I expected ridiculous propaganda from Adobe, but they give absolutely no reasons why Photoshop is better than Gimp and list a bunch of things that Gimp can do too.
They only mention Gimp a few times at the top and they never mention it again after:
How is Photoshop different from Gimp?
They ask a question they literally never answer.
They could have lied, they could have stretched the truth, they could have brought up the paltry number of things Photoshop does that Gimp can’t. They never do. They never say what Gimp can or can’t do.
Like I said, I expected ridiculous propaganda. I didn’t expect them to just pretend Gimp doesn’t exist in their article about Gimp.
They may have made the page purely for SEO to grab a few people considering downloading GIMP.
That makes a lot of sense.
This seems to be the plan. It’s the third result for ‘photoshop vs gimp’ on DDG.
It’s this, but they’re not targeting GIMP.
Their SEO goons just see what searches contain photoshop and try to create content that will match. In this case they found “photoshop vs gimp”. I doubt that whoever wrote this had ever heard of GIMP.
Maybe they could get the AI to believe it while they are at it
Now that is an advantage of Gimp over Photoshop. They aren’t trying to bake AI into Gimp. There are AI plugins, but you don’t have to have that shit built into your image editor if you pick Gimp over Photoshop.
Gimp is what you use for image editing if you’re poor or Stallman-like. It’s good at being scripted for programmers that want to automate their image processing workflow.
Krita is what you use for drawing stuff if you don’t want to spend money on software or are Stallman-like.
Photoshop is what you use if you do photo editing or digital art for a living. Paid, proprietary options exist if you don’t do photo editing.
There’s one tool that comes close to competing with Photoshop and it’s Photopea, a subscription based/ad ridden website clone of Photoshop.
Recommending GIMP as a Photoshop alternative is like recommending LaTeX instead of Word. It’ll work for some people, and it’ll do some things much better even, but it’s ridiculous to assume any normal user of the proprietary product is going to be able to use the open source alternative without weeks or months of training.
I don’t do photo editing (Gimp) or drawing (Krita) but I have followed many aggregated blogs such as Planet KDE, etc over the years.
I got the feeling that most people have a hard time moving or transiting to Gimp. I have seen some posts from people who love Gimp but they seem to be a miniority. On the other hand, I got the feeling the drawing community love Krita and think it’s worth learning. Krita even shows up in unexpected places such as Godot tutorials on YouTube.
I have to admit that GIMP has me beat - I’ve taught myself plenty of progs (usually in a panic because I told the interviewer I could use it and therefore had to learn it real fast - that’s how I learned Illustrator, CorelDRAW and QuarkXpress), but I just can’t seem to get the hang of GIMP.
I’ll agree with this. GIMP is the most user-unfriendly piece of photo editing software i’ve used to date. I can pick up video games like Shadow Empire and spend dozens of hours figuring out how it works but GIMP is a wall to me.
It’s one of the things I’ve bounced off of many times, but each time I come back and give it another shot it gets a bit easier until one day I thought, hey this isn’t as bad as I used to think. Not really a ringing endorsement, but I definitely don’t hate it anymore. I would still rather do as much as I possibly can in Krita though.
The other problem with Photoshop is that it now scans your projects.
I highly recommend the Affinity suite of problems (Photo, Designer, and Publisher). While they aren’t free they are much cheaper than Adobe and they are only available for a one time fee.
suite of problems
Lol not sure if this is a joke or a typo
Lol, it’s a typo but I’m not changing it, haha
It is a typo, affinity suite is a very good alternative
I agree, I bought them on sale a while back
How is Photoshop different from Gimp?
Photoshop is a subscription-based…
Oh, so Gimp is better then, thanks Adobe!
I so laughed when i saw they already start with that lol
How is Photoshop different from Gimp?
Photoshop is a subscription-based graphic design and photo editing program with a large catalog of advanced features that go beyond simple photo retouching. It’s the go-to tool for experienced photographers, graphic designers, web developers, and film editors. But at the same time, its tools are approachable enough for beginners and hobbyists looking to tweak images for work or create artwork in their free time.
Okay cool, that’s all technically true or unverifiable. What makes Gimp different, Adobe?
You don’t have to pay for it.
But they don’t like mentioning that part.
Edit: Having used both, the only real disadvantage I can see when it comes to Gimp in a Photoshop vs. Gimp comparison- apart from special cases- is that Gimp (for me anyway) has a higher learning curve. I end up having to look up how to do something more often with Gimp. But not having to pay Adobe a monthly fee makes up for that.
