First Preview of GIMP 2.0 Ready for Testing

molnarcs writes "The first preview of GIMP-2.0 is available. It can be installed side-by-side with GIMP 1.2 - so there is no need to uninstall 1.2 to test it. According to this README, some parts (gimp-perl and GAP) were removed from the main package, and will be released as separate modules. Use the mirrors listed on the homepage to download the source code. (Also available for FreeBSD via ports)." Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.

Comments

Yes but....

[dustmote]

Does it allow me to copy money? I hear programs like this are in short supply. :)

Re:Yes but....

[Anonymous Coward]

To copy money on Photoshop CS, its easy. Here is how to get around it.

1. Open up image in ImageReady.
2. Click import image to Photoshop
3. Have funny money fun :D

Adobe are stupid.

Re:Yes but....

[grub]

Heh.. well the fact that you can see the source and determine if there are covert functions will let you find that out for yourself without having to trust a mega-corp.

Re:Yes but....

[capoccia]

Does it allow me to copy money? I hear programs like this are in short supply. :)

I copied some currency with the GIMP recently. No problems at all.
http://kandent.com/archives/2003_11/funny_money.ht ml

Re:Yes but....

[GrievousAngel]

Being free isn't enough for you? I'm afraid if you want a license to print money, you'll have to get a job either at the Treasury or at Microsoft. Sorry.

Re:Yes but....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gimp! #1 among counterfeiters worldwide!

Re:Yes but....

[DrEldarion]

Nah, copying the bill isn't the problem. It's actually printing a realistic one that's that hard part.

Re:Yes but....

[Dunkelzahn]

Damn, you know a server needs work when its slashdotted from a comment and not even in the article. :P

Re:Yes but....

[capoccia]

Damn, you know a server needs work when its slashdotted from a comment and not even in the article. :P

something is wrong with your config. i've only gone through 1-3/4 GB and i've got a 5 GB/day cap. my site's still up. besides it's just virtual hosting, so you really won't be slashdotting the server. they'll turn my site off before it gets that bad.

Re:Yes but....

[Genda]

How'z it at copying Kugerands???

Genda Bendte

This sig reserved for paying customers...

Screenshots?

[jeffkjo1]

Does anyone have any screenshots?

Re:Screenshots?

[b1nhb00ng]

it is pretty much like version 1.3.x (development releases) since 2.0 is the final.

Re:Screenshots?

[drizst 'n drat]

sure do. unfortunately i can't show them to you as my monitor is currently smoking!

Re:Screenshots?

[locknloll]

well, at least not on gimp.org...

This document contains no data.

Nice job, /.

Re:Screenshots?

[Gilesx]

http://www.gimp.org/the_gimp_screenshots.html

Re:Screenshots?

[locutus_borg]

There is one here....
http://openosx.com/gimp2/screenshots.htm l

Re:Screenshots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are shots of the old 1.2 release.

Re:Screenshots?

[jcupitt65]

Here's a shot of 1.3.23 (I think), the final is pretty similar.

Re:Screenshots?

[jeremymh]

screenshot of the default setup running under gnome.

The interface has some very nice improvements. Each tool window can be dragged around, to dock things together (see the tabs on the layers window? Behind that are paths, undo history etc)

You don't have to right click on an image to do functions to the image, it has them up the top of that window, making it more friendly to new users.

Re:Screenshots?

[Raphael]

There are several screenshots of version 1.3 (pre-2.0) of the GIMP on the developer's site: http://developer.gimp.org/screenshots.html.

Other screenshots of version 2.0 will be available later, when the new GIMP web site goes live.

Re:Screenshots?

[BigSven]

Try http://developer.gimp.org/screenshots.html for screenshots of the development version.

Re:Screenshots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Python-fu? Script-fu?

Well FU too!

Re:Screenshots?

[CaptainBaz]

Can someone explain why this was modded funny?

Re:Screenshots?

[jazman_777]

Can someone explain why this was modded funny?

Because it was funny. If we have to _explain_ the joke, it's not funny anymore. Then you wonder, why was this modded funny?

Re:Screenshots?

[molnarcs]

Here is one I just made - please mirror it (villagephotos has a 5 megs quota/day). It is basically the same as previous devel versions, but it has a new splashscreen.

I must say that the new GIMP has one of the best UI I ever seen. You can stack dialogue windows the way you like by simply dragging and dropping the title - for instance if I clinck on 'Paintbrush Optins' you see on the left and drag it to my desktop, it will be deattached - reattaching it is simply dragging it back onto the small bar you can currently see between the main dialogue and Paintbrush Options. You can also make tabs - for instance, Layers and Channels on the right are separate windows, but I put them on the same stack as tabs (instead of just putting them below each other like you see the other dialogues on the left).

Here is the screenshot (but please, click on it if you can mirror somehow ... my server is down cause atacontroller died - was about time for the cheap mobo that it was). http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-6/215362/snaps hot1.jpg

Re:Screenshots?

[CaptainBaz]

Story: "New version of application released."

Poster: "Does anyone have any screenshots of it?"

Mod: "+1 Funny" (!)

Please, help me out here!

Re:Screenshots?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yo" "Word up"? Please, go shoot yourself now.

Re:Screenshots?

[muzthe42nd]

Story: "New version of Image editing application released"
Poster:"Does anyone have any Images of it?"
Mod:"+1 Funny"
Happy now? It's awful, awful modding, but I assume that's why it was done

Good news!

[roomisigloomis]

I am happy to hear that there is a Gimp 2 on the horizon. PhotoShop is becoming a parody of itself and anything else (PSP, etc.) is not really up to snuff. Hooray.

Re:Good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please elaborate.

Re:Good news!

[Deusy]

I am happy to hear that there is a Gimp 2 on the horizon.

The development version has been very good and (for me) very stable - more-so than the stable version - for the last 3-6 months, althoguh YMMV.

They've made a lot of improvements in usability as well as improving on and adding features. It's like comparing Photoshop6 to Photoshop4. It's that much better than the ugly, awkward, and sometimes crashy Gimp-1.2.

screenshot link

[ubiquitin]

There's a screenshot of the GIMP 2.0pre1 for Mac users here.

Re:screenshot link

[graffix_jones]

What screenshot?

I don't know about you, but when I click that link it takes me to a GIMP order form where I'm led to believe that you have to pay money to use the GIMP on a Mac.

Re:screenshot link

[Anonymous Coward]

They even welcome us slashdot users. I can't get out my credit card fast enough.

BTW, the screenshot is at the bottom.

Re:screenshot link

[oohp]

Gimp is GPL. Why the order form? 3 user pack? Site license? Does it come bundled with proprietary software?

Re:screenshot link

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with that? It's perfectly legal.

Re:screenshot link

[graffix_jones]

Thanks AC...

I saw that when I browsed the page, but I guess I was expecting more from a 'screenshot' than the tools palette. :)

Re:screenshot link

[HiThere]

I don't know about the "upgrade" that they've got, if any. But 4 months or so ago I bought a copy for the Mac. I never use it because ordinary The Gimp under the fink is superior. MacGimp launches nicely, but that's all I can say for it. Well, ok, and during the time that I ran it, it never crashed. If it weren't so slow that would represent a much larger period of time. (It's still sitting there on the system...unused.)

Re:screenshot link

[oohp]

I know it's perfectly legat to sell gimp but what about the licenses? 3 user license? Site license?

What if I decide to release my own binary build and sell an unlimited license for $24? I guess MacGIMP will be out of business.

Re:Of course the obvious question...

[Pirogoeth]

Talk about your well-timed product announcements...

Nice, but not the be all and end all.

[mkavanagh]

I like it..but GIMP always has been and still is quite lacking in the vector department. Combined with sodipodi, though, it's everything I could wish for.

Re:Nice, but not the be all and end all.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you like Sodipodi you might like Inkscape even better! I certainly did.

http://inkscape.org/

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[JanneM]

Except this one is a little different:

"Alert: a real $20 note is two steps darker than your attempt. Also, your serial number will not validate. Would you like me to apply corrections?"

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently haven't used 1.3 and greater versions.

Difficult to use or?

[tindur]

A lot of people say Gimp is difficult to use. Is it difficult for people who are used to Photoshop or is it difficult for everybody?

I haven't used image manipulation programs and would like to learn the basics. There are courses for Photoshop. Would it help me to take one of them?

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Mephisto_kur]

As someone who just recently started playing with this stuff, I can say that GIMP is much less intuitive than PS. That is the main problem. Since Photoshop is based on an MDI setup, and the standard menu style of most GUI apps out currently, it is leaps and bounds easier to just jump right into than GIMP.

GIMP is a powerful program, I'll give it that. With the addition of CMYK you can expect some graphics folks that have been waiting to move to jump ship, but it still needs some serious work on the user interface before I expect it will become as main stream as PS or PSP.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[TheMidget]

Actually, the gimp is much more easy to use than photoshop:

• put dead president into scanner
• click File->Acquire->ScanImage
• click File->Print

Now, try the same in Photoshop CS!

Re:Difficult to use or?

[contagen]

I'm pretty much a newb to image manipulation software, and I've used both photoshop and gimp...both have a significant learning curve for doing more advanced techniques, and both pretty easy if you are just trying to do standard things like cropping, rotation, color correction, &c. I don't see either as being harder or more complicated...it's just like any new program, you have to learn the interface.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

imo people that use photoshop, psp and the usual mdi programs. I have a friend who always complains about the gimp gui and rants on and on about it not being like photoshop. Personally I never used photoshop much, besides playing with its filters once upon a time, so I never grew attached to its interface, this may or not be the reason I really like the gimp interface. So I think the people ranting are the people use to the other interface, but maybe not....

Re:Difficult to use or?

[tgd]

I generally find Gimp very easy to use, even easier in some ways than Photoshop (although I think the difference between which you're comfortable with largely comes from whether or not you find top menus or context menus more convenient).

The actual methodologies you use between the two are very similar, although newer Photoshops have some interesting capabilities that Gimp doesn't have. For even very advanced graphic design, Gimp can certainly do it. Its got more features than people were using to do any imaging work a few years ago with things like Photoshop.

Courses that cover techniques could certainly be useful, with the understanding that the actual steps may be different in Gimp. Knowing what to do is more important than how to do it.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a course online somewhere called Grokking the GIMP that I thought was pretty useful. I'm at work right now, otherwise I'd provide a link. You should be able to google it up pretty quickly. Enjoy

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

It is difficult for people who have never used it. As is pretty much anything else.

The "big difference" is that instead of oppening the whole program, images and sibblings in a single window, The GIMP opens the toolboxes and images in separate windows. This allows a serious user to make an optimal use of the multiple desktops avaliable in almost all window manager for X11 out there.

As for making a phtoshop course, go for it. But make sure to pick a good course. If you pick a crappy one, that instead of teaching you some of the fundaments behind image manipulation, just mention a couple of the latest Photoshop automagic wizards, that will do you no good, either for using The GIMP, or for doing any serious work.

On the other hand, with a good course, you will find that most of the really usefull stuff on Photoshop or the like is in the GIMP, sometimes even more powerfull.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[rusty0101]

"The GIMP" (proper name include "The") takes some time to learn. You can use many of the skills you learn in using Photoshop, however getting to the tools you are familiar with is an exercise in creative thinking. The Interface is different, so if the tool you are looking for is (as an example) adjusting the gama for a layer, you have to navigate through different menus than you would under Photoshop, or PSP.

Whether that makes it "harder" than the other tools is a matter of interpretation.

The largest problem with learning The GIMP right now is that if you go to a bricks and mortar book store, you will be hard pressed to find a "Teach yourself" or "24 hours" type book, especially for the current version. There are tutorials online, and some of the techniques documented in earlier books (look at the online used books) are still useful.

Photoshop has been around longer, and has more marketing muscle behind it because Adobe has earned quite a bit of money off the product. As a result of those two factors (and perhaps a dozen others I am not aware of) it is easier to find people willing to earn money teaching you how to use the product. If you drop over $200 on a piece of software, wouldn't you want to make sure you had some pretty good ideas on how to use it?

The GIMP on the other hand is more of a play with this tool, and see what you can do, how about that tool, etc.

Just my thoughts, others may think otherwise.

-Rusty

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Ianoo]

Your "intuitiveness" about MDI applications is false intuitiveness brought on by using too much Windows software. MDI applications are horrendous for inexperienced users, and even Microsoft tried to phase them out (witness Word 2000). Macs and most X windows toolkits don't even have them. Tabbed user interfaces are generally considered better (but aren't great).

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Lispy]

Well, this probably depends on how familiar with PCs you are. I am not an Imagemanipulation-guru myself but I had no trouble getting my work done (some webgraphics, Digicam-Manipulation and so on) with either Adobe Photoshop or Gimp.

They actually look a bit different but follow the same basic concept. The "tools" you get are mostly the same, their location and symbols may differ and the holy war about wether the windows are "docked" inside a framewindows or free floating is mostly a question of taste.

Therefore if you are quite at home with a modern dekstop PC you will soon feel comfortably with both systems.

So, to answer your question I would say that Gimp is easier for newbies and pretty hard for Photoshop-hardliners who have become very used to Photoshop and all its quirks.

Have you ever seen a Graphicdesigner use Photoshop on a Mac? Honestly its impressive (for me at least). They move thru the menus like a sleepwalker. Of course they would have a hard time to learn something new.

My hint: If youre a cheap (like me) with a decent knowledge of modern GUIs get TheGimp and see if it suits you. I like it and use it for all my picture edit needs!

cu,
Lispy

Re:Difficult to use or?

[AKnightCowboy]

Now, try the same in Photoshop CS!

I just put a picture of JFK in my scanner and imported it into Photoshop CS just fine.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[marcello_dl]

You can download version 1.3 or later and try out for yourself.

You can also download free documentation and manuals here and start experimenting. You'll see gimp has enough functionality to keep you busy for some time. Most of the things you learn on gimp are still valid when (if) you switch to photoshop.

Personally, and regarding basic operations, i found the gimp easy enough, compared to photoshop, but the interface needs to get better on things like rotation. Let's see the 2.0, though.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[SQLz]

The tools in Gimp 2.0 act much more like their Photoshop equivolents. Its much easier to use than 1.2 in fact I prefer it for everything except font rendering. (1.3 was 2.0 until recently) I use Photoshop via Wine to write text then save it as a psd and load it into Gimp because the anti-aliasing is so much better in Photoshop. After using Gimp 1.3/2.0 for awhile, Photoshop seems bloated and cumbersome to use. Now with the much more interface its like the OpenOffice of graphics programs, good enough for 99% of people doing basic graphics work.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[rompe]

There are courses for Photoshop. Would it help me to take one of them?

There are also many online tutorials especially written for Gimp. While you can reflect many Photoshop principles onto Gimp, I think that a dedicated tutorial is a bit more fun and ease to deal with.

You will find loads of information in the Gimp section of dmoz.org.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[karnal]

I don't have a scanner big enough to put a dead body on, let alone a live body....

Re:Difficult to use or?

[13Echo]

I agree.

I've personally found that each program has a similar learning curve when you make first use of the software. Such is the case with migrating to something even more simple, like a browser.

I've had people tell me that Mozilla Firebird was too difficult to use, so they stuf with IE instead. Personally, I find that the tabbed browsing and lack of pop-ups is a godsend. To each his own, I suppose.

After some experience using Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, and The GIMP, I've found that The GIMP has a method of drawing windows and manipulating menus that *I prefer* over the other two programs. The likely reason is that I've spent more time learning to use GIMP, over the last few years, and wouldn't likely ever go back to using the other commercial programs.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[quigonn]

A "dead president" is a dollar note. Actually, it's slang, and even Eminem got problems with the FBI for using it in of his songs.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

The humor is lost on this one.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[LX.onesizebigger]

Agreed on MDI applications for inexperienced users (not for other users though, so having it as an option would be ideal), but the Gimp's (at least the earlier version; I haven't looked at the latest one) spawning of separate toolbars for each image is (was?) terrible. You select the crop tool and find out you chose the crop tool for the wrong image, and you're still paintbrushing in the image you wanted to crop -- things like that.

That combined with the philosophy of "everything is done from the context menu", the fact that said menu is broken down into hierarchies several levels deep (however logical) with few shortcuts (Adobe spent an insane amount of money on this part of their UI design and it shows) and the messy array of tool and property boxes that inevitably clutter the screen (on that point, Photoshop isn't much better), makes the Gimp slower to work with than I'd like, regardless of how impressively powerful the underlying framework is. I'm looking forward to see what has improved so far, though, and I have good hopes for the future.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[quigonn]

Don't tell this me. Not even the parent postings were funny in any way.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Raphael]

The "big difference" is that instead of oppening the whole program, images and sibblings in a single window, The GIMP opens the toolboxes and images in separate windows. This allows a serious user to make an optimal use of the multiple desktops avaliable in almost all window manager for X11 out there.

Yes, the current interface of the GIMP (already much improved since the GIMP 1.x days) is very nice if you have a window manager that provides multiple desktops or virtual workspaces. This is good for most Unix users with modern window managers. But it is not as easy to use under Windows because all applications have to share the same workspace. An option for some users is to install some third-party Windows software that provides multiple virtual workspaces, but some users cannot or do not want to install such software.

In any case, even if the current interface is still not ideal when you do not have multiple workspaces, it is easier to use than the 1.x versions. And the best way to know if The GIMP is difficult to use or not is to try it yourself! You may also want to read some books such as Grokking the GIMP. That book was written for GIMP 1.2 and the interface has changed since then, but most of the concepts are still valid so it provides a good introduction to the GIMP.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[R.Caley]

put dead president into scanner

If you think that's hard, try it with live ones. Shrub is too thick for me to be able to close the lid, Clinton has this bit that always seems to stick out the side, Bush is too slippery to stay put on the glass, Reagan won't go in without his astrologer's approval, Carter's teeth dazzle the CCD, and Ford is invisible.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[adrianbaugh]

I came to the gimp from PSP (years and years ago, shortly after the invention of the transistor ;-)) and found it very easy to do basic things and very hard to do complex things. Then I discovered the gimp manual (available online somewhere, see gimp.org when it's recovered from its current slashdotting) and learned a great deal from it. There are still a few concepts I find awkward (mainly to do with transparency), but I'm not convinced I would find them any easier in a different package.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Crayon Kid]

That combined with the philosophy of "everything is done from the context menu", the fact that said menu is broken down into hierarchies several levels deep (however logical) with few shortcuts (Adobe spent an insane amount of money on this part of their UI design and it shows) and the messy array of tool and property boxes that inevitably clutter the screen (on that point, Photoshop isn't much better), makes the Gimp slower to work with than I'd like, regardless of how impressively powerful the underlying framework is. I'm looking forward to see what has improved so far, though, and I have good hopes for the future.

That's not really true. The GTK toolkit that Gimp uses allows you to redefine the keyboard shortcut for any menu entry, anywhere. In Photoshop you're restricted to whatever Adobe has set up for you.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "quirky". It's not particularly difficult once you get used to it, but it is needlessly different to other packages. Note that it is for Image Manipulation - I find it much more annoying to use for original image production than for editing photos or photomontages. For original 2D art, a package like photogenics is much nicer. But for reducing red eye or eliminating power lines, the Gimp is good.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[sootman]

Book links:

Grokking The GIMP - 100% free online or you can buy a copy.

ORA GIMP Pocket Reference -- prettty handy. You might find that in your local B&N or Borders or whatever.

Of course, both of these are for The GIMP 1.2.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[LX.onesizebigger]

Thanks for the tip, and pardon my ignorance (three seconds later, I also realise that you can configure it to use global paint options...), but where do I do that?

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Photogenics is at idruna.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Deusy]

The largest problem with learning The GIMP right now is that ... you will be hard pressed to find a "Teach yourself" or "24 hours" type book, especially for the current version. There are tutorials online... ...such as the Gimp User Group which can teach you a lot of very good techniques with a collection of very good tutorials.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a graphics professional. I have tried Photoshop 5, 5.5, and I think the computer we bought at an auction has Photoshop 4 (?) on it. I have Photoshop for working with images for printing out, and for a web site. It was easy enough (for me) to learn the basics. For advanced features, I'm sure I would be blown away watching a power user use it.

I tried Gimp about two years ago. It came with the first distro of linux I tried. It was a bit different (right clicking to get menus) and the different windows for tools, etc. (which I liked). The one thing that frustrated me two years ago was the lack of support for gifs. I also found it a bit hard to get used to due to my very minimal use, so I gave up and went back to using Photoshop (also minimally).

I just had to recently use Gimp again (and since I no longer use windows, Photoshop is not an option unless I install some additional software like vmware or wine). I didn't have any problems using gimp, and was able to do some graphics work on pictures I had scanned with ease. I was able to create jpegs without a problem, and some smaller thumbnails of the same pictures (by simply shrinking the size, although a "thumbnail" may be something else entirely, I don't know).

When you compare prices, the Gimp application is very favorable over Photoshop. Unless of course, you like throwing $1000.00 US away, or can steal it. If I were a graphics professional on the other hand, that would be a different story. I would probably be using Photoshop like others out there. But with the price difference, and the continuing improvement of the Gimp, I would continually be keeping an eye on Gimp. Especially as a former windows user, and the bad experiences I've had with stability and crashes on windows. Including while running Photoshop.

If you need to use a graphics program, the Gimp is very good, especially when run under Linux. Try the Knoppix distribution of Linux if you are used to windows. Burn the Knoppix cd, or get one from Cheapbytes, or some other similar place. You can run Gimp from the knoppix cd without touching your hard drive, and see if you like it. Then, while running knoppix from the cd drive, you can save your work to your underlying windows system hard disk.

Of course, from what I've read, I believe the Gimp is available for windows now as well.

Do a search for "Grokking the Gimp" for a tutorial on Gimp. It's very good. Also, I think MozillaQuest has a few recent articles on tutorials for the Gimp.

Good luck.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Darren Winsper]

Err...The GIMP doesn't spawn separate toolbars for each image. It didn't in 1.2 and it didn't in 1.0 (Which is many, many years old). In fact, it doesn't even use toolbars as such, there's just a set of toolbox windows which aren't associated to any one image.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are non-MDI image manipulation programs with better interfaces than the GIMP. Try photogenics (payware, 30-day linux trial download) and compare it to the gimp. Photogenics is MUCH easier for beginner and experienced user alike (it's descended from Amiga art packages of yore) than the GIMP, yet its UI is streamlined and, dare I say it, actually intuitive, as far as a UI can be. Discoverability is maximised, and nothing is more than 3 clicks away.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[teklob]

I've used photoshop for a while and had no trouble picking up the earlier version of gimp quite quickly. Although some tools were sort of hidden.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Khelder]

It is difficult for people who have never used it. As is pretty much anything else.

Although I happen to agree with the first sentence, the idea that "anything else" that someone has never used is automatically difficult to use is ridiculous. People use lots of things every day that they've never seen before quite well. Most of these things are not as complex as The GIMP or Photoshop, but what a lot of people want to do with The GIMP or Photoshop isn't that complex, either.

Things can be designed to be easy to use for first-time use (ATMs should be this way). They can also be designed to work really well for experts (I like emacs because of this). It is often difficult to do both in the same interface/device.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Khelder]

I tried to use The GIMP a few times and was profoundly frustrated. I found Photoshop much easier to learn. I can't say how they compare for expert users, because I don't know The GIMP and am only moderately advanced with Photoshop.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Xyde]

Only photoshop for windows uses MDI, gimp and photoshop for mac/mac os x both have floating palettes which are dual monitor friendly..

Re:Difficult to use or?

[blakestah]

A lot of people say Gimp is difficult to use. Is it difficult for people who are used to Photoshop or is it difficult for everybody?

I haven't used image manipulation programs and would like to learn the basics. There are courses for Photoshop. Would it help me to take one of them?

Gimp users that use Photoshop have at least as much, and probably more, trouble getting used to Photoshop as Photoshop users have getting used to Gimp.

If you have more money than time, take the course. If you have plenty of time, download Gimp and give it a whirl.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[uchian]

Personally I would prefer gimp to have the same kind of interface as Kdevelop 3.0 so that everybody can choose exactly what interface they want - personally I would like my main "gimp" window to be the picture I am editing, because I rarely edit with more than one picture at a time - and for those when I do, I would prefer tabs to choose between them.

And since I edit on a laptop with 1024x768 screen, IDEAl mode would be perfect to hide all those bloody huge dialogs out the way until when I want 'em!!!

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Tet]

Err...The GIMP doesn't spawn separate toolbars for each image. It didn't in 1.2 and it didn't in 1.0 (Which is many, many years old).

For those of us with longer memories, it didn't in 0.99, it didn't in 0.54 (the last Motif version) and it didn't in whatever the previous version that I used was (0.38? I can't remember; it was a long time ago now!). In fact, I think I can quite comprehensively state that Gimp has never behaved like this...

Re:Difficult to use or?

[neves]

Yes, Gimp is really more difficult to use. As almost all open source software, it looks like there's no usability testing or interaction design. Things are done as they are implemented, there's a lot of inconsistency. No doubt Photoshop has a better interface. The reason I use Gimp is ideology: I just use free software.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[t'mbert]

I think the responses here are typical. Typical of those who think "different is better" and that we all have time to devote to this.

I tried and tried to use Gimp over the years, I tried to read through the manuals online...it was PAINFUL. Even the easiest things escaped me. I just wanted to do X very simple procedure, and I spent hours trying to figure out how to do that. I even found newsgroup postings from people trying to do what I was doing and getting responses like "it's just a little different, you have to hold shift-alt drag the mouse and stand on your head to draw a box." Duh.

And then I picked up a trial copy of Elements 2.0, figured it out in about 30 seconds and was doing what I needed to do. I paid my $100 two days later and will never go back. It's super-fast on my machine too.

