Gimp 2.10.10 released
gimp.org
gimp.org
It'd be interesting to hear from Photoshop power users, who've made the switch, what they miss and what Gimp does better.
For those who didn't make it past the highlight list, here's the donation/support link: https://www.gimp.org/donating/ I just made a small donation and encourage others who use Gimp regularly to do the same.
It's not been an easy transition, but I'm getting used to it. It's similar in function to Photoshop, but performing said functions is just different enough to make it challenging.
It is, however, a lame duck to photographers (and I think many other artists) when compared with Photoshop. Those who want a visual interface to drag sliders around, instanly see how things would look and edit based on tight coupling with that visual perception still choose Photoshop. I have seen many, many artists try Gimp only to go back. Maybe Gimp does not need to be that tool for artists, but if it does its developer community needs to be more engaged with photography crowd.
As a data point: current Adobe licensing model is almost universally hated. If there were a viable option many users would migrate. I would (and I am just a hobbyist). And it is not for lack of trying -- they do try Gimp (and Liminar, and Affinity and such). But the fact that they curse Adobe but still use Photoshop tells you a lot about the fact that Gimp just does not cut it for them. My 2c.
Affinity Photo is a pretty good alternative. Familiar interface and features, and a one-time affordable purchase. Not entirely sure what an equivalent might be for video.
The Studio version's pretty cheap, too, if you want to upgrade.
Furthermore, I'd have to run an entirely different OS from the one I've been using since 2002, and lash myself to a licensing model that would be both crippling and expensive.
From my perspective, Adobe's tools do have remarkable capabilities and substantial support. The improved content-aware fill is remarkable, but I never need it. Adobe's close relationships with camera manufacturers (and large developer team) ensures that new cameras and lenses are supported almost at release. Lensfun and Darktable do a great job of keeping up with new hardware, but it often takes at least a few months for new cameras to be supported.
I buy slightly-older hardware, and I check for Darktable compatibility before purchase/rental. (The GFX50R isn't yet on my radar screen in part for this reason[2], though support is clearly on the way[3].)
[1] https://www.charliehagedorn.photography/ https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/
I ran Linux as a desktop for ~10 years and have just switched to OS X, but pulled in GIMP/Darktable/VueScan workflow even though I have access to the Adobe suite. I found GIMP lacking nothing granted I basically just replicate my darkroom process on the negatives when I scan them if I plan to share them digitally (dodge, burn, contrast).
I'm sure there are some advanced layering and other workflows, but I'm not really interested in doing anything I can't replicate in the darkroom. Plus as I said the entire point here is to use the computer less, but still derive joy from an old hobby.
Edit: Also, really enjoying your IG feed. Great work in your color palettes and in the tones across your black and whites as well. May be my love for the Hasselblads and 6x6 frames, but most of those work really well as straight squares as well. Nice to see another PNW photographer on here.
Oh, do you by any chance mean on-canvas preview available for almost every filter since GIMP 2.10.0 released a year ago? With that split preview slider? :)
I started using Gimp a few months ago after 10+ years of using Photoshop. My biggest complaint is the quality of scaling an image down. It's really really bad compared to Photoshop (even if you play with the low level details of picking the scale strategy). It always seems to come out blurry or fuzzy, to the point where I stopped using Gimp for that. Is there a better way to scale images?
Also, I just wanted to throw in a comment of, if you're switching to Gimp, don't immediately discount it for not having features you're used to with Photoshop.
For example, with Photoshop, if you copy an image to your clipboard outside of Photoshop, then you when you create a new image in Photoshop, the dimensions of the canvas will be set to the image in the clipboard. This way it's super easy to make a new image, paste the image from your clipboard and now you have a properly sized image.
Gimp has this feature but it's not implemented in a way that's the same as Photoshop. Instead, with Gimp you can just press CTRL + Shift + V to paste the image from the clipboard into a new image and it's all set up and good to go. The menu item is "paste as... new image".
convert -resize from ImageMagick is another option.
The problem with using an external tool is I often want to resize layers on the fly to fit them into a final image I'm working on. So using a third party tool to do that goes from a 5 second operation to 5 minutes because I first have to resize it in Gimp to get the dimensions and then resize it "for real" with a different program and then place that into the Gimp image.
It's gotten to the point now where I'm looking for an alternative to Gimp, or I'll just go back to using Photoshop full time (even though it's a huge waste of $ since I only edit about 2 images a week).
"None" interpolation is occasionally useful as well, in image with really striking edges.
Agreed that the older downscaling algorithms aren't great. My impression is that they do a nice mathematical job of downscaling, but not a great perceptual one.
You just scale the image down and it looks flawless and takes like 2 seconds. In over 10 years of using Photoshop I never once noticed a blurry downscaled image, but the first time I used Gimp to resize an image I immediately saw a poor result. I used every resize strategy too (including NoHalo and LoHalo -- they are both really bad compared to Photoshop).
It makes working with Gimp for any web style graphics a huge hassle because down scaling images is something you do all the time, and it's not just the final image too. It's every layer you're working with. Having to export every layer into a third party app and then re-place it is a huge time sink.
I used Photoshop regularly for a few months in 2009 but that was a public school computer so I'm sure the version was one or two behind. My GIMP use is more frequent/recent but very irregular and for a variety of tasks that are never critical to my livelihood. Today I feel like GIMP is much nicer to use than when I started using it (~2006) but I still remember Photoshop being a nicer experience.
