Good GIMP Book?

[Joel Hammer]

There used to be a Gimp book at the Gimp home page. I have used it and
grokking the Gimp. Both are helpful but....

I am sorry to say that the Gimp is not very intuitive. The biggest problem
I have had is that everything you want to do is buried in some menu,
dialog, tool, script, whatever. Some simple things like drawing arrows
are hard, or used to be.

I now use photoshop at work. I have never had to read anything to use
photoshop, in large part because Gimp is set up a lot like photoshop,
and in large part because photoshop is much more intuitive. The common
tasks are easy to find and perform.

Photoshop elements only costs about $80 they tell me, so the cost is not
bad.

I know this isn't a linux solution, but Gimp/linux is just not user
friendly, aka, easy to use. Some examples:

1. If you want to edit a second file while editing a file, clicking
on the second file in the file explorer in windows opens that file in
the current copy of photoshop. In linux, doing that same action opens
a second copy of the Gimp. This is unacceptable.

2. I never got the hang of layers in the Gimp, and after a while tried
to avoid them! I picked up layers almost immediately in photoshop and
find them invaluable. Just a matter of laying out the menus so they are
easy to use.

3.  I never found a good way to make simple arrows in Gimp. In photoshop,
they are built in and obvious.

4. Using the paint can tool, the Gimp gives you a million options,
photoshop just a few. But, the few options in photoshop are useful, where
as I have never found a use for most of the options in Gimp. For example,
photoshop gives you a contiguous/non-contiguous option when using the
paint can, a very helpful option, which I couldn't find in the Gimp.
Maybe it is there, buried somewhere with the dozen or more other options
with the paint can.

I could go on, but basically  I find I get much more done in photoshop
than Gimp. 

Now, these are all problems with the Gimp found by fairly casual use. I
just use Gimp/photoshop to touch up photographs. I am no graphic artist.
Perhaps the numerous options and scripts in Gimp might be of great value
to a professional graphic artist.

IMHO, if you are just fooling around with Xmas cards this year, Gimp
will not make your life easy. If you are doing this in any serious
(professional) way, your time is too valuable to spend with the
Gimp. Maybe a hardcore professional graphic artist might benefit from
the Gimp.

Joel