8 ms·

For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?

aikah 10y ago
It can't. If you work in the industry you'll be expected to use a specific format (.psd). I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. All Macromedia tools have since then been flushed down the toilets by Adobe. There is something Macromedia achieve with the notion of "community" that Adobe was never able to do.
- lftl 10y ago
  > I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. PSD shares this preview functionality. You can open a PSD just fine in Preview on OS X, or with ImageMagick you can do: convert my-psd.psd[0] out.png
- lucb1e 10y ago
  > I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. I'm pretty sure you can, and you can see all the layers and stuff. Editing though, if I remember correctly, is either extremely limited or non-existent. Still, when someone gave me a psd I had little hope of opening it at all, yet GIMP displayed it perfectly. That exceeded expectations already, just too bad that I couldn't edit. But then again, it's better than buying an expensive product line just to view a file. > The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. Exactly, which is one which is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of GIMP and Paint.NET for when people simply don't need photoshop. They often don't, but ask for it anyway, get used to it and then want to keep using it. This is about adults as well as teens who are still in high school and who might later go on to work as designers, and then can only work with photoshop.
- douche 10y ago
  Fireworks was great. I still have a copy somewhere for those tasks that Paint.Net isn't quite good enough for. Every time I try to use Photoshop or GIMP, it feels like it is just too complicated for what I'm trying to do, and I don't have the time to invest in learning where they've hidden my cheese.
kruhft 10y ago
I recently tried PS for the first time after using Gimp for almost 20 years. My images I work with are about 40"x40" at 600-1200 dpi. First impressions was that PS was a somewhat faster (about 25%) for certain operations like duplicating layers and it's interface was intuitive after using GIMP for so long, but the advantages I saw aren't enough to convince me to switch on OSX.
- teaearlgraycold 10y ago
  I've used PS for ~5 years for hobby work, but I've also spent a fair amount of time in GIMP while using Linux. GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools. PS also works much better for shapes/paths than gimp, given its superior set of effects that can be added to shapes. There's also a few not-so-important bells and whistles, like the photomerge script in PS, which makes it really easy to generate a panoramic image. Overall, GIMP works great for simple projects, but it's missing so much of the functionality of PS that I honestly never use it if I have the option to use PS.
  - anthk 10y ago
    >GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools. That's false, GIMP had that before PS itself.
PeCaN 10y ago
It doesn't. GIMP's support for nondestructive editing is very primitive, which might be the biggest issue. In terms of tools PS is far more comprehensive and flexible. GIMP is more like Paint.NET than Photoshop.
- C-Rogers 10y ago
  How does lack of support for non-destructive editing make GIMP "more like Paint.NET"?
legitster 10y ago
Not even close. GIMP was actually the first editor I learned on. But the minute you start using Photoshop it's pretty apparent that you can never go back. On paper they may look similar, but GIMP in no way touches the amount of options and features available to a designer out of the box in a pro software. Even just manipulating a single asset seems to take twice the work in GIMP. Imagine a PS file that is hundreds of layers deep. And last I used it, support for anything print related was abysmal in GIMP. I don't even have to think about color profiles in Photoshop, but GIMP gave me the sense I had to build everything myself. GIMP is kind of in this ugly duckling space where I feel the feature set is not acceptable for a professional designer, but the UI is too overwhelming for a non-designer. And you can tell by the quality of work that the average user is either pretty amateurish, or who design is the second thought.
waivej 10y ago
I use Photoshop regularly (over 18 years) and earlier this year I gave GIMP another honest 2-3 week try. There are some big conceptual differences, but the small things like it not remembering what folder you last loaded images from slowed me down too much.
- kazinator 10y ago
  A lot of "professional" apps have these kinds of problems. MS Word 2013 refuses to remember the folder where you last exported a PDF; each time you do it, you have to navigate there or give a full path. These sort of thing is more or less easily fixed if someone does the grunt work. Chances are the app internally has a nice object for representing a persisted global variable such as an option; it just has to be actually used as the value of the path when opening that dialog.
SilasX 10y ago
And follow-up, why is it so hard (for volunteer contributors) to implement those missing features and functionality?
- colmvp 10y ago
  My hunch is that if there were more unicorns (amazing designers/illustrators who used GIMP and had the capacity to write code for it), you'd have more progress in this realm. For example, Figma (non-open source) is doing stuff that myself as a designer, I find very subtly innovative for a browser-based graphics program. Sure, they are actual company which can devote more resources to the product, but I think it helps that some very talented designers are using it and thus, can give feedback and suggest new features with engineers to support the effort. Similarly, I'm sure a lot of open source projects have thrived because the contributors are active users whose skillsets (coding) overlap with the project.
