Lets make it billions!
Legend.
But can he make a circle?
With that kind of attitude, I hope your name is Rick Brewster. Does your million+ user image editing software make circles?
Yeah, it’s complicated to make a circle in gimp, but it is very doable.
You can constrain the shape tool to make circles, or you can use a 100% strong brush to make a circle as large as you want at the spot you want it, and then use the select tool to shrink that circle and then erase the infill.
Jfc. Who is this program for?
It’s for people that don’t want to give Adobe money.
It’s for people who want to image bash without paying $20 a month for the privilege.
It’s for people who don’t mind putting up with quirks in order to support free software and the free expression of creativity.
It’s for people like you and people like me and anyone else who feels like using it.
But there are dozens of other free and open source alternatives that are so much more powerful and easier to use. Krita, Affinity, Photopea… I could go on and on… Like why does Gimp exist any more? Who is it for?
Annnd well they should lose millions!
NGL, I paid out the ass for PSCS3 waay back in 2007 - Universal binary… PPC AND Intel installer - and FWIW, I’m still using it. In point of fact it’s why all my Macs are dual boot with Mojave (32-bit support) so I can continue to install and use it. Homegirl is no how, no way gonna rent what I should be able to own.
(As Adobe no longer has the CS3 activation servers online, if you’ve still got an installed, activated, instance of the PSCS3 kicking around somewhere, copy the actual application itself out to a backup location… so when you use the installer in a system capable of running it, you can swap the newly installed, inactivated copy out for the activated one you have in backup. Just do NOT try and launch the program before you do the swap… This works for PC copies of CS3 as well as Mac…)
I’m still using cs3 as well. For what it’s worth, I just checked and it’s still out there to be had. I have the master suite, which I could not find, but pscs3 itself is still alive out there.
Yep, same here. Mojave on an old MacBook with a complete CS5 suite lets me continue to use what I paid for.
I didn’t have a still-running copy like you did, so instead I disabled all network access and used my existing install media/licensing to activate offline, then before restoring network I went through and blocked every single executable at the firewall, esp anything having to do with updates or the licensing module. Now it doesn’t matter whether there is internet access or not, everything is stable and it doesn’t phone home.
The blocking was a pain in the ass, no lie, but I can restore the firewall settings from time machine if ever needed, and meanwhile I have a working, unshittified CS5 that is not constantly trying to move my data up to the cloud or give itself legal rights to my IP. It’s lacking some newer features probably, but it does what I need.
I’m going to pass your instructions along to a friend still using CS5 on the same Mac he installed it on, though. It’s a great strategy.
It’s a great strategy.
IIRC, I discovered it when I retired my Mirror Door Drive G4 and bought a MacPro. At the time I wasn’t online and couldn’t get the fresh install to activate and on a lark, because it WAS a universal binary, I just copied over the application from the G4.
It worked, but was a bit janky, so once the internet got sorted, I did a clean reinstall of CS3 and activated it as normal… I still have the G4 with the CS3 on it, and also copies of the install I did on the MacPro.
Also, with the CS3 and the OSes later than El Capitan, you need to get the JavaForOSX.dmg from Apple. It won’t launch otherwise.
The great thing about CS3 is that even if I try to have it update, it doesn’t. I used to run it with all the Adobe “phone home” addresses blocked in my system’s hosts file. Now I no longer have to even do that. Nothing’s there online. It will launch Bridge but when it gets to the Adobe Stock Photos and accepts the certificate, it connects to their servers and promptly quits.
LOL! Too funny!
Adobe has moved on and it’s pure bliss for me.
Personally, I can recommend a VM for that reason. Activate it once and then just copy the VM over to a new PC, Backup location, etc. Turn on internet access for it when activating, turn it off and leave it disabled for the rest of your life. Worked like a charm for me.
If you’re going to run windows in a VM, then what’s the point? Why not just run one OS?
Not for one application, while all other programmes run on GNU/Linux.
If pirating Photoshop counts as a lost sale then so does download GIMP.
If so, this man is one of the greatest software pirates ever.
Yeah nope, if the same product is available for free then the only way to prove a “stolen sale” is if someone had previously paid for the subscription and then cancelled to use the free version of the same product.
Anything else is just the hand of the free market doing it’s thing. If Adobe executives are malding because someone made a cheaper (or free) alternative then they have two honourable routes available:
-
Add more value to their products to convince people their price tag is worth it.
