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Gimp 2.6 (SL) vs. Photoshop CS5

M

mac2x

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 19, 2009
1,146
0
Hi all,

If this isn't the right forum for this, could a mod please move it? Thanks. :)

Anyway, I'm sort of a n00b at this sort of thing, but I have gotten fairly decent with using Gimp. And since I installed my hew HDD and SL, and gotten the SL version of Gimp 2.6, I've really been liking it. It's much snappier than the Leopard version.

I did do the 30 day CS5 Extended trial back on my Leopard system, and though I barely scratched the surface of what it can do, I did some nice stuff. The masking tool is particularly impressive.

What I'm wondering is if there is anything CS5 can do that Gimp can't? I haven't been successful in finding anything really concrete. :eek: While I can get a very good student discount on CS5, Gimp's price is just right. :D
 
chaosbunny

chaosbunny

macrumors 68020
Mar 11, 2005
2,106
491
down to earth, far away from any clouds
If gimp can do everything you need, then save the money and stick with it. ;)

As far as things photoshop can do that gimp can't, there are too many to mention, the most important one is probably the more or less missing cmyk support and the lack of color profiles. There are ways of doing that, but they are clumsy at best. You'll need that in a professional production environment.

Gimp is great for home users, and certainly most people just playing with their pictures or doing an occasional flyer for their birthday party do not need more. But you won't find it in any professional designers workflow.

Even improvements of CS5 over CS4 matter to me, like the "3D" brushes, or the mixer brush tool.

Only you can decide if you need it or not, it depends on what you want to do with it.
 
M

mac2x

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 19, 2009
1,146
0
Thanks for the reply! Yes, Gimp is almost certainly plenty for my current ability level. :cool:

I don't own a nice camera right now, so my main purpose is more along graphic design lines at this point. I've made a few nice web banners with Gimp, for instance.

I may see if I can try CS5 again and see how it runs on my newly updated system.
 
Winni

Winni

macrumors 68040
Oct 15, 2008
3,207
1,196
Germany.
mac2x said:
And since I installed my hew HDD and SL, and gotten the SL version of Gimp 2.6, I've really been liking it. It's much snappier than the Leopard version.
Click to expand...

If you think that it's snappy on OS X, then you really should try it on Linux...
 
M

mac2x

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 19, 2009
1,146
0
If I ever decide to dual boot Ubuntu, I'll get back to you on that. ;)

At any rate, I bit the bullet and downloaded the Design Premium trial, because I've been wanting Illustrator and Dreamweaver as well. I tried PS CS5 back when I was still running Leopard, but I decided not to pursue it due to lack of time.

I definitely think I'm buying for several reasons. First PS x64 is BLAZING FAST on my updated system. OS 10.6.4, the Momentus XT, 4 GB of RAM (was running with 2 last time I tried), and booting into the 64 bit kernel really improved my experience over the first trial.

Second, I had been working a couple of things with Gimp that I had gotten satisfactory results with after some tweaking. I repeated the same things in PS, and I got them done faster with superior results. In fact, I already created a kick-@$$ avatar for a game forum. :cool:

Thanks for the input! I can really tell the difference now that I have Gimp and PS side by side again.
 
Hermes Monster

Hermes Monster

macrumors 65816
May 4, 2010
1,204
552
UK
mac2x said:
If I ever decide to dual boot Ubuntu, I'll get back to you on that. ;)

At any rate, I bit the bullet and downloaded the Design Premium trial, because I've been wanting Illustrator and Dreamweaver as well. I tried PS CS5 back when I was still running Leopard, but I decided not to pursue it due to lack of time.

I definitely think I'm buying for several reasons. First PS x64 is BLAZING FAST on my updated system. OS 10.6.4, the Momentus XT, 4 GB of RAM (was running with 2 last time I tried), and booting into the 64 bit kernel really improved my experience over the first trial.

Second, I had been working a couple of things with Gimp that I had gotten satisfactory results with after some tweaking. I repeated the same things in PS, and I got them done faster with superior results. In fact, I already created a kick-@$$ avatar for a game forum. :cool:

Thanks for the input! I can really tell the difference now that I have Gimp and PS side by side again.
Click to expand...

Can you buy me a student copy as well please?:p

I'm using GIMP at home, and use PS CS3 at work - I can do pretty much what I need at home but sometimes I do miss the extra features PS has, no way I can afford the full price suite though :mad:

Glad it's worked out for you
 
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