
Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro - paulloz
http://www.rileybrandt.com/2014/03/09/photoshop-to-gimp/
======
jjcm
This was posted to reddit a couple weeks back, and I'll repeat the same
comment I made there.

"I spend about 90% of my time in Lightroom and only 10% in Photoshop."

This is why he was able to do this. He isn't using the functionality that
Photoshop provides, he's using the functionality that Photoshop Essentials
provides. Look at his parity instructions - every feature is found in
Photoshop Essentials. If that's all you use, then great, by all means switch
over to Gimp. The bigger the userbase it has, the better off it will be.

But don't think that it's going to replace Photoshop in the near future. Non-
destructive editing is the biggest thing GIMP is missing in my opinion, but
supposedly the move to GEGL will allow them to start development on this (
[https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-user-
list/2013-December...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-user-
list/2013-December/msg00225.html) ).

Smart objects are another huge feature it's missing - not only the ability to
downscale losslessly, but also the ability to edit all replicates at once.
This is huge for designers. If I'm defining a user control for a design
mockup, and I need to make a change to that control, in Photoshop all I have
to do is edit the singular smart object source. The source edits will
propagate to all the copies automatically. In Gimp I have to do this by hand.
There are some minor features too that bug me. The inability to add a mask to
layer groups is a big one for me. Layer effects (while often overused and
gaudy) can be really helpful for design work - need to change the color of an
icon that's raster art? Just drop a color overlay on it. If you have style
swatches, it can be really easy to do fast mockups using this. This in
conjunction with Layer Comps (also something missing in Gimp right now) can
really help in switching between two or more alts. A great way to see what
Gimp is currently missing in comparison to Photoshop is to look at the
development roadmap (
[http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap](http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap)
). If some of your heavily used features are on that list, it might not be
worth switching over to Gimp. If you don't see yourself as a user of those
features though, give it a shot.

~~~
jordigh
I hear this stuff all the time. So this is my own canned response:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6675258)

> it has a ways to go before it will actually be a competitor. And it doesn't
> have a few features that I find incredibly invaluable as an Evernote user:

[list of features snipped out]

As an Octave developer, I frequently hear exactly the same things about Octave
vs Matlab, and if I listen too closely, I find it disheartening. Why work on
something that will forever suck and not be a competitor, and can't implement
the full list of features because we don't have the giant budget of our non-
free competitor?

But then I remember that people are typically more flexible than they appear
to be when they write these lists, and you'll discover that they may do
without some of the features that they list, at least in some circumstances.
And that there exist many other people with different lists of sine qua nons
who will use the free as in freedom alternative you're working on because they
have different needs.

So, to the OpenNote developers and to anyone else implementing a FAIF
replacement I say this: don't let these giant lists of features and
suggestions about how you'll never be competitive grind you down. There are
many people out there who will appreciate your work, sometimes even the people
who compiled these lists. Look at the lists, see what you can implement, and
don't be disheartened by the parts that seem impossible to implement. Who
knows, maybe some day someone will come along and help you implement the parts
that seem so hopeless to you.

Keep your chin up, free software devs!

~~~
SiVal
Instead of the GIMP limping along behind PhotoShop, both dragging their
decades-old legacy baggage, monolithic architectures, 1990s pricing models,
etc., into the foreseeable future, I wish we had something more like Octave,
SQLite, or Python: a powerful, faceless dev platform on which to build
graphics-processing apps.

Basically, a runtime that holds a GPU-optimal image model (raster layers,
vector layers, non-destructive edit management, multi-session undo, etc.), a
set of APIs for sending memory-protected commands to the model, and a growing
standard library of routines that have proven useful (network comms for
offloading some processes or results to "the cloud", input/output codecs,
CSS3, whatever). It would have a relatively easy to use scripting language
with some built-in data types such as layer, region, vectorPolygon, gradient,
font, etc., plus the usual lists, dicts, first-class functions, etc. Scripts
that get a lot of use could be reimplemented in C, etc.

