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That's because you were PAID for it.

my UI's are scrutinized by project champions, end users (through UAT sessions) and our internal QA department.

Because they were PAID to do it.

because of changing corporate colours/branding.

Corporations GET PAID. Linux is not a corporation. Neither is GNU. As in "GNU Image Manipulation Program".

At home, I use programs which I find usable.

Let me guess. You PAID for them.

I use desktop backgrounds that I like and some of them were created by me but I don't discriminate.

Because...no, hey, wait: SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR!!! OK, and I bet your desktop art can hold it's own with da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Picasso, no? Or is it just "good enough for you"? So, if you share it with anybody else, and they say "This sucks!", your reaction is to shrug and say, "Well, guess you'll have to use something else, then.", isn't it? Because you do the best you can, and your best is usually satisfactory to you, but you don't CLAIM to be on a par with the great art masters of the world, so whose business is it if you aren't?

Likewise, Gimp comes with no guarantees. A few people (or person...I think I must be the only one, sometimes) have no problem with the interface at all. But Gimp doesn't advertise itself to be a Photoshop clone, or any other wonderful thing at all. The developers do all they can with what they've got, and it's good enough for some people. It's NOT the only option, not even for image manipulation programs that run on Linux/Unix/POSIX platforms.

But now they've got YOU: http://developer.gimp.org/ Because you're going right to this link to sign up to work on the developer team immediately, right? Because you cared so much to rag on other's work in public, I'm sure you care enough to BECOME one of the development team and put your fantastic ideas into practice, right? Otherwise, you would have found no reason to complain.

http://developer.gimp.org/ Sign up and volunteer! I want to see EVERY SINGLE NAME in here that posted with a flame about the Gimp on the development team and working their asses off to patch in all the improvements they've so generously suggested. I await the products of your labor.

Well spoken! But you forgot the link to the Gimp developer site: http://developer.gimp.org/. Because I'm sure the usual crowd of Slashdotters who rag on the Gimp are just DYING to dive in and work on it themselves, because why else would they care so much that they flame like Puff'n'Stuff in here about it?

Have you read the gimp man-page, in particular the part about splash images? http://gimp.org/man/gimp.html#SPLASH

I don't think that it is correct to say that the userbase of GIMP is small or inferior to another userbase. The userbase looks quite good considering the number of fabulous candidates that there were. I hope that you browsed through these pages before making your assertion.

I think that it is not a matter of the userbase not pumping out good material, but rather the developers' poor choice. I do not think that the clock is original in any way (not that originality is possible, but a clock seems too common and too easy to think of). There were much nicer and more original splashes from the candidate gallery. For example the one titled, "NextGen GIMP" or "The road to infinity". Actually the most creative one was "Tree of Ideas" in my view (but it was not as good-looking as others to win).

Clean, simple, relevant. Probably not enough wizardry for them though.
http://www.gimp.org.nyud.net:8090/contest/gallery. cgi?display=image&name=2005112609582421525
http://www.gimp.org/contest/gallery.cgi?display=im age&name=2005112609582421525

You can see the others for yourself if you like...
http://gimp.org/contest/gallery.cgi

IMO, they made a fairly bad choice. The contest was supposed to, among other things, show off what GIMP could do. The winner's strongest point was the photograph.

I know that my entry and each of my friend's numerous entries was done entirely from scratch with GIMP. I wouldn't be surprised if many others turned out that way.

It looks like some kind of rusty dial off the Titanic... only it's measuring.. years... which maxes out at.... 30.

Umm...

What?

This might help. There is no GUI involved here, though it does still require some scripting. If I'm reading it correctly the script can be entered entirely on the command line rather than referencing a file.

but it raises an excellent point.
I've no idea what that point is. I think it may be that he believes that the only way that people know which program to use is if it is spelled out in full:
"MicroSoft Windows Web Browser"
"MicroSoft Windows program to play music and video files"
"Adobe program to manipulate photos, images and pictures"
If that's all you want, create a menu item that takes up half the screen:
"GNU Image Manipulation Program"
Sorry, I guess that was not the point he was trying to make, was it?

The author seems to be lacking in depth of experience, implying that GIMP, Opera and FireFox are "Linux applications" only.

I don't know about anyone else, but I keep my GIMP in /usr/local.

