In fiscal year 2019 Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen made over $28 million in total compensation,
and several other executives made several millions in compensation as well.
Hello and welcome to yet another video by Davies Media Design my name is Michael Davies
and in today's video I'll be going over ten reasons to use GIMP over Photoshop in 2020.
I'll be using GIMP version 2.10.14 which is the latest version of GIMP at the time of this
tutorial. But of course before I get into that I want to direct you guys over to my website
at DaviesMediaDesign.com. As always there are tons of GIMP and Inkscape tutorials on here,
as well as my GIMP Book of Layers, and GIMP and Inkscape Help Articles so definitely check that
out. You can enroll in my GIMP 2.10 Masterclass: From Beginner to Pro Photo Editing on Udemy. You
can enroll in any my Skillshare classes by visiting GIMPSchool.com, or you can get more
with a Premium Membership to Davies Media Design. Your Premium Membership includes access to my GIMP
Help Center app, eBooks including my GIMP Book of Layers, and exclusive content not found on
YouTube. You can start your premium membership with a 7-day free trial and I'll include a link
to this as well as all the relevant links from this tutorial in the description of the video.
Alright so let's dive into the 10 reasons why you should use GIMP over Photoshop. The number
one reason of course is that GIMP is totally free. It's not a free trial or a freemium model,
it's just free. And you can download it for free at any time from GIMP.org. Other alternatives
are either not viable or require a significant investment. For example, Adobe has notoriously
switched over to a subscription model in order to be able to more effectively predict their
revenue stream and increase profits to make shareholders happy. Adobe is a publicly traded
company. Adobe charges a minimum price of $9.99 per month for Photoshop - that's about $120 per
year every year for the rest of your natural-born creative life. So if you purchase this package,
which is their minimum photography package, it's going to come with Lightroom, Lightroom Classic,
and Photoshop. And I know what a lot of you are thinking: that's two and a half programs that
come with this package, what a bargain. However GIMP can easily be paired with free Raw editors
like Darktable or RawTherapee to process your RAW images like in Lightroom. Plus there are
tons of other free programs out there that can replace the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite
and Adobe Stock which altogether will cost you $52.99 per month. If you simply want Photoshop
as a standalone product - so let's say you just don't like the other products or you don't have
room on your computer, that's going to cost you $20 per month. So moving on to the next reason,
reason number 2 is that GIMP includes many great built-in image adjustment features for
photo editing. It offers more than enough color tools and filters for the average to above-average
photo editor and retoucher. For example, under the "Colors" tab here in GIMP you have many popular
and commonly used image adjustment tools including color balance, color temperature, hue-chroma,
hue-saturation, saturation, exposure, shadows-highlights, brightness/contrast,
levels and curves. For those of you who are already familiar with editing photos you're
gonna already know what these tools do. I'm not going to go over them in this particular video.
But also in the "Filters" section over here you have a lot of commonly used filters including
Blur>Gaussian Blur, as well as of course many other blur types; Enhance>Sharpen (Unsharp Mask),
which is going to sharpen your photos - there are a couple of other sharpening filters found
in GIMP; and under Light and Shadow you have Vignette. And those are just three of the many
very useful and commonly used filters found inside of GIMP. If you are brand new to GIMP I recommend
checking out either my GIMP in 10 minutes tutorial which is a very quick overview of the GIMP basics,
or you can check out my more in-depth 2-hour GIMP Basics tutorial - both of which I'll link
in the description of the video. Reason number 3 is that GIMP has a variety of tools for photo
editing and graphic design that can be easily accessed via the toolbox panel. Like Photoshop,
GIMP has a variety of selection tools up here including smart selection tools like
the "Foreground Select" tool. You also have the "Paths" tool which allows you to create
bezier curves, and from those curves you can fill in the area with whatever color you want,
or you can create a selection area from the area you draw with your path tool. I do have
an entire tutorial dedicated to the path tool so I recommend you check that out. There's also the
"Alignment" tool which allows you to align objects on your image. And a variety of transform tools
including the "Unified Transform" tool, which allows you to perform multiple transformations
with a single tool. And let me just hit reset and exit out of here. You also have the "Rotate" tool,
the "Scale" tool, you've got the "Flip" tool here, and the "Warp Transform" tool. There's
also a "Text" tool here for adding text to your composition. So let me just delete this
text layer over here. There's also a variety of paint tools including the "Bucket Fill" tool,
which allows you to fill in areas with color. You've got the popular "Gradient" tool here,
and that's going to allow you to draw gradients on your composition. And GIMP actually has a live
gradient feature which allows you to edit this gradient while it's here on the composition. So
you can kind of move things around on here, and I do have an entire tutorial dedicated to this I'll
link that in the description. So just hit the "enter" key to apply this gradient. And ctrl+z.
