Now I don’t think the Gimp devs are trying to compete with PS in the pro level, which is a pity, people like me would LOVE to use it, both for ethical reasons (free software) and for the price (I can’t afford a legal copy of PS).

I am trying to learn how to create Web Templates and GIMP doesn’t seem to be the best approach because of the lack of WIN32 support. What I mean is that it seems as if most support is expressed in source code changes and using MAKEFILES to build this plugin or that plugin.

Last night was the last straw for me and GIMP. I was trying to use the bucket fill tool and when ever I selected a color (green, pink, brown, or whatever) all the bucket fill tool would do is fill everything as Gray. I promptly uninstalled GIMP and started using Paint.net.

I am mostly upset and don’t mean to be a butt head. If anyone knows of a place for reasonable GIMP support I willing to listen. Untill then my cheap butt will be trying to use Paint.net

There was a time when GIMP met my needs. Your graph is absolutely accurate. When I was editing a few photos at a time it was great. Didn’t need Photoshop. But when my shoots became larger and the ability to handle and batch edit literally hundreds of RAW photos at once became necessary, GIMP lost in favor of a full version of Photoshop. A couple versions later and I’m still paying because time is money, and GIMP takes WAY too much time. (Literally a few hours vs a few days.)

To be completely honest, however, what the GIMP is lacking is not so much Photoshop features as Bridge, Lightroom, Aperture, CaptureOne, or RAW Shooter features. I now do very little work in Photoshop, and what I do could be handled by the GIMP fairly well (still needs a little work…). Most of my work now involves sorting, rating, and batch processing large numbers of RAW images. I long for the day that we have an open source alternative in this department. (If I’m somehow completely oblivious to an existing solution, please let me know!)

- Jon

That’s very true!

I think this whole thing is going waaay overboard…

Some people are clearly overreacting.

With virtual desktops, and users who know how to use them, The GIMP can be quite usable. You can show the palettes on all desktops, and assign a couple of image windows to each desktop, thus enabling you to switch tasks by simply switching virtual desktops.

Therefore, the GIMP is perfectly acceptable on Linux. Sure, there are a couple of usability issues, but most complaints come from Photoshop users who want The GIMP to behave exacly like Photoshop.

On Windows, The GIMP just plain sucks! There are no virtual desktops and GTK is just ugly and weird outiside of X11.

On the Mac, The GIMP sucks! It is like you paired Frankenstein’s monster with a supermodel.

But one thing remains… MSOffice on the Mac also as the same MDI style as The GIMP, as does Photoshop. I don’t see anyone complaining, do you?

I think this whole thing is going waaay overboard…

Don’t know about Photofiltre, but last time I used Paint.NET (like 6 months ago) it didn’t have half of Gimp’s functionalities. Plus, it’s uncertain if it runs properly and GNU/Linux and Mac OS X — relies on Mono for that matter.

On the other hand, The GIMP has native builds of each operating system.

I hope that Gimp’s usability will improve along with GTK+ overall look. They should certainly take a closer look at Mac OS X.