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I use GIMP exclusively. Last time it allowed me to turn SVG animation into GIF. It literally took few seconds to complete. Many people bitch about GIMP, but lik

I use GIMP exclusively. Last time it allowed me to turn SVG animation into GIF. It literally took few seconds to complete. Many people bitch about GIMP, but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new things. I've nothing against them, but one thing, most of them in my circles are using pirate copy of Photoshop instead free GIMP. Some of them arguing about RBG/CMYK missing in GIMP, but most of them does not even know that.

pierotofy 10y ago
You can use the separate plugin to convert RBG to CMYK in GIMP. Not as good as Photoshop obviously, but I've made print ready images with it.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  I doubt there are many people in the world who can tell the difference between a print printed from RGB vs CMYK. Maybe a few extremely good print professionals with perfect vision and a $4000+ monitor. I've printed gallery quality prints from sRGB (online and at home), and nobody gives a crap.
  - loopbit 10y ago
    When you have to print thousands of leaflets for a client using that client's corporate colors and, after printing, it turns out that the artwork was in RGB and the colors are not exactly those the client wanted[0], yes, you notice it. And the client always gives a crap. Of course no one cares if you print something for your house or a friend and the color is slightly off. But in some industries something like that can cost you a big client and a lot of money. [0] The difference can be quite dramatic, even without a professional monitor.
    - kazinator 10y ago
      Even so, doesn't this just boil down to a few math functions applied to each pixel? Why would I need something in GIMP whose effect can only be seen on paper, except as some kind of Export ... format? Suppose I have a properly calibrated monitor, yadda yadda, I should be seeing good colors on the screen as I'm editing. When I'm done, good colors on paper can only be seen after the data passes through a professional printer provided its RGB values have been properly massaged into CMYK values. So it has nothing to do with interactive image editing. It's almost entirely "off topic" for GIMP.
      - dTal 10y ago
        It's not so simple. The problem: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/CIE1931xy_gamut_comparison.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/CIE1931x... Colors in one colorspace may not have a representation in another. If you do all your editing in RGB and then try and convert at the end, you restrict yourself to the set of colors available in both. To get print colors that are accurate to a provided spec, you need to work in the target colorspace directly, with an editor that will approximate the colors on your sRGB monitor as best it can so you can see what you're doing.
louhike 10y ago
Gimp is great if you're not a designer or exclusively a web designer. Otherwise, CMYK is a huge deal as it is the only way to go if you want to print something at a professional printer (not sure about the term).
- the_af 10y ago
  Is there a way to add decent CMYK support to GIMP? Is it technically unfeasible, or is it something the main devs are simply uninterested in?
  - dagw 10y ago
    http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-publishing-related-work-will-you-ever-support-cmyk http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-... there is however some cmyk support currently if you need it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support
    - the_af 10y ago
      Thanks for the link! So it's low priority for the existing devs (and I understand the reasons why... they make a lot of sense, actually!), but they are open to new devs helping with this. I assume it would be no small feat.
    - enobrev 10y ago
      Thanks for this. I was very happy to read that they're making non-destructive editing a priority. > Things like non-destructive editing are required by pretty much all users — photographers, designers, desktop publishing engineers, and even scientists. At the same time, CMYK is required only by a small subset of our user base. We prioritize our work accordingly.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  "Only way" is a bit of an exaggeration (Most popular way for sure). I've had large print houses ask for RGB files so they can control the CMYK conversion on their end (usually in cases when you're trying to get as close as possible to an RGB match).
lmm 10y ago
I use Krita, except for a time when it had issues with my graphics tablet and I switched to Gimp. I think Krita is the proof that there's no good reason for Gimp to be as unusable as it is: Krita is free, has all the features I've ever felt the desire to try in an image editor and more (though I probably wouldn't bother loading up a GUI just to convert an SVG to a GIF), has the missing colourspace support, is exceedingly scriptable in a standard way (rather than requiring its own specific way of doing scripts), and does all this via an ordinary, sensible GUI that works the way you expect. Somehow the gnome world seems to have much better marketing than the KDE world (particularly in the US), but I'd urge people (especially people who aren't doing enough image editing to justify a big investment in learning a tool) to check out Krita.
- runeblaze 10y ago
  I agree. Krita feels so much more intuitive to get into than GIMP. The current 3.0 version feels very buggy on my Mac (osx 10.11.6) though (and the older versions do not like my tablet).
  - baldfat 10y ago
    Krita and GIMP are two different tools. GIMP sort of fits the PS replacement Krita is a painting program - Corel Paint I love Krita but I liked it when it was more of a rasta editor before the remake into a painting program also. I support every kick starter Krita has made.
mschaef 10y ago
> Many people bitch about GIMP, but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new things. The other way to look at 'laziness to learn new things' is that these people are choosing to do something else with their time - something that they presumably value more highly than learning GIMP. For most people, the set of such things is huge. GIMP is usually just a means to some other end, and there's nothing particularly noble or enlightening about learning yet another piece of software. Personally speaking, I've used GIMP off and on since before it had either layers or GTK. (It was once Motif.) That said, a few years ago, I got sick of the time it was taking for relatively basic operations, installed a $30 copy of Pixelmator, and haven't looked back. Part of the problem with open source consumer software is just that: it has to compete with commercial alternatives and most of the time lacks the resources to do so in an effective way.

