5 ms·

This is great, I hope Gimp puts it to good use. I would love for Gimp to focus more on artistic uses instead of only on software types (which is probably a vain

• PascLeRasc 8y ago
  Krita's pretty good for an digital-pencil-based art tool and Darktable is a nice Lightroom replacement, both just need a bit of UI tuning.
  • ghostly_s 8y ago
    Darktable is not even in the same category as Lightroom. I spent months trying to figure out how to make it work for me before realizing it has zero library management functionality, which the devs seem to have missed is Lightroom's main value proposition. It is purely a non-destructive editor, and if you look up discussions on this topic on the mail lists you'll see WONTFIX responses in the vein of "just use your file manager and a tangle of custom shell scripts!"
    • girvo 8y ago
      I would absolutely love to see a FOSS alternative to Photo Mechanic. It’s a brilliant bit of software, stores info in the file itself in a neat way that syncs well across NextCloud, giving me a neat “cloud” workflow (sync folder raw after import, process, then remove sync once it’s done). It plus Darktable (or in my case, Affinity Photo) absolute rules
    • komali2 8y ago
      Wait, library management is supposed to be the main value prop? I didn't get the point of libraries - I already have my images in separate folders, what does the library actually add to that dynamic? Different folder, different instance of lightroom works for me.
      • RussianCow 8y ago
        Being able to organize thousands of photos dynamically by tags, date, etc, is enormously productive, as opposed to only having a single, static hierarchy through which to find photos. For instance, I could quickly retrieve all scenic photos across our entire collection.
        • komali2 8y ago
          Did not even realize tagging existed... but does that mean all photos must be in the same library? For example my workflow is usually Pull pictures off camera manually into a date-named folder Open lightroom, click "new catalog" Put catalog into named date folder Import those photos (import without move option) Work on those photos, use the slider catalog thing at the bottom to filter by flagged (the ones I edited and like), then ctrl+a and export.
          • RussianCow 8y ago
            It's been several years since I've used it, so I could be completely wrong, but yes, I believe that kind of filtering only works at the catalog level, so all of your photos would have to be in the same catalog to gain that benefit. When I used it, I only had one catalog that encompassed my entire photo library. My impression is that Lightroom is really designed for you to go "all in" and let it organize everything.
    • BeetleB 8y ago
      >I spent months trying to figure out how to make it work for me before realizing it has zero library management functionality It would help if you specify what you mean by library management. What it doesn't do, and is very clear, is handle things like renaming files. You are expected to have copied the files over to your hard drive and organized them into folders (in any way that you like). Beyond that, it serves library management well enough. You import a folder, and it becomes a collection. You can tag it, do queries, etc. It works very well for me when I want to find all photos of, say, my cat - even though they are spread across many directories. Why would you have to spend months to figure that out
      • ghostly_s 8y ago
        > You import a folder, and it becomes a collection. Right. And then as I'm working on a project, and decide that collection needs to be two sub-collections, these three shots should actually be in this other project, these two shots maybe should be part of both this project and that project, these three portraits might fit the mood of that collection I'started putting together a few months ago... what do I do then? I'm fine with having to pick a folder to store my files in, that's a simple data storage problem. Library management is about semantic data, and in case you haven't noticed every file browser is absolutely garbage at that. Tags, especially the tiny little PITA tag browser box that was so clearly an afterthought in darktable, are an inadequate solution. (I spent months trying to figure out what I was missing because I heard darktable repeatedly pitched as an equivalent to Lightroom, such as in the comment I replied to here, so I figured an answer to these fundamental workflows needs must be hidden in there somewhere and I was just committing the cardinal sin of Not Reading The Docs. When I finally did pore through the docs and find nothing more than tagging is when I jumped on the mail lists and discovered the devs are actually not interested in building an Lightroom equivalent.)
    • oedmarap 8y ago
      That's quite odd. I've noticed that every other photographer I know dislikes Lightroom for the very fact that it uses libraries -- ending up being way too bulky and a resource hog when scaling across cameras, editing machines, studio locations, and storage drives. Phase One's Capture One solves this by using "sessions" instead, which lets you keep any sort of workspace as a loose individual folder; with preset subfolders for raw files, output, trash, previews, etc. You still get the benefits of tagging and other bells and whistles of searchable libraries but with much easier grouping and portability. While this really doesn't apply to casual editing, I think the performance benefits and flexibility of the session approach over LR's insistence on libraries cannot be overstated if your RAW files start to number in the thousands after a few months (event/wedding photographers, etc.).
