Redneck company



  • If you still have your Christmas lights up after January, I think that qualifies you as a redneck:

    Lowes is redneck



  • The Real WTF is your taskbar.

     



  • And the use of GIMP on Windows.

    *shudder*



  • @sootzoo said:

    And the use of GIMP on Windows.

    *shudder*

     

    Hows that a WTF? What is better for image manip on windows? Adobe? I don't have a spare 300 bucks.

    That does not look like windows BTW.



  • @dlikhten said:

     

    Hows that a WTF? What is better for image manip on windows? Adobe? I don't have a spare 300 bucks.

     

    I don't know about better than GIMP, but Paint.Net works great for me, is free and open source.


    @dlikhten said:

    That does not look like windows BTW.

    Yes it does. What other OS do you propose is running Outlook?

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:


    @dlikhten said:
    That does not look like windows BTW.

    Yes it does. What other OS do you propose is running Outlook?

    Any linux distro + crossover office.



  •  http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=home

    I don't see the that either they fixed it quick or maybe you have an old image cached.

    As for windows photo manipulation I use Paint Shop Pro. Tried Gimp but it crashed repeatedly so I gave up on that. 



  • @dlikhten said:

    That does not look like windows BTW.
    Does to me. Windows XP with the silver theme. The taskbar's a bit funky, but if it's a widescreen monitor, that actually makes some sense

    Oh, and in my experience The GIMP works just fine on Windows. Sure it can be a little troublesome when you've got other programs about too, and it has some idiosyncrasies (like doing its own paging and having its own clipboard), but it works just fine for me. But then I've been using it since v 1.x (when image windows didn't even have a menu bar, you got the menu by right-clicking) so I'm used to it.



  • @m0ffx said:

    Oh, and in my experience The GIMP works just fine on Windows.
     

     

    Same with me. I have been using GIMP since 1.x too, and never had any major problems with it on Windows, but it does take a while to get used to.     



  • @Renan_S2 said:

    Same with me. I have been using GIMP since 1.x too, and never had any major problems with it on Windows, but it does take a while to get used to.     

     

    Pretty much every large, complicated application takes a while to get used to. I don't know why people would expect anything different.

    I am particularly amused by people who know nothing about image editing and have never done it before, who try using gimp (or photoshop) and then complain that it's "too hard". Artwork is hard, doofus. That's why people study for years to learn how to do it.

    Why do so many people have no respect for the concept of specialisations? They seem to honesly believe that every conceivable task should be no harder than banging a nail with a rock.

    Grrr. 



  • @asuffield said:

    Why do so many people have no respect for the concept of specialisations? They seem to honesly believe that every conceivable task should be no harder than banging a nail with a rock.

    Because many people are told by whoever sells them Solution X that this is indeed the case.



  • @medialint said:

    As for windows photo manipulation I use Paint Shop Pro. Tried Gimp but it crashed repeatedly so I gave up on that. 

     

     

    That's one of the big WTFs that the average computer user is faced with.  Photoshop is great but way too complicated and expensive for home use. 

    But the cheaper/simpler programs are missing key features and have lots of design WTFs (ie GIMP).

     



  • Granted, I haven't used GIMP in a while, but I had a much harder time getting used to it than either Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, even though it was the first real image editor I'd used.



  • Paint dot net.  Having used both, and also photoshop, I've found that paint.net is wayyy more intuitive, if you're used to the photoshop controls.  It's really trying to mimic photoshop, I guess.



  • What is so bad about GIMP? Apart from people trying to "sell" it as Photoshop replacement, which it isn't.

    It's a nice program as long as you need your graphics for the web only (so the missing stuff about CMYK and printing isn't an issue). It has lots of features - okay, most of which nobody needs - and is quite solid, and actually can write some image formats much better than Photoshop (in my experience, GIMP saves much smaller JPEG files at the same quality, and TGA writing with alpha channel is TOTALLY broken in Photoshop, as in, only Photoshop itself will read the alpha channel again, because it writes a color depth field in the TGA header wrong - and as TGA is a common format for games, that actually IS a problem).

    GIMP's user interface clearly sucks, but I think we can all agree on it. I could get used to it anyway, and have seen much worse (WinTV, or even Blender).

    The only big problem are people who say GIMP can replace Photoshop. It is still far from that. It's nice for many purposes, but not even close to a professional image editing app whose developers actually had professional print in mind.



  • @OperatorBastardusInfernalis said:

    What is so bad about GIMP? Apart from people trying to "sell" it as Photoshop replacement, which it isn't.
     

