Re: [CinePaint] cinepaint vs Gimp

Robin -

>I'm not a GIMP user. In what ways is the painting and retouching nicer
>there in your opinion?

That's a loaded question, but I'll try and answer truthfully. One of
the major things, relating to painting, is the cursor. In Gimp (and in
Photoshop for that matter) the cursor can take the shape of the brush.
In Cinepaint you get either a small circle or large crosshairs. Control
is an issue, not so much with dustbusting but with things like painting
out a background or a layer mask. It's difficult when you can't see
the edge of the brush.

Interface is actually a mixed bag. I think Cinepaint has it's menus
organized a little more logically, so it scores points there. But I
really like the ability to dock the various dialogs wherever I want them
in Gimp. I usually have them all on the toolbox to save screen real
estate. Cinepaint does just what everybody hated about Gimp-1.x, though,
and pops them up all over the screen.

Then there's the issue of previews. Cinepaint gives a preview for color
corrections and adjustments, but Gimp also gives a preview for filters
(I dislike applying unsharp mask without a preview). About the only
things Gimp won't preview are script-fu and python-fu. That was one of
the major enhancements in the 2.x series. I can get there with
Cinepaint, but I do a bit more apply/undo.

There's also a few really useful plug-ins that Gimp has among all the
not so useful ones. I would say that chief among them is the selective
gaussian blur filter. I'd love to have that in Cinepaint. I'm sure
other people would mention different ones though, because everyone has
their favorites.

>I'd like us to do more to support pro photographers.

That's much appreciated, actually. I think the support for raw images
and the fantastic hdr plugin show that Cinepaint in general does care
about still Photographers. Add to that the color depth issues and color
management and Cinepaint really exceeds Gimp in terms of power.

I'll stand by what I said earlier, though, and say again that both
programs have their strengths and weeknesses.

Nathan

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