GIIMP-related books can be found at: http://www.gimp.org/books/. Better yet, go to its online tutorials at: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/, and just print them out on sheets of 3-hole punched paper and bind them into a book, and then download a copy of GIMP (from http://www.gimp.org/), burn it into a CD, and gift-wrap all the items and present the package as a Christmas gift for her.

Without using any dead-tree books, I taught myself how to use GIMP and other free graphic software like Pixia and ArtRage by consulting their "Help" sections and online tutorials. Here are some examples of what I, someone who has no formal computer graphics training, can do: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-looks-at -old-movie-classics.html

GIIMP-related books can be found at: http://www.gimp.org/books/. Better yet, go to its online tutorials at: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/, and just print them out on sheets of 3-hole punched paper and bind them into a book, and then download a copy of GIMP (from http://www.gimp.org/), burn it into a CD, and gift-wrap all the items and present the package as a Christmas gift for her.

Without using any dead-tree books, I taught myself how to use GIMP and other free graphic software like Pixia and ArtRage by consulting their "Help" sections and online tutorials. Here are some examples of what I, someone who has no formal computer graphics training, can do: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-looks-at -old-movie-classics.html

GIIMP-related books can be found at: http://www.gimp.org/books/. Better yet, go to its online tutorials at: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/, and just print them out on sheets of 3-hole punched paper and bind them into a book, and then download a copy of GIMP (from http://www.gimp.org/), burn it into a CD, and gift-wrap all the items and present the package as a Christmas gift for her.

Without using any dead-tree books, I taught myself how to use GIMP and other free graphic software like Pixia and ArtRage by consulting their "Help" sections and online tutorials. Here are some examples of what I, someone who has no formal computer graphics training, can do: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-looks-at -old-movie-classics.html

The stumbling block is that I use a Canon i9900 printer in large format photorealistic mode, and a Wacom graphics tablet in Paint Shop Pro, for a very small percentage of my work, and there are no Linux equivalents. So I'm stuck with one toe in the Windows world. I can move more than 97% of my work to Linux at any time, but I'll have to go to WinXP to print the 11x17" photos and to do some of the photo touch-ups. I spend perhaps 4 hours a month on these activities-- it really is a small but important part of my work.

While I can't find any good news for the printer, most Wacom tablets are supported in Linux. As for Paint Shop Pro, most versions run in Wine, and I'm sure you've heard of GIMP before.

I find Last.FM a better method to find new music. Granted, the new Player REALLY SUCKS, I used it before they started the new player thing. There is a Proxy being developed which restores the old functionallity more or less.

Oh, that and the Pandora music project is not free:

Q: How much does it cost?

Pandora is available in two forms. Both versions have exactly the same features.

The first form is an advertising-supported version which is entirely free. Over time we'll be incorporating ads into this version of Pandora.

For those who want to steer clear of advertising, subscriptions are available in two different flavors:

        ANNUAL: 12 months of unlimited use for $36
        QUARTERLY: 3 months of unlimited use for $12



while the last.fm is free unless you want a "personal" radio.

Is this entry avalable as wallpaper or something? Seriously, I'd love to have this as my desktop background.
http://www.gimp.org/contest/gallery.cgi?display=im age&name=2005112318574628577

Apparently the gimp isn't all that is asleep... The contest has been closed.

"Submissions The contest is now closed. You can view the current submissions in the gallery or in the public voting system. Results The jury has now made it's choice and we have a winner: "work in progress..." by Bill Luhtala has been choosen as the splash image for Gimp 2.2."

Somebody better wake up Commander Taco and let him know.

Homer: Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel.

There's a GIMP fork called CinePaint (formerly known as Film Gimp, as it focused on features needed by the movie/special effects industry) that has CMYK support, IIRC. The features it adds were originally supposed to get merged into GIMP 2.0, but the GIMP developers later told the Film Gimp guys that they didn't want these things in the main branch after all.

That's a rather biased view of how things happened. I suppose that some CinePaint developers would like to describe the history like that. But looking at the archives of the GIMP mailing lists reveals a different story: Film Gimp started from a fork of an old version of the GIMP 1.x (based on GTK1), while the main development was taking place on what would eventually become GIMP 2.x (based on GTK2). Film Gimp development stagnated for a couple of years, until a new guy (Robin Rowe) appeared and decided to revive it.