The lesson: Gimp is different for the sake of being different, which means it's a higher learning curve than I'm willing to give it. I'll gladly pay someone who's taken the time to make their software work in a way that users expect these days.

Take a page about design from Joel on Software, guys. The Gimp isn't worth my time.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[labratuk]

Let me put it this way. A while back I was doing a job where I had to use Photoshop pretty much from 9 to 5. There was a reason I chose to use the gimp at home. Most people who kiss Photoshop's arse haven't had to wrestle with it all day every day.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the mouse pointer over any menu option (drop downs, right-click, nested, whatever..) and press the button you want to assign the shortcut to. It's really neat.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Tet]

But it is not as easy to use under Windows because all applications have to share the same workspace.

Even without multiple workspaces, it's still better than an MDI application. Now arguably, there are improvements to be made. My other third absolutely hates The GIMP's user interface, and considers it unusable, for a number of quite easily fixable reasons (tools not on a toolbar, no default blank image). One of these days, I'll get around to coding up her suggested changes, and see how the community in general likes them. I'll just try and avoid the flamage that occurred last time someone tried that (with KIMP, which actually had other problems apart from the different interface). Personally, I like GIMP's interface. But I seem to be in the minority (I can't see why -- it's perfectly intuitive to me).

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Mephisto_kur]

Ah, so just because I prefer a standardized layout - and I disagree on the "Windows Sucks" portion of your reply since many Linux\Mac apps use the same style of menu setup - I am wrong? *Any* system is not intuitive to an inexperienced user. That simple fact that we have a defacto standard makes your point moot when talking about anyone that has even basic knowledge of a GUI based app.

As for MDI, only an idiot would believe that any specific kind of interface works across the board. MDI sucks in things like a word processor. It doesn't work because it just confuses the user. But MDI is absolutely perfect for an app that has several toolbars that need to be open all the time. What exactly is the reasoning behind having to minimize or move 15 GIMP windows around to do anything other than GIMP while it is running? Graphics programs are a perfect fit for MDI.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, thanks. Can't believe I never knew that before. Customizable shortcuts has always been one of the reasons I loved KDE.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[MobyDisk]

Are you takign the course to learn image manipulation, or to learn the UI. If you are taking it for the UI, then no, it won't help. You will have to learn that on your own. To learn the tools - yes, you will have to translate that knowledge though. Allow me to give my experience as a Photoshop user moving to Gimp

I find Gimp hard to use. The Slashdot & Linux community will say that it just takes "getting used to" but I suspect that is the same crowd who will tell you that applications don't need to look & act in a consistent manner. I think the cause is that Gimp uses a number of old-skool interface concepts that fewer and fewer apps use these days.

Gimp uses the multiple-dynamic-windows approach, rather than the docking toolbar approach. This is the biggest headache, and probably the only one that it is impossible to "get used to." When you click on a tool, tool windows may appear, disappear, or resize. They may appear or resize right in front of another window that you need to see. Sometimes running a filter opens one or more windows, but you don't realize it because they open on top of each other and you may see only one of them, or none of them. Compare to MS Office, OpenOffice, or Photoshop, where the existing tool windows simply change their content.

Because Gimp "tool" windows are "top-level" windows, you cannot use alt-tab to switch between Applications anymore since you will have 5-10 more windows to go through. It also clutters the taskbar. (Some environments can group windows to help with this, but this causes other problems) If another window obscures Gimp, you can't simply click on one Gimp window and they all are visible. You must click on each window, or you must minimize the other application. Essentially, it has to have it's own desktop.

Gimp has a "main" window which has a menu for commands like File and Help. The image manipulation options (File, Edit, Select, Filters, ...) are a right-click menu on the image. This saves screen space by not displaying the menu at all times, but is confusing at first.

Gimp options are powerful and highly technical. For example, Photoshop has a median filter that asks you for the radius. Gimp has a median filter that asks you for radius, adaptive Y/N, recursive Y/N, black level, and white level. It is an excellent filter, but it is confusing at first.

It's tough to imagine these things without seeing it. I hope that Gimp 2.0 offers a more toolbar approach that is more consistent with the way most applications work. I think that will really help to make it more mainstream.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

In WinPhotoshop the pallettes are not part of the MDI interface -- you can drag them to another monitor. Only the actual images are MDI-childs. It really is bizarre.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh. One thing to note: Photogenics IS MDI on certain platforms, just not on Linux/ X Window System.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Alan]

They don't have the polish though. IE: in PS when you crop the area outside the crop area is dimmed, so you have a better idea of what the final image has, auto-levels, auto-color, and GIMP doesn't have the "photo filters" (ie: warming filter, cooling filter, etc) that PS/Elements/PictureIt! have.

This is the sort of thing that the gimp is lacking lately, and hopefully will start catching up on now when the 2.0 is released.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used both Photoshop and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. In Photoshop, I can go hunting through the menus to find things. In the GNU Image Manipulation Program, I have to find the damned menus, too. Hell, I still haven't found the "deselect" option for after you use one of the selection tools... maybe they just think it's not necessary? I don't know.

That said, I'm hardly a power-user. At this point, I can do most of the things I want to in either, but I've learned more about Photoshop simply because the options are more available for exploration/tinkering, which is how I learn to use them. Also, it's really weird and annoying to have all the little UI elements floating around. I really wish it'd go to something like MDI, if only because a bar or two at the top or even the side of the screen would be easier to move out of the way.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[crumley]

Yeah, the only way it spawns multiple toolbars is if you spawn multiple instances of the program. I have done that by accident on occasion, and it seems like the sensible way for it to work. I don't like programs that check and see if they are already running, and then just pop up the already running version when you try to run them multiple times.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[snol]

The GIMP's bunches of floating windows is mostly ok with me, but I wish it didn't play so much havoc with my taskbar. In 1.2 the main toolbox, dialogs, and each image all got their own entries in the task list which meant not only my taskbar got cluttered but if I ever switched to a different application I'd have to bring each window to the front individually. It's gotten somewhat better in 1.3 (most of the dialogs seem either to come up in the main toolbox or be tied to the individual image); the only thing I'd still like would be if bringing one of the pictures to the front would bring the toolbox to the front as well. I'm also not sure I wouldn't prefer having just one taskbar entry to bring all windows forward in MDI style; it would help when cut-&-pasting between lots of different images.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[SQLz]

I hear you about the polish. Its the little things sometimes.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[DrXym]

Not in the case. If you had used GIMP or any other graphics tool you would realise that MDI is essential. The problem with GIMP 1.2 (and only somewhat lessened by tabs in 1.3/2.x) is that you're forever playing 'hunt' the window because all the GIMP tool bars (all umpteen of them) are forever getting lost on your desktop and the task bar doesn't help much because it is so densely packed.

The 'workaround' is start it up on its own desktop, but this is essentially just allowing you to do what MDI would have let you do in the first place.

Another solution would be to make all the windows leap to the front in unison a la Mac, which would make some sense but then this would probably bring its own issues.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[elmegil]

I disagree. I'm quite comfortable with PC's generally, and Photoshop in particular. The Gimp does all the same stuff, but puts it all in somewhat significantly different places in a significantly different style of interface. That makes The Gimp about twice as hard for me as Photoshop, so unless I'm at work on a Unix box with no Photoshop as an option, I just work in Photoshop.

Obviously this is partly familiarity with The Gimp, but it's also a user interface issue--if it was a truly intuitive user interface it wouldn't be hard to find a given function once you know what function it is you want to use.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[stry_cat]

I think the GIMP is a lot easier to use that Photoshop. I now do everything in the GIMP and once I get the final image, I save it in some format Photoshop can open and then save it using CMYK in whatever format the printer prefers. Now that CMYK support is being added to the GIMP I can finally be done with Photoshop.

Now I have to say that I'm sure some people are going to prefer Photoshop. I just never got use to it. A former co-worker of mine just loved Photoshop, but I always thought he was weird.

It wouldn't hurt to take a course, but the fact that there are courses should tell you about how difficult Photoshop is.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[babyrat]

With Photoshop, I still can't get over the initial user interface feature of $649US. Maybe after that the interface is better than the Gimp.

Now $649 ain't a big deal for a professional, but for some of us home/hobby/casual users it's a big deal!

Re:Difficult to use or?

[babyrat]

Right - but then Photoshop wouldn't be worth your time...Elements isn't Photoshop.

So if you want to compare Elements to a dumbed down, easier to use version of The Gimp (if one existed) then your comparison would be fair. Now Elements may do everything you need to do, thus it is the right piece of software for you to use. It is not intended to be a replacement for Photoshop (or The Gimp, for that matter) but rather a piece of software that is easier to use because it does less.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[oddityfds]

The "big difference" is that instead of oppening the whole program, images and sibblings in a single window, The GIMP opens the toolboxes and images in separate windows. This allows a serious user to make an optimal use of the multiple desktops avaliable in almost all window manager for X11 out there.

Yeah, you can have one or two image windows on each desktop, and then move around the toolbox you're using between the desktops, because each GIMP only has one instance of every toolbox. (Right?)

Or start multiple instances of gimp and get confused about which toolboxs belongs to which image windows.

Or do it the Mac way: Hide the toolboxes when the document isn't active.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[PlainBlack]

I actually find both PhotoShop and The Gimp a complete pain in the ass to use. I really like Paint Shop Pro. I just wish they'd port it to Linux. After a while I have been able to get used to both PhotoShop and The Gimp. As far as power goes, Photoshop, then PSP, then The Gimp. Easy of use is PSP, then Photoshop, then The Gimp. And for extensibility, The Gimp, then Photoshop, then PSP.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[dylan_-]

Since you've already been told about the keyboard shortcuts, I'll just add: you know that dotted line at the top of each menu? Click that and it tears off the menu as a seperate window. Handy if you're using the same effect a few times or trying different settings.

I think the major problem with The GIMP is that people don't use it long enough to find out these things. These two tips should be the first to appear when you start the program.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[dylan_-]

Hell, I still haven't found the "deselect" option for after you use one of the selection tools... maybe they just think it's not necessary? I don't know.

Select...None (in 1.3 or 2.0)

I'm hardly an artistic power user either, but that didn't take me long to find...

Re:Difficult to use or?

[VFVTHUNTER]

I want some of what you've been smoking.

Seriously.

I have used both PS and Gimp each for about four years now, making 5 or 6 wallpapers a week, editing images for website upload, etc. Gimp is orders of magnitude easier to use.

Want to switch to Beizer without having to click on its icon? Hit "b". Want bucket fill instead? "B". And so on. Plus, if you hover over the icon in Gimp, it tells you what the shortcut is. Not so in PS, where I still don't know what the damned shortcuts are.

The _really_ big thing that Gimp has over PS is obvious for anyone who makes a lot of images. PS bitches each and every time you close a file without saving it in the native PSD format...this is exceptionally frigging annoying. What's worse, anytime you try and save a newly created file, it defaults to trying to save as PSD, so instead of being abot to simply type in the name you want for the file and choosing the format by typing the extension, you have to take the mouse and scroll down to the format you want. What's still worse than that is that if you try and save a previous file in a different format, it adds the word "copy" to the filename, which takes even more time to fix. Nor can you select the default image file format in which you would like to save.

Continuing on, one of the nice things in Gimp is that right-clicking in ANY image window brings up the menu, whereas if you've got an image on the far right of the screen in PS and you want to get to the menu, your ass is dragging the mouse all the way back over the screen.

I've heard people say that there things you can do in PS that you can't do in Gimp. Yes you can - it's called Script-Fu. Any functionality that exists in PS that is not included in Gimp, can be extended to Gimp via Script-Fu.

As a last example: in EVERY program I've ever used, ctl-Z is undo. PS, for some ungodly reason, breaks this rule. Ctl-z in PS is last undo, then to go back more, you have to add alt to that recipe. Why? If I wanted to redo the step I undid, I'd hit ctl-r for Chrissake.

I could go on and on about PS annoyances, but I'm starting to get pissy.

In short, Gimp's UI is about 50x more efficient than PS, and this is coming from someone who has used both of them quite extensively.

About the only thing I use PS for anymore is when I need a font that I don't have on my FreeBSD box. An upgrade to the latest gnome will fix that as soon as I get around to it, which will mean the end of the road for me and PS.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[psocccer]

I would agree that the multiple tool windows is probably my biggest gripe with the current stable series of gimp. But according to the screenshots page they have made it so you can dock the toolbars together, making what appears to be something like a super-toolbar, e.g. the tools/brushes/patterns/options/etc all in one toolbar that can be re-arranged. If it works like I'm dreaming it will, then the days of lost toolbars under windows should be behind us.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Lincoln? We all know that "shot to death" thing is just an SCO coverup by Darl and John Belushi.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[zurab]

The 'workaround' is start it up on its own desktop, but this is essentially just allowing you to do what MDI would have let you do in the first place.

I'm not a professional artist or anything, but that's what I do when I use GIMP. I can use a separate desktop, or spread the work over multiple desktops. Any kind of forced MDI would ruin the current flexibility.

As far as taskbar, that's a different topic altogether. You can make your taskbar show only items on active desktop, all desktops, group by tasks, by applications, or let the taskbar decide when to start grouping (i.e. when you have too many windows open) to reduce clutter.

If you have flexible desktop and taskbar, MDI (in this case) is useless and limiting. On the other hand, if you only have one desktop and a primitive taskbar only then would MDI be of any value.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[2nd Post!]

Elements isn't Photoshop, but Photoshop is Elements : )

Having used both over many years, Elements feels like they cut down last year's Photoshop by removing masks, CIE, CMYK, LAB, and channel *interfaces*, but the core program and code is, I'm sure, 100% identical.

So Elements can and will still happily open Photoshop files, but just not provide you the interface tools to manipulate images in LAB, in CIE, or CMYK, or play with masks or channels.

The neat thing is that if you're good at Photoshop and know how to use masks and channels... you can easily 'trick' Elements by playing with layers, additive and subtractive modes, and color curves, to play with masks or channels.

So if you're used to Photoshop, Elements is trivially easy; it's the same.

And if you're not used to either GIMP or Photoshop... well, Photoshop has multiple years of UI experience behind it.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jim3e8]

To my knowledge, only on Windows is Photoshop based on an MDI setup. To me it's difficult to use MDI, when windows are crowded into a single workspace with a non-transparent background, and it gets really unruly when scrollbars show up on the parent or you have multiple monitors. Cubase and Reason are examples of this. Note that Microsoft has also deprecated MDI.

On OS X, windows are free-floating, but they're also grouped by application (so no hunting around behind your xterms). And the menu bar is always on top, avoiding hunting around for the little palette in GIMP 1.x. The same is true on OS 9, I think.

Personally, I wish Linux had a way to group application windows by program, and kept the menu bar on top. It's possible to do this, but it doesn't work consistently.

It's interesting that Reason is similar: MDI on Windows, free-floating on OS X; it's much easier for me to use on OS X. But I use it on Windows anyway, because my Mac is too slow.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Kent Recal]

No. When you talk about GUI design then it's all about the little things!

Anyone who has done image cropping aided by the dim effect in PS will agree that when you've used it once you won't want to go without it ever again.

Why does the gimp have to reinvent the wheel (new structure, new keyboard shortcuts, new everything) when the dominating, pre-existing product in the field is already considered "close to perfect" in terms of usability?

Photoshop has its own problems but last time I checked these were much less harassing than the gimps'.
So why not make a copy of photoshop (that's enough work to keep a dozen codemonkeys busy for awhile already!) and then improve on the few problems that it still has?

That would be much easier than trying to list up all the things that need to be changed in todays gimp to make it a bit more usable.

discl: Just another rant on the gimp front...

Re:Difficult to use or?

[LarryRiedel]

The problem with GIMP 1.2 (and only somewhat lessened by tabs in 1.3/2.x) is that you're forever playing 'hunt' the window because all the GIMP tool bars (all umpteen of them) are forever getting lost on your desktop and the task bar doesn't help much because it is so densely packed.

The 'workaround' is start it up on its own desktop, but this is essentially just allowing you to do what MDI would have let you do in the first place.

I would argue that the virtual screen/desktop metaphor/capabilities widely known/available since before 1990 were better than intra-window MDI, and MDI as proffered in Windows 3.0 would have best been declared DOA and never heard of/from again.

Larry

Re:Difficult to use or?

[DrXym]

Who says it has to be forced? But it should be an option. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple desktops (Win32 users for one, but probably many Linux users too), so an MDI option is important.

As for the taskbar, I'm sure you can make it work in a number of ways. Personally I like an individual tab for evry window. Irrespective of the way you use it, it is still a poor substitute for an app which has UI shortcomings.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or shift-ctrl-a , like it says on the menu right next to that option. (just make sure the image window is active, or it won't notice the keypress)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[dasunt]

Who says it has to be forced? But it should be an option. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple desktops (Win32 users for one, but probably many Linux users too), so an MDI option is important.

There are 'virtual desktop' 3rd party packages that work just fine (other then the tool bar is its dumb self usually).

If your window manager isn't capable of managing more then a few windows, find another window manager.

I've used GIMP many times on a 800x600 resolution without a problem, by just shading windows and using FVWM's task list (which will list full window name).

On a dual-head windows setup that I use, I keep throwing most of the windows on my second monitor, which frees up the space quite nicely.

Of course, YMMV.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the image editors I have ever used, GIMP is the least-friendly and most esoterically designed of all of them.

GIMP has consistently served as an example of what *not* to do, though.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Earlier versions of The GIMP remind me of Maya. When using Maya, you can actually hide every single bit of user interface including the menu bar along the top in the name of screen real-estate. When you hold down the spacebar, something called the Hotbox comes up and it has every single menu in the entire program in it. Working entirely without menus and buttons can take a little getting used to, but it gives you a ton of screen space.

When I was using The GIMP 1.2.X, I really liked how all of its UI is either small (in the case of necesary elements) or can be hidden behind your image. It made the available image space so much bigger. However, I always thought that they needed to work on their menu scheme because File on the main window didn't have Save or other such things that manipulate files. Though come to think of it, most Windows applications just dump random things into the File menu such as Preferences that would really fit better under another menu. I like Apple's way of putting that sort of thing under a menu with the program's name.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[SQLz]

Why does the gimp have to reinvent the wheel (new structure, new keyboard shortcuts, new everything) when the dominating, pre-existing product in the field is already considered "close to perfect" in terms of usability?

Because people use Gimp who have Linux and don't run PS? Maybe because the PS keyboard shortcuts have already been taken by Gnome or KDE

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Funny that you would mention the 24 Hours series of books.

Sams Teach Yourself GIMP in 24 Hours

Or online here.

I'm not entirely sure about the legal status of that second link when you're inside the US. If it's illegal for you to view it, then don't go there. It was also distributed in PDF form with Mandrake Linux for a while.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Mentally_Overclocked]

Don't forget the manual too

http://manual.gimp.org/

Re:Difficult to use or?

[aonaran]

I had "Teach yourself The Gimp in 24 Hours", I found it in a bargain bin. It's a decent book, lent it to a friend though and never got it back.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Qbertino]

PS courses won't help you any more than Gimp courses if your entrirely new to Pixelpic editing.
Fetch a copy of "Grokking the Gimp" - a very good book that you can get at amazon or get for free as download. That's enough to get you started.

I know both and think PS 5.5 is 'easyiest' to use. Gimp bazillion windows that come with 1.2 and earlyier are a major downside and make the app allmost unusable without Fluxbox WM.
1.3 has tabbing and is quite good actually. I can say I get along with both. PS has really good features and filters that Gimp lacks but then again it costs something like 800 Euros (??) and GImp is free.

Rule of thumb: If you don't know if you need PS or if Gimp is enough, you probably don't need PS.
What makes PS unique you won't learn in a course. Check out the web and some sites like www.deviantart.com.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[WNight]

You'd think that professional apps have years of UI experience, but they probably just used their early market share to convince everyone that what they're doing is right. (btw, AutoCAD is probably the worst example of this... Ugh.)

I haven't met a single graphic artist who has liked the way Photoshop tool pallettes (layer properties, etc) roll up. They're a pain at the top of the screen so you put them at the side, but they roll up, not sideways... Ugh.

Photoshop also doesn't have a good way of exposing a commonly used sub-menu, like Gimp does with tear-off menus.

And, my pet peeve, Photoshop doesn't let you scroll a maximized picture past the edge of the picture. This would be handy for maximizing a photo (as I usually do when editing) and moving the left or right edges to the center to work on. It would also make it easier to drag a selection box and get the exact corner. You can do this if you window the photo and drag the window edges out, but then you've got the extra UI-cruft of the window title-bar, the dragable edges, etc.

Photoshop (for Windows) is intuitive, for a Windows (tm) user, but not as intuitive for a Mac user, or an old Amiga user, or an X-Windows user. Not that they're in the wrong, just that what is intuitive for you isn't intuitive for other people. Personally I find the Mac model the best, though I rarely use a Mac and didn't learn on one, it just seems to make more sense. It has an interface that looks like Gimp, but where all the pallette windows and such have just one toolbar icon. You don't have to futz with the MDI inanity, but you don't have sixteen toolbar icons either. :)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[WNight]

Because, if you look at Photoshop and Gimp like a UI designer and not like a user of one or the other, you realize that Photoshop does many things badly. (Not that Gimp is perfect.) Cloning photoshop would end up with something that was never all that Photoshop was, yet wasn't free to advance in other areas.

For examples of Photoshop issues, you can't scroll a maximized image to bring one of the edges into the center of the screen. (The usually uncluttered area.) You can if the picture isn't maximized and you enlarge the window it's in, but then you add the window UI cruft that you don't want. Being able to bring the edges into prime editing territory would be handy for that alone, but would also let you start crop and selects off of the edge of a picture and not risk losing the border pixels, or having to crop from the inside to the outside.

Photoshop also doesn't have a good way of making a commonly used submenu more easily accessible. Image size is always burried, Levels is always burried. If you are continually working with a submenu like this it's not very handy. Gimp lets you tear off submenus and sit them on the desktop.

Now, things Gimp should do... Let you lock all of the sub-menus, pallettes, and main window so that bringing one forward brings them all forward. (Or most, in a selectable way.) I wish I was one alt-tab away from seeing all the menus and tools, not three or four toolbar clicks away.

There is no program that I know of which is widely thought to be perfect, at least with people who have actually tried alternatives.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp isn't different for the sake of being different. I spent 5 years using Coral Paint, 2 or so using Photoshop, then moved to the gimp, and I will never move back. Not because I think its better, but because its apples and oranges.

The work I do (images for use in software) the Gimp kicks ass far and beyond Photoshop. Its like Vi versus Notepad. A bit weird at first, but once you see how its thought out its much easier and faster to use to get real work done.

Now if I was doing publishing work, (being artistic, something for a poster, letterhead, logo, whatever) I wouldn't use the Gimp, at least not 2.0 :)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Pope Raymond Lama]

Or...mark the toolboxes you want available for all images as present in all desktops, and open images in different desktops as desired. (DOH!)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[shellbeach]

Is it difficult for people who are used to Photoshop or is it difficult for everybody?

Well, it's not difficult for me to use. I use the GIMP most of the time and Photoshop only when using Win32 ... and I find Photoshop, rather than the GIMP, difficult to use.

This is not really surprising - you get used to the interface you're used to using :) The only point to note here is that the GIMP's interface is different to that of photoshop, so knowing where things are on one program does not mean you'll know where to find them on the other.

But after all, they both do the same thing, and I can always eventually find the feature that I'm looking for in Photoshop when I have to use it. Anyone who really gets their knickers in a twist about interfaces needs to get a life, IMO :))

Re:Difficult to use or?

[2nd Post!]

LOL, you know, I forgot that Photoshop for Windows was so clunky! I've been using Photoshop on a Mac for 6 years, now, and only sparsely on the PC platform.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[G-funk]

Gimp is the devil. It does a lot of stuff, and it's awesome that we have a Free alternative, but if you're on windows, use photoshop. Or if you don't want to cough the large sum / pirate it, PSP is pretty decent. The interface for GIMP and just the way it does things, is awful. It's like reverse polish notation but without the usefulness.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[KOE21]

I totally agree with the toolbars. I've been using gimp v1.3.23 for a while, and although the docking feature is cool, the toolbar behind the window still exists (even if you shove all the tools into one toolbar). Altough I can bring them back front using the F5 and F7 keys, they're not as convenient as PS's 'tab' key (which toogles toolbars off and on).

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jdg]

I struggled with the gimp program, read some book, struggled some more, then I discovered a book called "Grokking the Gimp". It worked for me, it might work for you. I have no relationship with the author or publisher, etc.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jonadab]

> A lot of people say Gimp is difficult to use. Is it difficult for people
> who are used to Photoshop or is it difficult for everybody?

If you are accustomed to low-powered tools like MS Paint (the thingy in
Accessories in Windows), the Gimp will set you back for a few minutes. For
example, there's no rectangle-drawing tool, because you don't need one. You
just use the rectangle selection tool and then do one of the various things
you can do with a selection (e.g., stroke around the edge of it with the
current brush). This is actually a much more powerful approach, because
it's more flexible. You're not limited to selecting one of six line
thicknesses for the rectangle; you can use any brushtip, including a soft
brush (i.e., one that fades toward the edges), a shaped brush, et cetera.
Plus of course you can do that with any kind of selection, including one
you've made with the magic wand or the bezier tool. However, when you
first start drawing with Gimp, your immediate reaction is, "Hey, how do I
draw a rectangle? All I want to do is draw a simple rectangle!"