I don't know if that's well shared or has changed.
For a little while i thought Krita would be it, but i quickly realized that they just copied Photoshop for the most part.
I am the author of https://www.Photopea.com, which is the image editor with the second best support for GIMP files (XCF) after the GIMP itself :) In the latest GIMP releases, I really appreciate Editable Text Layers and the support for DEFLATE data compression, which makes XCF files even smaller.
I created a document with a white background layer and a simple text layer both as PSD and XCF, and then ZIPped it:
XCF: 8.25 kB unzipped, 4.03 kB zipped
PSD: 81.10 kB unzipped, 7.96 kB zipped
> This includes support for CMYK ICC profiles in babl (at this point, through LCMS2), direct CMYK support as part of relevant GEGL functions and core operations, and support for reading/writing CMYK data in TIFF and JPEG files. While not done yet, this work goes towards adding first-class CMYK support to GIMP.
GIMP's poorer CMYK handling was one of about three reasons it didn't take pride of center in a small graphic design shop (attached to a professional printer) I joined as an undergrad.
Some of us remember when Microsoft Word document formatting would get all messed up if you moved the document to a computer with a different model of printer. The trouble was that documents were expressed in terms of specific printing hardware. Using CMYK has a very similar problem. You can't get a generic CMYK that just magically works directly on every printer, and even if such a thing existed you still wouldn't be able to see it on your screen. The black is also a problem; a 4-color space is overspecified. You'd really need CMY.
The actual CMYK needed is only known to the printer driver or even just internal to the printer. You'll need to convert. Since you are converting anyway, there is no need to start from a color space as awkward as CMYK.
There are really just two things of use beyond RGB, gamut mapping/alerting and spot colors.
Gamut mapping distorts your color space to fit the output device. Alerting is an alternative, for example by making out-of-gamut colors flash on the screen to tell you that they are not going to be printed correctly. Both of these are deeply problematic, because they require knowledge of the specific printer that will be used. That includes the paper color, the ink currently installed, the hardware model, the driver, and maybe even the intended viewing light.
Spot colors are for crazy kinds of ink that need to be handled separately. The ink might have sparkles, UV fluorescence, magnetism, and so on. These kinds of inks don't normally get treated as part of the colorspace. They shouldn't be affected by operations like adjusting saturation. The way these inks are displayed on the screen may be quite unrelated to how they actually look. You should be able to configure an on-screen appearance with any desired color or filter effect or even with flashing.
Note that this rarely applies to professional printers - as there is no "driver" as such. It's a several stage process, which relies heavily on the person involved. The 4 colours are mostly for cost reasons, otherwise you have to resort to spot colours.
The Pantone colourset is well-defined, and transfers to process printing well, but it is CMYK.
The average person has no need of it, but the professional will find it essential.
Every printer has something equivalent to a driver. It may be called something else. It may be a special printer program to run, or even a web service on the printing hardware that will accept jobs. All sorts of crazy variation is possible, and it doesn't matter. At some point in the process, there is a mechanism to convert from device-independent colors to device-specific colors. There is no good reason for the device-independent colors to be CMYK, and plenty of reasons to avoid CMYK.
[1] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article324/smart-coloring-preview...
It has a lot of nice illustrations.
I've used Photoshop for almost 2 decades and recently moved over to Ubuntu. I always struggle with shortcuts and generally 'how it works'. Simply opening a file, doing some cropping or resizing and saving it as a different file type causes me headaches because I still think too much in Photoshop concepts.
How do I get out of this?
Differences in workflow themselves are usually not hard to overcome. It's the conceptual paradigm the lies beneath the workflow that people have to wrap their heads around in order to understand _why_ a workflow is different.
One of the things that held it back (for me) for a long time was the lack of 16/32-bit colour processing, which it didn't get until the 2.9 (development builds) in 2015:
https://petapixel.com/2015/11/29/gimp-version-2-9-2-brings-1...
And of course this didn't make it into stable builds until around a year ago. I am very pleased with 2.10 overall, and these days I only start up Photoshop if there is something I can't do in Gimp 2.10.
Or is there any easy-to-underatand transition guides?
Photoshop is a bit a of jack of all trades, and the FOSS tools are usually more targeted. So Gimp may have all that you need, but that depends on what you use Photoshop for. I would look at the capabilities of not only Gimp, but Krita (for digital painting), Darktable if you want a more specialized tool than Gimp for photo manipulation, Inkscape for vector editing, Libresprite for pixel art (which is a fork of Aseprite, which went from open to closed source).
As far as being easy to transition to, I would say that it's a bit easier now than it has been in the past, but they make no effort to be a Photoshop clone. The biggest hurdle is re-training your muscle memory. I would suggest to do what I did, and do a project here and there using Gimp, and eventually the muscle memory problem will not be such a hurdle.
I tried switching and certainly didn't put the effort Gimp deserved but these days I use Krita for quick editing (but I never do webdesign anymore).
Now, every time I need to select the higher interpolation quality, preview results (huh), and put in my own guidelines manually since the builtin rotation guides are on the image itself (and rotate with it) instead of perpendicular to the window (wtf). Bass-ackwards?
Wonder if that was fixed, or perhaps I'm doing something wrong?