When he brought this up on the developer's list, the consensus was that it would be much better to take the best bits of the old Film Gimp codebase and merge them into the new architecture that was developed for GIMP 2.x instead of continuing to work on the old Film Gimp and making the fork diverge even further from the GIMP. There were also some arguments why the design of the old Film Gimp and the way it was storing image data was not appropriate for the GIMP and would have to be adapted instead of being merged directly, but I'm not sure that I understand the details of that. Anyway, it looks like he decided to go ahead and work on the old fork despite the suggestion from the GIMP developers. Later, that code was renamed CinePaint. Also, CinePaint distanced itself from the GIMP in very obvious ways (check some old versions of the CinePaint home pages in the web archive). So although the GIMP developers could have handled this in a better way, a lot of issues could have been solved if the features needed for the movie industry had been integrated in the then-current GIMP instead of reviving an old fork like Robin did.

Just check the archives of the GIMP mailing lists and you will see a different story than the simplistic view that you just described. Also, this statement on the CinePaint home page is just a (bad) joke: "Later the film industry was told no, that GIMP wasn't interested in meeting the film industry's requirements because it wasn't what existing GIMP users cared about." This is very different from what I understand after browsing the archives of the mailing lists (although I can never know if some other discussions took place behind the scenes). Anyway, if you are interested in checking this for yourself, the GIMP list archives are linked from http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html and you can just browse through the discussions around the times when Robin posted something on the developers lists (check mail-archive for search, or manual browse through the old XCF lists). There were a few personal attacks from both sides, though. So these guys should learn to get together in a better way. But still, it looks like Robin is as much (if not more) to blame as the GIMP developers.

Here on the official Web site.

dude, it's free. don't like the development status? lend a hand.

All in all, without tigert's demos - I'd have relegated gimp to being a glorified paint application instead of the cool tool for web-desginer it has recently become (and I'm not a professional web-dev, but I still like to muck around with gimp). Jimmac is good, but Tigert was and is the gimp wizard I shall worship for ever.

All in all, without tigert's demos - I'd have relegated gimp to being a glorified paint application instead of the cool tool for web-desginer it has recently become (and I'm not a professional web-dev, but I still like to muck around with gimp). Jimmac is good, but Tigert was and is the gimp wizard I shall worship for ever.

All in all, without tigert's demos - I'd have relegated gimp to being a glorified paint application instead of the cool tool for web-desginer it has recently become (and I'm not a professional web-dev, but I still like to muck around with gimp). Jimmac is good, but Tigert was and is the gimp wizard I shall worship for ever.

"but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure!"

I said the same thing not but eight months ago. Then, about two months ago, I installed a Linux distro on my home desktop. I've installed plenty of them before, but they never stuck. Even the one I'm using right now (Gentoo) has been on this system at least half-a-dozen times. However, this time it stuck.

"And why's that?", you may ask. Well, over the past few years I've been migrating to Open Source Software! Replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, replacing Photoshop with The GIMP, and of course replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox.

Anyway, once I got comforatible with the administration aspects of a Unix-like system, the software all fell into place. Most of the programs I use now on my NIX system are the same programs I used to use on my Windows install. And the best part is, if you enjoy fidling with stuff and don't mind recompiling loads of code, a Gentoo system (or just about any other non-bloated NIX distro) is at least twice as fast as a Win system.

Anyway, just saying Mac guy, if you want to take the plunge, go ahead and do it. You'll be pleasently supprised.

That's my $0.02.
QBRADQ

Try this instead: http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=4212

Regardless of how simple an interface is. Some people will manage to find the most complicated method available.

Gimp is built to be extended with plugins and scripted.

The GIMP does it just fine, of course. I don't know if you use Linux, but ImageMagick is a great command line tool which lets you do almost anything on a number of image file formats; it's a Godsend when you need to do batch processing.

    I also used to do simple image editing with ACDSee too (JPEG conversion, resizing, rotating, etc).

I often use The Gimp for simpler web-oriented photo editing, and bash scripts using convert and various other utils for large batches of images. I believe Gimp supports CLI scripting, but I don't think it's very advanced.

You must know about Gimp if you have a Slashdot account.

Gimp supports 24-bit color (also known as "True Color"), and has for as long as I can remember.

