A few months ago I asked for your opinions on a vectoring program. I installed Inkscape, and overall I was pleased with it. Probably the most irritating thing (I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this) is that it would crash constantly for no apparent reason, and I couldn't save it as a .jpg. This was a problem, because I couldn't send mock ups to the person I was making a lot of this stuff for, who only trusted jpgs, and other formats seemed to create hard ridges and edges. Overall though, the program was incredibly user friendly and useful. As long as you saved often. On top of that, my needs are expanding, so I'm looking for reviews on GIMP, and programs like it. I want to use it to do digital art again, so I'm looking for something that will read my Wacom Tablet's pressure sensitivity. I'd like for it to be able to save pretty consistently and clearly, and I'd prefer for it to no crash. Honestly I'm looking at Photoshop right now, because college students can buy it for $200, but any suggestions would be nice. =)

Save as any other filetype, open in just about any other program, save as jpg? All else failing, there's always printscreen and paint...
GIMP
GIMP's only crashed for me on rare occasion, and it's when I'm doing stupid things that don't apply to most people.
GIMP ... Actually, I don't even know what you mean here.
On Adobe's side, for vector work, there's always Illustrator.
That's what anti-aliasing is for.

Unfortunately, if you're still looking for vector editing, most of the decent or good stuff's already been mentioned.

GIMP is free, has severely limited vector capabilities (paths are essentially vectors), and does maybe 1/2 of the stuff that Photoshop does, with photoshop doing most of it slightly better or easier. Notably for me is iWarp (GIMP) vs Liquify (PS). iWarp (and other filters) does the preview in a small screen making it difficult to see what you're doing. I don't know of any way to get it to display the preview actually over the picture. Liquify (and other filters) will display the preview both in a small box and on the actual image, making it easier to use.

Gimp is very stable. If a plugin crashes (which will happen), you can save your work, then restart to reload the plugin, since GIMP sandboxes its plugins (they're all binary files).

Illustrator is the thing to use for vectors. Make sure you're using the lastest version of inkscape, as it fixes a lot of bugs, and remember to save often.

As for the person who only trusted jpgs: refuse to send them anything but pngs, unless your job is on the line, then you convince them that pngs are much better since it's lossless. You can also just convert the image in irfanview.

Paint.net is another nice program, but unfortunately it doesn't do nearly as much as GIMP does, though it certainly does some other things much better than GIMP.

Illustrator CS3 and Photoshop CS4 should satisfy most of your needs; if funding is a problem get PS 7.0 and Inkscape.

Personally, I detest GIMP. It is far less user-friendly than Photoshop (where it actually is a big issue here), and for vectoring just the Pen Tool in Photoshop will suffice, let alone Illustrator.

PNGs are lossless, but it is acceptable to use JPG where there is a lot of graphical variation. You can set the compression level of the JPG when you save it in Photoshop, allowing you to get very high-quality JPGs. Alternatively just change the file extension and keep the PNG header.

Photoshop is stable, aside from the fact that the extremely rare crash due to low memory will make all unsaved data non-recoverable. I learned to save the hard way:


^Also note that the image above is a JPG but does not have many visible posterizing artifacts. It is saved under the "Maximum" quality setting, and is an example of a high-quality JPG that can be saved with Photoshop.

paint and print screen really distort the colors...I don't have other programs to open it on.

And like I said, I'm not so much looking for vector any more.

Also, I'm kinda a noob...so don't hate me too much XD

Bingo. He doesn't trust anything unless its his idea. He'll download suspicious software from less than acceptable sites, but freaks out when I send him anything in a format he doesn't immediately understand. He doesn't get computers...my job has been on the line since I took it from him. Just another month of him and I'll be done, though. Then I can enter the menial workforce woooo

Doesn't saving with a maximum quality jpeg defeats the point of using a jpeg in the first place? As in, wouldn't you just be better off with PNG?

Just to have the option incase of isolated cases? Cases where they wouldn't allow PNG.

Too bad jpg cant do transparency

Funny part is that the png of the jpg is still smaller than the jpg.

This is when you use jpg.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 3 2010, 2:41 am by rockz.

SEN needs a saging option >_>.

But yes, JPG with maximum quality does not do very well when there is a lot of redundancy in the picture.

Installed GIMP 2 for windows...but its not reading my Wacom's pressure sensitivity at all. Velocity and Random options seem to be working fine....help? :\

Turn on Pen Pressure or something.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=872380

rockz, that looks like it mostly relates to using a tablet in linux. I don't know where I'd find half of those files, anyways. Help?

EDIT: Fix'd, and its a little embarrassing. My drivers were out of date. lol oops

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 4 2010, 5:28 pm by Fire_Kame.

I haven't used GIMP in about a year or so, stopped doing image editing, and I really wish I continued to use it. I had both Photoshop and GIMP and I picked GIMP every time hands down. I'm obviously sure Photoshop is better, but for me, the learning curve and the ease of everything with GIMP was amazing. Plus, people all over would make so much for GIMP, like Photoshop brushes, that you didn't need to have the brand name Photoshop.