If GIMP is so good, why does everyone use Photoshop? It’s a fair question, given the fact that GIMP is so often heralded by open source enthusiasts. GIMP is a free photo editing software often cited as the best open source image editing software on the planet. An offshoot, Gimpshop, features a user interface that mimics the appearance and terminology of Photoshop – and it’s also free. Why doesn’t everyone use it instead?
First, I make no argument against GIMP as a world-class image editor. What’s more, I have no problem whatsoever with open source – I’m also an enthusiast and have promoted GIMP in dozens of posts. What I do wonder is, when the free GIMP is arguably every bit as powerful as the $700 Photoshop, why doesn’t everyone just use GIMP?
This is why:
Marketing - Adobe undoubtedly has a large marketing budget, which they put to good use.
You learned on Photoshop - Most design classes use Photoshop; once out of school, why learn a lesser-known software that does the same thing?
Advanced features - GIMP can do more than most hobbyists would ever need, but Photoshop can still do more.
Photoshop is the industry standard - Photoshop is the most established photo editing software in the professional world. It’s what’s expected of professional firms.
Photoshop integrates with other Adobe products - From Acrobat to Illustrator, InDesign to Dreamweaver, Photoshop integrates seamlessly with other Adobe Creative Suite products.
Lack of GIMP support and tutorials - There are tutorials and excellent forums for GIMP users, yes, but not near the volume you’ll find for Photoshop users, including professional Adobe support.
Mistrust of open source - Perception that open source is always distributed with spyware or susceptible to crashes and data loss can turn some users off, whether the perception is valid or not.
Minimal investment - For the startup or hobbyist, the price of Photoshop might be a barrier to entry. But for established professional design firms, the price of Photoshop and the entire Creative Suite represents an investment with an expected return. Spending a few thousand dollars on software every few years is anticipated, and minimal given the fact that a single job might pay for the purchase.
What other reasons do designers cite for using Photoshop instead of GIMP? Or are you a designer who uses GIMP instead? Why? Let me know in the comments!
Latest posts by Brian (see all)
- 10 Must-Have Free Photoshop Actions – April 29, 2013
- 10 Best New, Free and Responsive WordPress Themes – April 9, 2013
- 10 Design Tutorials You Don’t Want To Miss – March 21, 2013
- If GIMP Is So Good, Why Does Everyone Use Photoshop? – February 28, 2013
- 10 New Websites Every Designer Should Know – January 28, 2013
I thinks is so simple to get around paying for photoshop, it’s such a great program!
I think Photoshop tops features, but if you could get a ferrari or a vespa for the same price (free), which would you go for?
I also experienced that GIMP can’t open PSD files correctly. Or at least it couldn’t open my website designs. That’s why I’m still using Photoshop
I find Photoshop is just a genuinely slicker experience, too. I don’t know how much of that is down to having more experience, but having worked with Photoshop and then tried GIMP, I found it far less user friendly. It’s definitely capable, but Photoshop just feels far more pleasurable to use on a day to day basis.
I generally support open source. I use Blender heavily in my projects and love it.
However, there is something about Gimp that just doesn’t cut it. How it handles layers and styles feel unintuitive and clunky. Photoshop does things easier and faster. It’s not that I’m more use to Photoshop so it comes more natural – it’s that with Gimp you need to do three for four more steps for something that Photoshop does easily.
HOWEVER, if I could use Gimp I would happily swap it out. It has some excellent paint/drawing abilities and does do a lot of great things. And for the price of free it can’t be beat.
I find that GIMP’s multi-windowed layout gets extremely annoying after a bit of use and changing, while PhotoShop covers this, and multiple types of views, very well. To me, it’s not any of the things you mentioned above, or even the old fashioned multi-windowed layout they used to swear by, but the entire user experience of PhotoShop is far better refined than GIMP’s. That seems like a clusterfuck of ideas and things – although with amazing functionality – in a bad workspace environment.
[...] Direct Link [...]
Been using it for years, great support, many tutorials. Also as stated above Photoshop is one of the industry standard tools for creating digital graphics so if you’re looking for a web design, graphics, interface designer job most likely they use Adobe products.
I tried to like Gimp a *lot*, but I just found it was really hard to get fairly commonplace hardware working with it that would probably be a normal setup for a Photoshop user (Mac with a Wacom graphics tablet with pressure-sensitivity, for example.) It was also crippled for a while by an X11 update on a new release of OSX, from what I remember. I wonder whether this lack of support for Macs and graphics tablets might have put people off — I’m guessing it’s the kind of setup Photoshop professionals who might be tempted to switch generally have.
I did use it for a while while I was a Linux user, but even then I can remember having to recompile my kernel with some hand-built patches to get pressure-sensitivity working on the tablet. Now, this was a while back, so things are probably better now. Back then, it was the kind of thing I was into, but I can’t imagine that going down well with most Photoshop users…
There is definitely a deficit of Gimp tutorials out there, which is why I started my site a few years ago. I’ve been working hard on creating a comprehensive place to get good tutorials for Gimp.
Hi Alex what’s your site…..
I use Photoshop only when my client want a PSD file, which is rather a rare case. When I make print design – they want PDF, when I make website – usualy they want code+jpegs/pngs so most of the time I can use whatever software I want (Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus, Blender & more) to make the job done. Photoshop is just a tool (yeah, pretty good one) – but what YOU can do is more important than the tool you use.
i use ubuntu so naturaly i use gimp and blender.
may be because most of them uses pirated version of photoshop (and windows)
With Adobe moving to a subscription only model (Cloud) and dropping the CS series that allowed you to keep the program on your computer, I can see programs like GIMP gaining a larger following.