Developers could wrap whatever GUIs they wanted around this engine, creating
easy consumer apps such as a slideshow or a camera-to-computer file importer
with a magnifying glass and a keep/delete shortcut, all the way up to building
clones of PhotoShop, Illustrator, resurrecting Fireworks, and so on.

Maybe someone would build a GUI builder for it that let you drag image
rectangles and buttons into a window and script the whole thing, so non-
programmers could create lens comparison apps, blink comparators for comet
hunting....

I'd so much rather have a platform like this, where the hardest part--the
image engine--would be done by experts, and the apps themselves, the feature
sets, the UIs, could then be built by hordes of amateurs.

~~~
oblio
> I'd so much rather have a platform like this, where the hardest part--the
> image engine--would be done by experts, and the apps themselves, the feature
> sets, the UIs, could then be built by hordes of amateurs.

The naïveté of a budding hacker.

Great UIs are done by experts too, young padawan.

~~~
Silhouette
_Great UIs are done by experts too, young padawan._

Yes, they are, but that doesn't preclude building the underlying data model
and functionality as a common platform with shared tools. It also doesn't mean
that building that platform and implementing a comprehensive range of
functionality isn't a much more demanding task than building a UI on top if
you've already got a good foundation.

No doubt there is plenty of hard work to go around, but I think the idea of
building more software with this kind of strategy has a lot of potential. It
could save on the donkey work for everyone, leaving different developers to
focus on the interesting/useful/distinctive aspects for different projects,
while retaining some degree of compatibility and robust basic functionality.

~~~
oblio
I wasn't disagreeing with your vision, but rather with your dismissal of UIs
as "amateur work".

And I'm not even a experience designer :)

~~~
SiVal
It will make more sense if you know that, by "amateur", I mean someone who
knows something about image processing, but not enough to build an image
processor--someone whose expertise is in something else: photography, public
presentation, UI design, etc.

I should have worded my final sentence differently, but in the sense that
someone who knows enough about database engines to be able to use one but is
an "amateur" at creating them can still use SQLite to build an app
incorporating a database engine, my "vision" would let developers whose
expertise is not in image processing engine implementation to write apps that
incorporated a sophisticated image processor.

------
pessimizer
This is like using Vim-mode to switch to Emacs, or installing Lindows. If
people could accept the trivial conventions of the software you're moving to
("How can I use GIMP? The hotkeys are different!") and stop treating it like a
free badly-executed Photoshop clone, they might realize that it's really nice
to work in.

My problems with GIMP were the CMYK stuff and a few terminology issues. I
really love the GIMP interface, and I'm not the only person who finds the
Photoshop interface awful.

I think that people just hate to have to learn anything new, and are willing
to pay rents for the rest of their lives to fend that moment away where they
might have to spend up to a week or more working in something that they're
unfamiliar with. It's a bit like the fortune web developers pay to not have to
figure out unix, or Apache.

Or like using a guitar tuner to tune each string separately. Maybe I'm just an
angry guy:)

~~~
dperfect
The thing you're missing is that the differences between GIMP and Photoshop
are _not_ just user interface idioms. I wish it were that simple (I'd love to
switch to GIMP if I could). It's not a matter of "learning something new";
it's the fact that without _real_ non-destructive editing features, GIMP is
basically just an enhanced version of MS Paint in the hands of serious
photographers and retouchers. Non-destructive editing is not a "nice to have"
feature. It's quite literally a fundamental shift in methodology - and one
that apparently the GIMP devs seem to be ignoring.

I know several professional photographers/retouchers, and for them, a typical
Photoshop document has a single source layer (the original photo) on the
bottom, and _hundreds_ of adjustment layers (organized into folders) on top to
create the final image. There's just no way to approach that power with GIMP.

~~~
k__
Shouldn't you know what you want to to, if you're a professional?

If you don't know what you want to accomplish, you need to experiment. This is
when those non-destructive features come in handy, but if you know the goal
and how to achieve it, they aren't necessary.

~~~
na85
This post is a really poignant (if unintentional) example of how a lot of
programmers/non-arty types have a fundamental misunderstanding about how
graphic design works.

"Just do it right the first time" is such a maligned attitude when directed
towards coders ("No, boss. I need to make revisions!"). Interesting that the
perspective isn't being applied equally.

Shouldn't you know what you want to do, if you're a professional? If you don't
know what you want to do, then you need git or other version control. If you
know what you want to do, why do you need version control or patches?

