Has anyone heard of GIMP? Basically, it's a popular photo and art editing software which, like WordPress is for blogs, is totally free - but not sure if open source. Anyway, I've tried it myself and you can do a lot - assuming, as with Photoshop, your willing to study. Anyway, while we're on the topic, another popular free art software is Blender. Basically, it's a 3D modeling software and like GIMP is probably tough to learn, but definitely worth the time.
The hard disk of our home desktop crashed a few months ago and with it went my Adobe Photoshop. I seemed to have lost the CD installer so now I have no photo editor. I have seen that GIMP but I am hesitant to install it because it is not easy for me to learn new software. Any photo editing software is not easy to operate and I might not have time to learn the details of operation of GIMP.
That seems to be a huge problem in industries that use Photoshop. A lot of people have been trained in only one software. Nonetheless, I think there are major similarities among GIMP and Photoshop. For instance, if there is some tool called instant smudge (something I think it is on there) on GIMP, then it's sort of the same idea as whatever that's on Photoshop or Paintshop.
We have an existing thread on this subject which enticed me to try GIMP: Log In I've used Adobe Photoshop in the fast so learning GIMP wasn't that difficult. Although it doesn't have the advanced features found in Photoshop, many users will find this open source graphics software useful. I've learned to create layers in GIMP using website tutorials and Youtube. In addition, its hardware or graphics are requirements are not as high as those of Adobe so I was able to use it on my last laptop which has very basic specs.
There doesn't seem to be much more than learning layers, but I could be wrong. Does anyone know of modifications for simpler computers that would allow them to work better with Photoshop?
I love GIMP and to this day I am really not sure what the pro version does, because the free one does all I need it to. It took a little getting used to but it is certainly up there with one of the better programs.
I have used Gimp quite a bit in the past,and there are maybe some reasons that it is better than Photoshop. A great reason to use Gimp, is because it's free for starters compared to Photoshop, and it's smaller so it's easier to install-about 20x smaller than Photoshop actually,so it takes up less hard drive,making it better for laptops and the on the go experience !