What you can do with the Gimp | Hacker News Reader

What you can do with the Gimp

rosiehardy.com

84 pointsmacco42 comments

I might use GIMP for finishing touches or work involving multiple layers, but on the whole darktable[1] is a much better option for the vast majority of photography work, both in terms of UI and plugins.

EDIT: And that is not because I think GIMP is terrible, but because darktable was designed as photography workflow software. That results in better fitting UI for this use case, and non-destructive higher precision image manipulation (floating point values instead of 8-bit channels, if I understand correctly).

EDITEDIT: There's also RawTherapee[2], but I haven't followed the development of that and can't say how it compares these days.

[1] http://www.darktable.org/

[2] http://www.rawtherapee.com/

Darktable is awesome, but should be compared to Aperture and Lightroom.

I'm actually trying out Dark table. Currently its crapping out on some Tiff files. I have yet to report the bug.

I love darktable, too, but I don't think it's really the tool for mash-ups like these.

It's very useful for the part where you need to tweak the pictures to the point where you can mash them up.

If you did that in GIMP, it would be much more of a hassle to do so.

One can do the same stuff in Photoshop with less learning. But this also shows it to the GIMP skeptics that if you put a little more hardwork GIMP can do outstanding stuff too and you will also save a good amount of money. GIMP is a boon to beginners (& students specifically). It's free, capable and accessible. Stuff like this should be showcased a little more so that beginners don't run away from GIMP.

I for one am happy they put all the stuff in a single window. GIMP & Blender are those FOSS killer apps in multimedia/graphic tools, they give lots of power to the user. I would like to see some FOSS app do so well in video editing & FX. The ones we have now are not even comparable to Adobe/Autodesk ones.

Well, theoretically anything can be done with Paint as well. For someone whose job requires image manipulation, Photoshop is probably well worth the money and is more valuable than their time.

I do agree though, GIMP is underrated.

I use both Gimp and Photoshop. I don't agree that the learning curve of Gimp is shallower than Photoshop. I also disagree that mastering Gimp will save money in the long term.

-- The tools that are available in Gimp are basically broken, especially the fuzzy-select tool. In Photoshop, you usually click and go on, in Gimp, you always have a halo and then you have to dive into pixel deletion. I don't care how good you are at Gimp, this will cost you tons of money.

-- "Smart Objects" in PS. There is no debate which is better. Working with Vector to Raster conversion is clean. You can open EPS in Gimp, but the conversion is terrible. To get it to look right after rasterizing will cost several hours.

-- Photoshop has CMYK, various RGB modes, etc.

-- Text in Gimp...

I thought it was well-understood that Gimp is not meant to be a replacement for Photoshop. A half-user of PS will pay for the program in less than a week if you consider $$/hr.

With that said, I always tell beginners to try out Gimp before trying Photoshop. The first things one must master is working with layers and pixel manipulation and Gimp is a free way to learn that. Photo manipulation is not everyone's cup o' tea either, and telling someone to get PS before Gimp is like telling a new pianist to buy a Steinway when a Casio will do well for the initial learning curve. Moving to Photoshop is more or less learning a few oddities and relearning hot-keys after a certain point, which is really no big deal.

A better title would be:

What you can do with artistic talent and sufficient time even despite the Gimp.

GIMP gets a bad rep, but really it's pretty good if you get over the fact that it doesn't do everything like photoshop. That being said, I am aware that Photoshop has several advanced features that are simply not present in GIMP right now... and I'm still waiting for GIMP 2.8 to be the default install so everyone can stop complaining about the floating windows.

And most people don't use most of those features. The hardest thing for many people about Gimp is that it's different, not that it can't do the job or is harder in any way.

text handling and CMYK support are not essential? Personally, I find lack of non-destructive color adjustments ie adjustment layers a deal breaker

And unfortunately some more basic features. :(

I've been using GIMP for the last eight years now, and I still run up against:

* Bad text handling. Can't kern individual letters, just coarsely set tracking for the entire block; this is particularly bad given Linux's decidedly average font rendering.

* Fuzzy Selection needs a lot of manual cleanup.

* CMYK. I have to jump over to Adobe tools on the Macbook whenever I want to work with things destined for print.

I'm not a professional graphics/design guy; I'm a mostly-backend web developer who dabbles in graphics and print design on occasion. I want to love GIMP, I really do. :(

(I'm running GIMP 2.8 on Ubuntu 12.10; I've been a Linux user since Red Hat 7.2, so it's not a Noobuntu issue.)

