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The best desktop photo-editing apps
Last month we covered the best mobile photo-editing apps, but if you're serious about photography you'll need more than the tools a phone or tablet can provide. Professionals rely on software from Adobe and others because of the power these programs afford them. Combined with shooting in the uncompressed RAW format, dedicated image editing suites allow you to adjust white balance, exposure, sharpness and color at a granular level. That might be a little intimidating for folks used to point-and-shoot cameras or a smartphone, but for professionals and hobbyists, this means they can reproduce the image they saw in their minds when they hit the shutters on their DSLR or mirrorless cameras. Beyond editing tools, some of these software suites also offer ways to organize and share your photos without leaving the app.
A fight is brewing over ads in the 'open-source Photoshop'
Far from just being that character in Pulp Fiction, GIMP is also an open-source alternative to Photoshop that's given away freely for all to use. Unfortunately, there's been a kerfuffle between the project's creators and SourceForge, one of the places that the software is available to download. The latter stands accused of adding for-profit adware to its version of GIMP, which is a big no-no amongst the free and open-source software community. In a posting to Google+, SourceForce is alleged to have frozen out GIMP for Windows rep Jernej Simončič and subsequently injecting malicious code into the build to trap unwitting users.
Square absorbs Viewfinder team, picks up some ex-Googlers in the process
If you're in the market for a few more engineers, you could go through the rigamarole of posting a listing on some job site -- or you could just pick up a whole team. The small staff behind photo-sharing app Viewfinder will be setting up shop in Square's New York offices, including co-founders Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, who'd previously done time at Google and created image editor GIMP. While Square's engineering blog happily talks up the fact that the move will effectively triple the company's NYC staff, no mention is made regarding the fate of Viewfinder itself, which may not bode well for the future of the app.
Pixelmator and Acorn: economic, practical image editors
Last week, after Adobe announced its move to a subscription-based cloud plan, our own Kelly Hodgkins asked me to look at software alternatives for some Creative Suite apps. We know that none of these apps provide a full replacement for Photoshop or Illustrator. What she asked me to do was to spend time, hands on, to get a sense of what kind of options were out there. For Photoshop, I looked primarily at Pixelmator (US$14.99 "sale" price, but it's been on "sale" since November 2012) and Acorn 4 ($29.99), with a glance at the donationware GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP. I quickly discovered that GIMP is not in the same class as Pixelmator or Acorn. Both Pixelmator and Acorn have seriously targeted ex-Photoshop users, creating tool suites intended to seduce that audience. GIMP just isn't competitive in that way. You can tell this in the key equivalents added to both Pixelmator and Acorn -- they responded properly to many of the Photoshop-standard text shortcuts I tried such as G for gradient, M for marquee selection and W for the magic wand. On the whole, Acorn seemed to support more shortcuts -- such as 0 through 9 for transparency and Command-Shift-I to invert the selection, but both apps have the sense of Photoshop users in their DNA. In terms of general interface design, Acorn stood out. I found its toolbar easiest to understand and its adherence to Photoshop norms the strictest. It also achieves the most OS X-like look and feel. Both apps got OS X, in elevating interaction beyond Adobe's prosaic implementation. But Acorn's fine details are palpably superior. Both GUIs were polished and stylish, although I wish both apps would offer bigger font choices for older and visually impaired users. Acorn's visuals were generally larger except for teeny tiny font choices in palettes. I found the Acorn toolbar much easier for recognition tasks. In power, however, I lean towards Pixelmator. Although both tools have recently undergone major upgrades, I found the Pixelmator toolset more extensive than Acorn's. There were almost always extra options on the Pixelmator side that I did not find (or, at least, not easily find) on the Acorn side. I rely on community support for my photo-editing needs. Whenever I need to figure out how to do anything in Photoshop, I turn to Google and the thousands upon thousands of how-to articles and videos found there. During my testing, I set myself common tasks like building buttons or blurring backgrounds in Acorn and Pixelmator, and quickly found myself searching for how-to answers on the web. While both developers have provided superb how-to support pages on their sites, Pixelmator offers a far larger existing support community. To give a sense of that, the Google results for "glossy button in Pixelmator" include videos and how-to articles from a variety of sites and vendors. The first three include a link to pxm-tuts.com, a Pixelmator support page, and ehow.com. Compare that with the results for "glossy button in Acorn." These start off with a Flying Meat support page, followed by a bunch of acorn-shaped vector links, finishing with tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator and GIMP. If you're looking for a knowledge-base of solutions that you can use today, Pixelmator has the edge. On the whole, I was terrifically impressed by both apps. While I generally preferred Acorn's look and feel, Pixelmator's feature set and passionate userbase should not be overlooked.
