I wonder at times why The Gimp hasn't become more successful. Certainly for a while it was billed even by coworkers more in the know about image manipulation than myself as pretty much an even trade-out for Photoshop for 80% of practical Photoshop users. That is to say, there are a ton of non-graphic design experts out there using Photoshop when they don't need to be shelling out that kind of dough. The Gimp worked well.

Lately The Gimp's Windows installer has gotten pretty friendly, to the point that anyone who would be savvy enough to use its tools should be able to install it with ease. This is great news. So why aren't many students and professional graphic designers using open source's most useful piece of desktop software?

My first reaction is that there's likely some issue with local Adobe sales reps giving schools good discounts, and I'd like to think The Gimp is at least partially to blame for the price differential, if there is one. At the same time, people are [still] learning Photoshop for pretty trivial tasks, not The Gimp, so in the future, well, I think we know where the user base is headed. Why do I tend to use Macs? If I had to guess, it's because I used Apple IIe's through my younger days and the LC was as good as it got when I was studying Pascal. Getting students used to your app while they're students is pretty important.

Aren't many Photoshop filters compatible with The Gimp? I just wonder what the barriers to entry are that haven't been knocked down. It's never been price, seemingly hasn't been feature set, isn't preformance thanks to Moore, and is no longer installation. Guess I'm due to try Photoshop again to see what I must be missing...