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View Full Version : Are proprietary applications heavier than they need to be?



Macfunky
August 13th, 2010, 02:00 AM
I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently who uses photoshop and illustrator. He really only ever does basic, and i mean basic work, on these applications. I do love gimp and inkscape and do quite a bit of work on them. I definitely do more "advanced" work on them than my friend would on his adobe programmes.

While i know that photoshop has some features that gimp doesn't and that illustrator also is the same are they really efficient programmes. I'll admit, whilst using linux and loving it, i am very much a user end person. I have studied photography and am very familiar with photoshop. I am far from a graphic artist but i do dabble in it as a hobby.

What i have found is that gimp and inkscape are VERY lightweight compared to their adobe counterparts. Once again i do know that adobe products may have more features and can do things that gimp and inkscape cant do but really are they heavier than they should be? For intermediate tasks i would not dare go near either as i can get the same results with gimp or inkscape.

My question, though, really is, are they heavier than they need to be? gimp is very fully featured and so it inkscape. In relation to adobe products, the quality, stability and minimal resources these programmes take up is amazing and inspiring. When you look at adobe's latest suite and see how long it takes to load up and then run on very well off hardware it makes me think. I have a lowish end computer that i can easily run gimp and inkscape from whereas if i tried to run photoshop it would halt.

I mentioned adobe and their products. I don't mean to be picking on them but just wanted to make a reference. Does anyone else think big companies like adobe could do a better job as in stability erc?

Any thoughts?

Ctrl-Alt-F1
August 13th, 2010, 02:05 AM
I've noticed even on some pretty solid machines that some of the CS suite can be a little slow, but it's usually not a problem. I think in the case of your friend photoshop and it's counterparts are probably way more software than he needs, but that's his fault not the software's. Also in many ways I prefer Gimp but if I had to choose on or the other and they were both free, I'd choose photoshop hands down. (the non-freeness) is the biggest issue for me.

jerenept
August 13th, 2010, 02:08 AM
Photoshop was never intended for home use on a budget PC. It was intended to be used on a serious computer, for the use of professionals.

If you want to touch up your photos and so forth, Photoshop Elements and GIMP are definitely recommended.

RiceMonster
August 13th, 2010, 02:09 AM
I think that's a blanket statement. There are both heavy and lightweight applications that are proprietary and open source.

Simian Man
August 13th, 2010, 02:20 AM
Gimp is not what I'd call a light application. It takes forever to start because of all the plugins and whatnot it has to load.

Phrea
August 13th, 2010, 02:30 AM
tl;dr.
From what I've read, Irfanview might be what he really wants/needs, if he's on Windows.

Sadly, there's no real counterpart for Irfanview for linux [apart from a few sad tries/forks].

Dustin2128
August 13th, 2010, 02:47 AM
well when nobody can access your source code, nobody can prune criticize or improve it. They probably cold be much, much lighter. Plus windows isn't exactly a lightweight its self anyway, which doesn't help when running already heavy apps.