Would GIMP work?

And another posts to attack The Gimp without even reading the thread :/

That's the only reason I can think of why Thunderclap would think an application used by Sony Pictures International would generate laughter.



Or perhaps it was to give ex-Photoshop users an easy introduction to The Gimp. Maybe there's not enough Gimp users who feel the need to move to Photoshop for Adobe to consider implementing the reverse a good ROI.

I don't wish to further the GIMP vs. Photoshop argument, which is why I ended up dropping out of this thread weeks ago, but I do want to try to straighten on thing out.

Domino, I'm pretty sure you're wrong about SPI using GIMP. As far as I know, no professional movie studio uses GIMP, as it's not suited for the high fidelity imagery and deep paint requirements of the film industry. What SPI does use (and actively help to develop) is CinePaint, which happens to have formerly been called "Film Gimp".

Despite the former name, CinePaint is not GIMP. The two do share a common ancestry, but in its present form, CinePaint is no more GIMP than a human being is a chimpanzee. They are two different things.

I would invite you to read the following quote from the CinePaint website:



And this one, from a recent interview with Robin Rowe, project manager for CinePaint, and Gabrielle Pantera, cofounder of the film maker's association, SreenPlayLab:



Got that? "GIMP is practically useless for filmmaking". I highly doubt Sony Pictures International, or any other studio, is using it for that purpose.

So what do you believe they ARE using it for, if anything? And can you provide links to any articles or interviews that say so?

I know. I posted the original link earlier in this thread. I was sloppy in my restatement of this point as I knew Thunderclap wasn't really paying attention and didn't think explaining the difference was worth the effort.



Also true, but if you look at the current releases of Cinepaint they still have a user interface that is virtually identical to The Gimp. It's still a valid point to bring up when people say The Gimp skills aren't applicable in seeking work. The differences are comparable to the ones between different versions of Photoshop for example.

The major difference is that the colour depth in Cinepaint is increased over what The Gimp will support. But as most people don't have a monitor that will support that depth it's not a major consideration in this context.



Thanks for quoting it again in case I missed it the first time, but we aren't really talking about film making. I was taking things to an extreme point to counter an extreme view. We are talking about making content for a 3D world where the color range The Gimp offers is perfectly suitable. And if we were talking about film making, then the Plumiferos and Elephants Dream / Big Buck Bunny teams found the standard Gimp did the job for them.

When someone says "you can't get a job with The Gimp" it's over stating the point. It is possible to get a job, and in some cases is an advantage. A Gimp user would get to grips with Cinepaint faster than a Photoshop user would. But again this isn't what this thread was about. A simple "yes it will" was all that was really needed to answer the original post.

I don't know why users of other software see a title like "will the gimp work?" and hit reply and start ranting on a thread that should have long vanished, do you?

In my area, it's pretty easy to find a distance learning class at the local community college that covers subjects like Photoshop and other graphic design classes. In turn, you can get student pricing on Adobe's software. Its a very significant discount. Student versions usually have some restrictions on upgrades, but its still a very good deal to consider. And you learn something and earn college credits!

On OSX, theres a slew of new apps coming out that utilize OSX's Core Technologies. Pixelmator (bitmap) and Drawit (vector) are 2 apps that at $50 average price, are poised to stick a really big graphical boot up Adobe's and other gorilla-sized software company's butts when it comes to value.

http://www.pixelmator.com/

http://www.getdrawit.com/

for the Xwindows apps such as Blender, GIMP, etc. I love them for what they are, but the UNIX-like interfaces and the heavy memorization required--theyre definite "use it or lose it" apps. Basically, if usability isnt a big deal, and cost is, and you have a good memory of hot-key assignments and/or plan to use them constantly, go for it. However that was the biggest issue personally--the ease of forgetting them when away for a period of time (and the really patchy GUIs).

Sorry to break up your sentence, but there are two separate points here to address, so it seemed prudent.

I think it's pretty wrong of you to decree who's "paying attention" and who's not. Just because you don't think someone understands your point (or someone else's point, as you perceive it) doesn't mean they necessarily don't.