I once read that adobe also patents the simplest UX improvement, which means that gimp can’t implement good ideas that people are already used to.
I wonder if that’s why Gimp also has different hotkeys than Photoshop in some instances. Some of them seem pretty arbitrary. Like E is ellipse select in Gimp but eraser in Photoshop. The latter seems more intuitive to me.
Software design really needs to take a leaf out of game design’s book and let you change key binds. I suspect the only reason they don’t is because it would make troubleshooting more complicated.
This is very common for a lot of these programs, I’m not actually sure about Gimp, but Photoshop, Krita and Affinity Photo all let you. Same with a lot of the other digital art programs I use for work.
Nah, there’s other apps that have similar or the same shortcut keys. Gump just tries to be it’s own thing and not worry about Photoshop.
And that’s probably why it sucks so much. If they’d just cloned the work flow of other programs GIMP would actually be good for amateurs.
I was usig both in the early 2000’s, at that stage there wasn’t too much difference in the UIs. Gimp just seems to have stuck (more or less) with mid 2000’s design concepts in the UI
I think they don’t take inspiration from Photoshop. Either it’s been a clone of a different product at some time or they developed it themselves. Hence the differences. I mean the whole UI doen’t really resemble similarity to Photoshop.
I think for a real Photoshop vs GIMP comparison from the eyes of a professional, I’d like to share Franklin Veaux’s perspective. He’s an author, graphic designer, and the infamous local polygamist.
I would note that the reply is 3 years old and many things have changed in the interim, so I think an updated reply would be warranted for a good comparison.
Just a cursory glance, but GIMP still doesn’t seem to support additive curves and CMYK support is still rudimentary and needs a plugin
I’m not surprised at least some of it applies, but I’m not sure what still applies and what doesn’t without looking it all up. But I do understand their general point.
I doubt that GIMP will ever overtake Photoshop. Adobe has the money to employ (and does employ) hundreds of experts in their fields to work on Photoshop for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Although GIMP is very impressive as an open-source project and a massive testament to how far the free software model can go, it is still, at the end of the day, made by a ragtag band of (mostly) amateurs volunteering their time. Adobe, by brute force, can deliver a higher-quality product just by having the resources to employ the best people to work for them.
I love GIMP. I use it for all my image editing needs and would never consider giving a dime to Adobe. But I don’t do it for a living and I respect the opinions of those who do when they say that GIMP isn’t a good replacement for Photoshop.
You may be surprised. I use Photoshop in my profession and I am desperately trying to move away from it. Not just because of the obvious Adobe is the worst, but it has been getting progressively worse to use for me. I don’t speak for everyone of course but at least for me there’s really only a few very small things that would make me switch instantly.
Photoshop just infuriates me lately, you’d think with all their employees they’d figure out how not to lose my hotkeys every automatic update, or that I’ve been using it for over a decade and don’t need annoying tutorial popups for every tool.
The priorities of a large company can often be opposed to making their software better, like adding AI into everything or adding new features nobody really needs so they can have a flashy presentation at some conference, or deprecating features in order to move people to their latest acquisitions program instead.
Blender is a great example of open source being totally viable for replacing commercial software. I use it professionally and it’s never been a limiting factor for me.
Oh yeah, I agree. Photoshop will probably continue to dominate, at least for the foreseeable future. The same with Premiere vs. Resolve. Resolve is free (and, in my opinion, pretty much on par with Premiere in most applications), but Adobe has the money.
Gimp’s UX is a trainwreck. “Approachable tools” is the key bit there.
I don’t use photoshop. Fuck subscription horseshit. I use affinity. But Gimp having capability is fine, but it has a super high barrier to entry because the design is so bad.
It’s like AI wrote it.
I stopped reading after “subscription-based”.
For a real Photoshop vs GIMP discussion, I think I’ll leave a link to Franklin Veaux’s Quora post here.
tl;dr there is actually a lot of functionality in Photoshop not present in GIMP that most casual users will never use, but is very important to professionals. People don’t pay hundreds of dollars to Adobe just for funsies.
I would argue that there’s also lots of professionals who don’t use or need those features. Not everyone is using photoshop for print work, which that link seems to mostly discuss. It is still true, though, and every time I try to switch away from photoshop I run into some niche missing feature I need that most people wouldn’t care about.
