pimped-out gimp

Andy · March 31, 2005

David_S85 · April 1, 2005

andy wrote:

it's all here, ladies and gents

Now that's somebody with more than just time on his hands. Never having used GIMP (I'm a PSP'er myself), I can't really appreciate all what he's done by pimping the app, but I guess that longtime GIMP'ers no longer need to be "convolved". :uhoh And that is good.

rutt · April 1, 2005

If only it were true. I just can't tell you how happy that would make me. But gimp has a long way to go. This isn't a case of linux chasing windows. It's more like Bambi vs. Godzilla. And as I say, I'm someone who really wishes this weren't true. Don't make me give details; it's just too sad.

I think gimp could get to the point of being a reasonable replacement for PS Elements or Photodelux or something. Maybe it already is.

Sigh.

JamieC · April 1, 2005

rutt wrote:

If only it were true. I just can't tell you how happy that would make me. But gimp has a long way to go.

Don't tell me that! It's all I have and all I know. Linux nut here... so I don't have the luxury of PS. I will just go back to thinking it's close enough, ok?

:

Jamie

rutt · April 1, 2005

JamieC wrote:

Don't tell me that! It's all I have and all I know. Linux nut here... so I don't have the luxury of PS. I will just go back to thinking it's close enough, ok? :

Jamie

OK, I love linux, too. Adobe is the slime daemon. Really.

Fine, gimp is great.

devbobo · April 3, 2005

rutt wrote:

I think gimp could get to the point of being a reasonable replacement for PS Elements or Photodelux or something. Maybe it already is.

are u for real, comparing the gimp to PS Elements...what an insult !!

JamieC · April 3, 2005

devbobo wrote:

are u for real, comparing the gimp to PS Elements...what an insult !!

To which? The Gimp or PS Elements? (seriously... I have never used PS Elements)

Jamie

devbobo · April 3, 2005

JamieC wrote:

To which? The Gimp or PS Elements? (seriously... I have never used PS Elements)

Jamie

the gimp, of course

rutt · April 3, 2005

devbobo wrote:

are u for real, comparing the gimp to PS Elements...what an insult !!

It's been a while since I used The Gimp and I've never used Elements. But I've checked The Gimp's specs regularly. I prefer linux to any other OS at present and so I'd love it if The Gimp would do it for me. But compared to full PS, well I'm sorry. It's not the extent of it so much as very bacic missing things, in particular, the ability to work in alternative colorspaces. For serious color retouching, well it's just a nonstarter. I'm sure there are other issued and probably The Gimp has some plusses compared to PS. But no CMYK and no LAB, for me that puts in in the league with the nonprofessional programs like Elsements &etc. But I suppose it will work fine if you don't care to much about color.

Look, as I said, I wish this weren't true. I spent years trying to believe that The Gimp was a fine alternative to PS. I can tell you stories about why I don't like Adobe. But in the end, the truth is the truth.

devbobo · April 3, 2005

rutt wrote:

It's been a while since I used The Gimp and I've never used Elements. But I've checked The Gimp's specs regularly. I prefer linux to any other OS at present and so I'd love it if The Gimp would do it for me. But compared to full PS, well I'm sorry. It's not the extent of it so much as very bacic missing things, in particular, the ability to work in alternative colorspaces. For serious color retouching, well it's just a nonstarter. I'm sure there are other issued and probably The Gimp has some plusses compared to PS. But no CMYK and no LAB, for me that puts in in the league with the nonprofessional programs like Elsements &etc. But I suppose it will work fine if you don't care to much about color.

Look, as I said, I wish this weren't true. I spent years trying to believe that The Gimp was a fine alternative to PS. I can tell you stories about why I don't like Adobe. But in the end, the truth is the truth.

I'm think you might be mistaken about no CMYK and no LAB. Below is a screenshot from the Gimp 2.2

Cheers,

David

rutt · April 3, 2005

devbobo wrote:

I'm think you might be mistaken about no CMYK and no LAB. Below is a screenshot from the Gimp 2.2

Cheers,

David

Hmm, interesting. Being able to extract channels is different than being able to actually work in the color space. This might be the first step. I'll experiment in the near future and report. Or you can try to reproduce some of my LAB curve correction in The Gimp. For an example, see: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9006

devbobo · April 3, 2005

rutt wrote:

Hmm, interesting. Being able to extract channels is different than being able to actually work in the color space. This might be the first step. I'll experiment in the near future and report. Or you can try to reproduce some of my LAB curve correction in The Gimp. For an example, see: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9006

ok...you decompose into LAB, work on those channels then re-compose the image into RGB..

Original...

Gimp LAB conversion using Rutt's settings...

Hopefully, this will be convincing enough.

Cheers,

David

devbobo · April 3, 2005

rutt wrote:

For serious color retouching, well it's just a nonstarter. I'm sure there are other issued and probably The Gimp has some plusses compared to PS. But no CMYK and no LAB, for me that puts in in the league with the nonprofessional programs like Elsements &etc. But I suppose it will work fine if you don't care to much about color.

