Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 05:36 PM 9/10/99 -0400, you wrote: > * I haven't used the latest version of Photoshop: I've used Photoshop > version 3.something pretty extensively on an M$ Windows NT platform. This is part of why you may think GIMP is close to Photoshop. Photoshop is way beyond Version 3 in more than numbers. A whole lot of stuff has been added since. Such as actions, which is pretty good scripting. And the history brush, all sorts of tools like the magnetic lasso and magnetic pen, the ways one can manipulate layers, do special text effects, etc. Plus with 5.5 they've added a whole new program into it. It was called Image Ready. It optimizes photos for the Web and can build animated gif files. And 5.5 has much more sophisticated masking tools. > * I run GIMP 1.0.2 on a Silicon Graphics Indy machine, using IRIX 6.5 > OS and the 4Dwm X-Window manager An Indy! Well, I've always lusted for an O2 workstation. I guess Photoshop for Unix costs about twice as much as for Windows/Mac. I think there's a version for Irix, right? >What I liked about the GIMP over the version of Photoshop that I used is >that it has some automation, and is extensible. Features such as >Autostretch HSV or Normalize Contrast are great for getting the most out of >a scanned negative and Auto Levels does a good job of putting some punch in >my pictures. Photoshop is extensible, and people are writing for it. And it has simplified stuff like Auto Levels, and a variation on that the let's you pick the right color balance from a ring-around. I prefer to do stuff through levels and curves, like you, and sometimes through the Hue/saturation and color balance sliders too. >the colour balance that lets you adjust shadows, midtones & highlight >separately (just like Photoshop). Undo is limited by (a) memory and swap >space and (b) by how many levels you set in the preferences dialogue. Photoshop has a user-defined level of undo. Limited by memory/swap space I'm sure. >There are channels (including alpha) and layers, much like Photoshop. The >selection tools are an improvement over the version of PS I've used. Using >Bezier curves and a little feathering you can isolate pretty much anything >perfectly from it's surroundings. Selections can be saved to a channel. You can buy very sophisticated masking tools that are extremely high end, but the latest three versions of Photoshop have very good masking tools too. >It's main advantage, though, is Script-Fu, a scripting language that can be >used to write extensions (plug-ins are a different thing and are written in >C/C++-code and linked with the GIMP libraries). Many of these are chiefly >of use to those designing art from scratch, or webpages, but some are useful >to the digital darkroomer. Actions pallet are great, but probably not as sophisticated as this, since Unix seems to be good in that area, and Windows stinks. Mac has a great scripting program that's on the OS level. Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch I have my doubts about disbelief.