Posted by David Prichard on February 13, 2007 at 5:38 PM
I'm teaching photo classes for the city rec department. I've had some questions regarding GIMP, which is open source, as regards to its abilities and qualities for digital photography. I've not used it and, other than what is on their website, know nothing about the program.
Has anybody any experience or recommendations regarding this software? Bear in mind the students are largely hobbyists who want a bit more experience before venturing into commercial packages.
Dave
Posted by Mel Ladewig on February 13, 2007 at 6:32 PM
I don't use the GIMP either, but I've read a bit about it. To summarize, it provides many of the same features as photoshop including layers, saturation adjustments, all of the basic tools and some of the advanced tools like cloning tools. But it doesn't currently support 16bit editing and some of the other Photoshop CS2 features (from what I've read).
As a compromise, I might suggest that your students look at Photoshop Elements. For the modest $100US investment (less for students), this application is very similar to Photoshop and would allow you to teach in common terms with a common interface and layout to what you've used in Photoshop. Although Elements doesn't support 16bit editing at all levels, it can be used to teach about layers, levels, contrast, saturation and most of the other basic post processing skills that your students may want to learn.
If the students are using the rec deparments computers, I would also look to see if your city's rec department can contact Adobe about classroom licensing. You can read about this on Adobe's website. They call it Volume licensing for educational institutions.
Posted by Ott Luuk on February 13, 2007 at 6:36 PM
I`ve used it for some applications for a while. The user interface is quite "different" and not really beginner-friendly. It`s also on the slow side, limited to 8-bit image manipulation and lacks integrated colour management.
Other than that, GIMP has an impressive set of advanced tools for free software including layers, masks, levels, curves, a pile of filters and adjustable selection and paint tools. It takes various plugins, (including raw converters) and it is possible to write scripts a la PS actions. Files can be saved with layers in tact. Fully customizable keyboard shortcuts and a slew of other tweakable options. It`s quite capable if you bother to learn how to use it. And again, it`s free - so why not see for yourself?
OTOH, any decent digital camera or scanner will come bundled with an image editing software of some kind, often a version of PS Elements. These should be fine (and easier to learn than GIMP) for most users who never really need the heavy lifting capabilities of full version PhotoShop.
I've used GIMP in the past, and now am a CS2 user.
GIMP is good, it's free, rather easy to use IMO (but I'm a software geek by profession).
However, I think as the name suggests, it's only an image manipulation program, not a complete workflow solution. The versions I've used so far never had any concept of color space. Or devices.
I know of only a single RAW plugin called UFRaw that worked with GIMP, and it's not very useable in my opinion.
I also found the GIMP algorithms rather rough; and very susceptible to noise and posterization. But then again, I'm used to looking at things with a find tooth comb, so if your students aren't likely to notice the differences, then GIMP may very well be worth it.
Afterall, I learned all my stuff on GIMP first.
Posted by Paul Wegemann on February 14, 2007 at 6:51 AM
I passed on the GIMP a couple of years ago because it did not offer color management. I believe for newer versions they were going to fix that, but I don't know whether they have. If you're looking for free software, Lightzone was offering their Linux version for free, and I believe Cinepaint was too.
Posted by Les Barstow on February 20, 2007 at 5:58 PM
The latest development versions of The GIMP are still working on color management, sadly. A proposed side project to develop a new framework for transparent manipulation of arbitrary colorspace and bit-depth (GEGL), proposed several years ago, was inactive until recently. In the meantime, a series of plug-ins to work with ICC profiles is being (slowly) integrated into the main program. When GIMP hits v2.4, that support will be complete - right now, you can assign profiles and proof, but profile conversions including printing are Right Out as of this time...
If your students will be working with JPEG output from their cameras, GIMP will probably be sufficient to their needs; if you want a PhotoShop interface, GIMPShop provides that, too. But if you're working with colorspaces, I'd recommend other tools.
Discussion
5 repliesHas anybody any experience or recommendations regarding this software? Bear in mind the students are largely hobbyists who want a bit more experience before venturing into commercial packages.
Dave
As a compromise, I might suggest that your students look at Photoshop Elements. For the modest $100US investment (less for students), this application is very similar to Photoshop and would allow you to teach in common terms with a common interface and layout to what you've used in Photoshop. Although Elements doesn't support 16bit editing at all levels, it can be used to teach about layers, levels, contrast, saturation and most of the other basic post processing skills that your students may want to learn.
If the students are using the rec deparments computers, I would also look to see if your city's rec department can contact Adobe about classroom licensing. You can read about this on Adobe's website. They call it Volume licensing for educational institutions.
Other than that, GIMP has an impressive set of advanced tools for free software including layers, masks, levels, curves, a pile of filters and adjustable selection and paint tools. It takes various plugins, (including raw converters) and it is possible to write scripts a la PS actions. Files can be saved with layers in tact. Fully customizable keyboard shortcuts and a slew of other tweakable options. It`s quite capable if you bother to learn how to use it. And again, it`s free - so why not see for yourself?
OTOH, any decent digital camera or scanner will come bundled with an image editing software of some kind, often a version of PS Elements. These should be fine (and easier to learn than GIMP) for most users who never really need the heavy lifting capabilities of full version PhotoShop.
GIMP is good, it's free, rather easy to use IMO (but I'm a software geek by profession).
However, I think as the name suggests, it's only an image manipulation program, not a complete workflow solution. The versions I've used so far never had any concept of color space. Or devices.
I know of only a single RAW plugin called UFRaw that worked with GIMP, and it's not very useable in my opinion.
I also found the GIMP algorithms rather rough; and very susceptible to noise and posterization. But then again, I'm used to looking at things with a find tooth comb, so if your students aren't likely to notice the differences, then GIMP may very well be worth it.
Afterall, I learned all my stuff on GIMP first.
If your students will be working with JPEG output from their cameras, GIMP will probably be sufficient to their needs; if you want a PhotoShop interface, GIMPShop provides that, too. But if you're working with colorspaces, I'd recommend other tools.