    I use it as a Photoshop supplement! I've found even "Save for Web" in Photoshop still produces images bigger than a normal Save in the GIMP. And Photoshop often tries to be smart with colour correction so images don't match properly with HTML colours, whereas in the GIMP they do. 



  • @El_Heffe said:

    But the cheaper/simpler programs are missing key features and have lots of design WTFs (ie GIMP).

    While the GIMP is not exactly a paragon of great software engineering, I do have to say that Photoshop is not really all that much better. They're both large, clumsy, crufty, and more than a little buggy.

    @OperatorBastardusInfernalis said:

    GIMP's user interface clearly sucks

    Photoshop isn't really that much better, especially on Windows. GIMP has a significant advantage on its native X, where the window manager actually works properly.

     

    I find them both quite unpleasant - but there's nothing else that can do what they do. And it is hard to justify the price tag on Photoshop, when its only major advantage is the CYMK colour model. Maybe if it cost about a quarter of what it does...



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    The Real WTF is your taskbar.

     

     

    I have the same arrangement (I have a widescreen monitor). Far superior to having it at the bottom if you often find yourself with ~10 windows open.



  •  

    I have the same arrangement (I have a widescreen monitor).

     

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors?  I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size.  A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally.  So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"?  Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

     

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors?  I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size.  A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally.  So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"?  Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

    They're nice in two situations: one you view allot movies in wide-screen format; two you rotate the monitor 90 degrees and read allot of documents that happen to have very long lengths, like forum topics, documentation, terminal output, e-books and whatever else you can think of that is presented in long list format.



  • @Lingerance said:

    They're nice in two situations: one you view allot movies in wide-screen format

    A widescreen movie is exactly the same size when displayed on a monitor of the same width but full height.



  • @asuffield said:

    A widescreen movie is exactly the same size when displayed on a monitor of the same width but full height.

    Which is why spending the extra money for a 4:3 monitor is such a waste.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @asuffield said:

    @Lingerance said:

    They're nice in two situations: one you view allot movies in wide-screen format

    A widescreen movie is exactly the same size when displayed on a monitor of the same width but full height.

    I think the point trying to be made is that a 19" widescreen is wider than a 19" regular screen, since the 19" typically refers to the length of the diagonal.

    Not that the differences are that great. 4:3 - 15.2" width, 16:9 - 16.6".

    Always assuming of course that the 19" refers to visible diagonal, and not just the size of the casing.



  • @OperatorBastardusInfernalis said:

    GIMP's user interface clearly sucks, but I think we can all agree on it.
     

    It might suck on Windows, but with a good WM configuration and virtual desktops on Linux it is not bad. 

     

     @OperatorBastardusInfernalis said:

    GIMP saves much smaller JPEG files at the same quality

     

    I think there was someone at the GIMP mailing list which made such an experiment (comparing JPEG file sizes from both PS and GIMP at the same quality).



  • @asuffield said:

    A widescreen movie is exactly the same size when displayed on a monitor of the same width but full height.
    If you keep the aspect ratio constant yes. However the point was people who watch movies would rather have a 19" wide-screen rather than a 19" 4:3 monitor. Personally I don't have a wide-screen, if I were to get one I would set it to be rotated.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors?  I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size.  A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally.  So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"?  Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

    I read when reasearching my last monitor that wide screens are cheaper to produce than traditional 4:3 ratio monitors. I find Visual Studio is a little nicer to use on a wide screen monitor anyway.

    As for paint programs, I've used Photoshop, the Gimp and Paint.net on windows and personally, I tend to stick towareds Paint.net. Photoshop has to much for my needs (I'm not a graphics professional creating stuff to go down to the printers). The Gimp, whilst a great program with some excellent featres has one of the worst UI's around. I find Paint.net will do most of the things I need and is fast, stable and easy to use.



  • @DaEagle said:

    I read when reasearching my last monitor that wide screens are cheaper to produce than traditional 4:3 ratio monitors.

    I bet that's "cheaper" in the sense of "it lets us sell another display to somebody who already had one, as an 'upgrade' to 'widescreen' 'for movies' at an inflated price", rather than meaning something like "it costs less to produce so we'll sell it to your for less".



  • @El_Heffe said:

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors?  I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size.  A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally.  So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"?  Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

     

    The deal is math.

    The diagonal does not express anything about the ratio of height and width, nor about the surface. E.g., a screen with a width of 18" and a height of 6" has a diagonal of 19", as does a screen of 13.4" x 13.4". Most people will refer to the former format as oblong and being wide, and to the latter as square. So that explain the term "wide screen", I'd say.

