GIMPshop the Gimp and P-shop....Free!

[Kraellin]

Attack of the Show (AotS)(formerly The Screensavers) on tech tv did a bit yesterday about a new hack of the Gimp. for those that dont know what the Gimp is, it's an open source paint, graphics editing program. i believer several folks around here use it and can tell you much more about it than i can.

the new news on this is, that not too long ago, some clever person converted the Gimp for the Mac to make the interface more like photoshop's. the idea is that if you learned to use a paint program with the free Gimp with a p-shop interface, you could then be more likely to get a job that actually required photoshop without having to invest in the very expensive photoshop.

at any rate, folks using the Gimp liked this, but folks using windows couldnt use it. thus, a port was done to Linux, and just recently a new port has become available for windows.

now, whenever AotS does one of these reviews, servers get flooded. they claim to have a viewership of about 50 million folks. so, if even a tenth of those all decide to check out the review or program, servers tend to get overwhumped fairly quickly. and sure enough, i couldnt get the page to load last night, even into the late hours. however, i tried again this morning and it was back up!

so, if you're interested in checking this out, the link is here: http://blog.yumdap.net/archives/20-G...r-Windows.html

now, so far i've only downloaded this. i'll most likely install it later today, so all i can say about it is what i've heard. it seems a number of folks didnt like the gimp interface all that much and that basically, all this gimpshop does is change that interface. it's not adding a lot of new photoshop type features. one review did mention, however, that you could now use photoshop plug-ins with the gimpshop and that that would add a fair amount of new features. that's basically it.

so, if you do try this and would care to review it, post it here, please.

K.

[Kraellin]

ok, i installed this thing and it does work. and, having tried out one of the photoshop cs demos, i can say that gimpshop does look a bit like photoshop. i can also report that there are features here that i dont have in paint shop pro ver. 7 (psp). so, that's good.

however, i like the ease of use of psp a bit more and my version 7 is now a bit dated too. i also tried out version 8 of psp while on vacation and gimpshop may not have a thing more than that version. i dont really know. all of this so far is just a cursory look at psp v. 8 and gimpshop and the p-shop demo. so, no extensive reviews here. the main thing is that gimpshop does work in windows....oh, and it's free!

with that in mind, i would have to say that for the money you spend, gimpshop is definitely the best value for what you get ;)

for me, currently, i'll continue to use psp as my primary tool. i'm just too used to their interface and know what most everything does. learning a new paint tool, especially one as complex as p-shop, is not going to happen right now. but, as a secondary, i can only find this tool in this paint program, gimpshop, for me, is going to stay on my machine. and for those already using the Gimp, i'd say, give gimpshop a shot. you might like it. and for those looking to buy, steal, or borrow a decent paint program, gimpshop looks like a real deal.

now, bear in mind that i'v only played with gimpshop for a VERY short time, but i did encounter one bug that forced me to close it down. the author of the hack does warn about possible bugs, so this was no big surprise. when 'exporting' a tiff file, it did this ok, but then froze the program after it tried to refresh the interface afterwards. more bugs may well exist, but hey, it's free!

K.

[Mouzafphaerre]

-
Thanks for the report Krae, I'll check it out. Do you know if this thinglet is Unicode enabled? PSP 7 isn't (JASC/Corel told me that PSP 9 was though).
-

[Kraellin]

mouza,

umm, i dont even know what unicode is, so couldnt answer that :)

K.

[Mouzafphaerre]

-
LOL!

Simply put, it's being able to write this, դհիս, ضيس, θις, גןד and тхис altogether.

Officially: Unicode
-

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Bein' just a poor boy, this sounds pretty darn amazin.'

Thanks Krae!

[Kraellin]

mouza, thanks. sounds like a very daunting task. i guess the days of ascii are pretty much gone ;)

alexander, if you get it and use it, write up your opinion of it. i've only used it enough to see what it was about and it seemed fairly good, but i'd be interested in knowing how buggy it really is or not.

K.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Will do.

First impressioin:

Looks somewhat like photoshop. Acts somewhat like photoshop. Since I've only tooled around photoshop for a few days on one of those trials, I can't really say what the fine points of p-shop are and if g-shop has them or not.

One thing - g-shop seems more forgiving with layers and stuff than photoshop, which (at least for a newbie like me) can be confusing.

[Quietus]

Thx Kraellin,

Not so much for the G-shop but for the GIMP info. What an amazing program.

[Kraellin]

well, i need a new computer. lately, i've been playing more with psp and g-shop and while using both of these i've been having to wait while certain actions are rendered. in g-shop it was the 'warp' tool. in psp it's some of the effect menu stuff :) i've also recently been backing up my picture files.....almost 6 gigs now. and there's more on other disks.

quietus, you're welcome :) the Gimp has been around for a while, but i'd never used it till i heard of gimpshop, so i dont know the differences tween the two. the articles i read about gimpshop all pretty much stated that folks didnt like the clumsy interface of the gimp; ergo, gimpshop. and yes, i've been impressed by how much there is in that program. i had always thought 'ok, open source paint program. this is going to be somewhat lightweight.'. but, in fact, it's got a LOT of stuff. i'm still exploring it on and off.

K.