[oclug]for the mac / linux fans

[Brad Barnett]

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 18:55:20 -0500
gabriel <the.angel.gabriel at rogers.com> wrote:

> On January 12, 2003 06:08 pm, Milan Budimirovic wrote:
> > Well, I don't care what you say. Sentences should begin with capital
> > letters.
> >
> > Photoshop is **not** light years ahead of the GIMP. The only thing it
> > has that the GIMP lacks is CMYK support, which is really only useful
> > to professional photographer for generating hardcopy. The vast
> > majority of people who use Photoshop use it for manipulating web
> > graphics, where the GIMP has major advantages, especially with its
> > macro powerful languages-- one of which is Perl. :=))
> 
> after hearing all the support for gimp, i decided to go back and give it
> 
> another try.  it was already installed on my box, so why not?  (i'd kept
> it around in case i needed something quick and simple) and here's what i
> found:
> 
> gimp is pretty damned impressive.  it handles masking, blending types
> and previews for jpeg compression.  it even gzips on-the-fly.  pretty
> cool.
> 
> it's lacking however in some very important areas if it's meant to be a 
> photoshop replacement:  (a) no gif preview.  you're saving @256colours 
> whether you like it or not, ie. you can save it as a gif, but don't
> count on using it for the web.  (b) no knife tool.  making one really
> big 6mb image is great, but if i can't hack it up into multiple pieces
> and save each piece individually in different formats, it's never going
> online.  sure, i can select, copy paste into a new file, but that's
> really an excessive amount of work when you're talking a full web
> layout.  (c) lastly, there's some gaps in the useability.  the
> right-click system is pretty cool, but there's no "hand" tool, so i'm
> having to use my scrolling arrows (very slow) and using the move tool
> isn't intuitive.  you can't select a layer and move it about, you have
> to click on it directly, and if it's buried under 5 other layers... good
> 
> luck.
> 
> some of what i've posted here may be an easy work around, maybe there's
> some special button i can click to "lock on" to a layer or something,
> but seriously speaking, you just can't compare the two.
> 

OVER A YEAR AGO, I ATTEMPTED TO MOVE A PHOTOSHOP USER OVER TO THE GIMP FOR
WEB PUBLISHING.  HE HAD MULTIPLE COMPLAINTS, PROBLEMS WITH THIS AND THAT,
UNTIL HE DISCOVERED ONE THING.  THE GIMP SIMPLY DOES NOT USE ALL OF THE
SAME KEY COMBOS OR COMMANDS TO GET THINGS DONE.  IT DOES THINGS, EQUALLY
WELL, BUT IN DIFFERENT WAYS.  YOU SOMETIMES HAVE TO THINK DIFFERENTLY TO
DO SOMETHING UNDER THE GIMP, AS OPPOSED TO PHOTOSHOP.  THIS MAKES SENSE,
OF COURSE.  THE GIMP IS NOT A PHOTOSHOP CLONE.

IN FACT, THE GIMP SEEMS TO BE EVOLVING SO FAST THAT WHENEVER WE FOUND A
SIGNIFICANT BLOCKAGE, THERE WAS ALREADY A SOLUTION, ALTHOUGH UNFORTUNATELY
NOT COMPLETELY DOCUMENTED.  EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM WE RAN INTO WAS SOLVED BY
ASKING A QUESTION ON #GIMP ON OPENPROJECTS.NET.  IN MANY CASES, THE
SOLUTION WAS MORE ELEGANT THAN THE PHOTOSHOP METHOD.  AFTER ALL, MANY
PEOPLE THAT HELPED TO DEVELOP THE GIMP, HAVE ALSO USED PHOTOSHOP AT ONE
POINT IN TIME.

KEEP IN MIND THAT YOU DID NOT LEARN TO USE PHOTOSHOP IN AN HOUR, YET YOU
SEEM TO HAVE TRIED TO LEARN, GRASP AND UNDERSTAND THE ENTIRE PACKAGE THAT
COMPRISES THE GIMP IN ABOUT THAT SAME PERIOD OF TIME.  TRUE, YOU DO
OBVIOUSLY UNDERSTAND AND KNOW HOW TO WORK WITH GRAPHICS, BUT APPLYING
PHOTOSHOP METHODOLOGY TO SOLVE A PROBLEM WITH THE GIMP ISN'T GOING TO GIVE
YOU A GOOD IDEA OF HOW THE GIMP RATES.

PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND.