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If and only if you have GIMP 1.2.x or higher, select a painting tool (pencil, paintbrush, etc.). Click where you want the line to start. Now hold down Shift and click where you want it to end.

In my opinion this should go in the Interface Hall of Shame if it isn't there already. What kind of interface designer thinks it's a good idea to make such a simple, common task so difficult to discover? Why couldn't they just have a straight line tool like every other paint program on the planet since at least MacPaint way back in 1985?

but there is no version of GIMP for Windows

We should stop calling them "Anonymous Cowards" and start calling them "Anonymous Idiots".

I've been using GIMP on Windows for over two years. Apparently you missed the "GIMP for Windows" link on the main page of the GIMP website. It must be tough for you when things are hidden in plain view.

Since you probably haven't mastered the mouse yet try clicking --> here

Maybe this program will mature in time and I wish the best to the development team.

Let's keep in mind that the original version of the GIMP was written in 1995 by two students before dozens of other developers started contributing to it. The first public version, 0.54, was released in 1996 and had features that were more or less comparable to those available now in Paint.NET. The support for layers was lacking, but it had decent plug-ins, undo and channel operations. It has come a long way since then...

Given enough time and/or contributors, I am sure that Paint.NET could become a very good program. But of course, I hope that the GIMP will always be better...

If you are interested, here is a link to a brief history of the early versions of the GIMP.

gimp is too slow and unusable on Windows.

Did you try a recent version of the GIMP (2.2.0) or did you try an older one such as 2.0.x or 1.2.x?

Also, if you have a look at some of the other comments posted here, you will see that several people describe Paint.NET as being very slow. So if the GIMP is slow on your system, there is a risk that Paint.NET could be even slower for some operations (such as painting with a large brush).

Having learned to use the GIMP years ago (and later being incredibly frustrated at how little I could "intuitively" do on a friend's PC running Photoshop), I would disagree that the learning curve is "enormously steep". It does take a little bit of learning, though.

To anyone out there who would like to try the GIMP out, I would suggest installing and then heading directly to the tutorials page. With approximately a half-hour of tutorial work, you can get the hang of the most of the UI (at which point it becomes much easier to "discover" other features).

Maybe it would be helpful if a few tutorials were included with the GIMP distribution (so people might actually give them a try before giving up).

...install one of the few hundred others immediately available from the competition. Or whip up your own, they've even given us a sample template to speed things along. We look forward to seeing "The Electric Hamster GIMP Splash 1.0" up on Freshmeat soon.

...install one of the few hundred others immediately available from the competition. Or whip up your own, they've even given us a sample template to speed things along. We look forward to seeing "The Electric Hamster GIMP Splash 1.0" up on Freshmeat soon.

...install one of the few hundred others immediately available from the competition. Or whip up your own, they've even given us a sample template to speed things along. We look forward to seeing "The Electric Hamster GIMP Splash 1.0" up on Freshmeat soon.

To make gimp single window. use Xnest in X11 and this for windows.

And to make a line, select a brush. then click on your image, then hold shift and click somewhere else.

Very good point. This has been in their bugzilla (as a feature enhancement) since Sept '03.

Check this out, from their wiki:

The initial roadmap for Gimp 2.0 included a few "professional" touches that previous releases were missing, such as native support for CMYK and 16 bit/channel image depth for video editing. These features have not made it into the 2.0 release, because the Gimp developers decided that it is better to release a good thing now than to delay much longer in the quest of better functionality.

What a joke! Without CMYK, the Gimp is a toy, useful for web graphics but little else. No good to design pros, or to anyone that wants to be able to produce documents to print -- I fall into that second category, and without Photoshop and/or Illustrator, or a Gimp with decent features like native CMYK, there's no way I'm shifting from OS X. Trust me, graphics people do not give a monkeys about Python-Fu .. they want decent tools, they want them to have professional features, they want a decent intuitive UI (anyone that claims the Gimp has this is either a fantatic, a troll, or has the pleasure nodes in his or brain switched with the pain ones). I am not saying this for my own sake, I'm happy using Photoshop, but for the sake of FL/OSS in general. The lack of a decent graphics package This may not sound such a big deal, but without a *n?x version of Photoshop, and the Gimp being in the state it is, this effectively cuts out the viability of using a FL/OSS OS as a graphics workstation.

