The GIMP: good or no good?
 

I was reading Trinity22's blog the other day, and realized that maybe I'm not the only one who hates the GIMP. Perhaps the GIMP is like Linux in that it's a little harder to learn, but is better once you get it down. I wouldn't know. I love Photoshop and don't plan on becoming a GIMP expert.

The thing that gets me about the GIMP is that the selection tools are so lame. When I make a selection with the lasso in the GIMP, and it's all jagged. Photoshop does a beautiful job. When I use the wand tool, I have to move the slider back and forth untill I get it (sort of) right. I don't know why Photoshop's wand tool works so well, it's got a percentage sort of thing, but Photoshop's wand works and it works like a charm.

If the GIMP were designed to be "buget software" I could maybe see that, but it's supposed to be the real deal, isn't it?

What do all of you think?

Gimp Rocks!

Cool

I go with MasterC's "Gimp Rocks!".
Apparently that is not an option on the poll.

The Gimp has almost every feature that Photoshop has, and even if it doesn't there are tons of plugins and I'm sure you can find what you're lookin' for. IMHO it's easier to find your way in Gimp than in Photoshop. I didn't work alot in Photoshop but when my friends who love photoshop come to visit and I show them The Gimp they start asking where's that and where's that and I when it's time to leave almost each one of them has a good opinion about Gimp. It's really a powerful tool and I like it very much it's just that you have to know it a little better because at start it a little confusing, but in the end it's as powerful as photoshop and maybe one day it'll surpass photoshop :)

P.S.
:D

Indeed. I'm a big fan of the Gimp as well. Can't say I've played with Photoshop much so I can't really make that comparison. It is noteworthy that a lot of Photoshop users have a really tough time using the Gimp tho.

Where's the "Loathe it with every ounce of my being" option, eh? :D

But really.....it's not for lack of patience, but the way that the gimp controls are spaced out is just maddening. everything about that program is maddening. I've been on linux for at least a month now and can't do things that I was doing in Paint Shop Pro (my "training" graphics program) for god's sake. just trying to put a 1px line on my webcam photo inspired my webcam caption "you're a mean one mr. gimp".

but anyway, my blood pressure is rising just thinking about that heinous little monster. gah. one day i shall be very, very happy when someone figures out how to get ps 6 or 7 working without having a windows partition

trinity

Its good for what it is - it does take some getting used to though.

for a free software it works pretty well, but when you are very very used to photoshop, moving to gimp is hard and annoying. i just spent 2 hours doing that would've taken me 5 minutes in photoshop. i have a headache now. bah

I consider The Gimp as a first class product ;) < insert thumbs up here >. And so is OpenOffice and Blender3D which competes very closely with top products (and fairly expensive ones) as OfficeXP, Photoshop and 3DMax but free. If I had made such a great product as those, I doubt to let them be free, at least for a while. But The Gimp's usage is a bit different from Photoshop and you will need to read some tutorials. Think about not only Gimp, but Linux itself as a new language that you don't understand. The best way to learn and master a new language, is practicing and using a dictionary (tutorials). Here is a nice one for Gimp:

http://tigert.gimp.org/gimp/tutorials/

Re: The GIMP: good or no good?
 

That's the GIMP actually showing you which pixels are making it in and which ones aren't.

I actually like the GIMP's wand a lot better (I'm using GIMP 1.3, you should really give it a go if you haven't). You click and hold and it outlines the area that will be selected if you let go. Drag it around to different points and it will change that outline as appropriate.

It's not supposed to be for professionals really, no. It's getting there, but that wasn't its original purpose.

sk8guitar

ah, i feel relieved that i'm not the only one spending hours doing things that took mere minutes in ps.

I consider Gimp in the way that I think of roads and interstates. PS was my interstate, my way of getting from point a to point b the fastest and easiest. Gimp is like that shortcut that the local told you about but takes you double the amount of time to get there, that is if you don't find a tree blocking your path.

if you haven't noticed, i love analogies :D

trinity

I quite like GIMP but I would prefer it if all the tools were in one GUI rather than sepurate windows.

Other than opening a window for the graphic, everything I use is available by right clicking on the graphic window. I just do simple cropping, brightness, resize, reformat, usually.