There’s a ton of functionality in Photoshop that even pros never use. Every user of Photoshop needs something different from it. Sure, there’s a core of features that everyone uses (and which the Gimp also has) but there’s also countless other niche features that are a crucial part of the workflow for tons of users and they won’t give them up. This is one of the reasons Photoshop is so hard to replace.
It’s also the reason Latex is tough to replace as well. It’s a phenomenon which is not limited to commercial software, that’s for sure.
They do it because there really isn’t much of an alternative for substance painter…
Also the UX difference is worth the money alone.
I’m pretty sure there’s a GIMP plugin that does that if that is all you care about
To redo the entire UI?
Now that single window mode is a thing across all platforms, it’s not as bad anymore.
I still don’t know how to draw a circle, though. I think I may need to turn a selection into a path? I just use Photopea for this stuff these days.
I truly hate how shit like Adobe and ProTools become the only acceptable software to use “inside the industry”. Plenty of independent self publishers use tools like Gimp and Reaper. But the velvet rope mindset refuses to accept that in certain circles.
Those same types of folks are the most likely to get replaced by AI. So maybe that will be some bittersweet Schadenfreude.
I think, for the most part, is that GIMP is obscure. Not as in ‘unknown’ but as in ‘really hard to master, how does anything work?’ It has been this way, voluntarily.
I think it’s what lacks in GIMP, a good user experience.
I have used gimp for the better part of the last ten years. It’s good. I have used Photoshop less than ten times in the same timespan. But when I need to do something, it will always be easier to me on photoshop, eveh though I’m not acquainted with it…
I do wonder what differences in philosophy and development led to something like Blender to be pretty accepted even in pro circles?
For me, personally, the moment I found out you can easily install a version of gimp that doesn’t distribute it’s tools and canvas across a dozen windows was when it began to feel “right” for me. Granted, I am only using it as an amateur for meme and touching up on graphics for game dev, but it feels right to me at least.
I barely use GIMP, but years ago I heard about it and gave it a go. It simultaneously opened three or four seemingly random windows and no actual workspace as far as I can tell. I immediately gave up. It wasn’t until recently that I had a reason to try again, and at this point I had forgotten the absurd situation I ran away from the first time. Luckily they’ve made some improvements since then. It’s still a bit obtuse, but I hear a big update is coming soon that might fix some of the UI issues?
Protools can suck it. :) REAPER is where it’s at.
Photoshop lets you draw a circle
This one hurt.
So does Gimp…
It’s more complex. In Photoshop, it’s a single tool. In GIMP, you make a circular selection, convert it to a path, and then stroke the path.
Not only is this more convoluted, it’s bewilderingly unintuitive to beginners and is definitely one of GIMP’s shortcomings.
In
Photoshoppaint, it’s a single tool.I think the real reason so many people hate GIMPs flow is that it doesn’t match the free paint tool that comes with every Microsoft OS since before I was born.
This would help explain why people who have never used PS even 10 years ago would regularly bounce off GIMP for making no intuitive sense
In every fucking program ever it’s a single tool.
One can reduce to two steps:
- Draw elipse selection
- Fill with paint bucket
I’ll not disagree that it is unintuitive, however. But, that was not the statement.
That doesn’t do the same thing, I guess the goal is really how to draw the outline of a circle
Yeah. That’s different. The way that I’d do it, supposing it didn’t need to be perfect (I’d use a vector-based program like Inkscape for that), would be to create the selection, paint bucket, contact selection by desired number of pixels, clear. Not as good as converting to a path but more intuitive to me having learned PS circa early 2000s.
It’s just standard corporatese - if it’s not insulting your intelligence they’re not doing it right.
I use Photopea, it’s a website so no download and does 99% of what Photoshop and GIMP can do.
Made by a single Ukrainian developer, and free (with some ads on the side while you’re using it)
Obligatory: Do people not know that Krita exists?
Krita isn’t for image editing
I’ve found Krita to be a less clumsy way to edit images than GIMP, been using it that way for years.
Yes, GIMP is powerful when used correctly, but Krita is far closer to Photoshop in terms of UI and out of the box features.
I edit images in Krita…
It isn’t for image editing
Well I’m not gonna stop doing it.
No, don’t you understand? It is not for image editing
Fun fact: Krita started its lifespan as an image editor before becoming focused on illustration.
Lmao I mean I knew it was going go be bad … but that’s so hilariously awful.
They are honestly different beasts