Of course, this will get me modded down by a furry-loving part of Slashdot for sure, but I think the fact that this disgusting image made it into the final program is just fucking gross. There's nothing sexy about animals, PERIOD.

That open dialog really reminds me of something. Hmm. Oh well, keep innovating guys!

Selling The GIMP

Great.. now we get to use that awesome new save dialog! I couldn't stand being able to choose the dir to save in easily... Reduced usability is fun!

And the amazing new open dialog... After all, being able to type in the name of the file or dir you'd like to see is lame. Text input boxes are soooooo 1990s!

Now if only they'd replace these text inputs on /. so that I can type everything out with my mouse... The ultimate in usability.

*GAG*

Great.. now we get to use that awesome new save dialog! I couldn't stand being able to choose the dir to save in easily... Reduced usability is fun!

And the amazing new open dialog... After all, being able to type in the name of the file or dir you'd like to see is lame. Text input boxes are soooooo 1990s!

Now if only they'd replace these text inputs on /. so that I can type everything out with my mouse... The ultimate in usability.

*GAG*

See "Work In Progress" by Bill Luhtala here!

(closer view)

See "Work In Progress" by Bill Luhtala here!

(closer view)

Details of the release: http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/WhatsNew2

The Winner of the splash screen contest has been announced

Read the announcement from the mailing list archives
here or here

Link to the Winning Splash screen image,
"work in progress..." by Bill Luhtala

URLs <URL:http://example.com/> will auto-link a URL

Done entirely in MS Paint.

Vote for mine here.

About the other ones you are perfectly right, but please not this one, its my absolute favorite =:)

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

I think it's overreaching to blame the design of their splash screen design contest page for any reputation problems. But there has to be a better way of running this contest.

For example, couldn't they at least remove the ones that gratuitously court lawsuits, are totally irrelevant, divisive, or just too ugly for words?

Seriously, thin the herd down to the top 50 or so. What's the point of even having a splash screen if looking at it makes you hesitant to open the application?

Government Induced Mind Probing!!!
Am I the only one who can see the truth???
http://www.gimp.org/var/wgo-contest-current/200412 020906257541-t.jpg

You should vote for this one then ;)

the most.

I have to say, for the basic fact that it is free* The Gimp is an excellent solution. There is no other free software that compares to it.

But it is still less-than.

As someone who has been in the design field professionaly for over 10 years, I can say that The Gimp lacks a lot of proper features (color correction, pre-press) and more importantly, is just a pain to use. The interface is competely counter-intuitive for a Mac OR Windows user. If that is the best tool available, so be it. But I would gladly fork over $800 for Photoshop rather than have to deal with Gimp.

That's just me though.

Please define "passable workflow". How is it missing from Linux?

If you think there's no scripting or batchmode in Linux image manipulation, I suggest you do a little research on the GIMP, ImageMagick, and SANE.

I won a used Minolta DiMAGE II slide/film scanner on ebay for $162.50 a month ago.

I downloaded the GIMP for free.

Grokking the GIMP is available online.

HTH

How often do you need to run an X app across the wire? How many times do you need to support multiple displays and screens (OK, this is slashdot, so I know some of you do -- I have myself, but it's very rare).

Let's see... Every day I have two or three XTerms on different machines from which I launch some editors (emacs, xemacs) and various graphical programs (purify, xcompare). Then I also have a mail client (sylpheed) running from yet another machine through ssh X forwarding and sometimes also a web browser (FireFox) running remotely from that machine. I even run the GIMP remotely at least once per week. And I do a lot of copy and paste between these applications running on different boxes. Basically, it would be hard for me to work without the network transparency offered by X. Should I also mention that these boxes run different operating systems (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD) and use different processor architectures?

