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From: Russell D. on 20 Nov 2009 17:40
On 11/20/2009 12:41 PM, Troy Piggins wrote:
> * Russell D. wrote :
>> On 11/18/2009 08:47 PM, Troy Piggins wrote:
>>> After a little deliberation,
>>
>> <snip good stuff>
>>
>> Are you bagging GIMP?
>>
>> IMWTK,
>>
>> Russell
>
> Not at all. Reason I switched to PS was purely because of this
> astrophotography I've taken up. The images I end up with after
> the pre-processing steps are, as you can imagine, still very
> dark. All the information is bunched way up at the dark/shadow
> end of the histogram. Have to do a lot, lot, lot of
> teasing/stretching of the histogram using many iterations of
> levels and curves to get that data out of that end.
>
> Can do all that with GIMP, but the 8 bits per channel kills it.
> You lose a lot of data when stretching so much. Wish I had some
> screenshots or something to show you what I mean, but can't at
> the moment. The shots get a bit posterised.
>
> PS's 16 bits per channel is almost a necessity for doing that
> magnitude of stretching. I hate saying it, but it's true.
>
> I've never been one to bag PS or whatever, but have always
> maintained that GIMP can do practically everything PS can do.
> I had always said that unless I was a professional photographer,
> I'd be happy with GIMP as it does everything a digital
> photographer needs, whether by the base package or with the
> plethora of plugins/scripts available.
>
> I still stand by that, except for the astrophotographer.
>
> But for "normal" dynamic ranges and photography, I'd recommend
> the free but extremely powerful GIMP. If you have the money you
> have another choice, I'd recommend both PS or GIMP.
>

Thanks for that explanation. Makes perfect sense. I use GIMP because it
is free and PS has a tough time on Linux which I use 99% of the time. I
just knew you had used GIMP in the past.

Russell
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