If you've pirated purchased Photoshop, you can get to the gamma adjustment program in the Control Panel. It's the one called "Adobe Gamma". Your monitor manual should have directions on how to go about setting the white point for your monitor. There are directions at the InformIT website.

I've given up on trying to educate other people on why black on white site layouts are hard on your eyes. I spend most of my time reading the internet over a terminal in Hacked Links anyway. I hope this is enough contrast for you.

By the way, updates are at the bottom.

I work in a commercial prepress shop. We have a bunch of shiny G5 Mac towers, with nice 23" flat panel displays. We run good software – Quark, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. I use Photoshop, at work, almost every single day. While there are other bitmap editors that would allow me to get my work done, none of them are better suited to the job than Photoshop.

At home, I run Linux. I have a used, 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with a Gig of RAM and a 21" CRT. I run a lot of good software at home, only I didn't pay a dime for it and it all just works. I use the Gimp, personally, as I don't intend to commercially print any of the images I create.

Head to head, which of these two programs are "better"? I couldn't do my job without Photoshop, so it's clearly the winner, right? But if Photoshop is so great, then why wouldn't I use it at home too?

Is the Gimp just as good as Photoshop?

Yes, for the average home user, the Gimp is just as good as Photoshop. The gimp has layers, alpha channels, a robust plugin architecture, I could go on but they have a pretty good overview of what the Gimp is capable of at Gimp.org.

The most common tasks that the typical home user is going to require out of a bitmap editor is covered by the Gimp. Retouching personal photos? Need to remove redeye? Background replacement? Selective colorization? Maybe you're not one for tutorials, maybe you like the plugins.

The vast majority of the people that pirate Photoshop do not need it. The people who legitimately use Photoshop use a fraction of its capabilities. Honestly, unless you're putting out a print publication, you really don't need Photoshop. You can just as easily use the Gimp to float text over a Dragonball-Z picture to post as your image signature in a web forum as you can with Photoshop, which is what most people end up using their pirated copy for anyway. Oh, and to create bloated, image-heavy web layouts that slow down an already overworked internet connection. What great reasons to pirate a grand worth of software!

Seriously, for personal use, the Gimp will do everything you need it to do and more. However, if you need a bitmap editor so you can create or edit images for commercial printing, you don't want the Gimp, you want Photoshop as the Gimp lacks most of the required commercial features.

Lack of commercial features

While it is true that you can create really good designs, the Gimp doesn't support CMYK or PANTONE colorspaces, requirements that are crucial in a commercial printing environment.

I can understand why an open source project doesn't want to shell out the big bucks to license Pantone, but I'm still curious as to why there isn't CMYK support yet. You can work around a lack of Pantone with CMYK and save some small print shops a lot of money. Hell, I think you could just about run a small newspaper with the Gimp if it had CMYK. I know that CMYK is coming any minute now, but it's still not here, and so, sadly, the Gimp still isn't getting any commercial printing love.

"Waitaminute!", you exclaim. "I can just convert an RGB image to CMYK in Photoshop". And sadly, that common misconception is why I stay productive in Photoshop at work. The conversion algorithim in Photoshop, while very good, tends to add about 15% black to the color after conversion. The black in a resultant image is called "process black" because it's not 100% black but a combination of percentages of black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks.

As an experiment, take a 2 color, RGB image into Photoshop and convert it to CMYK. Now, open the Info palette and mouse over the black, see those percentages under Cyan, Magenta and Yellow? Now you see how the Black isn't at 100%? That is "process black", and unless you would like to pay for four-color, process printing, which is significantly more expensive than two-color, spot printing, you'll end up printing the ugly, washed-out, version of your four-color, converted image. Would you like a visual aid?

Original RGB	Converted CMYK	2 Color "Spot" Process (Cyan and Magenta plates)

The original examples didn't explain exactly what I wanted to demonstrate, so I present to you the fictious Cthulhu Inc. I threw this together in about a half an hour in Inkscape and then shaded it with the Gimp. You can definitely get better results if you take your time.

The image to the left is what the designer, in this case me, intended the image to look like. The image in the middle is converted to CMYK only. Can you see how the entire image has darkened up, and now looks flat? The colors in the original image, while obnoxious, pop off the page. The image to the right is what the image looks like after converted to CMYK and only the Cyan and Magenta plates were used. Can you tell the difference?

Many inexperienced designers output work in RGB. As I had a woman tell me once, "my filters don't work in CMYK". As a result I get a lot of people who work with Photoshop, that should know better, send in RGB artwork all the time. These are the same people who hit the ceiling and have a conniption fit because their colors don't match. I get a lot of 72dpi artwork in too, but that's a rant for another time. The whole point is, if professionals (and I use that term loosely) can't get color right, with Photoshop, you are hosed if you send in artwork done with the Gimp.

