[er1kksen]

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.

Yeah, I've been boosting the scale slider to its max for some time now. That's still much to small to burn in a larger area in a uniform fashion, unfortunately. I'll have to look into that ability to create your own brushes.

[innershell]

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

I was playing with Gimp and Photoshop yesterday and I experienced the same results with Gimp. Photoshop was able to make my image "pop", but I couldn't tweak anything in Gimp to give me the same effect. Photoshop is just better, but Gimp is worthy in a "pinch" ... like when you're at a friend's house and need a quick photo tool to do some editing.

[Shaloot!]

Has any Mac users had problems using GIMP? I wanted to download it but when I started reading about the extra stuff I had to do on my mac and then user comments about how they started having issues, I haven't pulled the trigger yet...

[X Man]

With all due respect, for the price difference I'd sure hope PhotoShop is better.

However, I sure hope people don't take what you're saying at face value and think they can't make your Gimp edit look like your PS edit.

Gimp is plenty powerful and it's not a toy to be relegated to use in a pinch anymore than Photoshop is a bloated overpriced hog... wait....

Flickr: Michael Goldsmith's Photostream All of these are mine and all of them were edited using Gimp.

Regards,
Mike

I was playing with Gimp and Photoshop yesterday and I experienced the same results with Gimp. Photoshop was able to make my image "pop", but I couldn't tweak anything in Gimp to give me the same effect. Photoshop is just better, but Gimp is worthy in a "pinch" ... like when you're at a friend's house and need a quick photo tool to do some editing.

[elliott]

With all due respect, for the price difference I'd sure hope PhotoShop is better.

Yeah, Photoshop CS4 is $600, is it better than GIMP? Probably. Is it 600x better than GIMP? Not for my money.

I can't make my images look good in either editing program at the moment, because I really don't know how to use either of them effectively, but I am learning GIMP.

[Marc Sabatella]

FWIW, I think it is important to understand what you want to do before deciding which application is "best". Workflow is far more important to me than the specific controls I get on any indiviual picture. A program like Aperture that allows completely non-destructive editing and has a host of batch facilities (at least I assume it does, because it is so often compared to Lightroom) is worth way more to me than a program like the GIMP that is much more focused on doing things one image at a time and to do them in a destructive manner or requiring you to use a cumbersome "layer" interface just to get the sort of nondestructive capability one presumably takes for granted in Aperture.

I use ACDSee Pro, which is similar in concept to Aperture or LR. It doesn't have layers, and doesn't have much you can do on a pixel-by-pixel basis, so if I want to burn or dodge or do much cloning beyond dust removl, I do drag out the GIMP from time to time. But for basic color and exposure correction, I *MUCH* prefer the very simple non-destructive workflow of a program like ACDSee Pro or Aperture or Lightroom to something like the GIMP.

Photoshop CS is in some ways the best of both worlds, but of course you pay for that, both in actual money, and in a user interface that is rather more cumbersome for the sort of basic workflow tasks I am talking about.

[Syb]

Destructive? That is now how I see the GIMP. And working with layers is not cumbersome in my eyes. But I have not been using Lightroom. That may be a lot easier of course.

However, when I change pictures, I will always depart from the RAW image, mod it in Pentax Photolab, and then do some more editing in the GIMP. This allows me to keep the DNG file unchanged, and always go back to what came out of the camera. I like working that way.

Isn't lightroom remembering your changes, and linking them to an image. If that image is deleted or replaced (or its folder), the pointer feature may encounter broken link errors or won't it?

[Marc Sabatella]

Destructive? That is now how I see the GIMP.

I mean this term in the sense it is used with respect to editing programs: a destructive editor alters the actual pixel data, a non-destructive one does not. As long as you use layers, the GIMP is non-destructive, but if you simply go in to an image and, say, raise the exposure level, then save the image, the original RGB data is altered. That makes it destructive. Only if you take the time to set up a layer and make your changes there is it non-destructive. As far as I know, there is no way to edit JPEG non-destructively in the GIMP - it has to be a format tha supports layers, and you have to do your editing using a layer to make it non-destructive. With LR, everything is non-destructive, always.

As for how cumbersome it is, can you, say, select 40 images, increase the exposure 1/2 EV, hit Done, and have all 40 images automatically processed with that increased exposure while leaving any other settings you may have made alone? And never have to convert the file to another format? That entire operation is as simple as I just described and takes about 5 seconds with the kind of program I am talking about. It's just a different way of working that's about as different from a program like the GIMP as a windows-oriented graphical user interface is from the command line OS interfaces of the 1970's.

