GIMP users?

Aaron1971 · 12-28-2008, 02:44 PM

Does anyone use GIMP for PP? I assume it has similar interaction as PS, but could be wrong. I currently use Aperture 2 and was hoping to ease my way towards PS. Any thoughts?

ftpaddict · 12-28-2008, 02:51 PM

I tried using the GIMP but the interface scared me away. lol.

Why do you think you would get better results with Photoshop? Do you use masks, layers? Do you feel the need to dodge and burn a lot?

Aaron1971 · 12-28-2008, 03:49 PM

Originally Posted by ftpaddict

I tried using the GIMP but the interface scared me away. lol.

Why do you think you would get better results with Photoshop? Do you use masks, layers? Do you feel the need to dodge and burn a lot?

I don't know, from what everyone says on the forum most use layers, curves etc. It sounds like they have more editing controls than I do in Aperture. I could be wrong as I am not a computer guy. I will say that if the results I get are comparable then I love the simplicity of Aperture. I'm just curious as to how the other half lives.

*X Man* · 12-28-2008, 03:55 PM

Well,

The Gimp is free so you have nothing to lose. If I were you, I'd poke around with it a bit and then go through a couple of the 5 million tutorials are out there online.

Regards,
Mike

Originally Posted by Aaron1971

I don't know, from what everyone says on the forum most use layers, curves etc. It sounds like they have more editing controls than I do in Aperture. I could be wrong as I am not a computer guy. I will say that if the results I get are comparable then I love the simplicity of Aperture. I'm just curious as to how the other half lives.

newmikey · 12-28-2008, 04:11 PM

I use GIMP( and UFRaw, Digikam, Cinepaint and ImageMagick) and am very satisfied. It does all I know how to do and much, much more at a great price - zero. The interface takes some getting used to but once you do, there's no limit. The available plugins are a mixed bunch between totally useless and absolutely awesome, which I guess goes for any collection of plugins. I actually do PP mostly on an image-wide basis (levels, curves, contrast layers, masking etc.) without GIMP - there I prefer Digikam and ImageMagick. When it comes to cloning, stamping and general pixel-editing, Gimp is a very capable tool indeed. As capable as PS, maybe not, but PS seems like absolute overkill for all but a few professionals anyway.

dschlamp · 12-28-2008, 04:23 PM

There is also gimpshop, which claims to bolt on a photoshop-style GUI onto GIMP, but I haven't tried it. It isn't based on the most recent version of GIMP, but there was nothing wrong with the 2.2 series.

Gimphoto and Gimpad appear to offer a similar, PS-style interface based on a more recent version of GIMP (2.4), with more recent updates than gimpshop.

I've used the regular, plain old vanilla GIMP for around 10 years on linux, but I don't do much PP. I find Hugin to be my favourite tool, for stitching panoramas together.

kenyee · 12-28-2008, 05:22 PM

Seems to do everything PS does...only negative is it can't run PS actions and a lot of people have written PS actions to get different "looks" from a photo, sharpen parts of it, take away CA, etc...

*maxwell1295* · 12-28-2008, 07:06 PM

I used to use it a lot, but I've gravitated to Lightroom2/CS3. The ability to use presets in Lightroom and plug-in in CS3 makes PP a breeze now. I still use GIMP to add simulated film grain to some of my B&W conversions.

I say go for it. If it's sufficient for your needs, it's a great program. It's free and there are plenty of scripts out there that work very well.

*jbinpg* · 12-28-2008, 08:08 PM

The Gimp only has one showstopper drawback currently - the inability to save in 16-bit formats. This will be remedied in the coming year. Then it will be an almost functional equivalent of Photshop.

*er1kksen* · 12-28-2008, 08:20 PM

I use it every once in a while to clean up complexions on portraits, with cloning and blurring and smudging. Also a little dodging and burning here and there. My only real complaint is the limited flexibility of the brush tools. At times I've wanted to, say, burn in a large area of sky, and I simply can't do that in a uniform fashion with the relatively tiny brushes available. Maybe I should learn to use layers but at some point I clicked out of the layers display box and I haven't seen it since.

Generally, I prefer to keep my processing restricted to RAW Therapee as much as possible.

I might have to look into some of these GIMP plugins. They sound possibly very useful.

dschlamp · 12-28-2008, 09:08 PM

Originally Posted by er1kksen

I use it every once in a while to clean up complexions on portraits, with cloning and blurring and smudging. Also a little dodging and burning here and there. My only real complaint is the limited flexibility of the brush tools. At times I've wanted to, say, burn in a large area of sky, and I simply can't do that in a uniform fashion with the relatively tiny brushes available. Maybe I should learn to use layers but at some point I clicked out of the layers display box and I haven't seen it since.

In Windows, GIMP version 2.6, click on the menu heading Windows (between Filters and Help), and then you can open any of the dockable dialogs, or else the one labelled Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo.

For the brush size, in the main toolbox when a paintbrush or airbrush tool is selected, you can pick the brush size and style. Beneath that, there is a Scale slider. When you drag the scale slider over to 10x scale, a 19x19 paintbrush becomes 190 px by 190px.

Mike Cash · 12-28-2008, 09:52 PM

The ability to use layers is the main advantage Gimp has over Lightroom (for me, anyway).

And if you don't like the size/shape of the brushes, you can create and save your own.

Erik · 12-29-2008, 05:04 AM

I've been a Linux user for a long time and used to use The GIMP for everything (because honestly, what alternative did I have?) since version 0.95 or so, but when I had to sit down and learn Photoshop for school I then never went back. Honestly, The GIMP's price tag is right, and it is a good piece of software with a good interface (some parts of it feel a lot better than Photoshop) but there are things it just doesn't do well enough. Basic photo editing things like "brightness/contrast" and "unsharp mask" are just decidedly better quality in Photoshop. Photoshop has a bunch of useful tools that are made with the photographer in mind ("shadow/highlight", "photo filter", easy b/w conversion...) that aren't there in The GIMP because it was never really made with photography in mind. I now reboot into Windows for all my photo processing

*Syb* · 12-29-2008, 05:08 AM

I have been using Photoshop some years ago, and now I am into GIMP. Low price and layers work made me choose for it. I am very satisfied.

denisv · 12-29-2008, 08:08 AM

I used GIMP in Linux until a few days ago. I wanted to test DxO noise reduction abilities and it wouldn't work in Wine, so I rebooted into Windows and installed that, and while I was at it I also installed Photoshop to check it out.

I won't be going back to Linux and GIMP. There's just such a huge difference in quality in even the most basic operations.

Here's a photo postprocessed in GIMP
Same photo, postprocessed in Photoshop