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Comment by hirako2000 | Hacker News Reader

hirako2000

Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.

On adobe, I prefer using photopea than ever having to touch photoshop again, that's a tell that it isn't all that great to since a free to use replias fits all my needs.

I would concede photoshop has a better UX, on Windows and OSX that is true, but on its native linux home, it blends rather well with gtk approach to UIs and flow.

IDE wise, plenty of OSS solutions on par with commercial products now, at least for tooling education needs.

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> Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.

No, Gimp is quite bad when it comes to non-destructive editing. Even the FAQ mentions that [1]. As someone who works in game development, non-destructive editing, specifically layer effects are used everywhere. Especially for UI elements and stylizing text.

[1]: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-suppor...

Sure. I tried to answer contextually. If some kids get to a certain level, they will be using adequate tools for the job. I think the critic is about standard bulk licenses bought for kids training on multi disciplinary activities. In the context i would say destructive vs non destructive or that gimp has filters that are not gpu optimised while adobe does are secondary concerns. + don't have me dig to find a non destructive photo editor that is open source :)

Good products sell themselves. If GIMP were better AND free people would be all over it.

"B-b-ut Photoshop cornered the market", wrong, plenty of new apps like Procreate have found success just by being a tiny bit innovative and delivering a quality experience.

I really like OSS (and have contributed to several projects) but what matters in the end is the UX. There's a reason why Apple is a trillion dollar company.

Some projects are just mediocre and stagnant while trying to save face by saying they are OSS, at the end of the day no one cares, people just move along.

Other projects are so poisoned now that they barely resemble what they once were in their best times, i.e. Firefox and their self-imposed race to the bottom.

If firefox is the bottom, I don't really understand where do you put chrome or edge. Abysses?

There is a lot to say about Mozilla management but Firefox the browser is really good.

Sorry. gimp is crap compared to Photoshop. Gimp was on-par with Photoshop when it came out in the nineties. It hasn't improved much since.

That said, gimp is free. Adobe Creative Suite is over half a grand a year. For most people, knowing gimp is a useful life / workspace skill. Only the very elite will have access to Photoshop. Learning Adobe tools is simply not helpful for 98% of the population, as a life skill (beyond the general skills learned with any tool).

Yes, but being able to use Gimp isn't going to help your career and being able to use Photoshop is.

Both programs are easy to use, though. If a company has Photoshop installed, use it, sure. But there is also no reason not to use GIMP if that is preferred, and .. you know .. gets the job done anyway.

I get art from artists to integrate into apps all the time that wasn't made in photoshop. Most important is they know what they're doing, whatever they're using...

The UX totally kills Gimp, like it hinders LibreOffice, especially in comparison to Excel. Let's not forget many pupils have little affinity with corporate IT and no interest in learning text editing for the heck of it. If you have to teach it anyway, best give them easy tools that they can recognize later in life, and with which they can help their grandparents.

Given the fact that IT teachers are scarce (at least here; teachers for programming aren't available at all below advanced educational levels), I do think that simply foregoing teaching these skills might even be better.

> no interest in learning text editing

Why is this relevant to the use of gimp ot libreoffice? I never had to open a text editor to use gimp or libreoffice (well apart than writer itself duh).

>Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.

This is just a lie. My hatred of Adobe borders on the unhinged but to compare GIMP to photoshop is a joke, it’s not even the pro features just the basic requirements that were completely expected 15+ years ago are missing and the attitude of the team to the userbase when they ask for these features is extremely poor.

Honestly it’s time to start comparing GIMP to its real competitor, MSPaint.

It’s not just UX, it’s the basic features they’d need to do a job with the tool are not there.

Photoshop's AI features are light years ahead of GIMP.

>Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.

It's not about the features. I agree there's more or less feature parity for the 90% of use cases, but gimp has bad UX.

It's just clunky and frustrating to use, and there's no sugar coating that fact.

I hate using gimp.

I don't argue the UX is lacking, i still hate using Photoshop even more, and would have liked, as a kid, to be told how to use open tools even if not as good. It surely would have been better than what i got: Windows 98 which only had MS paint in it at my high school computer room, and that wouldn't be the only productivity tool missing on any Windows machine we may find at schools even today, while some linux package manager is 1 click and 1 command away to install literally whater, for free, probably better security reviewed than the next commercial product.

> It's just clunky and frustrating to use, and there's no sugar coating that fact.

Having used both as well as alternatives (like paint shop pro and some others), this is mostly resistance to change. You are used to photoshop so anything with a different paradigm will feel unituitive. Same with libreoffice and office if you don't care to understand the concepts.

Resistance to change is a strong thing. Objectively, macos and windows desktop are slow and clunky interfaces compared to say, gnome3. Yet many people even among linux users hate the later because they have been used to slow and clunky and don't understand smooth.

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