Wednesday, December 28, 2005

GIMPShop listed in Top 12 Mac Apps of 2005


According to Chris Howard of Apple Matters, GIMPShop is among his "Dozen Mac Gems Unearthed in 2005".


GIMPShop
After my search for a low cost decent image editor proved fruitless, it was both a delight and relief to find GimpShop, a hacked version of The Gimp but with a Photoshop like interface. Obviously I wasn’t the only one confused beyond sanity by The Gimp’s interface!


I'm glad Chris found GIMPShop. A "low cost decent image editor" may be hard to find. Luckily, GIMPShop is free. 8^)



Thursday, December 22, 2005

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, Ramadan, the New Year, or just having a few days off - we here at GIMPShop dot Net want to wish you and yours a very Merry, Happy, Joyful, Jolly, Blessed, Cheerful, Fun, and Safe holiday season!

Happy GIMPShopping!

- Chad Smith (Webmaster of GIMPShop dot Net)



Thursday, December 08, 2005

GIMPShop versus Photoshop

Recently, I received a comment to one of my posts that asked this question:
I use Photoshop to edit my photographs. What is the difference between Photoshop and Gimp? - Other then the name Gimp is much more fun!
First of all, I agree, the name is more fun than Photoshop. :-)

I liked the question so much, that I thought it would be good to post the reply as an article, since I'm sure many people have wondered the same thing. I know reading comments isn't the easiest way to find out things, and thus this page was born.

For a simple answer about what GIMPShop is, you can check out my page called "What is GIMPShop?"

For a few specific answers to what's the differences between GIMPShop and Photoshop, please see below.

GIMPShop is different than Photoshop in a number of ways.

#1) It is free. Meaning it doesn't cost you anything to own the software - you can download it (legally) from the links to the right of GIMPShop dot Net.

#2) It is Free. No, I'm not repeating myself, it's a different kind of "free". Free as in Freedom. This means you can download it for free, and give it away for free, or sell it, or change it and make it your own. In fact, GIMPShop itself is based on The GIMP, which is a different Free (and free) program. Another term for this is Open Source, although there are slight differences.

#3) GIMPShop is cross-platform. This means that whether you use a Windows computer, an Apple with Mac OS X, or even a computer with Linux on it - you can use GIMPShop. Adobe Photoshop is not available on Linux. And the versions of Photoshop for Windows and Mac are different, (and must be purchased separately - if you have a Mac laptop and a Windows computer, you would have to buy a copy of Photoshop for each if you wanted it).

#4) As close as GIMPShop may act to Photoshop, it's not exactly the same. There are some features (just a few) that Photoshop has that GIMPShop does not. CMYK support, tablet support, and some other advanced features are available in Photoshop, but not GIMPShop, (or the GIMP). There are some features, like ScriptFu, that are available in GIMPShop that Photoshop doesn't have - so it's plus and minus both ways on that.

#5) Third party support is better for Photoshop. Photoshop has been around longer, it makes millions of dollars of profit that it can use to advertise, so it's better known than GIMPShop, so other companies make things for Photoshop because they know it's out there. Open Source support is better for GIMP and GIMPShop.

#6) There are books out there for Photoshop, not too many for the GIMP, and even less for GIMPShop. However, the point of GIMPShop is to make the GIMP more like Photoshop, so these books should help you use GIMPShop as well.

Hope that helps clear things up! Thanks for such a great question!



TuxPaint - it's like Fingerpainting on your PC


With the holidays upon us, I thought I would takes some time to show you the kid-friendly side of Open Source. There are many programs out there for the children in our lives - or the kid inside of all of us - and TuxPaint is a great example of this genre.

A little bit of back ground information. Some of you may be wondering why a kids program is named after an outfit that most grown men complain about wearing, namely a Tuxedo. Well Tux is the name of a little cartoon penguin that has come to represent Linux, (Tux ... Linux, get it?) :) And since Linux is *the* project that is most representative of the open source movement, Tux is used even in cross-platform apps, like TuxPaint. But Tux doesn't just show up in the title - he's also very active in the program itself.

A lot of work has gone into TuxPaint to make it as easy to use as possible - remember, it was designed for children. Once the program opens up, Tux welcomes the user to the canvas. If the user has already started a painting - it opens right up to where he left off. If not, the user is greeted with a new place to get creative. And Tux is there to guide the young users step-by-step. Even the canvas is a consistent size, so issues like number of pixels or width in inches or centimeters never come up. The whole screen can fit on a small 640 x 480 monitor or be expanded to fill whatever screen is being used.

There are plenty of tools available for the budding artist - stamps, paintbrushes, a text tool, a shape tool, a line tool, an eraser, an undo and redo button, and "magic". All of these tools are a breeze to use, and the reuse of some of the settings (like the line tool is based on the paintbrush that was last selected, which can also be changed while you have the line tool selected), makes the interface very consistent and easy to learn. There are even fun sound effects that are played when tools are selected and used. Of course, those sound effects can be turned off if they get annoying.

Even saving a picture is consistent no matter what operating system or file structure the computer uses, because it's not based on file names or folders - it's all done with thumbnails that are displayed right in the canvas area of the screen. The drawback is that this limits the pictures made in TuxPaint to TuxPaint only, unless the user uses a screen-capture program or similar software. But TuxPaint does allow for printing, so the little artist's masterpiece can be proudly displayed at the local Refrigerator Museum of Fine Art.

The two tools that most appeal to the children, (I'm basing this assumption on extensive research which consisted of watching my youngest sister play with it), are the stamps and the Magic. The stamps are a huge assortment of different pictures like cars, planets, smiley faces, shapes, bugs, animals, etc. Some of them are included in the basic download, but a ton more are in a separate easy-to-install download. These stamps can be a learning tool as well as a fun and creative way to spend some time. Whenever a stamp is selected, our good friend Tux has something to say about it. Sometimes it's a simple one-word description "Pumpkins!" but sometimes it is a full-fledged lesson. Like "This is a 50-cent piece from the United States. It features a picture of US President John F. Kennedy. That's why this coin is known as the Kennedy Half-Dollar." It's a neat way to include learning in an afternoon of computerized arts and crafts.

The other popular tool is Magic. Magic offers a whole new set of tools that takes TuxPaint to a whole new level. The magic tools include a rainbow paintbrush, sparkles, a flip tool, a mirror tool, an negative tool, a "chalk" tool - which makes the picture look like chalk art, a drip tool - which causes the draw to start to melt around the edges, a box tool - which makes the drawing turn into a mosaic of blocks, think about a badly distorted JPG, and you'll get the idea, a thick tool, and matching thin tool, and a fill tool.

There are parental or teacher controls, so the adults can adjust the way it is set up, turn on and off some of the more advanced features, or include special instructions for the young artists.

All in all, this is a neat little program to play with whatever your age, and might just replace solitaire on your list of things to do with your computer when the network is down. The author, Bill Kendrick has done an excellent job with this project. You can pick up a copy of TuxPaint, on the NewBreedSoftware website- the extras I told you about are also available there.