Hello and welcome to yet another tutorial by
Davies Media Design my name is Michael Davies and in this tutorial I'll be providing
an in-depth comparison between GIMP and Photoshop quick disclaimer I've been creating
GIMP tutorials and courses since 2011 and have been a strong advocate for both GIMP and Free
and Open Source Software. In fact some of you know I'm not afraid to talk a little **** every
now and then about Adobe. But I think many of you on my channel would like a more neutral
objective approach when comparing these two programs so that's what I've decided to do for
today's video. I'll be using GIMP 2.10.18 and Photoshop CC 2020 for this tutorial which are both
the latest versions of their respective software. But of course before I get into that I want
to direct you guys over to my website at DaviesMediaDesign.com. As always I have tons
of GIMP, Inkscape and Darktable tutorials, as well as Help Articles covering Free and Open
Source Software - so definitely check that out. You can enroll in my GIMP 2.10 Masterclass:
From Beginner to Pro Photo Editing on Udemy. You can enroll in any of my Skillshare classes by
visiting GIMPschool.com. And you can get more with a Premium Membership to Davies Media Design.
I'll start this video with an introduction to Photoshop and GIMP, and we'll follow that with the
strengths and weaknesses of both programs. I'll by no means be covering all the features found
in both programs as that would make this video excessively long. Let's start with an introduction
to the two programs. It's no secret that Photoshop has been a cultural icon for the better part of
the last two decades and that it has both defined and dominated the photo editing and manipulation
landscape since its inception in 1990. It's become so ingrained in society that the brand name
itself has become a verb - as in to "Photoshop" someone out of a photo. Today, Photoshop has
become a staple in the photo editing arsenal of photographers around the world. It utilizes
many AI powered smart selection tools as well as non-destructive editing features. Additionally,
Photoshop has tons of intelligent tools for creating mock-ups for branding assets, web design,
and more. It is considered the industry standard software for photo editing and manipulation
and is the go-to program for professional photographers and creative agencies. On the other
hand GIMP, or the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has paralleled Photoshop since its inception back
in 1996. Originally founded by a couple of college students as a viable photo editing program for
Linux operating systems, this free software has evolved through community-based development to be
by far the best FREE Photoshop alternative on the planet - as well as arguably the best Photoshop
alternative period. GIMP has everything you need for editing and manipulating your photos including
both basic and more advanced tools. Though, it hasn't quite become a verb - which perhaps is
for the best since I don't think people want to be "GIMPed" out of a photo. GIMP has had a meteoric
rise in recent years thanks to its improved development and community support. GIMP has become
an obvious choice for everyday photographers, photo retouchers, and digital artists. All that
being said let's dive into what I like and dislike specifically about each program, starting with
what I like about Photoshop. Photoshop's strengths start with its world-class team of developers
and software engineers. As the "Golden Goose" of a multi-billion dollar company, Photoshop
essentially has an endless supply of talent and resources to maintain and develop the program.
As a result the program is constantly innovating with new features, improved performance, and
cross-platform functionality. Photoshop is undoubtedly a very complex program with multiple
integrations that work seamlessly such as the built-in RAW processing interface "Camera Raw,"
smart objects for creating interactive design assets, and Creative Cloud app integrations for
bringing in compositions from other Adobe apps like Lightroom or Illustrator. Additionally
Photoshop has integrated tutorials into its home screen to help beginners learn the program,
as well as Adobe Stock templates to create quick projects. Of course you'll need a Creative Cloud
plan that includes Adobe Stock in order to access stock templates or photos. Adobe Photoshop's user
interface is simple in design but also packed full of features. It has grouped tools, dialogues that
can be repositioned anywhere around the canvas, and a dynamic options bar that changes based on
the tool you have selected to reveal additional tool settings. Getting into some of the tools,
Photoshop has a variety of smart selection tools that work quickly and intelligently. Though they
aren't perfect as I demonstrated in my "GIMP vs. Photoshop: 90 Second Background Erasing" video.
