People argue that you only get what you pay for, implying that free software is somehow defective. However, the same as with Blender, that couldn't be further from the truth when it comes to Image editors as well. The reality is that companies that produce paid-for programs have serious concerns about the longevity of their companies with their current business models.
Comparing their own limited teams of programmers who are doing it for the money and know in the back of their minds that they will never be recognised for their work, they are up against the rest of the world, a vast army of programmers who can discuss openly any problems they might have encountered and how best to solve them, programmers who know that their work can be inspected by anybody and therefore they should make a good job if it, programmers who are doing it for the love of it. If there is a local problem, then somebody with the required specialised, localised knowledge of that problem can solve it or explain it to people who can.
The GIMP is one of the image processing programs that I use, virtually all of the time in this case, from correcting images to making them from scratch. However, even though I use it a lot, there areas of the program that I have never used, even though there is the possibility that I might find that they could make life easier for me. What The GIMP does for me is good enough and being free, I am not paying for things I will never use.
The first job that any image editing program should be useful for is correcting images for things like density range, perspective and so on.
This is just a couple of photographs taken of an art installation in our downstairs toilet - pictures taken by hand, not on a tripod. Cross your eyes to see the toilet roll out of the screen.
However, not everything I produce is real.
This is from my Gurvetica page on BeHance. The 'ਟ' letter has the 'ਇ' sound after it to make 'ti' thus; 'ਟਿ'; and it is typed that way, in that order. The free software The GIMP handles this all right and produces the correct results. However, When I try to do the same with PhotoShop, that program gets it wrong, placing the vowel sound that looks like a lower-case 'f' after the 'ਟ' which is useless. I've tried it with different copies of PhotoShop and different fonts on different operating systems but it gets it wrong even when Windows gets it right.
The GIMP is developed by people who do it for the love of it and who care about making a good job of it. PhotoShop is produced in a system, where the people who can afford to purchase a copy of the program will have programmer time spent on their potential problems - any group who probably can't afford it en-mass, won't get their problems sorted out until all of the other ones have been so no proper Indian writing for the time being.
So, rather than the saying being; 'You get what you pay for,' it should be; ''Why buy something that doesn't work?'
I love old books with odd fonts in them and this one is based upon the font used in William St. Clair Tisdall's 'A Simplified Grammar and Reading Book of the Panjabi Language' which sounds okay on the face of it but the content of the book reveals it disturbing purpose on page 8 - 'Should this work assist any one in acquiring such a knowledge of Panjabi as will enable him to preach the Gospel to the people of that country, the compiler's chief object in preparing it will have been attained.' And people wonder why proselytising religions are so dangerous.
However, the font is interesting and although it has an uneven colour and is difficult to read, it marks a point in the history of printed Gurmukhi text. I suppose that for each copy of this book that I have, that is one less reference work that people who want to destroy the Dharma of another country have to use.
This font is based upon some photographs taken by Hardeep Singh Mann and Tajinder Singh of real-life sign painting in the Punjab.
The writing/painting style consists of usually a light 'shadow' upon which is a white outline and then that is filled in with the dark letters. One thing that many of the photographs conveyed was that this writing lasts for years and whilst the paintwork largely survives the extremes of the weather out there, it is sometimes too much for the surface that it is painted on.
Above is 'Welcome to Southall' painted on now decaying plasterwork and below is a translation into Punjabi of the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Imagine you have a brooch made of golden lettering that is inlaid with mother of pearl, or something like that anyway.
This is the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita.
Front cover...
Back cover. The language is actually English so if you can read Devanagari in Sanskrit style (all of the sounds are explicit), you will be able to read the story.
The stained glass set in lead treatment for my Dekho Naveen font.
Varnished chalk on mud-rock for this Tibetan - or is it a piece of slate in my back garden with Tibetan-style writing in Punjabi/Gurmukhi where the language is actually English?
It says; 'Tsheg. Tibetan stile Gurmukhi and Latin Display Font.'
Have fun.
