Re: [Gimp-developer] Asking for a Miracle !?

[C R <cajhne gmail com>]

On a positive note, I was able to answer some GIMP questions last night at
the London Linux meetup.
These questions came from a long time Photoshop and Corel Draw user, who
has tried GIMP and was stumbling as many do when coming from Photoshop as a
primary photo-editor. However within minutes, he had completely changed his
mind about GIMP. This is not the first time I've seen this happen. In fact,
it seems to be the default reaction when I show them this GIF I made of the
process of photoediting a paintbrush and wall for a charity website:

http://www.opendesignstudio.org/gimp/quickref/fresh_paint_new_orleans_500px2.gif

It seems to me, the real problem is not that it doesn't have the same UI as
Photoshop, but rather that people forget how long it took them to learn
Photoshop in the first place.
I've found that showing people the power of the software, more often than
not, rekindles that essential flame of curiosity, which is essential to
learning anything new. The rest is patience, and realising that the time
investment pays off tremendously in the end. Even if you can not replace
Photoshop entirely in your working environment, you have one more
standards-compliant tool to produce graphics, and this tool is usable by
everyone in the world at no charge. That's an enormous advantage over
Photoshop, and well worth the time it takes to learn the software.

-C


On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine <
alexandre prokoudine gmail com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Webdrifter wrote:
>
> First of all, I realize you are passionate GIMPshop/GIMP user and I do
> appreciate that. But you seem to be making a horrible lot of debatable
> assumptions.
>
> > Downloads of Gimpshop really skyrocketed, thus proving the viability
> > and deer need for a product like this.
>
> With free software that has no "phone back" feature you have no way to
> estimate if downloaded software is used at all or if there's a hype
> going on. Hence viability of GIMPshop is merely a speculation. The
> same applies to GIMP as well.
>
> > A product that not only can knock Photoshop off it's throne, but that
> > could get rid off Photoshop's dominance and arrogance alltogether.
>
> I think I can freely speak for the majority of the team here: we do
> not define GIMP as a project that aims to dethrone Photoshop. You are
> of course at liberty to disagree with our project vision.
>
> > You would think the Gimp society would have picked up on this,
> > however it never happened. Million's of people are still waiting for the
> > miracle to happen again.
>
> The reason it never happened is because noone cares enough to go ahead
> and do that. So much for "millions" of people waiting for a miracle.
>
> > We should recognize this need and use it to our advantage, instead
> > of ignoring it.
>
> By all means, please go ahead and fork GIMP :)
>
> Alex
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