Besides PANTONE and CMYK colorspaces, support for digital camera's RAW format is in high demand. Professional photographers love Photoshop's RAW support. Trust me, after you shell out three grand for a wide-format camera body and spend the afternoon taking pictures of models who are a vanilla wafer away from an eating disorder, you want your photo editor to eke out the best quality possible from your shots.

Why doesn't the Gimp support RAW? Because RAW is a proprietary format, and each digital camera manufacturer has their own individual interpretation. This may, hopefully, be rectified in the near future by Adobe's attempt to unify the RAW format with its DNG format. However, since there are only about five camera manufacturers that currently support DNG, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Workflow gripes

I think the biggest complaints I hear about the Gimp are from long-time Photoshop users. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. It would be like an American driving a car in Great Britian, or a woman standing to pee. Everything still does what it's supposed to do, but nothing is where you expect it to be.

If you ask one of the Gimp developers, they will tell you that it is as they intended. The Gimp was not intended to be another Photoshop clone. As a matter of fact, the Gimp developers got mightily pissed when they heard about Gimpshop, a project to change the hierarchial menus in the Gimp to more closely resemble those of Photoshop.

The thing is, the Gimp is not Photoshop. If you're a long-time Photoshop user, the Gimp is going to feel weird. Things are not in the same places and sometimes they're called different things, but you can still get the same things accomplished, visually, as long as you're not hoping to get your images commercially printed.

Update: I am, literally, sick of all of the emails about how the Gimp sucks because its UI doesn't closely mimic Photoshop. If you are one of these people, go here and download Gimpshop.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Gimpshop is basically a rewrite of the XML files that generate the menus to be more Photoshop-like, and a shortcut file to remap the shortcuts to match Photoshop and a script that puts all of the Gimp's windows in one big window. That's it. There is no magic. It merely reaffirms what I've said above, the Gimp is not Photoshop, it was not intended to be a Photoshop clone, things are going to feel weird.

Now, if that diverts the next 37 emails about how "the Gimp isn't like Photoshop, it sucks", it will have been totally worth it.

So, who wins?

I'm about to tell you, geez... don't get your panties in a bunch.

The winner for commercial printing – Photoshop.

The winner for home use – The Gimp.

Bet you saw that coming, didn't you. The truth is, they're both winners when they're used in the proper context. The Gimp just doesn't have support in the areas that are necessary to make it useful in a commercial application. However, you cannot justify the price of Photoshop for personal use when the Gimp will do everything it can do outside of commercial printing. I know I've beat the horse to death, but unless you want to pirate software, there is no reason to use Photoshop if you're not producing a print publication – use the Gimp.

I hope that clears that up.

Update | January 19, 2007

Well, after about three days and just shy of 50,000 unique visitors, and a lot of email, I have a few additions and some clarifications to make.

I'm not a designer

I'm not a designer. I'm not sure how I could state that any more clearly, but I don't do design work. I am a prepress monkey. I make sure that the files the designer designs will print. Also, it bears mentioning that all of the prepress gigs I've worked were for commercial printing companies. These guys deal in volume. I know this seems like it's not a big deal, but I have a bunch of email that says otherwise.

You're not very good at your job because you said X...

Yeah, I got a lot of these from experienced prepress guys. Let me run through a few of them:

• Your RGB to CMYK example is a little misleading. You make it sound like a flaw when that is exactly what it is supposed to be doing.

  I have to confess to this one. That's the one embarrasment of the whole piece. I'd intended to show a 2 color RGB image converted to CMYK process and then show that the ouput, unless you wanted to pay for process instead of a 2 color job, would be screened and look like shit. In my defence, I didn't think I'd get to the front page of digg, lifehacker, reddit, del.icio.us and a few others, and that, when I had time, I could go back and create a couple of 2 color images that would be a better example. I don't keep 2 color images just laying around on my computer and I didn't think it would be a good idea to borrow one of our customer's files. So, yeah, that one is absolutely correct, and if I get some time this weekend, I'll whip up some better examples and rewrite that section.

  Okay, I've updated the article to show a better example of what happens during RGB to CMYK conversion. All of the images above are RGB PNG's, exported from the CMYK conversion in Photoshop to ImageReady. They're not really CMYK images, but are representative of the results you'll get when straight converting in Photoshop. The third example is typically what an image converted in this manner would look like off the press. The image to the left is how the image would appear in Photoshop before it was sent to the RIP.