However, when I change pictures, I will always depart from the RAW image, mod it in Pentax Photolab, and then do some more editing in the GIMP. This allows me to keep the DNG file unchanged, and always go back to what came out of the camera.

Right, but in order to do this, you have to first save out of Photolab as a JPEG or TIFF - thus "locking in" your Photolab settings and requiring you to start all over to revist them. You end up with two copies of your image - the original DNG and the processed TIFF. With a program like LR, TIFF are not needed at any stage.

Isn't lightroom remembering your changes, and linking them to an image. If that image is deleted or replaced (or its folder), the pointer feature may encounter broken link errors or won't it?

I suppose it's possible if you go out of your way to mess it up, but under normal circumstances, that just wouldn't happen.

[newmikey]

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

Without knowing exactly what you did in each program, which steps you took, what plugins actions or script-fu's were used and without having a person well-able to operate both programs with confidence compare what you did on Gimp to what you did on PS, your statement proves nothing.

You just said you do not know how to work with GIMP, no shame in that. Quite possibly you don't know PS that well either and just used a ready-made action or plugin.

To be honest, I looked at both images and the GIMP version is a little flat but realistic. The PS version is horribly oversaturated and oversharpened to my, admittedly untrained, eye.

I struggled with GIMP just as I struggled way back with PSP, chances are I'd struggle with PS CS4, the probability is close to 100%. What does that prove? Just that I'm a lousy, untrained image processor. If I were any good, I'd get results on whatever you'd let me work with. Same discussion with cameras. Great camera paired with lousy photographer gives lousy shots.

You want to use PS, use it! Don't look for excuses to do so, it's a free world.

[tux08902]

I was a GIMP user, but migrated all of my systems (which run Unix) to Adobe applications. I just can't use GIMP.

[Clicker]

I was a GIMP user, but migrated all of my systems (which run Unix) to Adobe applications. I just can't use GIMP.

I'm the opposite, just switched this desktop back to Linux only and will make an effort this time to learn GIMP and similar; whereas, before Lightroom and Photoshop were second nature to me.

[Wombat]

Like many here, I find GIMP a bit of a mixed bag. It has the ability to produce some magic images, with layers (which, like Marc, I find tedious, but some people love 'em), curves, some excellent filters and plenty of tools that are easy to learn and use. There's now even a plugin that lets you use PS filters. On the downside, it doesn't handle RAW or 16 bit images. The Ufraw plugin is a horror interface, really unintuitive and development on the 16 bit issue has been painfully slow. When those two items are fixed I may find myself using it more when I'm in Linux, though I think Krita has the wood on it for ease of use and features.

In your situation, I'd be asking myself what is it that I want to achieve that can't be done in Aperture? When you're clear on that, you'll have a better idea of what to add to your software collection.

[denisv]

I think the newest GIMP handles 16bit PNG files, since that's what I exported my photos as from RawTherapee. Well either that or it doesn't warn you that it's discarding data, like it does with TIFF files.

As far as my GIMP vs photoshop postprocessing comparison being scientific... I didn't say it was. But with my limit knowledge, it was much easier to achieve results with photoshop, and I did notice that even relatively basic things like image resizing and JPEG compression are much better in photoshop.

I've used only Linux for the past four years and I find going back to Windows... painful. I would rather not use. But I've found that (expensive, yes) Windows software gives noticably better results. At some point I will probably go back to Linux and run Windows in a virtual machine with kvm.

[innershell]

Like many here, I find GIMP a bit of a mixed bag. It has the ability to produce some magic images, with layers (which, like Marc, I find tedious, but some people love 'em), curves, some excellent filters and plenty of tools that are easy to learn and use. There's now even a plugin that lets you use PS filters. On the downside, it doesn't handle RAW or 16 bit images. The Ufraw plugin is a horror interface, really unintuitive and development on the 16 bit issue has been painfully slow. When those two items are fixed I may find myself using it more when I'm in Linux, though I think Krita has the wood on it for ease of use and features.

In your situation, I'd be asking myself what is it that I want to achieve that can't be done in Aperture? When you're clear on that, you'll have a better idea of what to add to your software collection.

Let add to the pitfalls that you have to be a computer programmer to write a GIMP action script. Such simple tasks that I do over and over again cannot be easily scripted without hours of learning the script-fu language.

[roentarre]

Moved to software section