SixSigma 10y ago
Gimp = Photoshop 4 and I use Gimp a couple of times a week.
C-Rogers 10y ago
It's perfectly usable for professional work. There was a recent question on the GIMP developer thread asked by the head of a company to find out if GIMP was right for their graphics department. Their artists demanded a bunch of things that they were sure GIMP didn't have, or couldn't do. This was my response, having successfully replaced Photoshop with GIMP quite a few years ago: 3 Single row Marquee tool 4 Single coloumn marquee tool -Draw a rectangle selection across the canvas from end to end where you want the 1px selection. -In the rectangle select dialogue, scroll down to the "size" and enter "1" for the width or height 5 Polygonal lasso tool -The default mode for the lasso tool in GIMP is polygon. Click and drag for mouse mode. -Moreover notice you can move points you have already put down simply by dragging them where you want them (better than Photoshop in this way). 6 Magenetic lasso tool - Try the Scissors Select tool. 7 Quick Selection tool - Try the Foreground Selection Tool 11 Perspective crop tool - Select area to be cropped with lasso tool - Image > Crop to Selection - Use Perspective Tool to adjust 13 Color Sampler tool - Windows > Dockable Dialogues > Colors 14 Ruler tool - Try the Measure tool. 15 Spot healing brush tool - Try the Heal Tool. 13 Patch tool - Filters > Enhance > Heal Selection 14 Content aware move tool - make selection - Copy selection - Filters > Enhance > Heal Selection - Paste selection ... (I have no idea why you'd need a separate tool for this. ;P) 15 Red Eye tool - Filters > Enhance > Red Eye Removal 18 Color replacement tool - Use "Select by Color Tool" - Colors > Color Balance / Hue Saturation / Etc. - Additionally: Colors > Map > Color Exchange 19 Mixer Brush tool - GIMP will acquire brushes that include background color mixing in the 2.9/3.0 release - Check out Krita.org for an illustration program to rival Photoshop or Painter X 21 Pattern stamp tool - Select Clone tool - Scroll down in tool settings to "Source", and choose "pattern" 22 History Brush tool - Open another copy of your current working document from your last save point - select the Clone Tool - In your save point document, ctrl-click on the area to paint from - Switch back to your current document and paint as you like 23 Art History Brush tool - Not implemented, feel free. :) - Check out GMIC. It contains a wealth of interesting painting effects for GIMP. 25 Background eraser tool - Can be achieved with resynthesize as above, but if you must have it in an eraser tool form, feel free to implement. 26 Magic eraser tool - Fuzzy Select tool (Wand icon) - Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask (check the "Selection" radio button and the "Invert Mask" checkbox and Click "Add") 32 Dodge tool 33 Burn tool - Try the Dodge/Burn Tool. ;P 34 Sponge tool - Try the Blur/Sharpen Tool 36 Free form pen tool - Try the Ink Tool 37 Add anchor point tool 38 Delete anchor point tool 39 Convert point tool - All Integrated into the Paths Tool. - Check out my 30 second runthrough of the Paths Tool and related functions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgI8rCRLbQ 41 Vertical type tool 42 Horizontal type mask tool 43 Vertical type mask tool - Not implemented, these would be neat, but to be honest the Text tool needs a serious overhaul anyway. - Check out Inkscape.org for vertical text, and a much better and more versatile vector text system, and easy masks that don't need separate tools. Turn any text into a mask in two clicks. 44 Path selection tool 45 Direct Selection tool - Windows > Dockable Dialogues > Paths - Click on the first empty box beside your path to show it. It's now selectable with the Paths Tool. 46 Rectangle Tool - Feel free to impliment. This would be useful. - See Inkscape.org for a current solution that works great. 47 Rounded Rectangle tool - If you impliment this, please make it part of the rectangle tool. There is no point at all to having separate tools. :P - Inkscape.org again :) It's like Adobe Illustrator. 48 Ellipse tool - Feel free to impliment 49 Polygon tool - Paths tool already does this. I don't know why Adobe made a separate tool for this. It's unnecessary clutter. :) 50 Line tool - Paths tool... (hit b to end your line and start a new separate one) 51 Custom shape tool - Would be cool to see in GIMP - Check out the Polygon and Star Tool (Inkscape.org) 53 Rotate view tool - View > Rotate (also Ctrl + Shift + Middle Mouse Button) 58 Masking - Really? Gimp has more Masking options than the Carnival of Venice. ;P - Check out Quick Mask and Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask - Also check out Mask to Selection, and Selction to Path. 59 Mode change in to CMYK - Feel free to try to impliment, but read this first: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIMP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIM... - Check out Scribus for conversion into CMYK (FOGRA 27 is the default, but you can add your own color profiles if that's not working for you) Hope it helps. :) -C

aikah 10y ago

It can't. If you work in the industry you'll be expected to use a specific format (.psd). I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. All Macromedia tools have since then been flushed down the toilets by Adobe. There is something Macromedia achieve with the notion of "community" that Adobe was never able to do.

