PSCS v GIMP

[steve foster]

How does PS compare to GIMP, I use CS but I am getting fed up with

trying to keep up with the new versions. Is GIMP as good as photoshop.

It's a helluva lot cheaper!

[skidoo]

> Is GIMP as good as photoshop?

 

Overall? No, of course not.

 

But would GIMP suffice for your requirements? Who knows? What do you currently use Photoshop for? GIMP might do everything you need.

[steve foster]

I use it for the following:

 

Colour correction, Sharpening, Blending layers, Imitation IR, Channel mixer black and white conversions, Calculation conversions, Cropping, Jpegging to web file size, Duotoning, Creating Brochures, Healing and cloning, resizing, creating 2m banners, Softening using layers, opacity changes, selective sharpening etc...

[Ed_Ingold]

GIMP is not color managed, PSCS is. Without color management and calibration, you are spinning your wheels.

[ole_hjalmar_kristensen]

You could look at Cinepaint, a fork of Gimp targetet to the movie industry. It has color management if I remember correctly.

[._kaa]

GIMP has no color management and cannot deal with 16-bit color. That, IMHO, makes it useless for serious photography.

[jbq]

I've tried using the GIMP. No 16-bit handling of images, something as simple as the crop tool was far behind photoshop's, it didn't gracefully handle large images (4x5 scans), and I found that the UI in general was poor (or at least not intuitive coming from photoshop).

 

Why do you want to keep up with photoshop versions? What's wrong with the one you currently have?

[Ed_Ingold]

Queru - why would you want to keep up with Photoshop...?

 

Photoshop CS2 is a quantum leap above CS, ad so infinitum. Among the additions useful to photographers is Adobe Bridge (for rapid preview and pre-processing hundreds of images), a new healing tool (preset is not required), more 16-bit processing and Adobe Camera Raw 3.2 (for the latest cameras, not supported in previous versions).

 

Oddly, Adobe does not require you to buy consecutive upgrades. You can skip from v5 or newer directly to CS2. Personally, I'd hate to miss out, and $150 every two years or so is not burdensome.

[skidoo]

Yep. The spot healing brush alone is worth the upgrade for me. It's awesome. Speeds up my (amateur) workflow TREMENDOUSLY.

[KenPapai]

Comparing GIMP to PS CS2 is completely illogical. Sort of like comparing PCDOS 1.1 to Mac OS X.

[fk319]

Ken, while it may be illogical to you, for those of us who use gimp, or PC-DOS, and have only heard about PS CS2, this thread is of value.

 

I have done some color enhancing and cropping/sizing in gimp. I can't imagine why 'I' need to us CS2. The main reason is that nobody has worked with me on how to use either package, or the before and afters. The other reason is I don't have a windows box or make any money from my pictures.

 

While I 'know' CS2 is better than gimp, I dont know why. 16 bit seems important, but what does gimp use? 15? 12? 8? and something about color management, I see colors on my gimp pictures.

 

Yes I am clueless when it comes to post processing, but I am making progress, or at least I am now looking for a direction.

[bill_tuthill]

Steve, I believe GIMP can perform all the operations you do

except healing brush. Its JPEG writing is superior to Photoshop's.

The 16-bit thing is good in theory, but nobody has yet demonstrated

(despite $200 reward) that a 16-bit advantage can be seen in actual

images. Probably it's more important for scanning than for digital

capture, and for multi-output colorspaces. But you didn't say CMYK.

 

Two caveats: GIMP is (much) slower on large images and crashes

more frequently.

[skidoo]

OK, obvious question: How is GIMP's JPEG output superior to Photoshop's? Just curious.

[KenPapai]

Frank, no one is trying to answer your question as you had not asked anything. Photoshop runs on a Mac or on Windows. The original question stated "GIMP as good as photoshop?" The easy answer is NO, not by any stretch of anyone's imagination. Happy to help, Ken.<p>

(if you use Gimp you'll be like the lone step child in a large city and wonder why you make the choices you do)<p>

If you cannot afford Pbhotoshop then the NEXT BEST THING is Corel's Paint Shop Pro. I have version X (10) now and have used every version of PSP since 1995. PSP can do about 75% of what PS CS2 can do; and, do it WELL.

[fk319]

Actually my question in ths forum is, to clearify the 16 bit color space of CS2 and what gimp has, and the what is the color mamagement that gimp does not have.

 

My other coments are not revelent to this thread, sorry.

[peufeu]

I just can't tolerate the Gimp' user interface. PS, on the other hand, is very intuitive. But it's darn expensive.

[blueviews]

The color management that Gimp doesn't have is the ability to get your pictures on paper to look like your pictures on the monitor. Using Photoshop once you have a calibrated monitor, it is pretty easy to get photos printed out on a wide variety of paper (if they have profiles) using a wide variety (if they have profiles) of printers. Of course if you use only one kind of paper and have lots of patience you can dial in GIMP to get you pretty close, but if the paper guy goes out of business then you have some problems.

BVA

[pete_su]

I only have two words: Adjustment layers.

