Alan Browne wrote:
I just downloaded a recent v. of GIMP for iMac. Runs under X11.

As I wrote earlier it does not support 16 bit/color very well. In fact
on loading a scan from yesterday (TIF) it immediately declared
incompetence and converted to 8 bit/color on loading.

For light editing this is not a huge deal, I admit, but it does make
changing contrast/bright/colors, etc. a lossy deal.

When done correctly, with the RAW converter (at 12 or 14 bit
depth) during the conversion process, it makes virtually no
difference for editing photographs.

The USM is ________HORRIBLE________

Actually, it's great.

a) The preview is on a tiny area of the scene and you have to move
sliders around to select an area (imagine a 8500 x 8500 pixel image and
preview area of approx 200x200 and you want to check for detail and
halos at a dozen places... Oh my... crap!

Thank goodness for that! Instead of waiting while it applies
USM to your imaginary 72MP image, you only have to wait while it
does a 200x200 image. That allows you to very precisely adjust
for the correct USM.

b) and then the results of the USM are just plain terrible compared to
those in photoshop.

See above, about adjusting it correctly. That does help
greatly.

It did, BTW, a reasonable job reading a DNG file and a Minolta raw file
(Maxxum 7D) but converted both to 8 bits on load, of course.

Really, I wish the Gimp folks well, but it is not something anyone
serious about photography would use. Get Elements for much better
results and get CS3 for heavy lifting.

The fact that you can't use it properly does not indicate a flaw
with the program.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)