There are a couple dozen gotchas like this one. Most of them are covered in
the tips that come up (by default) one each time you start the Gimp. The
biggest one is getting used to layers, but once you do, you will NEVER go
back to a non-layered image editor. (Photoshop of course has layers too.)
Another gotcha I can think of off the top of my head is the alpha channel.
This is an *extremely* useful feature, but if you're not used to it, you'll
erase something and then expect to be able to draw on the erased area of
the same layer, but that will only change the color, not the alpha channel.
For that you have to use the eraser in unerase mode. (Once you get used
to this it's definitely a Good Thing, being able to unerase and get back
whatever color was there before. If you want to draw over it without
unerasing, just use another layer; you should be using a new layer for
each part of the image anyway, as in the long run that makes the image
easier to work with.)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jonadab]

> but the Gimp's (at least the earlier version; I haven't looked at the
> latest one) spawning of separate toolbars for each image is (was?) terrible.

Wow, that must be a really old version you used. The Gimp has used just one
toolbox window, regardless of how many images you open, for as long as I've
been using it. (I guess that goes back to when I first started playing with
RedHat 6.0. I used Debian some before that, but the version I used was so
old that it didn't come with an X server.)

> That combined with the philosophy of "everything is done from the context
> menu"

I actually like this, once I got used to it, because it means less mouse
movement. However, the rumor is that the new version of Gimp now has these
menus at the top of each image window also, which will be useful especially
for Mac users who haven't bothered to buy a real mouse. (You can get a
context menu with a one-button Apple mouse, but it takes longer, because
you have to wait for the half-click to register as not being a full click.)

> and the messy array of tool and property boxes that inevitably clutter
> the screen (on that point, Photoshop isn't much better)

There is a reason Gimp and Photoshop both do this: all those controls are
*needed*, but if they were all put into one big toolbar it would take up
half the screen for most folks (people with big displays would fare a bit
better). With having them in separate windows at least they can be arranged
at will (and overlapped partly) to show at any given time the stuff you're
actively working with. The 1.3 development versions of the Gimp (and
presumably therefore also the 2.0 prerelease) have some improvements in this
area, but the problem fundamentally won't go away unless people all start
refusing to buy a computer with less than about a twenty-inch display.

The reason simpler painting tools like MS Paint don't have this problem is
because they're simply missing most of the features that take up all that
space. For example, they don't have a Layers dialog because they don't
support layers (which, frankly, makes them next to useless for serious
image editing). Brushes? MS Paint can fit all of its brushes in a
10x20-pixel area on the toolbar; Photoshop and the Gimp have a somewhat
larger collection, plus the ability to make your own brushes, and so on,
so they need a much larger brush-selection area. Tool options? Each tool
in MS Paint has at most one option, which has only a small number of
possible settings (e.g., the line tool can be set to one of about six
thicknesses), so it fits nicely on the toolbar, right in the same space
as the brush selection, since the brush is only used with the paintbrush
tool and therefore is its option. A number of the tools in Gimp have
several useful settings, some of which (such as the opacity setting on
several tools) can usefully be set to a wide range of values. So a whole
separate box is used for tool options. You can minimize it if you don't
use the tool options, but frankly if you're doing any real image work
you're going to find that those options come in handy. I could go on
to talk of filters and other features, but you get the idea.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jonadab]

> There is no program that I know of which is widely thought to be perfect,
> at least with people who have actually tried alternatives.

The closest in this respect is probably Emacs. Nobody really thinks it's
perfect per se, but many of its users who have tried numerous alternatives
(including the really popular ones e.g., vim) consider Emacs to be orders of
magnitude better than the alternatives that they have tried. (Because of
the learning curve, few people try Emacs first. Most Emacs users are former
users of other text editors that they found to be inadequate.) Perfect?
Not yet, but maybe when version 22 comes out...

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which alcoholist modded this up? This is total flame.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard people say that there things you can do in PS that you can't do in Gimp. Yes you can - it's called Script-Fu. Any functionality that exists in PS that is not included in Gimp, can be extended to Gimp via Script-Fu.


It's fairly hard to Script-Fu your way around the lack of prepress features.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Luyseyal]

clogging up the taskbar, zillions of windows, ... sounds like The Gimp is just what I hate about IE...

Gimp needs tabbed windows!!! woo! :)

-l

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corel PhotoPaint has a brush mask feature, where you just paint a selection mask right on the image without any cumbersopme outlining or waypoints or layers or any of that. It's a must-have feature for me and has prevented me from moving from Photopaint to Photoshop. Does Gimp have that?

Re:Difficult to use or?

[juhaz]

That doesn't work on GTK2 any more, though.

It's probably the best way to assigning keyboard shortcuts ever invented, why the hell did they remove it?

Re:Difficult to use or?

[jonadab]

> Gimp uses the multiple-dynamic-windows approach, rather than the docking
> toolbar approach.

This is a matter of taste. I actually prefer it, because it gives you more
flexibility in arranging things. (Most of these windows can be not only
repositioned but also usefully resized and reshaped. About the only one it's
not useful to reshape is the tool options window.) It is true, however, that
this can be bothersome for people who prefer not to mess with customizing the
positions of things.

> They may appear or resize right in front of another window that you need to see

I find that they always appear in the last place I left them, so once you get a
good arrangement worked out you should be able to keep it. It is true that your
arrangement needs to devote a fair amount of space to Gimp windows, but that is
unavoidable if you want to have all the necessary tools readily available.

> Compare to MS Office, OpenOffice, or Photoshop, where the existing tool
> windows simply change their content.

This is quite troublesome on occasion. For example, in OpenOffice when you
have the cursor in a table cell, the table toolbar *replaces* one of your
regular toolbars, meaning that for several very common, frequently-wanted
things you have to dig into the menus and wade through dialog boxes. I run
into this quite often, and it's annoying. Now, the Gimp's approach would not
be an appropriate solution for OpenOffice, so I'm not sure what there is to
do about this problem, but I think the problem would be much, much worse if
the OpenOffice toolbar system for example were employed in an image editor.
Do you really want to have the gradients become inaccessible whenever you
have an active selection, or things like that?

> Because Gimp "tool" windows are "top-level" windows, you cannot use alt-tab
> to switch between Applications anymore since you will have 5-10 more windows
> to go through.

Oh. I barely noticed this since I normally have 30-40 windows open anyway
(even though I used tabbed browsing to keep my 20-30 web pages all in one
window). If an extra six or eight windows is a problem for you, you really
need to look into multiple virtual desktops. (Personally, I never use them.)

> It also clutters the taskbar. (Some environments can group windows to
> help with this, but this causes other problems)

Yeah, I don't like task grouping either and always turn it off. Instead I
put the task list on a panel entirely of its own, with nothing else (no clock,
no nothing) at the bottom edge of the screen. That frees up extra space on
the task list. Then I put my launchers and drawers and applets and things on
a panel that goes down the left edge. Also, I never minimize anything, so the
window I want usually has a corner or something visible, unless I have a big
window (like my web browser -- I keep that almost filling the screen usually)
above it, in which case I just send the big window to the back.

> You must click on each window, or you must minimize the other application.

I never minimize anything, because that makes it a pain to get back. I always
just send things to the back, if I want them out of the way. Since I keep my
launchers on my left panel, or in drawers on my left panel, I don't keep any
shortcuts on the desktop, so unless I just feel the need to gaze idly at my
wallpaper, I never need to minimize anything. Usually I only have two or
three windows big enough to block out everything behind them (one web browser,
one Emacs with Gnus in it, and sometimes OpenOffice), I just send those to
the back and everything else then is in front of them and therefore has at
least one edge or corner accessible for clicking. (It helps to have a 19"
monitor or so, so you can crank up the resolution a little (without needing
to squint like you would on a smaller one) and have more room for stuff.
Frankly you really need a good-sized monitor for serious image work anyway,
whether you're using Gimp, Photoshop, or whatever.)

Re:Difficult to use or?

[zurab]

As for the taskbar, I'm sure you can make it work in a number of ways. Personally I like an individual tab for evry window. Irrespective of the way you use it, it is still a poor substitute for an app which has UI shortcomings.

I see it the other way around. Taskbar, as well as some other DE features, are tools designed to help you manage your tasks/open windows/applications/etc.. Application specific MDI is a poor substitute for DE shortcomings.

That said, I wouldn't really care if MDI was an option or not. I would never use it, but I guess some others would, so it should be a cost-benefit calculation for whoever would think about implementing it. Surely, any developer who disagrees with the current implementation can produce their own patch to allow for an MDI option?

Re:Difficult to use or?

[scrote-ma-hote]

Yeah, GIMP for Windows isn't dual monitor friendly though. It's a real pain in the ass, cause I have my notebook monitor and a CRT. I had to swap everything around so that GIMP was on my primary monitor and didn't spawn windows in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Difficult to use or?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel The Gimp is kind of similar to Photoshop on the Mac I used at Kinko's about two years ago, opening the tools separate from the image.
Tom

The List of mirrors is slashdoted.

[chrestomanci]

Africa ftp://ftp.is.co.za/applications/gimp/ Australia ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/gimp/
http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/gimp/
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/
ftp://gimp.zeta.org.au/gimp/gimp/ Austria ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/gimp/gimp/ Finland ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/graphics/packages/gimp/ France ftp://ftp.minet.net/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/gimp/ Germany ftp://ftp.fh-heilbronn.de/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/gim p/
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/ Greece ftp://sunsite.ics.forth.gr/sunsite/pub/gimp/ Ireland ftp://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/ Japan ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/packages/gimp /
ftp://ftp.u-aizu.ac.jp/pub/graphics/tools/gimp/
http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
ftp://ftp.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
http://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/
ftp://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/ Korea ftp://ftp.kreonet.re.kr/pub/tools/X11/ftp.gimp.org / Netherlands http://gnu.kookel.org/ftp/gimp/
ftp://gnu.kookel.org/pub/gimp/ Norway ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/gimp/ Poland ftp://ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl/pub/Linux/gimp/
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/ Romania ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
ftp://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/ Russia ftp://ftp.sai.msu.su/pub/unix/graphics/gimp/mirror /
http://gimp.tsuren.net/mirror/gimp/

Re:The List of mirrors is slashdoted.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should post things like this anonymously. Otherwise you're just karma whoring.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[locutus_borg]

What exactly would you say is better than it is? The only thing I prefer using is Photoshop, however the price drives me away.

Re:CMYK support?

[grub]

Hooray for the Open Source development model!
brHow far along in Photoshop's life-line did CMYK support appear? Remember that GIMP has a several year disadvantage to Photoshop.

Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[AnriL]

Having CMYK support is all fine and dandy but it won't get you far in the printing world without support for colour profiles and colour calibration. Linux sadly lags behind others (Windows, MacOS) in this area, and having Gimp support CMYK is like fitting racing wheels onto a horse and shoving it onto the Indycar track ...

Mod away...

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea because of the OS is really lagging...

fuck off turd squirter. the OS is not lagging ,it the APP that is lagging.

if you get your hands on the linux version of photoshop (disney studios have it) then you can stop whining.

Cripes, I' am sick of know-nothing idiots like you posting to slashdot... oh wait...

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[AnriL]

Yea because of the OS is really lagging... fuck off turd squirter. the OS is not lagging ,it the APP that is lagging.

Colour profiling should be a part of the OS so that all applications can make use of it. Actually, a part of the display system, which would make it XFree86's fault for not supporting colour calibration. Besides, how do you expect an application to have colour calibration support without the display system supporting it? Should the application just blindly trust the display system to display accurate colour? Don't think so.

Yes, Linux and The X Window System sucks at colour calibration support. Get over it.

OTOH, I suppose commercial Unices (I'd expect at least Irix) do have colour calibration support, since SGI's are (were?) widely used in the graphics industry.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you get your hands on the linux version of photoshop (disney studios have it)

There is no Linux version of Photoshop. Disney uses VMWare.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[jcupitt65]

There's a thing to output to CMYK using a colour profile via littlecms.

What GIMP is missing is native CMYK (ie. it's all still RGB for editing). Next version!

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[johnnyb]

Wrong. Disney uses WINE.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[krmt]

Isn't native CMYK going to be in 2.0? I thought that was the big underlying switch for 2.0, was that the fundamental color model scheme for the whole app would be changed to allow for CMYK, not just export.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Raphael]

What GIMP is missing is native CMYK (ie. it's all still RGB for editing). Next version!

You are right. Supporting native CMYK (or L*a*b or HSV or CieXYZ or ...) without conversion to/from RGB while editing requires the GIMP to support multiple color spaces and optionally multiple bit depths for higher precision. This will be done in the next major release of the GIMP by using GEGL, a library designed for supporting many different color spaces and transformations between them. It will take a while until all tools in the GIMP are converted to use GEGL, but this is what we are aiming for...

The current CMYK support in The GIMP 2.0 is rather basic, but it will hopefully already be sufficient for several GIMP users.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

sure color profiling should be built into X but here's a clue, calibrating a monitor requires specialist equipment. professional colorists would be crying tears at what you're calling calibration, when you are talking pre-press you are fucked anyway. Monitors display RGB, you are NEVER going to reproduce on a monitor what you see coming of an additive CMYK press.

90% of people who complained about the gimp not being suitable for pro level work because it lacked CMYK support know nothing about color theory, they just think they look smart. They don't!

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[ScottGant]

wow, in all the years I worked in the pre-press field I never ever once used color calibration nor colour profiles. Not once.

We scan, make a Kodak Approval or similar proof (depending on what the customer/pressmen wanted), looked at it in a light booth, went back and made adjustments...taking readings here and there and using curves and masks to color correct areas, then made a final proof. The customer would then look at it, approve it or want more adjustments. etc etc.

So to say that you wouldn't get far in printing without profiles is kinda wrong. We saw them mainly as a crutch to people that simply didn't understand color, and generally ran circles around them in terms of speed and accuracy.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[DrSkwid]

yes, let's put colour calibration in the kernel

My web server will benefit greatly from being able to calibrate colour of the million pages a month it pushes out.

My PDA will wet itself with excitement that it too can match Pantone colours.

My router will be able to colour match incoming packets for firewalling.

My in-car mp3 player will be able to match the road surface

I think perhaps you should go and read up on what an OS is.

Colour Calibration is for userland.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Raphael]

Isn't native CMYK going to be in 2.0?

No, the plans have changed last year. There was a debate among the developers about whether the next stable release should be called 1.4 or 2.0, and the decision was to call it 2.0. It does not have the native CMYK support (only export), but it has many other new features. Also, the internal structure of the program has changed so much that a major change in the version number was considered useful. Even if the end users do not see some of these changes, they are very significant for script and plug-in authors and the improved structure and documentation of the code should make it easier for new developers to contribute to the GIMP.

A bit of background (if you are interested): after the GIMP developers' conference in 2000, the plans were to have CMYK support in GIMP 2.0. These plans for "the future of the GIMP" were published and were often refered to (in newsgroups, mailing lists and even here on Slashdot), until the middle of last year. At that time, the discussion started about how the new version should be called and it was decided to call it 2.0. This decision was confirmed at the 2003 edition of the GIMP developers' conference. Even if those who were expecting native CMYK in 2.0 will have to wait until the next release, I think that most users will be very happy with the new GIMP.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I've just gone insane, but weren't there also some patent concerns with CMYK editing?

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[ajagci]

Having CMYK support is all fine and dandy but it won't get you far in the printing world without support for colour profiles and colour calibration.

Some people swear by color calibration, other think its complete b.s. Not having color calibration certainly limits the acceptance of the Gimp.

But, since I'm in the category of people who think that color caliberation is b.s., maybe that's a good thing: let the calibrationists pay top dollar for useless features in Photoshop; maybe they'll go out of business, pick up flower arranging instead, and stop messing around with color. We can only hope.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[rocketjam]

While you don't need color profiles to do cmyk, there's alot more to cmyk than one simple look-up table. You should have options as to what kind of black generation you need, probably a GCR scheme, a UCR option as well as options on how to handle out-of-gamut color. Additionally, you should have dot-gain choice for all 4 colors with, ideally, your monitor displaying your image with the appropriate dot-gain. This is the reason that generally, only high-end commercial programs do cmyk.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[BigSven]

The point is that you can do display color calibration using the GIMP's framework for color display modules (see http://developer.gimp.org/api/1.3/libgimpwidgets/G impColorDisplay.html). There is a soft-proof display filter implemented as such a module. Writing a monitor calibration module based on lcms (or some other color management library) is a piece of cake. I am pretty sure such a module will show up very soon and might even be included into 2.0.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[jcupitt65]

No, it's fine. There are patents on pantone colours, maybe you're thinking of that?

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

not to mention every press I ever sent to wanted color profiles stripped from all .tiff files before submission.

I agree that it's mostly a crutch. no amount of color calibrating on a monitor will make it match your prints perfectly..it's a totally different color space, not to mention you are dealing with the difference between drawing with light, and drawing with ink. one is additive, the other subtractive.

anyone for dark purple blues? amethyst pinks?

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there's a bunch of patents on CMYK->RGB conversion methods. Odds are the Gimp's way is less optimal than those found in commercial software.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Kyouryuu]

It's what happens when you let "ahrt-teeeeets" dictate programs. :)

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Trolling4Dollars]

Why do people always bring up printing? How many people at home ACTUALLY print using CMYK or plan to take their family photos to a service bureau and have them printed in large format? A professional designer might be limited by this, but they are not likely to use GIMP for final output. The printing issue is a non-issue for about 90% of the GIMP user base since many of us do not ever intend to go to print. Besides... dead tree publishing is overrated.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[akoni]

Anyone who lives print will tell you (or should tell you) that color profiling and calibration, while a nice touch, just is not important to getting the work done. When you are working on a CMYK coated/uncoated print job for making anything from movie posters to marketing slick-sheets, for instance, it's all about owning one or more PANTONE color guide swatch wheels. You should never, NEVER design for print interpreting color on a monitor as the color you will get from your printer. Logically, the whole idea of including profiling and calibration in the software was supposed to change this, but it has not. I cannot tell you how often I hate opening up client work in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. and having that stupid profiling box pop up. Turn profiling and calibration off and go invest in a new set of PANTONE Spot and Process color guides. And when your new designer underling who only knows about print from inside photoshop says they do not like how it looks on screen, just smack over the head with the two-pound color guide! DOH!

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[jcupitt65]

Gimp uses littlecms, which generally beats commercial packages on accuracy and speed in the tests I've seen.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[ajagci]

I'm sure people will create color management for the Gimp. My point is: unlike what calibrationists claim, color calibration is not a requirement for professional imaging, it's just one particular hangup that a (sizeable) subpopulation of imaging professionals have. It's just that people who don't want or need calibration never complain about the fact that Photoshop has it or that the Gimp doesn't have. All you ever hear from is people who believe in calibration and keep whining that the Gimp doesn't have it.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[archen]

That reminds me of the system in place when I started working here. We eventually got a new graphics artist here and I recall talking to him about how it all worked (I wasn't involed with the process).

The theory is you get a logo from a costomer, then you press it onto an emblem. Simple right?

1) So we get really bad quality stuff to scan from the sales people.

2) then it goes to this ancient SCSI scanner that screeches and scans like shit and gets the picture WAY to bright.

3) then it is "touched up" on a computer where the RGB is messed up on the monitor and extremely dim - making it hard to even tell what you are working on.

3.5) They work on it using Corel Draw, despite the fact it has to be a bitmap in the end anyway...

4) Then it is printed onto a printer which was probably never calibrated since the colors will never turn out like you expect (and cannot make certain colors all together).

5) Then it goes to the press which was 200 degrees under temp the entire time so the emblem didn't press correctly.

I wonder how many years we had that all going before the new guy fixed it...

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[AnriL]

Why do people always bring up printing? (...) A professional designer might be limited by this, but they are not likely to use GIMP for final output.

Well, for small scale image editing stuff at work (I'm not in the graphics industry, btw) I use Gimp since my work environment includes both Windows and Linux boxes on my desk. However, when I print in colour on our colour laser (cmyk), I have to resort to Photoshop to convert the image from rgb to the printer's cmyk colour profile since it seems to be the only way to get decent colour and saturated black out of it.

But I digress. My whole point was basically against all those Linux zealots who will blindly claim that Linux is great and that Gimp is just like Photoshop except it's free and use that as "proof" of Linux being ready for the enterprise (well, publishing in this case) and that you don't need Photoshop since Gimp is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, it bloody well isn't.

Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so.

[Trolling4Dollars]

"Zealot" is a useless label meant to make the "other side" look bad to a third party. (I'm not attacking you by the way as our discussion has been pretty rational) I could just as easily talk about the Photoshop "zealots" on /. who always claim that the GIMP isn't quite up to snuff without actually taking into account how people may actually use it at home.

I just moved my folks over to Linux at their request for X-mas. (I have a JE about it for anyone interested) So far, they are much happier with Linux than they were with Windows (I'm keeping an open mind since they may find things that it doesn't do for them) especially since Windows XP, Office XP and Photoshop are out of their price range. So... it's not impossible for Joe Average to use Linux. Many of us are proving that.

I'm not saying that Photoshop doesn't do some really nice things. But for all that it offers, the average user can't tell much of a difference between it and the GIMP. With UI enhancements in GIMP, even less so.

Also... to be fair I'll point out that I've been using Windows XP on my work laptop for a little over a year now and it's the first version of Windows that they got close to being "right". It's got it's problems, but the layout is much more logical (I hate Classic mode, I only use XP native mode since I'm originally a Mac guy). But... I still use GIMP in XP. It worked well for me on my trip to Australia last year (posting digital pics on the web). Of course I still load up Cygwin as CMD is pretty useless... ;)

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[CaptainAlbert]

LOL!

Prepare for Microsoft to retaliate by inserting Clippy into MS Paint...

"I see you're trying to defraud the federal government - would you like some help with that?"

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't know what you're talking about..and neither do the people who modded you insightful GIMP 1.3.x/2.0 does a lot to address the user interface issue; (most, AFAIK) of the previously isolated windows can be docked.

Re: your sig

[SixArmedJesus]

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

I thought it was, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets." :)

They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[ciaran_o_riordan]

For anyone that hasn't tried it out, the interface is much improved. Great news since this is most peoples biggest gripe.

toolboxes are now dockable with the main toolbox, so you just have one toolbox window, and a window for the image. Also, the image window has a menu bar now.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[kapowaz]

It's still hideously inefficient, if the first posted screenshot (http://cima.ng-london.org.uk/~john/desktop29.png) is anything to go by. Why would you want a list of all fonts displayed in a floating palette rather than a single selector? A more advanced font selection tool might be useful, but floating palettes should provide the most frequently required tools so as to save on screen usage. Multiple virtual desktops are all well and good but they don't let you look at all these palettes at the same time. The same gripe can go for the Document History and Palettes palette (!) - why would you need to see a thumbnail of every document you've recently worked on, all the time?

These are the main reasons why I won't ditch Photoshop yet. It might rival PS in terms of image quality and features, but the UI is (as with most Linux applications) designed in a haphazard and amateur fashion, whereas Photoshop's is developed by UI professionals.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[BigSven]

You should perhaps try it first instead of judging from a screenshot. These palettes are configurable, you don't have to use them. If you need them, you open one and have GIMP remember this setting. You can even have multiple configurations, each configured for a specific task. Almost all things can be choosen from popup menus or optionally from palettes (or docks as GIMP calls them). So please, give it a try before you bitch about it.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[kapowaz]

Just so. But configurable or otherwise, the very idea that such things should be available seems baffling to me. Photoshop has many configurable floating palettes, but each is well designed and efficient with usage of screen space.

The question rises from your suggestion that "you don't have to use them", why bother putting them in the program at all? Surely some other way of accessing fonts with previews, recent documents with thumbnails and colour swatch palettes would be better than an ever-present window that would usually be used for frequently accessed tools?

I don't mean to belittle your work, of course; I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who commit hours of their time to such projects. I will still however be critical of these projects if I don't think they do the job better than commercial alternatives.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[BigSven]

One reason is probably that some people find these things very useful. The other is that they come for free because of the object-oriented design of the GIMP core. Except from a few lines to create a menu entry for it, there wasn't any code written for this specific fonts palette. It's just a generic view on a container of GIMP things.

I'd be happy to learn about what other way you would like to suggest since all you said so far is that "some other way" would be preferable. And you still didn't try the application. You can't really judge this from a screenshot. Please do also keep in mind that these screenshots do not necessarily represent a working environment. Instead they are arranged to show off as much of the user interface as possible. Usually you'd group the fonts selector in a dock with the brushes, palettes, patterns, ... selectors. Also, as I said earlier, there is another way to select the font. In the text tool there's a preview of the selected font. Click it and a font selection menu pops up to allow for quick access to all your fonts. Similar widgets exist to choose brushes, patterns, gradients, ... Actually of course this popup widget is again generic and works for all GIMP things.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[ratsnapple tea]

You're in denial. Until you snap out of it, there'll be no hope for The GIMP.

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[kragaroth]

There is no hope for you at all...

Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)!

[kapowaz]

Who is? Myself or Sven? I admit there are a lot of unknowns here (and I do agree that I should at least try it before being too critical), but where software I use 50% of my working time is concerned I tend to have a philosophy much like Robert De Niro's character in Ronin: "Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt."

Windows version?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, will there be a Windows version anytime soon for us Windows users (over half of ./), or are we stuck with the ancient 1.2.5? I would like to try it out, since the newer versions are said to have a less sucky UI making them actually usable, but the Windows port of the GIMP seems... dead.
(and no, don't even think about saying "upgrade to linux" or something similar - some of us have to stick with the platform, some of us simply prefer it, and in no way are you going to get people to switch to Linux because it is the only thing that runs the GIMP)

Re:Windows version?

[dylan_-]

So, will there be a Windows version anytime soon for us Windows users (over half of ./), or are we stuck with the ancient 1.2.5?

I'm running 1.3.23 on my Win2K machine. Download it from http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html

You may have to wait a bit till gimp.org gets back on its feet...

