And, in general, the FOSS communities (including on HN) are often incredibly ignorant of how deficient GIMP and other tools are compared to Photoshop.
Let me put it in programmer's terms: Using GIMP is like telling you to build a website with a COBOL backend. It's technically possible - the IRS has all but done it - and it's Turing complete, so why can't you?
> Would programmers listen to an artists opinion on programming languages and IDEs? Of course not.
I'll address that question in just a second, but as far as I can tell, the makers of GIMP have failed to listen to anybody about how that name turns people off and it's failed to gain acceptance because it's got such a terrible name. Ow heartbreaking to see such hard work wasted because horsecocks and panty-dropper, or other equally bad names could have been chosen instead. As far as listening to artists opinions, where do you think easier to use languages like Python or Ruby came from? By listening to curmudgeons that C syntax is totally fine, pointers are easy, it's fun to lose hours looking for a semicolon, and people like the author of "Real programmers use Pascal", so no need to make any changes? Or were there people, some of whom make art, who said, this crap is too confusing, and easier to use programming languages and IDEs came along? The ethos that everyone should be able to program comes hand in hand with listening to users, no matter what their day job. Programmers universally write for two classes of people. Themselves, and others. Talking to users and getting feedback (now that LLMs can write the code, but also before) is job #1 for a programmer. In order to do a good job, before you write a single line of code, you gotta find your users and see how they live, before you can write software that helps them. Find me a software project that didn't engage with its users and I'll find you software that has failed to gain wider acceptance. Like, say, Gim Paint, as I call it, since the name Gimp is such trash.
If your first instinct is to down vote this, I urge you to articulate your counterargument, because I think this comment is spot on. I would love to see someone actually try to defend all the Adobe bashing that goes on here in a way that's valuable. E.g., by illustrating comprehensive experience using both the open source applications and the commercial competitors and demonstrating through example the relative merits of each.
I've published a game on the Apple App Store. All graphics were produced using non-Adobe commercial and open source software. I even used relatively ancient software.
Here's a list:
- Creature House Expression: a competitor to Illustrator, which has a way better UI than anything Adobe, and still (AFAIK) unique features (eg. "skeletal strokes").
- Synthetik Studio Artist: has no competitor, and outdoes anything that Photoshop can accomplish in its niche;
- Vue d'Esprit 4: landscape and plant generation, which worked well enough that I didn't need any resource-hungry later versions;
- Candy Factory (for the Amiga, running under emulation): I'm sure some PS plugins can do the same, but why bother when I had this already from way back?
- GIMP: STFU about the UI. If you're used to Photoshop, get used to something else; PS is not the pinnacle of UI excellence.
Other superb software:
- VectorStyler, which might be a practical successor to Expression;
- Escape Motions software collection.
I've also tried Affinity Photo and Designer, but I definitely prefer the software I mentioned above.
So, YES, I am qualified to bash Adobe, and I unashamedly do so.
Not to detract from your post, which I found super interesting to read. I hadn't heard of most of the software you listed and most of it was pretty interesting.
But I wouldn't find it convincing as a list of Adobe alternatives, the main thing that seems missing is expertise with Adobe software.
The type of review I'm primarily interested in is from folks who have used the software semi-daily for a long time, often at least a decade. The feedback usually looks something like this (e.g., something I'd imagine reading comparing NLE packages): "I edit ~10 documentaries a year in Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci's color workflow is clearly superior, the UI is deeper, and the way the color wheels work makes it easier to make fine-grade adjustments. The node-based color workflow also makes it easier to separate making color corrections from actually color grading. But on the other side, Premiere's Dynamic Link integration, makes it easier to maintain and iterate on shots that involve a lot of 2D motion graphics."
A couple of points that I look for:
- Someone that's done something so many times that they no longer care about anything other than the best tool for the job. Often times the best tool is different if your goal is quality vs. speed, it's a good sign if that's specifically called out.
- They don't have chip on their shoulder. A lot of folks don't like paying at all, so will always prefer the cheaper software. Or they prefer open source software inherently. Or they have some other priority, like not wanting to install Adobe Creative Cloud (which starts a permanent process always running on your machine, which is icky). All of those are perfectly fine priorities for someone to have, but care absolutely zero about anyone else's opinion on any of that stuff, because I can already gauge for myself how I feel about those things. I.e., I already know how I feel about the price of software, so I don't care about someone else's opinion. What I want to know is if I invest in learning this software for a decade daily, how am I going to feel about it then? Would I have preferred investing in another package? The only way to gauge that is hearing from folks that have already done that. Note they don't need a decade of experience in the second package to compare, but they definitely need it for the first.
Just for completions sake, the other thing I noticed about your list is a lot of the packages were for one specific niche, which is a different category of software. All of the Adobe flagships are general purpose.