2damncommon, I love that Sig... I almost fell on the floor laughing so hard.

As for the GIMP, it did take me a while to get used to it, but now that I'm comfortable with it I am just as fast as I was with Photoshop.

One question that I have for Trinity22 and Sk8guitar, did you actually buy photoshop, or did you just DL it off of Kazaa or E-Donkey. See, if you really did spend the $699.99 that Adobe charges for it, then I'm sure you would be more open to the GIMP. I have yet to find something I can not do in the GIMP that I can do in photoshop, which makes me very happy that I didn't blow $700 on a piece of software that does the same thing as something I can DL and compile for free off of the net.

Nuff said. Gimp rocks.

slight

I don't think that spending 700 dollars on one similar program makes you more "open" to another. That's ridiculous. I went out and purchased my copy of Roxio EZ CD creator 5 platinum. When that turned out to be crappy I d/l Nero and used that. It didn't make me more "open" to it. I mean wth?. But anyway, whether I open my mind or not to a program is moot, imho the gimp is an awkward program. not everyone finds a program where you have to right click for everything intutitive or faster.

trinity

I am a fan of the Gimp. I have never used photoshop, but when I was a windows user I would use Photodelux, and I like the gimp much more. Other than the fact that it runs on linux so you don't have the problems with windows (such as restarting the computer after 10 pictures), I really like the right click menu's. I can go through what I usually need much quicker than in photodelux.

Well, I'd also like to add that, I don't know if it's because I am a big Blackbox fan, but it's way easier to user The Gimp with Blackbox then then my second X (gnome). Blackbox has a cool function where the active window is the window the mouse is over. So you can easily switch to let's say, the layer window just pointing the mouse over it (no clicking, indeed) and boom, you are in the layer screen. Typing ctrl + n you make a new layer and just pointing the mouse in the new layer, you are in it ready to work. Blackbox + bbkeys + The gimp is a powerful combo IMHO :).

The Gimp is just such a sweet program. Whenever you think you can't do something, it surprises you and does it very good. The color correction tools are just wonderful. I compare these to the color correction tools in Final Cut 3, and believe me they are very very good. No wonder the Hollywood people have been using their own version of the Gimp; CinePain or formely known as FilmGimp. I do video editing and also DVD authoring and I use the Gimp to create the menus for my DVDs. I haven't had the necesity to use Photoshop at all. Why pay lots of $$$ when The Gimp or CinePaint can do it for you?? It is beyond my mind.

Gimp You Rock!! I Love Open Source "Alternatives"!!!

Peace and Love,
Figa

i like the gimp but it is closer to print shop pro than it is to ps7. i cant find the patch and heal brushes. and when your a student adobe doesnt cost $700. and if you buy winex you can run it in linux. i like the gimp but it is no photoshop.

OK...... name something that you can do in photoshop that you CAN'T do in the GIMP. Personally, I have yet to find anything that I can't accomplish just as easily in either program.

Trinity, the point I was trying to make was that alot of people seem to compare PS and the GIMP apples for apples because they got BOTH of them free (i.e. by pilfering PS7 off of some file sharing proggie). I think this clouds one's judgement. If I sat 2 products in front of you and said "Both of these products do the same thing, but this one is free, and this one is $700, which one would you like?", I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't say you want the $700 one just cause you like the menu's better. I'm not trying to disuade you from PS7, it is a hell of a program. I just wanted to make sure you were using cost as a factor as well.

slight

yeah, i'm not about to pay 700 bucks for photoshop. and i never did. and i'm not complaning about gimp, i'm just saying its frustrating having to relearn things, thats all. it works amazingly well for being free and i'm sure once i get in the groove i can do better things in it than in photoshop. :)

my intention is not to criticize gimp, i think it is remarkable and much credit should be given to the people who make it.