It's no effort to be accurate. You can't really believe it would have been any more difficult to say, "Lots of movie studios use CinePaint, which has a similar interface to GIMP, so GIMP skills could possibly help you get a job with one of those studios," than what you said, can you?

Surely you can see that the way you phrased it was misleading. You made it sound like SPI is actually using GIMP, which is not true. What's more, it very much seemed that the misrepresentation was deliberate. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but whether you did or you didn't, the outward appearance was that you were trying to spread misinformation to protect your point. That's not good.


Got it. That's what you should have said in the first place.


No, it's not directly relevant, which is why no one ever mentions CinePaint when we're talking about texturing. However, since you appeared to have been trying to pass CinePaint off as GIMP (intentionally or not), then it became not only relevant, but very important to talk about the difference. Accuracy is paramount.



No, we're not talking about film making, but again, you brought it up, not me. If you wanted to keep the discussion strictly relevant to texturing, you shouldn't have mentioned the Sony Pictures thing at all. You opened the box on that. All I was trying to do was close it again by pointing out that they do not, in fact, use GIMP for making movies.


You seem to be blurring the issue again. You're not really talking about the actual process of film making with those examples, not for the part where GIMP would have played a role, anyway. Surely GIMP would have been used where it belongs, which is in the texturing pipeline, not in the actual post processing of the film imagery. For that, they most assuredly would have used CinePaint.

Again, though, if you know something I don't, please link some articles or interviews that say so. I'd be happy to find out I'm wrong. Short of that, however, I've got a hard time believing they would have chosen to employ GIMP as a film making tool when there are better choices freely available. Unless directly shown otherwise, I have to believe that what those guys use GIMP for is the equivalent of what people in SL use it for, texturing (which of course makes it relevant to the discussion as a whole, just not at all in the context by which you brought it up here).

Assuming I'm not wrong, then trying to say they used GIMP to make those movies would be like trying to say they make live action films with with paint brushes and makeup applicators. Those tools are all used on the assets that get filmed, not in the actual filming or post processing. There's a big difference there.

Also, for whatever it's worth, I think it's a little unrealistic to cite those films as evidence of job options. While I do think there is important historical significance in these first ever films produced entirely with open source tools, it's not like there are many (if any) jobs available in relation to them. They are fairly unique examples right now.

The latter two are products of the Blender Foundation, produced largely just to prove a point. Maybe they'll serve to have some influence on the industry; maybe they won't. No one can know yet. It will be interesting to see.

And the studio that is making Plumiferos is in Argentina, not exactly an industry hot spot. If you want to move there and try to get a job with your mad GIMP skills, go right ahead. Me, I'll stay here.


I'd like to agree with you here, since technically you are correct. If something is possible, no matter how improbable, you cannot rightly say it can't happen. However, at some point, you do have to take probability into account. And when the odds are low enough, rounding it off to an even "no, you can't" isn't really wrong.

So let's talk about the odds. Search Monster.com right now for the word "Photoshop" right now, and you'll get over 4000 returns. Search for "GIMP", and you get exactly one. (Well, two if you count the one for a sewing machine operator. Apparently a gimp is a button holing tool, or some such.) And even that one says "Photoshop or GIMP", so a GIMP user won't even necessarily get that job.

How about Jobs.com? Well, they stop counting at "over 1000", so that's what your Photoshop search will show. Search for GIMP, and you get just one (again, not counting the sewing gig).

OK, those are general interest sites, not focused on digital arts, right? Well, lets look at at a digital arts job site, DigitalArtistManagement.com. Unfortunately, they don't have a search engine, so a thorough scan of everything is not an option (unless you have more time on your hands than I do). However, just doing a simple browser search for the word "Photoshop" on each page I'm looking at yields a whole bunch of hits. I'm not finding a single page with the word GIMP on it in any job listing.


Again, technically correct, but you're so oversimplifying, you're completely removing realism from the equasion. Yes, you MIGHT be able to get a job using GIMP if you happen to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. 99.9999% of the time, though, in any job you get in the graphics industry, you'll be using Photoshop.

