by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday February 07, 2013 @03:53PM (#42823505)
I don't really have much to say about this review or the article, but I'd like to say, as someone who has been using GIMP extensively for the past six months, it's a really fantastic program and probably one of the best, most reliable, and most useful free/open source software packages I've used. I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
Amen! I would be happy to see more people being honest about it.
I've been used Photoshop about 15 years and I would say Photoshop should be the first example to teach on the UIX classes. It's so great that even a 5 years old could get around in couple of hours.
I don't want to troll about it, I'm a developer and I can appreciate the hard work of people behind GIMP. And their influence over Linux world with GTK. Still I hate to see people comparing saying "GIMP is waaaay better than PS".
Photosho = $600 dollars. Gimp = $0 dollars.
Ipso facto gimp = winner.
You can make arguments about ease of use and such, but unless your job requires something not available in GImp, then Photoshop isn't better.
I could restate the entire comment I made replacing Photoshop=$600 with Elements =$70 and the point would be just as valid. In fact I am willing to bet that GIMP is way more capable then elements. You can make usability arguments, but that does not make it inherently better..
People used to bitch mainly about gimp having a multiple window interface while photoshop had a single window (and acted as it's own window manger inside that!). Now both can do both. To sum up "better" is just doubleplusgood for "different".
As someone who embraces copyleft and is a strong supporter of free software GIMP isn't a replacement for photoshop yet. The roadmap for GIMP should make it possible after 2.10 or 3.0
Here's what I need to switch:
Unified transform tool so I can scale, rotate, shear, etc all with one tool (currently available in 2.9 dev)
On Canvas Preview so I can see what something looks like without having to commit and undo a change over and over again.
16/32 Color Bit Depth (CMYK would be good but not required). This is already in GIMP, but not supported by everything. After GEGL is fully integrated this will be great.
Layer Masks and other nondestructive editing. Massively speeds up productivity and prototyping.
I'd really like an improvement to layers in GIMP. Right now you can't select multiple layers and move them up and down. Layer groups makes it tolerable, but it's still slower than photoshop.
On top of that the UI of GIMP is big and ugly. The menus are in akward places with way too much white space and padding taking up a good chunk of the screen. Some of this can be fixed with icon packs, customized panels, and a new theme, but it's always going to be a little oversized and awkward. Photoshop's menu organization is just about perfect; might as well copy it.
Couldn't possibly agree more. For the curious, it's not just about being able to scale/rotate/shear/etc. with one tool - it's about those operations happening concurrently when finalized. Right now, a scale followed by a rotate is lower in quality than a rorate followed by a scale. So if you ever scale something down to roughly the size you need it to be, then realize it needs to be rotated a bit - you'll have to perform the rotation, jot down how much you needed to rotate it, undo both the rotate and the scale, rotate it by the amount you jotted down, and scale again. And no, the cage deformation tool is not an appropriate alternative - it doesn't do a point-to-point deformation. The perspective tool is also not an appropriate alternative, as you can't retain aspect ratio (why this is still called the 'perspective' tool is anyone's guess).
On Canvas Preview
Preferable using the on-screen pixels for performance sake. This would need quite a few changes under the hood, but GEGL does allow for this.
16/32 Color Bit Depth
Yep - and, with it, appropriate support for RAW files.
Layer Masks and other nondestructive editing.
I don't know if this will come to GIMP in the foreseeable future. For the curious, think of this as the old (might still be in there, haven't used it in forever) Adobe Premiere workflow of adding effects in realtime, and then having to 'render' to the final output. So in the above example of scale/rotate - right now if I scale that back up, I get a bunch of blocky pixels (or fuzzy, depending on extrapolator). In a non-destructive workflow, it would reference the original pixels. The down side to this is that you need to keep references to everything and, of course, have to 'render' the final result.
I'd really like an improvement to layers in GIMP. Right now you can't select multiple layers and move them up and down. Layer groups makes it tolerable, but it's still slower than photoshop.