I had a problem in that it didn't detect my fonts, and I had to grab fontconfig from http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/WindowsInstall to fix it. The new interface took a little getting used to, but I like it now.

Re:Windows version?

[DrSkwid]

can I think about saying 'hey, windows boy, boot a live CD with Knoppix / Suse / Gentoo / FreeBSD on it and stop whining'

Re:Windows version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as soon as Microsoft releases Office for Linux and Apple releases Quicktime for Linux.

Re:Windows version?

[dandot]

Actually a better URL is:
http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html
But it looks like the pre packages haven't made it there yet.

The fonts didn't work for me either (XP) but I was able to fix it too, see:
http://www.wingimp.org/forum/read.php?f=1&i=144&t= 142#reply_144 for details.

Dan

Re:The problem with gimp...

[dustmote]

While I admit the interface furstrates me from time to time, I still use GIMP. Why? Because it's free, plain and simple. Yes, I might not make the same decision if I were a small-or-larger graphic arts shop, although I probably would if put in charge of the purchasing. The interface may be a bit clunky, but I will never plunk down whatever astronomical sum Adobe is charging for Photoshop nowadays. I can spend that money on a scanner, a drawing tablet, some nice paper, and a bunch of non-photo blue pencils. For a hobbyist or amateur artist (or just a bad one, like myself,)these are as much of a factor in deciding which program to go with.

Re:CMYK support?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first retail version was Adobe Photoshop 3.0. A year later Adobe Photoshop 4.0 was released. It was the first version I ever used for correcting photographs and I remember distinctly it had CMYK color support. I want to say this was back in 1997 but I'm not sure. So the GIMP is what, three years in developement and they just now got CMYK?

Pretty much from day 1, I think...

[inimicus]

Though I can't verify it (all my old Photoshop floppies went bad some time ago), I'm pretty sure Photoshop had CMYK support (though I'm not sure about color profile support) pretty much from the get-go. But then again, it was (IIRC) _intended_ for print-publication use from day 1 as well...

Re:Pretty much from day 1, I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, The GIMP's initial ambition was to be "something else," not a PhotoShop replacement anyway. That considered, and the stage in its development, I'd say it's not half bad.

Gimp/Cinepaint merge

[gr8_phk]

Gimp and Cinepaint should merge. Why not? The Cinepaint guys roadmap shows some items being pulled across from GIMP and development of new stuff that would certainly be welcome in GIMP. The main difference is Cinepaint was restructured to support the deeper color depths required by the studios. It seems to me that GIMP may actually have more active development going on. The fork just seems unfortunate to me - I suspect politics at work, which can't be productive.

Re:Gimp/Cinepaint merge

[grumbel]

Yes, the fork is unfortunate, but as far as I know a merge will not happen in the near future. The reason for that is simply that Gimp2 is in huge parts a rewrite of Gimp1, lots of code cleanup and such. But since Cinepine is forked from the Gimp1 code base, there is not much left that Cinepaint and Gimp2 really share, sure they still look similar, but under the hood a lot of stuff has changed. So its probally already to late to merge again, to much has changed since the fork.

Re:Gimp/Cinepaint merge

[adrianbaugh]

There isn't a merge planned in the roadmap. Instead there is a new colour model library (don't ask me what it's called, I've forgotten) in development which will make it easy to write new colour models as plugins. That's the idea, anyway: last time I checked on progress it seemed like only a few preliminary ideas were coming together, it isn't even pre-alpha. So I wouldn't expect a stable version based on this till at least late 2006, or even 2007. Perhaps the roadmap will even change altogether.

Re:Gimp/Cinepaint merge

[dave1g]

I thought Film Gimp/Cinepaint was for video: Gimp is to PhotoShop as CinePaint is to Premiere

I dont actually know this I just thought thats what the old name implied.... Maybe thats why they changed the name, I dunno...

I'm guessing I got that wrong...

Re:Gimp/Cinepaint merge

[Micah]

No, Cinepaint is just a version of Gimp that lets you modify frames of videos. Premiere does quite a bit more than that, letting you do all sorts of things working with video clips instead of individual frames.

Cinelerra is closer to Premiere.

Re:I realize

[colinleroy]

You know, Gimp's primary platform is not windows. And there's no Paintshop Pro for linux that I know of.

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[Boing]

Prepare for Microsoft to retaliate by inserting Clippy into MS Paint...

"I see you're trying to defraud the federal government - would you like some help with that?"

Considering how widespread their products are in the government, Microsoft might actually be a valuable reference for that particular kind of "assistance".

Mandrake Cooker has it

[G�tz]

The package gimp1_3 in the Mandrake Cooker contribs is already at version 2.0pre1. Users of 9.2 should be able to install it too.

Go to Easy Urpmi and add a Cooker contribs source if you don't have one already. Then type urpmi gimp1_3 and you're done.

Re:Mandrake Cooker has it

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for Mandrake 9.1 also

Re:The problem with gimp...

[haggar]

There is some valid concern regarding the UI: when I started to use GIMP, 2 years ago, I just couldn't figure out how to actually manipulate files (open, new, save etc.), it was really weird. At first I was totally frustrated and I gave up on GIMP. However, I had to convert some pictures to PNG, and I was hoping GIMP would do that correctly - and I was right, GIMP lived up to his fame of being powerful. That's when I was forced to figure out the GIMP UI.

If you don't mind me asking...

[vasqzr]

What happens if you try to copy money with Photoshop CS?

The reason I ask is, we just bought a $25,000 Canon color printer. It might print some fairly realistic -looking- money, but it wouldn't fool anyone if they touched it, even if they had the right paper.

Our copier salesperson told us a story, that sounded like an urban legend, it went like this:

"A few years back, we sold 5 color copiers to some Arab guys in the Detroit area. They paid for them in cash, didn't want a service contract, and wanted them delivered to some abandoned warehouse. At first our VP of sales didn't want to do it, but we stood to make so much money on the deal it wasn't funny. So we did it.

Apparently, they were using them to make counterfeit money! We talked to Canon and they have a anti-counterfeitting chip inside, where if you put a $20 bill on the glass, it will lock the machine up, and notify the local Secret Service office. A half an hour later, the feds are at your door!


In theory, wouldn't you be able to buy some real printing equipment for the price of a couple high-dollar color lasers?

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[mirko]

Did these arabs pay him using phony money ?

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[mirko]

Apparently, they were using them to make counterfeit money! We talked to Canon and they have a anti-counterfeitting chip inside, where if you put a $20 bill on the glass, it will lock the machine up, and notify the local Secret Service office. A half an hour later, the feds are at your door!
It gives me ideas on how to D.O.S. a company by having its staff busted.
All you need is a 20$ note and access to their copy room :)

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because Arabs really need to copy money. There are some Saudis who laugh at Bill Gates measley billions. There is also no lack of funding for Arab terrorists.

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet :10bux: this is an urban legend

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Why have billions when you gave have ... Millions!. He's the richest man in the world, how could anyone laugh at that except Billy (but he'd be more laughing at us)?

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[dave1g]

Bill Gates is the richest working man.

Meaning he is the richest guy that uses his money to make more money in a business.

There are some royalty in the mid-east and asia that technically have more money, but they don't do anything with it except maybe an investment portfolio.

Thats how I heard it, Forbes only lists businessmen in their listing of ## richest people articles...

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[T3kno]

it wouldn't fool anyone if they touched it, even if they had the right paper.

You'd be surprised, people are stupider and busier than you think. A local news station here did a story on this very phenomena about a year ago. They took bills that they printed on ink jet and color laser printers and went and used them in stores. If I remember right they had about an 80% success rate with normal paper.

I couldn't beleive it, but once they crumpled the bill a little bit a busy cashier didn't even notice. This was before the new alien ware $20's, but I've always been partial to counterfeiting $5's, they are scrutinized a lot less than the larger denominations. I'm not a counterfeiter btw, just if I were that's what I would do :)

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but that's okay, he gave the arabs a shiny box full of pinball machine parts in return...

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[jdray]

I've heard this tale a few times from various vendors in the reprographics industry over the last decade or so. The last time I heard it, it was making the rounds at Sharp Labs where I was working about seven years ago. I was one of several new guys on the staff, and the story had the feel of being told a lot at that point. An urban legend for sure.

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, they were using them to make counterfeit money! We talked to Canon and they have a anti-counterfeitting chip inside, where if you put a $20 bill on the glass, it will lock the machine up, and notify the local Secret Service office. A half an hour later, the feds are at your door!

It might be in their color copiers, but I copied some bills (denominations from $1 to $100) on a b&w copier to use as a demo in a college class. I also shrunk them down to 75% and only did one side so it wouldn't be obvious because I think there are laws concerning fair use of images of money, but the feds never showed. Must be their color copiers only. How do the copiers notify the feds - built-in cell phone?

Re:If you don't mind me asking...

[Bert64]

Well, i dont think you could fool anyone with monochrome copied money so theres no need to stop anyone doing it.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Really! I agree. Photoshop is priced for raping it's users. I realize they have a ton of money tied up in it's development, but that is not an excuse for charging as much as some PC's COST! Video is even worse! Premiere is priced really high as well. GIMP rocks. I can do about 90 percent of what can be done in Photoshop with the GIMP. CMYK is just an added and wanted feature.

CMYK support getting closer, but not here yet

[ubiquitin]

I wanted to clarify one point from this slashdot posting: GIMP 2.0pre1 has plugin or two that can handle some CMYK functionality, but this is not the release that uses gegl, or the generic enhanced graphics library. GEGL is the project that will bring all the bells and whistles necessary for proper colorspace support.

Re:CMYK support getting closer, but not here yet

[Anonymous Coward]

For those concerned about the "virality" of the GPL, a suggestion: Write Your Own Damn Code."

most of are just concerned to see the impressionable youth (like yourself) being raped by the idealism of a filthy old man pissed off about printer drivers and bellowing something or other about 'HURD'.

Nothing in the world changes the fact that people are signing over their hard work for no compensation.

Re:CMYK support getting closer, but not here yet

[sgtrock]

Nothing in the world changes the fact that people are signing over their hard work for no compensation.

Funny, where I come from this is called "charitable works" and is highly regarded. I've been told that those of us in the 'frozen wasteland' should drop the idea that "Minnesota Nice" has a place in the real world. Still, it's nice to see so many people around the world still understand that when you give back, sometimes you get more. :)

Re:CMYK support getting closer, but not here yet

[foandd]

Nothing in the world changes the fact that people are signing over their hard work for no compensation.

No compensation? Really? You mean Linus could have brought the Linux kernel to this point by himself? Perhaps Spencer and Peter working alone would have gotten Gimp as featureful as it is today?

Of course, the answer is no in both cases. The compensation people get is the use of a product that works well, isn't subject to the whims of quarterly profit statements, that they never could have accomplished by themselves. Not to mention the personal satisfaction of contributing to such a project.

I've noticed that those who think free software authors receive no compensation for their work tend to be the same people who have an overinflated sense of their own value though they accomplish jack squat. You don't get it and/or have nothing to contribute? Fine, but please stay out of the way of those who do, 'k? Thanks.

Re:CMYK support getting closer, but not here yet

[lostchicken]

So, when is gegl supposed to be done enough for a gimp release? I thought that gimp2 was always supposed to be the one that used gegl and fixed everything.

Argh.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

are you a windows user? Gimp under windows is IMHO extremely unwieldy, because all the subwindows appear in the taskbar all with the same unhelpful label "the gimp", and window decorations that only take up space.

gimp under linux or OSX is much nicer.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[donscarletti]

I use multihead displays and personally, I have never seen anything as efficient as the gimp interface to use.

Also, 1.3 and 2.0 have tabbed control boxes making the UI compact, intuitive and flexible, one can even shove all one's little boxes into a single window vertically with the new interface and it will be the same aweful interface that you seem to like with photoshop.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[CaptnMArk]

MDI sucks. I'd rather have the current UI.

Just in time

[rjamestaylor]

• Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.

Whew! What with PhotoSTOP and all I wasn't sure how I could keep the boss happy with his funny money needs. Things sure work out in mysterious ways. Whew!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[CaptnMArk]

... 2 minutes pass ...

Of course, the current UI is also MDI. (multiple documents)

Re:I realize

[Anonymous Coward]

Platform choice is not important; application is important.

That was true 25 years ago, it is still true.

Why do you think the Mac held on through the 90's? It certainly wasn't the horrible mess that was OS 7, 8 & 9. 9 was so unstable that it reminded me of Windows 3.x.

Help Me Out GIMPers

[subjectstorm]

I've been using photoshop for about, eh . . . 2.5 years now. I'm currently using 6 on a Win 2K box here at work.

It nice, but it can be an enormous resource hog. it also likes to occasionally lose all of the styles i've loaded or created myself.

anybody out there using both that can tell me how they differ in terms of performance or ease of use? photoshop can be damned cryptic sometimes.

also, i can read the specs all day, so if your answer is "RTFS" or "photoshop suXX0rz" then you can just shove it. I'm asking more about perceived differences.

i've got mandrake at home, so i COULD load it up there and play with it, but i HATE taking my work home. anyone using it on windows? don't flame me, i don't have a choice here :)

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"anybody out there using both that can tell me how they differ in terms of performance or ease of use"

I've used them both ... neither is what I would call easy, but power and ease of use don't go together. As for performance, way back when it was GIMP 0.something we ran a test on photoediting. The same digital image was edited with the GIMP and with PhotoShop to crop, remove flaws, and enhance. We couldn't tell which one had been processed by which program, so the compoany switched ot GIMP and saved a bundle.

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[TooTechy]

If Mandrake Move or knoppix have gimp on them (and I suspect they do) then you could run it off the CD and see how Gimp behaves, without ever having to touch your harddrive.

For knoppix you might like to try booting with the option SCREEN=1400x1050 (or the like) to set a good resolution for your screen.

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[subjectstorm]

so, in terms of final image quality, the two seem to be at least equal. I'd already read somewhere that this was the case.

What i'm considering is a switch from PS6 to GIMP, or perhaps using both.

Is there anything that GIMP is particularly useful for or better at than PS6? For instance, i do a lot of logo and menu design work. I'll typically have Flash 5, PS6, Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks, and god knows what else running simultaneously when i'm really busy. I make my BGs and button phases up in PS, port em in FW to refine or resize them (ps saves deceptively small), then maybe animate in flash.

so, if GIMP actually RUNS with less resources, that would be an enormous help for me. also, if it's able to do just a couple of things really well, that would be worth knowing.

I don't need GIMP to kicks PS6's ass on every category - i just need to know what it can do well, how well it works with windows, if it lets you c&p from other windows programs, personal experiences with it, and, if you don't mind, any obvious flaws i might encounter.

i just like to know what i'm getting into before i install anything on my work pc.

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[Fr33z0r]

I actually wrote quite a long response to this, then thought of this more concise and to the point one after:

The difference between PhotoShop and The Gimp is like the difference between MS Office and OpenOffice... If OO was 100% compatible with MS Office's filetypes. Namely: One is very expensive, the other is free.

There's not a lot you could do in Photoshop but not in the Gimp, OTOH, there's quite a lot you can do in The Gimp that you can't do in PhotoShop.

Install it, play with it, see how you get on - the worst that can happen is you lose a few hours trying out something new and find you don't like it, the best that can happen is you save hundreds (or possibly thousands) of dollars on future purchases/upgrades.

(I'm a huge fan of The Gimp, both in Linux and Windows, but am trying not to be too "Gimp rocks, Photoshop sucks!" in this post - both are great packages, but one has very obvious advantages (the most important to me being that it doesn't use MDI - I hate being trapped in Photoshop's all-encompassing top-level window))

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[Anonymous Coward]

i just like to know what i'm getting into before i install anything on my work pc.

It won't be a test on windows, but you could download and burn a copy of Knoppix to a single cd, then boot your pc from the cd drive, running Knoppix/Debian Linux, you'll be able to check out the features of a slightly earlier version of Gimp, without the newest color feature, but you can get a feel of how it works in the previous version, keeping in mind the later features are supposed to be much better.

Re:Help Me Out GIMPers

[Coryoth]

The difference between PhotoShop and The Gimp is like the difference between MS Office and OpenOffice... If OO was 100% compatible with MS Office's filetypes. Namely: One is very expensive, the other is free.

There's not a lot you could do in Photoshop but not in the Gimp, OTOH, there's quite a lot you can do in The Gimp that you can't do in PhotoShop

Fairly good analogy actually. It does extend though - if you're a hard core professional user who uses every damn feature of Office/Photoshop regularly you may percieve the free option to be lacking afew vital things. 99% of people are not in the hard core professional user category of course.

And the Gimp doesn't quite fully support Photoshop files (or didn't, haven't tried the latest version), it still doesn't quite know what to do with adjustment layers from .psd files.

Jedidiah.

Completely new UI (Was:The problem with gimp...)

[Anonymous Coward]

The GIMP development version has had a completely new interface for a while now, so before complaining about non-existent annoyances, check your facts. With its innovative dockable palettes GIMP really sets the par above Photoshop and likes.

I'm not even going to explain how bad MDI is, there's a reason why MacOS applications (including Photoshop) don't have such thing. Get rid of the few MDI apps all together and learn to use virtual screens!

money jokes?

[apachetoolbox]

What's up with all the jokes about coping money? What'd I miss? :)

Re:money jokes?

[Anonymous Coward]

This

Re:money jokes?

[Anonymous Coward]

An early new item said there was code in photoshop preventing users opening images of money.

Re:money jokes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at this article from earlier in the day. I guess even Paint Shop Pro has this feature/limitation.

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/01/08/0111228.sh tm l?tid=152&tid=185

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

The problem with gimp...is its User interface... What happened to the MDI model.

Someone responded saying the problem has been partially solved in later versions of gimp, with "docking" ability. But I think Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing.

For the story of why MDI wasn't adopted earlier, read the following:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7379

Putting my own personal bias into it, attitudes like Sven's (for example, an exerpt from a message on 2002-12-10 08:31: "WiW is evil! Why do you want to put a large window all over your screen that hides everything but your application? Because your desktop sucks? Then get a better one.") are what I see as the big imediment towards adoption of open source. If someone in a commercial project vocally complained that the customers of that project wanted dumb things and that their environments were inferior, he or she would be fired.

I understand that these people have given freely of their time to improve GIMP, but they also claim to want widespread adoption of it; something that won't happen if they establish a mental wall between their personal agendas and the desires of other users.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never plunk down whatever astronomical sum Adobe is charging for Photoshop nowadays

I personally wouldn't pay 650$ (US) for Photoshop, as my 5.0LE does the job fine for me. But calling that an astronomical sum is pushing it by a lot.

Adobe's Photoshop Store

RPMS (and SRPMS) for RHL9/FC1

[kosmosik]

http://www.gnome.org/~drc/gimp-rpms/ - here you go...
Cheers.

gimp is too complicated for me...

[Maditude]

At last, I can ask slashdot without being too off-topic! Gimp, like photoshop, is just too much for me -- I've recently made a full-time switch to Linux at home, and the one thing on my list of needed software is a SIMPLE photo editor (for fixing red-eye and not much else). I was pretty happy with PhotoImpression under Windows, but haven't found anything close to that level of simplicity under Linux. Anyone got any suggestions (preferably aside from Wine and Gimp) for something that runs well under Linux?

Re:gimp is too complicated for me...

[donstenk72]

The Gimp 2 should really do it for you. I am hardly an advanced user but it works fine for small retouches.

Pixieplus can also do a lot of the standard things, check it out!

Re:gimp is too complicated for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think theres some simple editing under Kview, but for Redeye, you'll have to use The GIMP (or a redeye reduction flash!)

Re:gimp is too complicated for me...

[Thornae]

the one thing on my list of needed software is a SIMPLE photo editor

Well, a quick search on Freshmeat (bookmark it, you'll find it very useful) suggests the following:
If you're not after actual re-touching capability, VIPS might be what you want. (Oh, you are. Oops.)
Well, for the princely sum of US$25, JPhotoBrush Pro looks good (there's a trial version available for download).
For very basic manipulation, IV might do. And if you want something really basic...
If you're willing to play with something considerably less mainstream, PyWiew caught my interest for being pure Python. Does sound a bit esoteric, though.

Finally, you could see for yourself what else is out there. There's more than freshmeat, of course. Like the Linux section of Tucows.

Incidentally, if you have the time to learn it, Gimp can be very useful. Best way (like all *NIX at home learning) is to find someone who knows what they're doing and get them to teach you.

P.S. - If you like Linux, try FreeBSD sometime. Not as popular or well covered, but has advantages too.

HTH, etc.

Re:gimp is too complicated for me...

[Virtex]

You might give flphoto (http://www.easysw.com/~mike/flphoto/about.html) a try. It's simple and designed specifically for touching up photos.

Screenshots

[ghostis]

Here are some decent screenshots

-ghostis

Re:Screenshots

[zandermander]

Does anyone else find the 4th screenshot from the right incredibly funny?

Note that among other templates there is one for toilet paper?

Now to just figure out how to run it through my laserprinter.....

:-D

Re:Screenshots

[LX.onesizebigger]

Looks like they've fixed some of my main gripes with the UI. Good on them!

But ack! They've gone and made it German!

Re:Screenshots

[EMH_Mark3]

You probably need inkjet.. Might cause ink bleeding problems upon use tho :)

Grokking the Gimp

[CapnKirk]

It's an online book, best I've ever read on the GIMP. The instructions for how to retouch photos is fantastic. You can also buy a hardcopy.

Re:Grokking the Gimp

[Daengbo]

Yeah, we've translated the first chapter of that book into Thai (available here) and have seen some real enthousiasm over it.
My SO (who did most of the translation) finds Gimp easy to use and has no problems with the 1.2 interface. She actually finds it easier to use on a 800x600 screen than the development version.

I wonder...

[shic]

Is there a Win32 binary (installer?) available for GIMP 2.0?

Re:I wonder...

[Denyer]

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html

I'm downloading it now... apparently it's roughly equivalent. I'm sure someone will correct if I've got the wrong end of the stick.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, It is:
http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable. html

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Flaming Death]

Well.. this is always a common theme with user interfaces. Just because a tool has a different user interface doesnt mean its worse, just means its different and the new user isnt 'used' to using something different (god help us if we have to learn something new and accomodate a new idea!!). This is often a case in point of the Windows V Mac V Linux V Solaris V IRIX and so on.. most often the interface is implemented to be used in a particular way. Just because it isnt the Microsoft way, or the Adobe way, or the Macromedia way, has little relevance to its UI design. I personally like it, as I am not much of a fan of the MDI layout system, mainly because you end up wasting screen realestate on MDI style tool windows and bars, but thats my preference... it doesnt make one good or bad based on my preference though..

I have also found that people can pick up the use of gimp quite quickly - having all the tools on the right-click is very handy and very productive, as is the script-fu tool. I have been using it commercially for a bout a year now, and I am quite comfortable with it... and have had quite a few people on our team move over to it, mainly because of some of the features it has. If a gimp user is a fan boy then I guess I am.. at my age I'll take any flattery that makes me sound younger...

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Elektroschock]

I prefer the way Kdevelop chose: You can configure your user interface to whatever you like. Unfortunately gtk does not provide this functionality.

It was always said that gimp 2 will offen gui abstraction. We will wait and see.

I am still waiting for a proper KDE integration of Gimp or an alzternative. I also hope that 2.0 will be "stable" when it is got the status "stable".

Perhaps it was intentional?

[Ayanami Rei]

I mean, no sense making it airtight. What happens if one of Adobe's biggest clients came running to them bitching about this new "feature". They'd have to have some technical work-around to tell them. (At least they'd be sure they weren't counterfeiters)

yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the `winmpified' version of TheGimp 1.3 on XP: http://www.golem.de/screenshots/0310/gimp/gimp-win xp.png

Do the copiers have cell phones in them?

[Ayanami Rei]

I mean, how else could they "call the local Secret Service Office"... kinda hard to do if you let's say: ship it halfway across the country without the copier knowing.

Re:Do the copiers have cell phones in them?

[Joey7F]

If you put the copier in an elevator would that be a DRM violation?

--Joey

Re:Do the copiers have cell phones in them?

[Josh Booth]

I think that many copiers double as fax machines which, oddly enough, have phone lines attached. The cops then trace the call and voila, you have your crooks. Why they would be dumb enough to attach the line, I don't know.

What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Queuetue]

I'm a fan of window-in-window MDI, and any time I ask why it's not considered for interfaces in most Linux/UNIX apps, I'm told that

a) It's really bad.

and

b) Microsoft has stopped using it.

Can someone explain why it's so bad? Because it sure seems like a great way to associate windows and tools together into one cohesive group. The fact that MS does something is never a good enough reason for me to do something, that they stop doing something won't make me stop either.

I'd just like some clarity on why this interface is shunned - is it a technical problem preventing nested windows under X, as a random person told me in irc one day - or are there some hard-fact usability reasons?

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[vidarh]

MDI that uses nested windows consistent with the current window manager is a "problem", though it shouldn't be hard to provide an X protocol extension to allow windows to have managed sub-windows (I think, though I'm not sure, that it might be feasible to do it even without a change to the server itself, by letting apps ask the window manager directly to reparent it's windows, but there might be restrictions that stop this). The reason nobody has bothered doing this is that MDI is a giant hack which had as it's sole purpose to "work around" a problem created by the menu-per-window mechanism of Windows, which is the defacto standard also for X apps.

It's confusing as hell to most users, but was considered more or less a necessity due to avoid reproducing toolbars etc. for all document windows.