Anybody can cry all they want about whether or not that's how it should be. But the fact is that's how it is. To pretend otherwise won't do anyone any good.

So, while I l do ove all the positive wishful thinking you've invested in this thread to predict a future in which open source tools might become as commonplace in the graphics industry as commercial ones, the truth here in the present is that that's not how it is. If it goes that way, great. If not, that's great too. Either way, right now Photoshop IS the standard, and most likely will be for many, many years to come.

That's not to say people shouldn't use GIMP. Those who like it absolutely should use it. Just don't dismiss all the warnings about how it's not gonna take you all that far in the industry compared with Photoshop. But if someone doesn't care about that, and they can handle the inteface, GIMP will do them fine.


That's all that was needed if you wanted an oversimplified answer, sure. There's nothing wrong with a "Yes, but..." instead of a straight yes, though, when a topic warrants a more detailed explanation. It's unfortunate that some saw fit to use the "but" in this case as fuel for argument, and for whatever it's worth, I do regret my part for having responded to that. But what's done is done.

My main concern is to make sure there's enough correct factual information that readers can make up their own minds. That's why I responded to your post in particular, Domino, after having ducked out of the discussion for almost a month. Your claim about the movie industry was new information, which wasn't accurate, so I felt it warranted a response. I have no desire whatsoever, though, to let it become another lengthy argument. I hope you don't either. Unless there's something new to add that hasn't been discussed, I'll be dropping out again as soon as I finish this post.


No comment, other than to say that if you feel it should vanish, just stop responding to it. Let it go.

Sometimes it can be hard to do that, I'll admit, especially when people are twisting your words like was happening to me in this thread before. But it's the only thing to do when a discussion becomes useless.

yes Gimp Works fine as others are just bashing each other about rubbish in my eyes..
Gimp works fine if u cant afford Photoshop Use gimp I DO and its taken a long long learning curve but as somebody else has said play around with it you dont know what does what till you try incidently I make Skins in SL with Gimp 2.4 and alot of peeps have commentted that they were awesome and flawless it all comes done to technique and practise makes perfect..

but u always get people jumping on band wagons buy this buy that look at microsoft for example but its not the arguement for here it was asked WILL GIMP WORK short answer YES....Long ANSWER if you got time Practise and Play around with it amd i turn out Stuff textures all made by GIMP and no ones complained infact they thought it was photoshop

Make's more sense than assuming everyone is hanging on my every word.



I thought I did when I referred to Cinepaint as a fork of The Gimp. To me "fork" conveys all of that. As I said, the second reference was sloppy, thanks for catching it.



I'd say that the texturing pipeline is a part of the film making process, so I don't see any blurred issues there.



In the context of there being people doing professional work (ie getting paid) using those tools? I don't see the difference myself.



How many jobs are there where neither Photoshop or The Gimp is mentioned but where they could be used? Just because The Gimp is low profile in the adverts doesn't mean there isn't work where it could be useful.



That's overstating the point. It is realistic to state there are more jobs where Photoshop is a desired skill, but it's nowhere near 99.9999% - Even just adding Flash reduces that considerably, and it's conveniently ignoring the jobs where no preference is specified. There's also a whole heap of freelance work where the deliverable and not the method of production is the key factor.

Of course if you narrow the job market enough, or limit film making to post production, then you can get the numbers to anything you want.

Sunni, I'm a mom of two young ones and fully understand where you are coming from. Though the idea of Photoshop make me smile like a school girl I know I can't afford it. I did download Gimp (quite a long time ago) and found it a tad daunting and tutiorials a bit sparce at the time. I downloaded a free trial of paintshop pro and did a search for tutorials and started picking some to play around with. A lot of moms use it to do their digital scrapbooking so their are tons of tutorials. There are also Yahoo Groups full of moms that are very helpful. When my trial was done I bought it for I believe 75.00 (this was about 2 years ago) and use it for SL (creating ads, textures, clothing, etc) as well as my sons various projects for school, creating fun pictures of family and friends as gifts, for work projects, etc so please do not think of your graphics program as somethign strictly for SL. As I'm sure Gimp has come a long way in the tutorial area and photoshop is the industry standard I'm doing just fine with paintshop and enjoy it.

