delirial

Over a year and a half ago, one of my best friends (who happens to be a professional graphics designer) was hired by a company and, as part of his sign-in deal, got brand new Mac loaded with Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 and several other applications for his home. A hell of a deal, if you ask me.

Knowing that he had a CS1 license that he wouldn’t bee needing anymore I convinced him to trade his license for a couple of seasons of Stargate: SG-1. Long story short, I was finally able to drop that old Photoshop 6 that I had downloaded off Kazaa (shame on me) and go ‘legit’.

I was a happy man. I now owned the weapon of choice for graphics proffessionals and would be able to create even cooler signatures for my forums and performs edits on my photos.

Enter Linux & The Gimp:

My days as a Photoshop user didn’t last too long. Several months ago, I decided to jump on the Linux bandwagon. I tried to get Photoshop to work in linux with wine, but I was not successful, so I was left with only one option: The Gimp

I went on and installed The Gimp.

To be honest, I was not overly impressed by it, and I was already aware that it would take some getting used to.

After some time using it, I found myself frustrated by how I had mutated from a self-proclaimed Capable Photoshop User to a Complete Gimp Disaster. I was just about to throw the towel on The Gimp but then I heard about GIMPshop.

I wont go into much detail about what is GIMPshop. To summarize, I’ll quote Wikipedia:

“GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source graphics program GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.”

An amateur’s point of view:

The Gimp by itself is a very good tool for your average photo-editing needs. It has nothing to be ashamed of, and can be used to do pretty much everything that Photoshop can do (or at least everything that an amateur would want to do). My problem with The Gimp was not related to a lack of core functionality, but it was more the fact that I had a rough time getting used to the interface differences between Adobe Photoshop & The Gimp.

I don’t use graphics design tools on a daily basis. For that reason, having to spend a considerable amount of time learning a new interface, to accomplish the same things that I could already accomplish with Photoshop, was kind of a turn-off. If I wan’t to edit a picture, I don’t want to spend 25 minutes figuring out the menu and then 30 seconds doing the edit. I want to do it as fast as possible.

GIMPshop successfully manages to fill the gap that lies between The Gimp & Photoshop. The addon is definitely worth checking out and is able to level the learning curve for The Gimp (assuming, of course, that you are a previous Photoshop user).

A professional’s opinion:

I managed to get my friend to try The Gimp + GIMPshop. After using it for a while he came up with a list of things that I lacked, and a 15-minute rant titled ‘why you shouldn’t use it’. Truth is, I didn’t understand 75% of what he said, so I’ll make this short by quoting a pretty clear oneliner:

“Dude, drop that piece of shit and use the real thing!”

One thing that he did mention, that made a lot of sense to me, was the fact that he believes he wouldn’t be able to achieve the same level of productivity that he has with Photoshop. Another aspect that is of great importance to him is being able to make use of the interoperability features between all of the applications contained in the Adobe Creative Suite.

In short: The Gimp doesn’t seem to be a good option for professionals.

Closing thoughts:

Let me end this article by answering the question you all came here for: Is GIMPshop a viable alternative to Photoshop? The answer is not that simple. It all depends on what you plan on doing with it. It has been argued that the average Photoshop user will never use the vast majority of features that Photoshop provides, so paying the heavy price tag ($585 at Amazon) might not be worth it when you can get pretty much the same features for free.

If you are an average user and would like a graphics design program for casually creating/manipulating images, photos, etc, then Yes! GIMPshop can certainly do the trick for you.

If you work as a professional graphics designer, you are probably better off paying for Photoshop, as it is the industry standard and support (tutorials, books, guides, groups) are a lot easier to find.