Hi All I always read posts regarding GIMP vs. Photoshop.
As far as I have explored PS, there are lots of great quick-and-easy filters available and lots of tutorials to match on the Internet - however, many filters are missing the parameteric touch that GIMP does have - you get the same result out of a PS filter and if you want the result to be different, you start looking for another filter. In PS, it seems that for everything, there is a filter while GIMP gives you the basic building blocks that help you achieve the results through application of a combination of those building blocks. I am reading Carey Bunks' excellent book "Grokking the Gimp" and recommend it to all new GIMP users as well as PS users because many fine aspects of computer graphics have been covered in sufficient depth here. Particularly, the section on Color Spaces (or models) such as RGB, CMYK, HSV and Blending Modes is really excellent and I haven't yet seen that kind of quality PS stuff elsewhere. Yes, lots of good tutorials illustrating lots of 3rd party & built-in filters and good techniques but no technical tutorial about blending modes, color theory and the like illustrating why a particular mode or a color model functions in a particular way, for example. In fact, this gives you great insight into the color theory and helps you a great deal in developing solid effects or filters. Further, a couple of days ago, I happened to use PS (7) and I couldn't find a Selection/Shrink command/function in PS though a Selection/Grow was there (may be there is a key combination for shrink - I don't know!). The point is: GIMP's menu structure and placement of functions is very intuitive and easy plus, though, it doesn't offer lots of quick-and-easy filters, it does give you a feel of being in the know of what exactly you are doing (if you have gone through good references such as GIMP's online reference and Carey Bunks' book) and helps you produce the results through application of various available facilities - filters, curves, modes, etc - you can automate and create your own plugins if you can. In addition, though minor things like key assignments seem to have changed from previous versions, core functionality has been greatly improved and somehow one can make do through user lists, online references and other resources. In my humble opinion, references to PS functionality or filters can serve as new functional specifications that voluntary developers might implement in future releases (if they do find that kind of time, of course). Further, such references can serve as marketing tools for GIMP if the same results/effects can be achieved in GIMP in a different fashion using a combination of GIMP facilities that educate the PS user a lot about computer graphics. In addition, there is enough material available on the Internet that very clearly positions the GIMP amongst other re-touching tools - GIMP has its own niche. I hope this long post is not considered as spam. My apologies in advance! Best regards Asif __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ Gimp-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user