Just to show how far behind I am in listening to podcasts, I just heard the TWIT episode tonight where they were talking about GIMPShop. (Check the previous link for screenshot comparisons and the author’s post, and gimpshop.net for easier access to the most current downloads / ports).
For those of you unfamiliar with GIMP, it’s an open source image editing application that rivals Photoshop in terms of functionality, but (arguably) is not quite as user friendly (or at least intuitive). It’s available for Linux, Mac, or Windows.
Being very familiar with Photoshop, I was always hesitant to use GIMP, even though philosophically I’d prefer to, and I’m sure it could do most of the stuff that I could do in Photoshop, the downside was always that I already knew exactly how to do it in Photoshop, whereas I would have to figure out the GIMP way to accomplish the same task.
Enter Scott Moschella, creator of GIMPShop, which is basically just a facelift (menu tweaking, adjusting terminology, etc.) to make GIMP look and feel a lot like Photoshop. It’s an excellent idea, whose time has definitely come (with the current version of Photoshop costing a hefty $600). Now all you PS pirates out there (not to mention any names…) can enjoy quality image editing guilt free.
Now, anyone know of a good “Illustrator killer”?
9 Comments
http://www.inkscape.org/
Inkscape looks pretty awesome; I love the fact that it’s designed around the SVG standard, which I think is probably the future of web graphics.
Too bad there is only a package for windows.
huh?
ahhh, nevermind
Are you talking about GIMPShop or Inkscape? I believe both are available on Mac, Windows and Linux…
I think it’s cool this is being done, but part of me dislikes the idea of making a GIMP clone of Photoshop. I would prefer that free software applications, especially high profile ones, try and blaze thier own trail, be innovative, and do things their own way not just copy their proprietery counterparts.
Ya, there are a bunch of people in the open source community who flamed this guy like crazy. I heard that he asked for some advice in the gimp developer forums / groups, etc. and they didn’t respond very pleasantly.
While I agree that innovation should be valued, I also believe that there are cases (and this one is a perfect example) where there is a perfectly capable product which is pretty much equal in terms of functionality, and it’s only being held back because the UI is perceived as difficult, or at least different than the familiar Photoshop one. If that is the case, then I think the OS (open source, not operating system) community is better served by breaking down that trivial remaining barrier to widespread adoption.
It’s actually a pretty big credit to the flexibility of design that’s present in GIMP that this can even be done. The guy isn’t even a programmer, GIMP just has a very easily customizable UI system, and he just edited the menu layout etc to make it look more like PS and then packaged up his changes, so the underlying app is pretty much unchanged. This is a prime showcase of one of the the huge advantages of OS software.
I think this is a very different case than the Linux distros that try to copy Windows as much as possible, but even with those I don’t have a problem with the concept of making the UI more familiar. The downfall of those projects was that they introduced a great deal of non-”free” (as in freedom) software as a part of the distro, defeating part of the purpose of running Linux in the first place.
I still don’t get the only having a package for windows comment, though.
they can flame him but they can’t stop him.