Scammers
We all know those scammers who take FLOSS software, change the name and try to make a buck from naive users, I saw this so many times with OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Inkscape, Audacity and so on. So no surprise seeing one of those renaming GIMP as PhotoEditorX, hyping is as "Award-Winning Photo Editing Software Previously Only Available For Professional Studios" or "Dead-Simple To Get Started & Great For Beginners & Professionals Alike" (GIMP detractors - that is in your face!) and selling it as the incredible discount of 47$ (down from $297)
Nothing out of usual so far until the step where a kind soul noticed the scammer is using one of my videos to advertise his product (a small demo for the Resynthesizer smart-removal plugin. I am not very sure if I should be angry about such usage (at least I have a title in the video saying "GIMP") or feel flattered by my video being called "a must see!". Anyway, the video is Free, licensed as CC-BY-SA, so the only thing I could do is to try to get satisfaction on the BY (attribution) and SA (share alike) parts (like a scammer would care!). Or try to shame him on my blog... oh, I just did that :D
So a moral for this story? That's what the guy has to say about GIMP "If You Think PhotoShop Is Good, You Ain't See Nothing Yet..." Ignore the hype, have a look at my Free graphics tutorials and you will understand applications like GIMP and Inkscape are really useful, with the potential to make your life better. Just don't give money to scammers.
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Looks like payments are processed through clickbank. They have a TOS:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.clickbank.com/network_abuse.html
Spend 5 minutes complaining and see if you can shut him down for a day or two...
If people start copying your work, then it must be good, Nicu :)
ReplyDeleteWhat if it's not a scam?
ReplyDeleteThe product includes GIMP built for MS Windows and Mac OS, plus 3 hours of video. They say "Note: Full Source & License Available in Download Area" and if they're following through on that, they're meeting their GPL obligation.
And they offer an online support board. If the help that new users get is good enough, and the product doesn't include spyware or something, it might be a good deal.
I want to know... can you take the photo on the right and make it look like the one on the left. She's much prettier on the left.
ReplyDeleteI like the initiative i like the name and i guess you like the pub. Just like the manele singers if you get copied it's a good thing :)
ReplyDeleteQq
@Smooge: making the face look natural is much harder than making it look like plastic, probably the easiest is to add the freckles back with a brush and specular light on the lips with the dodge tool.
ReplyDeletethey also have one of my videos..... fł¶↓€ŧk s↓¶ŧt
ReplyDeleteI think many GIMP detractors are people like me who were so used to Photoshop, we didn't want to have to re-learn a lot of things. But in the face of the recession, after switching from Mac to PC, I didn't want to re-pay for Adobe apps, so I've been forcing myself to learn GIMP.
ReplyDeleteSo far, GIMP has been able to do everything I wanted to do, but I had to Google a lot of it because the steps are different than in Photoshop. But once I get proficient on GIMP, I'll be able to use it on whichever platform I like as long as the community keeps developing it. The short-term pain will produce long-term gain.
I am honest and acknowledge there are technical areas where GIMP is inferior to Photoshop (CMYK, adjustment layers, >8 bits per color channel, work with huge images and so) but most of the people do not use those features, they are like you Greg, not motivated enough to learn a new GUI. I do photography and for me GIMP is enough (well... coupled with things like ImageMagick, Hugin and some plugins like GREYCstoration or Reshyntesizer)
ReplyDeleteI also think she's prettier in the "Before" image... :-)
ReplyDeleteFocus people! This is not about excessive photo retouching (is someone want to make Playboy-style photography from normal people he has the freedom to) but about scammers.
ReplyDeleteI think many GIMP detractors are people like me who were so used to Photoshop, we didn't want to have to re-learn a lot of things. But in the face of the recession, after switching from Mac to PC, I didn't want to re-pay for Adobe apps, so I've been forcing myself to learn GIMP.
ReplyDeleteThat is the real problem: inability to adapt to some image editing other than Photoshop even though they share the same basic concept. Mac version on Photoshop has similar interface to Gimp so most complaints are from Photoshop for Windows users. Gimp is not hard at all.
Speaking about CMYK support, there is an add-on called separate+ that allows exporting file in CMYK. Granted that Gimp still cannot read CMYK but it is better than nothing
The title picture would not convince me. The girl looks so much prettier on the original.
ReplyDeleteHoly moly, this is scary!!! Will talk about it on your next LUG meeting!
ReplyDelete@Russel: Tatica got in contact with this guy and asked him to remove the videos, I didn't follow the outcome.
ReplyDelete