GIMP vs. Photoshop!

The GIMP vs. Photoshop! On any other forum those words would be considered trolling to start a flame war and the about.com post titled “GIMP: Like it or Lump it?” had some pretty strong opinions in the comments section and mine, which follows below, was one of them   Some of the following might seem a bit out of context as I was referring to what others had said before me but I think you will get the gist of it:

The professionals that use Photoshop at work make up a tiny minority of the total user base and if you need 16 bits, etc. you probably wouldn’t be considering using anything else in the first place. For the rest of us you can spend big $$$ on Photoshop (or take yer chances on a pirated version, matey!) or get GIMP for free. I stopped using PS in a semi-professional capacity when I discovered that it would crash if I had too many fonts installed on my system. WHAT?!? I think that’s fixed in the newer versions but I haven’t looked back since… I’ve tried the newer versions but wasn’t impressed. Photoshop: Very capable, very expensive, commercial software with very strict licensing. Only available for Windows and Mac. Somewhat of a memory hog and I really don’t care for the way the UI demands most or all of my desktop when I’m working with it. The GIMP: Very capable, can do most of what Photoshop can do (even most PS tutorials are useful for GIMP users!) and what it can’t do won’t matter to most of the people who will try it anyway. Absolutely FREE in every sense of the word and portable: I can pop it on a memory stick or a CD and most “live” linux CDs come with it as well, if I’m using someone else’s computer for a bit. There are installers for more operating systems than most about.com readers have even heard of. I can even run it on Microsoft Xbox 360 if I want. As I need to be flexible to deal with different operating systems from time to time learning an application that will look and function exactly the same on any of them is a huge plus for me. Last but not least I actually prefer the minimal UI of The GIMP. I can give it my entire desktop or just a small corner of it and still perform the exact same tasks. If I’m working on a project with many repetitive tasks I can “undock” (used to be “tear away”) menus and make them semi-permanent so frequently used items are only a single click away. 16 bit is trickling into the latest development version (it’s been in a branch known as “Film Gimp” for years and even used by major movie production companies), CMYK is available right now as a plugin, and 3D painting? That’s like saying the tire iron in the truck of my car is an EXCELLENT walnut cracker! Need to pound a nail? Buy a hammer.

In summary it’s my personal opinion that for the professional, someone who is paid to use Photoshop, there is probably no real competition…  But most of these users don’t have a choice in the matter anyway… it’s the software their company bought for them to use and it’s what they are paid to use.   Whether or not Photoshop is the only tool that can do that job isn’t the point…  For most of these users it’s the only software they can use.  So it’s worth considering that the professional Photoshop user probably makes up a very small minority of those looking for alternatives and of course reading (and writing!) GIMP vs Photoshop type comparisons! For the vast majority, that is, for those that don’t have to use Photoshop and for those not paid to use Photoshop, those that probably don’t need special functionality X or Y bit enabled whatever on a day to day basis, GIMP is a perfectly sound solution.  It offers pretty much all of the real core functionality that Photoshop has, the stuff that truly matter to the majority of users of any 2D image editor.   But most of all it’s free, it’s open source, it’s portable, and it’s very cross platform…  features that Photoshop will never have.