Slashdot Mirror
New GIMP Book Under Open Publication License
Carey Bunks wrote to tell us that last week, "a new GIMP site, Gimp-Savvy.com, has come online
and is making available the complete text of the recently released book Grokking the GIMP . This new GIMP resource, written by me and published by New Riders, has been released under an Open Publication License. The goals of Gimp-Savvy.com are to provide high-level educational and practical resources for the GIMP, and to promote its skillful and knowledgeable use."
It's good to see high-quality books on open source software, and this one is well-organized, thorough and profusely illustrated. It happens to make a great online GIMP tutorial as well.
Note: as you might expect, many of the Web pages that make up the book are image-heavy (as you might expect), so if you're on a slow connection, browse the detailed, outline-format table of contents carefully.
And if you do have the bandwidth, you can slurp down the entire book to browse later. When's the last time you read a book that came as an HTML tarball?
Speaking of which, I've used Photoshop on SGI.. what's the big deal with porting from Irix to Linux? What's the hold-up?
Last I checked, active PhotoShop for Unix (Irix and Solaris) development finished at around 2.5.1 or 3.0. So ther isn't a contemporary code base to port to Linux (unlike FrameMaker and Distiller). Moreover, Adobe have only decided Linux constitutes some sort of real platform they can make money with in the last few months, with the aforementioned Frame and Distiller ports (as opposed to the Acrobat Reader ports, which are to nearly every platform that still has any kind of ongoing development).
Even with Adobe moving some of their existing Unix products to Linux, I still can't see them porting PhotoShop any time soon. If they didn't think it was worth keeping on the heavily graphics-desktop oriented Irix, I doubt they'll see much value in Linux. BICBW.
On-topic, it is nice to see more Gimp documentation - one of the big problems anyone trying to provide a PShop alternative has is that most people in the graphic arts industry aren't taught about image manipulation (as they were in the pre-digital area), they are taught "PhotoShop"; most courses and books purporting to be about image manipulation and the liek are little more than PhotoShop HOWTOs, so its gratifying to see some substantive alternatives.
I use a small Wacom ArtPad 2 as my primary pointing device because it's a lot easier on my wrist than a mouse. This has the nice side effect of being able to draw and erase pressure-sensitively in the GIMP. It is necessary, however, to recompile your GTK+ toolkit with XInput Extensions enabled. After this is done, it works like a charm.
The latest version of the driver supports even the multiple input Intuos series of tablets. It is available at http://www.lepied.com/xfree86.
F0 07 C7 C8
OK, it's better than nothing, but I would have liked to see the same set of rights as the software.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Hello,
Am not sure why they are endosing Amazon. You can also buy the book at Barnes and Noble for $31.99.
Grokking the Gimp
Other Gimp Books
--
timothy asked: "When's the last time you read a book that came as an HTML tarball?"
Sun has for a while had on their Java website a freely downloadable tutorial, html zipped or tarballed. Bruce Eckel at
http://www.EckelObjects.com/
has freely downloadable books in html (or links to PDF) on Java and C++, Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++. He also makes drafts of his next editions available as he writes them. For that matter so does Sun with the Java tutorials.
Of course the Free Software Foundation makes available their manuals in all sorts of downloadable formats including html.
The GIMP is just amazing... I remember 0.99 when I first downloaded it and though "hmmm.... this is kinda neat." Now (i.e. 1.1.18) this program is fucking PHAT! I can't believe how quickly GIMP has gone from a decent paint program to the best photo editor and straight up computer graphics program around. Once they fix a few small issues with the path tool, this program will be perfect.
/. - he doesn't want to bring it to his dorm because he's afraid it'll get stolen so he leaves it at my house :-) Anyway, back to the Gimp. Gimp has some crazy features that even Photoshop and Illustrator don't (badass plugins, better gradient tool, better-than-photoshop-and-almost-as-good-as-illust rator path tool, great patterns, etc...) - and even better, it's free. I love it :-)
:-) (yeah, yeah, FreeBSD, et al, too :-) As that British guy in "The Man Who Knew Too Little" says, "Happy days, Hawkins... happy days." (that's a phat movie, by the way. If you're not quite obsessed enough to boycott the MPAA, rent it)
Gimp was actually the reason my friend converted from MacOS to Linux yesterday. He's big-time into computer graphics and used Illustrator and Photoshop all the time - now he's a Gimp fiend. He had been using Gimp on my computer and finally broke down and wiped MacOS off his PowerBook (which I'm now using while lying in bed reading
And now with this book online (which is downloading way too slowly right now - damn you people), it's a good time to be a Linux user
Ergh... enough of this ramble. You can go back to reading about hot grits and listening to 11 year-olds ramble off all the swears they can spell.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
As the psd format plugin is a standard plugin that comes with every gimp installation, I'd say that it's natively supported. I don't think any image format is built in, with the exception of the gimps one.
