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I think the point is that they provide free alternatives to the majority of users who need to use them, but who don't need the full feature set of a pay version. I use gimp and oocalc all the time, but I'm not a power user, so they tend to work out just fine.
And really, Pantone? You can't even accurately display Pantone on monitors, as Photoshop tells you if you've even used that feature. You only use Pantone colours for the printer.
Lastly, gamma? You can apply a gamma layer if you'd really like to. I don't see what the big deal is. I guess I should conclude this by saying "Stop spreading the FUD" but you likely just heard those buzz-phrases from a friend and are repeating them here. Gimp is a wonderful and professional program that performs quite well for most people's needs. It most certainly is "on the table".
I agree that the gimp is functionally good for many users, but right now it's caught in a weird space splitting 2 markets rather than committing to one. if it is intended to be a complete alternate to photoshop, great, make it so. you can start with the list above, but there are many other features beyond those that are similar but not the same. if the intent is not to be a replica of photoshop & rather to provide a photo editing tool that covers a wider market (that maybe doesn't need Pantone/print integrity) that's fine too - but then they've got a lot of work to do in making the experience friendly to that wider/non-photoshopper market.
I don't think the parent was spreading FUD, rather, i think gimp needs to be more clear about setting expectations. maybe it's just a me-problem that doesn't apply outside this anecdote, but i've tried to get convinced by gimp many times through many versions and it's always hit that uncanny valley that inspired too much fear, uncertainty & doubt to become part of my everyday workflow.
Evidently not. Whereas I am a photographer and I speak from having evaluated GIMP for my own use (and I'm hardly a high-end fashion or advertising pro, I do a few weddings a year) and found it lacking. It's hysterical claims that free-X is a perfect substitute for commercial-Y when it's simply not true that do the most harm to free software's credibility.
I was curious, that's all. I'm not a image-manipulation person (the largest amount of image-manipulation I've done involved porting an algorithm to do some stuff from C++ to python), only have cursory experience with both Photoshop and the GIMP, but have heard both "It's no replacement!" and "It's a perfectly good replacement" from people I know who do have a lot of experience with image-manipulation.
I know, for instance, that the interface is wildly different than photoshop's, and was curious as to how much time you had invested into examining it.
If your friends are targetting web output, GIMP may be perfectly adequate.
Don't get me wrong, GIMP is not a bad program. I particularly appreciate it being scriptable in Python, which is my day-to-day bread-and-butter language. But for professional (i.e. stuff that people pay money for) photography targetting print output, it's nowhere near Photoshop - and it's very clear that the authors of GIMP don't understand why. At Adobe, they listen to photographers and designers and the programmers understand that they're not the domain experts. In the GIMP camp they suffer from the same problem as most open-source projects; people who can't code aren't really taken seriously.
There's definitely a focus on feedback from coders in most open-source apps - and that makes sense as well, although I'm sure it can be frustrating.
As a coder, I've found that it can be very hard to communicate with non-coders about coding or design issues - and this seems to be mostly a case of one of us not understanding the domain-specific language of the other.
At Adobe, I'm willing to bet that a lot of the design and goals for abilities are found and decided by people who aren't programmers at all - or who are, but are also very involved with professional-style photo-editing, and that by the time it hits the people coding, the decisions that don't have to do with implementation have been made. (This is only one possibility, but I'm sure there's some sort of "translation" layer there)
I would be somewhat surprised (but not to a large degree) if the GIMP camp wouldn't be open to suggestions from professionals in the field, but communication might be difficult as the users don't understand the coders language, and the coders often don't understand the users language. People in both camps are rare - and in the case of the GIMP (and a lot of OSS), people in both camps are really comfortable using (for instance) interfaces that aren't really up to par, or having the ability to create the extra features they need instead of having those features by default.
There's also the problem with some groups of developers ending up being elitist cocks towards users that want there input heard (There are also elitist cock users, but whatever). There's not much that can be done about that, but it seems to be a decreasing trend as (high-level) programming becomes more mainstream.
Side project, anyone?
Also, I resent the non-inclusion of emacs at least in the notepad, mIRC, and TeXnic center replacement sections.