     About cost: if we take all pixels to be the same size (lets say some 72 ^ 2 = 5184 pixels per square inch), then an 18"x6" screen fits 18 x 6 x 5184 = 559872 pixel, whereas the square screen fits 13.4 * 13.4 * 5184 = 930839 pixels. That's almost the double...

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors? I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size. A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally. So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"? Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

    Yes, it is just marketing. The clever marketing is the idea that you're supposed to compare the 19" widescreen with the 19" "regular" monitor. It's no surprise that the widescreen is cheaper - the widescreen has an area of about 154 square inches, whereas the regular has an area of 173. Yes, you get to watch movies a bit bigger (the 19" 4:3 can only display a 16:9 movie 8.5" high, rather than 9.3" on the widescreen), but everything else gets smaller due to the shorter height.

    To my mind, the real "widescreen upgrade" to a 19" regular monitor is a 23" widescreen. Same height (ish), extra width. The advantage of bigger movies, without any drawbacks for other stuff.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ThePants999 said:

    without any drawbacks for other stuff.
    Like price.



  • The price difference is accounted for in the word "upgrade" :-P



  • 19" WXGA+ != 19" SXGA


     17" and 19" 'square' monitors (actually, they're 5:4 rather than 4:3 as somone else posted) are 1280*1024 = 1,310,720px. 19"W are usually 1440*900, or 1,296,000. The biggest you can thus watch a 16:9 source on a 19" SXGA is 1280*720, or a waste of 30% of your pixels, whereas on a 19" WXGA+ you can scale it to 1440*810 - only losing 10% of your vertical resolution. That's the media argument.

     Going from a 19" SXGA at 1280*1024 to a 19" WXGA+ at 1440*900 would actually be a downgrade, because you're losing vertical (and overall) resolution in order to get the extra width. The closest equivalent in widescreen terms would be a WSXGA+ screen at 1680*1050 (=1,764,000px), with the 20" panel having pixels of roughly the same size as the 17" SXGA, and the 22" WSXGA+ being similarly equivalent to the 19" SXGA.

     



  • I used PhotoStyler in Windows 3.1 days... It was very intuitive, I could find out how to do anything I wanted to do (I'm not a professional) in a few seconds.

    Then when it broke on Windows 98, I switched to Photoshop. Ugh! Photoshop is not intuitive at all. Even though it was the sole program I used to do basic image editing (and maybe some manipulation) for _years_, I never figured out how to do most of the basic stuff.

    In contrast, I've found GIMP to be very intuitive. 10 minutes after I'd installed it for the first time, I already knew how to do everything I knew how to do in Photoshop, plus a bit more! And I'm not exaggerating.

    I'm not saying GIMP is better than Photoshop (and certainly not so for professional work), but it is _way_ more intuitive. And that's my top priority at the moment.

    I've never tried Paint.Net, I'll go check it out right after I post this message. 



  • It's true that PS is utterly incapable of a couple of deviously simple things.

    But finally, in CS3, Adobe fixed the inability to contract a selection that touches the document edge.

     Paint.Net has a Paint Shop Pro feel to its interface, in that it's a little clunky, but functions quite adequately for normal image stuff.



  • @aib said:

    I used PhotoStyler in Windows 3.1 days... It was very intuitive, I could find out how to do anything I wanted to do (I'm not a professional) in a few seconds.

    Then when it broke on Windows 98, I switched to Photoshop. Ugh! Photoshop is not intuitive at all. Even though it was the sole program I used to do basic image editing (and maybe some manipulation) for years, I never figured out how to do most of the basic stuff.

    In contrast, I've found GIMP to be very intuitive. 10 minutes after I'd installed it for the first time, I already knew how to do everything I knew how to do in Photoshop, plus a bit more! And I'm not exaggerating.

    I'm not saying GIMP is better than Photoshop (and certainly not so for professional work), but it is way more intuitive. And that's my top priority at the moment.

    I've never tried Paint.Net, I'll go check it out right after I post this message. 

    It's just what you know and you are used to.
    For me the GUI of PS is selfexplaining and "intuitive". I used it for years in my side job, and just loved the interface. On the other hand, I had a few tries with GIMP, and it was a real pain to make even the most basic tasks. I just don't know how this cr*p could grow so popular.



  • @tray said:

    @aib said:

    I used PhotoStyler in Windows 3.1 days... It was very intuitive, I could find out how to do anything I wanted to do (I'm not a professional) in a few seconds.

    Then when it broke on Windows 98, I switched to Photoshop. Ugh! Photoshop is not intuitive at all. Even though it was the sole program I used to do basic image editing (and maybe some manipulation) for _years_, I never figured out how to do most of the basic stuff.

