Why is it that people have no faith in gimp? everywhere I look people are abandoning it for Photoshop, some of its best teachers some of whom i learned gimp from. gimp is not that old and look how awesome it is compared to Photoshop which i think has been out for years gimp is only on what? is 3rd v? 2.7 i believe I just think it's unfair that I doesn't get more support.

The only reason GIMP doesn't get support is because of the fact that it is not the industry standard, I still prefer it over Photoshop

I have CS5; short of RAW processing and 16-bit or higher editing (only reason besides a few cool actions too that I keep CS5) GIMP is my tool of choice. When GIMP ever gets higher bit editing and better RAW file handling (still not happy with any of the Open source solutions w.r.t. RAW file handling; too slow and not accurate), trust me; GIMP will be the standard. Nobody's going to pay $600 plus for an editor when they can get an equivalent for free. I do wonder sometimes if someone at Adobe is paying one or more of the GIMP developers to slow down progress, but I am a paranoid type of guy. lol

GIMP is not going away.

Gimp has actually been around for a very long time! Much longer than most people are aware of.

What's hurting Gimp right now, is that they are making big changes to Gimp, without backward compatability. Great plugins, like G'MIC and PSPI, may not be supported in the newer versions of Gimp. Many older scripts and plugins won't work under the newer versions of Gimp either. Gimp is still my favorite program ever written, but some people I have shared Gimp with, have switched programs because of the lack of consistency.

You have a point there too Greg. At least through GIMP 2.6x, there has only been a few snafus with Script-fu and some plugins, but 2.8 sounds like there is going to be a major headache. I've been, on and off, evaluating 2.7.3 64-bit and G'MIC, at least, appears to be working fine. I still would like a viable PSPI filter, but Shellout does fit the bill (though it does have a slow down when launching the external and having to return the result). Shellout, by the way, works in 2.7.3 64-bit too. I'm hoping that Partha gets SVG capability added too then I can pretty much hose using 2.6.11 and go fully 2.7.x 64-bit until 2.8.x get's released.

My problem with shellout is that some programs launch (ie. Irfanview) but doesn't transfer the image back to Gimp. I have to copy the image in Irfanview and paste it into Gimp. One of the programs, I don't remember which one (I think AnamorphMe), resaves the temp file under a new name, so Gimp doesn't import it. I have been using work arounds, but still love PSPI. I don't think I could live without G'MIC!

For those of us who use GIMP without any interest in filters or plugins, GIMP will forever be backwards-compatible and usable I guess For me at least, GIMP's filters and plugins was always just a fun bonus of little consequence. For my regular usage, I couldn't care less which modules are backwards-compatible, but I know some live by them and do cool stuff with them of course. I just hope the majority of them bloody things finally get converted to Python one of those days. I tired of Scheme-derived hungarian-syntax languages long ago.
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Griatch

In my opinion best "advertising" for Gimp is to do good art or useful image processing with it. Photoshop is mass market product with huge user base and a lot of (commercial) support from artists and image processing professionals. However, I'm not that convinced that all those pros want to support Adobe with their hard earned money, if they get what they need free.

No need to compete, just do good work with Gimp. Those people who only need 10% of the features of any proper graphic app would be very happy with Gimp. Those who need something like print-ready CMYK will probably not be willing to change from Photoshop anytime soon.

I'm really happy with Gimp, 2.7.2 is marvelous with all the new and improved features. Many great artists here and on other Gimp user sites have shown that Gimp is first class graphic editor. Maybe one flaw is missing or hard-to-find documentation for some features (I've learned by accident *so much* I'm quite sure there *should* be more docs!).

But, all things considered: make neat things with Gimp, that's best way to grow the user base. There is no better argument!

@Griatch: There's nothing wrong with Scheme, just remember not to try to work on any other style language on the same day! Saves you from headache. Scheme has quirks, but they are *powerful* quirks. Then again, Python is fine language too... (Some quirks there too, however...)

Everything I do is in gimp. The word photoshop has become a verb. Actually, to photoshop someone into a picture is something I do in the open source program gimp. I have faith in the program. So, now off to xerox a help file on my HP printer.

You can also save the result inside GIMP and it will save the file (Irfanview anyway). In Inkscape, I just save the bitmap or vector before exiting. XNView is cool in that it asks you if you want to save before exiting.

Also, to answer Griatch, it will be a good day when GIMP begins to implement naturally rotating brushes; even better if they implement bristle dynamics like they currently Photoshop does, but I'm a simulator and not a painter. Each see the daylight in differently respects so to eaches own. I'll stick to my filters. lol

I belong to a few graphics groups, all of which rely on either Photoshop or more so PSP to get the job done. I'm the only one who uses GIMP and they all say...what is GIMP...I get a lot of pleasure out of telling them and referring them on...and showing how I can achieve the same result out of something they have paid a fair amount of money for...PSP here in Australia retails for about $120...and Photoshop is about $800 for the CS versions...The only thing I find is that I am sometimes trying to find a similar filter to PSP...other than that the results are fairly close to those...For me it was a matter of finance that I began to use GIMP and also a matter of operating systems...I do in fact have a couple of versions of PSP on the VMware on my computer and it is a fact that anything which is saved in PSP X3 as an X3 file, cannot be opened on the earlier versions so they arent necessarily compatible with other versions...lot of complaints within the communities about X3...as for me...if I can get the images open and make them a .png file, which keeps them transparent, I can use them in GIMP. So thats where the VMware Fusion comes into play. Most of my PC friends have never heard of GIMP but I have at least one convert and that is the girl who joined here a few weeks ago....tigerlilly...she does come back here but doesnt show herself.