However, tools like the Object Selection tool and Quick Selection tool are quite effective
smart-selection tools. These tools also come with the "Select Subject" button in the options
bar to quickly select prominent subjects in the photo. Additionally the "Select and Mask" button
within these tools brings up a properties dialog for quickly refining your selection regions
- further extending their capabilities and speeding up your work flow. I can't talk about
Photoshop without mentioning the features that made Photoshop famous. Its Airbrush, Heal, Clone,
and Warp tools, as well as its object removal tools. It's infamously good at transforming
the body which has sparked a worldwide debate on body image, and whether disclaimers should
be required on heavily Photoshopped images. The Content Aware Fill feature can erase pretty much
anything within a selection area from a photo, and the Spot Healing tool can quickly paint
out mistakes in a photo such as a stain on someone's shirt. Photoshop naturally has a full
suite of image adjustment tools like Curves, Levels, Dodge and Burn, and various transformation
tools such as the Free Transform and Crop tools, as well as a variety of filters for common
tasks like blurring or sharpening. However, one of the program's major strengths comes from
its non-destructive editing features - most notably the adjustment layers that make it easy
to preserve your original photo as you work or go back and tweak adjustments you make at any point
in your workflow. Photoshop is undoubtedly a world-class photo editing and retouching program
used by many of the best photographers in the world. It performs well even with larger image
sizes with most of its tools being lightning fast. It works on Mac, Windows, and iPad with
the new Photoshop for iPad. Of course it also has a huge community of creators that create
thousands of informative tutorials, articles, and courses on the program. Finally there are
plenty of add-ons, plugins, brushes, fonts, etc. you can download and install for Photoshop
to further enhance the program. Let's move on to GIMP, which certainly has had a different
upbringing. Rather than having unlimited monetary and developer resources to maintain
its software, GIMP relies entirely on volunteer contributions from an open-source community of
part-time developers with day jobs. There's no massive corporate umbrella or army of nine-to-five
top tier software engineers dedicating their work lives to the development of GIMP. Despite
this, GIMP has managed to survive nearly a quarter century at the time of this video,
while becoming a powerhouse alternative to Photoshop. This bootstrap mentality of GIMP's
development process often works in its favor, creating a culture of community around the
project. There are many features found in GIMP that are obviously inspired by Photoshop,
but GIMP is not simply a carbon copy of that program. It does many things differently while
in fact doing some things better than Photoshop. Opening GIMP for the first time you'll immediately
notice that, like Photoshop, it has grouped tools, a dark theme, and dialog boxes surrounding the
canvas. There is also a Tool Options dialog that allows you to adjust various settings for
your tools. Like Photoshop, the dialogues can be moved around to create different workspaces. GIMP
also uses a layer system including the ability to add layer masks, group layers together,
and add layer modes to layers. Fun fact: there are more layer modes in GIMP than there
are blending modes Photoshop. Like Photoshop, GIMP contains many smart selection tools with
its most powerful tool being the Foreground Select Tool. This tool contains similar features
found in the Object Selection, Quick Selection, and Select Subject tools found in Photoshop. GIMP
has powerful retouching tools including the Heal tool, Clone tool, and Warp Transform tool. These
tools work just as effectively as their Photoshop equivalents, allowing you to retouch photos in
a timely manner and get professional results. It has all the vital image adjustment tools like
Curves, Levels, Dodge and Burn, and more for basic and advanced photo editing. It even has a suite of
transform tools like the Unified Transform tool, Scale tool, and the more advanced 3D Transform
tool. GIMP has a variety of filters for common photo editing tasks like sharpening and blurring,
as well as filters for more advanced effects like the Long Shadow filter. Most of these filters
run on an open source engine known as GEGL that allows for faster performance and cool features
like the split view preview option. I have an entire tutorial dedicated to the GEGL concept on
my channel. Just like Photoshop, GIMP has a large community of content creators that create how-to
tutorials. Davies Media Design, for example, has hundreds of free tutorials on YouTube, Help
Articles on our website, and multiple GIMP courses for mastering the program and improving your photo
editing. In the areas where GIMP is lacking there is usually a third-party plugin or resource to
fill in the gaps. For example, the G'MIC plug-in does a great job of offering additional filters
and effects, while the Resynthesizer plug-in gives you access to an intelligent object erasing
tool that works just as good if not better than Photoshop's Content-aware Fill. Additionally,
there is a full suite of complimentary free and open-source software programs like Darktable
for RAW processing, Inkscape for vector graphics, and Blender for 3D design and animation. They
use a similar code base to GIMP. Like Photoshop, GIMP supports third-party fonts, brushes,
and patterns. It even supports the use of most Photoshop brushes. Finally there are some
