Graphic design projects like logos, page layouts, and illustrations often need to be adjusted for various different uses, and creating them in a pixel-based editor like GIMP can limit your options. Yes, you can, but it’s not the best choice available. Illustrator is far better for creating vector graphics than GIMP will ever be. GIMP is an extremely capable image editor in terms of functionality, but it lacks a lot of polish and user experience benefits that you get in Illustrator. There are still a few popular questions that get asked about GIMP and Illustrator by readers, so I thought I’d go over some of them quickly now to help save time. I know that with most Creative Cloud subscriptions, you’ll have access to Photoshop for your raster work, but there are plenty of older versions of Illustrator in use today that can benefit from a companion raster editor like GIMP. Illustrator handles all the other graphics and the assembly into a final layout, where its ability to treat graphical elements as distinct objects without requiring each one to have its own layer makes the design process much simpler. GIMP can prep any photos that you might want to include in your designs, and it can help polish and prepare images made in Illustrator for their final usage in other programs or projects. Instead of setting them against each other, it’s a much better idea to use both programs together to complete your design projects in a complete raster/vector workflow. Illustrator’s use of vector graphics makes it suitable for a wide range of projects:Īs you might have noticed from the lists above, there isn’t any real overlap between the capabilities of the two programs. It is named the GNU Image *Manipulation* Program, after all! Here are some common tasks that are best suited for GIMP:ĭespite what you might think from the name, Adobe Illustrator isn’t just for creating illustrations (although it is great at that, of course!). When to Use GIMPĪlthough you can use it to paint and draw new graphics, GIMP is typically used for editing or combining existing pixel-based images. Now that you understand the key difference between how GIMP and Illustrator create and edit digital images, you can probably already start to guess which program is better for your particular project. Illustrator can also import and apply a few edits to pixel images, but you’d never choose to do any serious photo editing with it. GIMP can technically create and edit SVG files, but the support for the format is so limited that it just feels silly to claim that GIMP is also a vector editor. That being said, it’s always better to use a program that’s specifically intended for the type of project you’re working on! As each program has matured over the years, the developers have each expanded their features to the point that there is a bit of crossover between the raster and vector aspects. Somewhat confusingly, the line between raster editors and vector editors isn’t quite so clear anymore. Most modern web browsers can display the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format, but it’s not widely used across the web yet due to potential security concerns. However, the use of native vector formats is on the rise, thanks to their ability to easily scale to different resolutions for display on different devices. In most situations, vector images are only kept in vector format during the editing and saving process (for example while you’re actually working in Illustrator), and then they get exported in a normal raster image format like JPG for sharing and using online. They’re great at displaying the complex details and tonal ranges found in photos, but you can’t scale them easily without blurring the image.Įven when zoomed in to 1600%, the vector image in Illustrator is still perfectly crisp and clear Most of the images you see on your computer and around the web are raster images. Raster graphics, also known as bitmaps, are composed of pixels arranged in a neat, orderly grid.
The biggest difference between GIMP and Illustrator is how they create and manipulate graphics: GIMP is a raster graphics editor, while Illustrator is a vector graphics editor. I’ll try to make it as quick and painless as I can, but it will help you understand the two programs much better. You’re going to have to forgive me, but we have to get technical for a moment.
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR VS PHOTOSHOP FREE
Is there a Free version of Adobe Illustrator?.
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