Free vs. pay software

[TJ]

The August 2007 Computer Shopper contains an article comparing free and
pay application software. Two of the comparisons are of interest to
those who do much printing: Microsoft Office vs. Openoffice.org 2.2 and
Photoshop vs. The GIMP.

The conclusions were that for most people, those who don't necessarily
need all the bells and whistles that professionals look for, the free
alternatives are the clear winners. Read the entire article at
http://computershopper.com/feature/...free-downloads-as-good-as-for-pay-apps-200706

To Measekite: I have temporarily disabled your entry in my killfile so
that I may read your comments directly, if you have any. Before you make
them, however, please read the article for yourself.

TJ

 

[measekite]

The August 2007 Computer Shopper contains an article comparing free
and pay application software. Two of the comparisons are of interest
to those who do much printing: Microsoft Office vs. Openoffice.org 2.2
and Photoshop vs. The GIMP.

The conclusions were that for most people, those who don't necessarily
need all the bells and whistles that professionals look for, the free
alternatives are the clear winners. Read the entire article at
http://computershopper.com/feature/...free-downloads-as-good-as-for-pay-apps-200706


To Measekite: I have temporarily disabled your entry in my killfile so
that I may read your comments directly, if you have any. Before you
make them, however, please read the article for yourself.

TJ

Speaking for Windows only:

I do not have to. I use both MS Office and OpenOffice. I use Photoshop
and just installed Gimpshop. I know Gimpshop is not as good as
Photoshop but based on the cost difference I agree one should try
GimpShop unless you need to interact with other Photoshop users or get
various forms of PS support. In that regard I would like to see how it
stacks up with Photoshop Elements. If Elements is better than the
$75.00 or so is meaningless. Like a Quarter Pounder without cheese.

Now as for the two office products. If you do a lot of MailMerge and
Database work MS Office is a no brainer. Access and the other features
of Office are lightyears ahead. However, if you only occassionally use
MailMerge and your minimal DB work is mostly flat files without code
then I would say OpenOffice is better. The implementation of everything
graphic is far more efficient than Office.

The main problem is if you need to interact with Office users you should
not use the default Open Office file format.

I do not know about the newest and latest version of MS Office that uses
the ribbon. Maybe that has better ease of use, I do not know.

 

[frederick]

Speaking for Windows only:

I do not have to. I use both MS Office and OpenOffice. I use Photoshop
and just installed Gimpshop. I know Gimpshop is not as good as
Photoshop but based on the cost difference I agree one should try
GimpShop unless you need to interact with other Photoshop users or get
various forms of PS support. In that regard I would like to see how it
stacks up with Photoshop Elements. If Elements is better than the
$75.00 or so is meaningless. Like a Quarter Pounder without cheese.

As this is a printing forum, there are two significant reasons to use
Elements or full PS over the Gimp for photo editing and printing.

First is the ability to edit in 16 bit colour space. If you make
significant changes to colour balance, levels etc, then you will see
banding/posterisation if editing in 8 bit due to integer rounding ( a
blue sky is often where this is first seen). This gets exacerbated as
you edit several times, and/or if you save between edits, especially
compressing as jpg.

Second is the ease of using ICC profiles for printing. While there is
usually some way of using profiles using the printer driver, AFAIK
there's no way to view "gamut warning" in Gimp (or Elements), and a
difficult job to soft-proof in Gimp using view/filters and loading the
profile.

The first problem can mainly be worked around if shooting in raw, and
making any significant changes using the raw converter before saving for
any further editing in Gimp's 8 bit colour space.

The second might be improved when Gimp 2.4 is released, but a
pre-release (2.3xx) I was looking at didn't look promising.

Otherwise, Gimp is terrific, in Windows even supporting features such as
pressure sensitivity and switching to eraser when inverting the pen with
my Wacom tablet. And if you can use PS, it's no trouble to switch to
use Gimp and vice versa.

 

[measekite]

As this is a printing forum, there are two significant reasons to use
Elements or full PS over the Gimp for photo editing and printing.

First is the ability to edit in 16 bit colour space. If you make
significant changes to colour balance, levels etc, then you will see
banding/posterisation if editing in 8 bit due to integer rounding ( a
blue sky is often where this is first seen). This gets exacerbated as
you edit several times, and/or if you save between edits, especially
compressing as jpg.

So you are saying that GimpShop does not support 16 bit color?

 

[frederick]

So you are saying that GimpShop does not support 16 bit color?

AFAIK it doesn't.
If you open a 16 bit (ie a tiff) then it will convert it to 8 bit per
channel, and only save it as 8 bit per channel.

 

[frederick]

measekite wrote:

AFAIK it doesn't.
If you open a 16 bit (ie a tiff) then it will convert it to 8 bit per
channel, and only save it as 8 bit per channel.