AmigaOS and MacOS avoided similar issues with an app-wide menu at the top of the screen, and in AmigaOS' case with "screens" as a more generic type of grouping (because screens weren't restricted to having Windows from one app)

In X you can get the same grouping by keeping an app on a virtual screen, so MDI serves very little purpose. Using virtual screens gives you the advantage that there is one less mechanism for the user to understand.

Increased screen real estate and configurable and draggable toolbars also lessen the problem of losing screen realestate by duplicating toolbars in each document window.

To sum it up, MDI was a hack to solve a problem that's mostly gone away.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Oo.et.oO]

pure and simple: it is a waste of space and does not allow the user to put things where_they_want_them.

WiW has (all but) died and i couldn't be happier.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[jcupitt65]

I think the main reason X has shunned it is the window manager issue: you need to have the same style of decorations on the sub-windows as on your top-level windows. X makes this almost impossible, since the top-level window decorations are drawn by a different program.

One of the big reasons for MDI on win is that they don't have multiple desktops and many apps like to run full screen. MDI is a convenient way to represent that on the screen.

Useability: MDI makes drag-n-drop harder, it means any time you move/iconise/resize a window you need to think about what sort of window it is, unless all apps run full screen it starts placing annoying restrictions on where you can put your window, and I'm sure there are other issues.

So ... the usual answer is that a good window manager combined with apps which don't insist on running full screen results in a simpler, easier to use desktop.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[WWWWolf]

It's not exactly a technical problem. StarOffice and old versions of OpenOffice.org used to do that. Of course, I believe these things were "faked"; they were not properly X11-managed windows, but rather, the application drew them as widgets inside the window with their own windows-like title bars.

In X11 applications can themselves be in "one cohesive group" already. I hit Alt+H in GIMP (or select Hide from window bar menu) and the whole app gets hidden. I can give the GIMP a whole desktop for itself if I want using virtual desktops.

Also, I can move individual GIMP windows wherever I want on the window, or even to different virtual desktops. Would be extremely cool if I had a dual-head (Xinerama) setup, too... One monitor for toolbars and alternate views, one for the picture itself.

Just a few of the things I could think of off-hand.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your window manager knows nothing about these internal windows. They are managed by the application, so they don't look like or work like any of the other windows on your system. You can't, for example, move them to other desktops.

Watch how people use this sort of MDI. 95% of the time they just maximize the main window and manage the internal windows as if they were on the top level. If that's all you are going to do, you might as well drop MDI in favor of multiple top-level windows. All you get from it is maybe a menu bar, status bar, and a solid gray background.

Now, I suppose we could come up with some crazy X extension to allow window managers to manage internal frames, but it just doesn't seem worth the effort.

For grouping, I just confine certain applications to certain workspaces. I use devilspie to do this automatically. I configured it to put mozilla on desktop #4, gaim and xmms on #7, and evolution on #8. With the rest of the workspaces, I just manually confine the applications (because I use them for different things depending on what I am doing).

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't any real issues with having nested windows or things like that, apart from the fact that window managers aren't really geared up for it. I've seen a couple of applications that did an MDI on X, such as Qt's Designer, an older version of StarOffice, etc, and while they worked fine, they tended to do things their own way.

A big problem of a Windows-style MDI is that it works very badly over multiple displays. I've got two monitors, and The GIMP's absolutely lovely to use, but an MDI-style application becomes horribly clumsy. I'm interested to know what Photoshop does on Windows systems when confronted with multiple displays, anyone know?

The GIMP's interface is actually a lot closer to the original Photoshop interface on the Mac, except that the Mac has the menu-bar at the top of the screen. They cope in a similar way to multiple displays, which is a feature which has existed for a long time on the Mac.

The GIMP 1.3+ has the option to put a menu bar at the top of each image window, which is kind of half-way between a Windows MDI and the Mac. I prefer the old right-click menu, in the style of RISC OS's menus - once you know what to do, it's such a trivial thing that I wonder why people complain about it so much.

A Windows-style MDI isn't particularly bad, but it can become very clumsy when you've got multiple applications with multiple documents open in each, and you don't want to run everything maximised. An X-style window-for-everything can be more versatile, but if you haven't got a good window manager things can become very untidy and difficult to control. There are benefits and drawbacks for each.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[adrianbaugh]

If you want this type of interface you could probably rig something up with Xnest. Arrange it so that when you run foo it runs an Xnested server with some minimal windowmanager and launches foo-real inside that.[0] Then you'll be able to minimize the Xnest window just like a single "container window" and have all the application windows bound within it. This also has the benefit that everybody else can continue to use foo in a non-MDI fashion.

[0] This would take a bit of work to set up but has the advantage of incredible customisability. I suspect you'd want a window manager like blackbox where the window dressing can be customised to match the rest of your desktop but which is small, fast and light and doesn't insist on littering itself with panels and docks. If you get anywhere with some sufficiently generic scripts I'd be interested to see you post them on freshmeat (not so much because I like this interface myself but because it demonstrates the flexibility [hackability?] of X.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[spongman]

codswallop.

MDI was designed (imagine that!) to emulate on windows the prevalent user environment at the time - DOS. Under DOS you had a single appliction running full-screen that often had a single menu at the top (or bottom) which, among other things, allowed you to switch focus between documents within that app - a multi-document interface. Later DOS apps used a character-based windowing environment similar to MDI with overlapping child windows. Providing a familiar interface for existing users was key to ensuring the adoption of the new system.

The main reason MDI has been declining in popularity recently is that it was found (in usability testing) that novice users tended to lose the child windows when resizing/restoring the parent frame. It also isn't compatible with multi-monitor setups.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under Window, Photoshop will let you move the tool windows "outside" of the main window. I have a dual-head Windows setup and kepp my tool windows on the second screen and use the main screen for the image.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[neves]

Don't discard MDI so quickly. It has a lot of problems: you have a lot of excise managing windows in your screen, you don't know where are your windows, there's problems minimazing and maximazing then, and a lot more things to confuse the user. But don't forget that there's a great implementation of MDI out there: the mozilla tabs. It solves almost all the problems with traditional MDI.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. In "real" MDI, at least the app remembers the stack-order of the Windows.

Not so with Mozilla tabs, which are always "stacked" in the order you opened the tab, not the order you looked at them.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Khazunga]

Can someone explain why it's so bad? Because it sure seems like a great way to associate windows and tools together into one cohesive group. The fact that MS does something is never a good enough reason for me to do something, that they stop doing something won't make me stop either.

For me, it's the fact that MDI apps implement a windowmanager with much more limited features than whatever I choose for the regular desktop. I'm a windowmaker user for some years now. Taking gimp as an example, I've configured gimp to always open windows on the same virtual desktop, with a specific ordering of windows -- so that toolboxes are never covered -- with specific positions for some toolboxes. I can never get that kind of customizability with an MDI app, whose internal windowmanager is just a quick kludge to glue the app together.

All in all, I guess I use GIMP just as an MDI, by dedicating one virtual desktop to it, and then make full use of the excellent windowmanager running on my desktop.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[RoLi]

But don't forget that there's a great implementation of MDI out there: the mozilla tabs

Actually it's something completely different. MDI allowes multiple documents to be worked with simultaneously (hence the name) while Tabs just switch between views, it's merely a switchable single document interface.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[Jeremy Erwin]

MDI gets in the way. I recall that MDI was particularly invasive when I was trying to use a hex editor (AXE?), to write texture loaders with Codewarrior. AXE, because of a strange design decision was MDE, which meant that running a debugger and simultaneously viewing a binary file dump was difficult. Instead of neatly placing a critical window from one application into the void left by an arrangement of three rectangular windows in another application, I had to deal with the fact that the MDI app had no useful voids.

Codewarrior by the way, used a floating menubar palette, in a attempt to replicate the Mac User interface. It was largely successful.

The trend in Mac GUI design seems to be going towards single window applications (xcode, itunes...). Bit of a shame, really. Maybe it's some strange Next design influence.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[spitzak]

A whole bunch of people here seem to be confusing "put controls in the same window as the document" with MDI.

MDI means that if you have two documents open, they are both in windows that are inside an OUTER window. Often there are controls in the outer window as well, and sometimes in the inner ones too.

MDI as defined this way is a complete waste of screen real estate and has been proven many times to be confusing to users. It's purpose was to avoid swapping and redrawing problems on the original version of Windows. As long as the user did not move the outer window then no other programs than the one they were running would have to be swapped in in order to redraw, the user could move the inner windows all they wanted and it would redraw quickly because all the exposed areas were drawn by the current program. There is no other reason for MDI, it is a hack with no redeeming user interface value!!!

Now lots of work has been done with docking and toolbars. My own opinion is that this is completely wrong, that floating toolbar windows that Photoshop and Gimp uses certainly are best for allowing you to work in large overlapping windows. The problem is that every system, in particular Windows, has a fatal horrible bug in the GUI, which is the "click in a window raises it". This makes it almost impossible to work with overlapping windows and forces people to tile and dock and do all kinds of other strange things. They do add child windows (TRANSIENT_FOR in X) to try to work around this bug, but it does not solve it because you still cannot use a floating toolbar to edit more than one document (since the toolbar can only be a child of one).

The first desktop that by default stops doing raise-on-click is going to win, in my opinion. Unfortuately there is a good chance Microsoft will do this, as Linux insists on throwing away their only advantages in a mad dash to be compatable.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[kragaroth]

On my GNOME here with metacity WM, my windows do not get raised when I click in them, they never have, they didn't before when I used enlightenment either and we are now talking a few years back. It's not default in GNOME, but if you want it, it's really not that hard. In KDE I believe it's even more configurable (who would have thought...=). I may have totally misunderstood you, though

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[neves]

The difference is that tabs remove a lot of problems of the MDI interface: all windows have the same size, you know where are all windows when they aren't the one being displayed, you just have one document displayed at one time. You mantain the greatest advantage: you have all your working documents in the same place. Nothing block you to edit the documents in each tab (like some programs already do). Tabs are a special case of MDI.

Re:What's wrong with window-in-window?

[spitzak]

Part of the problem is that it is not default, so an application cannot assumme it.

I'm using KDE and I have it set this way, but there are still problems. First of all you can't move or resize the window without raising it, they really should restore the old FVWM behavior where if you click it raises, but if you drag it just moves/resizes.

More of a concern is that KDE has a bug that also exists on Windows and makes even using child windows to enforce stacking impossible. This is that if you raise a "child" window it will also raise it's parent to just below it. This makes overlapping windows with floating toolbars impossible. Most window managers that obey TRANSIENT_FOR have this bug, including old ones. I'm not sure why but perhaps they are all copying the same code base.

Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

[EpsCylonB]

Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

Yes I know this is slashdot, I really should be running linux. I like to play games okay ?, please don't make me hand in my slashdot id...

Re:Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dual boot you honkey.

Re:Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

[JCholewa]

> Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

Apparently, the 1.3.22 development version *is* the same thing as the 2.0 beta. You can get it from the following url:
http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/WindowsInstall

It's a bit annoying. You have to download a whole bunch of zip files listed there and put them into a directory like C:\gimp. Then, you have to unzip them (preserving directory structure). After that, you have to add c:\gimp\bin and c:\gimp\lib to the system path, and you'll have to rename some misnamed DLL files (the instructions only tell you about some of them, but gimp-1.3.exe will tell you which ones are missine), and you might have to search the web for a copy of msvcr70.dll (I had to), and keep in mind that they direct link to the 1.2 version of gettext, but the file isn't there. Just look in the directory from which the file is linked, and you'll find the 1.3 version of gettext, and that'll work.

A lot of effort to get it to work. Looks pretty cool, though. Still, I hate it when an app doesn't provide an optional MDI. I have too many task buttons on my taskbar as it is!

--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main

Re:Is there a version 2.0 for win32 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

or you can just grab the windows installer and have it do all of this for you:

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.htm l

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[fraggleyid]

If I was the treasury I wouldn't put the banknote detection in the image suite. I'd stick it in the printer.

GIMP 2.0 for Windows?

[PetoskeyGuy]

http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/

Anyone have news on when the 2.0 port to windows will be available? What is the average turn around time?

Re:GIMP 2.0 for Windows?

[EvvL]

check out: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your statement, is that the Gimp people are not complaining that Gimp "customers" want stupid things, they complain that Photoshop customers want stupid things.

Window in window is really a horrible user interface, either you maximize the main window, and lose the whole point in multitasking and having a window system, or you resize it, making the space left for the inner windows so small, that they are useless.

But of course, Photoshop users who look at the Gimp want it to be exactly like Photoshop, before they will even consider it - just like Windows fans want Linux to be exactly like Windows before they will consider it.

The Gimp developers should NOT listen to those that wants everything to be like Photoshop, because that would alienate the people who already like The Gimp because it doesn't have the horrible window in window interface.

Re:Anybody knows the CMYK value for green?

[mirko]

Emerald green or GET27 green ?
Otherwise, just mix Cyan and Yellow

Re:The problem with gimp...

[quantum bit]

Yes, let's cram all of the tools and images into one single toplevel window so that everything is restricted to one of my monitors instead of being able to spread out across all 3.

What genius! We'll conquer the world yet...

Re:Anybody knows the CMYK value for green?

[TheMidget]

Emerald green or GET27 green ?

Don't know. Whatever green is on a greenback!

Copying?

[Theatetus]

The image is the easy part. Getting your hands on the right kind of paper is what's tricky.

Re:Copying?

[arcanumas]

I see you've done your homework :)

Re:Copying?

[Kailden]

I heard a story once about people bleaching the current $1 bills and printing $20 faces on them.

Re:Copying?

[archeopterix]

I heard a story once about people bleaching the current $1 bills and printing $20 faces on them.

The story is true. That's why most countries print larger denominations on larger pieces of paper.

No GIMP-2.0 Windows version!

[axxackall]

'm running 1.3.23 on my Win2K machine. Download it from http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html

We discuss here Gimp-2.0 remember?

The answer to the grand-parent - no win32 gimp-2.0 available yet - unless you compile it and debug it yourself :)

Re:No GIMP-2.0 Windows version!

[Raphael]

The answer to the grand-parent - no win32 gimp-2.0 available yet - unless you compile it and debug it yourself :)

<pedantic>Well, there is no gimp-2.0 for any platform yet. We are only talking about a pre-release here.</pedantic>

This pre-release version (2.0-pre1) is not very different from version 1.3.23, which is available for Windows in a convenient installer from Jernej Simoncic's page. The release of the source code is rather new and it will take a few days until binaries are available for all platforms, but you can probably expect a 2.0-pre version for Windows soon.

Re:No GIMP-2.0 Windows version!

[dylan_-]

We discuss here Gimp-2.0 remember?

1.3 is the same as 2.0. The 1.3 is the development branch. I was pointing out that he is not stuck with 1.2 on Windows.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think an _optional_ MDI (one big window
with multiple, automatically organized windows)
would be very nice.

The screen becomes quite cluttered under all the
menu windows.

Woolf.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who modded this shit up? You need to have your balls chopped off.

I'll help... as much as I can.

[aug24]

I use it, but not on Windows. In terms of performance, I use an old box for my web stuff and it's plenty responsive enough for me.

In terms of ease of use, it's quite a different interface, although it sounds like 2 can be made closer to PS in MDI/floating terms. I understand that many people *really* didn't like the original The GIMP design of 'all windows float so there', but I got used to it really quickly. The tools system is very similar, but the menus are set up completely differently. It's like switching between Windows and KDE for example: a competent user of either will find it frustrating for a while.

I'd say *really* strongly "try it" - not just for your own potential benefit, but because people like you can offer feedback to the project that is vital: if you believe in FOSS, use it and report back what you thought.

Justin.

Re:I'll help... as much as I can.

[subjectstorm]

Thanks, i guess i'll load it up and give it a go.

*beats off aversion to learning new crap with coffee mug

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

so that everything is restricted to one of my monitors

Well, that's kind of the beauty of open source. I'm not disagreeing with Sven's opinion, just his closed-mindedness to other opinions. I'm all in favor of leaving MDI as a selectable option, like it is in NetBeans IDE, for instance. There will always be people in both camps, so neither one would really die out once they were both adopted.

how d'ya quit photoshop?

[zlel]

Before i had actually switched to photoshop proper, i used to use some gimp and some psp and some his and some that.. but several things make me wish that photoshop were open source and available on linux and i have to think thrice abt switching back - cos i luv photoshop for these:

(1)factory preset shortcut keys: these make sure I can be productive on just anybody's computer - esp useful when i have to fix someone else's artwork, though sad to say, i prefer to work on a PC 'cos Mac has its menu bar out of reach of the keyboard (2)more shortcut keys like space bar (temp switch to the "hand" tool), multiple ways to zooom in/out without needing to click on the zoom tool etc (3)filters,(quick)masks,paths(PS7),curves/levels,L AB/CMYK/RGB/Multichannel yes channels and yes LAB (4)gamut alert this colour can't be represented in CMYK (5)pantone colours? (6)argh can't remember offhand (8)oh yes did i mention shortcut keys? the ones that pop up my palettes (methinks freehand sucks at this) only when i want them? oh yes and the ones that make me forget that people actually use the tool palette :P (9)ah fullscreen mode always makes me like a pro :PP

yeah but i do have lotsa complaints too - (1)photoshop's a bit too dummy at times. where're all the DIP tools like 2D FFT and convolution matrix? (2)text on path. does Adobe not do this in PS so that they can sell you Illustrator as well? (3)Text - can't they store vector data as well so that on comps without those fonts i can still safely resize based on vector data? (4)sharks i can't nest layer groups (5)shit that drop shadow and inner glow effect i used on my layour didn't scale automatically when i resized that layer just now. (6)crap i need a 2-colour artwork that separates easily for my printer. gotta do it in illustrator again (7)the colour prints weird. oh no wonder it's CMYK artwork, gotta print it in Illustrator or Pagemaker. (8)can't i resize my canvas and not get my bitmap layers cropped??

ah well. sometimes i also wonder if Photoshop secretly aspires to be Illustrator. But that's a different thread altogether. i'm on PS7 btw. and ya, to add on to the other thread i read, there's colour profile, monitor calibration and PPD's too - but thankfully half of those are my printer's worries.

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[BigSven]

(1) factory preset shortcut keys

GIMP has these. It even comes with a menu file that makes it use PS key bindings.

(2) more shortcut keys like space bar

GIMP-1.3/2.0 does exactly this, press Space to temporarily switch to the Move tool.

(3) filters,(quick)masks,paths(PS7),curves/levels

Yes. yes, yes and yes. OK, you mentioned a few things here that GIMP doesn't have yet but most of them are available.

(8) Press Tab to hide/unhide the palettes/docks. This has been in 1.2 even.

(9) GIMP-1.3/2.0 has a nice (fully configurable) fullscreen mode.

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[Guano_Jim]

i prefer to work on a PC 'cos Mac has its menu bar out of reach of the keyboard

Under OSX you can access the menu bars from the keyboard by turning on full keyboard access in the keyboard control panel.

I use it all the time to lighten up on my RSI problems.

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[zlel]

(8)Tab ain't the most useful thing in PS/Illustrator to me though. it's F7(layer palette toggle), F5(symbol-cum-colourswatch palette), F5(brushes) and the like that bring out specific palettes that allow me to make optimum use of my desktop space... wonder if Gimp now has them?

technically this sounds really absurdly "shallow" but, being able to magically make specific palettes i need appear is a major reason why i like PS.

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[zlel]

Hmm i thought i tried that... but i still can't do my alt-t-b-g to bring out the gaussian blur filter... i think i'd need to press the menu access key and thre right-arrow a dozen times before i can get to my item? ok i admit this is a strange habit, but when factory settings don't exist for certain options i often use, i prefer to get used to the windows keyboard sequence just to be sure i don't get too crippled on another computer... GTK doesn't have this problem, yes? no?

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[Anonymous Coward]

-Photoshop CS has text on a path
-wanna store your text layers without the font? layer > type > convert to shapes
- Photoshop CS has nested layer sets

Re:how d'ya quit photoshop?

[Guano_Jim]

Assign an action to the filters you commonly use. One keystroke.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[rsidd]

Actually, you can quickly convert pictures to PNG with convert (command-line tool, comes with imagemagick, part of most Linux distros). You can also do resizing and other such trivial transforms that don't need visual feedback. Useful if, eg, you want to quickly generate thumbnails for a large number of images.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Oo.et.oO]

I drive an Audi and personally, I have no idea what you think multihead displays has to do with the gimp UI.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[quantum bit]

I'm not disagreeing with Sven's opinion, just his closed-mindedness to other opinions. I'm all in favor of leaving MDI as a selectable option, like it is in NetBeans IDE, for instance.

Eh, I wouldn't mind seeing the option as long as it was exactly that -- optional. Hopefully the new dockable windows in 1.3/2.0 will address most of the complaints about window overload though.

1.3.22 for windows VERY STABLE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/WindowsInstall

Re:1.3.22 for windows VERY STABLE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No 2.0 hello are you there. GIMP is dead on windows, *goes back to photoshop*

Go away fanboy.

If they ported it to a runtime like C# and the CLI (shut up anti MS shit, MS dont own it they just submit drafts, the ECMA DO) we would have no problems with windows updates on GIMP.

Re:1.3.22 for windows VERY STABLE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1.3 is the development version of 2.0. You might have noticed if you read, say, anything that has been posted so far.

But you can't script PSP actions with perl...

[Ayanami Rei]

It must suck to have to do everything by hand. I mean, even Photoshop has the semi-cool "Actions" feature.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

Gimp people are not complaining that Gimp "customers" want stupid things, they complain that Photoshop customers want stupid things.

If the goal is to increase GIMP market share, then Photoshop customers are GIMP customers. People who do graphic design for a living may have brand loyalty to Photoshop, but only because it's been so consistently powerful and usable for their purposes. If GIMP were truly "better", there would be a changing of the guard.

Window in window is really a horrible user interface, either you maximize the main window, and lose the whole point in multitasking and having a window system, or you resize it, making the space left for the inner windows so small, that they are useless.

When I write a word document, I keep Word maximized. When I browse the web, I keep Mozilla maximized. When I need to do both, I keep them both maximized and switch windows. The times when I actually need visual attention to more than one program, however, I'll unmaximize and do split screen. But discounting programs like taskbar icons and IM, that is a rare occasion indeed.

On the other hand, it's quite frequent, when using the GIMP, for me to inadvertently click on a program in the background, and have to manually re-raise each GIMP window. Additionally, the unnecessary window decorations (full titlebar, outline, etc) waste a great deal of screen real estate when applied to several windows of the same program.

Your opinion is your own, and valid to you. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that open-mindedness to the preferences of others will win many more converts than proselytizing.

Re:ironic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Alanis, it's like rain on your wedding day.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[adrianbaugh]

I really liked the gimp-1.2 UI: the "everything is in the context menu or separate windows" just appeals for some reason.

But for those of you who like menus along the top - they're there in 1.3; for those of you who want to combine control windows - you can do this too, switching between controls with tabs. Really, from what I've used of it so far, it seems you can customise the UI pretty much any which way.

I'm still itching for gimp-2.2 or whenever they finally put high-resolution colour models back in. 8 bits per channel is a real limitation for use with scanned film: you have to be so much more careful to get the scan settings correct than if gimp could actually cope with the whole 48bpp scan.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[jorleif]

what I see as the big imediment towards adoption of open source
Yes, yes, or then it's one of the reasons open source manages to produce loads of useful software at a fraction of the cost of commercial development. Don't reinvent the wheel and don't solve everyone elses problems. MDI works great on windows where the culture encourages running many programs in full screen mode. I was also initially annoyed by the GIMP interface and all its windows, but there's a very simple solution to that: Put GIMP on its own virtual desktop.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[asm0deu5]

I have no idea what you think multihead displays has to do with the gimp UI. He's referring to being able to spread the (now optionally) many seperate utility windows out over multiple displays, rather than them all having to be located on the one screen.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Paladin128]

The MDI model is thouroughly pointless, and overall a poor model. In today's world, particularly in desktop publishing/art/design/etc., people use a plethora of applications at once. I'm a coder, but I work in a design studio, primarily tying Flash apps and other things to an Oracle database. The people here often have Flash, Photoshop, various explorer windows, and a few other applications open at once. Both Flash and Photoshop are MDI. It's such a pain to switch between them; they take up the whole damn screen.

I can do a lot of quick image manipulation (I know lots more about compression, color indexing, etc. than the art guys do) with GIMP, an explorer window, my AIM client, and a terminal open on the screen all at once. It all fits. I don't have to play the ALT-tab game and wait to see what items I'm using.

The only reason that people on Win32 platforms like MDI is because they are used to it. It suck balls. There's NO REASON to restrict the movements of a window to a parent window. None. My specialty in school (I have a BS in Computer Science) was Human-Computer Interaction -- I know these things. It makes a different window model within a window model -- two completely different ways of interacting with windows. It's not only unnecessary, but it slows users down (they need the mental time to process "oh, this is an internal window"), it confuses users new to the system, and offers no benefits, other than allowing a control-freak UI designer to dictate that no one will use any other application in conjunction with theirs. It's a stupid and arbitrary sandbox.

Re:Anybody knows the CMYK value for green?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I see : this one's called "Iraqi-blood"...

G.I.M.P.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you heard about me...

Re:G.I.M.P.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty good. (+10 Hilarious)

Re:The problem with gimp...

[GiMP]

First, remember the Gimp is still an X11 program.. and most X11 users do not want such a horrible thing as a huge toplevel window containing smaller windows. Infact, this is one of the few things I hate about OpenOffice.org.

There is a reason that the Gimp designers never thought of doing this and should probably never think of doing this, except as a favor to the MS Windows users - in X11 you can create a new workspace for the Gimp. The window manager already contains the capability of separating the Gimp from all the other applications, so why would they work to poorly immitate something that the user's OS can do considerably better without horrible drawbacks like disabling multihead (which is of huge importance to graphic designers)?