It is not about the program you choose it is about releasing your creative designs and having a tool that will let you do that. Any program you decide on will require some time to get used to it but if you have the desire you will get there.

Blonde

Have to agree with the folks who tout GIMP. I have had little trouble adapting the PS tutorials to GIMP applications for my clothing design and have been very happy with it. There is a book for GIMP out there--mebbe have to check it out one of these days. Was talking to one of my buds having trouble with channels--guess what? He is using PS and could not get the same results I was achieving in GIMP.

Software evangelism is just plain silly, and is almost never accurate. Anyone who tells you that "program A" puts all other programs to shame is blinded by their own bias. Every paint program has its strengths and weaknesses but people who "swear by" the one they use, for whatever reason, likely aren't being objective.

Deciding what best suits your needs means balancing many factors - ease of use, features, price, upgrade path, and so on. Evangelism is an affliction that affects users of high end software and open source advocates alike. Open source users (and especially developers) tend to be so in love with the idea of free software that they're incapable of giving an objective comparison. Users of "industry standard" tools tend to be so in love with the idea of industry standards that they're also incapable of being objective. The bottom line with both is that they may be able to give you a full accounting of the ins and outs of the specific tool they use but probably can't give you an objective comparison becuase they don't use what they're trying to compare to. It's an odd form of tribalism.

It's no different than the Mac vs. PC wars, Xbox360 vs. PS3, and other similar foolishness. People repeat things that may have been true a decade ago that are no longer true. They've just been repeated so often that they become a kind of urban legend.

Some examples...

"Macs are better for graphics work than PCs" - That was true 20 years ago but hasn't been true for the last 15. For most of the years since, the opposite was true. Macs were lagging behind PCs in horsepower and value. In the past couple of years they've pretty much achieved parity.

"Maya is the best and only animation app for film FX work" - As with the Mac vs. PC thing that was true 15 years ago. It isn't true anymore and hasn't been for many years. Maya is more widely used in studios, but that owes more to its lineage (coming from Wavefront and Power Animator) than features. In the early 90's those two older apps were the only game in town for "high end" work and most existing studios had Unix/SGI based pipelines to support them. They naturally adopted Maya to fit in those existing pipelines when it was introduced. Today Max, Maya, SoftImage XSI, Houdini, and others are all used widely, and all have things at which they excel and others where they lag behind the competition. The FX shots for any given film are farmed out to many different studios who use different commercial and proprietary tools. Almost no films are created using just one of them.

Photoshop vs. everything else - PS is by far the most widely used, but like Maya that owes more to it being the first really capable paint program than with current capabilities. Other apps have achieved parity with it now. You're more likely to encounter PS in a job setting, but if you're well versed in PSP, GIMP, or PhotoPaint you'd be able to adapt to PS without much trouble. You'll get hired or not based on your portfolio, not your tools. In my first professional on-staff job, I used PS, but I used Lumena far more (which no longer exists). I learned both of them on the job.

To sum up, this thread is silly. If you're angling to get a job doing graphics or animation, it's all about your portfolio. A strong artist will always get hired over someone who's technically proficient with the tools in use at the studio who doesn't have as strong a protfolio to show. You can't teach someone to be an artist on the job. You can easily teach them to use a specific tool set.

If all you care about is doing stuff for SL and having fun at it, PS, PSP, GIMP, and PhotoPaint are all excellent choices. Pick one and have at it. If your hobby becomes profitable and you feel held back by your tool, try another one. I like Photoshop, but I can't give you a good comparison with the others because I'm not familiar with them. I do know that there are people doing excellent texture work in SL using all of them.

