EDIT: I thought I'd add this since there seems to be a large discussion below as to the type of user for which GIMP is applicable. I'm a software dev, in the past couple of years though mainly web apps where I've had to at times do graphics, for this GIMP worked fine for me (that's my pitch in the discussion). I think GIMP shines (as well as the traditional imagemagick) for batch processing, the scripting is easy, clean, fast - and lispy :) Some links for those interested: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Batch/ http://www.squidoo.com/gimp-how-to-write-a-script-fu-macro
Doing Graphics is not my main job description, far from it (somewhere between damage control and janitor is more like it), but I still do a lot of front end development, at my job I prefer to do all the graphics production work myself for the apps I'm building and have tried using GIMP a crap ton of times over the years - I've never found it to be a suitable replacement. Maybe its familiarity but I've honestly tried to use gimp in this role and just getting around has always been a complete nightmare compared to Photoshop. It may be able to do the job that Photoshop does, but nowhere near as easily.
Having our Devs at our shop use Photoshop is an expense, but like good chairs and big ass monitors, at the end of the day a few hundred bucks every few years isn't really that much and if its that much easier to use then its an expense we'll eat and happily. This also means from our devs perspective the choice between PS and Gimp is not a financial one, and once you take money out of the picture most folks are going to choose PS. So anyway, no I don't think this is a Photoshop Killer.
What I've found to be the case in prior versions is that it's not sufficient for many minor edits, because it's not 100.0% compatible with the PSD file formats. Even 99% isn't enough in some cases, unfortunately. Since I'm typically editing a file created by a designer in Photoshop, and since I might need the designer to build on my changes, I don't trust anything less than 100.0% compatibility.
But it works, because you know it really well and have spent (literally, in most cases) years perfecting your art. You haven't done that wiht GIMP, so of course it sucks. But the suckage isn't inherent, it's because the problem is inherently sucky, and you've simply trained your eyes not to see it.
[1] But see this gimp document - the first returned hit in a search for [gimp drop shadow text] - which appears to be weirdly complex.
Any time any with any technology those that have mastered the 'premier' product, especially those that are paid because of their knowledge of it, will always think it superior.
I love Fireworks, but I find myself using it less and less often. Usually I can look at a design straight from a designer who went wild in Photoshop and Illustrator, and make it look extremely close using nothing but HTML and CSS and images only where you'd expect image content.
As much as we like to complain, the web landscape has improved considerably.
The GIMP doesn't even support something like Adjustment Layers and that's a feature that was added to Photoshop 4.0 in 1996. Get real. Those who make that kind of argument for the GIMP, even pretending it could be used as a professional tool, have no idea what they're talking about.
Even the all-public, cheap edition of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, that you can get for $60, has features like Adjustment Layers.
The GIMP has been working on that stuff for a long time and they're still not done yet. They put off all features related to non-destructive editing until they finally fully switch to the GEGL engine.
EDIT: I downloaded it, and the app bundle doesn't seem to have an X11, so that's nice. However, upon firing it up, it throws up a splash screen in front of all other applications. Who still thinks that's acceptable behavior on a multitasking operating system? Also, the app quits when the last window is closed, which isn't how OS X apps are supposed to behave.
This is almost consistent with Apple's HIG: "In general, quit when users close the last open window in your app. [...] If users close the last remaining document window in a document-based app and switch to another app, it’s appropriate to quit the app" (emphasis added). [1]
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserEx...
If anything, they're ahead of the curve. Most Apple apps are beginning to follow this behavior: App Store, Calculator, Contacts, Dictionary, DVD Player, FaceTime, Font Book, Game Center, Garage Band, Image Capture, iPhoto, and so on.
[1]: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExp...
Adobe still does, and of all apps, GIMP is going to be one of the most likely to emulate them.
If anyone from GIMP is reading this, I strongly recommend that you fix that or at least allow us to disable the splash screen. Thank you.
Fortunately CTRL-Q does what it's supposed to.
