Your experience with GIMP files between systems

[Baby Astronaut]

What's your experience in working on the same .xcf files between different systems?

 

On a Windows computer, I have trouble playing .mov files saved by Adobe Flash on a Mac system, even though Windows has the same version of Adobe Flash (CS5). Even worse, Adobe's .fla work files saved on a Mac don't quite want to play nice on Windows.

 

I hire different people to work on the same animation files, but they have different computer systems so it's becoming a real pain with incompatibility. How does GIMP fare in this manner?

[Xittenn]

I have never had a problem with GIMP and portability issues. Any of the files I've transferred between partitions opened just fine between each instance of the program, under either system.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

On a Windows computer, I have trouble playing .mov files saved by Adobe Flash on a Mac system, even though Windows has the same version of Adobe Flash (CS5). Even worse, Adobe's .fla work files saved on a Mac don't quite want to play nice on Windows.

.mov files aren't Flash but a QuickTime file format created by Apple. You can install QuickTime on Windows if you need to. .fla files should be portable, presuming you have Flash Professional, which is the program used to create Flash animations, not view them.

 

I hire different people to work on the same animation files, but they have different computer systems so it's becoming a real pain with incompatibility. How does GIMP fare in this manner?

XCF files are for static graphics, not animation. But I've not used GIMP on different systems, so I can't really answer about compatibility.

[Baby Astronaut]

.mov files aren't Flash but a QuickTime file format created by Apple. You can install QuickTime on Windows if you need to. .fla files should be portable, presuming you have Flash Professional, which is the program used to create Flash animations, not view them.

 

 

XCF files are for static graphics, not animation. But I've not used GIMP on different systems, so I can't really answer about compatibility.

The animator worked in both Photoshop and Flash. I don't have the programs, so he saved me the both the work file (.fla) and a video copy of the animation. That way I could still view and show it to others. But the Flash on his Mac only gave a GIF or MOV as options for saving the animation. GIF is horribly compressed, so we picked .mov.

 

On the Windows machine of a different animator, Quicktime wouldn't open the .mov file which is strange because it had created the file on the Mac. It's possible we made an error somewhere, I'll have to double check.

 

For some reason, the one .fla file opened up in Windows just fine but wouldn't save, yet now it's mysteriously able to save edits of the other .fla files. Maybe there wasn't really a problem but an oversight somewhere. I really hope the work files are portable between systems as I plan on having others do more editing to the files, via Dropbox or related service.

 

Fonts are a major snag in this, as not everyone has the same fonts available their system. I encountered this problem with using Helvetica on some animations. They couldn't be edited, instead having to be completely redone for each instance.

[doG]

What's your experience in working on the same .xcf files between different systems?

 

On a Windows computer, I have trouble playing .mov files saved by Adobe Flash on a Mac system, even though Windows has the same version of Adobe Flash (CS5). Even worse, Adobe's .fla work files saved on a Mac don't quite want to play nice on Windows.

 

I hire different people to work on the same animation files, but they have different computer systems so it's becoming a real pain with incompatibility. How does GIMP fare in this manner?

Can't comment really on xcf files since I usually save to jpg, png or gif but I've been using GIMP across different platforms for years as my preferred photo editor because it does work so well across different platforms.