Why don't you tell them yourself: http://gimp.org/bugs/

Take a look at Deweirdifyer.

For those that just can't let go of Windows 3: Deweirdifiyer plugin for GIMP.

"I though 16bit support was due in GIMP about now?"

Yes, for any given meaning of "now". :-)

GIMP 1.4 (later renamed to 2.0) was going to a reorganization of the code, with a better separation of core functionality and interface. Then the GEGL library was going to replace the graphics processing functions. Except that by 2.0, GEGL wasn't nearly ready yet.

In the meantime it had been decided that because of the many ideas for new features that had been on hold while waiting for 2.0, a version 2.2 would be brought out first that incorporated all these new features (better previews, live transformations, better dialogs, &c.).

GEGL was going to happen in 2.4, IIRC, but that plan also seems to have been given up. A mail on the developer list from June 5, 2005, titled "The GUADEC meeting", detailing a meeting of several developers, reads:

        "We would like to get GIMP 2.4 out soon. The plan is to finish what has been started in the development branch. This should be doable over the summer. This means that 2.4 will have color management but we aren't going to try larger changes such as adding support for higher bit depths."

        "We agreed though that 8bit is not going to get us much further and that we need to pick up on GEGL again. The GEGL source tree had been abandoned for a while, the last commit dating back to March 2004. We found that in order to make further plans, we first need to get an overview on the current state of the code."

There is also mention of reworked menus.

It doesn't say so in the e-mail message, but the colour management Sven is referring to probably does not entail true CMYK, because that was also planned for (and put off for) GEGL.

"There's always cinepaint, the new version sounds promising."

Last time I checked, Cinepaint was a one man show and fairly buggy. (Granted, that was a while ago.)

"I'm sure some people out there would prefer a graphics editor without a GUI."

I find a GUI relatively useful for apps with a canvas. Still, for graphics operations that do not require a canvas, GIMP die-hards often recommend ImageMagick.

There's a large body of complementary apps for the GIMP.

Open Source software has often been acused of lacking in the graphical department. With the advent of more stable Inkscape 0.42.2 and user friendly Gimp 2.0 this has left us lacking only in the video department. Cinerella 2.0 was just released to close that gap. Coupled with alternatives such as diva , blender and others, what is linux and other Open Source operating systems still lacking?

Hey, someone else has had this problem too. Fortunately, free software to the rescue. and this plugin works nicely.

This is where the true support for these formats will remain - open source. If you want support, you have the freedom to write it yourself.

Of course, if memory serves me right non-free Paint Shop Pro still has IFF support as well. Hmmm. This page seems to say so. I seem to remember Photoshop having IFF support, but that was 3.0 or 4.0ish many moons ago onna MacOS classic box.

Have you seen the windows gimp deweirdifier plugin? http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=3892 It might help if you're using GIMP on windows. The latest gimpShop for windows includes it by default. http://blog.yumdap.net/archives/20-GIMPshop-for-Wi ndows.html

GIMP, Inkscape, Nvu. Fine, these products are nowhere near as good as anything Adobe/Macromedia offer, but if they stagnate the competition will eventually come from Free software like this. I doubt they'll stagnate though.

The original intent of The Gimp was to provide a set of modules to insert into a larger application for image management, as well as provide a framework for image modification libraries. Hence the floating palette model and distributed UI system.

It just so happens everyone just wants a binary to run Gimp directly on their OS because the binary which showcased the code waaayyy back in the day ended up turning out pretty darn good?

I can only imagine a usability call is more likely a shift to focusing on a specific Gimp application rather than an API. Yay. If it turns out decent, then y'all got what you wanted. If not, you'll all be using a code showcase as an image editor. Here let me pause and LMFAO.

The Gimp as a standalone app was an appropriation never intended, but unavoidable the day the first Win binary was released. But as everyone knows, if its free, and it does one thing everyone wants, it turns into that one thing, and so The Gimp grew like a Boil that everyone picked at, trying to figure out just what the hell it was.

Is it that Slashdot is once again complaining about getting a free Hot Dog, carefully slicing it into very small lunch meat and calling it bologna?

(just found a screenshot)

Kinda like this:

http://gimp.org/screenshots/linux_screenshot2.png

Except instead of having one big panel on the far left and far right of the screen, I just cram it all into one big panel on the left.

having to click to expose just the root menu is excessive. The root menu should always be visible, IMO.