  Actually, those color seps would normally be separated to whatever PANTONE colors were printing on that page and then saved as a DCS 2.0 eps. Typically, most 2 Color spot is black and one other color, but how could I resist getting more Cthulhu art online.

• You said that RGB images are no good but modern RIPs will handle them just fine, blah, blah, blah...

  Yeah, that's been true for awhile, actually. RIPs will convert RGB images to CMYK–BUT it's the same as if you'd converted them to CMYK in Photoshop. The RIP adds black to the image as a result of the conversion. Even this is correctable, however, in that you can add compensation curves to bring the color back to where it's supposed to be. However, not all RGB files are created the same way, use the same profiles, and the same compensation curve won't necessarily work on images from two separate customers.

  Could we create compensation curves per client? Sure, we could do that, but, remember, I work for a commercial printing company and what do we deal in? That's right, volume. My current employer gets around 300+ unique customer jobs per day. It's rare that we get more than a handful of the same clients twice a week. Our workflow is hairy enough as it is without mucking it up further by creating workarounds to artwork that don't meet minimal acceptance guidelines.

  Remember, this is a business. You don't get paid to play around with Photoshop for hours a day, you get paid to complete a product and ship it on time. We can do all of your color-correction, do your design and layout work, but it's gonna cost you.

• Color correcting is always done best in RGB or LAB color with CMYK preview on if necessary. Editing for color in CMYK can seriously fuck up a perfectly good photo.

  That may be well and good if you're editing photos, at some point you're going to have to convert them over to CMYK for the printer or the prepress guy is going to do it for you and the colors are going to be off. Unless we're talking Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Cigar Aficionado or Playboy and then their entire prepress department is focused around getting out that publication. And yes, before you email me again, I know a lot of the work is farmed out, the point is, that's their market, that's what they do. The bulk of commercial printing is not glossy magazines.

  The bulk of commercial printing is newspapers, direct mail, envelope sales, packaging, real estate guides, etc. All of that work is done on web presses or sheetfed presses and center around process and spot color. There were how many issues of vogue last year? Twelve or so? How many different toothpaste boxes got printed? How many different newspapers?

  The bulk of art that gets used in commercial printing is perfectly safe to edit in CMYK mode. I don't care if you believe me or not, that's the fact of the matter. Anytime one of you guys wanna trade up, I'd be perfectly happy to work on Cigar Aficionado.

No one uses the Gimp in the professional world

This one sort of floored me. When did I say that? Lemme go re-read what I wrote...

Nope. I didn't say anywhere that the Gimp isn't used professionally anywhere. In fact, as several readers have pointed out, Industrial Light and Magic used Cinepaint, a fork of the 1.x series of the Gimp, on the Incredible Hulk movie. There are several web design companies that also use the Gimp to create and modify web graphics.

Hobbyists

It's like I'm dealing with two year olds with a confidence problem and tourettes. I say the Gimp is perfectly fine for home use several times, but I ended the bit with "if you're not producing a print publication – use the Gimp" and everybody and their friggin cousin fires up Outlook to set me straight.

If your hobby consists of taking high-resolution, digital photography at high bit rates per channel, the Gimp might not be enough for you. However, in 2006, total digital camera sales were predicted to be about 29.5 million units, of that, only 1.5 million units were digital SLRs. Extrapolate those figures and you'll realize that only around 5% of digital camera sales were for professional quality digital SLRS. Out of the entire market, only 5% are capable of producing high bit per channel photos and of that 5%, 8 bits per channel will probably be "good enough". Almost without exception, the majority of consumer grade digital cameras only produce images in JPEG and JPEG is limited to 8 bit per channel, a bpc that the Gimp handles admirably.

If your hobby consists of painting high resolution 3D models, it is safe to say that your needs falls well outside of the "average home users" purview. The Gimp comes with a default set of generic brushes and, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, doesn't support the high bits per channel required for the detailed work involved in 3D model painting. 3D model painting is a wee bit more involved than, say, retouching a photo to remove an unwanted facial blemish.

So, when I say that the Gimp is perfectly fine for the average home user, and your experience with graphic manipulation is well outside the norms of the typical home user–how does that make me wrong?

Plugins of which I wasn't aware

There has been efforts towards fixing some of the shortfalls of a stock Gimp installation in the form of third-party plugins. I haven't tested any of these yet, so I can't vouch for how well they work, but they come well recommended. Some of these provide functionality that weren't directly addressed by the article, but I thought they were worth mentioning.