    In contrast, I've found GIMP to be very intuitive. 10 minutes after I'd installed it for the first time, I already knew how to do everything I knew how to do in Photoshop, plus a bit more! And I'm not exaggerating.

    I'm not saying GIMP is better than Photoshop (and certainly not so for professional work), but it is _way_ more intuitive. And that's my top priority at the moment.

    I've never tried Paint.Net, I'll go check it out right after I post this message. 

    It's just what you know and you are used to.
    For me the GUI of PS is selfexplaining and "intuitive". I used it for years in my side job, and just loved the interface. On the other hand, I had a few tries with GIMP, and it was a real pain to make even the most basic tasks. I just don't know how this cr*p could grow so popular.

     

    You've said it yourself - it's just what people know and what they are used to.

    My message was more to the point of saying that GIMP was much easier for me - a user with the experience of... hmm, remembering to try Ctrl, Alt, Shift variations on tools from Photostyler, simple cropping and resizing from MSPaint, and... hours of fun time playing with DeluxePaint PC.

    PS' GUI is intuitive, yes; but I've had a hard time doing anything that was not immediately available to me from the GUI, and that, unfortunately, included some basic tasks (which I can't remember offhand).



  • The Real WTF is that there is not a single on-topic post on this thread. I nominate this for the thread derailment award of the year. 



  •  

    What other OS do you propose is running Outlook?

     "Inbox - Micr..." must be Outlook? Signs point to yes, of course, but it's not conclusive. :P



  • @Lingerance said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @dlikhten said:
    That does not look like windows BTW.

    Yes it does. What other OS do you propose is running Outlook?
    Any linux distro + crossover office.
     

     

    LOL @ Linux people - buncha Unix farts trying to hold on to the dinosaur. 



  • Y'know, from where I'm sitting (Windows user) Beryl is so far in advance of Aero you can't even see it. Also, Linux works on least privilege, whereas Microsoft can't even get that right... 



  • @Zemm said:

    I use it as a Photoshop supplement! I've found even "Save for Web" in Photoshop still produces images bigger than a normal Save in the GIMP. And Photoshop often tries to be smart with colour correction so images don't match properly with HTML colours, whereas in the GIMP they do. 

    When working with web photos in Photoshop, you should make sure your images have the correct color profile for monitor display. Select "Color Settings" from the Edit menu, and in the "Working Spaces" section, select "sRGB [a bunch of seemingly random numbers]" from the "RGB" menu. Now, when you Save for Web, the colors should match the HTML colors perfectly.

    @Lingerance said:
    @El_Heffe said:

    WTF is the deal with widescreen monitors? I see them all over the place and generally they are cheaper that a "normal" monitor of the same size. A 19 inch wide screen and a 19 inch regular monitor are both 19 inches diagonally. So WTF is the deal with making one shorter and calling it "Wide Screen"? Is this just some sort of weird marketing?

    They're nice in two situations: one you view allot movies in wide-screen format; two you rotate the monitor 90 degrees and read allot of documents that happen to have very long lengths, like forum topics, documentation, terminal output, e-books and whatever else you can think of that is presented in long list format.

    TRWTF is "allot." Oh my God.

    Photoshop is great, but yes, I too still find myself pining for GIMP for certain things. Just today I was at work working in Photoshop and wanted to add a bunch of horizontal lines to an image. In GIMP, there's a grid line plug-in which does this very quickly and precisely, but in Photoshop, I had to draw one line, duplicate the layer, move it into place, duplicate the layer, move it into place, duplicate the layer, move it into place… Merge those layers, then duplicate that merged layer, move it into place, duplicate, move…



  • @Albright said:

    TRWTF is "allot." Oh my God.
    Firefox's spellchecker doesn't like "alot", and it suggested "allot"; I'm presuming then allot is not the right word?

    Edit: Google says no, my recollections from English class say "a lot" is incorrect. Grr.



  • "Allot" means something like "assign" or "set aside." For example, you might be fired form work if you do not finish your alloted work on time. If you keep your job, however, you should remember to allot at least half of your paycheck to pay bills -- don't spend it all on partying.

    "A lot" is the proper spelling of the term. If you are recalling your English teacher ranting against it, they were probably lecturing you to use a word like "many" or "several" instead -- "a lot" is too informal for some academics.

    Many people write it as "alot" nowadays -- which will correctly trip a spell checker -- but, like "afew" and "incase," it's simply a case of an incorrect (or at least widely unaccepted) contraction. However, "always" and "sometimes" are proper English nowadays, so in a hundred years' time, who knows?

    I graduated with a BA in English. Consequently, I'm now a programmer.



  • Some times I disconnect sometimes and every time a lot but never always. 


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