But yes, the reason its not used in the industry isn't because it sucks, but because it's not a Windows program
It's pretty well accepted that the GIMP is only as good as photoshop when it comes to doing web graphics, although that is being changed (afaik there's some cmyk work being done, and some fancy project I've seen (but can't remember what it did))
I do contend with your first point though. Why does support in the industry mean that the program isn't good?
Have you used the most recent release, it has an extremely interesting GUI feature which would solve your access problem straight away. Open your image, right client on the image, go down to the filters menu, and hit the line "----" at the top of the menu for filters.
:)
The filters menu will promptly detach and become a single seperate window, accessible instantly. You can do this with any menu you feel is appropriate. Several steps ahead of Photoshop
You can't win a fight.
For most computer related books, I'd rather have a kilogram of paper sitting right next to me on my desk, than having to read it from the screen. If I look at the books I use a lot -e.g. the bat book- which very much shows it's being (ab)used many times, I simply turn green by the thought that I would only have them on-screen or in HTML format. The single most important part of these books are the indices and TOCs, and printing an HTML file simply doesn't cut it.
Electronically distributed books are very much a pro, but I really want them in a format which makes it easy to print them (sorry, trees ;-) and PS or PDF are two formats which accomplish that. There are plenty of tools available that can deal with these two formats.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Granted this is OT and I'm sure I'll lose a little Karma.
However I'd like to say "Yay tomothy" for posting a nice latenight article. Those of grunts work'n the late shifts appreciate getting a chance to post before the discussion has moved on.
Thanks timothy
Oh my!
That just scared the Bajizus out of me!
I remember thinking that it moved in the past, but dismissing it to a few too many hours in front of my computer . . .
Good call on the irony of using a GIF for the logo. I don't think it's too big of a deal either, but worth a chuckle or two.
I'm sure the guys at http://burnallgifs.org/ would love it.
I dunno. I'm not too hot on Gimp for a few reasons.
a) Gimp has almost no support in the industry. I don't know more than 2-3 people who make a living doing graphics who actually use Gimp day-to-day. And they only use it for web graphics.
b) CMYK support is weak. From what I last remember CMYK support in Gimp is pretty much restriced to converting RGB => CMYK. If you're working in print you need to see your work in the restricted pallette that CMYK offers.
c) Large files. I've heard many potential users complain about Gimp's handling of large files. When you start getting into 120-160MB files (posters and such) it can barely chug along while Photoshop steams on by.
d) Color calibration. Does Gimp even have this?
Now, I'm not saying Gimp will not own in the future, I'm just saying that it's got a way to go before being a viable alternative to the Photoshop. Especially to DTPers.
Cheers,
Jay
-- polish ccs mirror
If you really want to have a hardcopy of the GNU Make manual, you can order it from the GNU folks. It's a great way to support free software (and free manuals).
As a converted windows user, I was exposed for a long time to professional design packages such as Photoshop (raise you hand if you didn't know that one was coming), painter, etc.
After using the GIMP for a couple of days and trying to do all of the same things that I used to do with my other packages, I found that it was distinctly limiting. Now, I am not speaking functionality-wise, but rather in the sense that the GUI was terribly constraining. I could not do the things that I wanted to do as fast as I would like to have done them. I particularly *hated* that the menus were hidden from me (right-click to get to the filters?? what kind of nonsense is that?).
Until some larger companies (Adobe, Macromedia, et al) start to port their large design packages to Linux, I don't see me using it as my main OS for design purposes. Sorry.
Speaking of which, I've used Photoshop on SGI.. what's the big deal with porting from Irix to Linux? What's the hold-up?
--
rJames.org - illustration
Personally, at first I thought it was eyes were to tired from reading to many posts about hot grits, natalie portman, and various other things that my mother told me would make me go blind.
But upon a lengthy and closer examination, I noticed that the GIMPs eyes moved.
And after some clever deduction, I realized that it must be a GIF animation.
Then, I thought GIMP is a GIF... that's kinda interesting, considering the GNU Project's position of GIFs. Not really a big deal in my opinion. But still kinda funny.
And there is definitely something sinister behind those moving eyes...
test
Wasn't it just last night that I overheard the following exchange on the Simpsons?
Can anyone comment on how well Waacom tablets are supported under Linux? My brother currently uses Photoshop, but he'll use whatever I tell him to (and he is a little odd, being an art major and hating Macs but liking DOS...) However, in order for Gimp+Linux to be a viable option for him, his 12x12 tablet needs to be supported, including pressure-sensitivity. The buttons along the top aren't all that critical, but PS _has_ to work.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Ok, there are two reasons why this is really cool, actually probably more but let me list just two.
1) I'm not an environmentalist but this does save a few trees.
