Photoshop or GIMP?

[blinkity-blonk]

Having read the thread on 'Photoshop or Pixinsight?' I thought I'd ask whether anyone uses GIMP instead of Photoshop. I don't have anything against PS, I just use GIMP as I'm too poor to afford PS and too honest to steal it

Can photoshop really be worth ALL that money though when there are alternatives like GIMP out there that are free? I know alternatives haven't been around long so there's been no choice but to buy PS, but surely now the hefty price tag on PS must be knocking their sales back a bit.

Having never used PS, I don't know how GIMP compares. Does PS have any edge over its rivals? Cos' I really can't see the attraction of it if the others are either at or nearing its level of performance.

It'd be great to hear from users of either one or the other, or users of both.

[Sam]

Gimp is a great application but it's main problem is that it can only handle 8 bit at the moment, there are plans to move it up to 16 bit but at the moment it's still 8 bit. PS can do 16 bit and for astro imaging you really need an imaging processing application that can make the most of the camera you are using. This becomes noticable when you start to stretch the data.

Sam

[roundycat]

PS is the world standard, otherwise all the users out there (mainly professional) would use something cheaper or free. It is a professional standard graphic imaging package that happens to do a lot for photographers as well. I did download Gimp a few years back as I needed to keep up with what was on the market at the time. I was disgusted with it after about ten minutes and uninstalled it. Even that didn't work cleanly. You get what you pay for.

Dennis

[blinkity-blonk]

Gimp will soon hopefully have 16 bit capabilities as you say. Personally I've not noticed any limits to 8 bit Gimp, but then I've not really done any intense editing so I've not pushed the limits of its potential. I'm new to astro imaging as well so I guess when I get more into that I'll notice the benefits of 16 over 8 bit.

I agree with Dennis on the earlier Gimp stuff - it was pretty nasty, but it's come on a long way (though they've slid downhill on user friendliness recently and it still has a stupid name!)

I suppose Photoshop is universally liked for a reason, you rarely hear people complain about it from a capability or user friendliness point of view.

[Sam]

PS isn't the only application out there and though it is very good it is certainly not the last word, though if I'd spent the small fortune that it costs I'd be reluctant to look any further. Gimp at 8 bits is certainly very limiting, you may not have noticed it yet but when you come to stretch histograms it'll certainly show it's limits. Notwithstanding that it's pretty good for touch ups. Once it goes 16bit it'll ceratainly be a good option to look at and I would imagine a lot of tools written for other applications relating to astronomy would be ported over to it.

Sam

[dph1nm]

I use GIMP (on linux) for all my single image processing. I used to use it for aligning & stacking multiple images, but DSS is somewhat easier for this (although the images produced are very similar). Interestingly, as a regular gimp user I find my cutdown version of photoshop on WinXP totally impossible to use, so I guess it is just a case of what you are used to.

Photoshop does all sorts of colour-space stuff which is of no interest unless you are a professional graphic designer, and I suspect this is what you pay for.

The 8-bit limit in gimp is rather tedious I agree - but if you are just going to display jpegs on the web it doesn't really matter.

NigelM

[dph1nm]

I just game across this set of rather useful GIMP tools for astronomy

Gimp Plug-Ins - Programme - Georgs Homepage

Seems to do most things you might want. I have managed to compile it under Linux + GIMP 2.6

NigelM

[Breakintheclouds]

Just to throw a couple of other things in here...

Have a look for Gimpshop - a version of Gimp (so free), but which is modified to look and act like Photoshop. This means that most of the Photoshop tutorials out there on the web will be usable.

Also, if you have a Mac, Pixelmator is really surprisingly good - it's very cheap, easy to use and looks good.

[ollypenrice]

Ps has many dedicated astronomical plug-ins available, which makes it very attractive. Noel's Actions, Grandient Xterminator, etc. It is also a lingua franca uniting imagers from all over the world, which is nice. I don't know the French Ps vocab but I can still exchange ideas with French colleagues quite easily.

The price, however, is as outlandish as the quality of the product is high. I sometimes have professional Ps users stay here - web designers for instance - and it is interesting that they themselves say that often two professional users will have virtually no common ground in the parts of the programme that they use. It is simply vast. The other thing is that it works. You can't say that for many software packages!!!

Olly

[keithatrochdale]

Don't forget RegiStax 5, also free;

RegiStax- Free image processing software

[Doc]

I've tried Gimp but just couldn't get on with it. PS CS2 just seems alot more natural and easier to use.

[callump]

I don't have Photoshop, and no plans to buy it (tight Scot...).

I use the Gimp regularly, and its fine for all my purposes.

I use IRIS for calibration, stacking, etc - and its good for all those purposes and works at 48 bit too.

For general purpose resizing, and simple stuff, Irfanview is nice.

Pity that IRIS does not work on linux - so I am thinking about trying ImageJ. Anyone on here tried it ?

/callump

[keithatrochdale]

I use IRIS for calibration, stacking, etc - and its good for all those purposes and works at 48 bit too.

/callump

Hi

Have you got a link for this software please?

[callump]

Iris can be downloaded from Christian Buil's site at:

Iris software

Also check out his home page at:

Spectroscopy, CCD and Astronomy

Some pages are a mixture of french and english, and some are just in french. But babelfish will help, if you got a c in french like i did :-)

/callump

[oceanheadted]

I don't have PS and really want to like GIMP but it does my head in. Everything seems to be designed to be utterly counterintuitive, even the most basic tasks seem to take longer than any other application I have used. I suppose I must be coming from a very different place than its designers.

Do you have someone in full time education in your household. There's quite good discounts for PS for students...