By "root menu" do you mean the menu bar at the top of the tool window, or the context menu in the document window? If the latter, then GIMP 2.0 and later have added that menu to the top of the document window. If the former, then try the Deweirdifyer extension on Windows or virtual desktops on *n?x.

Productivity:

Graphics:

Media:

Internet:

Survival Kit:

Development:

Imagine a scenario where you and some of your friends sit down and write a really cool app. It works pretty well, so it gets posted online for others to enjoy, which many do. You don't charge money for it, but you and your friends maintain and update the app for whatever reasons you so desire, be they fun, recognition, etc.

Then I download your app, throw up a website, strike all references that refer back to you, your friends, or even your app's name, and then charge people ten bucks a pop to download your software.

That company is doing just that with GIMP (example), among others. I'm no lawyer, but even if that is legal, it certainly is still morally wrong. Don't present other peoples' work as your own. :P

In your view what short comings would open source software such as Blender http://www.blender.org/ and the GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ need to overcome in order to be suitable to become part of the pipeline for developing high end game content as used in WoW?

LetterRip

For someone not "in the know", could you explain what's ironic about the G?

Most people that I've seen on Slashdot accept that GIMP has features and quality comparable to Photoshop but a less user-friendly interface. For my part, I only used Photoshop once, back before I was quite as skilled with computers as I am now, couldn't figure it out, and hated it, and I basically had the same reaction to my first experience with the GIMP. :) Eventually I got over that reaction and really dug in -- there are good manuals available online, so learning to use it is not an expensive proposition (but it is time-consuming). Every task I have wanted to do in the GIMP, I have been able to do -- shift all the colors a certain amount but maintain the same shades, draw something that looked like it was shiny metal, draw a picture that could tesselate -- but the trick in both programs was always finding out how. (I suspect I don't "think like an artist".)

GIMP is a free-as-in-beer download, so why not try it and see what you think?

Ethan
P.S. Layer->Colors->Hue-Saturation, http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Golden_Text/, and http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Tileable_Textures/.

For someone not "in the know", could you explain what's ironic about the G?

Most people that I've seen on Slashdot accept that GIMP has features and quality comparable to Photoshop but a less user-friendly interface. For my part, I only used Photoshop once, back before I was quite as skilled with computers as I am now, couldn't figure it out, and hated it, and I basically had the same reaction to my first experience with the GIMP. :) Eventually I got over that reaction and really dug in -- there are good manuals available online, so learning to use it is not an expensive proposition (but it is time-consuming). Every task I have wanted to do in the GIMP, I have been able to do -- shift all the colors a certain amount but maintain the same shades, draw something that looked like it was shiny metal, draw a picture that could tesselate -- but the trick in both programs was always finding out how. (I suspect I don't "think like an artist".)

GIMP is a free-as-in-beer download, so why not try it and see what you think?

Ethan
P.S. Layer->Colors->Hue-Saturation, http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Golden_Text/, and http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Tileable_Textures/.

f I didn't download Photoshop I'd just have to learn to love a truly free alternative.

I have half a mind to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on my 1.2 GHz box. Fewer unnecessary services, and programs really will open instantly.

You could try a minimal Linux distribution with a lightweight window manager. It will make your 1.2GHz computer seem very fast.

It is even possible (though probably non-trivial) to run your copy of Paintshop using Wine (a windows compatibility library for Linux). Otherwise there is Gimp which might be able to do the things you need.

Not only will you have a fast system, but also secure, up-to-date and still supported.

the questions will be raised as to whether the open-source model is relevant and useful to the graphics community. Does the model of proprietary application research, development, and usage serve the industry better? Or will commercial facilities continue to primarily choose off-the-shelf solutions? Can all models work together?

There's a place for both open source and proprietary software. Open source makes it easy for software to get into users hands while proprietary softwar gives developers and incentive to create good applications. In this case the incentive I'm talking about is is financial. Would Adobe spend 1000s of man hours developing Photoshop if the source code was open? I don't think so, and the open source project that comes closest that I know of to Photoshop is GIMP which while good can't do all that PH can.

GIMP hard to install!? It has a Windows installer that works wonderfully. (http://gimp.org/windows) I just installed it last week, but I think the installer's been around for at least a year.