[hnusersarelame]

This is dreadfully out of touch and only serves the interests of FOSS advocates, not the students. Give kids the tools that will make them successful in their educational and professional careers. Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.

This statement is false. In my company it is used all the time for any image manipulations, by both graphic designers and managers. Last time I've seen photoshop was maybe in 2007 or so.

[kcplate]

You are the outlier then. I have been in publishing and advertising industry since the late eighties through many companies. I can’t remember a time that it wasn’t the defacto standard since at least the early 90s

[Andrew_nenakhov]

We can't even use Photoshop, even if we wanted to: other than a few outlier macs used by iOS developers, 90% of our computers is running Ubuntu, and surely we aren't that addicted to do run Photoshop under Wine.

[kcplate]

I suspect you are not in the US. I can’t imagine any digital media director here opting to run an art department with graphic artists on Ubuntu. The GAs themselves would revolt and mutiny. In the last 30 years I have only seen I believe three companies that opted for for their art departments to run on Windows over Mac. From 2008-2012 all I did was contract work that optimize photo/art/ad workflow for these companies, so in that timespan deal they with around 50 different newspapers, magazines, and digital media producers in that time frame. It’s an apple world, at least on the desktop.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Photoshop (and illustrator too) are so, so dead, it's just some of its users don't know it yet. For interface/web design it is 100% replaced by far better tools like Sketch and Figma, and for image manipulation / photo editing there are far cheaper and more approachable tools than Photoshop. In fact, last time I saw it, it was a complete monster that took a few minutes to start on a top end machine. I shrug with dread and sorrow for those sad people who are forced to use it or don't know any better.

[kcplate]

Ahh, I see. They just aren’t as smart as you and haven’t converted to the new religion yet.

I was speaking photo manipulation and I stand by what I said. In the US it’s the tool that is present in every art department of every major media company and advertising agency to manipulate digital photos.

[digisign]

Those are not particularly large industries.

[kcplate]

Not sure where you are from, but in the US they are still industries that produce significantly more digital image media than most all others. And by publishing, I am not just referring to print.

Pretty much almost every photograph that you see on a media company website has been touched, color corrected, cropped or otherwise digitally manipulated by Photoshop.

[digisign]

Anything that is expensive is going to be used less than other options that are free.

Personally I've worked in VFX, Internet, medical companies, and while there were a few things got photoshoped here and there externally we almost always used something else, whether expensive or free.

[kcplate]

Your perception of “expensive” might be different than mine and many folks managing photo production workflows. If I have a dozen artists who are not as productive on a less costly package, handicapped by poor automation scripting of a low cost alternative, or are less productive due to training time requirements on a new package for even half a week, those low cost alternatives have zero value to me over a more expensive, better, and de facto standard.

I’ll admit it’s value was greater when print publishing was still a thing, but those magazine and newspaper companies that transitioned to digital didn’t necessarily go out and buy all new tools to replace effective tools that already existed, already had a trained base, and already had robust digital asset workflows in place.

[declnz]

But do we really think that learning (current) Photoshop etc will have any relevance to them being successful in say 5-20 years? (if the graphic design world even exists by then)