Honestly, I'd keep layers for simplicity sake (for most purposes, it's just fine), but add an additional node-based workflow. I'm guessing you're familiar with node-based workflows, but those who aren't.. google it.. it makes you wonder why we're still using such a simplistic concept of layers in the first place.
Photoshop's menu organization is just about perfect; might as well copy it.
Going to have to disagree with you there. I find no logic in Image, Adjust... to adjust something on what happens to be the active layer, considering the effect it has is on the layer, not on the overall image. That's just one of many little bits that confound me. I'm not saying GIMP's menu and tool layout is better, mind you - just that when looking for ways to improve it, as I said in another comment, not all of Photoshop is gold.
I personally would place the GIMP somewhere between Elements and CS in functionality. That said, for the vast majority of tasks, Elements is quite adequate. If a little more power is needed, then the GIMP is good, and if you really need / want to have the latest wizz-bang image editing tools at your finger tips, then CS is the way to go... although, if you're patient, something similar often turns up in the GIMP later on anyway.
As a professional photographer doing this for my bread and butter, I am actual
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday February 07, 2013 @06:15PM (#42825627)
Photosho = $600 dollars. Gimp = $0 dollars.
Ipso facto gimp = winner.
You can make arguments about ease of use and such, but unless your job requires something not available in GImp, then Photoshop isn't better.
Is your time worthless? Are you one of the few who is not routinely infuriated by a program which has long been the poster child for user-hostile open source software? Is your budget too thin to pay $600 for a good tool, even if you need it? Or perhaps you don't use software of this type more than once in a blue moon and therefore can't justify $600? (or even $70 as Desler points out?)
If any of these things apply to you, Gimp might be better. Otherwise... not so much. Price is not the sole determinant of whether one thing is better than another. Arguing otherwise marks you as a fool.
It exists. You can download Photoshop CS3 from Adobe for free.
[citation needed].
I know there was a story on BoingBoing a couple of weeks ago where Adobe mistakenly let you download a full old version instead of an update or something. But I can see no evidence on Adobe's website that they have free full versions of ANYTHING to download. The only free versions of Adobe products (even something like Photoshop Elements which you used to get for free with scanners or cheap cameras) I have ever seen are pirated versions.
Actually my time, as charged to clients, is relatively expensive. Therefore I have trained myself (as a web developer) to use GIMP for nearly every occasion, so when needed at the client site I can just download it and get to work without the time or hassle req'd to complete a purchase order and get it approved.
Same is true with Inkscape btw.
In case you are wondering, my clients are mainly enterprises that will balk at a new purchase request of several hundred, or even thousands of dollars worth of software
Photosho = $600 dollars. Gimp = $0 dollars.
Ipso facto gimp = winner.
You can make arguments about ease of use and such, but unless your job requires something not available in GImp, then Photoshop isn't better.
That's a stupid argument. Is a Nissan Micra better than a Lamborghini just because it's hundreds of thousands cheaper?
Don't you think you might be tainted by your 15 years of use with Photoshop?
Don't get me wrong - I'm certainly not saying that GIMP is 'waaaay' better than Photoshop. Far from it. But a 5-year old (really? let's try 8, at least.) can probably find their way around either of them in the same amount of time.
Just to counter your example, I've mostly been used to another graphics editor and GIMP, and only occasionally use Photoshop. Here's some of the things I encountered in the past that I thought "oh sweet jesus, wtf?"
Panning around an image. Practically any application middle mouse 'button' and drag away. Photoshop? Hold the space bar, and drag with left mouse button. Huh?
Adding a layer mask. Right-click layer, choose 'add layer mask'. Photoshop? I had to actually google this.. it's a funny looking icon of a rectangle with a circle in it at the bottom of the layers dialog. What?
Zooming. Ctrl+scrollwheel - again, almost any application. Photoshop? Alt+scrollwheel. Eh?
Pasting bitmap data on the clipboard as a new image. Edit, Paste as, New image. Photoshop? File, New, OK, Paste. Change to single layer or Photoshop will complain when you try to save the thing. Really?