~~~
rimantas
Andrew Clarke talks a bit about this:
[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/03/25/a-modern-
designer...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/03/25/a-modern-designers-
canvas/)

------
greggman
Maybe someday the gIMP will be even close to Photoshop. Heck, maybe it is for
some people's needs. But, I'm not even an artist and the gIMP doesn't come
close to meeting my needs.

"No decent OpenType typography, no layer styles, no smart objects, no dice."
(from the comments on the OP)

If all I need to do is crop or scale an image than sure, I might get by with
gIMP though in that case I'd arguably get by better with something simpler
than gIMP.

But, I actually use vector layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually
use text layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use non destructive
adjustment layers ALL THE TIME.

Photoshop layer styles are like CSS. You can declare your styles and then edit
vectors or text and the styles apply dynamically.

AFAIK gIMP has no equivalents. Those are not minor features. They're what set
Photoshop apart.

~~~
pwnguin
> But, I actually use vector layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually
> use text layers with layer styles ALL THE TIME. I actually use non
> destructive adjustment layers ALL THE TIME.

Just use Inkscape and call it a day?

~~~
louhike
I think you misanderstood. He does not only use vectors, he just always needs
to have vectors on his projects. Inkscape won't be a solution.

Apart from that, Inkscape seems to be a good solution for pure vectorial work.
But my non-techies friends hate the UI. It is not that it is different of
Illustrator, they just found it ugly and unpractical.

------
dperfect
If you're using Photoshop for the purpose it was designed for (editing photos,
not illustration/painting from scratch), then GIMP is absolutely inferior in
its current form.

If you're making edits directly to source pixel layers (or even making
duplicate flattened layers and working on those), you're doing it wrong.

Photoshop is designed for non-destructive editing. An essential part of that
is adjustment layers. Many serious photographers will never switch to GIMP
until it can match the non-destructive features of Photoshop.

Editing photos without adjustment layers is like writing code without revision
control.

~~~
themodelplumber
_If you 're making edits directly to source pixel layers (or even making
duplicate flattened layers and working on those), you're doing it wrong._

That seems like a rather absolutist statement. I work with PS CC and its great
features all day at work but I guess I still remember the fantastic work that
was done before those features existed.

I have colleagues who still edit their photos using the apparently-despised
techniques you mentioned, and despite "doing it wrong" they manage to make a
great living off their photography work.

When I was teaching PS at my local college, I allowed my students to try out
alternative software packages for extra credit. Some of my brightest students
walked away from those classes happy that they could do everything they needed
to do with GIMP, even though they knew all about non-destructive editing.

~~~
dperfect
Agreed. Some gifted people create stunning works of art with unconventional or
limited tools. Tatsuo Horiuchi uses Excel to create beautiful paintings.

I guess my point is that it's hard to argue _against_ using non-destructive
editing if it's available and you understand it. Can you create great things
without it? Of course.

Bringing the analogy back to programming: some people create useful/beautiful
apps without using any form of revision control, and that's fine for them. But
if you know how to use revision control and have access to it, then is there
really any strong reason not to use it, especially if you're working
professionally? It helps increase productivity far more than not using it. For
that reason, I'd definitely tell other developers that if they aren't using
revision control for professional work, they're doing it wrong.

If you were to pick two professional photographers or retouchers at random -
one who uses non-destructive editing and the other who doesn't, I'd be willing
to bet the one who uses it (all else being equal) produces more consistent,
high quality results and with greater efficiency than the one who doesn't.

