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Subject:Re: Essential software/programming skills for TC? From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Wed, 8 Dec 2010 09:43:39 +0200
Phil,
The GIMP has about 90% or so of the features of Photoshop, and a few
that Photoshop lacks. However, because Photoshop is so prevalent in
the industry, learning to use it is extremely helpful should you wind
up working for a company that uses it. You can save money, however, by
using the GIMP variant called "GIMPShop": http://www.gimpshop.com/
GIMPShop replicates the Photoshop interface closely, so as you become
accustomed to it, moving to a gig that uses Photoshop would be simple.
InDesign is indeed more popular than Quark these days. As "iffy" as
tech support for Adobe products might be, Quark historically has been
far, far worse. I think that has been one motivating factor in the
transition. That said, InDesign is a superb program. Although I
haven't used it in a few years now, it was clearly the superior choice
for detailed layout when I last used it. I've used the open source
layout program Scribus a few times, but although it is making progress
it's still a long way from InDesign. Unless things have changed in
subsequent versions, though, InDesign has a bit of a learning curve
simply because it is such a powerful tool.
Personally, I don't much care for most Adobe interfaces; however,
there is certainly a virtue to having very similar interface
approaches between InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Still, if you develop a degree of expertise in one of these tools,
moving to another really isn't that challenging. There is a large
gulf, however, between "using" a tool such as the GIMP and becoming
something of a power user with it. That is especially true since it is
so extremely extensible, using its scripting language called ScriptFU,
IIRC.
David
On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 09:00, <techwr-l-request -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> wrote:
> I've used OpenSource bitmap and vector programmes, and thought I had enough working knowledge from using these, but frankly having recently trialled the demo of InDesign with Photoshop and Illustrator, the latter are a completely different kettle of fish compared to the 'toys' that I learned on (GIMP/Inkpad). I already use QuarkXpress, but it doesn't seem very popular in the industry compared to InDesign from what I can tell.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> I'd welcome further thoughts from any others that may wish to share.
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