Yeah, when you get used to it and learn the keyboard shortcuts these really aren't big issues - I don't really think about them anymore. But I wouldn't exactly hold all of Photoshop up as an example in UIX classes. ( Fly-out tools don't help either. Long-press a tool to find other tools that may only be vaguely related to the tool you first saw? )
Counter-counter example - GIMP's transform tools. Who do I bribe to bump those up to the top of the "let's fix this" list?
I could probably be biased being used to PS. But indeed I use the keyboard a lot. Alt and Ctrl seem to be so natural. Though, latest versions are stuffed with features I would rather pass.
Tried GIMP few times for quick image fixes (using brush, text and layers) but no more than that. Maybe I should read this book.
Btw, the story with 5 years old is truth, too. Although must admit the kid had talent.
Here's another counter (counter-counter?) example - in the most recent versions of GIMP, you need to select Export rather than Save if you want to save in a bitmap format like PNG/JPG/GIF/etc. Save is now reserved for the native GIMP file format. Technically it makes sense since it clearly separates the functionality that would save all your layers and whatnots that only the GIMP format could retain, and those which do not. Only problem is a lot of people expect Save to also allow saving in multiple file fo
Yeah, I mentioned that change in another comment noting that I think it's the wrong direction to go, and somebody else also mentioned this change as a negative one.
Supposedly the GIMP developers talked to 'professionals' and made the change based on their input. I hope they stop talking to 'professionals'.
That said, I do know of a few other applications where save/save as deal strictly with their own native data formats and you have to use import/export to work with others. None of them are in the graphic
Nobody uses it except a fringe crowd of diehard Linux enthusiasts whose expertise is computers, not graphic art.
No, GIMP is used by people who don't want to pirate Photoshop and who can't justify or afford paying for a license. The competition is not between Photoshop and GIMP, it's between Paint.net and GIMP. I prefer GIMP so far, but then again I don't do enough editing to justify a Photoshop license so my experience with GIMP and Paint.net is limited.
No, I'm pointing out quirks in Photoshop. Again, I use it from time to time and am perfectly proficient with it. Do I prefer X over Y? That depends entirely on what I need to do, not whether or not it is open source (I certainly don't compile the thing myself, so I certainly have no direct stake in that aspect) or whether it is the defacto standard and big shot photographer/graphics design artist So DeSo lends their name and made-up quotes to marketing material.
> I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
Could your describe your work-flow including type of assets you need to manipulate along with the operations needed so we could better understand the problem please?
Also, could list what open source audio programs have you tried? What functionality did they fail to provide? What UI problems did you run into?
Clap, clap, clap, clap. I have struggled with Gimp for several years (only intermittent use). I tried to avoid it, because it always took a bunch of work just to figure out how to do something that should be simple.
Just recently I switched to Photoshop. What a breath of fresh air. I'm having very few problems. Stuff that I commonly did in Gimp through several menus and drill down choices; in PS there are three control key presses that do the same thing. I'm sure you could force Gimp to do something similar, b
Why does it have to be a question of how complicated it is? That's lazy reasoning. It's about cost-effectiveness.
So what you're basically saying is that you'd rather pay for a product just because it's easier to use than the free one? That's like going out to buy a new car just because it's comfortable, when you already own three or four perfectly good alternatives that you only have to put the effort into driving. Maybe one doesn't have AC, maybe another one doesn't have a radio, but they all get you from
I attach value to effort, though yes I do have the time to put forth the effort to use an application that's worth more than the $0 pricetag, where the benefits to using something "easy" that performs the exact same operations is not worth $200-600, even if only by comparison.
Again...it depends on how much you value your time. Doing something "easy" saves time, whether or not the time saved over the lifetime of the product adds up to $200 - $600 depends on your situation.
So what you're basically saying is that you'd rather pay for a product just because it's easier to use than the free one?
Well, yes.
