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huh? Photoshop is not the sole province of "pros", I really beg to differ here. That really is serious misinformation.

There are huge differences between CS2 and Photoshop 7, both in terms of RAW file support via ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), liquify filter (great for getting rid of blubber on modelling shots), smart sharpen (more intelligent in sharpening than the traditional USM) and a host of other stuff that just doesn't jump out at me yet.

CS2 has NOT worked for a long time on wine, try having a look at the winehq logs and you'll see what I mean. The last few releases of wine have had Photoshop CS2 working, but there are extra steps required, and it doesn't work out of the box.

And no, as good as the GIMP is, it is no Photoshop replacement, and is quite poor in many areas in comparison imho.

Dave

None of the point and shoot type cameras support RAW, so you really need to be at least a camera geek to own a digital SLR or something that uses a RAW format.



Yeah I sure photograph a lot of models... This is a prime example of something only professional photographers do.



Not something the average camera owner is likely to use.

'huh? Photoshop is not the sole province of "pros", I really beg to differ here. That really is serious misinformation. '

Of course it's not just for Pros. That's why there are filters in Photoshop ;-)

Edited 2008-02-20 08:49 UTC

I'm not saying GIMP is a replacement but for the desktop user it is and does it's work good enough. Why on earth would the average desktop user want Photoshop to do simple photo tasks and spend £400 on that?

Photoshop is more of a pro's app, other same apps can do the same thing for free, so I dont see why non pros even need it(unless you need it for your training at collage). I've used Photoshop/image Ready years ago to do icons in WINE and it was a buggy and somewhat unstable, I doubt a professional would rely on WINE to much, what if updates break it because Adobe dont need to fix WINE so it runs their updates.

Edited 2008-02-20 10:37 UTC

If you just want to edit your photo's use GIMP

I'm a professional web developer and I find it frustrating to use GIMP, even for the most simple of tasks. What frustrates me even more is the fact that GIMP can do 99% of the stuff I need but fails badly in the UI department.

If I were in charge of GIMP development I'd stop any kind of development and concentrate all forces solely on UI redesign.

I don't believe that the GIMP UI should mimic Photoshop's, or any other program's for that matter.

The best idea would be to make it exceptionally customizable by using some sort of themes that would rearrange everything - the menus, the palettes, the keyboard shortcuts, the toolbars. If I come from Photoshop, I simply choose the Photoshop theme, if I come from Painshop Pro, I choose that theme, if I like the current GIMP UI, I choose the Classic GIMP theme and so on. This way people who want a Photoshop look-a-like get what they wish, and people who want the old GIMP are still happy.

If they actually managed to do that, Photoshop wouldn't be needed anymore on Linux, maybe except for print work. And anyway, it's better to have a native, reliable application than Photoshop running through a compatibility layer.

If it is just a matter of removing red eyes, resizing pictures or doing mundane stuff, free software such as the GIMP is more than enough. The casual photo editor does'nt need to spend $$$ on Photoshop just to do that.

Now if someone is looking for a 1rst class application, then spending the money on Photoshop can be justified.

One does'nt need OpenOffice or MSWord to create a single page document. Most of the times a simple application like Abiword will do.

I agree that the GIMP's UI could be made more intuitive and straightforward, but keep in mind that it comes from a command-line philosophy.

I'm not sure know how the ability to use Photoshop on Nixes fits into Google's strategy, unles they plan to release their own GNU/Linux flavor at some point.

Edited 2008-02-20 15:19 UTC

That's the main problem of GIMP. Just put a newbie in front of both GIMP and Photoshop, ask him to do some image manipulation and then see which program he would prefer and find easier to use.

I hope GIMP would have a major overhaul in its GUI department, trying to improve things from the usability point of view instead of just throwing in more features without a good overall design.

GIMP has the features most people need but it often fails in design and usability.

KDE's graphic app Krita is actually quickly getting better than GIMP in many fields.

Edited 2008-02-20 17:16 UTC

Have you tried Gimpshop?

What you describe would probably not be very hard, technically. You might head down to http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign and see if you can make some contribution, even if it's just the ideas in this post.

I'm sorry, but amateurs also need more than the red eye removals tools. As long as the Gimp developers will restrict their app to only photo editing stuff, how do you expect graphic artists to consider it seriously?

2D graphics are not just photo editing. It's like saying that a 500$+ machine is only able to produce letters, browse the web and remove red eyes on pictures. Amateurs are also painters, they like to do things more creative than editing family pictures. Ever heard of Deluxe Paint? TV Paint? How can we expect open source to attract the artist community when the tool we advocate isn't up to par with 20 years old applications?

Photoshop, along with Painter, is used daily by thousands of amateurs to produce beautiful drawings. Trying to do that in the Gimp when the tools are castrated by keeping the app's development only focused on photo editing is like trying to paint with a log. You can do it, but it's tedious and painful.

And even though I also use Inkscape intensively (and there's more chances to see Inkscape address graphic artists needs thanks to their open minded and productive developers), it's not there yet, it's not sure it will address these needs either, and if it does it will take more than a few years due to its vector nature.

AFAIK gimp is not focused on photo editing, quite the opposite, it is more focused on icon/web-design. At least originally. I think photo editing is also the area where it is most inferior to photoshop. I don't do any icon design stuff, but I've been told by numerous people who do that gimp is actually quite good at it, and not much inferior to photoshop. A lot of people have also moved on to do vector based graphics for this stuff, so the moved away from photoshop/gimp to illustrator/inkscape.

OK, open up a blank document in GIMP.

Using a paintbrush, draw a simple Y shape.

Now, draw an oval selection marquee around a portion of the center such that you have three rays of the Y inside it.

Take the paintbucket tool and position it inside one of those empty spaces. What do you expect to happen when you click the tool: the ray is filled, but only the ray because the selection marquee is supposed to also function as a boundary?

Instead, all three areas are filled inside the selection because the fill algorithm doesn't treat the marquee as a boundary. No other well-known image editor has this problem, even the original MacPaint from 1984.

This was brought to the developers' attention before 2.0 was released. After getting to the actual code maintainer, his response was that the bucket fill algorithm was "too optimized" to modify: i.e., the source code isn't documented and they can't understand it well enough to touch it.

Believe it or not this is a dealbreaker for some of us, firstly because it is a basic functionality (selections are boundaries, not just masks) and secondly because it says too much about how GIMP devs prioritize bugfixes.