Starkman wrote:
GIMP Version: 2.8.10
Operating System: Windows
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level
Greetings,
I'm an amateur photographer who does not have a graphic-artist's eye. I can't draw and I am not artistic in this sense. I am, however, developing a talent for taking good pictures, seeing creatively (to an extent) — maybe more so seeing "a bigger picture" rather than seeing creatively, and making that work for me in my shots. Overall, my photography is more "street" and "catch it as it happens" rather than asthetic or graphically conceptualized.
I got a hold of Photoshop a few times and thought, "Oh my gosh, I don't even know where the ON button is!" Not only was it not intuitive, but it wasn't intuitive! I mean, I am not a graphic artist! Besides, it costs...well, more gold than even God has! Then I saw Lightroom, and that was it! I was sold, and it works wonderfully for me. But it's limited.
I'm now at the point where I need advanced image manipulation, which Lightroom cannot do: composite bracketed images; layering, better healing/cloning capability, and panorama creation. These are the most important issues for me.
What I don't need is the ability to create or manipulate images graphically, artistically (in the sense a painter or graphic artist does), or change images in any of these senses. As I say, I'm not gifted in these areas, nor are they the passions of my photography. Additionally, I don't think I'll need CMYK printing ability, and I don't think 16-bit capability is an issue right now.
I did read something, if I recall correctly, that GIMP doesn't recognize RAW files. Is there a work around? I work totally in RAW, converting to JPEG only when submitting to the Web or for (basic) printing. If however, I ever needed to print professional quality, I can do that from Lightroom, but I don't know how this works with GIMP not recognizing RAW files.
So, with the above said, is GIMP something that will work for me? Photoshop, cost aside, was not intuitive to me, and, having downloaded GIMP and fired it up for a few minutes, I can see that it is going to be a challenge, but I have to do something here sooner or later.
Thanks very much for the advice.
You only need RAW for the initial color/levels/balance processing (and even then...). Local editing can be done in 8-bit. When I start from a RAW file, I use some specialized de-mosaicing application (Canon DPP did the job when I was on Windows), produce one (or more) color-balanced version of the image, save them as high-quality JPEGs and then do the final editing with Gimp. Of course the next version of Gimp may change the workflow a bit since it supports 16/32/FP processing.