So what's the big deal with Photoshop?

[t0p]

I'm a keen amateur photographer, and I use the GIMP a lot to do stuff with my photographs.

The other week, a relative bought me a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS 4 for Windows. It would have been churlish of me to turn down this gift. So I installed VirtualBox and run a virtual XP to use Photoshop.

So I've been using Photoshop CS 4 for a few weeks now, and I still don't get what's so great about it that so many users cite Photoshop as a reason why they can't quit Windows or OSX. Seriously, what is it that makes Photoshop so much "better" than the GIMP?

[The Funkbomb]

Photoshop is great if you have to do high level editing. For most people, the Gimp is fine.

[juancarlospaco]

Really Nothing...
---> Is the Artist, not the Tool.
:)

[Exodist]

GIMP is great if you have to do high level editing. For most people, the Photoshop is fine.

FIXED!


The ONLY thing Photoshop has going for it is CYMK color -vs- RGB for GIMP. Thats it!
Other then that Photoshop has some minor simplified task that an idiot can use. While GIMP may not be as easy to use as soon as you use it, spending some real time using GIMP and you will realize that you can do more with GIMP then photoshop.

[chucky chuckaluck]

lack of cmyk support in gimp is the one i usually hear cited as the reason pros prefer photoshop. but, doesn't krita have that?

[Naiki Muliaina]

I always found PS industry standard. Seems to be what most people use, most books written for it, and ive seen general adverts saying 'photoshop skills a must'. I always preferred Photoimpact on windows myself, but eh... Guess not many businesses use it.

[blur xc]

Man, do a forum search. It's been well documents over and over again how PS excels over Gimp. What matter to the user, is what you need it out of it. I don't use PS nearly to it full potential, but there's a few things I do in it, that I'm used to doing, and finding another way in gimp has been an issue.

#1- Adjustment layers, I can't live w/o them.
#2- simple layer effects like drop shadows. There's no easy way that I've found to get that job done in Gimp.
#3- I know that doing text in the Gimp is a lot more clunky than in PS.

I'm sure there's a couple more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. I'm not a graphic artist, I'm also just an amateur photographer. The most advance PS stuff I do is scan in a piece of my wife's scrapbook paper, and change it's color using blending mode of it's layer, add some pictures using the transform tool, add drop shadows, text, etc., to make scrap book looking collage pages.

A staple in my workflow is using adjustment layers with layer masks. If your workflow doesn't include any features PS has over the gimp, then you're just better off with the gimp.

BM

edit- in before the move to Recurring Discussions

[John Bean]

The ONLY thing Photoshop has going for it is CYMK color -vs- RGB for GIMP. Thats it!
Unless you happen to use Lab mode (as I do) for some colour manipulations, or use adjustment layers, or need to edit 16-bit images, or do HDR composites, or... Well, let's just say that CYMK is certainly not the only thing it has going for it, even without the emphasis on "only" ;-)

[The Funkbomb]

CMYK is huge if you work in a print shop. When I was in graphic arts in school, we worked strictly in CMYK.

Plus, photoshop is widely documented.

[KiwiNZ]

In many cases it is personal preference , it is what they are used to and see no reason to change.

Myself I do not like the Gimp , its fiddly and less refined and a pain. I use Photoshop and for simple fixes just what is in Iphoto, I do a lot of my fixes first at the Camera ( Canon DSLR).

I have also found the colour accuracy in Photoshop to be better.

[Ric_NYC]

cmyk is huge if you work in a print shop. When i was in graphic arts in school, we worked strictly in cmyk.

Plus, photoshop is widely documented.

+1

[pelle.k]

#2- simple layer effects like drop shadows. There's no easy way that I've found to get that job done in Gimp.
You're not looking for this, are you? (you can adjust the drop shadow too, i just didn't include that in the screenshot).

[juancarlospaco]

Krita already got CMYK, Gimp got CMYK soon...

[JDShu]

#1- Adjustment layers, I can't live w/o them.


+1, CMYK support, >8-bit colors etc are not really relevant for most people. However, a lot of regular people need adjustments layers. Happily for us, once GEGL is fully integrated, this stuff is supposed to be easier to implement.

[blur xc]

You're not looking for this, are you? (you can adjust the drop shadow too, i just didn't include that in the screenshot).