So there's many other things you can do with the gradient that I'm not going to go over right now,
but you've also got the "Paintbrush" tool and the "Airbrush" tool. These tools allow you to
paint artistic strokes on your image or do things like improve the complexion of your model using
standard retouching techniques. And you also have more sophisticated tools like the "Clone" tool
and the "Heal" tool. And the Heal tool is going to allow you to choose an area on your image and then
paint that area that you choose on a destination area here, and you can see there that it's going
to use an algorithm to use selected pixels from the surrounding area to remove things like
blemishes. So this is a very good spot healing tool that's very effective and I use it all the
time. Once again if you want more information on what these tools do I recommend you check out my
2-hour GIMP Basics tutorial. Reason number 4 is that GIMP uses a layer system, including layer
groups, layer masks, and layer modes, which are known as "blend modes" in Photoshop. In fact there
are more layer modes or blend modes in GIMP than in Photoshop. These features allow you to easily
create complex photo manipulation compositions, blend multiple images or layers, and easily
organize compositions with many layers. Layers add a very high level of complexity to this free photo
editor. Reason number 5 is that the GIMP layout or the GIMP workspace is very customizable. So
if you don't like the way GIMP comes by default you can very easily rearrange the default setup
to your liking. So, for example, right now I actually have a custom setup here. So your
guys' set up might look a little bit different if you're opening GIMP for the first time. But
let's say I want to move the tool options. So I can click and drag on this dockable dialog and
move it over here and just release it. So now our Tool Options are right here. I can come over here
and I can decrease the width of my Tool Box right here. And if I wanted to add new dialogues I can
go to Windows>Dockable Dialogs, and I'll go with the "dashboard" dialog here. This is just a random
dialogue. So here we have a dashboard which is showing me what kind of strain GIMP is putting
on my computer right now. And I can click and drag this either to make it float on its own,
and of course I can expand this, or I can come over here and just drag this next to the display
navigation. And now we have our dashboard over here. And of course I can navigate between the
tabs. And if I change my mind and decide I don't want this here anymore I can come over here to
this little menu and I can click "close tab." And one last note about these dockable dialogues - if
you are switching over to GIMP from Photoshop you can set your GIMP workspace up to be almost
identical to Photoshop's, witch is actually how I have mine set up right now. And, you guessed it, I
have an entire tutorial dedicated to this subject which I'll link in the video. Reason number 6 for
using GIMP over Photoshop in 2020 is that GIMP works with third-party fonts and most Photoshop
brushes. Though the GIMP program comes with plenty of fonts by default, it is easy enough to download
free or premium fonts from trusted third-party sources and add them to GIMP. I have a tutorial
on how to download and install free fonts for GIMP which I'll link to this video. The same applies to
brushes. And GIMP also works with most photoshop brushes. You can also create your own brushes and
add them to your brush library. The 7th reason on this list to switch from Photoshop to GIMP is that
there is a large library of free GIMP tutorials on YouTube and on the web. Davies Media Design for
example has hundreds of free video tutorials on YouTube and articles at DaviesMediaDesign.com. And
for those of you who want to take your learning a step further we offer plenty of classes and
courses, eBooks, and a Premium Membership to our website. However there are plenty of free
resources out there to help you learn GIMP and create amazing works of art. Reason number 8 on
this list is that GIMP exports to a variety of commonly used filetypes. The program works in a
.XCF filetype by default, which is a proprietary file format unique to GIMP, and allows you to save
things like layers for future sessions. But it can export to many popular file types like JPEG, GIF,
TIFF, PDF, PSD, PNG and many more. Reason number 9 is that the GIMP team is constantly adding new
features and improving the software. Currently new releases occur approximately every three to
four months. If you want to help GIMP grow and improve at a faster pace, they actually welcome
and encourage any experienced developers to work on the program. Downloading the latest release is
totally optional for users, though I do highly recommend that you use the latest version if
possible. My 10th and final reason to use GIMP in 2020 over Photoshop is that with GIMP you
maintain control of your software and the creative assets that you create with that software. Last
year Adobe began threatening to take legal action against users who didn't update their
older versions of the software to the Creative Cloud subscription software. It forced users who
purchased and owned their software to relinquish ownership and pay a monthly fee for newer software
that perhaps they did not want. And with Adobe Stock now offering "premium" stock photos that
are not included with the standard Adobe Stock package, you have to wonder where else Adobe is
going to start trying to squeeze more money and control out of its users. Perhaps they'll start
removing popular features from Photoshop and making them "premium" features. In other words,
when the creative future is in the hands of a large profit-driven corporation, the uncertainty
lies in the lap of the users, and the power with executive decision making. On the other hand,
with free and open source software the future and power is in the hands of both the users and
the developers equally. It is community based, not shareholder-profit or executive-compensation
driven. In fiscal year 2019, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen made over $28 million in total
compensation, and several other executives made several millions in compensation as well. Guess
who's footing that bill? So what do you think? Is it time to switch to free software? I certainly
think so. Alright thanks for watching this tutorial. If you liked it you can check out my
YouTube channel at youtube.com/DaviesMediaDesign. Don't forget to click the bell icon to be notified
each time I have a brand new tutorial. You can also check out any of the links to my
resources in the description of the video, but thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.