It's the UI that's the worst aspect of gimp. I must admit I hate photoshop as well - it's just as bad. I much prefer paint shop pro for doing light graphics stuff - it's much more intuitive for the most part, and takes a lot less time to do stuff.

GIMP is terrible for text input, but then it's a raster graphics app and so I don't really think it's a major use case. I tend to use GIMP for photo editing mainly and then use those raster elements in Inkscape for composition and anything vector-y.

Inkscape is pretty good for text but there are still some things that trip me up on it. It could use some of the multi-page elements from Scribus IMO.

At first I was thrilled Gimp 2.8 added live text input. But I don't use it because when I make text, naturally I want to do Layer Styles to it like Photoshop and I can't. For 11 years now I've been waiting for GIMP to get those features that would make it usable for me. It's always just a tool to play around with every month or so.

I think in the next 5 years Linux will get a port or a new graphics app that will take Gimp to the cleaners.

Obviously, the only thing you know about Gimp is what you've read on a forum somewhere.

Actually, I think not.

3 downvotes for that? I've been using gimp for over 13 years, and it sucks compared to paint shop pro.

Yours is a dangerous attitude. You believe that the thing that you understand is easy to understand, and those who don't understand it are therefore morally wrong, for some definition of "morally". Thus, you ignore genuine problems because you've attached a deeper meaning to the very concept of complaint, and you also significantly underestimate the effort you yourself expended in overcoming your ignorance so you will generally underestimate it for other people too. Really, there's no good news here.

The Gimp finally supporting [1] a 16-bit workflow could make its way to pro photo retouching.

[1] https://plus.google.com/116634837115748851709/posts/hY3orKUQ...

You can also do this [1] with MS Paint, but that doesn't make it the best tool for the job.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUWqRhReaZk

That one doesn't work in Germany, but here's Mona Lisa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3anYbEtl9E

A gallery page is not very specific. What is it you can do?

It doesn't appear to be obvious in what way these pictures are enhanced, either, as one would need the originals to compare. I'd be more inclined to judge Gimp with pure digital art.

I think it's a somewhat sleazy ploy to get people to find the tutorial DVD that you can buy[0]. There does seem to be some content there, but I really don't like this submission as it only says "here is what you could achieve" without giving away at least a little tutorial. I could achieve the Mona Lisa with MS Paint, probably, but how is that noteworthy?

[0] http://www.rosiehardy.com/online-tutorials

"Here's what you can achieve with oil paints and a brush! Buy the DVD to learn how!"

I don't think the end results are a good way to judge software such as this. I mean can you judge text editor based on some apps people have written with them?

I mean can you judge text editor based on some apps people have written with them?

Sadly, sometimes, yes. If I see code with mixed tabs/spaces, mixed line endings, non-indented code, etc, it's a pretty good guess they weren't using Emacs or some other half-decent IDE. Not saying it's impossible to do it, just that badly formatted code is usually indicative of brain damage, either in the editor or the programmer.

If you consider speed too, then maybe. For example, if I see a 100 page document, and I'm told word wrapping was done manually cause the test editor was incapable, it is a bad text editor.

wordwrapping.... hmm based on that, it sounds like some text editors are worse than web-based email clients.

As much as gimp bugs me, I do play with it occasionally and dream one day of being able to squeeze everything out of it that it can do.

check out gimp magazine, which is a good window into what regular power users manage to achieve with it. http://gimpmagazine.org/

I learned about the GMIC filters from reading it. Also learned there's an online image filtering app from the same creators, which is pretty cool - https://gmicol.greyc.fr/

Are these photos manipulated in Gimp?

Most likely. Under the "online tutorials" link she says, There are also tutorials which cover a range of editing techniques - including the basics and tools of GIMP, the editing program I use.

Yes, they are.

I would have loved to have been able to pay for a download to those DVDs she is selling.

how about a CD-Rom with some Real Player .ram files.

It is very hard to judge how much touch-ups are done (i.e. how much Gimp is used) if the pre-production images are not shown.

Wish she had some screencasts.

Actually she has:

https://www.youtube.com/user/rosieburst http://www.rosiehardy.com/online-tutorials

I haven't checked recently (as in any time in the last 6 months). Does the Gimp have color profiling yet? Without it, it will be completely useless for professional photography. It might be fine for making pretty pictures to show off to people on message boards, but real pro photography is about print, and real, pro print houses care about getting color right.

You can also bring him out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com