Consumer alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud: practical software choices
Yesterday, Adobe introduced Creative Cloud, an on-line subscription based suite with $49.99 monthly charges that moves into the Creative Suite subscription space first started back in 2011. Existing customers of CS 3 to CS 5.5 and academics will pay $29.99 per month. Both Adobe and Microsoft are exploring subscription models in place of buy-once-then-use purchases. This has a number of us here at TUAW looking around to see what apps we might want to jump to as we move away from our premium products into the current marketplace. Although I am fond of Adobe Photoshop Elements, the consumer-priced version of Adobe's flagship photo editor, it's an app with walls. I accomplish far more using Photoshop and the other Creative Suite products, items I have spent years upgrading at considerable expense. Like many other Adobe customers, I live in the hazy world that stretches between Pro apps at one and and Consumer grade at the other. I've purchased CS because the consumer products aren't powerful enough for my needs, but I'm certainly not a full time "creative" who thinks of the suite as merely an incidental purchase. As a rule, I have upgraded as infrequently as possible, stretching out my purchases over as many years and operating systems as possible. I live very low on the Adobe consumer hierarchy, trying to eke out whatever time I have left with my CS 4 suite. It's time now to seriously look at alternatives. On the photo editing side of things, we propose three candidates. Acorn ($29.99) is on sale throughout May. Called the "Image Editor for Humans", it comes with great word of mouth and growing buzz. At just $14.99, Pixelmator's price point can't be beat. This "inspiring, easy-to-use, beautifully designed image editor" has somewhat mixed reviews on the Mac App Stores, but those who love it seem to do so passionately. GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has a lock on price. For years, this free app has been a stepping-stone app for people who didn't yet have the cash for Photoshop but who wanted access to powerful image editing. As for the rest of the suite, we TUAWians mostly use Acrobat, Illustrator, and InDesign: With Acrobat, you need look no further than Preview for an app that offers many similar features. Power users, however, may want to consider PDFPen Pro, a product we've covered in the past, which offers extensive PDF editing features. Illustrator users will find a variety vector drawing solutions for OS X including Vector Designer, Intaglio, Sketch, and EazyDraw. TUAW recently looked at EazyDraw. For page layout, Apple offers both Pages and iBooks Author. Swift Publisher from Belight seems to offer good word of mouth as well. Speaking of pages, both iWork and Apache's OpenOffice provide promising alternatives to Microsoft Office. GigaOM recently posted an excellent list of their take on Adobe Creative Suite alternatives. Got another alternative vendor to suggest for Creative Suite or Office products? Drop a note in the comments with your suggestion. TUAW will be reviewing many of these alternative apps over the coming weeks.
GIMP now (finally) available as a native Mac app
This is something that's been a long time coming, and it's finally here. GIMP is an excellent Photoshop-esque open source photo editor. While it's been available on Mac for a long time, it has required the X11 Window environment, which itself needs a separate (and somewhat messy) installation. For a long time, the programmers working on GIMP have been promising to eventually take it native, but it hasn't happened until just recently. As of version 2.8.2, you can now simply go grab the GIMP .dmg file from the main website, and then install and run on your Mac as needed. That's good news for those of us who appreciate a powerful photo editor like this but don't necessarily have the cash for big-name apps like Photoshop or Pixelmator. Congrats to everyone who's worked on GIMP in the past. If you like the app and want to support great open sourced work, they could probably use a donation or two. [via LifeHacker]
Daily Update for May 7, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
GIMP 2.8 gets a major facelift
Popular Mac, Linux and Windows image editing app GIMP has been updated to version 2.8. This latest version overhauls the UI to offer a new single window mode that lets users edit images, choose tools and set up docks all within one window. Earlier versions of GIMP had multiple windows for tool sets and images, which was confusing for some users accustomed to a single window work environment. If you like the multiple window paradigm, don't worry as GIMP lets you choose between multiple or single window mode. Besides a new UI, GIMP 2.8 lets you setup multiple column dock windows, edit text on the canvas and group layers. It also streamlined the saving and exporting of images. You can read the full list of changes, which includes many smaller tweaks, in the release notes for version 2.8. The GIMP 2.8 source code is available for free from GIMP's website and requires you to compile the code before you can run the app on your machine. Binaries packaged for installing on the Mac will be available soon. While you wait, you can check out an excellent overview of GIMP 2.8 from Ars Technica.