Oh, and great job GIMP folks. I love GIMP and recommend it often. I've even tried to convince some folks to stop using illegal Photoshop copies and switch to GIMP instead (so far I have a 0% conversion rate).
that's not surprising given that the GIMP pales by comparison to photoshop. There's just no comparison. I think the high price of Adobe Creative suite has always been there because any professional uses it and buys it, but Adobe knows there are many illegal copies used by students and they just assume they one day will get jobs and then they will be paid users, meanwhile the illegal use is subsidized by the industry who doesn't care how much it costs because it gets the job done. By comparison GIMP is a toy. I know its a pet of the open source community, but commercial software with real designers and focus groups and product managers sometimes get it right.
Serious question: how did this not happen 5 years ago? Is there some technical reason? It's so hard for me to understand why the creators wouldn't have always had this as the #1 feature improvement to make ASAP.
(In fact, based on another post, it sounds like the windowing toolkit picked up Mac support, rather than Gimp doing anything super special.)
I can only assume that someone (or several someones) with the time and knowhow to get this done finally came along and decided it was worth investing their time in. I doubt it's as exciting as working on the image editing features.
What are open source/free projects supposed to do about gatekeeper?
They're supposed to pay up.
The signing Developer Certificate Utility at https://developer.apple.com/certificates/ rejects accounts that are not paid members of the Mac Developer Program, and a footnote at https://developer.apple.com/resources/developer-id/ states that "Mac Developer Program membership is required to access the tools and resources for distributing Mac applications."
I'd mostly expect people who turn it off entirely to fit the "don't really know what they're doing but like to do whatever a forum post tells them to do" archetype.
This version in comparison feels a lot better, though there are still a few annoying things about it, such as the image editing itself seems a bit laggy.
Still, a good step in the right direction IMO!
So. Much. Better.
That said, I don't think there's a more under-estimated or misunderstood program around.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=682913
$ file GIMP.app/Contents/MacOS/GIMP-bin
GIMP.app/Contents/MacOS/GIMP-bin: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64I've been a long time GIMP for Mac OS X user (being a former laptop Linux users).
New GIMP crashed in me on the first run. It then hung on start up on the 2nd run.
I just deleted my old GIMP configuration directories and it started up fine:
rm -fr ~/Library/Application\ Support/Gimp/
I hope that is getting resolved, it's always painful to see large projects like GIMP suffer from "people problems" and developers become disgruntled as a result.
I don't mind paying <$100 for a decent graphics editor. My primary use case is tweaking screenshots, app icons, buttons, and the like for my iOS apps and the web site. I want to get in and out as quick as possible, so I can get back to my other work.
I knew if I just gave her Gimp (or Photoshop for that matter) she'd just get stuck - they aren't very user friendly. I had a look at all the image editors I could - Acorn, Seashore, Pixelmator, etc and came to the conclusion that Photoshop Elements beat them all for ease of use.
Specific things that help are the guided actions (in the panel on the right) that act like wizards for performing common actions, but also teach you how to do these things; and the selection & healing tools are miles better than those in the other tools. Take a look at the demo on the top left here: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements/features.ht...
... it's talking about the smart brush, which I don't bother with, but what you're looking at is how well it manages to select within a picture.
I still prefer using Gimp, but for quick photo edits, I tend to use PE now. However, I tend to work with photos not eg icons as you do - not sure if PE is any use for that.
If you want a sub-$100 Photoshop replacement, I'd go for Pixelmator. It's really affordable, and provides the functionality that most users need.
Anyone knows where I could find a JPEG-2000 plug-in for GIMP that works on this Mac version, along with instructions on how to install it?
This does not function on mac as far as i know. You cannot even manually do it in the selection options.
It's frustrating how long it is taken Adobe to update their software for Hi-DPI.
(Edit: that's Gimp and Acorn in the screenshot, respectively, in case you weren't clear what was going on.)
Compare with Microsoft, which simply won't support retina "for the time being"...