To clarify that, by 16 bit, I mean 16 bit per (RGB) channel, which might
be sometimes referred to as 48 bit(and 8 bit as 24 bit).
This is an example of what you can get from integer rounding when
adjusting levels in 8 bit colour space, and exacerbated by jpeg compression:
http://i8.tinypic.com/4rcsbqr.jpg

 

[TJ]

Speaking for Windows only:

I do not have to. I use both MS Office and OpenOffice. I use Photoshop
and just installed Gimpshop. I know Gimpshop is not as good as
Photoshop but based on the cost difference I agree one should try
GimpShop unless you need to interact with other Photoshop users or get
various forms of PS support. In that regard I would like to see how it
stacks up with Photoshop Elements. If Elements is better than the
$75.00 or so is meaningless. Like a Quarter Pounder without cheese.

Now as for the two office products. If you do a lot of MailMerge and
Database work MS Office is a no brainer. Access and the other features
of Office are lightyears ahead. However, if you only occassionally use
MailMerge and your minimal DB work is mostly flat files without code
then I would say OpenOffice is better. The implementation of everything
graphic is far more efficient than Office.

The main problem is if you need to interact with Office users you should
not use the default Open Office file format.

I do not know about the newest and latest version of MS Office that uses
the ribbon. Maybe that has better ease of use, I do not know.

One thing you should remember is that Gimpshop is a variation of the
GIMP. Gimpshop is basically the GIMP with the interface changed to be
more like Photoshop. It was designed to make it easier for Photoshop
users to make the transition to using GIMP. It is an independent project
as far as development goes, and the core of each version of Gimpshop
will by its nature be a version or two behind GIMP itself. This usually
means little, but if a major improvement is added to GIMP, it will be a
while before it gets to Gimpshop.

OpenOffice will save files in MS Office formats, but it's not perfect. I
once tried to load an OpenOffice Calc file saved in Excel 97 format into
MS Publisher 98, and Publisher wouldn't accept it. I had to load the
file into Excel 97, then re-save it. Still, its not bad, considering the
format had to be reverse-engineered because Microsoft won't release
details about it.

One problem MS Office has is the sheer size of its files. A friend of
mine was working on a book-sized file in Word format. He tried loading
the file into OpenOffice Write and saved it in its native format. The
Write file was half the size of the Word file. Same project, and all
formatting was the same.

TJ

 

[TJ]

As this is a printing forum, there are two significant reasons to use
Elements or full PS over the Gimp for photo editing and printing.

First is the ability to edit in 16 bit colour space. If you make
significant changes to colour balance, levels etc, then you will see
banding/posterisation if editing in 8 bit due to integer rounding ( a
blue sky is often where this is first seen). This gets exacerbated as
you edit several times, and/or if you save between edits, especially
compressing as jpg.

Second is the ease of using ICC profiles for printing. While there is
usually some way of using profiles using the printer driver, AFAIK
there's no way to view "gamut warning" in Gimp (or Elements), and a
difficult job to soft-proof in Gimp using view/filters and loading the
profile.

The first problem can mainly be worked around if shooting in raw, and
making any significant changes using the raw converter before saving for
any further editing in Gimp's 8 bit colour space.

The second might be improved when Gimp 2.4 is released, but a
pre-release (2.3xx) I was looking at didn't look promising.

Otherwise, Gimp is terrific, in Windows even supporting features such as
pressure sensitivity and switching to eraser when inverting the pen with
my Wacom tablet. And if you can use PS, it's no trouble to switch to
use Gimp and vice versa.

No matter what software you use, you should never edit a jpeg file. It
should be converted to a lossless format like png or tiff first. That
should be one of the first things covered in the docs for any photo
editor. Even the great Photoshop can't prevent degradation from repeated
saves of a jpeg.

TJ

 

[measekite]

No matter what software you use, you should never edit a jpeg file. It
should be converted to a lossless format like png or tiff first. That
should be one of the first things covered in the docs for any photo
editor. Even the great Photoshop can't prevent degradation from
repeated saves of a jpeg.

Most people that use photoshop uses layers and when saved the default is
..PSD and that is lossless.

 

[DK]

The August 2007 Computer Shopper contains an article comparing free and
pay application software. Two of the comparisons are of interest to
those who do much printing: Microsoft Office vs. Openoffice.org 2.2 and
Photoshop vs. The GIMP.

The conclusions were that for most people, those who don't necessarily
need all the bells and whistles that professionals look for, the free
alternatives are the clear winners. Read the entire article at
http://computershopper.com/feature/software-showdown-are-free-downloads-as-good
-as-for-pay-apps-200706

No surprise here. In fact, 90% of users' demand is pretty much satisfied
with a 3 Mb freeware IrfanView and absolutely anything as long as it opens
MS Word files.

