[Cialug] Gimp/Photoshop challenge

[Matt Stanton]

  Josh, you forgot to mention the handicaps each of us had.

Josh's handicap:  Not  professional graphics design person.
My handicap:  Running Photoshop CS4 in Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit, in 
Virtualbox with 1024MB of ram dedicated to the VM, running on Ubuntu 
10.04 LTS 64bit, on an Intel Atom dual-core cpu with 2GB of 
single-channel ddr2-800MHz ram.  Oh god, it was slow... It took about 
half the meeting to get it booted into windows with Photoshop open.

So I didn't really have the same amount of 'time' as Josh did.  You 
could argue that this points towards the benefits of lower CPU/memory 
usage of open-source software, though, because I would be willing to bet 
that Gimp runs twice as fast on Linux as Photoshop does on Vista 
Ultimate on similar hardware.  I can open Gimp up with no speed issues 
on the nettop (outside of the VM, anyway).  Also, it seems that the Gimp 
is capable of the same image quality that you would expect from Photoshop.

My verdict would be that if you are just starting out, and deciding to 
learn how to use these graphics programs, just start learning Gimp and 
Inkscape.  You are going to have to invest a lot of time and effort into 
learning the OSS programs, just as you would with the Adobe products, 
but if you start with the OSS ones, you don't have to worry about trying 
to 'figure out how to do this thing I know how to do in Photoshop in 
Gimp'.  Once you've spent years honing your skills with one program, you 
aren't likely to want to switch.  This is true even between commercial, 
closed-source programs... I learned on Illustrator, and because of that, 
I cannot stand CorelDRAW.  They do the same stuff, but their UIs are 
different enough that you can't just seamlessly switch between the two.

Also we didn't 'finish at the same time', because I wasn't really 
'finished'.  This is just where I was at when Josh called 'Done!'  So I 
really think Josh won.

-- Matt

On 8/26/2010 7:38 PM, Rob Miller wrote:
> I vote for Josh/Gimp.  The "gnu-head" is in a more natural position.  
> Cool contest !!!
>
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Josh More 
> <MoreJ at alliancetechnologies.net 
> <mailto:MoreJ at alliancetechnologies.net>> wrote:
>
>     For those who were at our meeting last week, the files are up.
>
>     Here is the original photo, wherein our friend James met Richard
>     Simmons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/guppiecat/4929342609/
>
>     The goal was to see who could change Richard Simmons into Richard
>     Stallman and make James's vacation so much more interesting.
>
>     Here is Matt's attempt w/ Photoshop:
>     http://www.flickr.com/photos/guppiecat/4929934660/
>     Here is mine w/ Gimp:
>     http://www.flickr.com/photos/guppiecat/4929342573/
>
>     We tied in terms of time, which means that the group has to decide
>     who actually won and whether or not it's worth paying real money
>     for proprietary software.  :)
>
>
>     -Josh More, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, GIAC-GCIH, RHCE, NCLP
>     morej at alliancetechnologies.net <mailto:morej at alliancetechnologies.net>
>     515-245-7701
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