Wow, it's really come a long way since 1995

[Anonymous Coward]

... which, if I remember correctly, is the last time I tried it and dumped it. I'll give it another shot when the v2 windows binary shows up.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Paladin128]

The GIMP uses a different model... rather than the monolithic application model, it uses the document model. Only the stuff you need to manipulate the document at a given time needs to rank high in Z-order.

Now, that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. I could see something like a checkbox in the config for "raise all tool palletes on document focus", that would raise all the tool palletes when the image being manipulated gains focus. This would be genuinely useful. Or better yet, make this model a standard type of development model in GTK and Qt, and add to compliant desktops the default behavior. This would kick some serious ass.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[grumbel]

I don't think anybody wants to force you into using MDI, it would just be a very nice option, since doesn't of floating windows can get quite tricky to handle.

Anyway, I think neither the current state nor plain old MDI interfaces would be a really good solution, since as already mentioned in the bug report, MDI with Window-in-Window is replicating WindowManager funktionality, which it really shouldn't and which as all kind of drawbacks on itself. On the other side the current WindowManager are not really useable to handle such a large number of windows effectivly, the normal window-controlls (resize, maximive, iconize) simply don't make all that much sense for a 'Layers Dialog' or something like that. I think what is needed would be quite a bit better interaction between toolkit and windowmanager, allowing the toolkit to give much more detailed hints about what type of window it is displaying, allowing additional buttons in the window border and such. So that one for example could take all tool-dialogs and group them with a single click or arrange them in fixed positions instead of having them floating around like a normal window.

One interesting hack-way to proof-of-concept stuff like this might be to make a custom gimp-window-manager, launch it together with Gimp in an Xnest, which in turn would give a MDI-style interface. If well done, people might not even notice what exactly is happening.

whats wrong with software?

[thogard]

Why can't any modern program be smart enough to figure out you've gone down the maze of menus to select the same option 600 times and then put a button for it some place reasonable or assign an automatic keyboard shortcut?

Re:whats wrong with software?

[Lochin Rabbar]

Probably the same reason that makes modern users unable to comprehend tear off menus.

Re:whats wrong with software?

[Mr. Darl McBride]

RTFM.

GIMP -does- this. Hover over the menu selection that you want to add a hotkey to, then just press the key combination you want to use in the future.

Re:whats wrong with software?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Office does this -- "Repeat" or Ctrl+Y

Re:whats wrong with software?

[RoLi]

In Gimp you can tear off all menus for exactly that reason.

One of the main advantages over Photoshop IMO. Of course it doesn't matter to the GIMP-UI bashers out there. They haven't tried GIMP for longer than 5 minutes and will neither be able nor willing to understand some of the really nice usability features of the Gimp.

Re:whats wrong with software?

[WWWWolf]

You can assign arbitrary key shortcut to any GTK+ menu item. (Can't remember exactly how, and wingimp keeps crashing at the moment - IIRC hover mouse over the option and press the shortcut keys... Handy because I've always preferred '+' over '=' as the zoom in key.)

Re:whats wrong with software?

[spitzak]

Changing the user interface automatically has been proven to be bad and users do not like it.

However as other posters have pointed out, you can certainly add actions the user can do to cause the interface to change. Since the user actively does these things there is no confusion when the interface changes (well, in theory...)

Re:whats wrong with software?

[kent_eh]

If you are doing the same action 600 times, you might consider memorizing the keyboard shortcut for that action.

Re:whats wrong with software?

[TrancePhreak]

In PhotoShop the last filter applied is given the shortcut Ctrl+F.

Re:whats wrong with software?

[TheRevenant]

Developers are probably frightened of the idea since MS Office 2000's shifting menu options were so poorly received. A menu dedicated to (say) the last 12 options selected would be very useful though.

My understanding is that you are able to assign keyboard options to menu items as you work in GNOME applications (including the GIMP), so if you find yourself using the same option a lot you could add the new shortcut yourself...

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Deusy]

Apparently you don't know what you're talking about..and neither do the people who modded you insightful GIMP 1.3.x/2.0 does a lot to address the user interface issue; (most, AFAIK) of the previously isolated windows can be docked.

I can confirm that the OP didn't know what he was talking about.

On a more serious note, the perception that the Gimp has a terrible user interface is a fallacy. Most people who complain are Photoshop users. D'uh! It's got a different UI to Photoshop, try using it for more than 5 minutes and you'll find that it's quite a nifty UI that is arguably better.

Of course, most people are referring to Windows and their poor taskbar being clogged up. D'uh! Get a decent OS or WinXP that'll solve that for you.

On an even more serious note, there's some awesome UI improvements in Gimp2. Not only does it use the graceful gtk2, it has some awesome UI touches like being able to group together dialogues in a tabbed dialogue. Gimp2 takes all that was good about the Gimp UI and improves on it whilst dropping a lot of the deadwood.

I'm glad that they didn't listen the whining Why isn't it like Photoshop crowd and stuck to what is a good plan.

And I, for one, welcome our new Gimp overlords.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Outland Traveller]

I personally see MDI as a horrible dead-end, and completely agree with Sven's analysis.

I'm very happy that Gimp did not follow photoshop too closely on that point.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally wouldn't pay 650$ (US) for Photoshop, as my 5.0LE does the job fine for me. But calling that an astronomical sum is pushing it by a lot.

It's still a lot of dough, especially since the new version no longer allows you to print out its purchase price

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! Where are the users, on photoshop. where is the industry, on photoshop, where are the tools and plugins, on photoshop where are the scripts, on photoshop.

Ignorance is bliss. You stand alone in youre ego bubble.

How about Illustrator?

[Anonymous Coward]

For what little PhotoShop-type work I need to get done, The GIMP does the job. I don't have any complaints for it. There was a bit of a learning curve, but now I can get to the commands I need fairly quickly.

What I really need now is some kind of Illustrator-killer. I miss the Vector-based graphics. And for the lettering stuff I do, the lack of Illustrator for Linux is a sore spot. Are there any vector-based graphics programs out there I'm missing that might help fill the gap?

-Augie

Re:How about Illustrator?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.sodipodi.com/

http://www.inkscape.org/

Re:How about Illustrator?

[beakburke]

Sodipodi?

Re:How about Illustrator?

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

Thanks for the links! Both look interesting. I'm going to be experimenting with them this weekend to see if they do what I need them for.

-Augie

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot...

Re:The problem with gimp...

[UPi]

For the story of why MDI wasn't adopted earlier, read the following:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7379

I read this... For the most part the discussion is intelligent and most people explain the reason for their views well. It contains several dozen comments, some are close to being essays. Then you go and take the lamest one, and say this is whay open source is like... which is OK, because you're a Troll.

What is NOT ok is your post being moderates as Insightful.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[interiot]

Hear hear. If people have dual heads and ocassionly use photoshop/gimp/etc..., a very helpful thing to do (that, for some reason, doesn't immediately come to people's minds) is to put all the little floating toolboxes over onto another monitor so the image you're working on can use an unobstructed full screen. Very helpful.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

There's NO REASON to restrict the movements of a window to a parent window. None. My specialty in school (I have a BS in Computer Science) was Human-Computer Interaction -- I know these things.

I took a few courses that focused on HCI at my school too, and while it had valuable theories about the subject, it is unquestionably a young science. Comparatively, in the "hard" sciences like Physics and Chemistry, most people shy away from statements like "I know these things". Even in systems with such strict rules, there's just too much possibility that there has been a fundamental misperception. When you translate that uncertainty into a young science, with few discrete quantitative metrics, and a person with only a bachelor-level degree specializing in it, it actually becomes quite arrogant to make such a lofty claim.

Even if you were right, and that the only advantage MDI has is that people have learned to use it, it is nevertheless an influencing variable. So-called "better" interfaces for things like the filesystem or keyboard layout have failed because people are already used to the interfaces made popular by Apple and Microsoft and QWERTY. More specifically, because people have a developed skill in the "inferior" interface, it is actually a better interface.

GTK+ version 2.2.2 required ???

[Anonymous Coward]

from the INSTALL notes ...
1) you need pk-config
2) you need GTK+ version 2.2.2
3) PangoFT2
4) libart2

Looks like you need a latest and greatest distro
or some slogging through the mud upgrade to get
up to speed.

rrrggghhh.

this the only crap i hate about linux.

cool

[chegosaurus]

I've been using 1.3 as my main graphics tool (on Solaris) for a good while now. Even when it was a little unstable it was worth the odd crash because it's so much nicer to use than 1.2. The interface is very different, simpler and more intuitive, paths are vastly improved, as is the text tool. Apart from that though, I've been a little disappointed at the lack of new features.
I understand the priority was the internal rewrite, so now that's done, fingers crossed that the developers will start giving us some nice new things to play with.

Having said that, let's get this clear: gimp is *not* a Photoshop replacement. In terms of functionality, it's just not in the same league. But what people forget is that PS is kind of like Word in that the core of it - the things everyone uses - was finished years ago. Now all they do is pile on more and more stuff that few of us will ever even learn.

If you make a living from graphics, you *need* Photoshop. If not, GIMP will serve you admirably, especially this new incarnation.

Re:cool

[eskild]

Amen to that! I do a good deal of amateur photo shooting + editing, and although I *really* want to get rid of Windows and go pure OSS, I find that sometimes Photoshop has some more advanced features that I need. Yes, adjustment layers, for one... ;-) (On a side note: I need Nikon Capture as well. Still haven't found anything OSS that will convert RAWs well enough, including dcraw.)

But still, The GIMP is sufficient for perhaps 80% of the work I do on photos, so it is by no means a poor piece of software; far from it.

Is this for real?

[lumpenprole]

Did anybody else notice that the new file dialogue shown here:
http://scr.golem.de/?d=0310/gimp&p=7
includes a form for toilet paper? My god I love open source software!

Re:Is this for real?

[NotAHappyCoder]

"Toilet paper" form has been there from GIMP v1.3, so it is not a new thing.

Re:Is this for real?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again the Linsux/open sores users are talking shit out of their asses. Like most "cool" features of the GIMP, the Mac version of Photoshop has had this for YEARS now.

Re:Is this for real?

[damiam]

For most people, anything added since 1.2 is a new thing.

sorry to bring this up every time there's a gimp

[MarcoAtWork]

article, but have they finally put in adjustment layers?

Gimp 2.0 on Win32 ETA?

[greygent]

Anyone know what the ETA is for Gimp 2.0 on Win32? Can't wait to get my hands on it.

Re:Gimp 2.0 on Win32 ETA?

[craigmarshall]

Apparently 1.3.23 is basically it. I've been using 1.2.5, and the new one is totally different. The new one is gorgeous!

Here's the download page: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html

I recommend gtk-wimp too: http://gtk-wimp.sourceforge.net/

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

I promise that I was not intending to be a troll. I chose that particular comment of Sven's because it was an example of his defense to an idea he disagrees with: insulting the idea and dismissing it without recognizing it as a valid opinion to someone else.

As I have said in another comment, I do not think that Sven is wrong. It is his opinion, and it is shared by many. His architectural concerns are also valid, applications should not be window managers as a general rule. But in the absence of functionality viewed as necessary (or at least useful) by some users, some part of the architecture should take responsibility for providing it. But the more important, overreaching concern is that his dismissal of the idea does not encourage cooperative communication about the needs of the product.

Typical Linux font misery

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the grid ticks touching the label digits while there is ample space to move the label up.

Just a detail, sure, but it shows a lack of attention to $3.

I'm willing to give it a shot this time, anyway...

[Denyer]

I've been plugging away with Corel PhotoPaint for years, and previous ports of Gimp under Windows have reminded me of nothing so much as ProArtII for RISC OS (albeit with far more features)... but screenshots of the new release suggest it'll be friendly for users who like fewer windows and menus and more docked/inobtrusive toolbars.

As I say, I'll take a look, anyway...

Re:The problem with gimp...

[haggar]

I tried several tools before going to GIMP. None of them did a good job with the transparent channel. I have not, however, tried imagemagick. I'll give it a try, thanks.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[meldon corintur]

Putting my own personal bias into it, attitudes like Sven's ... are what I see as the big impediment towards adoption of open source.

What I see is part of the beauty of open source. (OK sometimes there is a bit of - shall we say - attitude. Prime example: mplayer.) But what I'm talking about here is freedom - specifically freedom of speech.

Sven has a great point and he can make his point without worrying about customers the way a developer would working on a commercial product. Boing, I do see your point and it is somewhat valid but please understand that this freedom of the open source developer is a strength not a weakness for OS.

In the link you provided, The Gimp is compared to Star Office which is all in one window. But they've fixed that problem now in open office so that it is in multiple windows. I really don't see how a one window gimp would be an improvement but if you do (or any others) you are free to fork the project and implement that. Or simply do this command:

gdmflexiserver --xnest

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Paladin128]

Perhaps my post contained a bit of unnecessary hubris. And yes, HCI is a young discipline (I wouldn't really call it a science per se; it isn't developed enough and relies way too much on trial and error), but many of the common principals are valid. But there are performance metrics to back up my claims about MDI in particular. I'm of the school of thought, as were my professors, that for the sake of progress if a better interface is developed it should be used if and only if it is significantly better than the previous interface.

Your example of QWERTY keyboards is the classic example. Numerous tests have been done, and the data I've seen has lead to the fact that superior standards such as Dvorak only provide a measurable (>3 WPM) benefit with typists that type over 100WPM, which is the vast minority.

The lack of MDI in such an application isn't even a switch; the GIMP was built that way. And it currently has numerous advantages over the MDI model. Thus, it should be kept. I believe it could be polished into being a more learnable interface than Photoshop as well. And learnability is more useful, long-term, than familiarity. The next generation of computer users would benefit from learnability, while they won't from metaphors that are obsolete.

My beef with Gimp

[Larry David]

I think Gimp is great. Of course, I prefer Photoshop, but Gimp is definitely catching up in a big way.

The one thing that peeves me about Gimp, however, is the tool selection box. It's like 7 icons wide by 4 deep, which means you end up with a large box, rather than a taller slimmer one like in Photoshop. This causes problems when editing images, as with Photoshop you can shove your thin toolbar over to the side of the screen, but the Gimp one takes up valuable screen real estate. A totally customizable toolbar would be even better, of course, and make it better than PS!

Re:My beef with Gimp

[prockcore]

It's like 7 icons wide by 4 deep, which means you end up with a large box, rather than a taller slimmer one like in Photoshop.

You can resize the tool selection box window.. make it 1 icon wide by 30 deep if you wish. Just click the corner and drag, just like resizing any other window.

Re:My beef with Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing that peeves me about Gimp, however, is the tool selection box. It's like 7 icons wide by 4 deep, which means you end up with a large box, rather than a taller slimmer one like in Photoshop.

You can resize it. :-)

If you're using 1.3+, and the main toolbox is too wide and you don't want to squash the tool palette thingies it contains, create a new dock window by just dragging the relevant bits to the desktop. I've just had a play, and it's gloriously configurable, especially when compared with 1.2.

keybindings and focus

[X_Bones]

One thing I would really really like is if the tool palette hotkeys were mapped to the same tools in the GIMP as they are in Photoshop. I do pretty much the same tasks with the GIMP as with PS6, it all depends on what OS I'm running at the time, but I hate hitting a key which gives me the right tool in Photoshop, but something completely different in the GIMP (having to focus the pallete window first is another, minor, gripe). Does anyone know if the GIMP's keymap has changed for 1.3/2.0? Or, alternately, are there directions anywhere on how to change this mapping? When I googled, all I could find talked about changing menu shortcuts. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Re:keybindings and focus

[Tet]

One thing I would really really like is if the tool palette hotkeys were mapped to the same tools in the GIMP as they are in Photoshop.

So do it, then. Open up a new image, right click, go to Tools -> Select Tools -> Fuzzy Select, and without releasing the mouse button, press your desired hotkey combination. Voila. That hotkey will now choose fuzzy select from that point onwards. You can do the same for all the tools, until you have the desired hotkeys configured.

Personally, I find Photoshop is lacking the right hotkeys, and I'm unaware of any way to reconfigure them so that they're more like Gimp...

Re:keybindings and focus

[BigSven]

GIMP ships with a file called ps-menurc. Place it into your ~/.gimp-1.3 folder and rename it to menurc and voila, you've got PS keybindings.

Re: keybindings and focus

[ericdfields]

Any hint as to where one could find this file?

Re:keybindings and focus

[ratsnapple tea]

How intuitive!

Re:keybindings and focus

[BigSven]

Well, it's documented in the README and has been around for some years. But of course you can't expect users to read this file and we know that.

What about contributing to the documentation or send some code that allows to configure keybindings from the preferences dialog. This would certainly be welcomed.

Re:keybindings and focus

[Jon Abbott]

Personally, I find Photoshop is lacking the right hotkeys, and I'm unaware of any way to reconfigure them so that they're more like Gimp...

If you are using Panther (OS X 10.3), you can remap the keyboard combos for Photoshop (or any application for that matter) without much hassle. Here is a guide to the process. It isn't as easy as GTK's "highlight item and press new keyboard combo" feature, but the remappings do tend to stick better than those done with GTK.

Re:keybindings and focus

[BigSven]

Here's what you get if you google for "Photoshop keybindings for The GIMP":

http://epierce.freeshell.org/gimp/gimp_ps.php

Re:keybindings and focus

[The real PoD]

So what's the intuitive way to get PS to use the GIMP's keybindings?

Re:keybindings and focus

[ratsnapple tea]

Fortunately, Photoshop comes with shortcut keys assigned to the most commonly-used tools and operations. These are not hard to learn, but if I want to change them, I can go to Apple menu -> System Preferences, click on Keyboard, and change my keyboard shortcuts there (bindings can be set on a per-application basis). Point being, why would I want to mess with the GIMP and its rc files when I could just get down to work using Photoshop?

Even if I was happy with The GIMP's keybindings, I still wouldn't be able to use it, since as of the last time I checked (last month), its interface is just devastatingly ugly. Sorry, but it's true. Perhaps I just don't know how to install a non-ugly window manager, but I don't want to have to read 50 pages of documentation just to get a decent window manager up and running on X11 or whatever it is.

Working with Photoshop can be a pain, but at least Photoshop doesn't make me feel like I'm working in a concrete cellblock. The GIMP's interface saps me of all inspiration, and that's a much bigger problem than the keybindings.

Re:sorry to bring this up every time there's a gim

[Anonymous Coward]

adjustment layers Survey says: no. Various reviews I've read say there are no adjustment layers, and the adjustment layers bug has not been closed. Too bad.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[iangoldby]

..."raise all tool palletes on document focus"...

That is what Macintosh applications have always done, and yes, it is a perfect solution. I'd love to see this in the GIMP.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Fr33z0r]

Everyone I know who uses The Gimp (and I know quiet a few) massively prefers the Gimp's non-MDI approach, as do I.

I thought it ugly and cumbersome for the first few days after I started using it, but I wouldn't go back to an MDI image processing application now if you paid me, if I used Windows 3.1 maybe, but in this day and age I have a lot of stuff open, and I work between apps and windows, often while having information, chats and email open in others, should I sacrifice massive portions of my display to an image processing application when, let's face it, all I *need* of it onscreen is the image? Of course not.

Having an application eat space on my screen damages my productivity because I have to switch between windows or just plain old move them out of the way. After all, I don't have a desk for my phone, a seperate desk for my computer, another desk for my paperwork and another desk for my mouse, that would be pretty crazy. So imagine IE, media player, Outlook, Word, [windows] Explorer and whatever other apps you use all used their own MDI interfaces... Do you think your life would be easier then? Or do you (deep down) just tolerate the imposition that is PhotoShop's MDI because you're so used to it?

GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[Alan]

I love gimp, but latey it seems to be falling farther and farther behind the windows alternatives, at least in the area of digital photography manipulation. Don't get me wrong, it can still do all the things that it needs (I think), but the ease of use and UI from programs such as photohop, elements, and even ms pictureit/digital image pro make it pale in comparision.

A couple of quick examples of things I'd like to see (which aren't in the last gimp 1.3.2x version I have installed):

- crop which dims the area outside the crop to give you a better feel of what the cropped image will look like
- a "straighten image" function like MS has in their product, where you simply click a line on the horizon (or whatever) and the image is rotated and cropped automagically
- auto-[levels,colors]

Though I'm not sure if the gimp needs this sort of functionality, or if a branch using it's libs for digital imaging (gimp-elements?) needs to be branched off and started.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[Dielectric]

Both of those would probably make pretty good plugins. Well, I'm not sure about the cropping, but straighten image would be a great addition to a plugin group for digital photo editing.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[BigSven]

GIMP is actually a lot superiour than PS when it comes to "straighten" an image. You should try the Corrective mode of the transform tools. It makes the tools work the other way around. If you need to rotate a scan, choose "Corrective" and align the grid with a line that's supposed to be horizontal. GIMP will do the appropriate rotation for you. This also works for perspective transformations which makes it the ideal tool for correcting perspective distortions.

BTW, there is Auto-Levels as well and the Crop functionality you are describing is considered to be done at some point.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[Alan]

The cropping is simple a way to polish. Obviously gimp has had cropping from day one, but the way that PS does it if you've ever seen it just makes it a bit easier because you can see what the image will look like in the end. I also wish they could do that with the canvas rotation functionality.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[Alan]

Very cool sounding, I hadn't seen this before. Thanks for the info!

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[LuxFX]

(coming from Windows GIMP 1.2 vs PS 6 perspective)

My biggest gripe with GIMP is lack of Layer Styles and Adjustment Layers. Wow, those might seem to be frilly options for some people, and yes the same can be accomplished by hand. But I use those two functions ALL THE TIME and would love GIMP to have a similar interface.

Also, does the new version support layer grouping? And is there still a layer number limitation? My first experience with GIMP, I tried importing my most recent project and was told I used too many layers. Not a very good first impression.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[BigSven]

And is there still a layer number limitation?

Unlike PS which actually has (or used to have) a limitation on the number of layers, GIMP always allowed to use you as many layers as you liked. Of course there are limits (as always) but you will run out of memory before you hit them.

What you saw was the problem that the PSD import plug-in used to have a maximum number of layers that it could handle. This problem has been addressed. Please note that this only affected import of PS files. That's a lot better than what PS since it limits the number of GIMP layers you can import to zero.

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[LuxFX]

Unlike PS which actually has (or used to have) a limitation on the number of layers

I ran into that problem quite often. You never start a project thinking, "boy, I think I'll use more than 100 layers in file!" but it ended up happening quite often. I was so happy when they removed that limitation in PS....

Ok, so I'm very glad to hear it wasn't a problem with GIMP itself. Now if I can only get similarly easy fixed for my other issues.....

Re:GIMP Falling behind for digital photography

[ChaosDiscord]

Two of the things you asked about are already in Gimp 1.2.x.

You can "straighten image" using the "rotation, scaling, shearing, perspective" tool (it looks like a resizing window in the toolbar). Anyway, pick "rotation" and "Corrective" in the tool options. Click in the image to bring up the rotation grid and rotate the grid until the lines of the grid are parallel to known horizontal lines in the image. Corrected. (Very useful for us sloppy photographers.)

As for auto-levels, Image > Levels > Auto. Or maybe you're talking about something else.

These probably moved in 1.3.x/2.0pre1, but I'd expect them to be there. (Looking at the 2.0pre1 screenshots it looks like the rotation tool was broken into four distinct tools, probably a good call.)

As for dimming the cropped area, I agree, that would be most excellent.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[drakaan]

Yes, let's cram all of the tools and images into one single toplevel window so that everything is restricted to one of my monitors instead of being able to spread out across all 3.

Got a couple spare monitors and video cards for me? How about advocating the beauty of choice? Let me decide that having all of the tools, images, and menus in a single toplevel works well on my poor, measly, single monitor, and you can have stuff strewn across all three of yours.

Photoshop vs. Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done professional work with both Photoshop and GIMP and I believe they both have things to offer.

Difficulty aside, I don't think it is very realistic to say that people will be switching to GIMP anytime soon. Simply put, Photoshop is the culture of the Graphic Design world. You're also forgetting that there are products like Illustrator that are used just as much and integrate quite well with Photoshop. Sure, not much has been added lately to Photoshop, but maybe that's a sign that Photoshop pretty much has it right.

Photoshop has tons of books, courses, etc. Every office that does serious design uses it. Sure for your simple webpage, GIMP might do the job, but in a professional environment people need something with existing tools, support, namebrand, etc. We hear the same arguments regarding linux v. all the time.

I think many of the people on here have trouble negotiating the fact that if A is better than B, we should use A. That's not the real world.

There are plenty of compelling reasons to use both products as others have mentioned. No one is forcing you to use either. However to state that people wills switch to GIMP is an outright joke IMO.

I can't imagine the day I walk into a professional and skilled graphic designer's office and see them using GIMP. Face it, we might want everyone to use the best tools and run linux, etc but then there's the reality of doing business, working with others, and getting things done. Culture is so important in the workplace and incredibly hard to change, so tools like GIMP, OpenOffice, etc won't ever make a dent if they can't find good ways to become part of office culture.

Re:Photoshop vs. Gimp

[aonaran]

The biggest drawback I ever experienced with using the Gimp was that it could read photoshop PSD files but couldn't export to them (maybe that's been fixed since) That to me is a big hurdle to migration for anyone who wants to collaborate with other artists.

International versions?

[G3ckoG33k]

There should really be a way to easily translate all menus in Gimp to various languages. But, I could not find any information on their homepage. Any tips?

Re:International versions?

[BigSven]

There is an easy way. The GIMP is translatable using the gettext framework. Actually it is already translated into a large number of languages. This effort is coordinated by the GNOME Translation Project. The file README.i18n as found in the GIMP source tree gives you further information on how to contribute.

