[0] http://www.gimpusers.com/forums/gimp-user/14339-hate-the-new...
You are going to have a LOT more reach with Java for "career stability". That's why designers stick with it.
Edit to add: I ask because if GIMP cannot handle the de facto standard image file type without too much fiddling, people won't touch it. It is the same problem LibreOffice has, actually.
I use gimp to deal with psd files of web page layouts from designers and so far it's worked every time.
Wikipedia: "A .PSD file is a layered image file used in Adobe PhotoShop."
Oh, that's what you mean by "standard".
Not "standard" as in, I can put onto a server, point a web page's IMG at it, and be confident it displays on everyone's browser.
Or "standard" as in, documented in some RFC or other standard document.
How well does Photoshop open the "standard" GIMP .xcf files?
The Adobe PSD file format is documented in painful detail here https://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml...
The format is binary and extremely convoluted, in part because it attempts to maintain compatibility with 20 years of versions of Photoshop. Because of this complexity, I am unaware of any program that can read or write a PSD file that supports all features of Photoshop. I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp).
True. I haven't used any program for image editing other than GIMP since 1996 (which I first installed on a GNU/Linux system running on a Sun Sparcstation 20!)
> I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp).
That's just a consequence of being so incredibly standard.
And someone whose employability is probably tied to a specific OS, toolchain or software stack really shouldn't throw stones.
I don't know for sure but I'd wager upwards of 80%.
It's only a 'standard' for those closed-minded industrial drones who won't ever contemplate using something different. This is the attitude that causes awesome, innovative software to disappear beneath a morass of "But it's not industry standard!".
I create graphics. I don't use any Adobe software. Adobe isn't the only graphics software company out there.
A .psd file was, for a good chunk of the past twenty years, the "de facto standard" file format for teams or entire departments of graphic artists who spent all day, every day in Photoshop. I once worked for an online ad agency and Photoshop was used more often, by more people, than MS Word and Excel combined. The Network Effect was in full force. Graphics teams at three different companies cooperating on the same campaign would assume that their counterparts were using Photoshop, and would expect to send and receive .psd files. Man, Adobe must have been printing money in those days.
If you worked in print publishing, digital publishing, advertising, marketing, there was probably a graphics department of people who spent all day in Photoshop... and an IT department that was constantly trying to add new server capacity as fast as those artists were consuming it. Back when we measured server storage in GB, not TB, fifteen different versions of the same massive PSD file could cause real heartburn.
My complaint is basically: fuck off with the Adobe in a thread about Gimp. If you think the Adobe program is better or must work with every possible instance of its files, or you just feel good to use a de facto standard, go use the Adobe program.
Gimp is its own thing; it is not an open source clone of Adobe Photoshop. Never has been.
> My complaint is basically: fuck off with the Adobe in a thread about Gimp
OK, sure, but maybe you should have A) said something resembling that in the first place instead of attempting some inane linguistic argument, and B) replied to the person who introduced the comparison rather than the one who had a pretty salient response to that.
I don't use GIMP to load PSDs, but I don't remember the last time I had a problem with a Word doc in LibreOffice.
Not really, no.
There are a few new contributors like Jehan Pages, Thomas Manni, and Ell. But the majority of the work is still done by Michael Natterer, same as 5+ years ago.