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DPChallenge Forums >> Hardware and Software >> gimp vs photoshop
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 11/03/2004 06:24:29 AM · #1
how do they compare.
is gimp totally capable??
what do you use? wish you used?
 11/03/2004 06:29:49 AM · #2
Use photoshop, recommend photoshop and love photoshop
- a bit of a learning curve but yeh im a quick learner
- not actually that hard to learn and use

I been using it for a few years now - since 2000 and it is the best digital photo editing software around and Ive tried quite a few - even before I had my first camera

only problem being the $$$ Price
 11/03/2004 06:54:30 AM · #3
I use gimp, love it would not go back to photoshop.

I think that photoshop may have the edge, but considering that photoshop is expensive and gimp is free, I think gimp wins.

I don't want to use illegal software, and I'd rather spend my money on other things, gimp does far more than I need so I see no reason not to choose it.

Darren
 11/03/2004 06:56:45 AM · #4
The main difference is that Gimp does not support 16 bit/channel (48 bit) images.
 11/03/2004 06:58:32 AM · #5
Both have their strengths and weaknesses - check out these articles which discuss both packages here, here, and here. There's also CinePaint, a GIMP fork (I think), designed for the film industry.
 11/03/2004 07:03:45 AM · #6
I've been using Gimp extensively as long as I've been doing photography because my primary workstation runs Linux. To compare the two you really need to pick either PS CS of Elements, as they are two very different products.

Compared to Elements, I would say that GIMP is free, but has a less intuitive interface. That being said, GIMP can do layers, channels, curves, USM, edge & lab sharpening, and pretty much everything else one would commnly do for fairly advanced editing. In my mind, the real differentiator is that Photoshop Elements is a bit nicer looking and more intuitive. Given how much time spend with an editor, the intuitiveness isn't too big a deal, so it came down to price. I don't think that Elements gives me enough value to offset the free GIMP.

Now, CS is a different story. GIMP doesn't currently do 16 (12) bit editing unless you go with Cinepaint which is not really in the running. If you are doing professional grade fine art photography, then Photoshop CS and its $600 price tag is superior to GIMP hands down. In addition, there are for more 3rd party plug-ins for CS than there would be for GIMP. The question becomes, is that $600 the best thing to spend money on compared to a nice macro lens? Only you know the answer.

One thing that gets overlooked is RAW processing... There are now two GIMP plugins which handle raw workflow into GIMP: dcraw, and UFRaw. Both appear to be gaining momentum, and do a capable job of translating the images. In my observation it takes quite a bit of time before you get the hang of the settings for dcraw based GIMP plugins, but they will work.

If you prefer to be more mainstream because you depend on others to teach you then the Photoshop crowd is much bigger than the GIMP crowd. There is however a good GIMP community, and in my experience most photoshop techniques are easily applied in GIMP with only minor differences.

Just like your tripod and glass, the photo editor is a tool. You need to look at what functionality the tool needs to provide, and how much $$ that functionality is worth to you. In many cases, a free GIMP installation will more than meet the needs of an amateur and save them the ~ $100 for Elements.

If you do a lot of work with RAW images on Linux platforms you should also have a look at Bibble 4.0, which thus far is very impressive.
 11/03/2004 07:14:21 AM · #7
I use The Gimp a little bit at work because we don't have PS.

The thing I miss most is the ability to preview in a lot of their filters. I find it VERY useful to click Preview on/off to see what affect my filter is having..

A thread yesterday talked about Bibble, which is a free/pro-version image editor. I got to grips with it a bit, but couldn't find certain features (like Channel Mixer?). It did have filter preview though, using a swish pixelation mode to keep speed up. I don't know what the difference is between the Lite (free) and Pro (pay) versions, but it might be worth looking at.
 11/03/2004 07:55:29 AM · #8
Originally posted by PaulMdx:
A thread yesterday talked about Bibble, which is a free/pro-version image editor. I got to grips with it a bit, but couldn't find certain features (like Channel Mixer?). It did have filter preview though, using a swish pixelation mode to keep speed up. I don't know what the difference is between the Lite (free) and Pro (pay) versions, but it might be worth looking at.

This page lists the features - the pro-only stuff is down at the bottom.

Also the lite version still costs money. Having said that, I can't figure out what the restrictions are on the trial version and the website doesn't seem to say anything other than 'fully functioning'.