The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: My expedition
I have a confession to make: Returning to Anarchy Online was the driving force behind starting The Game Archaeologist. Oh sure, I pretended to be all business-like when I approached my boss and said, "You know, Señor Schuster, we are doing a disservice to some of the older MMOs and their fans by not covering these games, and I think, nay, insist we remedy that immediately." But of course, what I was thinking was, "Pay me to engage in hardcore nostalgia, dude!" It worked. *cue rubbing hands together and laughing maniacally* You see, Anarchy Online was my very first MMO. It wasn't my first MMO love, mind you -- that was City of Heroes. But AO holds a special place in my heart as the game that introduced me to the wonderful world of online RPGs. It was tough, near-incomprehensible, and quite buggy at the start, but I've never lost affection for the world of Rubi-Ka. So after my looking back at Anarchy Online's history, asking you to share your stories, and talking with Funcom's devs, it was time for me to return and see if this world still holds magic... or if it has lost its way.%Gallery-102015%
Exploring Eberron: Rolling the right character for you
Who are you whippersnappers? Get off my lawn or I'll blast ye into kingdom come! Shoo! I mean, howdy! Sorry, I got a little startled there. We just found out this morning that Rubi, your faithful DDO columnist, was captured by a beholder and locked away in a level 20 dungeon. While the Massively DDO guild, OnedAwesome, faithfully levels up in a rescue attempt (every Wednesday night, 9pm eastern/8pm central!), I've been drafted to keep the column going until victory is assured. Considering that a vast majority of my personal DDO resume is confined to levels 1 through 10, I have a soft spot for the newbie experience. And seeing how many fledgling dungeoneers are flocking to DDO these days, I figured I'd go back to the beginning to walk new players through the first week of the game. For you veterans out there, this would be a great time to (a) point out how much I say is completely wrong, and (b) offer up your own tips and advice in the comments section. Today, let's start with one of the most vital decisions you'll ever make in the game: rolling a character. Hit the jump and let's hope for all 20s!
The Queue: My Gimp
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. Yesterday Alex posted a pretty picture. So I thought I'd retort with my Gimp. Now I need to go talk to Mr. Wallace... Bonc asked... "When we get cross server LFG, what will happen to VoA, for example if I dont have it on my server, can I go to another and get in there, does it go by raid leaders server?"
Ask TUAW: Photoshop alternatives, Windows and Mac file sharing, application switching and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about Photoshop alternatives, Windows and Mac file sharing, graphics problems in Snow Leopard and quickly switching between applications, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions. Matt asks: I don't have the money for something like Adobe Photoshop. What's the best, cheaper alternative? For my money, the best Photoshop alternative at the moment, and one I use every day, is Pixelmator. It has many of the same features as Photoshop like layers, masks, level and curve adjustments and a whole lot more. Plus, it's a relatively simple program to use and is written to take advantage of your Mac's GPU when doing image processing. It also supports most image file formats including Photoshop PSD files and has many useful Automator actions built in. Actually, because Pixelmator is such a good app and takes care of most of my needs, it's pretty rare that I ever open Photoshop anymore. Sadly, Pixelmator is not free, but at US$59.00, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than Photoshop. Some other alternatives include the open source GIMP and its more Photoshop-like cousin GIMPShop. You can also check out Acorn, or if you need very minimal tools like crop and resize, ImageWell. Of course, Apple's built-in Preview.app can handle many of these low-end tasks as well.
