GIMP - Photo Manipulation Software

So, having installed GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) last week - as you may remember, my s.o. recommended this as a free alternate to Photoshop.

Well - I had it installed and running, and he comes along, looks over my shoulder and says, "Oh, you want GIMPshop - that's the one that looks like Photoshop - menus are the same and everything."

OK - so - armed with that piece of information - I go in search of GIMPshop. And I find it readily enough - at gimpshop.com. I go to the downloads page, and select a windows download. They use a download service that, if you subscribe, you can download right away, and if you choose not too - you might have to wait. So I waited, and what with one distraction and another, got the file downloaded about a half hour later.

I closed all my other applications and did the install. This one asks me which hard drive to install on (you remember that last week, GIMP did not give me that option and it annoyed me.)

So I selected another drive.

But part of the way through installing it - I started to get dialogue boxes about "missing disk" - which I generally get when some piece of software is assuming that I have a C: drive - which I don't.

The installation finished ok - and there were instructions to start and close the program, run an accompanying script and restart. OK - did that. It opened and closed. The script ran. I opened GIMPshop again. A few more complaints from the software about the missing drive. These dialogue boxes need a button that says "Get over it."

But the software is up and running and looks ok on the face of it.

So I tried to edit an image by dragging it from a folder and dropping it into GIMPshop (which works fine in Photoshop and GIMP and is an essential part of the way I work.)

De nada. Nothing. Ain't gonna do it. Holy cr4p. I just get the diagonal line through a circle cursor. No go. Not happenin'.

That's a deal-breaker. That's so essentially Windows interface that I can't see how that wouldn't work.

So - maybe I just need to re-boot. This is Windows - that's the tech support answer to everything. Turn it off and back on and see if it works now.

So I did that. And tried again. And the error is repeatable. You can't drag and drop an image into it and have it open. Whoa - this is not good. So I open the original GIMP and try the same thing. Yep - that works.

OK - we'll try opening an image in GIMPshop the traditional way - Pull down menus, File, Open - ok - wait a minute - there IS NO File, Open option. I stare at the interface in amazement. This is too weird.

I close the software and open it again try it again. Well - at least it is consistent. Most of the menus are missing.

At this point - my patience has run out. That's two hours of my life I will never get back. I suspect that there isn't anything wrong with the software, but something has gone wrong with the install. It could also be that despite it asking me where to install the software, not every part of the program is actually paying attention to that parameter, and so now it can't find missing pieces of itself. Or, somewhere in the bowels of the program - it is hard-coded to look for a specific drive (i.e. C:) - and is failing because it can't find it.

Whatever. If I had infinite amounts of time, I would un-install it, reinstall on the other drive, try again. But I don't. So GIMPshop is a non-starter for me. It'll be easier to get used to using GIMP than to get this working.

But - I stress to add - this is my personal experience - your mileage may vary. I'm not dissing GIMPshop - just saying that it's not working for me. I don't have the tolerance for this sort of thing that I used to have. My days of poking around inside the bowels of the computer and the software are gone - I now just want the d4mn thing to work so I can get on with it.

So there you go - I wasted my time so that you don't have to.

Cheers!