Message edited by author 2004-11-03 07:56:49.
 11/03/2004 07:58:28 AM · #9
Originally posted by bod:
Also the lite version still costs money. Having said that, I can't figure out what the restrictions are on the trial version and the website doesn't seem to say anything other than 'fully functioning'.

Oh sorry, stand corrected.
 11/03/2004 09:40:14 AM · #10
Originally posted by PaulMdx:
The thing I miss most is the ability to preview in a lot of their filters. I find it VERY useful to click Preview on/off to see what affect my filter is having..


I'm using the latest development version of the GIMP, 2.1, and it has preview support for more filters. Unsharp mask, gaussian blur, edge detect are a few of the ones I've used recently, and they all have preview now.

The next release will be version 2.2, hopefully to be released soon, and it will contain these improvements.
 11/03/2004 10:40:53 AM · #11
There's no question that GIMP is moving along very quickly. The recent 2.0 was a quantum leap past 1.x, and from what I've been reading 2.2 will be a big usability improvement.

While previews are nice - no doubt about it - on a reasonably fast machine, tweaking things like USM masks isn't really all that painful without preview. That's how I do it today. Not saying a preview wouldn't be nice - just that it's important to think about cost to value ratios. In my case, I desperately want a Nikkor macro lens, and buying Photoshop would make that goal financially difficult.

I'm going to enjoy the heck out of GIMP 2.2, but I'm definitely not planning to replace it with Photoshop any time soon. Now that LittleCMS is gaining momentum via the Scribus project's inclusion of profile management I anticipate that GIMP will be profile aware in the not too distant future. USENET indicates that one of the big reaons they haven't implemented 16 bit TIFF support is that there was no profiling, thus not enough display precision to justify the coding effort.

The next year is going to very exciting for Open Source in the graphic arts realm.


11/03/2004 10:45:12 AM · #12
Originally posted by PaulMdx:
Originally posted by bod:
Also the lite version still costs money. Having said that, I can't figure out what the restrictions are on the trial version and the website doesn't seem to say anything other than 'fully functioning'.

Oh sorry, stand corrected.


I haven't been able to discover any restrictions in the pro version... I guess its on the honor system. I'm so elated to see the product that if it passes my evaluation I won't think twice about licensing it. I think Bibble could take a big chunk of time out of my RAW workflow.

Still need to evaluate the final product against GIMP/UFRaw, but the NEF image browsing alone has just about sold me at this point.
 11/03/2004 12:09:09 PM · #13
Originally posted by cghubbell:
I haven't been able to discover any restrictions in the pro version... I guess its on the honor system. I'm so elated to see the product that if it passes my evaluation I won't think twice about licensing it.

Ditto that.

Interestingly, it looks like Adobe are starting sniff around the Linux market: //news.com.com/Adobe+dipping+toes+into+desktop+Linux+waters/2100-7344_3-5435397.html?tag=nefd.lede
No promises on Photoshop, but I wouldn't be surprised if they started working on a wine-friendly version of PS CS to start with.
 11/03/2004 12:47:24 PM · #14
everyones talking about the $600 version of photoshop, i was thinking about buying the cheap one ($50) at wal-mart or should i just stay with gimp

how does the cheap version of ps compare to the expensive one
 11/03/2004 01:03:53 PM · #15
Originally posted by riotspyne:
everyones talking about the $600 version of photoshop, i was thinking about buying the cheap one ($50) at wal-mart or should i just stay with gimp

how does the cheap version of ps compare to the expensive one


stay with gimp :)
 11/03/2004 09:25:40 PM · #16
Well, I don'thave Photoshop, but I tried GIMP but found the learning curve more like a stone wall. However, I've just spent a few minutes playing around with another free photo editor called Photofiltre and am very impressed already. It originally comes in French, but there is an English version of course, as well as other languages (does anyone speak Catalan here?)

Try it out. Photofiltre though that's not actually where I downloaded it from (not on my home computer now).
 11/03/2004 09:38:59 PM · #17
Originally posted by Pug-H:
Well, I don'thave Photoshop, but I tried GIMP but found the learning curve more like a stone wall. However, I've just spent a few minutes playing around with another free photo editor called Photofiltre and am very impressed already. It originally comes in French, but there is an English version of course, as well as other languages (does anyone speak Catalan here?)

Try it out. Photofiltre though that's not actually where I downloaded it from (not on my home computer now).

hey thanks i downloaded it and it is much easier to run than gimp fpr us editing newbies, still with alot of cool features
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