Hear, hear!
There could be hope for serious competition against Photoshop if Spiral Graphics starts moving their Genetica software towards a more more general photo/image editing app (expanding from its origins as a seamless texture maker)
http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/gen2tour/index.htm
They already have drawing tools, filters, and nodes that can all work together (you can even use the procedural generation features to texture your work), all they really need at this point are some photo specific tools and maybe some more artistic brush capabilities.
Genetica IS nice - though the transition to more general editing would put it out of the market segment Spiral Graphics is looking at. The problem is cmyk, colour management, etc. That is not to say that it wouldn’t be possible: I for one would applaud the node-based setup approach.
I’ve done some more research, and Vips looks quite nice as a replacement for heavy-duty image processing. Perhaps if someone could plug this into a node-like interface, and a better designer-friendly GUI… Who knows.
It IS software evangelism if someone who states that the software needs improvement is labled as a “whinging twat” and generally attacked.
I would agree with Herbert123, It would be great to see a new, fresh approach to 2d image processing, which is better then, or at least on par with Photoshop. It does see ridiculous that there are so many well known 3d apps and so few 2d apps. When I think of 3D I automatically think of Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Blender and then more as I think longer. With 2d, I just think Photoshop, and then GIMP…
How to miss the point!
I was saying that people who point out issues can either act as reasonable people or they can be whinging twats!
and you seem to be saying that anyone responding in any way is a software evangalist…
well, they may or may not be…
anyone who points out a workaround usually gets thanked with “fanboy” or a "ugh, 3 steps? in software brandx I can do it in 1! OMG it’s unworkable!
Fact is open source projects are often “not quite there” and the missing gaps are obvious to anyone who’s used a variety of software… it’s not fanboyist or evangelical to be realistic about this…
the trouble is it’s easy to see what we can’t do rather than to enjoy what we can!
I don’t know whether to find it ironic or not, but it seems that there’s just as much hate for blender as gimp out there…
and it’s still sad that a thread that’s a call to action for coders just gets a debate on what’s missing in gimp…
sad but all of these things have been on the roadmap for years… it’s still the best open source alternative to photoshop.
nobody mentions paint shop pro… (I haven’t used it in years BTW) but it’s still going and was a cheap commercial alternative to PS…
Been using Paint Shop Pro since it was still owned by JASC. Use Photoshop at work and was looking for an alternative for common image editing needs. The reviews were very good. Didn’t like it at first, but I was sold. Customizable, has some unique features, etc.
I use Gimp and it seems adequate for probably any amateur photographer. Most I know still don’t even shoot manual mode.
I think it’s a personal choice but I really like to support FOSS when I can.
I think it’s important in our society to be able to roll your own. I miss cars you could fix yourself as well.
If I had craploads of money and my sole income came from my art, I would buy the industry standards.
I was using Adobe Premier back in 94 on a 486DX system before windows came out. When Win 95 was released, they wanted me to spend the 650bux all over again and I haven’t used their products since. Don’t hate them but got sick of paying for basically the same software again every year with only minor improvements.
We had also CorelDraw Suite at work and Photo Paint was the other major half of the suite. I liked CorelDraw’s workflow better than Illustrator. Photo Paint never really clicked on me. But it was Photoshop’s main rival in the image editing war. I really think it still is. And if I have to spend money and go pro, I’d go for CorelDraw bundled with Photo Paint. There were things in Photo Paint you can’t find in Photoshop and most of the features that were missing that users were complaining about back then were fixed and added. Photo Paint’s user base is still solid to this day. I was wondering why Corel gave up competing with Adobe. I found part of the answers to that in this link:
Something that i dont think was mentioned here, other than as a passing criticism is the fact that on OSX gimp runs under x windows (x11), which is not ideal and does not work well at all, i believe the same goes for inkscape.
This is a HUGE dealbreaker. Granted, in 3d and and design for screen osx is not the forerunner, but I do not know a single print designer who does not use a mac, and only a few screen(web&other) designers who don’t and they are usually on the more technical side of that field. (this could be just europe but the point is still valid)
Now, i know apple has its problems, and a lot of opensource people have issues with them, but if your doing 2d graphics and you need a big user pool excluding osx is a huge mistake.
An even bigger mistake is not devoting all the available resources they have at getting cymk and cms into the program. I would say a large majority of “professional” photoshop users have used it for print at somestage, and certainly with its price a big percentage use it for print on regular basis.
