8 ms·

Are you joking? You would not be dissuaded from forcing your employees to switch from the many world-class graphics tools on Mac to the terrible Inkscape and Gi

by woah 10y ago

Are you joking? You would not be dissuaded from forcing your employees to switch from the many world-class graphics tools on Mac to the terrible Inkscape and Gimp? I wish there were better graphics tools on Linux, but it's just not the reality right now.

santaclaus 10y ago
Let alone video editing software! If I'm missing something let me know, but last time I checked people were recommending editing within Blender, of all solutions.
- jeena 10y ago
  I've heard about https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ but never used it for real myself.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Using Kdenlive regularly and it does simple jobs very well and is really stable nowadays. It's certainly nothing like Adobe Premiere but it works.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Depends on your industry; there are bigger players in film than Adobe. LightWorks is quite accessible, and Autodesk has lots of software for you to throw your money at.
- CyberDildonics 10y ago
  Black Magic Davinci Resolve is fantastic on windows but costs money on Linux. For professional video editing I was very impressed after having tried kdenlive, sony vegas (and premiere long ago).
- adrusi 10y ago
  Blender really isn't just a 3d modeling tool, it's a bit of a hodge podge. It does things well though. It gets the name "blender" for its video compositor features, comparable to AfterEffects. For video editing, kdenlive is the state of the art on linux. Here's a guide written by a professional video editor who uses only free software http://slackermedia.info/ http://slackermedia.info/
- herbst 10y ago
  Lightworks? It is pretty much the best software i've used for that and it runs even more stable on linux than windows
autoreleasepool 10y ago
Harsh word. I don't think gimp and Inkscape are all that terrible for casual use. On that note, I honestly can't think of anything other than Adobe products and Microsoft Office that is preventing a mass migration to Linux (or rather Ubuntu, let's be honest) at this point. It has all other killer apps. Dropbox, Spotify, VSCode, Atom, Steam, Chrome, VLC, etc... I know that Excel is the only thing keeping my dad on macOS these days. He is definitely not the Apple fanboy he once used to be. What an amazing day that would be... when, at least Adobe, would release builds for Linux. Does anyone know if there's a serious obstacle for them other than market share?
- microcolonel 10y ago
  One thing that I've run into when running Adobe stuff on OS X is that it fails catastrophically on a case-sensitive filesystem. That would be the first thing to sort out; short of that I think it would be a matter of platform integration for color management, and windowing system integration (iBus, libnotify). I'm sure there's plenty more in the way of technical difficulties in porting Creative Cloud. One reason they might do it is to capture the film industry, which seems to do grading and compositing on Linux (which is why Autodesk's products in those categories support it).
  - autoreleasepool 10y ago
    I actually reard in an HN comment that OS X's case-insensitivity by default was a choice that revolved solely around compatibility with Microsoft Office, so I think you're on to something.
    - wolfgang42 10y ago
      That sounds unlikely. I believe case preservation but insensitivity has been in Mac OS since the original Macintosh File System; certainly it was in the Hierarchical File System and was inherited by HFS+. When they switched to OS X, they still had to maintain filesystem compatibility for the Classic system, and maintaining it for the entire OS probably made porting other Mac applications simpler as well.
microcolonel 10y ago
I meant film. Where all of the major grading and editing packages for large productions are available for Linux. Please calm down. :- \ Also, I think it's pretty unfair to call Inkscape "terrible". It has, by far, the better shape editing tools (especially CSG) between it and Illustrator. As a bonus, Inkscape tends to output SVG files with maybe one or two unwanted transform()s, rather than the six or seven you get with a typical Sketch or Illustrator SVG.
- voidlogic 10y ago
  What about Cinelerra?
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Gimp has a learning curve just like everything else. It's _different_ from Photoshop, but for most tasks it's not actually _worse_. It needs to be learned. I learned it and it's comfortable to use.
- wildrhythms 10y ago
  Does Gimp have any kind of smart object equivalent yet? I've been using Photoshop for years and haven't been able to move to Gimp because it's missing a lot of "non-destructive" editing features like smart objects, smart filters, adjustment layers, etc.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    Not that I'm aware of. The workflow would be to make a copy of the thing before you do a destructive operation on it. You can put it in a hidden layer or something.
  - ommunist 10y ago
    save your image state in git, you get non destructive editing with extra layer of control. But its not seamless.
- sosborn 10y ago
  Has the CMYK situation improved? For someone that needs to output files for offset printing, that is an instant deal breaker.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    I don't know much about CMYK, but I found this summary on the current state of CMYK support in Gimp: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support
CyberDildonics 10y ago
Gimp is definitely horribly bad but there are good graphics programs for Linux - Houdini, Nuke, Digital Fusion, Maya, etc.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  And Krita.
babuskov 10y ago
> world-class graphics tools on Mac I hope you don't mean Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator. I tried those a couple of weeks back. Compared to Gimp and Inkscape they are as buggy as hell. Simple .png export with custom dpi often doesn't export to custom dpi. Exported images often aren't pixel-precise if you repeat the export and layer boundaries somehow suffer from float rounding errors if you load/save the file multiple times. I find it amazing how supposedly professional tools can have such major problems. I guess it's just good marketing. The only thing missing in Gimp is CMYK support and that might be sole reason people are still using Adobe products.
- sfifs 10y ago
  Adjustment layers/non-destructive effects are really the biggest missing pieces in GIMP

by woah 10y ago

santaclaus 10y ago

Let alone video editing software! If I'm missing something let me know, but last time I checked people were recommending editing within Blender, of all solutions.