-
Reduce the price they charge.
But they’ll literally do anything else but those two, including astroturfing messages like “open source software is piracy”, so stop spewing corpo bullshit!
Holy shit… did Adobe actually say FOSS is piracy?!? I couldn’t find anything, got a source?
-
I guarantee that Adobe definitely sees every download of GIMP as a lost sale. That’s corporate mentality.
I worked for many years in the music business, starting back in the days of the “Home Taping is killing music” campaign. I know for a fact that music executives saw the sale of every blank tape, and later, every download, as a lost sale. You could explain that it wasn’t really a lost sale, because that consumer probably wouldn’t have bought it anyway, but they didn’t like hearing that. If someone was listening to it, even if it was just curiosity, that was a lost sale.
They didn’t feel that way about radio stations or libraries, two places where people could get music for free, but somehow, borrowing a friend’s album, and taping it so you could listen to it a few times and decide if you wanted to buy a clean copy, infuriated them.
I knew the people at the top who were going after the downloaders. They were mean, nasty, greedy people, who were stealing way more from their own artists than consumers were ever stealing from them, so I never had a single concern about downloading whatever I want.
These days, artists hardly make any money from recordings. Unless you are buying the music direct from the artist at their shows, then you are just feeding an evil record company. Pirate the records, pay for the shows and merch, and if you want to own a physical copy, buy your music direct from the artist.
Do that long enough, and record companies will die.
And for a while, people using tapes to make field recordings were supposed to pay more for the blanks to offset the supposed lost sales of the unrelated music industry.
The record industry wanted a special tax on blank cassettes, to offset the costs of home recording, which they would distribute as they saw fit, but they never got it.
If there had been a tax, it would have gone straight into the exec’s pockets, and no artist would have ever seen a dime.
Adobe pretty much encouraged piracy up until about a decade ago, that way they got schools to train (for free) potential future customers in their way to use design software.
TBH I don’t understand why they have gone with the subs model they currently have, its kind of cutting the blood line from their future customers.
Competition is always a good thing, FOSS competition is the best thing in my opinion.
This guy is a hero, but not because he is trying to fuck Adobe but rather he is helping free design software from (massive) cost which most people cannot afford.
More designers, better art to my mind.
The subs model ensures regular and predicable quarterly revenue, which means easier forecasting of growth, which means happier shareholders.
I think JetBrains’s approach is nice. You can subscribe monthly but anything you e subscribed to for 12 months you get a perpetual fall back license for. Unless I’m missing something specific it’s a win for everyone.
There are student subs, which are super cheap. Wouldn’t be surprised if schools/universities would get free licenses. After all, this is how they can attract new paying customers, as you correctly stated
I’d suspect it was much the same reason as why Apple decided to kill FCP and rebrand iMovie instead. Professional users are inordinately more expensive in tech support costs
But FCP X is amazing. It’s the one thing I really miss having a Mac for and it’s so disappointing that nobody else has even attempted to replicate it. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else. Calling it a “rebranded iMovie” shows either a complete lack of awareness of literally anything about it, or an incredible intellectual dishonesty that doesn’t even seen to serve a practical purpose.
It’s also…not subscription based. Or wasn’t in 2018 when I last had a Mac.
Just wait till you hear about QGIS
Really cool.
I mean I can’t say it has had an impact on ESRI, but I for one have been boycotting ESRI and their products for over 10 years. I’ve moved entire teams and departments away, and was only able to do so through a combination of QGIS/ R/ Python. There are still some gaps to fill, but because geospatial is such a smaller world to begin with (than photoshop), I feel like QGIS maybe has had more of a “percentage” impact at breaking through on ESRI than GIMP has to photoshop.
My first job out of high school was doing GIS mapping for the National Wetlands Survey with a stereo scope, high altitude infrared, and topo overlays. I was comparing old data to new observations and manually drawing the identified bodies of water onto mylar over the topo. After that, I’d write the labels and lines on a second mylar overlay.
All of this was then given to a digital mapping team that plotted everything a using specialized mouse. That was 25 years ago, give or take.
The GIS software was so insanely expensive back then. To see something of this caliber for free is impressive.
Was it MapInfo?
The GIMP user would never have paid Adobe for Photoshop anyway.
If anything, it actually helped people get into photo editing and ended up using Photoshop at their work.
Saved me cheddar
Such a horrible product name.
Yeah, Adobe is just mud
Look… I like gimp a lot and Jehan is a G.
