On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 10:58 PM, James G. Sack (jim) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip]
> Here's my evaluation. > > If you earn your living as a graphic artist (or creative artist or > high-end photographer or photofinisher or ??), you probably want the > Adobe "Creative Suite" tool set (CS3, I gather, is the latest) It > includes (depending, I think. on standard, premium, ...) photoshop and > a couple of tools for managing image "collections" (if that's the right > term) and apparently other things that are somewhat frequently > considered useful workflow tools by full-time serious users. Program > names I remember are lightbox, "something-raw", oh well, surely there's > more. Oh, I guess the suite includes illustrator and pdf-tools as well > as flash-tools, and a 30 gal garbage compactor (just joking on that last > one [I think]). I have no problem saying that a "professional" would > probably be best off buying the tools most highly rated by his peers. > And the highest price versions are still only maybe a week's salary. > > Just considering photoshop, I have indeed seen features missing from > gimp that would unquestionably be useful to a moderately experienced > gimp user -- things like selection "refinement", layer style, and object > selection, and some tool workings that help discriminate highlights and > shadows when doing various photo enhancing operations. Also photoshop > does have some (perhaps limited but better than nothing) support for > 16-bit color channels. Oh yeah, they do a better job of integrating HSV > (and LAB, etc) for those special cases where in gimp you need to > decompose, edit, and then recompose. > > I'm sure I haven't yet seen features that skilled photoshopper consider > valuable. > > Nevertheless, I would say that the overwhelming majority of the features > /I/ want are adequate in gimp. I think it provides a lot of > photo-editing power. But that's me. In all fairness, I have heard > someone say that gimp isn't even up to PaintShopPro (an inexpensive > Windows prog -- used to be <= $100, and you could even get a trial/nag > version free). For me, I still think gimp is grreat! Others may have > specific needs --maybe even simple ones-- that gimp misses the boat on. YMMV > > And a good part of the things I wish for will probably come "next year" > (or so). I would guestimate gimp is probably 5-years behind photoshop in > the higher-end features. > > Gimp is most certainly a serious photo-editing tool. Whether it meets > "professional" needs is arguable. I think it's a very nice and fun tool. > > BTW there is a new version 1.6 coming out "real soon now" (my guess: a > couple more months). They say it is mostly preparatory for the real-nice > user-impressive features promised to come [more quickly?] in 2.8 -- but > I do believe there will be significant improvements in 2.6. They are > doing serious UI analysis using real UI experts; they are eliminating a > bunch of annoyances; and they are making things more consistent. I > haven't run a beta (2.5) but have seen demos that satisfy me as > impressive. We shall see. > > Aside to CM: I've even gotten a little better at photogimping; see > http://www.kernel-panic.org/wiki/VirtualReality > Has anyone tried GIMPshop(http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml)? I was looking into all of this about a year ago when I was designing book covers. I settled on Inkscape as the better tool for that in concert with Scribus. However, I ran accross a reference to something called GIMPshop, a GUI front-end for GIMP that made it resemble PS. At the time, it was reputed to be close enough that many PS tutorials could be used in GIMPshop. I never got so far as to try it because I had already decided on Inkscape at the time. I had never used PS anyway, so replicating the feel of PS was of little interest. It looked interesting though. GIMPers who are familiar with PS might be able to give it a more informed evaluation. Robert Donovan -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