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Honestly, I can't get Photoshop CS to warn me like that other story said it's supposed to. I've scanned and worked with a $5 and a $20 now with no problems. I'm beginning to suspect the validity of the story.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[LnxAddct]

When I use Gimp I tend to put it in its own virtual desktop. It helps alot if you've got a million windows open everywhere. With the newest versions of GIMP though there may be a less cluttered interface and may not be needed any more. I'm apt-getting the latest unstable when I get home tonight to check it out.
Regards,
Steve

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Overly Critical Guy]

MDI sucks.

Coming from a poster who probably used Mozilla to type it.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[RoLi]

Putting my own personal bias into it, attitudes like Sven's are what I see as the big imediment towards adoption of open source.

Wrong. The most important problem is that the world is crawling with idiots who think that just because "the market leader" uses something it has a good user interface.

Graphic artists - REAL graphic artists - are very likely to use more than just one monitor. And guess what, being able to put windows on both monitors and essentially being able to work on each monitor independently or not, just as needed is a big advantage. The same can be said about multiple desktops.

Of course the only thing some morons notice is that it's "different" than Photoshop. Because of the tight mental limits of those characters they will say that anything different to Photoshop is bad.

Grammar police

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, "A local news station here did a story on this very phenomenon about a year ago." "Phenomena" is the plural of "phenomenon."

color calibration is a MUST...

[rebelcool]

if you ever want to get well into digital photography where you print out your own photos on your photo printer, calibration is a must have if you have at least a passing demand of accuracy and quality.

You will never get your printed output to look exactly like whats on your screen without profiling. In many cases, the colors may be quite off because of variations in screens, video drivers, printer ink, printer paper, printer drivers etc.

Then again, I doubt any modern USB 2.0 photo printer is supported on any non OSX or windows system so perhaps the whole idea of printing in general doesn't get much attention from the gimp team.

Re:color calibration is a MUST...

[Trolling4Dollars]

Yes, but... that doesn't sound like the average person. When I say "average person" I mean the guy who grabs a picture off the web that's 72dpi at 240x120 pixels and prints it out at 360dpi on 8x11 photo paper. That guy isn't going to be needing CMYK.

In my case I AM into digital photography as a semi-hobby. The GIMP suits me fine. Especially with GIMP Print. I've done quite a bit of nice work with it any my USB Epson photo printer. Of course, these are things the average user would never do (even though they think they might).

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Right, let's squash the 90% of the population that hates the GIMP interface (someone claims MDI sucks, yet everyone wants it...perhaps the problem is that person?) so the minority of people with multiple monitors can feel happy that they have a brush toolbar on screen 3.

This despite the fact Photoshop handles multiple windows quite well anyway. You honestly think GIMP couldn't be MDI and multiple-monitor friendly? Welcome to the reason OSS has yet to succeed in the desktop market. Elitism and closed-mindedness. "I know what's best for you! Don't complain!" So everyone uses something else, and then people bitch when OSS isn't widely-adopted.

Script-Fu Hell

[N8F8]

Script-Fu seems to have been in limbo for quite a while. Personally I feel Scheme is just to alient for most hobby programmers. Not to mention the tons of dead scripts due to version incompatabilities. Perl-Fu seems to have never gotten off the ground. It would be nice if someone would develop a Javascript like interface language. I'd bet the intersection of graphics app users and web developers is pretty big.

Re:Script-Fu Hell

[tjic]

There are already two language extensions, each of which is aging and getting brittle, and the solution is to add a third language extension?

Isn't this like saying "the cook at my favorite restaurant can't remember how to cook the four dozen dishes on the menu...I think the solution is to add my mom's home cooked lasagne to the offerings?"

Re:Script-Fu Hell

[Anonymous Coward]

what about python fu? tastes great less filling right?

Re:Script-Fu Hell

[BigSven]

I don't see how gimp-python is aging. It is part of the GIMP-2.0 prerelease. gimp-perl is also not abandoned. It just has been moved into its own module to make it easier to maintain. We will probably do this for pygimp at some point and the plan is to move script-fu into it's own package as well. This doesn't mean that these language bindings won't be available to you. It's just a matter of doing an extra click in your installer of choice.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[RoLi]

I'm not disagreeing with Sven's opinion, just his closed-mindedness to other opinions.

It's not nearly as closed minded as "[..] Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing"

That's closed mindness at it's finest. And to complain about closed-mindness of others just tops it off.

Any chance of gimp-perl under Win32?

[exploder]

So they took out the perl bindings. The reason (as I understand it) why there's no working gimp-perl under Win32 is that the bindings don't work right in that environment. Are they changing the way it works so that it's more Win32-friendly? Or just taking out something that not enough people used?

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Do chapters in a book or articles in a newspaper all have seperate printings on seperate sheets in seperate wrappings? It's called organizational clarity.

My First Gimp 2.0 impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

I got this bad boy running pretty quickly after I heard the news, and I've been experimenting... but, alas, I've got a few big gripes about Gimp 2.0. 1) That toolbar is rediculous (i'm referring to the one where you select tools... i know "toolbar" could technically mean a number of different UI aspects). The fact that the items are arranged in a more square-like grid instead of something resembling the PS column means that you have to move your eyes back and forth to find the tool you want, rather than shooting down the list with one quick nod. All those different shape rotations as individual tools? I use Photoshop frequently thoughout my week and I only have to use those once in a while (but when I do use one, w/ the exception of transform, I usually use the rest of them too). So a) do they really need to be a tool thing and not just a right-click thing? and b) any particular reason why they're not made into one button where you click-and-hold for various other options? 2) The selection arrow. It just makes sense, visually. 3) Gimp seems to be very slooow. I'm running a P4 2.4 Ghz, 512 RAM and editing a measly 32 MB picture causes some lag unheard of with photoshop. That's all I have to say for now. Nonetheless, i'm going to try to use it until it makes sense.

Major version numbers

[pclminion]

Can somebody help me understand the difference in how major version numbers work between free software and commercial software?

The GIMP has been around a long time, but it's just now bumping against 2.0. In contrast, my company has product younger than two years old which are already hitting 2.3, and will go to 3.0 in a few months.

At least with our products, and I'm sure many other commercial products as well, major version number changes are used to indicate large-scale changes to the infrastructure. In the case of our 7.0 product, our entire rendering infrastructure has been rearchitected. We don't bump the version willy-nilly, and we don't have a competitor with whom to play "version tag" or anything like that.

So what's with free software? Most free software projects never bump past the 0.99 mark, and hardly any ever pass 2.0. KDE and GCC being prime counterexamples. However, this doesn't mean that major development doesn't go on! Things are constantly being redone -- even rewritten entirely -- and yet these major changes come with only a slight version change, say from 1.2 to 1.4 or something like that.

My question is, why not use version numbers more vigorously, as a way to actually indicate the degree of change from the previous version? A few bug fixes shouldn't take a project from 1.8 to 2.0... Nor should a major rewrite of a vital portion of the code only bump it from 1.8 to 1.9.

Anyway, why the difference?

Re:Major version numbers

[Permission Denied]

Can somebody help me understand the difference in how major version numbers work between free software and commercial software?

Sure. Commercial software always uses version numbers to indicate minor and major changes, whereas open source software uses version numbers willy-nilly.

Let's look at Sun for example. Long ago, we had SunOS 4.0. This continued until Sun was ready for the next major version of their OS. Instead of calling it SunOS 5.0, they created a new product line and called it Solaris 2.0. To stem confusion, the older versions of SunOS were re-branded with the Solaris moniker, so that Solaris 1.4 was equivalent to SunOS 4.4 and Solaris 1.3 was equivalent to SunOS 4.3, and so on. Thus, managers could easily see that they needed to upgrade if they were told that they were running Solaris 1.4 instead of 2.0, whereas SunOS 4.4 versus Solaris 2.0 was simply too confusing. To further help decision-makers, Solaris 2.7 was also named Solaris 7.0, in addition to SunOS 5.7 and Solaris 9.0 is also known as Solaris 2.9 or SunOS 5.9. This continues until today where IT managers can easily see if they need to upgrade by converting the new Solaris number into the old Solaris number for machines running versions of Solaris greater than 7.0 and converting SunOS numbers into old Solaris numbers.

So anyone can clearly see that commercial software vendors use versioning in order to minimize confusion among users.

On the other hand, open source developers are continually inflating version numbers in order to compete with other open source developers for precious clients. For examples, one has to look no further than the Linux even-stable/odd-development scheme or FreeBSD's branches. Obviously these developers are only attempting to confuse users through versioning in order to increase sales.

In addition, many open source efforts are constrained by the vagaries of their marketing departments. For example, Knuth's TeX approaches pi with each new version. Obviously, this was a shrewd tactic on the part of his marketing people to entice those mathematically-inclined (and how successful it was!).

"Made with GIMP" Galleries?

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard "This is not a Troll" disclaimer applies here.

I keep hearing and reading about how great the GIMP is, but I've yet to see any online galleries of GIMP made stuff that looks really professional.

Most of what I found is either very basic like a fuzzy edged Tux, or some simple text effects and gradients or art that looks it was made in Deluxe Paint in an Amiga circa 1990.

For all the junk talked about Corel Draw in the professional graphics world, Corel backed up their product with some amazing world class galleries and showcases or Corel generated art. Is there any really good collections of "Made with GIMP" art in the web?

Anonymous Joe

CMYK, not CYMK

[slavemowgli]

That's CMYK, dear /. editors, not CYMK. :)

Patents

[tepples]

[Support for other color spaces] won't get you far in the printing world without support for colour profiles and colour calibration.

We're still waiting for the patents on efficient, accurate color calibration and conversion, such as the PANTONE patents, to expire. Just be glad that nothing like the Cher Act has passed.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno but GIMP 1.3.x has SVG support. Also, to the previous person: scroll up in the topic there are some very good reviews in this article.

they will though as it becomes easier

[rebelcool]

its still a bit of a voodoo science to get the colors "just right", even with OSX and windows, but canon for example distributes its own photo print tool that uses canon provided profiles (based on their OEM paper and ink).

You still need some sort of monitor calibrator though to get the right colors. This can be as simple as the adobe gamma software, or the more accurate colorimeter packages which come with a sensor that suction cups to the monitor.

I just can't take a photo editting package seriously if it doesn't have at least some support for color profiles. Joe Point n' shoot might not use them, but Joe Point n' shoot doesn't use Linux either.

Re:they will though as it becomes easier

[Trolling4Dollars]

Yes. So... why is CMYK such a big deal then? You (and I) are obviously not Joe point and shoot. So... if you had an interest in investing the time to overcome the limitations (as I have) then the GIMP works just fine. For me it does what I need it to do:

1. Edit 6 megapixel TIFFs and get them "just right".
2. Send to my Epson photo printer.

For Joe average it can also do what he wants:

1. Take that picture of cousin Willy and put him next to the Hollwywood flavor of the month and e-mail it to everyone in his address book.

With the improvements in the UI that GIMP will have in 2.0, usability won't be much of an issue either.

GIMP? I like that!

[cornholio_hehehe]

hehe hehe gimp. I like that. GIMP! Hey GIMP! hehe hehe or is that gimPEE!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Paladin128]

No, that's a poor metaphor. It's like saying that all your books from one publisher should be attached together. Or that your pen should be bolted onto your notebook. Or your palette should be bolted onto your easel. Our tools we use should not be bolted onto the medium.

Think of it this way... eventually what would be ideal is to make a generic document editing interface... it shows views of the document, and nothing else. Then you open up GIMP to give you tools with which to edit that document. And you should also be able to open up other tools and work on the same document -- equation editors, various exporters, "code palletes" for making it do stuff.

SVG Support?!

[Milo Fungus]

Am I seeing this correctly? (screenshot #6 Does The GIMP 2.0 support SVG? HALLELUJAH!!! That's fantastic! I Googled around and found this article (translated from German).

This is wonderful, but a bit strange. I once inquired around about why The GIMP was so lacking in vector art tools. Why wasn't there a tool for making basic shapes, for instance? The answer I found (by Googling around) was that The GIMP is based on the old Unix philosphy, which focuses on small, reusable components. Designing in this way made components highly portable, and separated the work of creating a GUI from the core work. The GIMP did not support vector art because that was the job of a vector art authoring tool. The GIMP was a rastor image manipulation tool. This answer didn't satisfy me, because the GIMP itself is a huge conglomerate of tools, some of which are hardly related. The GIMP is the GUI wrapper which coordinates all of the little components (which are individually accessible through script-fu). So why insist that it was only for rastor image manipulations?

OpenOffice.org Draw can import/export SVG, but I don't like the interface very well. I prefer the spartan interface of a text editor for SVG. :) But I'd be willing ot try a GIMP tool.

There was a GNU project (which apparently failed) that was trying to create a vector art authoring tool. I can't remember the name of it.

Re:SVG Support?!

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

OpenOffice.org Draw can import/export SVG

Export. But not import. Not in the latest release 1.1.0 version. (Although I would love to be proven wrong!)

Re:SVG Support?!

[ianezz]

Am I seeing this correctly?

Yes and no.

The Gimp has had for some time (since version 1.2 IIRC) some support for vectorial drawing: you can define paths using bezier curves, which may be adjusted, saved and restored, and drawn on the current layer using the current brush. But drawing (and selecting the layer) must be done manually.

The next version of The Gimp adds the ability to save and restore paths as SVG paths (before, it used an ad-hoc simple textual format), and also the ability to import an SVG image by rendering it on a bitmap (like it did with PS images).

That's it: a useful thing to have, but it has little to do with vectorial drawing.

There was a GNU project (which apparently failed) that was trying to create a vector art authoring tool. I can't remember the name of it.

You are talking about GYVE: its developement has stopped in 2002.

OTOH, for Free vectorial drawing programs, check out sodipodi (and its IMHO nicer branch Inkscape) and the good ol' Sketch (now called Skencil).

The Gimp skins?

[gad_zuki!]

Are there photoshop-like skins for it? I'm sure that would go a long way to mass-adoption as we're all too lazy to learn new things. Afterall, KDE/Gnome have no problem looking like Windows.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

Or do you (deep down) just tolerate the imposition that is PhotoShop's MDI because you're so used to it?

I'll be honest, even if I were using GIMP in X11, and I had a viewport separated for specifically that purpose, I think I'd still prefer MDI. Part of that is that I'm used to it, but the value of my familiarity is that by this point, I've wrapped my head around the desktop-within-a-desktop metaphor, and I no longer have any troubles with it.

When I look at GIMP, I see multiple windows. For reference, my conception of a "window" is an independent process. So what I see is a process that seems to have no function except to provide little toolbar buttons. Independently, I see a process that has no function other than to list layers in some image. I see a process apparently devoted to displaying an image, and modifying it with the mouse (but within the scope of that process, there's no way to change what function the mouse performs).

In short, there's nothing subconsciously telling me that the Gimp windows are all connected; that the things I do in one will affect the state of another. Obviously I know it consciously (if from nothing else than the window icons), but it's not a fundamental realization... I always have to think about it.

Contrast Photoshop. I have a big window, with clearly defined boundaries (even if those boundaries are the maximized size of the screen). This window gets a little neuron in my head saying "here is photoshop... it's all in here". Within that window, I get image windows, which look like normal Windows XP windows. That's okay, I can tell by the fact that they're images that they're within the scope of Photoshop; and the each-window-is-a-separate-conceptual-process metaphor holds; from my perspective as the user, each image is a separate process. I don't interdependently work on two images at the same time. Then, also within the main Photoshop window, I have toolbar windows. These are not separate processes, because I'm not "processing" them. Instead, I conceive of them as subsidiary functions to Photoshop. So that little neuron telling me "Here is Photoshop" wants me to look for things that clearly "belong" to that window. So, Human-Computer Interaction experts aside, the different window decorations for the tool windows actually help me structure my workspace in my head.

Furthermore, some of the debate in that bug report had to do with the proper location and context of the menus. When I'm using a graphics editor, and I want to blur an image, what I'm really saying is "I want the program I'm using to blur the image". In Photoshop's context, the menu item for doing that "belongs" to the big Photoshop window, so my conception is accurate. In GIMP, the metaphor seems to be saying "I want this image to blur itself." Since I see Photoshop (or the GIMP) as a program, and the image as a static document, I can see the former performing an action on something else, but the latter cannot take action.

So that's my justification of MDI. It correctly extends the metaphors I have in my head to the behavior of the program. The (valid) question you should ask is, would those metaphors have developed naturally, or did my extensive use of Photoshop force me to adopt them in order to trace an outline of logic around my behaviors. I'm honestly not sure. But the metaphors don't seem illogical. They don't seem like they're really inconsistent with the actual roles of files and programs that have been established in other systems (examples: in a preferences dialog, the settings don't "change" themselves, they are changed by the program. In a word processing document, the document does not check its own spelling, the word processor checks it). So I think it's entirely possible that MDI is just a natural adaptation to the real role structures that we had conceived for our applications.

No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks...

[aquarian]

The GIMP is as byzantine a program as has ever been written. Features are haphazardly stuffed into menus anywhere they can be made to fit. File management is a horror, with stale motif-like file manager widgets that lack sensible defaults, and don't remember where you are. And that's just for starters. Using The GIMP is not just a matter of being accustomed to something else. It's just plain diffcult, nonintuitive, an example of lousy GUI design. I can only hope the new version is better.

Re:No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks...

[TandyMasterControl]

"File management is a horror, with stale motif-like file manager widgets that lack sensible defaults, and don't remember where you are."

You didn't tap its power. Yes it looks like ass, and it seems really braindead, but looks can be deceiving. If you come from Windows, you'll have a hard time guessing what the dialog can do.

Say you have an image that you want to reopen and edit to create a totally new image. You can't remember its exact name, though, because you initially added this file to your home directory months ago and since that time you've made several versions of images derived from this original already --always keeping part of the name of the original in the names of its derived images. Let's say the file has "cat" somewhere in its name. So there are several maybe a dozen and a half "cat" images that are associated with this original all jumbled in your home. And some of these are .jpgs some are .pngs, and some are "master images" in Gimp's native xcf format that have color tinting or have been cropped. And these files are all mixed up among a thousand or so other files in your home dir. You don't want any jpegs or processed .xcf's --just the original. How to find the one you want?

Well this apparently stupid looking file selector actually has some powerful tools to help you find that one desired file very quickly. Down in the file name text area you can type *cat*.xcf and hit TAB and then the listing of files in the right pane of the dialog will change. Only those master images with "cat" and suffix .xcf will appear now. Instead of a rightpane list of 987 filenames, now there's maybe only six files to choose from. (I am basing this description off of an example I am trying out as i write this). Let's say you can't tell at a glance which .xcf file out of these six filenames is the one that you wanted to start with. Clicking once on each of these filenames will give you a graphic preview of the file to the right of the 'selection' text area. So the GIMP fileselector is actually a shitload faster than many people think.

I long for "shortcut" buttons in the Gnome/GTK+ fileselector dialog (Ximian has long had these and I can't understand why Gnome hasn't incorporated them already). Basically a "home" shortcut would satisfy me. Others pine for a shortcut to removable media. But I also wonder how many of the people who piss and moan for that kind of feature are still unaware of how fast you can use TAB autocompletion to navigate directories in the file selection dialog? Once you learn that you can do this, and get some practice using it, I can't imagine that you'd believe that poking through a visual tree of directories and subdirectories could ever be as fast. TAB completion rules. Of course it assumes you know something about your filesystem. But then, UNIX was created for intelligent professionals unafraid of a keyboard, not porn surfers who always need one hand free.

Re:No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks...

[TandyMasterControl]

I should have added that there already is a shortcut to /home/user in the file selector: just type ~ [TAB] and, voila, you're in your home directory even if you were starting out from /usr/local/subdir/subdir/subdir, or wherever.

It's a shortcut-just not a graphical shortcut of the sort people used to other systems are expecting to see. But if you're used to the BASH shell on your linux system, this will click for you and provide that "consistent ui experience" people are always talking about. For those with toplevel floppy and zip directories like in Debian, or those who've made symlinks from the toplevel to the floppy and zip directories within /mnt (like you might do on a RedHat system), accessing those directories from the standard gimp file selector would also be pretty quick, eg: /fl [TAB] and, presto, you're in the floppy's filesystem. or /z [TAB] to access the zip (supposing it's (super)mounted).

Re:No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course if you are actually working with images... rather than passing yourself off as someone who does, you would rather not be continually having to put your stylus down to interact with the program you are using...

wanker...

Re:No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks...

[jonadab]

> symlinks from the toplevel to the floppy and zip directories within /mnt

Actually, I don't have a symlink to /mnt/floppy (because I don't use floppies
much anymore), and I don't have a zip drive, but I *do* have symlinks in /
to several smbmount directories pointing to directories on other computers on
my home LAN, such as the family Windoze PC upstairs. (I name these after the
name of the PC in question -- e.g., /trex for the main share on trex.) Also
for other filesystems on my main desktop, e.g., /dos, /95, and /winme for
the main filesystems of older OSes. (I still keep some things there, because
I still occasionlly boot those older systems for one reason or another. Yes,
even DOS, from time to time.)

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[Deraj DeZine]

The problem with MDI is that it seems like it's got a bunch of windows when it really doesn't (they're just inner-windows). The best solution (the one the GIMP supports well and is often used under X) is to use virtual desktops. This allows the user to group windows from different applications, move them between desktops, etc.

Tabbed interfaces suffer from the same problem, but since they actually save quite a bit of resources, they're actually very helpful on slower machines.

I was just looking at this stuff yesterday. Feel free to google for "MDI virtual desktops" or "application tabs window manager tabs" and such. Many of the people working on Mozilla had quite a bit to say against a tabbed web browesr...

Does it work on Windows?

[tepples]

So please, give it a try before you bitch about it.

The latest version of the GIMP available for Microsoft Windows operating systems is a 1.2.x.

And yes, I have given Linux a try, so per your comment, I assume that I likely have the right to female-dog. Last time I tried to install Mandrake (9.2 RC1), I couldn't get it to start X with my Radeon 9000 video card. When I selected Radeon in the installer's list of video cards and clicked Test, it "couldn't find a usable mode" or something like that). I don't feel Linux is worth running unaccelerated in 640x480 pixels with 16 colors (VGA driver). Should I wait for the next Knoppix to include this version of the GIMP?

Re:Does it work on Windows?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The very first link on a google search for 'gimp windows download' is this one:

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/

You can download both the stable and development versions, as well as GTK.

Re:Does it work on Windows?

[po8]

If you want to install Linux on your system, and Knoppix does what you want, there an HD installer on the Knoppix CD. I personally find Debian to be a quite usable Linux distro, although YMMV.

I imagine a GIMP 2.0 package will appear in Deb unstable shortly.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Boing]

Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing"

That's closed mindness at it's finest.

No, because while that is what I believe, I do not presume to impose my preferences on others. I merely ask for my opinions to be considered as well.

I probably should have qualified my statement with an "IMO", but in either case I have made it clear that I welcome constructive suggestions from others, even if (gasp!) it means that I don't have an indestructably perfect understanding of EVERYONE'S needs.

I depend on Windows for...

[tepples]

Will Knoppix, SuSE, Gentoo, or FreeBSD be able to read and write my NTFS C: drive safely, to draw to my ATI Radeon 9000 video card (which Mandrake's installer couldn't handle properly) with 2D acceleration (so I don't see menus painting pixel by pixel), or to read images from my SANE-unsupported Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner that I received as a gift?

"Operating system"

[tepples]

I think perhaps you should go and read up on what an OS is.

The word "operating system" means more than just a kernel. As commonly used, it includes at least the window system, which ideally should support color management.

Re:"Operating system"

[DrSkwid]

yes, it's more than a kernel but to say that colour matching *should* be part of the OS is overstating the importance just a tad.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[dustmote]

It's all a matter of scale. That's about a single paycheck for me, which is an astronomical sum in my tiny litte universe. :)

Patents

[tepples]

For logo design, you'll probably need a vector program. Does GIMP integrate with Sketch the way Photoshop integrates with Illustrator?

For logo design, you'll probably need support for PANTONE colors, which are patented.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Coryoth]

On the other hand, it's quite frequent, when using the GIMP, for me to inadvertently click on a program in the background, and have to manually re-raise each GIMP window. Additionally, the unnecessary window decorations (full titlebar, outline, etc) waste a great deal of screen real estate when applied to several windows of the same program.

That's the downside of GIMP for windows - which I presume is what you are using: it is designed for Linux, so doesn't work well with Windows slightly more spare window management facilities. With Gimp 1.x I just kept my palettes and toolbox in the same window group, so they all raised simultaneously. Should I have several images open and I somehow raise a window above them, "send to back" (opposite a window raise) does the job very nicely. Multiple desktops also make this sort of thing easier - I usually have all my GIMP windows layed out on one desktop and do other work on different desktops, so it is rare that I would have other windows interfering with my GIMP work.

On the other hand, to try and adress the growing market for Windows and Mac, they have made pretty much all the palettes etc. dockable in 2.0, and I hear Windows is getting multiple desktops soon (and at least has a powertoy to do it already), so some of your issues may be remedied.

Jedidiah.

Font copyright

[tepples]

where're all the DIP tools like 2D FFT and convolution matrix?

I agree. After having done some of that 2D FFT crack in a college image manipulation course that used MATLAB, I want some more in GIMP as well.

Text - can't they store vector data as well so that on comps without those fonts i can still safely resize based on vector data?

In theory, Photoshop could turn text outlines into an Illustrator vector layer, but it'd probably violate many font packages' EULAs. Vector data is copyrighted, and an embedding license (for use in e.g. PDFs) often costs extra. Remember that in this case, Adobe sells licenses for both programs and fonts, making it as schizophrenic as Sony Electronics vs. Sony Music.

