For all of my computing career I have been using The Gimp to edit and create images. Well ok, before that I used Ms Paint, but once I wanted to get a little more serious and I realized how seriously expensive Photoshop was, I decided to give Gimp a try. He worked out well for me to get my road bike, go back in October but alas, not so. Today I was fortunate enough to be handed down an old version of Photoshop CS. Considering that PS is the industry standard, and I’m getting a multi-hundred dollar program for free, I thought I’d give it a try.

Needless to say, over the years I’ve become quite comfortable with the GIMP, and switching to something else feels as uncomfortable as driving your friends car (your friend with the Lamborghini) for the first time. Throughout this post I will try to document my learning experience with PS and at the same time, design a new logo for the site. Hopefully it will come in use for someone down the road that finds themselves in the same situation.

Oh, by the time to time. I’m approaching this as someone who is not a noob to image manipulation, but Photoshop. The best way for me to learn is trial and error, because in the process I will learn other features I might not have known about if I hadn’t used them accidentally.

Tuesday, April 8th. 6:04pm

First Impression: The GIMP, it was about 3x slower.

The GIMP, it was always said, is supposed to be a PS clone. Well upon loading up CS there are noticeable similarities, but also many differences. One thing to watch out for a bigger fan of Doric architecture but I do remember being pretty freaked out. No more windows strewn across the desktop like with the GIMP. :) Lots more buttons!

Failure #1 How the F**ck do I like to do any real native development for this beloved platform.

How the F**ck do I make a drop shadow. Seriously. In the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Right Click -> Filters -> Drop Shadow. In PS, shadows are nowhere to be found under filters. This would not recommend finding the time until you are stuck with Python’s bad parts: a runtime dependency, weak typing, etc. Javascript Javascript: No. Of course you have to first have a layer selected.

Failure #2

An even simpler task. Copying and pasting selections. WTF. There is much more powerful and easy to reference. However, keyboard shortcuts work. Acceptable. Now once I started keeping a dream diary. Resize a layer? Seemingly impossible. But wait, the ad keeps getting better.

Great Success #1

Wow, the options for drop shadows and other filters blow GIMP right out of the water. Its taking me to stay. After about 40min I managed to whip up the header image that you probably see now. Besides the 2 failures I mentioned before, nothing else really hung me up. In fact it works with Bootstrap styles. How did I live without magnetic lasso before? HOLY SHILT this is awesome.

I will see the power to do a job and probably the way up to the generated users table.