[awindsor]

Bill,

 

I agree that very few can can tell the difference between a 16 bit image and an 8 bit image but if you do extreme editing then you can easily lose a few bits. You can tell the difference between a 6 bit image and a full 8 bit image (I often switch to 8 bit mode after my major edits since I use PS 7).

[leonard_richmond7]

Bill, if that's the $200 reward I think it is, it is bogus. The offerer (correctly) insists that the viewing will be done in 8 bit mode, so a conversion from 16 bit to 8 bit mode must occur. The catch is that he insists the conversion must happen BEFORE any post processing of the image rather than AFTER such post processing.

 

DUH! Of course you won't get any better results that way!

 

The fair way is RAW -> 16 bit -> post processing -> 8 bit compared to RAW -> 8 bit -> post processing.

 

Just applying a steep ramp up in the shadows using curves will show posterization (sometimes horrendous) in the shadows with an 8 bit image. Doing the same with a 16 bit image (even after later conversion back to 8 bit) will retain smooth transitions in the shadows.

[._kaa]

<p><i>Actually my question in ths forum is, to clearify the 16 bit color space of CS2 and what gimp has, and the what is the color mamagement that gimp does not have.</i>

 

<p>OK. A bit of education. In the computer world colors are represented as numbers. Specifically, a single color pixel is represented by a triplet of numbers -- the first shows how much Red is there, the second -- how much Green, and the third -- how much Blue. These numbers are often called RGB triplets.

 

<p>Usually these numbers -- each of them -- are 8-bit numbers, meaning they can only take values from 0 to 255. Thus, for example, [255 0 0] will represent the brightest red, and [1 0 0] will represent the darkest red possible in this system.

 

<p>Under certain conditions the available 255 shades of each primary color (red, green, and blue) are not enough. You need a more precise way of specifying color shades. Thus some application -- like Photoshop -- can deal with RGB triplets which use not 8-bit numbers (0 to 255), but 16-bit numbers (0 to 65535). The 16-bit colors give you the precision necessary.

 

<p>Color management refers to managing the correspondence between the RGB triplets and the actual colors in the physical world. For example, I said that [255 0 0] is the brightest red possible. Well, different devices (e.g. a computer monitor and a printer) have fairly different ideas as to what is the brightest red. You need a way to specify precisely which color does a particular combination of numbers (RGB triplet) stands for. This is done through so-called color profiles which allow different devices to understand which color is meant by which RGB triplet.

 

<p>The topic of color management is a complex one and there are several books written on the topic. But the gist of it is that without color management you cannot reliably transfer the colors you see on one device to another device -- for example you cannot easily match what you see on your screen to what comes out of your printer. Most serious photographers consider color management to be an absolute must.

[larry schaefer - chicago,]

Intuitive AFTER you have agonized forever over learning it.

[bill_tuthill]

I don't like Photoshop's UI (too Mac-y), so I'm glad Ken Papai

recommended PSP, which I find easier to use.

 

The reason GIMP is better than PS for writing JPEG is that it gives

you more complete control over quality values and chroma subsampling.

For example, Canon digicams produce 4:2:2 chroma, which Photoshop has

no way of producing. If you edit JPEG (not recommended but often

unavoidable) it's best to preserve quality and chroma settings.

 

I'm still agnostic on the 8 versus 16 bit issue, but suspect that

16-bit is oversold to move hardware. Mike Russell was sponsor of the

$200 challenge. Of the images submitted (summer 2002), I actually

liked the 8-bit versions better in all but one case. Hey-- somebody

actually won the 16-bit challenge! Google if interested.

[oskar_ojala]

I much prefer PS' UI, but I've been using it for 10 years so I'm a bit biased and I use Gimp on X11, which is a bit slower than Windows. However, Gimp manages to have a histogram view in curves, which PS still doesn't have. For every useful feature in PS added, there seems to be at least 5 "chrome features" of little use to me. Like Bill said, JPEG output is better in Gimp and so is PNG output.

 

Given the choice, I'd still take PS, but as you said, Gimp is a lot cheaper and there are still some things with PS to improve.

 

Incidentally, I don't remember Gimp crashing on Linux, although I haven't used it for really long sessions. Do those who say it crashes use Linux or some other OS?

[leonard_richmond7]

I was referring to the original challenge by Dan Margulis. You can see it explained and commented on at http://www.brucelindbloom.com/DanMargulis.html.

<p>

Finally found Mike Russell's reward offer at http://www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/ColorCorrection/ACT-16-bit-2002.htm, but it was for $100 (never could find any reference to a $200 reward).

<p>

From that last url: "I applied the same extreme corrections to the image, but this time not to Ric's 8-bit image but rather a direct Photoshop conversion of Ric's 16-bit image to 8-bit. Shockingly, this completely eliminated the problem. There was no reason to prefer the version corrected entirely in 16-bit. <b>When Photoshop converts from 16-bit to 8-bit it applies very fine noise to try to control subsequent problems.</b>"

<p>

Of course, if you start with an 8 bit image, you don't get the advantage of that noise dithering to prevent banding during post processing.