I find it a bit hilarious that Gimp can open PSD files but Adobe still can not open XCF format.
Is it because they feel no need for the file association? maybe...but i have a feeling they are about to change their minds when GEGL becomes fully operational with non destructive editing.
One thing i would really love to see Gimp obtain is live gradient editing.It is needed badly in any graphic design tool.

I still have faith in, and love, Gimp! Gimp is still my main program. We're talking 99% Gimp and 1% everything else.

The developers of Gimp need to do other work to pay the bills. This is why it may seem like the developers aren't pushing very hard on Gimp, but when you look at what they produce, I can't belittle them. I am hoping for PSPI and G'MIC support!

I am actually losing faith in Gimp and tend to use Ps more and more.
I am a windows user. My projects are getting bigger and Gimp still crashes on me.
This is a pity because there are features in Gimp that I particularly like such as the magnetic scissors tools, the marquee tools and crop tools which are superior to use over their Ps counterparts.
Basically I use Gimp with few plugins. My main workload is with photos, restoration or enhancement.
Over the past few years I have gotten reasonably competent in Gimp and love using it , I have championed it to Ps users and new graphics users.
After 4 years of using Gimp, the same problems crop up again and again and it seems that with every new version of Gimp there are different problems with tablets and crashing of Gimp. It seems that no matter how I configure Gimp storage tiling, Windows virtual memory or paging and GTK versions, when I work on large files it will crash! (It is just a matter of when it will)
Whilst Gimp appears to be designed for Linux, there are many more windows users.
My tablet works with out of the box parameters for every other application except Gimp. I have very few system crashes except for when I use Gimp.

I love my Gimp programs! 2.6.11 and 2.7.3 are both great in my honest opinion.You just need to NOT bloat them with too many brushes and filters.Even PS will drag with too many addons.and filters initializing at startup and while it's running.I learned a while ago not to do this with either.I went through all my filters and cleaned house.Gimp opens and operates so much better without the excess baggage.
I still look forward to 2.8 with excitement.

Yeah; 2.6.x has been crashing on me ever since I upgraded to Win7. Not sure what the issues are. What little I've played with 64-bit 2.7.3, it has not crashed. Still waiting for SVG import before I make the full switch (and then will 100% depend on Shellout to run my PS files; wil miss PSPI).

I still use PSPI for my 13 Photo Shop filters.Everything else gets ported to Shellout and it's 25 various programs.

There are a few areas that gimp falls short of my needs (which are more on the art creation side vs. photo editing):
1) 16 bit. I do a lot of heightfield editing, and 8 bit is not adequate. You can see that in the artifacts generated by simple bump-maps.
2) Performance under tablet support. I do painting with the tablet and performance when using large brushes (grunge, etc) is crazy bad, even using a variety of workarounds like disabling outlines, etc.
3) Large files. I can only work with <3000x3000 files once I get over 10 or more layers. The memory management model of gimp just can't handle it.
4) Layer effects. I know I can duplicate anything a layer effect can do either by hand (inconvenient) or via a script/plugin, but these are still too slow, are destructive, and have to be erased/repeated if I change the original layer[s alpha].
5) Rotatable canvas. PS lets be rotate the canvas when using a tablet, much like you work rotate a piece of paper you draw on. The GUI level and doesn;t change the drawing itself. Gimp doesn't have that feature.
6) No actions/action recording. Luckily I can write a script easy enough...
7) Vector clipping masks.

I know there is a big push for GEGL as the holy grail of non-destructive editing, but in all the dev releases the performance is absolutely horrid - so I'm not holding my breath at all.

There are quite a few thinks I love about gimp though:
1) Image hoses (tubes). Nuff said.
2) Scripting. I write as many as I need
3) Open source. I've reported and even fixed a couple of bugs in the core code.
4) Price.
5) Wide range of 3rd party tools/plugins which all tend to follow GPL. Unlike photoshop plugin where even crappy plugins now tend to cost money.

I still use gimp (+ inkscape) 95% of the time, except in rare cases where I need photoshop's capability. We'll see what happens with the next release. It will either win me over completely, or push me away completely. It all depends on what direction the devs take.

-Rob A>

Ive been using gimp for a couple months now and i find it alot easier than photoshop! The reason i used gimp is because photoshop costs money! i dont have that money! you can get almost the same results as photoshop (exceptions to a few photoshop filters and plugins) and honestly i dont wanna take the time to buy photoshop then learn it because gimp seems easier and i love it!