• Save for Web: Image is shown in two views: original and optimized ala ImageReady.
• UFRaw: Allows loading digital camera's RAW image and do basic manipulation and basic color management by applying camera's ICC profile to raw image.
• Pandora: Stitch multiple images into a panorama.
• Gimp Color Manager: Apply ICC color correction profiles to your images. Useful when scanning images if you want to apply the ICC scanner color correction profile to the scanned image.
• Layer Effects: This script implements the effects: add border, bevel and emboss, color overlay, drop shadow, gradient overlay, inner glow, inner shadow, outer glow, pattern overlay, satin.
• Perlotine: This chops up the image into pieces, determined by the guides. It outputs a bunch of gifs and the HTML needed to put it them together again. Think image slices in ImageReady.

The Development version of the Gimp already has most of the functionality provided by the above plugins built right in. A list of the features can be found in the NEWS file on developer.gimp.org. Among the new changes are CMYK colorspace support, healing tool, and an imagemap dialog and "split on guides" ala ImageReady.

I just downloaded and compiled the development Gimp last night based on the recommendation from lostlogicx and I'll be trying out the CMYK support when I get back in to work on Monday.

Update | January 24, 2007

The CMYK support available in the Gimp version 2.3.x is still available via a plugin called, Separate+. It also requires littlecms and all of the CMYK functions can be found under Image > Separate.

I'd mentioned that I'd heard that the Gimp was going to get native CMYK support and I'd forgotten were I'd run across it. I ran across the GEGL entry over at Wikipedia which, in turn, pointed to http://www.gegl.org/.

According to gegl.org, gegl is a graph based image processing library which provides a new compositing and processing core with minimal dependancies and a simple, well defined API. Although a work in progress, it already provides:

• 8bit, 16bit integer and 32bit floating point, RGB, CIE Lab, YCbCr and native CMYK output.
• Extendable through plug-ins.
• XML, C and Python interfaces.
• Memory efficient evaluation of subregions.
• Tiled, sparse, pyramidial and larger than RAM buffers.
• Hit detection.
• Rich core set of processing operations
  • PNG, JPEG, SVG, EXR, RAW and other image sources.
  • Arithmetic operations, porter duff compositing operations, SVG blend modes, other blend modes, apply mask.
  • Gaussian blur.
  • Basic color correction tools.
  • 32bit floating point for intermediate values.
  • Text layouting using pango

For examples of what gegl is currently capable of, they have examples provided in the gallery.

In the Linux monitor calibration area, I stumbled across Monica, a basic "match the box colors" gamma calibration tool. It compiles to a little stand-alone binary you can drop anywhere in your path.

Looks like there are some Gimp tutorials featured on Digg today. Hope they don't take comments.

Update | February 20, 2007

I have a ton more links, and the information just keeps on coming.

As for native CMYK support, etc., the current testing version of the Gimp does not have those features built in – download the current SVN snapshot.

Tutorials & Misc. Resources

• GIMP guru: Eric R. Jeshke's tutorials
• gimparoo!: adapting Photoshop tutorials for the GIMP
• GimpTalk: GimpTalk was formed in Dec 2004, in a hope that it will help the gimp users and will provide quality tutorials & resources, alongwith a good community forum where gimp users can discuss/help eachother.
• HOWTO: Dynamically resize Pencil, Eraser and Brush in The GIMP: "This is for the people who are used to this feature in Photoshop but everyone who uses The GIMP could find this useful."
• Photoshop brushes converted to GIMP brushes: "Here are some brushes I've converted to GIMP. I'll try to add to this as time goes on. Make sure you stop by the author's site and give them a 'thank you!' Let me know if you have any problems with them."
• Project-GimpBC: More Photoshop brushes converted for use with the GIMP.

Monitor Calibration (*NIX tools and tips)

• Monica: basic "match the box colors" gamma calibration tool.
• lprof: open source ICC profiler with a graphical user interface.
• littlecms: small-footprint, speed optimized color management engine
• ICC Profiles in X: This specification defines a property in X which contains the ICC profile for the screen. Using this property, applications can colour-correct images for display. So far Eye of Gnome, GIMP, and Krita support the property.
• Wikipedia | Linux color management: much more in-depth dissertaion on color management under Linux.
• Linux Monitor Calibration: This involves a dual-boot Linux/Windows rig and using xcalib or Argyll. Author does state that if you own either the Xrite DTP-94 or the Xrite DTP-92 colorimeters, you can calibrate under Linux 100%.
• Basic color management for X: Good explanation of color management under Linux. Make sure you read the comments.

Hopefully, that is all for awhile. If you have more additions or corrections, feel free to email me. If you have a del.icio.us account, tag the links to me. I'm gtcom.