Just thinking about this...it's hard since i'm not a PS user, but I think I understand the difference.

In the Gimp, after you decompose the image, you can work in the channels but the resulting image is seen as grayscale until u recompose the image. Obviously, this could be a pain if ur trying to work out specific adjustments, but given the example as above, when you have the actual curve adjustments life is very simple.

David

Andy · April 3, 2005

devbobo wrote:

Just thinking about this...it's hard since i'm not a PS user, but I think I understand the difference.

In the Gimp, after you decompose the image, you can work in the channels but the resulting image is seen as grayscale until u recompose the image. Obviously, this could be a pain if ur trying to work out specific adjustments, but given the example as above, when you have the actual curve adjustments life is very simple.

David

it would seem to me that the gimp should be quite good for lots of users... it has loads and loads of functions, and way cool that it's open source!

rutt - you've got to remember that you're in the top 2% of photoshop users as far as knowledge goes - i think that there are loads of people to who the gimp would be a step up from what they've got. then again, elements is pretty darn good, too, and it's included in most every box with every camera...

rutt · April 3, 2005

andy wrote:

it would seem to me that the gimp should be quite good for lots of users... it has loads and loads of functions, and way cool that it's open source!

rutt - you've got to remember that you're in the top 2% of photoshop users as far as knowledge goes - i think that there are loads of people to who the gimp would be a step up from what they've got. then again, elements is pretty darn good, too, and it's included in most every box with every camera...

I couldn't agree more. I just wish it was good enough for me. Really, that's what I wish. Straight-up.

Andy · April 3, 2005

rutt wrote:

I couldn't agree more. I just wish it was good enough for me. Really, that's what I wish. Straight-up.

becuase you hate adobe like you hate getting needles stuck in yer eyes? :uhoh

devbobo · April 3, 2005

andy wrote:

it would seem to me that the gimp should be quite good for lots of users... it has loads and loads of functions, and way cool that it's open source!

rutt - you've got to remember that you're in the top 2% of photoshop users as far as knowledge goes - i think that there are loads of people to who the gimp would be a step up from what they've got. then again, elements is pretty darn good, too, and it's included in most every box with every camera...

Andy, I think this is true for the most, but I have read lots and lots of posts on different forums about photoshoppers finding the Gimp difficult to use. So potentially there is a photoshopper-gimp interface problem even for high end users.

I assume this is the whole reason for Gimpshop in the first place.

rutt · April 3, 2005

andy wrote:

becuase you hate adobe like you hate getting needles stuck in yer eyes? :uhoh

There is that. But I am also a true believer in open source. I wish I could work completely on linux. I wish I had the source to my image manipulation program. There are lots of reasons. This isn't the place to list them all.

So it's sad that The Gimp isn't there yet, but I have to be pragmatic.
I'm still a student of applied color theory. I'm still learning. The Gimp just isn't a sufficently good tool. It would get in my way.

luke_church · April 5, 2005

Speed
I'd go along with this Andy.

I've seen a few problems with cheaper alternatives lacking the speed of Photoshop, I like the fast feedback it gives, outpacing any other editing software that I've used. [Once it's loaded of course!]

I was thinking of looking at ACDSee to see if it was even faster, but I don't really have the time to eval it properly, and in this case it isn't me who makes the decision...

I think the key point is that for most people, there isn't any need to spend $ddd for a good photo package...

Generally speaking, I have strong dislike for Adobe software after the disaster that is the Acrobat Reader series and the **PURE EVIL** that is the configuration of Photoshop CS (or at least the install that I've got to work with, and I can't find a way to change it) such that Alt + F + A => Open As, not Save As as it does in every other Windows App.... Who the $£(!"*$&£)&()*($£" thought this was a good idea?

Initally I thought that it was a Mac thing, but my Mac inclined friends tell me that this is no equivalent on the Mac to the Alt commands, only the shortcuts... Anyone? I'm willing to look stupid...

OK, it's been a long day.... </RANT>

Luke

andy wrote:

it would seem to me that the gimp should be quite good for lots of users... it has loads and loads of functions, and way cool that it's open source!

rutt - you've got to remember that you're in the top 2% of photoshop users as far as knowledge goes - i think that there are loads of people to who the gimp would be a step up from what they've got. then again, elements is pretty darn good, too, and it's included in most every box with every camera...

devbobo · April 5, 2005

hmmm....i must be missing something.

Why would you bother evaluating different packages...which in the long run is going to cost you money, for what speed ?

Do urself a favour....get the gimp, it's free...and put the money towards upgrading ur PC.

Makes sense to me

David

luke_church wrote:

I'd go along with this Andy.

I've seen a few problems with cheaper alternatives lacking the speed of Photoshop, I like the fast feedback it gives, outpacing any other editing software that I've used. [Once it's loaded of course!]

I was thinking of looking at ACDSee to see if it was even faster, but I don't really have the time to eval it properly, and in this case it isn't me who makes the decision...

I think the key point is that for most people, there isn't any need to spend $ddd for a good photo package...