2) I couldn't help notice a comment posted by someone a few discussion back who basically claimed the internet was dead simply because it was now filled with so many commercial and useless websites. After contemplating his remarks I found it hard not to disagree at least to some extent. But on the other hand when something like this comes along it makes me look on the bright side again...
There is use for the internet... distribution of information that is both informative and educational. Granted there is plenty of crap out there if you go searching but putting a good book like this online restores my faith in the internet once again.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
> Well, since the Gimp is open source, it should
> be possible for somebody to add this in.
Problem with that:
The very process of pre-press colour management is patented and controlled by the industry in other ways. The pantone system, for example, is an industry standard method of converting additive colours to their subtractive equivalents. Unfortunately, even if you can work this into your free software, you cannot call it pantone. That's okay for some situations (I need cmyk for my colour laser printer, e.g.), but it's not going to fly for professional prepress.
This is not just a matter of working a translation layer for colour into the software. There is an intellectual property issue. Even if you could do a colour separation with Gimp, you cannot use the results professionally without licensing which we cannot obtain.
For web publishing, that's fine, since all we need for computer monitors is RGB+alpha. For hard publishing, it's altogether another story, and not a trivial matter at all.
The printer needs to know, for a given ink and paper on a given press, how a colour is defined. If I have a press in michigan and a press in new york both printing the same book, magazine, cd cover, or what-have-you, I need the colours and ink textures to not only match each other, but also to match as closely as possible the original RGB image. (There are a LOT more colours possible with ink than even the best graphics systems can display, so "closely as possible" means we get the same results from different systems). Just because you have an amazingly accurate flesh tone on your monitor, does not mean that you have the information you need to get that flesh tone onto paper. And even if you could tweak one press or printer to give you the correct tones, you haven't done it for another printer, or even the same printer with different ink.
If you can convince someone like Adobe to release a pantone plugin for gimp, some of this problem will be solved. If you have photoshop, you can do your colour separation with that and use the rgb values for gimp, but do you see something wrong with that picture?
This problem is very similar to the problem with RSA. Someone in a free country could create a NON-US version of Gimp that has CMYK separation capabilities (which isn't hard). *BUT* it could never be legally used in the USA for prepress (commercial or not!) so no one bothers. (At least, the non-us/non-rsaref crypto has a niche where it is useful, so the community delivers that.)
Basically, pointing out the lack of colour standardization as a shortcoming of gimp is not fair to those whose images are not destined for hardcopy press.
I would wager a dollar that most people reading this slashdot article are using gimp to create rgb images which will remain rgb images for their entire life, and that those who criticize the lack of colour standardization in gimp are using something far more sophisticated than gimp for their prepress work.
Furthermore, most of them end up using ONE cmyk value more than any other. (the one for black).
It's not totally fud, but it's not really a fair criticism either. Colour standardization will not magically find it's way into gimp; and it only needs to be there for prepress purposes. Unfortunately, this includes everything from the black ink on your business card to getting your digital photograph on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Basically, if the only tool you have for your digital image is gimp, you won't be getting your picture published, or rather, you will get to pay someone else to put their grubby hands on your image before it gets printed. Do you understand the problem now?
We haven't even touched on the font problem. Have you ever thought about why people who write books benefit from typesetting systems as opposed to word processors? Just because you can make a beautiful antialiased screen font and display it, does not mean that's the way it's going to be rendered by the printing press.
I thought online publishing was taking over anyway. Did the revolution end, or did I miss something? Why are we still printing things on paper? Is it only to keep these patent holders fed?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'd be very interested in hearing the experiences of both authors and publishers about how well open licenses work for books. There are now at least three publishers that I am aware of who have published books that are licensed in whole or in part under an open license: O'Reilly, Coriolis, and New Riders. I am not counting the various publishers who have printed the Linux HOWTOs, Guides, manpages, etc. because those were not new material at the time they were published in printed form. For the same reason, I have also omitted the Free Software Foundation, which has been publishing printed copies of its own manuals for years.
Obviously, from the point of view of the publishers, it works well enough to stick their financial necks out to print the copies. It would be interesting to hear the pros and cons from a financial viewpoint. But what I really want to know is whether anyone has found a way to blend an open license with a print book in such a way that the open source community feedback has continued to improve the text after print publication. There are a lot of worthwhile documentation projects that are too big for a single person working part time on them. A positive answer to this question could encourage them to happen.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Like the GNU Make book ? (The GNU version, not the ORA one).
In that case, it can't be more than a week or two.
HTML Books are cool. I wish that ANSI/ISO would work that out. I'm still using the Draft C++ standard bcs I can get an HTML version of it. I'd happily pay for the final standard, but I'm allergic to PDF.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Don't forget to register your open texts and open web sites: At OpenContent.org there's a database specificaly for works under the Open Content license, and of course you should also register them with Freshmeat.net.
The database at OpenContent.org is pretty impressive but a lot of existing Open Content titles are missing from there.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.