Well there you go, I learned something new. I never would have thought to look there...

BM

[chucky chuckaluck]

for most of our needs (editing photos, making wallpapers, putting the heads of friends on the bodies of transgender porn stars, etc.), gimp is enough.

[koshatnik]

I'm a keen amateur photographer, and I use the GIMP a lot to do stuff with my photographs.

The other week, a relative bought me a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS 4 for Windows. It would have been churlish of me to turn down this gift. So I installed VirtualBox and run a virtual XP to use Photoshop.

So I've been using Photoshop CS 4 for a few weeks now, and I still don't get what's so great about it that so many users cite Photoshop as a reason why they can't quit Windows or OSX. Seriously, what is it that makes Photoshop so much "better" than the GIMP?

Photoshop is actually a graphic design tool that has been adopted by some photographers as a crutch to rescue their poor shots. Which, of course, you cant do.

I'm a full time photographer and I rarely touch photoshop. I use it occasionally for accessing the Neat Image plugin that I bought, apart from that I don't touch it. Its too cumbersome for photo editting - all that layers and masks crap is old hat and tedious. Packages like Capture NX, which are designed solely for photography, make adjustments much easier. I tend to get the shot right in the camera anyway, so do as little post pro as possible. I don't have time to adjust photographs.

GIMP is more than adequate and is getting better by the year. Most people dont need photoshop, they just think they need it.

But yeah, for multimedia, multisource graphic design and illustration, photoshop is pretty amazing.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Last I looked, Photoshop does much faster image processing than GIMP (and it shows intermediate steps, too, so it feels even faster than it already is). It handles higher colour bit rates, it does CMYK and the layer filters are really neat.

These things are being worked on in GIMP (and GEGL is really cool) so I'm not saying it will always be that way, but there are definitely benefits to using Photoshop. Nice gift! :)


koshatnik, Photoshop is pretty much a standard for professional photographers and designers who want to get images fitting their work. I agree that's a bit silly since a good photographer rarely needs (or wants to use) something like clone stamp, so really it is mainly used for highlighting certain colours. It has a nice interface for that (and the loss of colour detail in GIMP kind of kills that one), but there are definitely tools better aimed at that job.
On that note, though, clone stamp is pretty popular for getting rid of branding.

Unfortunately, I think the reason for Photoshop's unwavering top spot is the way it has almost become an English verb; somehow completely ingrained in culture. (I blame the pirates).

[drawkcab]

Which one makes the best lolcats?

[misfitpierce]

GIMP can get plugins that can do all the same things as photoshop so really its a crappy claim and now that GIMP has single window mode being put into new version they cant say it is the multiple window thing. I love GIMP over Photoshop any day. Not huge fan of the name but its a better app.

[Skripka]

GIMP can get plugins that can do all the same things as photoshop

Um. No. Some things are inherent problems due to the limitations of Linux/Xorg.

[t0p]

Man, do a forum search..


The rest of your post is useful. The above sentence ruins it.

Seriously: have you ever used this forum's search tool? If so, you should know better.

Anyway, I wanted specific answers to my specific question.

Everyone else: thanks.

[t0p]

Um. No. Some things are inherent problems due to the limitations of Linux/Xorg.

Such as?

[CharlesA]

I'll stick to Paint.NET on Windows and GIMP on Linux.

I suppose it comes down to personal preference.

[SunnyRabbiera]

I too really dont see much use for Photoshop, its overpriced, it needs 2 programs to have a paint bucket, plus CS4 only works well in vista it seems as even win7 is not supporting it.
Gimp is there when you dont need a lot of fancy features, but still want a fairly decent image editor.

[Regenweald]

As was mentioned before, photoshop is a powerful graphic design tool. Both it and gimp can do much more than edit pictures and in my experience working around graphic designers, photoshop is easier to use and more powerful.

[AllRadioisDead]

The rest of your post is useful. The above sentence ruins it.

Seriously: have you ever used this forum's search tool? If so, you should know better.

Anyway, I wanted specific answers to my specific question.

Everyone else: thanks.
Actually, I use it all the time.
It finds what I'm looking for.
...

[RPG Master]

For me the only thing I want that Photoshop has while GIMP doesn't is 16-bit color support :/