Posted by: Ken Barber
on February 28, 2006 03:38 AM
Using The Gimp is using stone tools; it is light-years behind Photoshop and will probably never catch up. I say this as a long-time Gimp user who had to switch to PS when I turned pro.
To answer your question, lots of things are missing from The Gimp that make it unsuitable for professional use. Here's a partial list, off the top of my head:
Too slow for professional use. I'm not talking about the code, I'm talking about the workflow. We pros often need to work on dozens or hundreds of images per day, and The Gimp just takes too darned long. Here are a few examples:
Severely limited size of clone stamp tool. I think the biggest you can make it is 20 pixels or something ridiculous like that.
No healing brush tool. This makes some retouch jobs more costly than the value of the image.
No 16-bit-per-channel capability.
No IPTC header capability. No publisher will accept images anymore without these headers filled in.
No <a href="http://www.digimarc.com/" title="digimarc.com">Digimarc</a digimarc.com> capability. This is essential to those of us who need to keep a lid on illegal usage of our images.
No color management capability.
The last item is the real deal-killer. Without Color Management there is no way to ensure that the colors I see on my monitor are the same colors that a publisher will see on hers -- and also no way to ensure that what is printed will be the right color. Even if The Gimp took care of all of its other disabilities above, this one glaring lack alone makes The Gimp a non-starter for professional photographers.
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Re:What's missing from Gimp?
Posted by: Ken Barber on February 28, 2006 03:38 AMUsing The Gimp is using stone tools; it is light-years behind Photoshop and will probably never catch up. I say this as a long-time Gimp user who had to switch to PS when I turned pro.
To answer your question, lots of things are missing from The Gimp that make it unsuitable for professional use. Here's a partial list, off the top of my head:
The last item is the real deal-killer. Without Color Management there is no way to ensure that the colors I see on my monitor are the same colors that a publisher will see on hers -- and also no way to ensure that what is printed will be the right color. Even if The Gimp took care of all of its other disabilities above, this one glaring lack alone makes The Gimp a non-starter for professional photographers.
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