  • noobermin 8y ago
    My gf is an artist and I roped her into trying Krita. Although she uses photoshop and illustrator mostly for interop with colleagues, I think she prefers Krita. Also, Photoshop is just as buggy as (if not more than) Krita she finds. People just live with it because they don't have a choice.
• 120photo 8y ago
  Adjustment layers....
• deleted 8y ago
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• slig 8y ago
  Have you tried Affinity Photo/Designer?
  • ptero 8y ago
    Thank you, I will take a look, it looks interesting and seems to be getting positive reviews from photographers.
    • petepete 8y ago
      I've been using it for about 18 months, works very well for my modest needs (stitching panoramas, HDR stacking, occasionally removing an unwanted person or thing from a photo). Most of the shortcuts and much of the interface is just like Ps, even to the point where many Ps tutorials/techniques just work. The one area where I'd say it needs improvement is the raw development. The output just isn't that great compared to Adobe Camera Raw or (my tool of choice) Capture One.
  • dkersten 8y ago
    I was about to comment the same thing. It’s a great photoshop alternative and it’s inexpensive (and not a subscription!)
  • tokyodude 8y ago
    So I bought both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer when they shipped. I re-bought them last year when I got a 2nd Windows machine and wanted something on Windows (first version was Mac) I've gotten quite a bit of use out of Affinity Designer. There's a few features I've wished for but I can't justify paying for Illustrator and so have made do and been pretty satisfied. But, ... recently I started doing some game development again and the workflows in Affinity Photo just didn't work for me. I found myself very frustrated because of poor or un-thoughtout design issues. So I caved and paid for the Photography Photoshop/Lightroom subscription ($120/yr). That's probably 1-4 hours of salary to buy depending on your job but it totally paid for itself in having a much better workflow so I could actually get stuff done. $120 a year is about 4x what I paid before Adobe went subscription (used to upgrade every other version which was about once every 4 years) so in that sense it sounds expensive but, compared to what I get paid or what I charge it's a tiny amount of money and AFAICT totally worth it, at least for me.
• deleted 8y ago
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• zmix 8y ago
  > [...] I hope Gimp puts it to good use. From the announcment: > [...] and will use the money to do much overdue hardware > upgrade for the core team members and organize the next > hackfest to bring the team together, as well as sponsor the > next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting.
• noobermin 8y ago
  Huh? Gimp has had 16-bit and 32-bit color depth per channel since 2.10 was released back in April.
  • ptero 8y ago
    Uh huh indeed. I am showing off my true age, but I had this exact discussion with a couple of Gimp developers in 1999 and 2001 (not sure what exactly they worked on). I am glad it is done about 20 years later, but not encouraged about this timeline. I understand that open source means you can do whatever you want yourself, but both conversations started when they heard I got photoshop and said "no no no, do not waste your money, let us show you how gimp is the better tool".
• ngold 8y ago
  I'm genuinely curious out of ignorance more than anything. I've farted around with ps but since I've only ever used gimp as an artist, what am I missing?
  • ptero 8y ago
    I know this sounds lame, but this is kind of like explaining why Vim or Emacs is a better editor than Notepad -- you can describe a feature (say, syntax highlighting or compile and jump to first error), but its power is not clear unless you see it in action a few times. If you are genuinely curious, maybe find a local photo hobbyist and just ask to watch him work after a photo shoot. To me (and I am just an occasional hobbyist), it is mostly the UI: the interface, flow and visual appearance is just right. As a simple example, moving levels slider ( https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/levels-adjustment.html https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/levels-adjustment.ht... ) with mouse and having a single-click option to see clipped areas is a killer feature. You can see it in other ways, but having this on/off before/after without moving a mouse is super powerful. Someone mentioned adjustment levels (and masks) that, to me, are done just right. Gimp is the right tool for thinking about images in numbers: average the area, find maximum channel intensity, stretch to full range. But it is lacking for folks who want to drag sliders around and see the changes to find out what looks good.