------
jordigh
This reminds me of the endless bug reports we're getting right now about the
Octave GUI not being indistinguishable from Matlab. Makes me wish people
weren't so inflexible about the tiniest UI differences. It's difficult to
please the converts.

~~~
Joeboy
> Makes me wish people weren't so inflexible about the tiniest UI differences.
> It's difficult to please the converts.

I replaced Photoshop with Gimp years ago, but I still find Gimp incredibly
painful to use. It accounts for a tiny proportion of my software use, but a
massive proportion of my swearing. I use to think it was just down to being
familiar with Photoshop, but I think I can only excuse it on that basis for so
long.

~~~
niels_olson
Yeah, is it just me or are InkScape and GIMP both set up with rather unhelpful
defaults? I didn't run into such problems with Huygen.

~~~
windsurfer
Inkscape is actually very good, and certainly comparable to Adobe Illustrator,
if not superior nowadays. The main problem I see people have with Inkscape is
when they have a MacOS computer, the only available build is from 3 years ago.

~~~
neovive
I use InkScape on the Mac. To get the most recent builds running, you need
install XQuartz which is not bundled with recent OS X versions.

~~~
windsurfer
Even the latest XQuartz install appears to be 3 years old. Were you able to
find a more recent one? I would be very interested if such a build existed.

~~~
_delirium
I don't know of a standalone installer, but Macports has the current stable
version (0.48.4).

------
skrowl
If you use Windows, consider Paint.NET
([http://www.getpaint.net](http://www.getpaint.net)) instead of GIMP. It's
much quicker (particularly the 4.0 beta builds) and has a much more Photoshop-
like UI out of the box.

~~~
tracker1
I like Paint.Net a lot on the windows side... for Mac/Linux alternative, look
into Pinta [http://pinta-project.com/](http://pinta-project.com/) ... it's
essentially a cross-platform port of Paint.Net

They do the vast majority of what most people need in a simple photo editor.

~~~
skrowl
Looks like a clone rather than a port (as paint.net isn't open source you
can't really port it), but I'll take a look.

Their github
([https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta](https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta))
makes it look like the project may be abandoned.

~~~
tanzam75
It's a port of Paint.net 3.3.6 from .NET to Mono. Paint.net used to be MIT-
licensed, and 3.3.6 was the last version that was released open-source.

Besides, the UI in Paint.net 4.0 has been rewritten to use WPF. That makes it
essentially impossible to port to Mono.

------
fidotron
Krita may have a different aim on paper, but that just looks like a way to
avoid conflict with the GIMP devs until it's clear to absolutely everyone that
they've replaced it.

One of the real shockers with the GIMP is how badly it plays with Ubuntu's
Unity, where the menubar will get emptied whenever you change something in a
non-image editor window.

~~~
edgarvaldes
Krita is a great program, and maybe a future GIMP replacement, but for now, it
is strongly focused on Digital Painting, and it does a great job in that
field.

------
bayesianhorse
While I never used photoshop, I also never quite liked the gimp.

I actually sometimes use blender (yes, the 3D software) to edit photos. It's
not the same paradigm as photoshop or the gimp, but it lets me do advanced
color grading very easily. I can use textured 3D objects for 2D Animations or
non-destructive editing. As an added bonus it works for videos and the
compositing setup can be reused for multiple photos. Probably if I were really
adventurous I could use more of the paint mode and texture paint mode to get
even closer to photoshop. But then again I'm not a pro...