And in terms of utilities, the carefully selected freeware/shareware trumps
commercial programs/suits practically all the time - even wghen it comes
to bells and whistles.

DK

 

[TJ]

Most people that use photoshop uses layers and when saved the default is
.PSD and that is lossless.

I've never used Photoshop. I can't justify the expense when the needs of
my very casual photo editing are met with good, open-source software or
software that was bundled with a printer, scanner, or camera. So I guess
I'll have to take your word for it. It's certainly not a standard
practice, AFAIK. With almost all software I've used, including the
GIMP(and GIMP works with layers, too), the default format for a simple
SAVE is the original format of the file. SAVE AS, now, that's a
different story. Most people probably automatically use SAVE rather than
SAVE AS.

Lossless format or not, the first thing I'd do with a photo even in
Photoshop would be to use SAVE AS to create a copy. I'd then do all my
editing on the copy and archive the original, just in case.

TJ

 

[measekite]

I've never used Photoshop. I can't justify the expense when the needs
of my very casual photo editing are met with good, open-source
software or software that was bundled with a printer, scanner, or camera.

For 1 casual users should use the free Picassa 2. And Photoshop
Elements is bundled with many scanners.

So I guess I'll have to take your word for it. It's certainly not a
standard practice,

If you think about it the jpg format cannot handle layered files so PS
uses their own proprietary format. If you use layers in PS and you save
in jpg the software flattens out the file so when you reopen it the
layers can no longer be edited as such. I think GIMP also flattens the
file and if you reopen a layered GIMP file saved in jpg I think you will
find you can not longer edit the layers that were flattened.

AFAIK. With almost all software I've used, including the GIMP(and GIMP
works with layers, too), the default format for a simple SAVE is the
original format of the file. SAVE AS, now, that's a different story.
Most people probably automatically use SAVE rather than SAVE AS.

Lossless format or not, the first thing I'd do with a photo even in
Photoshop would be to use SAVE AS to create a copy.

That is not necessary if you use layers. Open the jpg, create layers,
and then save and the resulting file will be PSD and the JPG is intact.

 

[frederick]

I've never used Photoshop. I can't justify the expense when the needs of
my very casual photo editing are met with good, open-source software or
software that was bundled with a printer, scanner, or camera. So I guess
I'll have to take your word for it. It's certainly not a standard
practice, AFAIK. With almost all software I've used, including the
GIMP(and GIMP works with layers, too), the default format for a simple
SAVE is the original format of the file. SAVE AS, now, that's a
different story. Most people probably automatically use SAVE rather than
SAVE AS.

Lossless format or not, the first thing I'd do with a photo even in
Photoshop would be to use SAVE AS to create a copy. I'd then do all my
editing on the copy and archive the original, just in case.

TJ

With "the Gimp", you can save in native and lossless format preserving
layers etc - same idea as "*.psd" in photoshop.
File extension is *.xcf.
IIRC there's a plugin to open photoshop *.psd files in Gimp, but I think
it's buggy.

For saving "as" jpg, then toggle on "Show Preview in Image Window", and
you can see a preview, an estimate of file size, and can play with the
"advanced" options for jpeg compression and see the effect.

Gimp is a terrific and well featured program, many people using
photoshop probably don't even use, or know why and when they could use
the features (16 bit working space and ICC colour management features)
that might exclude Gimp for some professional use.

 

[TJ]

For 1 casual users should use the free Picassa 2. And Photoshop
Elements is bundled with many scanners.

If you think about it the jpg format cannot handle layered files so PS
uses their own proprietary format. If you use layers in PS and you save
in jpg the software flattens out the file so when you reopen it the
layers can no longer be edited as such. I think GIMP also flattens the
file and if you reopen a layered GIMP file saved in jpg I think you will
find you can not longer edit the layers that were flattened.
That is not necessary if you use layers. Open the jpg, create layers,
and then save and the resulting file will be PSD and the JPG is intact.

If you do that with Gimp, you'll get a warning message that jpg can't
handle layers, that the image needs to be "flattened" before it can be
saved, and is that OK. If you say no, the save will be canceled. If you
don't know what's going on and say yes, you've lost your original image.
The way to save layered images with Gimp is to use the native xcf format.

I don't care if it's unnecessary or not, I'll continue to save my
originals and edit my copies. I've been using computers a long time,
through several different operating systems, and I've learned the hard
way that no matter how trustworthy a program may seem, never trust it to
ALWAYS act the way it's supposed to. Always have at least one backup. Or
don't you believe in insurance?

TJ