Bloated Image Programs

PhotoShop and TheGimp are both photo programs by most accounts. They excel at fixing bad photos.

However, starting with version 3 of PhotoShop, compositing features were added, thus taking PhotoShop into the domain of programs like AltimaraComposer or LivePicture.

Further, photoshop and the gimp have ton of paint effect type brushes and filters and plugins, taking them into the domain of Painter.

Is this a good thing, or is it just bloat?

I wouldn't call those features extraneous. PhotoShop and TheGimp are both far more than photo fixers. All of those compositing features and plugins are what make graphic artists at my company capable of producing some of the best stuff in the game industry. The texture artists couldn't live without a lot of those features. -- JesseBlomberg

It would be really annoying to constantly switch between three different programs (photo fixer, compositor, painter). It's also annoying to wait so long for PhotoShop to start, but you only have to do it once a day. I don't think it's bloat--it's useful integration of related functionality. (But I think the same of MicrosoftWord, so take my opinion for what it's worth.) -- KrisJohnson

Brushes, filters, and plugins might be BellsAndWhistles? in BloatedPhotoPrograms (which would be a better name for this page). They're quite useful in image editors. It's all in how you look at the tool.

If you think PhotoShop is bloated, you're probably not its target market. There are tons of people who rely on it for their job -- graphic designers, photo assistants, etc. -- who consider it the standard image editing tool by which all other programs must be judged. Yes, it's a big program. So buy a big, fast computer with a nice chip speed and huge tracts of RAM. If you're dealing with a $10k photo shoot or a $50k graphic design account then your investment will pay off. If you're just tidying up your vacation photos, then use something else. -- francis