lftl 10y ago
> I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. PSD shares this preview functionality. You can open a PSD just fine in Preview on OS X, or with ImageMagick you can do: convert my-psd.psd[0] out.png
lucb1e 10y ago
> I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. I'm pretty sure you can, and you can see all the layers and stuff. Editing though, if I remember correctly, is either extremely limited or non-existent. Still, when someone gave me a psd I had little hope of opening it at all, yet GIMP displayed it perfectly. That exceeded expectations already, just too bad that I couldn't edit. But then again, it's better than buying an expensive product line just to view a file. > The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. Exactly, which is one which is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of GIMP and Paint.NET for when people simply don't need photoshop. They often don't, but ask for it anyway, get used to it and then want to keep using it. This is about adults as well as teens who are still in high school and who might later go on to work as designers, and then can only work with photoshop.
douche 10y ago
Fireworks was great. I still have a copy somewhere for those tasks that Paint.Net isn't quite good enough for. Every time I try to use Photoshop or GIMP, it feels like it is just too complicated for what I'm trying to do, and I don't have the time to invest in learning where they've hidden my cheese.

kruhft 10y ago

I recently tried PS for the first time after using Gimp for almost 20 years. My images I work with are about 40"x40" at 600-1200 dpi. First impressions was that PS was a somewhat faster (about 25%) for certain operations like duplicating layers and it's interface was intuitive after using GIMP for so long, but the advantages I saw aren't enough to convince me to switch on OSX.

teaearlgraycold 10y ago
I've used PS for ~5 years for hobby work, but I've also spent a fair amount of time in GIMP while using Linux. GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools. PS also works much better for shapes/paths than gimp, given its superior set of effects that can be added to shapes. There's also a few not-so-important bells and whistles, like the photomerge script in PS, which makes it really easy to generate a panoramic image. Overall, GIMP works great for simple projects, but it's missing so much of the functionality of PS that I honestly never use it if I have the option to use PS.
- anthk 10y ago
  >GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools. That's false, GIMP had that before PS itself.

PeCaN 10y ago

It doesn't. GIMP's support for nondestructive editing is very primitive, which might be the biggest issue. In terms of tools PS is far more comprehensive and flexible. GIMP is more like Paint.NET than Photoshop.

C-Rogers 10y ago
How does lack of support for non-destructive editing make GIMP "more like Paint.NET"?

legitster 10y ago

Not even close. GIMP was actually the first editor I learned on. But the minute you start using Photoshop it's pretty apparent that you can never go back. On paper they may look similar, but GIMP in no way touches the amount of options and features available to a designer out of the box in a pro software. Even just manipulating a single asset seems to take twice the work in GIMP. Imagine a PS file that is hundreds of layers deep. And last I used it, support for anything print related was abysmal in GIMP. I don't even have to think about color profiles in Photoshop, but GIMP gave me the sense I had to build everything myself. GIMP is kind of in this ugly duckling space where I feel the feature set is not acceptable for a professional designer, but the UI is too overwhelming for a non-designer. And you can tell by the quality of work that the average user is either pretty amateurish, or who design is the second thought.

waivej 10y ago

I use Photoshop regularly (over 18 years) and earlier this year I gave GIMP another honest 2-3 week try. There are some big conceptual differences, but the small things like it not remembering what folder you last loaded images from slowed me down too much.

kazinator 10y ago
A lot of "professional" apps have these kinds of problems. MS Word 2013 refuses to remember the folder where you last exported a PDF; each time you do it, you have to navigate there or give a full path. These sort of thing is more or less easily fixed if someone does the grunt work. Chances are the app internally has a nice object for representing a persisted global variable such as an option; it just has to be actually used as the value of the path when opening that dialog.

SilasX 10y ago

And follow-up, why is it so hard (for volunteer contributors) to implement those missing features and functionality?

colmvp 10y ago
My hunch is that if there were more unicorns (amazing designers/illustrators who used GIMP and had the capacity to write code for it), you'd have more progress in this realm. For example, Figma (non-open source) is doing stuff that myself as a designer, I find very subtly innovative for a browser-based graphics program. Sure, they are actual company which can devote more resources to the product, but I think it helps that some very talented designers are using it and thus, can give feedback and suggest new features with engineers to support the effort. Similarly, I'm sure a lot of open source projects have thrived because the contributors are active users whose skillsets (coding) overlap with the project.

SixSigma 10y ago

Gimp = Photoshop 4 and I use Gimp a couple of times a week.

