Is GIMP the best software for me?

[SamuelRox]

Hi
Im not a designer but our art teacher has told us that if we are interested in doing art for a job we should get GIMP. But a friend of my dad says this is bad advice and I must learn to use Illustrator.

What do you think is this true. Will I able to make the kind of things that I want to with GIMP. 

Also I think Illustrator is pretty expensive and I don't think my parents would get it for me.

[rich2005]

First of all Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing application and the equivalent free vector drawing application is Inkscape.

Gimp is a raster (bitmap) editing application, you can use it for drawing from scratch or say editing photographs. It is not the only free application for art, many use Krita and for drawing MyPaint.

If you can use Gimp (or Krita or Inkscape) for artwork then you gain all the fundamental skills, and depending on talent produce work just as good as anything else.

However that alone is not the whole story. Custom and what has been used in the past and will be used for evermore comes into play.

You use a Mac, Go to our local newspaper and the art department uses Mac's and Photoshop. Everyone else in the building uses Windows, but the art department has always used Mac & Photoshop, never to change.

A friend is a university lecturer, He writes a report. Has to use MS Office and diagrams using Adobe Illustrator. That is what has always been used. It is expected. All his students have to use the same, and so the cycle continues.

Your art teacher is correct and so is the other advisor. Get going using Gimp and develop some skills. If you are going to invest in anything, get a Wacom drawing tablet. If you go to art college, you will have the basic skills to adapt to other applications and Adobe is not the only player, Corel Draw is widely used in the graphics industry.

Check out those other applications mentioned
Krita - http://www.krita.org
MyPaint http://mypaint.org
Inkscape https://inkscape.org/

[meetdilip]

It is simply a matter of choice. GIMP is often compared to Photoshop than Illustrator. Inkscape is the most widely recommended alternative for Illustrator.

You will see a lot of videos on YouTube comparing GIMP and Photoshop. You can watch them for extra info. I cannot say all of them are unbiased. Some people have spent a lot of time learning one of these and will favour their most used tool.

Another good option is to use Photoshop and Illustrator trial versions. GIMP and Inkscape are free of cost and open source. So you can try them without any limitations.

Once you use them enough and try to create art with these, you might finally able to decide which one is the tool for you.

[SamuelRox]

Wow thank you both for your replies. It does sound like maybe I should try to learn GIMP and Inkscape.

The problem is that I really am just a beginner and I don't know where to start.

Yesterday I saw a video online of a guy making a keltic design and I thought it looked really cool. He was using Adobe, but I wonder if I could also do something like that with Inkscape.

I can't find the video now I think it has gone.

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I just found it. Could I do something like this with GIMP or Inkscape?

https://youtu.be/3eo14cPAd7Q

[meetdilip]

Can we ?

   

   

[PixLab]

Yes you can do it in GIMP as well as in Inkscape (Inkscape is more suitable for vector graphic => your video link, though)
A good tuto channel to start with > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQXp_f...rzNtWJ1w9w (Logos by Nick),
once you'll have started to learn Inkscape, you will be able to reproduce that draw, even if it was made in Illustrator.

[SamuelRox]

Thanks for all the advice guys.

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(09-26-2021, 03:34 PM)meetdilip Wrote: Can we ?

These look wonderful. Maybe Inkscape is the way to go.

[Dogeageddon]

(09-26-2021, 02:55 PM)SamuelRox Wrote: The problem is that I really am just a beginner and I don't know where to start.

Sorry for being massively late to this thread, but I've been in the same boat as you for a while and this is how I've been learning how to use GIMP*:

For learning and understanding how each tool works, I used GuruGal's playlist on the GIMP tools (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...tEYYuJRTr8). She talks kinda slowly so I set video speed to 1.5x but these videos really helped me understand how certain tools and their tool options worked, as I really struggled to figure out what some of the options even did for some tools.

Along with this I used Davies Media Design's videos to give me an understanding of the wider aspect of GIMP and how it can be used.

*In a later post you said you feel Inkscape is the way to go: while GuruGal doesn't seem to have any Inkscape tutorials, Davies Media Design does have a playlist or two on Inkscape basics that could be useful.