I’ve been using GIMP off and on for a couple of years now, but I just haven’t been completely happy with it. I hate the multiple separated windows “feature”. And it always took way too long to load, even after I completely reformatted my computer recently. I’ve been looking for an alternative. Something with more features than Picnik, but works better than GIMP.
Somewhere along the way I heard about Paint.NET, asked around about it, and decided to give it a try. The first thing I have noticed is that Paint.NET loads approximately 47.35 times faster than GIMP, which was by far my biggest complaint with the software. I went ahead and took some photos and played around with some post-processing, something I could never quite get the hang of while using GIMP. Here are the results.
Alex with Dandelion
This one didn’t turn out so great, mainly because I tried to use too many of the image adjustment options. After some hue saturation, some level mixing, a glow affect, and some contrast adjusting, the dandelion ended up blending in almost completely with Alex’ hands. Still, I think it looks better than the original. Okay, maybe not.
Before
After
Flowering Tree
I thought this would be a good one to work on because I could focus on making the purple color of the flowers really pop out with some warmth and glow. I adjusted the color bringing out the lavender and gave it some softness. I think this one really turned out well.
Before
After
Guitar Top
This one I am most proud of. I did the least amount of adjustments to this photo. All I did was give it some light saturation to really deepen the color of the wood on the guitar surface, and a little bit of contrast to darken the pick guard (thereby removing my head from the reflection in the photo). I think the result is a much more pleasing photograph that has some definite richness to it.
Before
After
All in all, I’m really happy with Paint.NET. It seems to be much friendlier to use than GIMP (at least to me), and just as extensible with its own set of plug-ins (though I never bothered to extend GIMP, so I doubt I’ll do so with Paint.NET). I just love the fact that it opens so much faster. The transparency of the various windows on top of the working canvas helps, too. With this result, I’ve already uninstalled GIMP. If it keeps working out for me so well, I may even give the developers a donation.