If anyone remembers the OP's original question: "Will GIMP work?" then the answer is a very big "yes it will". In fact, quite well even. However, these questions always seem to derail to arguments on which is better.....Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and GIMP. There is a core here who are quite obviously professional graphics types who use Photoshop and/or Paint Shop Pro for their real life living (at least one of them I believe is in the graphics education profession). It's those professionals that seem to always answer the question with a qualification........."yes, GIMP will work, but............". Which, of course, brings in the GIMP users with rebuttals. It reminds me of the arguments of "my Cadallac has more horsepower than your Kia........and it also is more comfortable. Plus, I only gave $30,000 more for it. If you want the cream of the crop, go Cadallac". They both get you where you want to go. Each has it advantages over the other. One, is the so called industry standard of US built automobiles and comes with "perks" that are "standard" on all models........but, they come at a price. One has few "perks". So what? When you are interested in transportation to and from somewhere one is only better than the other according to you what you (as an individual) are willing to pay for.

GIMP is more than adequate for content creation in Second Life. The argument about industry standards and/or resume entries touting your experience using either for creating content for a virtual world such as Second Life are really silly. I can't imagine anyone putting their extensive experience making textures for Second Life using either software application.......I believe mentioning that as a qualification for any real life job would actually be couner productive for serious consideration. It's quite obvious that anyone seeking real life imployment will be trained and educated using graphics applications that are "industry standards".........and if that is what you are seeking, then you have little choice but to follow that path in your gaining of experience. But, if you are merely seeking entertainment and/or pleasure strickly as a hobby then there is a choice.......spending $50 to $800 for your endeavors or nothing at all. If the price for owning or using the "Cadallac" is worth it to you then go for it. If it's not, then get the "Kia" and enjoy your savings.

I'm one of the "Kia" users........and enjoy the "learning curve" knowing I'm not busting my entertainment budget. I can have as much fun and enjoyment as anyone else no matter how much those others have spent in dollars or time learning. GIMP does it, pure and simple. There is no need to constantly tell us GIMP users how hard it is to use or how little we gain in real life work experience for future graphics field related work. We simply do not care. We can do anything the Photoshop users do in SL. We don't care if everything is easier using one over the other. It works, it gets us there. Why the freaking argument all the time?

Edited to say: Thank you Chip Much more eloquately said than me.

F

Chip, while I agree with most of what you said, from experience, I cannot agree with this point. Sure, proof of artistic ability (portfolio) is extremely important, but in this day and age, technical proficiency with requisite software is at least as important, if not even more so, in the minds of employers. While you and I as artists can certainly agree that in an ideal world someone's portfolio SHOULD be what matters most, employers do not usually see it that way, at least in my experience.

Studios and other organizations will, more often than not, have established pipelines. And what they tend to look for are people who can integrate into their existing system with the greatest of ease. Often, what determines the likelihood of a good fit in that regard, at least from the employer's point of view, is the candidate's knowledge of specific software.

I've been refused many a job interview over the years because my resume happened to have said InDesign instead of Quark, Illustrator instead of Freehand, Maya instead of Max, etc. And I've also been granted interviews for the same reason.

And, for whatever it's worth, I don't disagree with the employer's attitudes on this. It can often take weeks or months for an artist, no matter how talented, to become proficient enough with a new software package to use it as effectively and efficiently as a job may require. I don't think it's wrong for an employer not to be willing to wait for that, no matter how much the artist's talent might otherwise suggest he or she "deserves" the job, not when there's an army of other applicants out there who do have the requisite skills (and there always is). Usually, what an employer needs far more than raw talent is in an employee who will know exactly what they're doing on day one.

Maybe back whenever it was that you were allowed to learn Photoshop on the job, the prevailing attitude was different. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that was probably some time in the mid 80's to mid 90's, since if I'm not mistaken, that was when Lumena was current. If that was indeed the time, then I'd imagine it would probably have made perfect sense to let people learn on the job, since almost everyone would have been brand new to digital art anyway. For most people, it was a relatively new field then, so presumably many would have had no choice but to learn on the job.

