Is GIMP a viable PP program for photography?

[LocalHero1953]

I hope we can eventually get away from telling people who choose not to sign up for PS CC & LR that their thinking is seriously wrong, illegitimate or whatever.

Ironically, all this focusing on PS's subscription model has reactivated my GAS: the tempter in my left ear is saying "why don't you give it a try for a year and see how easy it would be to extract yourself from it if you decide you don't want it? And with LR 6 on the horizon you'll have to think about it anyway". Little Miss Common Sense in the other ear is having a hard time making herself heard "but you don't need it...."

[Manfred M]

I would differ, IMHO...no other PP software has the length of learning curve time,
nor the capabilities of Photoshop.

Gimp would qualify as having a similar learning curve...

[chauncey]

Want...need...has no bearing on the decision.

[ajohnw]

I hope we can eventually get away from telling people who choose not to sign up for PS CC & LR that their thinking is seriously wrong, illegitimate or whatever.

It's water off a ducks back for me Mike. On the other hand when this sort of thing has cropped up comments from none adobe people that they just stay out of it crop up. After all we all live in poverty and in real terms are the pits of humanity and can't even afford to eat properly otherwise why on earth would we do it.

Look what some one can get for sub 60 quid complete with pretty advanced colour correction

http://product.corel.com/help/AfterS...justments.html

John
-

[Black Pearl]

Look at it this way:

1. Scrat about the net downloading for all sorts of weird beard bits of software from all sorts of manufacturers needing all sorts of odd unrelated workflows, with little or no support and no hope of long term stability.

2. Spend a trifling sum of money each month and get the best photo software on the market with a solid workflow that links multiple bits of hardware, incredible compatibility with the latest cameras and lenses, instant support, thousands of online tutorials, rock solid stability and a proven track record of getting the results people want.

Up to you folks.

[ajohnw]

Look at it this way:

1. Scrat about the net downloading for all sorts of weird beard bits of software from all sorts of manufacturers needing all sorts of odd unrelated workflows, with little or no support and no hope of long term stability.

2. Spend a trifling sum of money each month and get the best photo software on the market with a solid workflow that links multiple bits of hardware, incredible compatibility with the latest cameras and lenses, instant support, thousands of online tutorials, rock solid stability and a proven track record of getting the results people want.

Up to you folks.

I just love the way you lot now throw in the money aspect over and over again - couldn't you afford it before?

The reason they have changed is pretty clear when this page is set to yearly. Ailing company going no where.

http://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NASDAQ:ADBE

On the other hand they also seem to have diversified

http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/adobe-systems

Interesting and very unusual solution to the sort of problems they have.

Now we are down to workflows - the order in which things are done. Pathetic and not worth even commenting on. I will add one. I have several. What's wrong with that.

John
-

[Adrian]

A little harsh John.

When you have a lot of experience, workflow may come naturally. However, many people looking at sites like this will have no idea. I had been using Aperture for some years before I was shown by a pro a workflow methodology that I have now adopted. This covers everything from downloading, backups, archiving and of course image processing. A surprising amount of time can be wasted by amateurs doing things in an ineffective or sub-optimal way.

It seems to me that there is a large measure of agreement here that the cost of the software is not all that relevant. For some of us the opportunity cost of our time may be a big factor. For others, quite possibly most people, simplicity is key.

On forums like this there is no value in finger pointing, but the different perspectives gleaned from different experiences are interesting and informative.

PS : you can't really draw the conclusion that Adobe is an "ailing company going nowhere" from the link you posted. It has for example shown consistent and marked growth in normalised EPS (Earnings Per Share) in each of the last four quarters.
The balance sheet is stable at $10bn and the business is cash generative when investment cash flows are stripped. Doesn't look ailing to me. Adrian

[ajohnw]

True Adrian it was harsh.

One aspect I have tried to get across and Colin after a fashion actually is that PP gets more and more complex as packages get more and more sophisticated. I do think that represents something of a problem acquiring the entire adobe photo suite. It's great for some one who can use it. Can others resist working on images in a sensible order and in the right way rather than diving into the deep end. I do feel that something like Rawtherapee does have something to offer there even though it has the same problem. With that people might find that getting a raw image that is suitable for further processing 1st before adding the bells and whistles is rather important.

Adobe - I clicked anual and looked at the % profits and % margins and also noticed that the gross revenue has fallen following year on year growth in respect to revenue. All signs that a company needs to do something and they have.