Photoshop is a bad example because it's really quite expensive (350GBP at a quick glance, and you can buy a laptop for that) for someone who's not a professional graphics person, but in general I'd pay a reasonable amount for something that was noticeably better than a free alternative.
If the philosophy of FLOSS can be reduced to "it's not very good, but at least it's free" then it's lost the battle. But it's better than that.
My point is that The Gimp IS as good as Photoshop. A lot of FOSS alternatives are (though to play my own Devil's Advocate, I've seen plenty of applications that were both ugly and unusuable). Being "good" doesn't mean you have to put the least amount of effort into it as possible. If the philosophy of paying for otherwise free software is, "It's basically the same, but it does most of the work for me," then it's lost the battle.
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
I have struggled with Gimp for several years (only intermittent use). I tried to avoid it, because it always took a bunch of work just to figure out how to do something that should be simple.
Just recently I switched to Photoshop. What a breath of fresh air. I'm having very few problems.
Stuff that I commonly did in Gimp through several menus and drill down choices; in PS there are three control key presses that do the same thing. I'm sure you could force Gimp to do something similar, but what's the point? PS is by far easier to work with.
I can't comment on your workflow, but for the work I do (mostly sprite work or photo enhancing), most everything I need is in the toolbox or on one of the tabbed permanently docked tool windows. I don't dig, I just click or hit the hotkey. For comparison, the few times I've tried my wife's photoshop I usually have to dig or ask how to do something. I'm not saying either interface is better, just that both need time to learn.
Well, it would be nice if they would pick a UI and stick with it. It seems like whenever someone publishes a good book on how to use GIMP, the GIMP team immediately overhauls the UI, changing all the menus to make most of the text utterly useless. Alternatively, the blame can be placed on the authors and publishers for releasing a book when they know a new UI is forthcoming. It's not like they don't have access to the prerelease versions of the new UI.
Ardour just isn't a product professionals would use. I know several professionals who use GIMP.
At least once a year, I take another shot at open music production tools. I would love to see something, but it's just not happening.
My own theory is that it has to do with the difficulties in using professional digital audio interfaces with Linux. If vanilla interfaces could be easily used with Linux, you'd see a more vibrant community of music producers who use the platform. Also, the proprietary nature of t
I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
The way I go about this personally, have jack as the audio/midi backend, rosegarden as sequencer, hooked up to several synths, bristol for analog, linuxsampler for sampled things like piano, yoshimi for other synth things, all hooking up to ardour to record.
It's a little messy using multiple programs chained together, but you get used to it.
My experience with the GIMP (Score:5, Informative)
I don't really have much to say about this review or the article, but I'd like to say, as someone who has been using GIMP extensively for the past six months, it's a really fantastic program and probably one of the best, most reliable, and most useful free/open source software packages I've used. I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, it's almost as good as Photoshop 5.0!
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
I've been used Photoshop about 15 years and I would say Photoshop should be the first example to teach on the UIX classes. It's so great that even a 5 years old could get around in couple of hours.
I don't want to troll about it, I'm a developer and I can appreciate the hard work of people behind GIMP. And their influence over Linux world with GTK. Still I hate to see people comparing saying "GIMP is waaaay better than PS".
Guess what! I
Re: (Score:1)
That was sarcasm.
Photoshop 5.0 is from 1998.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In which way?
I always read comments like "PS is better" or "Gimp is better", but those are usually just claims without giving any substance.
So please elaborate: What is better in Photoshop Elements than in Gimp?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Support for more than 8-bits per colour channel/plane:
Works with images in non-RGB/sRGB colourspaces:
Re: (Score:2)
To sum up "better" is just doubleplusgood for "different".
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:4, Interesting)
Couldn't possibly agree more. For the curious, it's not just about being able to scale/rotate/shear/etc. with one tool - it's about those operations happening concurrently when finalized. Right now, a scale followed by a rotate is lower in quality than a rorate followed by a scale. So if you ever scale something down to roughly the size you need it to be, then realize it needs to be rotated a bit - you'll have to perform the rotation, jot down how much you needed to rotate it, undo both the rotate and the scale, rotate it by the amount you jotted down, and scale again.
