hand up GIMP users

Jagera

I recently made the operating system switch from Windows to Linux, and along with that I had to say goodbye to 6-7 years of Photoshop experience.

I now move into the GIMP arena, and would like to get a feel for other people's opinions of it.

The first hurdle I fell at was cropping. With Photoshop I could select a crop size, say 10x15inch, and drag the rectangle to any size. In GIMP the crop seems to remain fixed at the proportion of the image. The GIMP help doesn't seem to answer this question.

But other than that, are people satisfied with it, as a tool for, lets call it, "advanced hobby" photo editing?

pft

I've only ever used picasa and gimp for photo editing (import all jpgs into picasa and then select some for extra processing using gimp), so I can't compare to photoshop or any other professional product. For me its adequate but the biggest drawbacks I see are its user interface is difficult to use at first and is restricted to 8 bits.

What version of gimp are you using? The crop tool on my version allows you to fix the aspect ratio eg to 4:3 or whatever you like.

There are a load of gimp tutorials on youtube and other sites which are worth checking out.

DaireQuinlan

GIMP suffers from a couple of glaring flaws.
Firstly is, despite promising it for years, the lack of 16 bit support. Just checking the site there it's apparently going to be in the next major release, 2.8. I'll believe it when I see it actually released and supported.
Secondly, the UI is truly appalling. IIRC there's GIMPShop that has a photoshop-like interface but it lags a few versions behind the trunk. Blender suffers from a similar problem. Although GIMPs UI is at least usable, unlike Blenders'.

KarmaGarda

Ex-Gimp user as of about a week ago. It's a very powerful but a very annoying editor at the same time. Granted, this was under windows vista. It will crash, go to the background when you click it, confuse you, all at the same time. I've purchased photoshop elements and I am happier with that already in the few brief encounters I've had with it. Lightroom all the way unless I wan't to do some serious/artistic editing.

democrates

What DQ said. I usually use ufraw to process at 16-bits first and save shots from the trash. For bracketed exposures qtpfsgui is great, you don't have to tone-map the hdr image.

Importing to gimp converts to 8-bit, doesn't matter for web output but for print even though it looks ok you know it could be better. Of course it's the shot that counts most but it is a pity to know that your editing hours are only producing medium depth results. I'm hoping smart software in the future will do smart interpolation to 16-bit, and pattern recognition to guextrapolate to 3d...

Imagemagick may be worth a look as it isn't limited to 8-bit but it could do with a high-end gui, while Inkscape is good for vector work but only deals in 8-bit rasters. You might also be interested in Phatch and DigiKam.

AnCatDubh

I think the gimp is absolutely great. You do need to spend time learning it but to be fair - be it photoshop or corel or illustrator or whatever, you will need to spend similar time learning them like any other package. The interface is more linux-y (which I think is its origins) which is also why many windows or mac users take instant dislikes.

You need to understand that interface (again this takes time). I think its where your crop hurdle happened. It can do really advanced stuff when you get into it.

To get you over the first hurdle you encountered - when you crop (SHIFT-C) or click the crop tool (scalpel icon), you get the tool's options in the lower half of the toolbox.



Check the fixed checkbox leaving Aspect Ratio selected in the drop down beside it. In the box below it enter any ratio that you would like 8x10, 10x8, 6x4, 12x8, etc..., etc... or crop to any fixed aspect ratio. Obviously play with the other options where you can constrain the width and height.

You've also the benefit of having it running on the wonderfully stable linux platform. I run it on vista (performs a little erratic) and on a linux netbook. Identical - same plug ins, etc.... Oh, imho, it is dead cool (at least a a techy geeky kinda vibe).

16bit hasn't yet been a problem for me. As soon as it is I'll go looking for a solution.

check out meetthegimp.org

I usually find the online documentations or forums quite helpful in terms of plain technical "this is the feature, and these are its settings" kinda stuff. Meet the gimp or youtube will be your friend.

There is a feature which photoshop does that the gimp absolutely doesn't which I remember thinking it would be very nice to have however i've since forgotten what it was - I guess what you don't have you won't miss.

pullandbang

One thing I found very useful in GIMP which isn't in PS, is the way you can overlay the crop tool with a "rule of thirds" frame. This allows you to play with a crop by dragging the corners over your image while still seeing the rule of thirds grid. Very useful and missed big time in PS.

paudie

New user of Ubuntu and I've written down some initial thoughts on editing in it in general.
http://paud.ie/blog/?p=881
I'll hopefully keep it updated as I go along and get more experience if anyone is interested.

Jagera

Sounds good Paudie, keep it up. I'm about the same as you with photo editing. Cropping, levels, contrast.. thats about it.

I'm over a month into Linux now and GIMP, and am getting on top of things.

I don't really need 16 bit but if/when it comes to a future version of GIMP, then great.