Today, though, that's just not the mindset. Employers want people who know whatever software their company is using. I'm pretty sure if you were to walk into any interview for any graphics related job in the free world, and you said "Check out my nifty portfolio. I've never used Photoshop, but I'm willing to take my time learning it, on the company's dime," you'd be laughed out of the office.

There may well be an exception to the rule here or there, but generally speaking, as I said earlier, what software you don't know can hurt you.



Peggy, by the way, you're absolutely right that the OP's question has been answered by now, many times over, in fact. The discussion has moved past that, though, and there's nothing wrong with that. While I do regret the "mine's better than yours is" kind of arguments that have crept into the thread, other parts of the discussion are still useful.

I do think GIMP will work for me. I really am not looking for something to use on my resume, and in my current field of work, knowledge of any graphic program is not required. I think I'll download it and play around with it...check out some tutorials, and if I can't get the hang of it, I'll part with some money and go with Paintshop. PhotoShop will probably always be out of my reach, though.

That's an excellent point, Chosen. I've been self-employed for the last decade and when I entered the field (1992) you couldn't go get a degree in computer graphics anywhere. While there were lots of Quark and Illustrator people around, high quality raster artists were still a rarity. I also learned the precursor to Max on the job which was 3d Studio 1.0 running in DOS, hehe. Now CG artists are a bit like law school graduates. There are ten times more of them pouring out of schools than there are jobs to be had. Actually the ratio is probably much, much worse than that now.

There's an upside to the elapsed time though, which is that the tools have gotten very inexpensive and the hardware that can run it has too. When I started a license of Wavefront cost $40,000, annually! You could get 3ds for $2000 and own it (which was the death knell for Wavefront and SGI). Someone with their heart set on a job doing CG can spend the money for a kickin' computer, Photoshop, and Maya or Max and it'll likely be less expensive than a single semester at a mediocre art school.

I also tend to look at things from the perspective of a generalist, because that's what I've always had to be. Studios these days are highly specialized so even if you do get a job you might spend all of it painting wires out of matte shots, or writing shaders, or rigging, or modeling, or texturing, and that's it. They'll also be perfectly happy to work you into the ground for a pittance because there's a hundred people in line behind you anxious to be abused.

Hi Sunni

just get Gimp. I would have used it but I have a dusty old paintshop pro 7, which I bought years ago and after a few days of try and error I can easily follow most photoshop tuts for making SL-clothes now. I would also go look for a good book cause these program's are amazing
and you can do so much more with them when you know what the tool's and effect's are capable of.
and then one more thing if you really like doing clothes for SL and you are planning to stick with it then do yourself a favour and get a graphic's tablet. It's so much fun to work with them and speeds up your workflow. Just imagine no more mouse click's ( well almost )

i personally have photoshop, dont feel as if you have to get cs3 to make it work well. look for earlier versions to save on the price tag if you choose to go the photoshop route. Just be careful if you're looking through places like ebay to not accidentally invest in a student version.

One thing i didn't see mentioned is that gimp also offers gimpshop, which is meant to be set up similar to photoshop to help with things such as tutorials.

While one is looking around at software one might consider Corel Photopaint, and Serif's PhotoPlus.

I was just going to ask, has anyone tried Gimpshop? Apparently it mirrors the menu structure, etc, of Photoshop, thereby making all the tutorials easier to follow. As someone with basically no experience of either I would be interested to know.

Thanks,

Jen

i know of people who use gimpshop, i personally havnt. There are a few kinks to it from what i understand ( coding issues where certain tools wont work) but overall they are happy with it when using it for texturing.

Photoshop costs L$173,000, before tax. Divide that by the average Linden cost of the things you make, or plan to make. How many things can you sell in a month? In a year?

Sunni- Check the "stickies" at the top of the forum. I did a quick N Dirty tutorial for GIMP a while back. There's a link to it there.

Here's the link (just looked it up):

http://www.angelfire.com/planet/gimptutorial/

Thanks, Tod!

That's the very first tutorial I did once I got GIMP........it's a great and easy one to follow. And, thank you, Tod............you got my feet wet

Glad to hear it.

Eventually I might try a video version. Just havent had time.