------
hadem
I've always disliked GIMP's floating windows (especially with a tiling window
manager) but never knew of the single-window mode. That is a great tip!

~~~
nkuttler
Don't worry, it's pretty new. [http://www.gimp.org/release-
notes/gimp-2.8.html](http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html)

------
elclanrs
I was a Photoshop user for a long time, but haven't looked back since I moved
to Linux full time a few years back. The challenge was to use libre software
for everything and reduce my business' expenses. It's been 4 years since then
and I don't miss Photoshop. I realized in the process the I was terribly
misusing it. It was my goto tool for everything, from web design, to photo
retouch, to vector, icons...

I have a background in 3D & VFX but my work today is mostly web development,
and opensource software covers all my needs. MyPaint for free drawing like
brainstorming, illustrations, and blueprints. Inkscape for vector graphics
like icons, logos, layouts, mockups. Darktable for simple photo editing. GIMP
for heavy photo retouch, and well, it's still my goto tool for those quick
screenshots, image cropping jobs. And Blender for 3D work of course. I hardly
do print, but when I do I use Inkscape, HTML and CSS.

TLDR; Photoshop isn't the best for every task. There are free software
alternatives for everything. Using them all together provides me with all that
I need, so I no longer miss Photoshop.

------
th0ma5
As a developer, I've often felt that if I can't script something, embed it
into my own software or service, or even redistribute it, then I haven't
really _done_ it with software. This is an unrealistic goal if I was in DTP
work still, but by setting this bar, I've been amazed about how my
understanding of the context of a problem has broadened my horizons. For
instance I feel I now have a great grasp on Nurbs, Voxels, and 3d meshes in
general from having done it all with Clojure instead of Blender. Batch
processing with Imagemagick is now so second nature to me I can't stomach the
idea of having to load up PS or even Gimp.

I think when the process involves subtle interactive hand touches and nuances,
then an interactive editor will always win out. However rudimentary, discrete
"operations" are things computers should do well, and PS and Gimp fall short
in my opinion. Gimp being slightly better sort of with its open scripting.

~~~
evan_
Photoshop got full scripting support in 2003 with Photoshop CS. Before that
you had to install a free plugin and it didn't support _everything_ but it was
still pretty powerful, I don't remember exactly when that came out but I think
it was first for version 6 in 2000.

Photoshop has also had full recordable macro support ("Actions") since 1996.
Many photographers I've worked with have developed huge suites of actions
they've created that enable them to automate much of their workflow despite
having no coding ability whatsoever.

