GIMP vs Photoshop

[Erica C.]

In another thread, someone said that the GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop. I use the GIMP and haven't tried anything else. I was wondering what, if anything, I'm missing.

Thanks!

[Kevin]

A very big price tag :P

If you are happy with GIMP don't ever look at Photoshop. Photoshop is the absolute top of the line in graphics programs and it is priced accordingly. There are things it can do that GIMP can't but not many. Certainly not enough to justify the price difference (hundreds of dollars vs free) unless you use it on a daily basis and require those few features.

[Wassercrats]

I've had Gimp for years and still don't know how to use it. I think I figured out how to make part of an image transparent a few years ago after trial and error, which was mostly what I needed Gimp for, but I forgot since then.

Everything Kevin said is also said about Open Office Writer vs. MS Word. I've used Writer for about a year just so I could overlap my signature and typed name, and encountered many problems that made it not worth the trouble. I tried updating it two days ago and it didn't work so I uninstalled the old and new and won't try again. I went through the same thing with Thunderbird and a bunch of editors. Free, community written stuff just doesn't work well.

[Kevin]

I would say just the opposite from Wasser. If it isn't free open source then it probably isn't worth paying for. In most cases I will not even bother to try the non-open source programs.

BTW, I am not really a big fan of Open Office either. It does all of the things that most people do with MS Office but I don't really want a clone of Office or anything even kinda like it.

I would rather use Gnumeric instead of OOCalc/Excel. The differences aren't that big but Gnumeric is far superior.

I would rather use a "document processor" like LyX than a "word processor" like OOWriter/Word. The nice thing about LyX is that you pretty much just type and let the application figure out how to format it as you go. There is no "make this bold", "put a bullet here" or any such similar wastes of time. You type and it figures out how to format. The end result looks like you spent hours in Word "painting" your document by manually controlling every detail.

I can't really specify an alternative to OOImpress/PowerPoint because I don't really like that kind of presentation style in general. Generally when I do a presentation it is purely technical and I just make up a reference handout for people to take with them. If I ever have to try to sell something to someone I would probably have to figure out OOImpress.

[Jeff]

Photoshop has some powerful tools for me. I mostly use Corel's Photopaint because I like some of its tools better like the interactive transparency tool and the clone tool size adjustment by holding shift -- just works smoothly for me -- and lots of little things like being able to paste directly into a new document without photoshop's intermediate step, an instant jpeg export preview with more fine tuning ability, etc. But Photoshop has the best actions palette that I've found -- recording a set of complicated steps, editing the steps, and then playing back or applying in batch mode works great. It sounds like a simple thing, but reliability is worth a lot for me and other programs just haven't provided a recorder / actions palette that works as well for me. Also when doing CMYK prints I like the easy fine tuning of the sRGB to CMYK that photoshop provides, e.g. being able to set the GCR amount to control how much black is substituted for colors during the conversion. I'm not a photoshop power user by any means, but some basic features like these I just can't duplicate in other programs as well. Likewise I still keep Fireworks on hand because I find its batch fit to size and batch conversion settings to work the best for me of any program when doing large batch resize operations. (sure I could do it with imagemagick and a script on the server, but fireworks provides a nice 3 click GUI way to quickly batch resize to fit max x or y and set compression and format options really easy.)

Have also just started using open office casually. I find a few things in calc better than excel (doing charts), but at the same time I've run into some things already where the features just aren't flexible enough for me to 'get there from here' so I hit a wall. Probably won't switch any time soon to it full time, but then again, it's only in version 3 and office is well over a dozen versions I think to get to the present incarnation. I think open office could be quite interesting in another year or two for a full time replacement for office for me, so I'm keeping my eyes on it.

[Kevin]

My biggest problem with OpenOffice is that it is essentially a free clone of MS Office. That means it will always lag behind MS in terms of features. It is like they chose ease of migrating from MS Office over functionality. What they ended up with is something that post people look at and say "It is like MS Office but worth less". This gives open source software "not good enough to charge money for" impression that just isn't true for most other open source apps. It also gives the feel of "all the crappyness of MS Office with the added annoyance of not being finished".

If you are looking to do spreadsheets then I strongly suggest trying Gnumeric (http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/) instead of OOCalc. It isn't a clone of Excel so it will be a little different but I believe it is better.

[Erica C.]

Thanks for the input!

Having passed through Wasser's trial and error learning stage I think I'm happy staying with the GIMP for now. I can do a reasonable number of things with it and have a book that one day I'll find the time to make my through. Though if anyone knows of a good online GIMP class ...

I use Open Office too but primarily so that I can read the MS docs that others send. I don't mind it. Except for that idiotic smiling lightbulb that pops up occassionally.

Erica

[Randall]

Except for that idiotic smiling lightbulb that pops up occassionally. Buh, buh :eek: ... they've cloned Clippy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy)?

Randall

[Erica C.]

Buh, buh :eek: ... they've cloned Clippy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy)?

Randall
Apparently. I tried to find a picture for you but couldn't. My search basically resulted in many variations on "how do I turn off that annoying lightbulb." (http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9434)

[Wassercrats]

I guess it looks like this (http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=%22lightbulb+icon+appears+in+the+bottom+right+corner+of+my+scre en%22).

[Kevin]

The difference is that unlike Clippy the light bulb is so unintrusive you might not even notice it. You have to click on it to find out what it wants to tell you.

[Erica C.]

I guess it looks like this (http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=%22lightbulb+icon+appears+in+the+bottom+right+corner+of+my+scre en%22).

No, at least not in my version of OO. My light bulb has a face.

But as Kevin said, it isn't that obtrusive. And now I know how to turn it off.