Comments on: Gimp vs Photoshop

By: Choose The Best Between GIMP vs Photoshop – Comparison Between GIMP vs Photoshop – Selecting The Best Amongst Photoshop vs GIMP Adobe Photoshop Mac

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:31:48 +0000

[...] here for Related LinksGimp vs Photoshop Share and [...]

By: Nicolas Lannuzel

Nicolas Lannuzel — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:30:51 +0000

Hi,

Interesting website, good source of information, and I like your personal point of views too.

Regarding dcraw/ufraw, I’ve been using UFraw since a while, and it give me excellent results. As far as I can see, the colors and brightness is exactly the same as the embedded JPG inside the RAW file. And under 100% zoom there’s no moire or funny artifacts as some would fear. Details level is same as output from CaptureNX.

The only differences are:
– Noise level, but that’s because I’m not using the wavelet noise reduction feature in UFraw; while the embedded JPG has already been “denoised” directly in the camera.
– Sharpening: UFraw doesn’t do any kind of sharpening (yet). It’s not a concern for me, since I always scale down and sharpen a bit in Gimp just before saving as JPG but never before editing the picture.

In the case of my Nikon D80, the picture from UFraw also contains more pixels. It seems that the camera engine (or Nikon CaptureNX) trim the image a bit, in order to keep a 3:2 aspect ratio I presume. But those pixels are in the raw file, and UFraw will give them to you.

The key here is to use the right color profile for your camera. Without it, the picture is flat and dark. I found the profile for my camera on the UFRaw page, there’s also a link to a site giving other profiles as well.

I like UFraw more than CaptureNX (that I was using before in a virtual machine running XP). It allows me to write custom shell scripts for downloading, resizing and tagging in F-Spot automatically using UFraw, Image magick and Exif Tools.

You can check the UFraw page here: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

Have fun!

Nicolas

By: WickedBlog » Blog Archive » Open Source Gems: Graphics 2-D Manipulation and Replacement for Illustrator and Paint Shop Pro

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:52:55 +0000

[...] Illustrator user now, and you want to read a great review on the comparisons between the two, visit Brian White’s Review of The Gimp vs. Illustrator to determine if you can go with the current version of The Gimp, or if you need to wait until [...]

By: Brian White

Brian White — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:03:25 +0000

It isn’t so much that Gimp can’t do RAW/NEF is that it supports only 8-bits per channel. Since one of the benefits of the RAW formats in greater color depth (usually 12 bits per channel), these extra four bits are dropped after the conversion.

If the RAW converter can do the adjustment you need, such as adjusting the “levels” or “curves” before reduction to 8 bits, then this is sufficient and Gimp is fully capable for all the other touch-ups.

When I tried “dcraw” for conversion in to Gimp, I was disappointed. It could convert the image data, but it did not apply the correct white balance or noise reduction that had been set in the camera. The JPEG was of much higher quality and a better starting point. I’ll have to try “ufraw” sometime.

By: Andrew Codrington

Andrew Codrington — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:42:31 +0000

Hey Brian,
You mentioned GIMP not having RAW support. I saw a mention somewhere a while ago about UFRaw (http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/). I’ve downloaded and installed it with no injuries.

It seems to work with GIMP, and supports our NEF files – but I have almost no clue what I’m doing.

I’d be interested in your take on it if you get a chance!

I’m sold on the utility of RAW for special cases, but don’t want to waste time fighting with software that doesn’t do it justice.

Enjoy Zurich!

Andrew

By: tom

tom — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:28:45 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, gimp will be getting (basic) ICC profile support in 2.4, which should be out fairly soon. Shame about V3 being so far off, but at least their new image processing layer is actually being developed agian…

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:09:55 +0000

One more thing:
Photoshop is troublesome if you have an outdated machine (4-6 years and not upgraded since then :p), many of the filters give me the messages “Not enough memory” etc.. I have never(ever) had any message like that with Gimp, everything is just perfect.

Why spend money on something don’t really need? Go for Gimp!

By: Brian White

Brian White — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 15:21:31 +0000

I know of CiniPaint (formally, FilmGimp, I believe) but haven’t used it. From what I’ve read, it more suited towards the editing of multiple film frames that of individual photos. How does it’s tool/feature set compare to that of Gimp itself?

By: Alan Weller

Alan Weller — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:12:00 +0000

Cinepaint, derived from the Gimp has 32 bit colour support as well as ICC colour profile support. It also works on low end equipment as it uses the GTK 1 library. I still use The Gimp but am keeping an eye on Cinepaint development. There is a new version on the horizon which will use the lightweight FLTK library.

By: Brian White

Brian White — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:22:43 +0000

I did that at a sunset (Art and the Technician) for those very reasons. It took four exposures and some careful blending to make everything look balanced. I guess because I'm keeping it in XCF (Gimp native format) I have the full range of information anyway.