I wanna learn how to make some post pro and other pretty advanced stuff and I looked at tutorials and only found for photoshop (full, pro, I’m not sure what it’s called). And if I look at the tutorials I see that there are some things that’s missing in my program. Those feutures seem to be pretty important so I want those feutures. Now I have to choose - should I learn GIMP (and be able to make more advanced images) or should I stick with Phoshop Elements (and stick with pretty simple pictures). Is GIMP better then Photoshop Elements?
BTW for people that don’t know what photoshop Elemnts is it is an easier, program that lacks some feutures that the real photoshop have.
yeah, not by a lot though… photoshop elements has some nice brushes and brush features that the gimp doesn’t have
however, in elements I don’t belive you can make your own brushes… and you certainly don’t have layer masks [an absolute MUST once you learn to use them]
I’ve got PS CS, PS Elements and GIMP. Of the three, I use GIMP the most. Elements is a -severely- crippled version of Photoshop. You don’t even have access to channels. If you google for Elements tips, you’ll find that there are ways to work around many of it’s limitations, but I found most of the work-arounds a pain to do. Another big negative about Elements is that it has a number of big TSR apps that sit in your memory eating up space… argh, I hate that kind of stuff. I’ve since pulled Elements off my hard drive.
Photoshop CS is just too big and bloated IMHO. I come from a background with Photoshop (been using it for over a decade), and there are still somethings that PS does that GIMP can’t or PS does better (like text kerning and anti-aliasing). But for most of my day-to-day grunt graphics work I prefer GIMP.
Wow, I’m surprised this hasn’t turned into an app vs app war… The people who posted here have said un-biased comments about Gimp vs Photoshop…
I personally use an old version of Photoshop, photoshop 6.0. It and Gimp are virtually identicle, though I’ve found that the Gimp has things Photoshop doesn’t have (the Make Tilable) and things that the Gimp doesn’t have (Offset filter). I use one for one thing and the other for another thing. I usually stick to Photoshop, because I happen to have it, but it’s not because it’s better, it’s just because I’m used to it and I know what it has. Gimp, on the other hand, is similar, I can easily figure out how to use it, but some features go by different names, it’s set up slightly differently, and I’ve found that the text tool doesn’t work on my computer for some un-known reason. The program goes un-responsive whenever I try to use it, so I stick to Photoshop.
If you don’t already own a copy of the REAL photoshop, I highly recomend the Gimp, but it’s a personal preference; if you like Photoshop’s GUI better, use it. If you don’t want to spend money on upgrades, keep your current version and load Gimp, and use both.
You can move the panels all to one tool window, which makes it a bit easier to use IMHO. Play around with the interface and I think you’ll get the hang of it.
If you -must- have a PS looking interface, there’s “GIMPshop”, a mod of GIMP that looks like PS (google will find the web page). But from what I hear it’s a bit buggy and is based on an older version of GIMP.
But like I said, now that I have about a year with GIMP I’m finding it’s work flow to be even faster than PS, but it’s all about what works for you. Good luck!
Lots of people will suggest GimpShop… I wouldn’t. It seems that it’s always been extremely unstable. Anyway, once you dive into some tutorials, GImp will start making sense. Also, 2.4 will be out soon and it is way nicer than 2.2 (they just released 2.3.9 development branch and have already said that 2.3.10 will hopefully be the last one before 2.4).
no comparison between gimp and elements. elements doesn’t even support vector curves. it’s like they took photoshop, left all the ‘cool’ stuff in and took everything that was truly useful, such as vector curves, and real batch processing out. elements is like a trial version of photoshop, whereas gimp is the full package. also, try making an image pipe in photoshop elements. not possible. also, no reflection maps, nothing to speak of animation-wise aside from making simple gifs, the list goes on.
btw, a couple of corrections, gimp does have offset, it’s in the layer menu, and you can make custom brush tips with photoshop elements from the file menu, i think you choose ‘save brush’ or some such thing. similar to saving a pattern.
Ah, I just re-loaded my GTK runtime, and it works now :D. But what about “Layer Styles,” for text effects? I can’t even figure out how to make a drop shadow!
Right now the text effects are holding me back from deleting Photoshop.
Then it’s settled; I’ll switch to the GIMP after Summer, after Google’s bounty adds lots of new features that I won’t know how to use. This will clear my conscious a little.