As far as I've read though, the future of GIMP seems to be around making icons and logos and stuff. It's not focussing on photo editing.

AnCatDubh

The Gimp UI is to get a major makeover (read, ability to dock menus etc...) as well as an overhaul of the text handling functionality in next release v2.8

I dunno, but once you are used to the floating docks, you get to like the amount of space that's free'd up. Thankfully if you like it how it is then you needn't change at all.

democrates

bw wrote: »

As far as I've read though, the future of GIMP seems to be around making icons and logos and stuff. It's not focussing on photo editing.

Have no fear that article couldn't be more wrong, the prime goal of the Gimp is photo-editing, always has been and everything on their to-do list shows they're continuing to add features that make it a more powerful photo editor. That's their prime directive.

The author might have gotten the wrong end of the stick from looking at tutorial titles on gimp.org and gimpusers.com which seem top heavy with tutorials of interest to the web dev crowd.

For icons, buttons, logos etc inkscape is a great alternative tool and where I tend to start, but good as it at vector graphics I still find myself using gimp to add raster elements because it's just so groovy at naturalising.

The Gimp has gozillions more features from animation to scripting it's true, but photoshop branches out into these areas too and it doesn't take from it's excellent photo-editing reputation, quite the contrary. Which reminds me you can also use PS brushes available free all over the web in the Gimp.

If you only trust me on one thing, this: a treat awaits if you take the time to suss out layers and layer masks, it's a quick way to single out areas for processing from fixing CA fringes to enhancing skin tones. I was kicking myself when I finally spent half an hour sussing how that annoying box of options worked, because I'd spent the first year doing lots of things very hard ways. Live and learn I guess.

paudie

Another update of my journey into open source if anyone is interested.
http://paud.ie/blog/?p=903

paudie

Been there, done that, given up.

My Ubuntu experience has come to a close.
There is no easy to use HD video editor so I'm going back to Windows.

I found some nice programs that I might try to port over in place of photoshop. But the hassle needed to edit HD video has pushed me away from Linux systems.

Blog post here if any one wants a bit more info.

democrates

paudie wrote: »

Been there, done that, given up.

My Ubuntu experience has come to a close.
There is no easy to use HD video editor so I'm going back to Windows.

I found some nice programs that I might try to port over in place of photoshop. But the hassle needed to edit HD video has pushed me away from Linux systems.

Blog post here if any one wants a bit more info.

If Kdenlive is too complex kino might be a good place to start. I've used the former on Kubuntu (installed easy from the repos) no problem on 5D II 1080 30fps .mov files, and it caters for 29.97fps which I'll use come the next firmware update.

paudie wrote: »

It’ll be hard enough getting my head around editing video never mind having to worry about re-encoding the video and all that craic.
Sorry open source.
You have failed me.

Granted there's a bewildering array of options particularly in the big programs, but I predict you'll have much the same issue on Win or Mac because unfortunately that's how complex the AV world is.

An editing program regardless of the OS it runs on has to cater for more than one user need. Others may be starting with video from other devices, maybe pre-processed or animation from blender etc, the audio could be in any format too, then how would you like your output container, is it for dvd, youtube, what frame size/rate and what compression formats for the audio and video etc.

I can appreciate your frustration but AV editing is a field with many format options, it seems unfair to blame open source for catering to that.

paudie wrote: »

Going to save up (again) and get a 64bit machine for the HD video, will get Windows 7 then for sure.

I think this hints at the other part of the problem, I had to buy a new pc to handle HD too. The old box just didn't have the horsepower either in Linux or Win XP MCE (dual boot), real pain.

I'd get the new pc and have another go. In the interim you should spend some time solely nailing down input and output options that suit. You'll need to do that regardless of OS. Good luck and enjoy.

AnCatDubh

dont forget the Gimp works on windows too And still costs nothing to install. Wooo!

Jagera

I have enough disk space on the PC, so I have a dual boot between Linux and Windows 7.

I have only 1 or 2 reasons to use Windows these days, and once I find an alternative, I'll probably have no need for it.

But as far as photo editing is concerned, I'm using GIMP for everything, and after some initial learning (i.e. the first post here) I'm fine & dandy with it now.

paudie

democrates, Ok I didn't really say exactly what I meant.

From my searching it seemed the only way to edit HD video was to put the video through some complicated decoding and re-encoding process so that Ubuntu could recognise it. It was this I had a problem with, not the actual editors. I know I'm going to have to learn a lot with those. I was planning on using cinelerra or maybe Blender, but definitely one of the more intense NLE's. I just didn't want the hassle of mucking about with the clips before I get them into the editor.

Could you give me an overview of your workflow for video?

paudie

Right so this transcoding is what every one does all the time.
http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=6516

I hadn't realised that :rolleyes:

I'll keep looking into Ubuntu stuff for the moment I think.