Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux 678
S point 2 writes "Google has announced that they have hired Codeweavers, maker of the popular Wine software to make Photoshop run better on Linux. 'Photoshop is one of those applications that desktop Linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now...We look forward to further improvements in this area.' It is unknown whether or not the entire Creative Suite will be funded for support, but for the time being it seems Photoshop-on-Linux development is getting a new priority under Google."
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)
However, gimp is good enough for many amateur and some professional uses.
While I like the gimp for what I do, my father who does photo retouching prefers photoshop.
If having photoshop work better(I believe it was bronze on winehq.com a little while back) helps make people make the move to linux, I'm all for it.
While we're at it... how about premiere too? Linux video editing doesn't even have a gimp equiv (kino doesn't give me enough control, cinelerra crashes, kdenlive has a few bugs and not enough effects yet...)
Re:wut? (Score:3, Informative)
They sell a version of Wine. They are also company that will gladly take Google's money to do work on Wine. They are the same ones who helped [desktoplinux.com] make Google Maps and Picasa run on Linux.
Re:wut? (Score:5, Informative)
site, employ the Wine maintainer, and do much of the 'heavy lifting'
required to keep Wine moving. Of course, many others contribute as well,
so we're certainly not the sole maker, but we very much play a vital
role in the making of Wine.
Wine support for 99% win programs should be focus (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#Color_support [wikipedia.org]
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)
"Note that 'CMYK' colors are immediately translated into RGB when used; GIMP does not have any built-in support CMYK mixtures that cannot be represented in RGB, such as rich blacks, though they can be simulated to a limited extent with third-party add-ons.)"
Wow, improvements really show (Score:5, Informative)
Preamble: I'm a photographer needing to process tens of thousands of photos relatively swiftly. The functionality I need isn't all that advanced (curves, levels, an occasional straighten horizon (measure + arbitrary rotate), crop, unsharp mask, and sometimes an action to find edges, feather and apply unsharp mask on that), but being able to access and apply this functionality swiftly is an absolute must because of the volume of photos I deal with. Photoshop is optimized to perfection to allow a swift workflow, while the gimp seems optimized to perfection to hinder it. Focus is never where I need it, shortcuts to access tools don't work depending on which sub-window has focus, etc. So yes, I really need Photoshop.
I last tried Photoshop 7 under wine about a year ago. It was functional to an amazing degree (for someone who'd never seen or used wine before), but the rough edges were slightly too rough for me to be able to switch to Linux fulltime. I could trigger a dozen crashes in Photoshop at will just by resizing panels and doing other simple things like that, the program didn't feel native (alt-tabbing would keep the panels in the foreground, obscuring other programs), and focus sometimes strayed, amongst other lesser (but still annoyingly noticeable) issues.
I just tried the latest wine with these Google sponsored improvements, and wow. This is an amazing difference. Every single issue I saw a year ago is gone. Photoshop feels as responsive as it does under Windows (perhaps even more so), and I went through an hour long editing session without being slowed down or annoyed even once.
As far as I'm concerned, Linux is now ready to become my main OS.
Google: I don't like your lack of respect for my privacy, but for this work on Wine, I can say from the bottom of my heart: Thank you!
Re:Google owns a photo editor... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:wut? (Score:5, Informative)
On that note: thank you to Google and to Codeweavers.
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
Off the top of my head, GIMP needs:
Re:WINE is an interesting strategy (Score:2, Informative)
I can fake Photoshop (GIMP), InDesign/Quark for simple things (Scribus, which is even decent in making PDFs), Illustrator (InkSpace), but I cannot fake a signed PDF without the recipient knowing (I can sign it with PGP, but that is useless). The PDF optimizer and pre-flight tools are worthwhile too, as is the full fledged form editor.
Re:This is not a troll: GIMP is hard for newbies (Score:3, Informative)
Now I do graphic design for a living. The tools that I use are: Scribus, Inkscape, and the Gimp. Honestly, I've been told by the boss that I can, but i have absolutely no desire to, switch over to Adobe products. In fact if i was forced to switch, the quality of my work would most certainly go down.
I've been given the blessing to go out and spend whatever I want on a photoshop/illustrator combo and whatever fancy pants Mac rig i want...but the truth is that my commodity Dell box, running these great open source solutions is every bit as good (and in my eyes better) than really ANY other combo i could come up with.
Frankly, the Community could start charging for this software and my company would gladly pay whatever they asked. These three programs are absolutely invaluable to us.
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wut? (Score:5, Informative)
Both of course!
All the work we did for Google was committed straight to the Wine repository. But that's just business as usual for us: we already submit 99% of the changes we make to Wine. The remaining 1% are those hacks that are rejected as too ugly by Alexandre (the Wine leader) but which we keep as a temporary fix / workaround.
See, the thing is that improving Wine is so central to our business that it's just part of our mission statement [codeweavers.com]:
To transform Mac OS X and Linux into Windows®-compatible operating systems.
To help our customers leverage Windows technology on non-Windows operating systems.
To promote the growth of Free Software by supporting and extending the Wine Project.
Re:Why not port it to Linux they have a win and ma (Score:3, Informative)
GIMP opens psd files already. I'm not an artist by any means, nor do I aspire to be one, but I haven't had any problems with it.
Actually, Kuickshow can open psds too, although Kuickshow doesn't support layers and other useful features, but it's quite sufficient if you only need to view psd files and not edit them...
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:4, Informative)
Open source != developers working for free.
Quite a large number of developers writing OSS software are paid to do so by companies who use the software. And the reverse is also true, a number of closed source freeware applications are written by developers who are not paid in any way.
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We already have Photoshop! (Score:2, Informative)
Unless you plan to sit for a couple of days waiting for your procedural materials to render, you use 2d images mapped onto a 3d surface wherever you can get away with it, no matter which 3d application you use. Photoshop is one of the biggest tools in a 3d designers toolbox, to the point where a lot of designers will have photoshop and their 3d app open side by side.
Realistically, the gimp is good, its fantastic. But photoshop is better in a lot of cases
Re:Colour Management (Score:1, Informative)