jeena 10y ago
I've heard about https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ but never used it for real myself.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Using Kdenlive regularly and it does simple jobs very well and is really stable nowadays. It's certainly nothing like Adobe Premiere but it works.
microcolonel 10y ago
Depends on your industry; there are bigger players in film than Adobe. LightWorks is quite accessible, and Autodesk has lots of software for you to throw your money at.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
Black Magic Davinci Resolve is fantastic on windows but costs money on Linux. For professional video editing I was very impressed after having tried kdenlive, sony vegas (and premiere long ago).
adrusi 10y ago
Blender really isn't just a 3d modeling tool, it's a bit of a hodge podge. It does things well though. It gets the name "blender" for its video compositor features, comparable to AfterEffects. For video editing, kdenlive is the state of the art on linux. Here's a guide written by a professional video editor who uses only free software http://slackermedia.info/ http://slackermedia.info/
herbst 10y ago
Lightworks? It is pretty much the best software i've used for that and it runs even more stable on linux than windows

autoreleasepool 10y ago

Harsh word. I don't think gimp and Inkscape are all that terrible for casual use. On that note, I honestly can't think of anything other than Adobe products and Microsoft Office that is preventing a mass migration to Linux (or rather Ubuntu, let's be honest) at this point. It has all other killer apps. Dropbox, Spotify, VSCode, Atom, Steam, Chrome, VLC, etc... I know that Excel is the only thing keeping my dad on macOS these days. He is definitely not the Apple fanboy he once used to be. What an amazing day that would be... when, at least Adobe, would release builds for Linux. Does anyone know if there's a serious obstacle for them other than market share?

microcolonel 10y ago
One thing that I've run into when running Adobe stuff on OS X is that it fails catastrophically on a case-sensitive filesystem. That would be the first thing to sort out; short of that I think it would be a matter of platform integration for color management, and windowing system integration (iBus, libnotify). I'm sure there's plenty more in the way of technical difficulties in porting Creative Cloud. One reason they might do it is to capture the film industry, which seems to do grading and compositing on Linux (which is why Autodesk's products in those categories support it).
- autoreleasepool 10y ago
  I actually reard in an HN comment that OS X's case-insensitivity by default was a choice that revolved solely around compatibility with Microsoft Office, so I think you're on to something.
  - wolfgang42 10y ago
    That sounds unlikely. I believe case preservation but insensitivity has been in Mac OS since the original Macintosh File System; certainly it was in the Hierarchical File System and was inherited by HFS+. When they switched to OS X, they still had to maintain filesystem compatibility for the Classic system, and maintaining it for the entire OS probably made porting other Mac applications simpler as well.

microcolonel 10y ago

I meant film. Where all of the major grading and editing packages for large productions are available for Linux. Please calm down. :- \ Also, I think it's pretty unfair to call Inkscape "terrible". It has, by far, the better shape editing tools (especially CSG) between it and Illustrator. As a bonus, Inkscape tends to output SVG files with maybe one or two unwanted transform()s, rather than the six or seven you get with a typical Sketch or Illustrator SVG.

voidlogic 10y ago
What about Cinelerra?

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

Gimp has a learning curve just like everything else. It's _different_ from Photoshop, but for most tasks it's not actually _worse_. It needs to be learned. I learned it and it's comfortable to use.

wildrhythms 10y ago
Does Gimp have any kind of smart object equivalent yet? I've been using Photoshop for years and haven't been able to move to Gimp because it's missing a lot of "non-destructive" editing features like smart objects, smart filters, adjustment layers, etc.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Not that I'm aware of. The workflow would be to make a copy of the thing before you do a destructive operation on it. You can put it in a hidden layer or something.
- ommunist 10y ago
  save your image state in git, you get non destructive editing with extra layer of control. But its not seamless.
sosborn 10y ago
Has the CMYK situation improved? For someone that needs to output files for offset printing, that is an instant deal breaker.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  I don't know much about CMYK, but I found this summary on the current state of CMYK support in Gimp: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support

CyberDildonics 10y ago

Gimp is definitely horribly bad but there are good graphics programs for Linux - Houdini, Nuke, Digital Fusion, Maya, etc.

ekianjo 10y ago
And Krita.

babuskov 10y ago

> world-class graphics tools on Mac I hope you don't mean Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator. I tried those a couple of weeks back. Compared to Gimp and Inkscape they are as buggy as hell. Simple .png export with custom dpi often doesn't export to custom dpi. Exported images often aren't pixel-precise if you repeat the export and layer boundaries somehow suffer from float rounding errors if you load/save the file multiple times. I find it amazing how supposedly professional tools can have such major problems. I guess it's just good marketing. The only thing missing in Gimp is CMYK support and that might be sole reason people are still using Adobe products.

sfifs 10y ago
Adjustment layers/non-destructive effects are really the biggest missing pieces in GIMP