Granted, I may not be a typical user and as you pointed out, some Slashdot visitors are likely to do unusual things. But for me, relying on X to work accross the wire is not very rare - it's what I need every day.

So the fact that KDE and GNOME rely on X is a feature, from my point of view. I wouldn't mind if a replacement for X would be added as an option, but I don't think that I would use it.

The pending 2.2 release will add previews for most filters. Unsharp mask included... You can find a list of what's new in this release here.

Something I've liked in the past from compiling development versions of the Gimp are the development splash screens. Frequently containing giant photos of bugs (for squashing, obviously), fake news report screengrabs or some other warped aspects of the programmers' humour, they often show that programmer art isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Although a couple of them were astoundingly crude - but I think that was intentional. :-)

You can find out more about GIMP splash screens

I have been experimenting with creating compositing software lately, and the engine works,. it has high bitdepth, and some effects, interesting do occur when combining multiple atoms though. EffecTV has this same effect the chameleon tv effect, this version might also give a few hints about how the effect is made.

I don't have much time to work on this software, essentially what I've got is a fully working engine for video editing/compositing, but not time to get the ui really going.

For the original reason, see here: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/why.html

I'm not aware of any specific goals with GIMP on Windows - there simply are individuals who use Windows and find it worth the effort to keep GIMP and GTK+ running on it. I personally have contributed several bugfixes to GTK+ and GIMP on Windows because those bugs annoyed me and I had the time and knowledge to find and fix them.

It might be possible to hack some of these features into the current GIMP, but that might be considered counter productive, hopefully a clean implementation of these concepts is possible in the not too distant future,. remember GIMP is a volunteer project, and timeframes nearly impossible to estimate.

The things in those screenshots is a video compositor built around a testbed for the GEGL engine. That video editing application is called bauxite.

Bauxite and it's underlying libraries are available for download already (dig around). GIMP intergration will take more time since it involves major surgery. Bauxite and the librarires surrounding it can be seen as a prototype used to learn about problems before they will occur during GEGL/Gimp integration.

/pippin

Ugh. Thank you for illustrating exactly why people find the open source software community so intolerably obnoxious. To a user with legitimate questions and needs, a snide and condescending "tutorial" that painstakingly explains a completely unintuitive process, as if to imply it's the user's fault for not jumping through hoops, is a huge turn-off.

I know it's open source dogma to always "blame the user", but it's still unbelievable that the administrators of gimp.org thought it appropriate to post this "tutorial."

This has been planned for a long while, GEGL is the library that is planned for this in GIMP, by introducing a new low level library for all the core image processing a smoother path towards higher bitdepths will also occur.

There is no opposition between a graph of operations / connectable blocks and a layer tree.

/pippin

This has been planned for a long while, GEGL is the library that is planned for this in GIMP, by introducing a new low level library for all the core image processing a smoother path towards higher bitdepths will also occur.

There is no opposition between a graph of operations / connectable blocks and a layer tree.

/pippin

You could have pointed to this tutorial instead which is about as sarcastic as your reply ;)

Besides Script-Fu and its successor Tiny-Fu, there's Perl, Python and Lua for you to choose from. There also used to be Java bindings and probably others but I am not sure if these have been updated for GIMP 2.x yet. Generally, all the functionality is available in a well-defined API and it is not a big deal to write a binding that allows you to write scripts/plug-ins in your favorite programming language.

If you had bothered to RTFA you would have noticed that rotation preview is in 2.2.
http://developer.gimp.org/screenshots/gimp-preview -rotate.png

Slackware, you insensitive clod! ;-)

Actually on a serious note, I install (for my mother, family and friends)...

7-zip
gs / gsview
Firefox / Thunderbird
AVG
WinPT
Eraser
OpenOffice
Gimp (depending on the family member or friend)
Gaim
FileZilla
Amaya (only because bluefish is not available on win32 yet)
RealVNC
VIM
irFanview
Azureus (depending on the family member or friend)
Daemon Tools (depending on the family member or friend)