C-Rogers 10y ago

It's perfectly usable for professional work. There was a recent question on the GIMP developer thread asked by the head of a company to find out if GIMP was right for their graphics department. Their artists demanded a bunch of things that they were sure GIMP didn't have, or couldn't do. This was my response, having successfully replaced Photoshop with GIMP quite a few years ago: 3 Single row Marquee tool 4 Single coloumn marquee tool -Draw a rectangle selection across the canvas from end to end where you want the 1px selection. -In the rectangle select dialogue, scroll down to the "size" and enter "1" for the width or height 5 Polygonal lasso tool -The default mode for the lasso tool in GIMP is polygon. Click and drag for mouse mode. -Moreover notice you can move points you have already put down simply by dragging them where you want them (better than Photoshop in this way). 6 Magenetic lasso tool - Try the Scissors Select tool. 7 Quick Selection tool - Try the Foreground Selection Tool 11 Perspective crop tool - Select area to be cropped with lasso tool - Image > Crop to Selection - Use Perspective Tool to adjust 13 Color Sampler tool - Windows > Dockable Dialogues > Colors 14 Ruler tool - Try the Measure tool. 15 Spot healing brush tool - Try the Heal Tool. 13 Patch tool - Filters > Enhance > Heal Selection 14 Content aware move tool - make selection - Copy selection - Filters > Enhance > Heal Selection - Paste selection ... (I have no idea why you'd need a separate tool for this. ;P) 15 Red Eye tool - Filters > Enhance > Red Eye Removal 18 Color replacement tool - Use "Select by Color Tool" - Colors > Color Balance / Hue Saturation / Etc. - Additionally: Colors > Map > Color Exchange 19 Mixer Brush tool - GIMP will acquire brushes that include background color mixing in the 2.9/3.0 release - Check out Krita.org for an illustration program to rival Photoshop or Painter X 21 Pattern stamp tool - Select Clone tool - Scroll down in tool settings to "Source", and choose "pattern" 22 History Brush tool - Open another copy of your current working document from your last save point - select the Clone Tool - In your save point document, ctrl-click on the area to paint from - Switch back to your current document and paint as you like 23 Art History Brush tool - Not implemented, feel free. :) - Check out GMIC. It contains a wealth of interesting painting effects for GIMP. 25 Background eraser tool - Can be achieved with resynthesize as above, but if you must have it in an eraser tool form, feel free to implement. 26 Magic eraser tool - Fuzzy Select tool (Wand icon) - Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask (check the "Selection" radio button and the "Invert Mask" checkbox and Click "Add") 32 Dodge tool 33 Burn tool - Try the Dodge/Burn Tool. ;P 34 Sponge tool - Try the Blur/Sharpen Tool 36 Free form pen tool - Try the Ink Tool 37 Add anchor point tool 38 Delete anchor point tool 39 Convert point tool - All Integrated into the Paths Tool. - Check out my 30 second runthrough of the Paths Tool and related functions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgI8rCRLbQ 41 Vertical type tool 42 Horizontal type mask tool 43 Vertical type mask tool - Not implemented, these would be neat, but to be honest the Text tool needs a serious overhaul anyway. - Check out Inkscape.org for vertical text, and a much better and more versatile vector text system, and easy masks that don't need separate tools. Turn any text into a mask in two clicks. 44 Path selection tool 45 Direct Selection tool - Windows > Dockable Dialogues > Paths - Click on the first empty box beside your path to show it. It's now selectable with the Paths Tool. 46 Rectangle Tool - Feel free to impliment. This would be useful. - See Inkscape.org for a current solution that works great. 47 Rounded Rectangle tool - If you impliment this, please make it part of the rectangle tool. There is no point at all to having separate tools. :P - Inkscape.org again :) It's like Adobe Illustrator. 48 Ellipse tool - Feel free to impliment 49 Polygon tool - Paths tool already does this. I don't know why Adobe made a separate tool for this. It's unnecessary clutter. :) 50 Line tool - Paths tool... (hit b to end your line and start a new separate one) 51 Custom shape tool - Would be cool to see in GIMP - Check out the Polygon and Star Tool (Inkscape.org) 53 Rotate view tool - View > Rotate (also Ctrl + Shift + Middle Mouse Button) 58 Masking - Really? Gimp has more Masking options than the Carnival of Venice. ;P - Check out Quick Mask and Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask - Also check out Mask to Selection, and Selction to Path. 59 Mode change in to CMYK - Feel free to try to impliment, but read this first: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIMP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIM... - Check out Scribus for conversion into CMYK (FOGRA 27 is the default, but you can add your own color profiles if that's not working for you) Hope it helps. :) -C