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.

Originally posted by MasterC Gimp Rocks!

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?

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/

Originally posted by Travis86 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

trinity

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

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