Hacker News Reader

The piece of software that forces people like me to use non-free operative systems is not Photoshop, but Gimp. And more horribly, Inkscape.

View on HN

That sounds backward. How could some software that is merely available for free drive you away from something? Also, have you tried alternatives? There is not just GIMP...

There are no serious alternatives to GIMP, and GIMP in turn is not a serious alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is an astonishingly user-hostile piece of software--though to their credit it appears the developers have finally begun to realize this and make changes with people who actually use graphics software, not people who write graphics software, in mind.

However, even despite these new-ish developments, there is just no real open-source answer to Photoshop (and Inkscape is only a partial one to Illustrator).

can you elaborate? I see people constantly bashing GIMP, and though it isn't without problems it's good enough for me for all web stuff, and good enough for a bit of print stuff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com