On 2/27/2010 10:20 PM, jim j. wrote:

Finally figured out answer. Sadly, this might be a deal breaker for using GIMP. Too bad. It's powerful and potentially useful tool, but without effective, timely, interactive help, it's not going to be very useful except for expert programmers with lots of time on their hands. It really would be worth charging a fair amount to charge for GIMP to provide a good search engine help tool and live support. It still would be lots less than Photoshop. Without it or a really active user community, it's not very useful.

My problem was simply that the initial pix I downloaded to work on were reduced resolution so tools were compatible in size. When I tried to get serious about editing a full res image 10x the reduced size, the tools were too tiny to see. When I resized them appropriately, all was well. Sure wasted a lot of time figuring it out. No help at all from GIMP or anybody else. A pity.

Interesting. First, Raster image editing is not an easy topic for someone to master, regardless of the tools utilized to do it. There seems to be the public perception that Photoshop only takes a bit of effort to use, while GIMP is, "The Photoshop Clone, that is more difficult to use." However that really is not necessarily the case. Both software packages require a significant amount of time to master. However, that is not to say only expert programmers can use it. It only took me a tutorial or two to really start to get the hang of it.

An hour and a half is not what I would consider a large waiting time, but that is just me. There are other mediums in which questions can be submitted as well.

As for charging for the usage of gimp, I think that would be generally a bad idea. Many users (i think it is fair to say almost all) use Gimp because it it is free. In addition to its cost, I use it because it is supported on several platforms, is very powerful, and is entirely transparent. When I use Gimp, I feel as if I am using something created by a small group of intelligent people whos purpose is creating the software to further technological competency rather than earning money. It really is a stark contrast.

jim j. wrote:

...... It's powerful and potentially useful tool, but without effective, timely, interactive help, it's not going to be very useful except for expert programmers with lots of time on their hands.

Well, I know this is an inherently wrong statement, because I am not an expert programmer, I don't have a lot of time on my hands, and I use GIMP quite successfully for image manipulation, both manipulating photographs, and in other drawing tasks.

Without [a good search engine help tool and live support] or a really active user community, it's not very useful.

Well, I'll concede that the help tool in Windows GIMP is not functioning as it is apparently intended to work, and I'll concede further that the on-line documentation is out of date, but the documentation is there, even if you have to search a bit for it. Further, as far as a "really active user community", there is one, and it works pretty well. I saw your request for help, but due to insufficient information from you on exactly what the problem was, I had to take care of other issues first. GIMP is a sufficiently complex tool, that a request for help needs to contain some level of detail. If I were to ask for help for an issue you such as you raised, at minimum I'd provide the platform (Windows, MAC, or Linux] and version or distribution, the version of GIMP you are using, a link to an image which is giving me problems, and step by step what I'm doing, and what I expect to see happen, but is not. My vision is not what it used to be, and it's a bit hard to see your monitor from my workstation.

ns