I have two decades of experience in Creature House Expression...! It's my go-to for anything vector.
What I love about it: foremost, the UI. It was made for the software, not based on any existing library (as far as I'm aware). (I particularly love the 'dials' which work equivalently to sliders; and which, when double-clicked, allow the user to enter precise values in a text box.)
It's organized intuitively, with a great balance between simplicity and features. And features! It seems that Affinity Designer still hasn't caught up to this 2003 software. CorelDRAW is clunky in comparison too. While Expression's isolated bugs and annoyances will never be fixed, it's a joy to work in: grids and guides are perfectly 'good enough' (not the equal of Inkscape); onion-skins are invaluable for animating; fonts have simple but comprehensive controls (although OpenType doesn't work properly); brushes are unrivaled, even by Illustrator; and the (optionally) bitmap-style vectors enable a different kind of work flow.
Unfortunately, there's no SVG output, so I export as PDF and use Inkscape to convert. However, Expression also allows saving in a text-based format, which could be the basis for a file converter.
It can also use Photoshop plugins! Since I work mainly with vectors, I haven't had occasion to try this feature yet...
Expression is still available as a free download. It works in Wine on (Intel) Mac and Linux. The manual is great! And the sample files (together with the old website) are delightfully whimsical. It's stable, mature, and (in my opinion) outshines Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, CorelDRAW, and Inkscape.
Open source tools (outside of Blender, which has an amazing reputation among creative professionals) are not discussed at all in creative circles, there is no mirror image of creative professionals bashing open source tools.
what about the comments in this very thread? every argument about gimp vs photoshop has claims that photoshop is so much better. i don't dispute that, but i am still waiting to see the evidence
I think the dilemma here is trying and failing. Many of us tried the open source alternatives and failed, there's nothing really useful to say about that. It might just be a failure on our part, i.e., someone else with a better approach might succeed. But what you really need is someone who's an expert in Photoshop, to move to an open source alternative and succeed and then weigh the advantages, and this needs to happen in aggregate to start getting a real sense of what the difference are. Note that I don't think even the commercial Affinity apps have crossed this bar, so it's nothing against open source, it's just photo editing at the high-end is just a one-tool market. Contrast this to Final Cut Pro X vs. Premiere vs. DaVinci Resolve, where you can find countless comparisons of the individual advantages of each of those platforms, that's a market with healthy competition and options. Same with DAWs, same with 3D packages.
GIMP is awesome on Linux. GIMP runs like ass on OSX. I still use GIMP on OSX anyways, but I see that weighing heavily on someone considering their options.
I used to use photoshop and Lightroom a lot. I got pretty good at it.
The Linux equivalents are quite good. I currently have 2 pieces in an exhibit I created with GIMP (manipulated photos). It’s got layering and the filters I needed. I’ve started to use dark table somewhat (it’s like Adobe Lightroom) but there are a few other photo organizers to try.
The UI is on these tools is different.. different and not great. But workable. The docementation is a little lacking. To be fair there is a whole industry based around teaching Adobe product (I went to one of their conferences years ago)
The 2 standout application for art creation in Foss seem to be blender(3d modeling) and Krita (painting).
while i concede that i don't know how good photoshop is, based on my experience of building websites and using gimp for photo editing, i find the suggestion that gimp is as bad as cobol disturbing, unless cobol is much better than its reputation.
try finding a better comparison please.
everytime i look at a discussion of gimp vs photoshop, i fail to find anyone articulating exactly why photoshop is so much better.
Consider the expressive power of GIMP over ImageMagick, then imagine that Photoshop is an increment of expressive power over GIMP.
As you become familiar with Photoshop you will experience a usage gestalt that is unattainable with GIMP.
But why? Compared to Photoshop, GIMP's UI is a continually unfolding disaster by comparison.
Plus Photoshop includes Adobe Camera Raw which in and of itself is a UI majesty compared to anything available in Linux and its just an adjunct capability.
The programming language analogy is a good one. There's no point in arguing which language is the best, but everyone knows that language features have an obvious bearing on productivity in particular domains: this is demonstrated beyond all doubt via the enormous efficacy of levels of interface abstraction over the innate capabilities of a physical computer.
If you regard PS and GIMP as GUI languages for image manipulation, the expressive power and smoothness of operating PS compared to GIMP is obvious to any diligent user.
The joy of GIMP is that the advantage of GIMP over no image manipulator is infinite, while the advantage of PS over GIMP is merely incremental. This is the profound philosophical basis of Linux: it's something that can't be easily taken away from you. Photoshop is much more tenuous.
As to being able to appreciate the distinction, there's an old joke about advertising the advantage of color TVs on TV: if you can see the advantage, you already have a color TV. And if you don't have a color TV you can't see the advantage.