And no, the cage deformation tool is not an appropriate alternative - it doesn't do a point-to-point deformation. The perspective tool is also not an appropriate alternative, as you can't retain aspect ratio (why this is still called the 'perspective' tool is anyone's guess).
Preferable using the on-screen pixels for performance sake. This would need quite a few changes under the hood, but GEGL does allow for this.
Yep - and, with it, appropriate support for RAW files.
I don't know if this will come to GIMP in the foreseeable future.
For the curious, think of this as the old (might still be in there, haven't used it in forever) Adobe Premiere workflow of adding effects in realtime, and then having to 'render' to the final output.
So in the above example of scale/rotate - right now if I scale that back up, I get a bunch of blocky pixels (or fuzzy, depending on extrapolator). In a non-destructive workflow, it would reference the original pixels. The down side to this is that you need to keep references to everything and, of course, have to 'render' the final result.
Honestly, I'd keep layers for simplicity sake (for most purposes, it's just fine), but add an additional node-based workflow. I'm guessing you're familiar with node-based workflows, but those who aren't.. google it.. it makes you wonder why we're still using such a simplistic concept of layers in the first place.
Going to have to disagree with you there. I find no logic in Image, Adjust... to adjust something on what happens to be the active layer, considering the effect it has is on the layer, not on the overall image. That's just one of many little bits that confound me.
I'm not saying GIMP's menu and tool layout is better, mind you - just that when looking for ways to improve it, as I said in another comment, not all of Photoshop is gold.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally would place the GIMP somewhere between Elements and CS in functionality. That said, for the vast majority of tasks, Elements is quite adequate. If a little more power is needed, then the GIMP is good, and if you really need / want to have the latest wizz-bang image editing tools at your finger tips, then CS is the way to go... although, if you're patient, something similar often turns up in the GIMP later on anyway.
As a professional photographer doing this for my bread and butter, I am actual
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Photosho = $600 dollars. Gimp = $0 dollars.
Ipso facto gimp = winner.
You can make arguments about ease of use and such, but unless your job requires something not available in GImp, then Photoshop isn't better.
Is your time worthless? Are you one of the few who is not routinely infuriated by a program which has long been the poster child for user-hostile open source software? Is your budget too thin to pay $600 for a good tool, even if you need it? Or perhaps you don't use software of this type more than once in a blue moon and therefore can't justify $600? (or even $70 as Desler points out?)
If any of these things apply to you, Gimp might be better. Otherwise... not so much. Price is not the sole determinant of whether one thing is better than another. Arguing otherwise marks you as a fool.
Re: (Score:2)
It exists. You can download Photoshop CS3 from Adobe for free.
[citation needed].
I know there was a story on BoingBoing a couple of weeks ago where Adobe mistakenly let you download a full old version instead of an update or something. But I can see no evidence on Adobe's website that they have free full versions of ANYTHING to download. The only free versions of Adobe products (even something like Photoshop Elements which you used to get for free with scanners or cheap cameras) I have ever seen are pirated versions.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually my time, as charged to clients, is relatively expensive. Therefore I have trained myself (as a web developer) to use GIMP for nearly every occasion, so when needed at the client site I can just download it and get to work without the time or hassle req'd to complete a purchase order and get it approved.
Same is true with Inkscape btw.
In case you are wondering, my clients are mainly enterprises that will balk at a new purchase request of several hundred, or even thousands of dollars worth of software
Re: (Score:3)
Photosho = $600 dollars. Gimp = $0 dollars. Ipso facto gimp = winner. You can make arguments about ease of use and such, but unless your job requires something not available in GImp, then Photoshop isn't better.
That's a stupid argument. Is a Nissan Micra better than a Lamborghini just because it's hundreds of thousands cheaper?
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think you might be tainted by your 15 years of use with Photoshop?
