I've never used photoshop, but I used Paint Shop Pro years ago. It has a similar interface to Photoshop. But for more than a decade all my (bitmap) graphics needs have been fulfilled by GIMP.

The interface may be a little weird (or it used to be), but it's really powerful when you get into it. Sure, being effective in GIMP requires you to learn a few keyboard shortcuts but what software doesn't?

I was completely blown away once when I saw a hacker/artist friend of mine do some amazing artwork with GIMP (this was circa 2001). One hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse/wacom tablet. Sure, he was a hacker, so the interface may be a little more intuitive from that background but the artwork he produced spoke for itself.

I don't listen to pro-photoshop people's arguments any more. The interface may seem weird but it gets the job done. The 8bpp color was a major stumbling block but now it's gone. As are many other sources of complaints about GIMP.

You (and everyone) should really give GIMP another go, the improvement has been HUGE in the last 10 years. This is what a lot of people don't get about open source software. It improves constantly, if you did not like it 10/5/1 years ago, the chances are it's been improved during that time. And if you feel that something needs a change, you have the option of doing it yourself or helping the community put it together by whatever means you have to contribute.

Or just shut up and pay the license for Photoshop, but please don't come bashing people who are doing hard work to make GIMP/Blender/Inkscape better.

Not sure where I bashed the people working hard with GIMP/Blender/Inkscape. If I've offended anyone, sorry about that. I was merely trying to convey that ~13 year ago and a few times after that, I've been confused by the Gimp UI. Sorry if that didn't come through clear enough.

It's the same thing with Photoshop I guess; You invest heavily in the tool chain -- I know basically every keyboard shortcut there is by tactile memory -- and suddenly your definition of usability in image manipulation becomes 'The inverse of the squared distance to Photoshop'.

I'll download it and give Gimp another go.

> Not sure where I bashed the people working hard with GIMP/Blender/Inkscape.

You didn't. I am sorry if I implied you did. I was referring to the average stereotypical art student gone internet troll who are often quite vocal in bringing out their dislike of free as in freedom tools vs. their favorite free as in pirated proprietary software.

> I'll download it and give Gimp another go.

You do that and tell us if you felt it was better. Tell the GIMP devs too, they get too little positive feedback.

-I'll download it and give Gimp another go.-

I'd like everyone to do this but this just isn't going to convert you to GIMP overnight. If you are as invested into the Photoshop tools as you say you are you will just get frustrated at the UI differences and give up within a few days. After all why should anyone struggle with a free software if you've already paid a thousand bucks for Photoshop and memorized all the shortcuts that make you a Photoshop machine.

Having said that, if you were ever in a bind and you had to give GIMP a try for a prolonged period of time, it would be capable of everything you ever wanted to do in Photoshop.

Actually you stated "the productivity enhancements of a tool you really know far outweigh the price of it", which is wrong if you have zero money. With zero money Gimp will always reign supreme.

I don't necessarily know that that is an insult, but sure, if you're short on cash then free is always better and certainly beats piracy. I was thinking in terms of professional tools, and the output value delta of something you know well (this might just as well be the Gimp) compared to unfamiliar software.

If you're a professional though you don't exactly have "zero money". The amount spent on a DSLR alone is bigger than what you'd spend in a Photoshop license.

The only way that would make the GIMP an alternative to photoshop would be for your time to be worth NOTHING.

I've been using GIMP for probably 6 or 7 years. The last version of Photoshop I ever opened was version 6 and I hardly remember it. I've been doing web design with it for about the same duration and it is the staple image editor tool I use. I'm the creative director for my company and GIMP has played a major role in my career.

I've used both - for basic stuff, mind you. But I remember how hard it was to pick up Photoshop. My conclusion from my limited experience is therefore that it is simply what you are used to. Neither Gimp or PS are necessarily better, they are just different. If you are used to Gimp, you will swear if you have to use PS, and vice versa.

One problem for more advanced work could be that there are more tutorials for PS than for Gimp.

(I only use Gimp because I don't want to pay for PS and I tend to be on Linux at times).

Neither are necessarily better ? it shows how much use you have for a professional image editing package : NONE. It has been a long time since I've picked up Photoshop (as in I'm used to its interface) so I can't say whether it's really hard to "pick it up" compared to beginning with the gimp but the environment is FAR MORE productive than what the GIMP offers if you were to master the two and compare their abilities. The amount of non-destructive tools in Photoshop alone make it ten times better than the GIMP if productivity is your priority.

The GIMP is like Photoshop 4 or 5. One of the worst "open source alternative" to proprietary software. It's an antique piece of software that hasn't caught up with the last DECADE of innovation.

Obviously it depends on the level you work on. And PS 5 might have been the last version I tried, don't even know what is current.

If PS is so much better, why don't you use it? What non-destructive tools are you talking about? I don't think tools are typically destructive in Gimp?

But you are correct, I am not a designer, I am a developer.

If you don't understand what "non destructive" means in the context of an image editor you obviously will never grasp why PS is actually better than the GIMP, and it's only ONE of the bigger example I took to compare them. http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS2FD6768E-DB6B-4... "Nondestructive editing allows you to make changes to an image without overwriting the original image data, which remains available in case you want to revert to it. Because nondestructive editing doesn’t remove data from an image, the image quality doesn’t degrade when you make edits. You can perform nondestructive editing in Photoshop in several ways:"

A Smart Filter will be reapplied to the object every time you make changes to the object. But not in an "applied twice" way, because changes are not set in stone, it doesn't degrade the original object.

Photoshop is so much more productive than the GIMP. Anyone who pretends that those two packages are equal should keep from talking about image editors.

I thought that was what non-destructive means, I was just surprised that Gimp supposedly doesn't work that way.

Anyway, I am definitely not a power user - I think those already know if they are going to use Gimp or PS, and will not be swayed by HN discussions. I am just tired of the interface argument, because PS is definitely not easy to use. You have to dig through some tutorials and then you suddenly know how to do things, but it is not intuitive.

If you need specific PS functionality, obviously you have to use PS. My point was merely that the user interface is not really the big differentiator. (Also, I don't know the latest PS versions so I might be wrong, but I doubt it).