Gimp?

[Stephen Mann]

Yes and no.
For a free program, it is a really good replacement for Photoshop. In my limited use of GIMP, I would say it’s closer to Photoshop 3 in capabilities. You can open Photoshop PSD files, but you can’t save a PSD file.

But no NLE recognizes the XCF files like they do Photoshop PSD files. You can use GIMP to prepare standard PNG or JPEG files which any NLE can handle.

Bummer because the price of Photoshop just keeps going up and GIMP is still free. I don’t plan to upgrade Photoshop from CS5 because CS5 does all that I want. I use Photoshop to make my DVD menus and if DVDA would recognize GIMP XCF layers like it does Photoshop PSD layers, then I would learn GIMP. But it won’t.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Mike Hinkel]

Thanks Steve, I thought that would be the case. Photoshop is out of reach for sure. Gimp is interesting in its own right. Certainly a lot of tutorials on how to do things.

[Edwin Street]

Hi,

I use Adobe ImageReady. It’s free and it comes with the 30-day trial version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 but it lasts forever.

It’s basically Photoshop CS2 with some features removed.

It’s a great program and can import/export PSD files, BMP, TIFF and others.

Just do a simple Google search and download it.

[Mike Hinkel]

Thanks Edwin, I’ll take a look at that.

[Malcolm Matusky]

Photoline pl32.com I used Gimp for a while and was frustrated with it, and did not want to buy photoshop (too expensive) I found Photoline and am very happy with it. 32&64 bit, 16bit color depth, only 8 on gimp! Uses PS plugins, etc. Excellent low cost alternative to PS, +/- $75.

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Mark Barton]

I just took a multi-layer xcf file I had and exported it to a psd file with GIMP 2.8. When I dragged it to the Vegas Pro 12 timeline it was able to place each layer on a track. So give GIMP a try again.