So excluding both mac and print users, i would say you’ve cut down your numbers far too much to actually make a success out of it.
It’s been mention here to take blenders core gui and some elements and turn that into a 2d graphics application. I personally think that simply because it supports osx that it would be a stronger basis from the very start than where gimp is now.
I think opensource needs a user pool that reflects the paid equivilent’s, they might do a lot of things wrong and charge inexcusable amounts but their user base is what you want. Opensource projects that spring from an operating system not having the software such as gimp will probably never get to where they could simply because if the software wasn’t available on their OS in the first place their userbase isn’t either. Thats not definite but with opensource depending on its userpool its like starting a fight with an open artery.
and for the record I am an osx user, simply because my profession requires it, im building a machine in the near future that will be ubuntu and for rendering/3d, This is just to clarify im not trying to start an OS debate i think they are pointless.
Oh Man Double Posted!
True.
But “Them’s the breaks.”
People are people.
From what I’ve read online looking for when the next release will be, searching for news in the past, (because I do actively use it now), it sounds like there are some political problems with the development crowd of the GIMP.
So at the very least for those of us here, it’s nice to get a sense of what it’s missing, what alternatives are out there.
This is a discussion thread afterall.
I see your point though Michael.
crazy server issue here !!!
Well
when I started to study Design Coral was often positioned as the wanna be Design software.
Today the main key element why I would always go Adobe is this:
They all use the Color Engine which means I have no soft-proof differences
The interface is the same
The files and formats are well established
Adobe invented and perfectly uses PDF
But that is only for straight print.
Coral offers a great sketch application Sketch Pad and I know from few people who
are not big in design just want to edit images etc that Coral’s photo tools are great.
A fact is - which often is not mentioned - Photoshop is not really that good
of a drawing or paint program at all. Even for complex compositions it lacks tools.
Plus nothing is more stupid then Photoshop path tools.
However as mentioned it still satisfies the need of most users.
The example I’m trying to establish is that Blender is no longer able to do what I need it to. Just like GIMP. I have been using Blender for years, since about 2004. I’ve always just got around the problems and made do. I’m not going to drag the whole thing up again, because (and this is part of the problem) nobody here cares. Recently I’ve started doing work where the limitations of Blender are costing me a lot of time and frustration. So I came here, as a Blender user, and let it be known that I’d like to see some progress on this front. I’m not a dev, I don’t know Python or C so the only thing I can do is come here and say that I’m having a problem.
Now when I said that I thought this area should be addressed, I was attacked. One guy accused me of being a sock puppet and even one of the devs said that they didn’t use that feature that much so I shouldn’t complain. The attitude given was that I didn’t have a problem, I obviously wasn’t using it, otherwise I would know that there are no problems. Stop spreading your lies, Blender is perfect, get lost.
I am not advocating that the devs drop what they are doing every time someone comes on and says “I need this feature”, nobody would get anything done. But to attack people who criticise Blender, just because they are criticising Blender, IS software zealotry.
People will learn not to speak out if they have a problem with Blender - they’ll just go and learn something else.
If your “problem with Blender” is that Feature X isn’t getting done fast enough, I’m all for people not speaking out about it.
It’s the workflow differences to some people, ie, Photoshop vs Photo-paint. Many just find Photoshop easier to follow. (Same thing with Illustrator vs CorelDraw.) Corel have addressed printing issues long time ago, so there is no longer any significant differences in those areas. Interface and workflow is tricky. Once you get the hang of Corel’s you’d find that they make more sense than Adobe’s as they make you save lots of clicking. CorelDraw is one shining example. But Adobe’s fame and exposure in this arena made it difficult for companies to compete. They’re not necessarily better, in my opinion.
Vips/Nip2 is nice as"herbert123" mentioned
I have been using it for many years ( since 2005 )
it works VERY will with very large images 1 gig plus
i have a 24 Gig image that is opens in 3 sec.
BUT it was never intended to replace Gimp
it was designed for working with tiled images from a multi spectral camera having 24 or more layers PER image
an advanced version of hugin
with the ability to work on the whole image at one time on BIG images
and do it in 8 bit,16 bit unsigned ,16 bit signed, 32 bit singed /unsigned 64 bit float
i am just waiting for Gimp to work with 16 bit and 32 bit /layer images ( like Cinepaint)