great free stock photo websites like Pexels and Pixabay that have free assets to download and
use for any of your GIMP projects. Ultimately, GIMP finds its strength in its simplicity, making
it ideal for the casual photographer or beginner photo retoucher. However, as you delve deeper
into the software you'll learn that it is powerful enough to accomplish professional-grade editing
and manipulation tasks. It works on all desktop operating systems including Windows, Mac and
Linux, and at the end of the day it's absolutely free and backed by an awesome community. Alright,
so I've covered what I like about both programs but let's get into where the programs have their
weaknesses - starting with Photoshop. It's most glaring weakness is the subscription fee you pay
every month, of course. For many businesses and individuals this is an unwelcomed added expense,
especially in tough financial times like right now. And yes, I know pirating software to get
around the price tag has become common, but this comes with many unnecessary risks that I won't
get into for this video. Outside of its price tag, Adobe also has a tendency to constantly update its
software. This is usually more a good thing than bad, but constant updates can be a nuisance
to some - requiring ever-increasing amounts of computing power and a never-ending learning
curve, especially since Adobe forced its users to stop using older versions of the software. If one
version of Photoshop contains a bug, for example, but the update isn't compatible with a user's
operating system or graphics card, then the user is stuck with the bug or needs to upgrade their
computer. Sticking with compatibility for the next weakness, Photoshop does work with Windows and
MAC operating systems, as well as on the iPad, but it does not work on Linux operating systems.
Of course you can use a virtual machine to run Photoshop on Linux, but it's not quite the same
as running it directly on your desktop. Finally, for users who simply want to edit photos for
personal, small business, or passion projects, Photoshop contains more features than they'll
ever need. This complexity can slow down simple photo editing tasks, especially when working on
a computer running below the recommended system requirements. Let's move on to GIMP's weaknesses.
Having a volunteer workforce is what makes GIMP free, but this does come with drawbacks. For
one, development on GIMP can be inconsistent, with new release versions taking anywhere between
three or four months to be made available - versus Photoshop's steadier one release version per
month schedule. It is often the case that GIMP has more ideas than it has developers to
implement those ideas, and so some features get delayed over more routine bug fixes, while other
features go overlooked entirely. Another weakness in GIMP is its lack of non-destructive editing
features. Though it has made up some ground on this front in recent years, it still does not
have popular features like adjustment layers or smart objects. For many photographers used
to working with these features in Photoshop, this can be a deal-breaker. However there are some
workarounds to preserve your image as you work, and the GIMP team has promised adjustment
layers in a future version - GIMP 3.2 to be exact. Lastly, GIMP does not currently support
full CMYK color modes. This means that all your images are edited in the RGB color space and thus
may not properly display if you need to print your work. This is once again a deal-breaker for some,
especially those who work a lot with printers, but for people who only post their work online this is
a non-factor. GIMP does offer CMYK soft-proofing modes that allow you to preview how your colors
will look once your composition is printed, which I cover in a dedicated tutorial. But for some this
is not enough as it still creates compatibility issues, especially if someone sends you a photo in
CMYK mode and instructs you not to convert it to an RGB color space. Once again the GIMP team has
plans to implement a full CMYK color mode soon, but currently the program does not support it.
If you're still wondering which program you should use, let me sum it up this way: GIMP is a
fantastic free alternative to Photoshop for small businesses, casual photographers, influencers who
post their work directly to their audience online, and even professional or freelance photographers
working on a budget. It's also perfect for beginners wanting to give photo editing and
manipulation a try without having to make a purchase. In other words, if you aren't working
with clients or agencies that require you to work in Photoshop, GIMP will do the job just fine.
If you're a professional photographer working for an agency that only uses Adobe products
or someone that isn't as budget conscious and is willing to put in the hours to learn
the ins and outs of a more complex program, then Photoshop is certainly for you. It is, after
all, the best photo editing software money can buy at the moment. Just make sure you have a
computer powerful enough to handle the program, otherwise you may not be able to take full
advantage of the power of Photoshop. And remember ultimately you can still download GIMP
for free if you decide to purchase Photoshop. That's it for this tutorial hopefully you liked it
if you did you can check out my YouTube channel at Youtube.com/DaviesMediaDesign. Don't forget
to subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified each time I have a brand new tutorial.
You can also check out any of the links to my resources in the description of the video. But
thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