John
-

[LocalHero1953]

I suspect there will always be those who avoid pp because of limitations in IT skills, and those who would rather explore every remote pathway of pp software and tools just for the pleasure of it. Each to their own (whatever excuse they give in public ).

But there is another spectrum between those who genuinely want to minimise manipulation, and those who see any tool as valid to get the best image. This same argument was played out in the last century: "pictorialism" and "straight photography". Ansel Adams was a proponent of the latter, though he was happy to reprint the same image many times to get a different effect. With historical hindsight, both approaches seem valid, and I hope we can take the same view of the same issues in the digital age.

[Mike Buckley]

Ailing company going no where.

If you really believe Adobe is or was an ailing company going nowhere, I wonder if you have any idea how many companies would just love to be in their situation. Describing Adobe that way is flawed analysis in my opinion.

[lukaswerth]

Okay, at long last my two pennies:

I tried Gimp some time ago, worked a bit with it also, but never really got familiar. Since I have taken up Photoshop, CS6 in my case (no hurry to switch to CC, although i would if necessary), I personally have never looked back.
Reasons: I tried Gimp 3 years back, and I couldn't find that many tutorials for it. I never managed to get its raw machine to work (used Raw Therapee instead, good program), and the GIMP is an 8bit program, whereas my camera produces 14bit picture files. I honestly don't know the practical consequences of that in every situation, but it certainly limits color depth.

I learned Photoshop in steps, with tutorials, working first with CS5, then with CS6. My aim is generally not to manipulate or combine photos, but to interpret image files the way I feel they should. Photoshop gets me there, no other program does. GIMP might perhaps, but then I would need another learning curve, and I wasted enough time in my life learning software which lost its relevance quicker than you can say "obsolete". Also, I don't know whether the GIMP is able to produce, for instance, luminosity masks (anyone knows?), I wouldn't know which are all the ways and shortcuts to tweak a mask I am more or less familiar with in PS, and this is really essential to me for my efforts of interpretation.
I am somewhat concerned sometimes that even with PS I follow, so to speak, industrial highways rather than following my own concepts, but then again PS has so many possibilities, so many open ends, allows you to master it in your own way. I think I consider myself lucky that here is an industrial standard tool which is accessible for everyone - unlike, let's say, a 180MB Phase One with assorted lenses and what not, or the soft- and hardware needed to produce James Cameron's "Avatar".

Lukas

[Black Pearl]

Now we are down to workflows - the order in which things are done. Pathetic and not worth even commenting on.

Hahahahahahahahaha!

I'm never sure if you are just on the wind up, genuinely convinced you are right or spamming. For this I'm going with the spamming assumption because you clearly can't think that and its a weird way to wind up a forum full of photographers.

[jcuknz]

I really wonder what all this talk about editing programmes has to do with photography, the expression of ideas rather than pre-occupation with technicalities ...I tried GIMP and it lasted no more than 24 hours in my computer, but then I am a confirmed Paint Shop Pro user which meets my requirements, as others find with other programmes.

[Richard Lundberg]

There's the geek way (GIMP, RawTherapee) and the corporate way (Photoshop, PaintShop Pro). You can't render intent to your screen in any of them. Their space profiles don't have anything but relative intent. You probably can't see the other intents very well on an sRGB monitor anyway. I know that I can actually see all four intents when I print to my six color Epson using Photoshop manages colors and the correct Epson printer and paper profiles. It's possible to go to the ICC and get an sRGB profile with intents and install it so that you can do the intents to your screen. Color management is still in its infancy, so just use what you can handle and bang on it til it works.

[ajohnw]

There's the geek way (GIMP, RawTherapee) and the corporate way (Photoshop, PaintShop Pro). You can't render intent to your screen in any of them. Their space profiles don't have anything but relative intent. You probably can't see the other intents very well on an sRGB monitor anyway. I know that I can actually see all four intents when I print to my six color Epson using Photoshop manages colors and the correct Epson printer and paper profiles. It's possible to go to the ICC and get an sRGB profile with intents and install it so that you can do the intents to your screen. Color management is still in its infancy, so just use what you can handle and bang on it til it works.

Strange that I can see all intents when I go from raw. I'm amazed this thread is still up too.