Adobe has lost basically nothing. Because Gimp is still ridiculously underpowered compared to Adobe Photoshop (let alone the rest of the suite). That is perfectly fine since the vast majority of users don’t need those capabilities. But the people who do (e.g. professionals)? There is really no other choice.
“Professionals” is one of those words, you know, like “consumer” or whatever, that does a lot to hide what’s really going on. I’m a professional who used to use GIMP all the time for my work. I’m not less of a professional because I didn’t like Photoshop, in fact, I used to use PS at previous jobs but gave it up because I prefer the GIMP interface (yes, I’m that person) and didn’t need the other bits. “Professional” just means you do it as a job; it doesn’t indicate what that job is, and different people have different use cases.
Yeah, that title’s last sentence is just a straight-up lie, lol
I disagree. GIMP and photopea get really slow on larger files that photoshop can handle with stability. I’ve really, really tried to move to GIMP, beyond just learning different hotkeys. I keep falling back to Photoshop.
(Disclaimer: I use Gimp a lot and Adobe not at all)
Tbh, the people who use Gimp and the people who use Adobe are two separate crowds and neither Gimp nor Adobe are the only tools in town.
If I’m not going to pay for a photo editing tool and Gimp would cease to exist, I’d just download another free tool and call it a day.
If I’m a professional relying on Adobe Photoshop, the existence of Gimp does nothing to me. Photoshop plus Lightroom costs ~€25/month. For a private person that’s a lot. For a professional that hardly matters. If I pay €1000+ rent for a studio+office, paying €25 isn’t that big of a deal.
Or to put it the other way round: If our hypothetical professional saves just one hour of work per month due to using Adobe tools over Gimp or another software, it’s cheaper for them to use Adobe. Because time literally is money when you are self-employed.
poor artists blame their tools.
Do execs really hate him? Competition validates the marketplace and your product. Plus they can afford to develop more features than the open source community can produce in the same amount of time. So they can always argue you are paying for the additional features.
GIMP’s UI and UX are just terrible. I forced myself to use it for months but it never felt like anything ever got easier to do, it’s just so unintuitive. Nevertheless, I thanks the devs for all their work, it’s great great tool
Did you reconfigure it much?
There are preconfiguration packs that make it more like photoshop if you want. Gimpshop I think one is called.
Have you tried PhotoGIMP?
Photogimp is just lipstick. There are root design choices that create the problems.
I used PS from v3 (I think?) to CS2 (ish?) before switching to GIMP. I thought the interface was weird until a designer at my job showed me where I was getting confused. So I’ve been a semi-regular G user for the last million years and every once in a while I offer to help my partner with something in PS and honestly I take so long to get anything done because I can’t find it in the PS UI.
What are some other good open alternatives to GIMP?
Having been in the design trade for 20 years, I’ve mastered countless design applications, but GIMP’s UI is something I have always struggled with.
My goto these days has been photopea when I need something fast and free… but it’s not open and it’s ad supported.
I’ve heard
mentioned as a more familiar UI, for those moving over from locked-in software.
Idk it its new but the photgimp dot com link is rouge and directs you to spam. I believe this is the real one https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
Thanks for heads up about the spam.
I’ve changed the link.
Here, you can filter by OS and license.
https://alternativeto.net/software/gimp/
Honestly the GIMP interface is way better than it used to be (5-10 years ago?). The old multi-window design always frustrated me but with the single-window tab view it feels much more normal.
This. I assume the people complaining about the UI fall into two categories: people who haven’t opened GIMP in years and people who want it to be a photoshop clone.
Clearly that’s their problem not GIMP’s
Try Krita, it doesn’t do everything GIMP does but depending on your workflow it might do the trick for you.
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
Isn’t JavaScript technically open source? Does photopea use WASM? Maybe there’s a way to self host and remove ads?
the only thing gimp in my life is my leg.
I doubt Adobe execs know who he is, and if they did they wouldn’t care. They don’t talk in “millions” lol
Yah, Adobe execs are crying about GIMP in their mattresses stuffed with thousand-dollar bills.
Bullshit, atomizing and pandering headlines aside, GIMP is a great program for light-duty graphics work and very easy to learn how to do impressive things with and a great intro to graphics programs and photo editing before investing in a more robust program.
Gimp was nice but the color balance always made images look dirty.
Are you sure you’re using gimp and not a VCR?
Omg Just shot milk out my nose.
