX/UI/Graphic designer and software developer, and have really tried to get on board with gimp bc its open source, saves $50 monthly, and is hackable all unlike ps, it even has a lisp scripting language! I couldnt do it even with that much goodwill so i honestly cant see any less motivated designer using it. EDIT: of course designers or a ps alternative might not be gimps market at all, and instead just normal end users, in which case gimp should definitely not be criticized. I think people (unjustly perhaps) want gimp to be a ps alternative for designers, its not. plain and simple.

beefsack 10y ago
Parent commenter mentioned "most users," designers are the power users in this vertical and wouldn't constitute the majority.
- xsmasher 10y ago
  It's fine for most computer users, but not most Photoshop users.
  - jshevek 10y ago
    Most designers might be photoshop users, but its not true that most photoshop users are designers.
cocotino 10y ago
No layer styles for example makes GIMP unusable for me.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Last time I tried, GIMP couldn't even import a layered image. It just flattened it. Useless. I have Gb of images; I can't even begin to use GIMP unless my investment is preserved.
  - prokoudine 10y ago
    > Last time I tried, GIMP couldn't even import a layered image. Glad to see you are back to GIMP for the first time since 1998.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Be fair. Since about 2 years ago. Just installed latest (2.8), and I see it has a new menu item - Open as Layers. So cool. And also to be fair, from my perspective that leaves GIMP only a few years behind other packages.
      - prokoudine 10y ago
        Be fair. 'Open as Layer' has been around since 2004: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=37912655f2073068e73dc30b620c427b41f177f6 https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/commit/?id=37912655f207306... :)
        JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        So all this time I just missed that menu item? Believable; I am pretty dense sometimes. Gotta wonder why though, with a 'flatten' option already there, there's need for two versions of 'Open File', one that screws you and one that works, but that's probably history. I admit I use GIMP all the time, and have for years. It has a scripting language (ok just Lisp but with image-processing primitives) that I use to generate hundreds of images for card games. Photoshop has some arcane scripting ability but they sell it. My game club didn't want to pay, which is reasonable. So GIMP has been useful to me for years.
groovy2shoes 10y ago
> someone could build a httpserver in pure x86 if they really wanted to You mean something like this? http://asm32.info/index.cgi?page=content/0_MiniMagAsm/index.txt http://asm32.info/index.cgi?page=content/0_MiniMagAsm/index.... EDIT: Scratch that, it's just a CGI application and not an HTTP server on its own. Still, I think it's pretty neat :)

vmarsy 10y ago

The issue is Gimp tries to look like Photoshop very hard, so people tend to compare the 2. But if we compare 2 Free popular painting software: MS Paint and Gimp, then Gimp is awesome, for non professional use I love Gimp. If I were a professional image editor I would buy Photoshop. On my windows 10 machine, I hope I'll be able to run Gimp. I don't know if the Linux Subsystem makes it possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ea4w4/fyi_you_can_run_gui_linux_apps_from_bash/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4ea4w4/fyi_you_c...

jdboyd 10y ago
On more than one Windows 10 machine, I have no problems running Gimp 2.8 build for Windows supplied straight from https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ It also works well on Windows 7. I can only assume that means it will probably work OK on the versions between 7 and 10.
- Nexxxeh 10y ago
  I've experienced weird behavior with GIMP on Windows. It mangled my clipboard usage with Teamviewer (wth?), tablet support is hit and miss, and other just plain odd behavior. That's not a complaint, I've no right to complain as I've not documented and raised the bugs.[1] I've just worked around them, which I appreciate is selfish. But it works just as well/badly on 7, 8.1u1, and 10 in my experience. And it's still my go-to image editor for anything that Irfanview can't do. [1]https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&classification=Other&op_sys=Windows&order=Importance&product=GIMP&query_format=advanced https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRME...
camclay 10y ago
They've had a long history of building or other users compiling versions for Windows - https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ https://www.gimp.org/downloads/ - has Windows and Mac OSX as options, as well as Linux.
newscracker 10y ago

smrtinsert 10y ago

gimp can't even begin to compare with Photoshop on a filter level, especially in areas like burn/dodge. I don't know how it applies it but Photoshops application of filters is much more intelligent. Not to mention Gimp has an absolutely baffling ui philosophy (paste as layer/yellow square/brushes not painting) while Kritas seems sane at least, mimicing popular photoshop features and even improving it in some cases. In an ideal world, gimp is retired and Krita becomes the Photoshop alternative and the community can focus on really getting behind Krita.

buovjaga 10y ago
That goes against the product vision of Krita, though. Krita is a painting application, not a photo editor. The defining of the vision was a Eureka moment for the developers. http://blog.mmiworks.net/2010/03/working-on-vision-with.html http://blog.mmiworks.net/2010/03/working-on-vision-with.html