John
-

[William W]

Going back to the OP perspective, I would say people often get fixated on arguing the toss about PS / CS without considering the biggest cost. [TIME]

I am highly computer literate. I am an amateur photographer. I run a fairly large business and the reason I make this point is by far and away my biggest constraint is time. Time to learn things and time to implement things. The difference between The difference between £10 a month and free is irrelevant to me (and probably most people). What makes all the difference is how accessible are the programme features to help me do what I want, and how reliably will the programme give me access to my digital archive over the next few years.


. . . I looked at GIMP quiet carefully. It seemed like many free programmes, somewhat thrown together with a lot of solutions to problems I don't have. It is a powerful tool, but I don't necessarily see open source as an advantage as many others do. It can lead to cluttered and illogical software structure, and a tendency for useful development to be very slow. Commercial organisations like Adobe are incentivised to deliver excellence. . .

. . . The learning curve / upgrade path from Lightroom to Photoshop is achievable but LR doesn't require much investment in learning the software. My wife can attest to this. If I were the OP and cost constrained, I would start with Lightroom 5. This is just based on personal experience.

Sage perspective.

My view is that, irrespective of one's Station and Task - One's TIME is always the most precious resource and should be considered as such in all one’s choices: however most often it is not.

*

Unfortunate it was those reasons outlined, that Colin chose a Sabbatical.

WW

[RedZebra13]

So John; my conclusion with all the various responses is that yes, Gimp is indeed a viable option because after all, you can edit images with it; especially if you use the free RAW converters out there.

The flip side is a question why would anyone bother, other than that they want to avoid using Adobe products. This is the old MS Office versus OpenOffice argument; one is free and one is mainstream. Why is MS Office so much more popular that OpenOffice, given the cost advantage of free?

I would submit this is the same reason I would suggest the Photoshop over Gimp discussion. Unless one does not want to send any of their hard earned money to Adobe or one likes messing around with non-standard software, there simply is no good reason to use GIMP, given the very low cost of the PS subscription. I quite agree with Colin; at $10/month, very few people have a legitimate argument these days for not using it.

The reason they bother is the same reason the world chose the Windows operating system - Aggressive marketing (and questionable / underhanded tactics) and safety in numbers. I ran a printing and graphics business for nearly a decade and used a variety of "professional" software (I was on the bleeding edge of technology at that time - the first in my area to do computer to plate to press). I remember the days when Adobe was making a fortune selling fonts - that is until CorelDraw came around. Funny how Illustrator seemed to mimic most of Corel's functionality. Adobe was (and in my opinion, still is a company for the elite). And yes, they do make a "good" products. The real question is: Who determines what "Standard" software is? You? Some group of elites? Or those brainwashed by Adobe? Or the company that does the best marketing? Also funny that your mindset it $10 per month instead of at least $120 a year FOREVER! For some of us in the real world that's a LOT of money. Of course here are always those who believe that if you pay more it must be better.

Aside from the reason above, there are reasons that OpenOffice is not as "popular". I found it to be painfully slow on my older computers compared with MS Office. There is also nothing that compares to MS Access in OpenOffice. Gimp doesn't have those issues, it simply lacks some high-end graphic capabilities at the moment.

There are many reasons to use Gimp. If you're like me, and do all gratis work, why would you need Photoshop or any Adobe products for that mater? Even if you run a business, Gimp is an excellent choice with a great user support base and community - all free. It's a good rock-solid product.

It's sad to read so many narrow-minded, somewhat Adobe fanatical and unsubstantiated responses over such a simple question. Especially when there are clear reasons why you'd use one over the other. For example Adobe would be the clear choice if you were in a high-end production environment.

[ajohnw]

It's a fact Red......... that Manfred's post is typical of a general argument against using things like the GIMP. The only reason is money which basically for many users is complete and utter rubbish. Some do like the free aspect though, only to be expected.

Next comes the standard aspect. Who says Adobe products are standard. They are not a standard in any form what so ever. It's what they choose to sell. Acrobat - people should give Foxit a go. DJVU is way way quicker than Acrobat which is based on really ancient pre PC software technology anyway.

Then there is the Gold Standard comment. Fact GIMP can still do some things PS can't and no doubt these will migrate across at some point. They have in the past even down to raw conversion.

I've long suspected that people who reckon that others who run Linux and OS don't want to give money to this and that terrible company really feel that way themselves. Otherwise I can't see why on earth they would think that. Most people who run Linux do so because they want to. Often because they are sick to death of some aspects of Windows. These days many people would be better off running a Mac anyway. More and more people seem to be changing. I wonder why? Linux isn't for everybody but again most have no idea at all what it can offer. Trouble and strife some times but a lot depends on what precise platform is being run. There are several flavours.

