[Topgun]

I have the chance to get photoshop for a extremely discounted price. I have been using gimp for some time and, while I love what can be done with it, I hate the interface. Is photoshop worth buying?
is the interface much better?
are the plugins and features much better?

[Dark RevenantX]

Photoshop has a very wide variety of plugins, has some more features than Gimp, and has a more flexible interface.

In short, if you have the money, it's worth a buy.

[Nuke]

* Nuke likes photoshop

[Aardwolf]

D'oh. I misread the title as "Is philosophy really all that?" and came in expecting a philosophical debate of some sort.

* Aardwolf prefers Gimp.

[Scooby_Doo]

If it's at an extremely discount price, I'd say grab it 

[Androgeos Exeunt]

* Androgeos Exeunt likes the Photoshop interface more than The GIMP's. He also got it free because his school supplied it to students at no cost.

[blackhole]

Photoshop's interface is superior to GIMP, and it admittedly has some of the best features of any image editing program. These perks outweigh its bloated memory usage and the fact that it was made by the worst software company ever. That is, of course, if you can get it for really cheap and/or free. Otherwise its just as unbelievably insanely overpriced as the rest of Adobe's Sh!t-ware.

[Stormkeeper]

I think if you can get it at discount, just get it. No harm done.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Photoshop's interface is superior to GIMP, and it admittedly has some of the best features of any image editing program. These perks outweigh its bloated memory usage and the fact that it was made by the worst software company ever. That is, of course, if you can get it for really cheap and/or free. Otherwise its just as unbelievably insanely overpriced as the rest of Adobe's Sh!t-ware.

Then again, programs like Maya and 3DS also cost a bomb.

[Stealth]

Photoshop is still the benchmark of picture editing software.  It doesn't really have a comparison (let's be honest)

So yeah, it's all that

[Pred the Penguin]

Just be sure to learn how to use it.

[Bobboau]

if your already trained on GIMP, I'd say stick with that, though, I suppose it might depend on how discounted a price we are talking about.

[Herra Tohtori]

If all you do is stuff that doesn't require pro-grade colour management utilities [CMYK colourspace for printing/presssing colour images, higher than 32bit colours, stuff like that], then I'd say GIMP offers better performance/price ratio (being a free program). Which means that it is sufficient for a lot of stuff that you wouldn't think it can stretch to.

However, the interface design is inferior to Photoshop, and GimpShop version really doesn't help at all IMHO. GIMP is also a bit less stable on Windows than on Linux when handling images of extreme resolution; it seems prone to GLib memory errors if I boost the useable memory space over 1 GB.

Also, Photoshop offers better performance for some filters, at least compared to what GIMP did at the time I tested Photoshop CS2 briefly.

All in all, which is better for you depends on many factors. Do you need Photoshop? Probably not, aside from the more complex colour management situations. is Photoshop better than GIMP? Yes, in most areas, but GIMP is perfectly capable of doing most of the stuff that Photoshop does, it just does it a bit differently, maybe a bit slower and less stabler, but it does it. So if you don't have need for colour management gizmos, all you'll be paying for is the better interface and other basic stuff that photoshop maybe on some subjective scale does somewhat better than GIMP.

Is that worth paying the price of Photoshop for? That obviously depends on how much you need to pay for it. Hence I'd agree that if you can get Photoshop with extreme discount, it might be worth getting, but otherwise you'll need to weigh the performance/price ratio really carefully and preferably test both programs beforehand.

[Topgun]

I think I am going to buy it. I can't pass up a discount like this.

BTW im getting cs4 extended, if that matters.

Is there anything I need to know about the differences between photoshop and gimp that will make the transition easier?

[Bob-san]

I'd say just **** around with Photoshop for a few hours. I found Photoshop to be much easier to use for batch jobs; uploading HD pictures from you DSLR and then working with hundreds of photos. For Photoshop, it was a quick matter to trash, crop, adjust colors, and do other quick tasks. Their batch converted is awesome. Depending on what you want to do, Photoshop typically has the faster and cleaner tools. Remember it's a business-first program. To me, it was easier to learn than AutoCAD.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

All in all, Photoshop's pretty user-friendly. It's been like that since the first time I used Photoshop seven years ago.