Don't get me wrong - I'm certainly not saying that GIMP is 'waaaay' better than Photoshop. Far from it. But a 5-year old (really? let's try 8, at least.) can probably find their way around either of them in the same amount of time.
Just to counter your example, I've mostly been used to another graphics editor and GIMP, and only occasionally use Photoshop. Here's some of the things I encountered in the past that I thought "oh sweet jesus, wtf?"
Panning around an image. Practically any application middle mouse 'button' and drag away. Photoshop? Hold the space bar, and drag with left mouse button. Huh?
Adding a layer mask. Right-click layer, choose 'add layer mask'. Photoshop? I had to actually google this.. it's a funny looking icon of a rectangle with a circle in it at the bottom of the layers dialog. What?
Zooming. Ctrl+scrollwheel - again, almost any application. Photoshop? Alt+scrollwheel. Eh?
Pasting bitmap data on the clipboard as a new image. Edit, Paste as, New image. Photoshop? File, New, OK, Paste. Change to single layer or Photoshop will complain when you try to save the thing. Really?
Yeah, when you get used to it and learn the keyboard shortcuts these really aren't big issues - I don't really think about them anymore. But I wouldn't exactly hold all of Photoshop up as an example in UIX classes.
( Fly-out tools don't help either. Long-press a tool to find other tools that may only be vaguely related to the tool you first saw? )
Counter-counter example - GIMP's transform tools. Who do I bribe to bump those up to the top of the "let's fix this" list?
Re: (Score:1)
Though, latest versions are stuffed with features I would rather pass.
Tried GIMP few times for quick image fixes (using brush, text and layers) but no more than that. Maybe I should read this book.
Btw, the story with 5 years old is truth, too. Although must admit the kid had talent.
Re: (Score:1)
Here's another counter (counter-counter?) example - in the most recent versions of GIMP, you need to select Export rather than Save if you want to save in a bitmap format like PNG/JPG/GIF/etc. Save is now reserved for the native GIMP file format. Technically it makes sense since it clearly separates the functionality that would save all your layers and whatnots that only the GIMP format could retain, and those which do not. Only problem is a lot of people expect Save to also allow saving in multiple file fo
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I mentioned that change in another comment noting that I think it's the wrong direction to go, and somebody else also mentioned this change as a negative one.
Supposedly the GIMP developers talked to 'professionals' and made the change based on their input. I hope they stop talking to 'professionals'.
That said, I do know of a few other applications where save/save as deal strictly with their own native data formats and you have to use import/export to work with others. None of them are in the graphic
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody uses it except a fringe crowd of diehard Linux enthusiasts whose expertise is computers, not graphic art.
No, GIMP is used by people who don't want to pirate Photoshop and who can't justify or afford paying for a license. The competition is not between Photoshop and GIMP, it's between Paint.net and GIMP. I prefer GIMP so far, but then again I don't do enough editing to justify a Photoshop license so my experience with GIMP and Paint.net is limited.
Re: (Score:2)
No, I'm pointing out quirks in Photoshop. Again, I use it from time to time and am perfectly proficient with it. Do I prefer X over Y? That depends entirely on what I need to do, not whether or not it is open source (I certainly don't compile the thing myself, so I certainly have no direct stake in that aspect) or whether it is the defacto standard and big shot photographer/graphics design artist So DeSo lends their name and made-up quotes to marketing material.
Unfortunately you didn't actually address t
Re: (Score:1)
Their new unified transform tool should already be done and I suppose it's in 2.9. I haven't tried though.
http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/Transformation_tool_specification [gimp.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
> I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
Could your describe your work-flow including type of assets you need to manipulate along with the operations needed so we could better understand the problem please?
Also, could list what open source audio programs have you tried? What functionality did they fail to provide? What UI problems did you run into?
Re: (Score:3)
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
I have struggled with Gimp for several years (only intermittent use). I tried to avoid it, because it always took a bunch of work just to figure out how to do something that should be simple.
Just recently I switched to Photoshop. What a breath of fresh air. I'm having very few problems.