pierotofy 10y ago

You can use the separate plugin to convert RBG to CMYK in GIMP. Not as good as Photoshop obviously, but I've made print ready images with it.

imaginenore 10y ago
I doubt there are many people in the world who can tell the difference between a print printed from RGB vs CMYK. Maybe a few extremely good print professionals with perfect vision and a $4000+ monitor. I've printed gallery quality prints from sRGB (online and at home), and nobody gives a crap.
- loopbit 10y ago
  When you have to print thousands of leaflets for a client using that client's corporate colors and, after printing, it turns out that the artwork was in RGB and the colors are not exactly those the client wanted[0], yes, you notice it. And the client always gives a crap. Of course no one cares if you print something for your house or a friend and the color is slightly off. But in some industries something like that can cost you a big client and a lot of money. [0] The difference can be quite dramatic, even without a professional monitor.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    Even so, doesn't this just boil down to a few math functions applied to each pixel? Why would I need something in GIMP whose effect can only be seen on paper, except as some kind of Export ... format? Suppose I have a properly calibrated monitor, yadda yadda, I should be seeing good colors on the screen as I'm editing. When I'm done, good colors on paper can only be seen after the data passes through a professional printer provided its RGB values have been properly massaged into CMYK values. So it has nothing to do with interactive image editing. It's almost entirely "off topic" for GIMP.
    - dTal 10y ago
      It's not so simple. The problem: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/CIE1931xy_gamut_comparison.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/CIE1931x... Colors in one colorspace may not have a representation in another. If you do all your editing in RGB and then try and convert at the end, you restrict yourself to the set of colors available in both. To get print colors that are accurate to a provided spec, you need to work in the target colorspace directly, with an editor that will approximate the colors on your sRGB monitor as best it can so you can see what you're doing.

louhike 10y ago

Gimp is great if you're not a designer or exclusively a web designer. Otherwise, CMYK is a huge deal as it is the only way to go if you want to print something at a professional printer (not sure about the term).

the_af 10y ago
Is there a way to add decent CMYK support to GIMP? Is it technically unfeasible, or is it something the main devs are simply uninterested in?
- dagw 10y ago
  http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-publishing-related-work-will-you-ever-support-cmyk http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-... there is however some cmyk support currently if you need it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support
  - the_af 10y ago
    Thanks for the link! So it's low priority for the existing devs (and I understand the reasons why... they make a lot of sense, actually!), but they are open to new devs helping with this. I assume it would be no small feat.
  - enobrev 10y ago
    Thanks for this. I was very happy to read that they're making non-destructive editing a priority. > Things like non-destructive editing are required by pretty much all users — photographers, designers, desktop publishing engineers, and even scientists. At the same time, CMYK is required only by a small subset of our user base. We prioritize our work accordingly.
awesomerobot 10y ago
"Only way" is a bit of an exaggeration (Most popular way for sure). I've had large print houses ask for RGB files so they can control the CMYK conversion on their end (usually in cases when you're trying to get as close as possible to an RGB match).

lmm 10y ago

I use Krita, except for a time when it had issues with my graphics tablet and I switched to Gimp. I think Krita is the proof that there's no good reason for Gimp to be as unusable as it is: Krita is free, has all the features I've ever felt the desire to try in an image editor and more (though I probably wouldn't bother loading up a GUI just to convert an SVG to a GIF), has the missing colourspace support, is exceedingly scriptable in a standard way (rather than requiring its own specific way of doing scripts), and does all this via an ordinary, sensible GUI that works the way you expect. Somehow the gnome world seems to have much better marketing than the KDE world (particularly in the US), but I'd urge people (especially people who aren't doing enough image editing to justify a big investment in learning a tool) to check out Krita.

runeblaze 10y ago
I agree. Krita feels so much more intuitive to get into than GIMP. The current 3.0 version feels very buggy on my Mac (osx 10.11.6) though (and the older versions do not like my tablet).
- baldfat 10y ago
  Krita and GIMP are two different tools. GIMP sort of fits the PS replacement Krita is a painting program - Corel Paint I love Krita but I liked it when it was more of a rasta editor before the remake into a painting program also. I support every kick starter Krita has made.

mschaef 10y ago

> Many people bitch about GIMP, but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new things. The other way to look at 'laziness to learn new things' is that these people are choosing to do something else with their time - something that they presumably value more highly than learning GIMP. For most people, the set of such things is huge. GIMP is usually just a means to some other end, and there's nothing particularly noble or enlightening about learning yet another piece of software. Personally speaking, I've used GIMP off and on since before it had either layers or GTK. (It was once Motif.) That said, a few years ago, I got sick of the time it was taking for relatively basic operations, installed a $30 copy of Pixelmator, and haven't looked back. Part of the problem with open source consumer software is just that: it has to compete with commercial alternatives and most of the time lacks the resources to do so in an effective way.