The really curious thing about the GIMP is that if people mention what they actually do to a shot there isn't that much difference. As a for instance I've seem comments such as a package must be able to brush a tone curve. One way of doing that in the GIMP is to brush a quick mask and then do what ever to it. In essence most things that GIMP can do let alone a tone curve. Is that significantly different - ye and no. Another method uses 2 layers and the clone tool which will do other things as well. Many other things that people do are equally similar. People who have looked probably never noticed that some of the tool options have layer modes or even wondered why. .Beginners don't usually do things this way - the problem I mentioned immediately. One click wonders are limited in most OS packages but the plugins can be full of surprises.

Truth is that people who glibly comment about the GIMP don't have any idea at all what can be done with it. I still have long way to go. I've described it as unfinished. Really it's a case that the people who tend to do work on it are well aware of how to use it. Sad that really but variation should be encouraged rather than having a single huge bloated application available even if it does only cost $10 a month.

I pointed out that Adobe is an ailing going no where company. Look at the graphs on the page I linked to and think about what they mean. They really did need to do something. Be interesting to see if it works or if some one else takes them on as it wouldn't be difficult.

John
-

[ajohnw]

To get some sanity back into the thread. Robin, Colin and some others might remember this one. 1250 ISO D7000 shot with a horrible earlier Nikon AF FF lens. I used Corel Aftershot Pro on it to see what it's noise removal software will do. It's rather good for such simple controls. Here is the full res shot. The white halo along the roof is common for lenses that need this much chromatic aberration correction.

http://www.23hq.com/ajohnw/photo/16680858/original

I left the grass green as is but did reduce a brown patch left and back from a bench using it's LAB adjustments which are very easy to use.

It has adjustment layers and I probably haven't made best use of the fill light. The tone range that covers is adjustable. Past that, local adjustments etc I have no idea what it can do if anything.

I downloaded Corel on trial to obtain a camera ICC file for one of Manfred's shot and used it just as a raw converter. Open source software had no problem sorting that shot out but I did use a Linux only package that has had a bit of a fresh look at what adjustments are needed. One problem with open source raw development can be obtaining good camera profiles. Some packages however can use ones which are freely available and kept up to date - Rawtherapee for instance. Things aren't so simple using Ufraw. The developers seem to need a kick up the backside. It seems stuck where it is.

John
-

[Black Pearl]

Here's why I use Adobe software and why I still believe it is the best alround solution.

I was out at the weekend shooting some photographs for a local band to use for promotions and their upcoming album. Came back with around 600 shots from two different cameras. The CF card from the D300s went I to a card reader - Lightroom thumbnailed all the shots then I told it where to save the files and to make back-ups on my NAS drive as the shots are very important, I also named them, key worded them, and made sure that it automatically used the latest profiles to correct the CA's and apply lens corrections. Second card from the K30 went in with the same process.

What I ended up with in a matter of a few clicks was a fully searchable and backed up folder of named shots from two cameras that were automatically arranged into date/time order and had all the basics done ready for sorting and processing.

The lead singer was heading away on holiday the next day and I had promised a handful of images to give him and the band an idea of what had been taken and what 'looks' could be achieved. There were several sets of photographs that matched i.e. all the band members had individually stood in the same spot and had matched portraits taken. Lightroom is perfect for this as you can 'sort' one and apply the setting a to all the other files. It is also extremely simple for applying a mix of styles creating duplicates of each shot while still keeping an open history so they can be tweaked at a later date. In a matter of a few minutes I had applied a mix of my saved pre-sets, fixed a few WB issues, applied noise reduction where needed, output sharpened where needed (at the correct level for the specific size) and tweaked either individual shots or whole groups of files.
Still within Lightroom I exported images to DropBox at a full resolution but compressed so the band could see them at a good size, emailed smaller images to the lead singer direct and exported a few to Photoshop CC 2014 to give a final polish to. These polished files were then automatically saved back into the Lightroom library without any further user input and added to the export lists.

There are a whole bunch of image processing and file management processes going on there but it was all achieved by one brands products and it's is all achievable with a very small number of user inputs. I could have used Gimp, Rawtherapee, Coral and god only knows what other bits of unconnected software but I don't need to. Also if at any point I had hit a problem or had an issue I could have gotten instant support direct from Adobe.

I don't have to use Adobe and their fantastic CC package but honestly I can't think of a single reason why I wouldn't want to.