[http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html)

~~~
th0ma5
Yeah I guess I was thinking about that when I wrote this, but for instance
with Python I can instantiate a batch of transformations, and integrate other
libraries, other programs, and share inputs and outputs among all of them. I'd
be excited if there was a CS scripting whereby I could take an AI file, apply
layer effects, and then position that in a 3D transform in AE, and render an
MP4 all in one script.

I can do that with Linux and open source utilities, but I can't with CS. Also
AI is horribly leaky in memory when dealing with advanced computational design
where you have billions of points, whereas open source SVG renders take such a
thing in stride.

------
Thiz
For web developers and web designers, GIMP is a great tool.

Best of all it is free.

While I'd gladly pay ten or twenty bucks for cropping and texting images for
my web properties, I'd never pay hundreds for photoshop and their invasive
anti-piracy software.

------
logfromblammo
I think it is a mistake to measure GIMP against a standard set by Photoshop.
If a person wants a program to work like Photoshop, they should probably use
Photoshop. The standard for GIMP should be whether you can use it to
accomplish your goal.

You might as well publish a guide on how to make a circular table saw cut like
a band saw. That's completely useless both to anyone who doesn't already know
how to use a band saw, and to anyone who already satisfies all their wood-
cutting requirements with the circular saw. They are different tools; they
don't need to work the same way.

------
0x420
I only use Photoshop to slice the web site designs my coworkers send me. I
would have switched to GIMP a long time ago if they all used it, too. GIMP
doesn't read their PSD files very well.

------
hunvreus
I'd recommend you switch to Sketch[1] and/or Acorn[2] instead if you're on
MacOS. I love Gimp, and was a long time user of Inkscape after growing tired
of Adobe's products, but the UX simply is too frustrating.

[1]: [http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/‎](http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/‎)
[2]:
[http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/](http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/)

------
jawngee
I suppose it depends on what you consider a "pro" or not, and what you are
using Photoshop for to begin with.

I started out 20 years ago as a retoucher and digital pre-press. 20 years
later, I'm back in the publishing game, but publishing on the tablet. The
magazine I am producing as the "eat your own dog food" test run of our
bootstrapped tablet publishing tools (see
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22qqsFHH1HY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22qqsFHH1HY)
or
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlHFhbqzHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlHFhbqzHU)
for more info) is almost entirely photography and video. Guess who is doing
the "pre-press" work? Yeah, that's me.

So let me run you through my typical retouching workflow I use to retouch a
fashion photo (discussion about perpetrating negative stereo types of female
body types ignored for the sake of this conversation):

    
    
        - Open the image in Photoshop
        - Duplicate the background to a new layer and convert to smart object
        - Open up the smart object into a new document
        - Liquify, patch tool, liquify, patch tool
        - Hair, pimple removal with clone stamp
        - Masked adjustment layers for very slight color correction, typically make up and teeth and eye whitening
        - Save smart object
        - Go back to original document
        - Duplicate smart object twice
        - Highpass filter + overlay blend mode on top most smart object copy
        - Smart blur on smart object copy beneath high pass
        - Mask the blurred smart object and start painting in skin smoothing on the channel mask
        - Now at this point, I might have gone back to the smart object and made some more clean up and liquify tweaks
        - Manual corrections done, I move onto color grading and color correction
    

All of this is done with a wacom tablet, which afaik, GIMP still has issues
with (usable but not on the same level as photoshop). Liquify tool in gimp is
a horrible joke. No smart objects.

Can you do this process with GIMP? You can. I have. It's not as easy or
straight forward as it should be though. It can't be stressed how important
Smart Objects are to the modern photoshop workflow.

So as someone who uses Photoshop not only for app design, but actual honest to
goodness professional retouching, I have to say if this guy is only using
Photoshop 10% of the time, he's probably not even the target market for it.
Will GIMP ever make it to actual competion for Photoshop on the professional
level? I sure hope so, but not anytime soon. Photoshop CC (I've been using
Photoshop since 2.5 on a Mac Quadra 950) is the best version ever. I know I
sound like an Adobe shill, but I have extensive expertise that goes back
decades now.

Now you damn kids get off my lawn.

------
virtualwhys
Man, breath of fresh air, have never bothered tweaking GIMP as out of the box
it's usable but frustrating compared to photoshop or fireworks (yes, I've got
the latter running in a Windows VM).

On Fedora here so GIMP is what I've been using for quick image optimizations
when I can't be bothered to fire up a virtual machine.

Am definitely going to integrate some of the suggested tips, thanks to whoever
posted this...

------
dudus
Cached version
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.rileybrandt.com%2F2014%2F03%2F09%2Fphotoshop-
to-
gimp%2F&%7Bgoogle:acceptedSuggestion%7Doq=cache%3Awww.rileybrandt.com%2F2014%2F03%2F09%2Fphotoshop-
to-gimp%2F&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

------
elwell
GIMP is lighter-weight. I use it all the time for web work. If it meets your
needs, it's definitely preferable to PS.

------
computerslol
I expected this to be a joke of some sort.

------
Dale1
The only way to get something that works like Photoshop.....

I bet you can guess the answer!

It's a bit like all those people who try to get a PC to run OSX. Just buy a
damn Mac for goodness sake!

~~~
ForHackernews
Gah, I don't understand why everyone doesn't just have infinite money for
goodness sake!

~~~
amwelles
I've been paying the ~$20/month for awhile now. I'm totally happy with that,
and I don't think that's an unreasonable expense, especially if you're using
it professionally.

------
nomadcoop
I haven't tried it myself so can't vouch for it but GimpShop
([http://www.gimpshop.com/](http://www.gimpshop.com/)) fills a similar niche.

~~~
plasticbugs
I originally created Gimpshop, but I'm not the jerk who owns that domain and
added adware & spyware to the source. Sorry about that. I hate that this guy
is out there making my fun little project into an abomination.

~~~
CatMtKing
Man, that sucks. Do you have a project site for your real source code?

~~~
plasticbugs
I don't have a project site for it. I became discouraged after this whole
ordeal and I let it slip away into obscurity. Also, when I put Gimpshop out
there, I didn't really know how to code, so updating the source to stay
current was a huge undertaking for me. Since then, I've become a self taught
programmer. I know Ruby fairly well. I've built a couple of non-trivial Rails
sites and within the last 6 months, I published my first iOS app. Gimpshop was
a fun little 'prank' that got bigger than I ever expected. Sad what it has
become, though.

