by DST » Wed Oct 07, 2009 1:39 pm
There are several things that make gimp faster.
1. great svg support eliminates the need for other file formats, i can dump directly from inkscape into gimp.
2. choosing extensions by typing. No more dropdown lists, no more typing this.png and having it save as this.png.jpg cause some file option was set to jpg.
3. The file browser. Ubuntu keeps thumbnails for the images, even in list mode, making browsing for files much easier, whereas in windows i have to always change the view to thumbnails, which most programs don't save, so next time i opened the dialog, i'd have to change the view again and again.
4. The file browser. Ubuntu's file browser makes much more sense than windows, with important bookmarks included in your filesystem by default, no more of this c:>documents and setting>someuser>mydocuments> crap. (and i always have multiple hard drives with os's on them, or similiar so i found myself navigating that way in windows a lot).
5. The image previewer has faster rendering for newer filetypes, such as svg, as opposed to windows picture and fax viewer that chokes on so many of these.
6. More consistency in system colors and fonts mean when i make the theme dark, i don't get black text in black boxes nearly as often as i do in windows. A darker background means images are easier to pick out of a list than they are against white. The black text problem means most color customization in windows isn't really possible.
7. Gimp Loads and Exits much faster than photoshop. It's no longer a big program i keep open for extended periods of time, instead i can close it whenever i finish with an image and open it whenever i need to open another one. Its also much easier to edit your hotkeys. So to say, you can make Gimp act more like photoshop, but you can't make photoshop act more like Gimp.
Yes windows can be customized to do some of these things, but Ubuntu sets them up this way by default. So even customizing Ubuntu is much simpler, i've found, than windows.