Free Graphic Programs As Opposed To The Real Thing

I am sure many of you have heard of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and their "FREE" competition, The Gimp and Inkscape.

Personally myself I love all Adobe Software, but can't afford any of it. Anyone here use The Gimp or Inkscape and can they show some of there work from it. I have just recently started using the two, although I design my websites with Adobe Photoshop, but it's my fiances brother's Adobe Photoshop. So I just use it more than he does to get my work done.

I have to say though the developers of The Gimp and Inkscape did a really good job and are doing a great job keeping up with their top dollar competition.

You are in luck. There are a few GIMP designers here and I am one of them. Just take a look at the stuff at my signature gallery. http://mysig-gallery.page.tl

I personally am too used to adobe software to move on to gimp, I see no reason as to switch to gimp or open source when I am already proficient enough in adobe. The learning curve might be small when switching but like I said why switch when I have adobe PS already to gimp. I can do things in photo shop that I can do in Gimp. Yeah the price tag is a bit high but its an investment if you look at it that way. Most schools you go to will teach you adobe photoshop because it is the standard, most companies probably already use photoshop also so it makes sense to stick with the standard unless your really good at gimp then it wont matter what you use.

A topic about Inkscape was created here: http://www.trap17.com/forums/Inkscape-Open-Source-Vector-App-Support-Lot-Function-t53520.html
You can find work by GIMP users here: http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/forum/GIMP-A...leries-3-1.html
You'll notice that basically all of them can be compared to the Adobe products.

Come to think about it, Gimp and Photoshop don't really have too much that isn't in common, other than GUI and general layout of functions. I think Inkscape and Illustrator can do the same things as well, so the two are also interoperable.

And if Photoshop really is the de facto standard, it sure is an expensive one.

EDIT: Anyway, the title is misleading. Who is to say which program is "the real thing"?

This post has been edited by tricky77puzzle: Feb 22 2008, 02:25 AM

I was just about to make the same point. The GIMP and Inkscape are just as much "the real thing" as any of the Adobe stuff. The fact that you don't have to pay for them doesn't make them lesser pieces of software.

As I'm on Linux, all of my graphics work is now done with GIMP and Inkscape. I've stopped posting signatures and other things on a regular basis as I simply don't have time at the moment, but all of my actual graphics work that I need to do can be done with those applications. Even with a student discount, the Adobe suite is ridiculously expensive for what it does compared to the GIMP and Inkscape. The very few extra features you get aren't worth the cost.

Also, Google have just invested a considerable sum in getting Photoshop to run on Linux, so the rest of the Adobe suite may follow if that is successful. Then you can use Linux and still spend thousands on closed-source software

At the moment I'm mainly using Inkscape to make diagrams and such like (similar to what Illustrator is used for), so I present to you a basic diagram showing how a cheap colorimeter works

 Colorimeter.png ( 274.67K ) Number of downloads: 11


Well, I'm doing my chemistry coursework and that was all I had lying around.

I have GIMP and Inkscape installed on my computer, I use gimp a lot! But I find that Inkscape is not as good at some things.
They are very good if you dont want to pay a lot of money for photoshop.

Out of curiosity...Can any of these also do 3d images?

And I've messed with Gimp and Photoshop, and I found PS to be much, much easier to use. A lot of people I know are just fine with GIMP though. But are either of them able to do 3d or are both/just one stuck with just normal photo editing?

Dear friend even I have started using these for graphic designing for my web sites and I am fully satisfied with the same. Even though some more facilities should be included and hope it will be covered by them as soon as possible. Even I came to know about these packages in posts in trap17 and tried them.  

The GIMP and Photoshop are not designed for the creation of 3D graphics. They are primarly image editing applications. Inkscape, however, does include some primitive 3D drawing elements, such as 3D perspective cubes. If you require anything more complicated than that, however, then you are better off looking at some 3D modelling software like Blender, which is also free.



The GIMP and Photoshop work in pretty much the same way, have the same menu items and similar interfaces, so I've never had a problem switching between them. Also, many tutorials, tips and tricks for one will work perfectly on the other piece of software.