Generally speaking, I have strong dislike for Adobe software after the disaster that is the Acrobat Reader series and the **PURE EVIL** that is the configuration of Photoshop CS (or at least the install that I've got to work with, and I can't find a way to change it) such that Alt + F + A => Open As, not Save As as it does in every other Windows App.... Who the $£(!"*$&£)&()*($£" thought this was a good idea?

Initally I thought that it was a Mac thing, but my Mac inclined friends tell me that this is no equivalent on the Mac to the Alt commands, only the shortcuts... Anyone? I'm willing to look stupid...

OK, it's been a long day.... </RANT>

Luke

luke_church · April 5, 2005

Hi David,

OK, so it depends what role I'm existing in at the time :-) In Photoeditting mode, much of what I care about is how fast I get visual feedback, I don't care about batch processing speed, I've got plenty of CPU cycles for that, but I don't have plenty of brain hundreads of milliseconds in the creative process.

As for upgrading a PC, put it this way, the cost of Photoshop wouldn't go far on the machine I was editting photos on, but it's a mute point as the licence was free to me, so I had open choice. If it was my own cash, I'd probably be GIMPing... Hmmm... RAW..... Hmmm... Needs to think about that workflow..

Thankfully the really performance critical imaging work I do is not bottlenecked by batch imaging problems.

I'm going through the GIMP install process as we speak, so I'll take another look...

All the best,

Luke

devbobo wrote:

hmmm....i must be missing something.

Why would you bother evaluating different packages...which in the long run is going to cost you money, for what speed ?

Do urself a favour....get the gimp, it's free...and put the money towards upgrading ur PC.

Makes sense to me

David

devbobo · April 5, 2005

Hey Luke,

Hope you didn't take that personally, it was tongue in cheek.

luke_church wrote:

OK, so it depends what role I'm existing in at the time :-) In Photoeditting mode, much of what I care about is how fast I get visual feedback, I don't care about batch processing speed, I've got plenty of CPU cycles for that, but I don't have plenty of brain hundreads of milliseconds in the creative process.

that's funny

luke_church wrote:

If it was my own cash, I'd probably be GIMPing... Hmmm... RAW..... Hmmm... Needs to think about that workflow..

At present, I don't need RAW since my camera doesn't support it, but check the plug-ins registry, I have seen some RAW stuff in there, but can't say how well it works.

http://registry.gimp.org/list?baseVersion=6

Cheers,

David

luke_church · April 6, 2005

Hey David,

devbobo wrote:

Hey Luke,

Hope you didn't take that personally, it was tongue in cheek.

No offence taken

:

At present, I don't need RAW since my camera doesn't support it, but check the plug-ins registry, I have seen some RAW stuff in there, but can't say how well it works.

Thanks for that, I took a look. They seem to have some stuff that they say can load RAW, I'll have to give it a try to see how well it works. I tried the newest version of GIMP last night, not bad, it's a fair bit better than it used to be, though I guess it would take a little while to learn the new interface.

IMHO it's still outcompeted by Photoshop on speed, but that's some pretty serious competition to the rest of the market!

Cheers,

Luke

ubergeek · April 22, 2005

Processing raw files with GIMP
I'm a little late to the party, but better late than never...

There are GIMP plugins and standalone tools for processing raw images on OS's like Linux. One of the most powerful is dcraw (http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/), which supports a ridiculous number of cameras (over 150!) Sure, many of them use the same format, but it's still impressive. Somewhere out there is a GIMP plugin that uses it.

I'm a little bit of a coder myself, so a while back, for fun I wrote a raw decoder (I call it "ImageCooker") which I've released as an open source project (http://www.focalplane.net/imagecooker/). I was shooting with a Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi at the time, and I haven't done much work on the project lately, so at the moment it still only understands Minolta raw files. Lately I've been using Capture One (a fantastic product but a little rough around the edges) and Photoshop CS, so ImageCooker has been put on a back burner. However, if there are GIMP users out there who would like a more integral raw workflow, I'm looking for excuses to support Canon raw files.

(I could pretty easily support Nikon as well, or anything else for that matter, but Canon would be easiest for me to test because that's what I have now.)

Actually it might be useful beyond GIMP users. If your OS of choice doesn't happen to be Windows or MacOS--or even if it is--ImageCooker has potential as a batch raw processor. Also, I don't know whether the other tools support multiple processors--which are becoming more common these days--but ImageCooker does. Anyway, Linux users or other fans of open source, if it's interesting to you, drop me a line!

Cheers,
Jeremy

geraldfinnegan · August 7, 2005

Gimp

andy wrote:

it's all here, ladies and gents

The Gimp has many useful tools that PS2, at least, dosen't: one is the Path Tool and a VERY good one you can get as a plugin is Smart Sharpening, a technique allowing refined sharpening, more sharpening with less noise. This you can do on your own but it's so many steps, layers and everything else that I never got it right and it took forever. The plugin does the whole sequence for you, you just choose the parameters.
best
jerry

pimped-out gimp

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