Half the amount of color spaces
Using Gimp you can edit colors in YCRCB or LAB or CMYK or HSV. Using photoshop you can only edit in LAB or CMYK. Half the amount of color spaces.Limits Creativity
I don’t care if I am destructively editing a photo, don’t limit my creativity because of it. Photoshop focuses a ton on a few non destructive adjustments, and they don’t pay attention to the many other destructive edits that are just as valid of methods of editing photos. Photoshop is limiting in this respect.lack of awesome plugins
Lack of free awesome plugins. And Photoshop really needs better plugins for doing things like reducing noise, Fourier transform, and separating frequencies.Overpriced
Photoshop is way overpriced, with way overpriced 3rd party plugins. Especially if you try to stay up to date with the newest version of Photoshop.Hide their algorithms
Photoshop hides the technical details about the exact algorithms they use in their tool set, while in GIMP I can look at the source code and I can read up on any of the algorithms used so I know exactly what is happening under the hood.Copy, paste and undo, don’t work INTUITIVELY
You can copy and paste and undo. I get really annoyed at the way Photoshop thinks we would only want to undo one edit at a time or that we wouldn’t ever want to copy information from one layer to another. There are ways around these things. Yeah it doesn’t matter that much, but they are two really big pet peeves I have with Photoshop.Terrible UI
GIMP’s single window UI is awesome and better than Photoshops UI. When I started using Photoshop, I found out why so many people use keyboard shortcuts with Photoshop. trying to navigate through Photoshop’s menus is ridiculous. Keyboard shortcuts are the only way to do things in a timely manner. An obvious sign of a poor UI. in a comment on lightstalking.com Deeg said:Interesting. Now I have been using gimp to edit my pictures. Now I used photoshop years ago so understoof that menu system more. It did take a while to adjust to a different menu system and layout. For myself I find the Gimp layout freindlier and quicker, and more than capable to edit an original photo to my desired result whatever it is, so I personally feel Gimp is well up to the task. That is not to say that gimp does not have its shortcomings, and I did try shift back to Photoshop and honestly the number of mouse clicks needed to accomplish the same tasks was so much more and more tedious I am back using gimp.in another comment on lightstalking.com Dolores said:
“The GUI which is used in GIMP is not as advanced or even suitable for the hand of an artist” I do not agree with this assessment AT ALL. I have found gimp’s interface to be far more intuitive than photoshop’s.I used photoshop for 5 years, before switching to gimp because gimp was much faster and cheaper, with nearly identical functionality.
I love gimp’s right click menus. When you select something on an image, you can right click on that selection and hit “crop to selection”, use filters, change contrast, hue/saturation, etc, etc. Its intuitive and faster than going up to the top of the screen and using a tool bar. I also like the way gimp handles brushes much more than photoshop. Its more organized and easier to find the brush you want. Plus all the options for that brush are all in one spot. Want to make it 40% transparent, dodge and the shape of a star? its easier and faster to do in gimp. I think people believe that gimp is harder simply because they are not familiar with it. If people would take the time to learn gimp and do tutorials, etc they would see that gimp can do 99% of the things photoshop can.Plus even if you do use photoshop for big projects, sometimes you just want to do a quick edit. Waiting for photoshop to load is a pain, and you can open gimp, make the edit and save the file in the time it takes for photoshop to even load. I think it is very much worth it for people learn how to use gimp. Its a very powerful tool.
Some things GIMP could improve on [incomplete list].