Mac 101: Get a PC printer running on a Mac. There's a driver for that!
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for new Mac users. While this tip may be old news to tech-savvy folk, I think it might help a lot of recent Mac switchers who want to leverage their existing investment in their Windows-compatible peripherals.I have a friend who has been on Windows forever. He finally had his fill, and after some incessant nagging on my part, he made the switch. What I expected to happen, did happen -- he's thrilled being on a Mac. He's yet to see a crash, and as most of us know, it generally 'just works.'He did have one problem though. He had a Dell USB printer sitting on his desk. When he plugged it into his MacBook it wasn't recognized, and there was a scrolling list of lots of printers, but nothing from Dell.A quick web search revealed the printer was actually a rebranded Samsung ML-1710. The Samsung driver page for this printer didn't show any Mac drivers. Searching a bit deeper on Google, we found that an unsupported Mac driver was hiding on the Australian Samsung website. We downloaded and installed the driver, and what do you know? The printer came up, and printed just fine.The reality is that there are a lot more printer brands than there are original equipment manufacturers, and it's pretty easy to find out who actually makes a particular printer. If it's a USB printer, chances are good you can find a driver and be quickly printing away. For a wide-ranging solution, the Gutenprint (formerly Gimp-Print) open source project provides drivers for hundreds of older or unsupported printers.The moral: Don't give up on your PC printer if you feel like it still has life in it; a little bit of online research may turn up a way forward for your Mac. If you have similar happy endings, or unpleasant ones, let us know in the comments. Your fellow readers can learn from your experiences.
WoW Machinima: The basics
(Dell is holding a machinima contest, which we'll discuss shortly. They asked me to write a tutorial to help new machinimators get their start.)Every day, I feature a video by some brave soul that dived in head first into the world of machinima. For those that aren't familiar with the term, it stands for machine and cinema. The literal definition is movies made in a 3D gaming platform. Using this basic guide, as well as the other tutorials and resources available to you, you'll be creating your first project in no time!Here is what you'll need if you want to make a machinima for free: WeGame camera - A free capturing program GIMP - A free image editing program Audacity - A free audio editing program Windows Movie Maker/iMovie - Free video editing programs that should have come with your appropriate system [Thanks for originally suggesting this, Bryan!] Read on for optional and advanced tools, plus additional resources ...
Seashore, open source image editor
The Gimp isn't the only open source image editor in town. Seashore may be quite basic in its functionality, but it's pleasant to use and the source code is freely available. Seashore employs many of the tools you're familiar with, like the lasso, marquee tool, smudge, erase, position, paint and more. Plus, there are several brushes and textures to choose from. Export options include JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, TIFF and XCF (Gimp). Seashore also supports layers and alpha channel editing.Seashore is free, universal and requires Mac OS 10.3 or later.[Via FreeMacWare]
X11 on Intel Macs
Despite my initial inability to find a proper X11 installer the other day, it is included on the disk with my new iMac (although nowhere that I could find on Apple's website, which I think is a mistake on Apple's part). So, I installed X11 and OOo and the Gimp. The X11 launcher app is installed in your Utilities folder and, after the initial launch of the program, launches quite speedily (just one bounce in the Dock!). Launching the Gimp takes a bit longer with 9 bounces in the Dock and then a very speedy splash screen load. OpenOffice.org 2.0 takes even longer with one bounce and about 14 seconds total loading time.Great. So what? Well, here's the interesting bit: both the Gimp and OOo (which is really only an alpha release) launch and run faster than Microsoft Office and Photoshop running in Rosetta. So, if you have a new Intel-based Mac and you are lamenting Photoshop and Word sluggishness, why not give these open source softwares a try? There's an initial learning curve, but, hey... they're free. Free is good.
OS X-native GIMP coming
StyleMac has discovered that GIMP is making its way to OS X native goodness, as Mikael Hallendal, involved with the project, posted on his blog. For those not familiar with GIMP: it's basically an open source version of Photoshop. No, it isn't an exact, feature-for-feature alternative, but it's one of the best available analogies I can think of.As far as I've found, there's no ETA on when you'll have one less reason to run X11, but this will certainly be a welcome addition to OS X's graphic edition options.