Stuff that I commonly did in Gimp through several menus and drill down choices; in PS there are three control key presses that do the same thing. I'm sure you could force Gimp to do something similar, b
Re: (Score:1)
Why does it have to be a question of how complicated it is? That's lazy reasoning. It's about cost-effectiveness.
So what you're basically saying is that you'd rather pay for a product just because it's easier to use than the free one? That's like going out to buy a new car just because it's comfortable, when you already own three or four perfectly good alternatives that you only have to put the effort into driving. Maybe one doesn't have AC, maybe another one doesn't have a radio, but they all get you from
Re: (Score:2)
It's still a crap interface. Saying it's free doesn't make it better.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I attach value to effort, though yes I do have the time to put forth the effort to use an application that's worth more than the $0 pricetag, where the benefits to using something "easy" that performs the exact same operations is not worth $200-600, even if only by comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're basically saying is that you'd rather pay for a product just because it's easier to use than the free one?
Well, yes.
Photoshop is a bad example because it's really quite expensive (350GBP at a quick glance, and you can buy a laptop for that) for someone who's not a professional graphics person, but in general I'd pay a reasonable amount for something that was noticeably better than a free alternative.
If the philosophy of FLOSS can be reduced to "it's not very good, but at least it's free" then it's lost the battle. But it's better than that.
Re: (Score:1)
My point is that The Gimp IS as good as Photoshop. A lot of FOSS alternatives are (though to play my own Devil's Advocate, I've seen plenty of applications that were both ugly and unusuable). Being "good" doesn't mean you have to put the least amount of effort into it as possible. If the philosophy of paying for otherwise free software is, "It's basically the same, but it does most of the work for me," then it's lost the battle.
Re: (Score:1)
Clap, clap, clap, clap. I have struggled with Gimp for several years (only intermittent use). I tried to avoid it, because it always took a bunch of work just to figure out how to do something that should be simple.
Just recently I switched to Photoshop. What a breath of fresh air. I'm having very few problems. Stuff that I commonly did in Gimp through several menus and drill down choices; in PS there are three control key presses that do the same thing. I'm sure you could force Gimp to do something similar, but what's the point? PS is by far easier to work with.
I can't comment on your workflow, but for the work I do (mostly sprite work or photo enhancing), most everything I need is in the toolbox or on one of the tabbed permanently docked tool windows. I don't dig, I just click or hit the hotkey. For comparison, the few times I've tried my wife's photoshop I usually have to dig or ask how to do something. I'm not saying either interface is better, just that both need time to learn.
Re:My experience with the GIMP (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems like whenever someone publishes a good book on how to use GIMP, the GIMP team immediately overhauls the UI, changing all the menus to make most of the text utterly useless.
Alternatively, the blame can be placed on the authors and publishers for releasing a book when they know a new UI is forthcoming. It's not like they don't have access to the prerelease versions of the new UI.
Re: (Score:2)
Ardour just isn't a product professionals would use. I know several professionals who use GIMP.
At least once a year, I take another shot at open music production tools. I would love to see something, but it's just not happening.
My own theory is that it has to do with the difficulties in using professional digital audio interfaces with Linux. If vanilla interfaces could be easily used with Linux, you'd see a more vibrant community of music producers who use the platform. Also, the proprietary nature of t
Re: (Score:2)
That wasn't my point. For the things it's appropriate for in the music production environment, Linux is stellar.
Re: (Score:1)
... I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
Actually there is. It's called Linux MultiMedia Studio (LMMS). I really like it. it's fast, has a nice UI, and reminds me of Fruity Loops Studio.
Re: (Score:2)
I wish there were something like the GIMP, but for music production.
The way I go about this personally, have jack as the audio/midi backend, rosegarden as sequencer, hooked up to several synths, bristol for analog, linuxsampler for sampled things like piano, yoshimi for other synth things, all hooking up to ardour to record.
It's a little messy using multiple programs chained together, but you get used to it.
Re: (Score:1)