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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

Maybe someday the gIMP will be even close to Photoshop. Heck, maybe it is for some people's needs. But, I'm not even an artist and the gIMP doesn't come close to meeting my needs.

"No decent OpenType typography, no layer styles, no smart objects, no dice." (from the comments on the OP)

If all I need to do is crop or scale an image than sure, I might get by with gIMP though in that case I'd arguably get by better with something simpler than gIMP.

But, I actually use vector layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use text layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use non destructive adjustment layers ALL THE TIME.

Photoshop layer styles are like CSS. You can declare your styles and then edit vectors or text and the styles apply dynamically.

AFAIK gIMP has no equivalents. Those are not minor features. They're what set Photoshop apart.

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I use GIMP all the time for editing and its interface feels great to me. Mostly just like this silly thing I made as an avatar http://i.imgur.com/4xFBVus.png or this color swap I did http://i.imgur.com/S7QH2EA.png , or cropping out something to put it on a different background, changing the contrast/saturation/brightness/etc to make a picture look better, sometimes pixel art, or turning a series of images into a GIF. I used to use photoshop and I remember it not really being easier or harder. It did have moments where it was more convenient, such as automatically sizing a new image to the size of the image in your clipboard.

The new single-window mode helps a lot.

I agree on some points, but for the non destructive photo adjustment there is an excellent open source alternative caleld darktable which you should check out if you haven't: http://www.darktable.org/

Arguably, they don't support none of the vector layers, but thats something you could do in Inkscape. Agreed that it might be more convenient to stay in one tool, though.

Darktable is like Lightroom; it has the same editing limitations as Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw, for that matter). It's nothing at all like what non-destructive editing in Photoshop means.

I made a free online photoshop thing:

http://yangcanvas.com/paint

> But, I actually use vector layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use text layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use non destructive adjustment layers ALL THE TIME.

Just use Inkscape and call it a day?

Not great advice for photo editing, which is a huge use case for nondestructive adjustment layers.

I think you misanderstood. He does not only use vectors, he just always needs to have vectors on his projects. Inkscape won't be a solution.

Apart from that, Inkscape seems to be a good solution for pure vectorial work. But my non-techies friends hate the UI. It is not that it is different of Illustrator, they just found it ugly and unpractical.

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