It would be a good choice for someone who wants all of these archetypes in one program, and is able to adjust their workflow. (and probably unparalleled for the photographer and text manipulator)

I don’t get what the author meant in saying there were no “professional” alternatives for the vector graphics professional. I think that Illustrator (or if Adobe isn’t allowed, Corel Draw or Xara would easily fit the bill…)

I wish Gimp could be skinned, including shortcuts and placement of buttons. That way, a photographer could have a photography-oriented skin, with the relevant functions.

Really though, the problem with GIMP is that it’s trying to clone a program that sucks (OpenOffice has this same problem). I wish that Linux folks would spend more time trying to figure out what users actually want, rather than just mindlessly aping popular Windows apps.

I usually post first, edit later :)

simple problems like, not being able to edit text on canvas, a flat layer structure, having to use modifiers to move the layer you have selected (click dragging will move the layer of the object you have moused over, alt dragging will move the layer) its insistence in using 20 windows, and probably most annoyingly, have ui element fly around the screen as I mouseover things.

(plus the layer panel highlight (with a black border) what you dont have selected…?)

to be honest I might give it another shot now because I really dont like booting into vbox to get ubuntu, but gimp is far and away nowhere being as usable as photoshop, in terms of saying its “just as powerful”, features are pointless if noone knows how to use them.

Inkscape is a much more comparitavely powerful tool, it doesnt have as hard a ui problem because inherently vectors are somewhat easier to manage, but they have done a pretty good job.

I’ve never used photoshop for serious work because it just doesn’t run on the platforms I use, so I honestly don’t know what about the Photoshop UI is so great compared to GIMP (what I’ve been using for years, because it seems to be the best option). I can’t find my way around Photoshop for anything, but having never (really) used it, I’m not at all surprised by that. Maybe it is substantially better. The thing is, I haven’t been able to see any major differences aside from personal preference.

Now, I frequently see GIMP dismissed in the manner of the comments above (“There’s a reason it’s not mentioned. It’s not up to the job”, “Until GIMP receives a complete interface overhaul….”) but I’ve never seen a constructive criticism of the GIMP UI. I think it would be pretty interesting to read, since a lot of people obviously feel it has failings (including the GIMP dev team, 2.6 is moving to a different UI, and 2.8 should have CMYK and 16-bit support as well as additional steps towards that new UI).

Anyhow, if anyone knows of a constructive discussion of the GIMP UI’s failings, I would really like to know about it.

Thanks!

The problem here is that there are people like me in the world who are professionally “all of these people at once”. (students, also)
I do digital painting, photography, illustration, AND graphic design.
Photoshop allows me to do all of this in one program, although I do use the rest of the Suite to help.

I NEED and LIKE Photoshop in it’s full monstrosity.
Perhaps I am a small percentage, but, because of the versatility/compatibility/etc. of it’s programs, our percentage will continue to be Adobe’s slaves.
Is there any hope for our wallets?

And that’s exactly the attitude that will keep holding GIMP back from being a viable alternative to Photoshop. Obviously, if I have a complaint about it, it MUST be my fault. After all, GIMP is perfect already. If it doesn’t have a feature, I must just not have realized that I don’t actually need it!