Gimp: the all-rounder
Of all the applications featured in this article, Gimp ( www.gimp.org) is arguably the least tightly focused. Whereas Krita and Inkscape have welldefined niches, Gimp is a jack of all trades used by artists on tasks ranging from illustration to image retouching to editing textures for use on 3D models.
One such versatile creative is Cameron Bohnstedt ( www.cameronbohnstedt.com), currently a contract designer for Daybreak Game Company – better known under its former name, Sony Online Entertainment – and freelance artist working on gig posters, game assets, logos and promotional materials.
Having previously used a more conventional designer’s set-up of Adobe software running on an iMac, Bohnstedt had an “on-and-off relationship with open-source” until 2012, when his Mac died. “I figured it was a good time to leave the walled garden and buy a Linux tower,” he says.
Bohnstedt now uses a range of opensource software, including Gimp, Krita,
Inkscape and Blender. One key factor in his adoption of open-source tools was Gimp2.8: a pivotal release that introduced a range of features familiar to Photoshop users, including a single-window mode, layer groups, and on-canvas text editing.
“Just about anything I can do with Adobe software, I can now do with open-source,” he says. “I actually prefer Gimp’s combined polygonal and [freehand] lasso tool to the
Photoshop alternative.”
Although Bohnstedt feels that Gimp still needs to catch up to its Adobe counterpart in some areas – in particular, he cites
Photoshop’s Smart Objects, which enables artists to perform non-destructive edits on source images, including those stored as external files – he notes that a larger feature set is not necessarily a better feature set when it comes to professional work.
“Both commercial and open-source programs have bells and whistles that aren’t needed to create quality work,” he says. “You don’t need every tool.”
While he feels that “as things are now, it’s often easier with Adobe”, he notes that opensource communities are knowledgeable and passionate, making it possible to find workarounds to problems – and that the dominance of closed-source tools is as much down to their PR as to their power.
“It’s like how Apple products used to be associated with creatives,” he says. “They marketed to that community during the transition to digital production, so that professionals adopted the brand. That preference was then passed down to younger designers.”
Rather than simply adding new features, the developers of open-source tools need to be more active in promoting their existing capabilities, Bohnstedt argues. “Adobe flaunts features, but more importantly, its users’ best work. The most seductive thing the community can do is to showcase the best of what a prospective user can hope to achieve. If I hadn’t found and kept checking in on what artists like CT Chrysler and David Revoy were doing, I wouldn’t have stuck with Gimp. Their work showed me that the quality of my work would not be limited by the software, but by my own artistic knowledge.” LXF