Photoshop or Gimp

[monaghan]

The Gimp has a Photoshop version, google for Gimpshop, this claims to have a Photoshop style menu system, personally this confused me, so I went back to the native Gimp interface.

If you're earning your living from it, then go with the easiest for you so you can invest more of your time earning, if it's for occasional use, then I'd go with Gimo as it's free

[Rory]

Gimp is OK and really not very hard to get used to. It's big advantage is price, and for a lot of people who don't want to use an editor professionally, that is a big consideration.
The major downside is that it doesn't do CMYK, so you can't use it to prepare anything for commercial printers.

(And yes, Ramfir CS3 is the latest. So? Most users use about 15% of PS anyway, and whilst the new tools in CS3 are pretty fab, how many people want to accurately desaturate pictures for adjusted B/W representation to the extent CS3 allows...as an example? I love it, but like a lot of software it has become bloated. CS2 is great, hell I could get a result in PS4, which I still have somewhere.)

[Shane McManus]

Nothing compares to Photoshop...

[lin robinson]

Some other programs do some things better.

[Shane McManus]

I agree they probably can, I use Photoshop on a daily basis and I have tried other programs but Photoshop just seems right...

[lin robinson]

That is what a lot of it comes down to. PS feels all wrong to me, as do Nikon cameras.

I use some programs just for one thing they do well. I use Microsoft Photo Editor (of all things) because they've got this great little magic wand for turning selected colors transparent--with selected similarity--and a gamma slider on their brightness/contrast/hue control.

I like GIMP's alpha to logo filter-you can whip out cool logos in seconds.

Paint.net has a really great way of zooming, positioning, rotating one layer on another.

I use PAINT a lot, actually. I haven't found anything better for blocking colors and love the way you can assemble things with a selectable dropout color.

Word processors used to be like that. Back in the DOS days (remember the little shacks selling shareware programs for a couple of bucks on floppy disks?) I used a half dozen of them, some just for certain abilities. Now it's Word Uber Alles and there are things you can't do, but tough titty, chumps. Wait for our next version which will take up twice the disk space and be even less workable. Runs only on ReVista.

[bumfluff]

You don't like Nikons either?

There's really no hope for you, is there

[lin robinson]

When I worked at that I was a Konica man. Nikons just always seemed to have all the controls and metering backwards, to me.

Of course that was in the bygone Age of Film. Totally different now.

[harding125]

I've used Photoshop for years and have just started to look at Gimp. Gimp looks OK and the shortcomings might just make up for the cost difference. I'd say give Gimp a go for a while and then see which is better.

Gary

[Arleigh]

I have been using Photoshop for many years and I really find it the best image editing application...