when i have the time to look further into it again i will let you know the differences that i find. for now i will ask( because i really dont know) does it have a healing tool or a patch tool? these are a couple of the big changes between ps6 and ps7. they have a great effect on surfaces such as skin with removing imperfections such as under eye circles and blemishes (just as an example) quickly and effortlessly. the achieve the same result with other techniques say like clone brush and blending would take awhile. does it have an extraction tool? this would work on the lines of the magic wand except you high light the edge where you want the extraction to occur so you can left a whole section of image without focusing on any one color and without the hassle of the magnetic lasso. photoshop also incorporates well with premier and after effects. and although i have found the linux replacement for premier to be better i dont know if there is a suitable replacement for after effects because i havent looked yet.
and if your a college student or whatever i think the price of photoshop is like $300 which is still high but not so bad if you work with a lot of images since you probably have already spent $400 or$500 or more on a camera and another $500 at least on a dye sub printer. and another grand for a dv cam if your doing video editing as well.

since you all seem to be adept at the gimp, can anyone tell me how to create a 1px border around something? or a 1px line? that's my #1 aggrevation at the moment.

trinity

what i have been doing for just rectangular objects, make the square around the object with the square lasso tool. then right click on your image and go to "select --> border"; do a 1px border. then use the fill bucket tool on the border. also about the fill bucket tool (i didn't realize this for a long time), if you double click on the damn bucket a menu comes up.

the 1 thing i DO NOT like about gimp is that you can't make custom fill patterns with transparency!! sometimes i want that cheesy "grid" effect in the background of an image but it won't let me make a grid that has a transparent bakcground

I don't have the option for 1px though. :scratch: It puts this ugly huge border around it when I use it. There seems to be no other option for it. I've got version 1.2.3.....is mine outdated or something? Or am i just an idiot? :D

trinity

Here are some good resources:

Grokkint the Gimp
http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/index.html

http://linuxartist.org/

trinity, mine is also v 1.2.3

let me show you some screenshots of how i'm doing this

make the rectangle using the rectangle lasso:
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp1.png

right click on the image and go to "select-->border"
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp2.png

click on border and it will give you this option. make sure its on "pixels" and not "picas" or "inches" or "cm" or whatever it has
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp3.png

here i zoomed in 4:1 (right click on the image and go zoom in) so you can see that it actually has made the border. its slightly deceiving because it appears to have made a giant ugly border, but thats only because for some reason gimp has the dotted lasso around the entire picture. don't be fooled by this. its just gimp being a gimp
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp4.png

here i took the fill tool and went to the line and filled it.
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp5.png

then i zoomed out, click off the image with the rectangle lasso tool and showed you the final product
http://feton.net/othershit/gimp6.png

it shoudl work, we have the same version. let me know if you have questions

thank you so much sk8guitar for showing me like that. you'd think i just won the lottery with the smile on my face. :D It works perfectly :)

trinity

my pleasure :)

Do you mean like this? If you look close, this image has a faint 'checkerboard' background, but I could have done a grid just as easy. This was done with the Gimp....but damned if I remember how I did the checkerboard off the top of my head.... :P

slight

That looks awesome!

Cool

:scratch:
Got to ask...
How do you rotate an image that isn't sqare? I can right click and go to Layers --> rotate 90 degrees but it chops off the top and bottom.

beats me, but i dunnow how you managed to do that (i'm thinking you had a white block and black block and just made it more opaque) because to make a fill pattern you have to store the pattern as a .PAT and .PAT's do NOT allow transparency. so i think its fair to say thats impossible.

I've got the source file at home, so I'll take a look and see if I can remember how I did it. You might be right, I think I did the checkboard as a layer and just made the top image a bit opaque to allow the background to show through... similar effect, but not exactly what you were speaking of.

slight

yeah, i've done that. what i may end up having to do is adjusting manually the pattern's backgroudn color to match whatever color my project is. not a huge issue but slightyl tedious.

You can just do a shift+T and that will open the transform dialog box, and you can rotate from there....as for it chopping off the top and bottom, that is the behaviour I would expect if you are just rotating the image, and not the canvas. If you want to rotate the canvas you just right click, go to image/transform/rotate and pick the # of deg.

slight

OK, I went home and played around a bit....and you can control the opacity of a pattern fill by changing the tool options for the bucket. At least, I think this is what you were trying to acomplish. So you can make a pattern (or use a pre made one), select it, and then change the bucket to 30% opacity and then fill over your image/selection.

slight