It sometimes comes as a bit of a shock to people who don't give a lot of thought to computers to find that the ferocity of the Mac versus Windows debate rivals the controversy over the religious principles in the Reformation. You read some forums and breathe a sigh of relief that it is no longer legal to burn people at the stake.
Even if you are au fait with the passions aroused by these different platforms, you may not be aware that there is a similar war going on between aficionados of Photoshop and the GIMP. Photoshop is the best selling graphics package and the GIMP, or the Graphic Image Manipulation Programme is its leading open source rival. Luckily, I don't have to come down on one side or the other because as only the GIMP is free I only have to consider its merits in absolute terms. Photoshop may or may not be a much better option for the seeker after serious graphic gratification - I don't know because I have never had a go on it.
What I can say is that for the ocaissional dabbler in graphics, the GIMP is very capable but does not make it easy for the novice to get the most out of it. I suspect that if you have a pretty good idea of what you are doing that it is a very useable piece of software. But its bewildering array of features and its very, how we shall we put it, original configuration don't lend themselves to its use for a quick bit of image tarting up. Pressing the wrong buttons can also get you into a frustrating cycle of futile clicking.
Nonetheless the fact that it is free, that it supports a huge range of file types and that it almost certainly does actually do whatever it is you want to do justifies downloading it and devoting a modest bit of your hard disc to it. It comes in versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, and all are very similar to one another so it is a good choice for platform tarts or people who need to work on the same files at home and on a different system at work.
I'll post a couple of step by step guides to how to do speficic things with the GIMP.
Saturday 22 November 2008
GIMP - A bit fiddly but very powerful
It sometimes comes as a bit of a shock to people who don't give a lot of thought to computers to find that the ferocity of the Mac versus Windows debate rivals the controversy over the religious principles in the Reformation. You read some forums and breathe a sigh of relief that it is no longer legal to burn people at the stake.
Even if you are au fait with the passions aroused by these different platforms, you may not be aware that there is a similar war going on between aficionados of Photoshop and the GIMP. Photoshop is the best selling graphics package and the GIMP, or the Graphic Image Manipulation Programme is its leading open source rival. Luckily, I don't have to come down on one side or the other because as only the GIMP is free I only have to consider its merits in absolute terms. Photoshop may or may not be a much better option for the seeker after serious graphic gratification - I don't know because I have never had a go on it.
What I can say is that for the ocaissional dabbler in graphics, the GIMP is very capable but does not make it easy for the novice to get the most out of it. I suspect that if you have a pretty good idea of what you are doing that it is a very useable piece of software. But its bewildering array of features and its very, how we shall we put it, original configuration don't lend themselves to its use for a quick bit of image tarting up. Pressing the wrong buttons can also get you into a frustrating cycle of futile clicking.
Nonetheless the fact that it is free, that it supports a huge range of file types and that it almost certainly does actually do whatever it is you want to do justifies downloading it and devoting a modest bit of your hard disc to it. It comes in versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, and all are very similar to one another so it is a good choice for platform tarts or people who need to work on the same files at home and on a different system at work.
I'll post a couple of step by step guides to how to do speficic things with the GIMP.
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