Re:Font copyright

[zlel]

actually it's not just in theory... PS7 does have a turn text to path function - only that it doesn't have a turn ALL text layers into paths function.. something which Illustrator does have.

fonts can be a big headache, especially if you design on a PC and your printers work on a Mac and your company isn't half as rich enough to buy all the established font packs out there. I always turn all my type (text) into outlines (paths) in illustrator to save my printer and myself.

and if i'm right, the partial embedding of font vector data (eg, for just the text that's been used) is allowed, but the wholesale embedding of certain fonts in not allowed.

just on the side - has there been any legal cases surrounding the intellectual ownership of fonts? some people seem to be pretty liberal when packing fonts with artwork.

does anyone out there do GPL'ed opentype and truetype fonts? i'd love to own the whole pack!

Counterfeiting is social engineering, too

[danlyke]

I chatted with a counter guy at a coffee shop the afternoon after they'd taken a counterfeit $20 and discovered it later. He showed it to me, and, yes, it sucked, but I could see how if you were slapping out drinks with a line out the door you'd just look at the denomination and drop it in the till.

"Good enough" is the point of counterfeiting, and there are lots of ways to offset the difficulties of obtaining good paper or getting the colors exactly right by trying to spend it in places with uneven lighting and rushed staff.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[ratsnapple tea]

On a more serious note, the perception that the Gimp has a terrible user interface is a fallacy. Most people who complain are Photoshop users. D'uh! It's got a different UI to Photoshop, try using it for more than 5 minutes and you'll find that it's quite a nifty UI that is arguably better.

You're in denial. The GIMP's interface is terrible. It's not just about toolbars, button placements, key equivalents--though those things matter too--it's about the overall look and feel and consistency of the application. It's about the comfortable feeling you get from some applications (Photoshop) but not others (The GIMP) that the interface was designed with you in mind. Speaking for myself, the atmosphere of The GIMP simply isn't conducive to my creativity the way Photoshop is--it just doesn't inspire me to be creative. Until The GIMP fixes that, and I don't pretend to know how that might happen, I'll stick with Photoshop.

on laptops

[tepples]

Handy because I've always preferred '+' over '=' as the zoom in key.

I learned GIMP on a laptop, where + requires a shift key and - doesn't. Still, I have changed a few GIMP key bindings myself to give GIMP and Cool Edit (Audacity isn't there yet) similar shortcuts.

Algorithm?

[tepples]

A home inkjet printer can see only about 50 to 100 scanlines of the image at once. How do you expect it to spot banknotes in all rotations?

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[LuxFX]

Clippy: Hi! It looks like you're trying to draw a straight line. Would you like some help?

Me: Dammit, I know I can't draw a straight line. But go the hell away!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[JCholewa]

> Of course, most people are referring to Windows and their poor taskbar being clogged up.
> D'uh! Get a decent OS or WinXP that'll solve that for you.

Bah. WinXP's handling of the taskbar is *awful*. If I'm viewing a webpage in an SDI web browser, and I want to switch to another one, I have to click on the task bar entry for the application, then examine the tasks that pop upwards for the entry that corresponds for the window that I want to go to. But a typical MDI browser has its own personal version of the taskbar, whether it's Opera's original system or Mozilla's tabbed version. I can navigate between the pages in a single application with one click. Additionally, with Windows XP's method, there's no standardized keyboard shortcut for changing to different windows within the same application. In most MDI applications, ALT-Tab changes the application, while CTRL-Tab changes the document within the application. It'd be great if I could change between my GIMP windows with CTRL-Tab, but instead I have to either clutter up my task bar, waste time with ALT-Tab, or waste even more time with XP's taskbar grouping.

Bah!

FWIW, I'm a frequent Linux/FreeBSD user. I'd use OS X, but I have no money. KDE's konsole program simplified command line work so well for me that, in Win32, I make sure that I install Cygwin, X11, the ion window manager and xterm so that I can fake similar functionality (mutiple bash shells, SHIFT-Left and SHIFT-Right to change the active shell, CTRL-SHIFT-N to make a new one, with clickable buttons added to switch back and forth with the rodentia).

That said, I haven't yet reached the point of condemnation of The GIMP. I did have some problems working with 1.x, but they weren't UI related (for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to paint a single, non-textured pixel!). And I don't really mind having floating toolbars. Personally, I would have liked it if the window that holds the actual image would act with an MDI (maybe optionally, with a control/widget that [un]groups them?), but that'd only be a problem in those rare instances when I need to open up dozens of images (ecch, where in a taskbar would they go if there were a hundred of them open at once??). Heck, I haven't really played with 2.0, so maybe it does that anyway!

Heh. If I wait long enough, some crazy guy will just make a KParts interface for The GIMP (so that it's forced inside a konqueror-like window with tabs), like they're doing for OpenOffice. That might be icky, though.

--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main

PS: heh, just realized that I said "bash shells"! ^_^

Re:Completely new UI (Was:The problem with gimp...

[fault0]

> With its innovative dockable palettes GIMP really sets the par above Photoshop and likes.

Uhhhhhhhhhh.. these "innovative" palettes have been around since Photoshop 3.0.. I beleive it was Aldus who first implemented it in PageMaker; Adobe later bought Aldus (and sold off FreeHand, since it competeted with Adobe's own Illustrator)

Re:The problem with gimp...

[jedrek]

Exactly how? If you're a graphic designer billing at $50/hr it costs less than 2 solid days work.

Using Photoshop for light photo retouching is like using Oracle for your blog.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[fault0]

Indeed. In fact, perhaps GIMP should just raise all windows once one window is raised. This is how Mac PS behaves.

Often I've seen GIMP developers point to Photoshop on MacOS and it's lack of MDI; the big mistake is that they forget about the Mac-ish application oriented behavior, compared to GIMP's rather lacking document oriented behavior (isn't very good for image processing applications; often people have to bring in _many_ layers from other documents; this is what Windows's MDI and MacOS's "raise all windows of program" upon focus of one window acheive)

like I said

[DrSkwid]

stop whining

Re:I realize

[JCholewa]

> You know, Gimp's primary platform is not windows.
> And there's no Paintshop Pro for linux that I know of.

For what it's worth, Paint Shop Pro reportedly works well with wine (the windows compatibility layer for Linux and similar platforms). I haven't tried it, and it probably takes some tweaking to get past the installer, though.

--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main

Working with text in the Gimp, Why so hard??

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been playing around with Gimp 1.2 and tried v2 last night (I like it much better than 1.2). With both programs (without a plugin)you are out of luck if you committ your text to a picture. You can't edit it or move it later. Thats probably the most frustrating thing I have when working with the Gimp. What are your thoughts on this?

Re:Working with text in the Gimp, Why so hard??

[Anonymous Coward]

I am afraid you are mistaken. You CAN do this stuff in the Gimp 2, its just that they way that the gimp handles text that makes it seem strange at first.

Editing text is very easy with the gimp. the Gimp treats all text as layers as default. To see the list of layers in the image, press CTRL+L. Then click the big T button in the toolbox to bring up the text tool, then choose the layer with the text in it, then click the text on the image. A text box will appear with the text in it. As for moving text, make sure the text layer is selected, then click the move layers button, which is a cross with four arrow heads on it, you can move it to any place you like. Gimp's text utilties are very powerful (see the script fu menu for example), but it takes practice. For example, double click the T to get advanced options for the text tool.

Re:Working with text in the Gimp, Why so hard??

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand corrected. I tried it when I got home from work and it works like a charm. The more I use it I imagine it'll be easier to work with. Thanks for your reply.

Two Questions

[KalvinB]

Have they finally put a circle around the brush pointer to tell you how big the brush is and where exactly it's drawing at?

And have they finally removed that rediculous brush size limit?

Both of which should have been done from the start.

Ben

Re:Two Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and yes. Just try it and see for yourself!

Even more fun: try an animated brush and see how the outline of the brush changes as you are drawing.

By the way, there never was a real limit to the brush size. It's just that the pre-defined brushes shipped with the GIMP and the built-in brush generator had limits, but you could always generate your own files and save them as .gbr (GIMP brush) to have larger brushes.

It's not CYMK

[problah]

It's CMYK, Cyan Magenta, Yellow and K=Black, as not to be confused out of the 16 primary colors with Blue.
They are the interopposites of RGB Red Green Blue which is on the light scale, not the print scale. If you point a blue light at a green light, you get Cyan, and on and on and on. When RGB all point at each other, you should have white, and if CMYK point at each other you should have black. The black that is ut in there is a bit of a cheater, if you don't add K, you get a muddy brown, and that wouldn't look good for print, so they throw in black because they can.

Re:It's not CYMK

[SharpFang]

Well, not completely. It's pretty simple. Assume . being the signal value and the letter RGBCMYK the actual "used by device" color value. Assume (for our purposes) 9 bit color depth.
.....C__(5)
..M_____(2)
....Y___(4)

_____R..(2)
__G.....(5)
____B...(3)

__...C__(3)
__M_____(0)
__..Y___(2)
..K_____(2)
These are equivalent plus/minus palette unlinearities. Common part of C+M+Y is replaced by K. Better contrast and saving on color ink.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[ungerware]

I'm all in favor of leaving MDI as a selectable option, like it is in NetBeans IDE, for instance.

The code necessary to maintain the ability to switch between MDI and SDI in Netbeans is a beast, and the main reason it "feels slow". The next version of Netbeans has a complete rewrite of the windowing system, and it's MDI-only.

no.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you have ever used photoshop on a mac you would understand why the gimp does what it does. MDI is a sick joke in the usability world.

OT, but it's driving me crazy

[sgtrock]

I've managed to figure out almost every UseNet acronym I've ever seen with just a bit of contextual hint. This one, however, has baffled me for years.

Just what is HTH?

Thx from a puzzled geek who really should know better.

Re:OT, but it's driving me crazy

[j7953]

Just what is HTH?

Hope this helps.

Re:OT, but it's driving me crazy

[Thornae]

And the almost invariable followup HAND:
Have A Nice Day.

After seeing it at the end of numerous usenet posts way back when, I actually did an altavista search for "HTH. HAND." to figure it out...

Re:OT, but it's driving me crazy

[sgtrock]

Thanks to both of you. I knew it was going to be one of those 'slopey headed forehead' moments. You know, so obvious as soon as you hear it you slap yourself in the forehead so hard it hurts and say, "I KNEW I should have known that!" :)

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[Kent Recal]

I don't quite get your last point about mozilla.
I mean, last time I checked mozilla firebird does support tabs. The advantages are obvious.

Re: your sig

[sketerpot]

I thought it was, "If you can't dazzle them with dexterity, baffle them with bullshit."

Re:The problem with gimp...

[RoLi]

No, because while that is what I believe, I do not presume to impose my preferences on others. I merely ask for my opinions to be considered as well.

Well "is ideal" isn't leaving any room for preferences.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[rabidcow]

Photoshop won't let you move the images onto another monitor, but I guarantee you that the MDI interface doesn't stop you from moving the tools there. Even that much doesn't have to be the case, considering that you can implement it however you wish. Don't count your features before they're hatched.

In any case, there's no reason why this couldn't simply be an option. When a lot of people like things both ways, you add an option. That's how you get happy users.

But where?

[tepples]

to say that colour matching *should* be part of the OS is overstating the importance just a tad.

In a graphics system whose requirements include displaying accurate color across all makes and models of applications, where lies the responsibility to handle various color spaces?

Re:But where?

[DrSkwid]

in the code that does the display

for many many applications graphics display is not part of the brief

Windowing systems and GUIs should do the colour matching but again, to say it is *necessary* is overstating it's importance.

real discussion

[asciiRider]

does anybody have pointers to any real discussion about the new features in this release? This slashdot discussion is nothing but "interface sux" and "I'm not moving from photoshop until gimp does x" crap...

Re:real discussion

[mcrandello]

news://comp.graphics.apps.gimp

Re:real discussion

[mcrandello]

oops, goofed up the url. Anyway look at that newsgroup, its probably your best bet.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

The perfect interface does what you expect.

learned intuition

[Doc Ruby]

That "intuition" you think was free, was actually forced on you over at least 5 years of training, during which you were confused, hungry, scared, tired, and working for free. Then you entered kindergarten, and the real work started - training your classmates. All these GUIs are less intuitive than say, peeling a banana. As for the intuitive PS GUI, "it's intuitive, once you know how".

Serious GIMP question

[26199]

How do I draw straight lines, squares, and rectangles?

That sounds silly, but I haven't been able to figure it out. I've discovered that you can hold down shift to draw straight lines, but that only works when you're already drawing... not much help for starting a line.

Why is this relevant to the discussion?... well, either I'm an idiot, or it's an example of where The GIMP doesn't quite cut it on the interface front...

I look forward to trying version 2, though.

Re:Serious GIMP question

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what the path tool is for. It more powerful than photoshop in that respect bacause not only can you create a basic line or rectangle, you can apply it with any brush making for some really cool effects rather than just a plain rectangle. Although if all you want to do is make a basic rectangle it is very easy to do. I notice that alot of people jump to the cunclusion that open source software lacks in what commercial software provides, however, most of the time it is by far superior, only done in a different way than people are used to doing it so they end up thinking a particular feature is not included. :) I usually suggest when using software that is opensource, the hardest part of learning to use it is unlearning the bad habits you were taught by prvious software design.

Re:Serious GIMP question

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a tutorial on straight line at
http://www.gimp.org/~sjburges/straightline/str aigh tline.html

Re:Serious GIMP question

[The Cookie Monster]

Photoshop has had a path tool for quite some time

Re:Serious GIMP question

[26199]

But the problem remains... how do you start the first line without actually marking the canvas?

Re:Serious GIMP question

[26199]

Well, I tried, but couldn't figure it out. Ho hum.

Re:Serious GIMP question

[Anonymous Coward]

You click on the first point of the line (that is: press the mouse button, and release it again). Yes you will have marked the canvas at that point, but since the endpoint is part of the line that is no problem, it will be covered by the line anyway.
Now you press and hold shift, move mouse cursor to second end point and click (press and release) the mouse again.

Re:Serious GIMP question

[26199]

But it is a problem if you're using, say, a tool with opacity set to 50%. Then you get an ugly splodge at the start of the line.

Re:Multiple desktops in Win

[Anonymous Coward]

There is first party (I assume unsupported) virtual desktop action for those on Windows XP. It's the MSVDM, and it give you four desktops, with hotkeys, and different desktops, and shared or not shared space on the taskbar.

Re:mod up

[Anonymous Coward]

read the other replies and mod this the rest of the way up.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Peganthyrus]

This is something like the tenth tme I'm seeing discussion of MDI in the comments of this story.

Um, MDI is that thing Windows does, where all the windows a program spawns go into one huge grey-backgrounded window, right?

Because, you know, lots of graphics professionals use Macs, and, um, this doesn't exist on Macs, at all - Photoshop on a Mac manifests as a floating toolbar, an assortment of floating palettes, and one or more document windows floating above your desktop and any other programs you may have running.

Wanting MDI in the Gimp is an 'it should work like Windows' issue, not an 'it should work like Photoshop' issue. If MDI is part of your criteria for 'how Photoshop works', then the copy of Photoshop installed on my Mac 'doesn't work like Photoshop'.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[BigSven]

That's why we have put a lot of effort into making GIMP-2.0 work well on multi-screen setups. Not only does it respect monitor borders on Xinerama setups, it also works on X-servers configured to have multiple screens. GIMP-2.0 allows you to move docks and image windows between X11 screens and GIMP's session management remembers this setting. This allows you to prepare a very convenient multi-screen setup.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Overly Critical Guy]

Look, people like you complain that MDI is bad, inferior, and counterproductive.

Yet, everybody hates GIMP's interface and likes MDI. You're probably browsing using Mozilla in a tabbed interface as we speak (er, type). So, because you yourself have decided MDI is inferior and that you can't work with it, suddenly nobody else is more productive with it than the alternative? Maybe everyone else really does prefer MDI and aren't just deluded souls.

Photoshop has been doing quite fine with its MDI interface all these years--even across multiple monitors. Accept it and deal.

OSS--"difficult to use"

[karlandtanya]

Most OSS is developed with the idea that the user is responsible for some effort and learning.

I find The GIMP (and other OSS packages) to be much more powerful and much more flexible than their commerical counterparts.

I also find The GIMP (and other OSS packages) to involve more learning curve than their commercial counterparts. More quirky, too.

For me, the power, flexibility and price are worth the learning curve. Besides, I like to learn!

Monday, I was speaking with a friend that created our website for the company we work for. He was complaining that MSPaint was a horrible tool for editing web graphics, but the company wouldn't pay for adoobie pornoshop. I demonstrated The GIMP (windows version) for him, gave him a copy of the executable, and invited him to use it.

The description I used was "Free, Powerful, and kinda hokey." I believe that's accurate for most OSS.

No, I didn't give him a copy of the source. So, I guess I'm in violation of GPL. If he wants it, he knows where to get it.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Paladin128]

Saying "everybody" hates GIMP's interface is a rather foolish statement. Photoshop on the Mac doesn't use MDI and Photoshop on Windows does. It does for legacy reasons.

And when people talk about MDI, they mean "windows within windows", not "an interface that allows you to view multiple documents in one window". Under the current accepted definition of MDI, tabbed browsing doesn't fit the bill. Tabbed browsing makes sense for a couple of reasons:

- you're talking about viewing different clumps of similar types of data, rather than editing
- the tabs are always visible, unless you have way, way too many open
- The metaphor is actually a bookmark metaphor

Tabbed browsing, in many ways, is inefficient as well. Honestly, the best approach to this I've seen was BeOS, where one could stack multiple windows on top of each other, and then treat the titlebars as tabs. This way, normal switching between windows hotkeys still work, rather than having to memorize a new set. They behaved both like windows AND tabs.

As for MS-Windows-style MDI, with current toolkits, there is no point. There are better, easier ways of doing it (like my suggestion in another post -- have all tool palletes raised when the document gains focus). And also, in the GIMP 2.0 betas, the UI is notably improved, particularly with the new dockable tool palletes. I can still make room for my terminal view and my document, but have the palletes dock at the side of the screen.

And I do accept Photoshop does fine its way. I just think, IMHO, that GIMP happens to be better in this respect.

very good, balanced post.

[Anonymous Coward]

[nt]

Re:very good, balanced post.

[Lispy]

thanx ;-)

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[JoshRoss]

With MDI you have a Z-Axis. Keep the sub windows maximized and ctrl-tab or ctrl-shift-tab between windows. The tools stay in the same location and have a key, like tab, that hides the tools occasionally.

What gimp really needs is something like expose.

Photoshop Filter compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it allow use of Photoshop compatible filters yet?

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting point, although personally I have a passionate dislike of MDI. Here is a window manager that preserves windows Z orders and has a task swiching mode that, for some, apparently beats Expose. Using this may meet your objectives without using MDI.

gimp keyboard shortcuts

[what the dumple is]

the coolest thing about the gimp, and the thing that i wish ALL applications did is this:

if you go to the menu amd highlight an option you can press a key combination (say ctrl+alt+b) and it automagically assigsns the key combo. you don't have to go to some stupid settings screen.

that is just about the coolest thing ever.

GIMPs not about creating art

[grahamsz]

Whilst you can create art with it, its generally used for photo-editing and any gallery is a tribute to the photographer and not the tools.

Some of corels demo stuff was very impressive, but i doubt there's much that can be done in PS that cant be done in GIMP, but personally i think PS is a more productive tool.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Findus Krispy]

I've been using the 1.3 series for about half a year now, and find that it is completely stable already (for what I do with it!), so I have no doubt that the final will be.

Also, the interface is so much better; I never felt at home with The Gimp 1.2, but love 1.3/2.0. It is not just the toolbars and the GTK2 look though, as some people have been saying, but the dialogs in general are so much more intuitive, and there is now a real-time preview when setting JPEG/GIF compression levels, which was something that really put me off before.

The Gimp 2 is now definitely comparable to Photoshop from an ease of use perspective. Suck it and see.

As regards KDE integration, I think it is less important with 2.0 (again, try using it!), but will probably happen to some extent even if there is no Kimp. Native KDE widgets, print, and save dialogs are all in the process of being made available for Gtk2 applications. That will be enough for me.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Deusy]

Duh! Where are the users, on photoshop. where is the industry, on photoshop, where are the tools and plugins, on photoshop where are the scripts, on photoshop.

Ignorance is bliss. You stand alone in youre ego bubble.

Whine whine whine you hackers never innovate, you only copy, why can't you do things differently!

Whine whine whine your things aren't the same as mine!

Make up your fucking mind.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Deusy]

You're in denial. The GIMP's interface is terrible ...for you.

Speaking for myself, the atmosphere of The GIMP simply isn't conducive to my creativity

Are you gay?

The problem with you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the reason OSS has yet to succeed in the desktop market. Elitism and closed-mindedness. "I know what's best for you! Don't complain!" So everyone uses something else, and then people bitch when OSS isn't widely-adopted.

Hmph. Hubris is everywhere. As a matter of fact, what you just said here could easily be said of proprietary software!

I see you constantly bitching about how terrible open source is without contributing anything positive. But then again, your pure hatred of anything open source seems to have blinded you to the fact that the knife cuts both ways.

Fetch the gimp...

[ross.w]

"He's asleep."

"You'd better go wake him up then!"

Ob. Pulp fiction reference

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Findus Krispy]

Good point, and very well made.

The problem with the idea about not re-creating a window manager is that it requires that your primary window manager is up to the job. I believe WinXP and Linux do a fairly good job by nesting the Gimp's task buttons, but a Gimp toolbox still isn't an app/task, and IMO doesn't merit a task button.

I use The Gimp and originally found it both confusing and unintuitive. 1.3/2.0 is far superior: having the menu available all the time allows me to think "I am going to apply this effect to this image", whereas I couldn't do that with 1.2, and having the toolbars dock together is just plain easier.

But, if it were not for the virtual desktops available in Linux I think the Gimp interface would drive me mad. Like you, I need to be able to wall of the app for it to make sense for me, and with Linux I can do that satisfactorily. The advantage here is that I might be able to tolerate an IM client on the same desktop, and that is actually very handy.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[ratsnapple tea]

Are you gay?

It's not my fault I have a sense of taste. Fucker.

r3r34d my p057

[Deraj DeZine]

Go google for some of the Mozilla developers' comments against supporting tabs, they're not hard to find. Their points are very valid under X11 but they do not make sense under Windows (I think I forgot to mention this before).

Yes the advantages of a tabbed browser are obvious, but the problem is already solved under UNIX with virtual desktops. There is no need for tabs within the browser except for the one I described in my earlier post. The Mozilla team is thus duplicating work and introducing inconsistency to the so-called Linux desktop.

Re:r3r34d my p057

[Kent Recal]

I found some comments, they don't convince me, though.

Seems like these people are in the minority (tabs made it into about any browser incl. mozilla after all) and most of their points seem to be irrelevant anyways.

Actually I wasn't able to dig up any valid point vs tabs except the one you already made - duplicating the virtual desktop functionality.
Which seems to be a non-issue considering the improvements you get:

• All tabs easily reachable from within browser gui, no irritating desktop switching necessary
  
• No duplication of browser toolbars
  
• Sane popup handling (open in tabs)
  
• Per-tab right-click options
  
• Cross platform UI consistency
  

Last but not least; it's an optional feature, you're not forced to use it. - Choice is good!

And, let's not forget what happens when software tries to avoid duplication of functionality like that at all cost: The Gimp.
The common battery of gimp windows and panels literally screams for a central tabs-bar (beyond what some windows managers can offer) to manage the mess. For that insane amount of windows probably a tree-view would be even more appropiate than a flat list. Or just go the photoshop way and make it MDI.

User interfaces for humans are not about avoiding redundancy or blindly sticking to some UI framework/paradigm! It's about finding the right balance between redundancy, complexity and functionality that will provide the shortest possible path for most common tasks and the least "overhead" at that. Don't be afraid to to temporarily "break the rules" (read: make an exception) when that becomes necessary. Every app is different. Innovation and good, efficient interfaces don't happen only by following academic guidelines.

Oh, and one more thing:
Your claim about the mozilla team introducing inconsistency to the linux desktop is void.
If there was any consistency in todays "linux desktop" it would make sense. But since there is none...

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[Deraj DeZine]

My point is that MDI already implemented by top-level windows. There should be no distinction between inner and top-level windows. This is why virtual desktops make more sense than MDI and tabbed interfaces in almost all cases.

so then...

[rebelcool]

GIMP's main target is Joe Point and Shoot? It seems a bit too complex to be targetted at them. That and the fact windows isn't supported yet...

But without profiles, its simply not useful for anyone else, much less graphics professionals or even semi-amateurs who may, at some point, want accurate reproductions of their work. A properly calibrated monitor (and software that can recognize it) is essential to anything thats non-toy graphics work.

Re:so then...

[Trolling4Dollars]

A properly calibrated monitor (and software that can recognize it) is essential to anything thats non-toy graphics work.

True. Just like you can't make decent audio recordings with a standard 16-bit soundcard... but people do it every day anyway. And... "non-toy" is pretty much a very small niche market.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!

Thanks, I like detail. (-:

[leonbrooks]

I also like not being left in doubt as to an author's opinion, and there are no lingering questions here. (-:

Re:Including banknote detection ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward acoherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly Critical Guy has yet to put forward a coherent or logical argument for his tired and continually discredited views. He sure hates Slashdot, but he continues to post here!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's because you're an idiot

How can you mod up such crap?

-1 Troll for vapid tellings of truth

Please learn how to use links

[Anonymous Coward]

<a href="http://inkscape.org/">Inkscape</a>

yields "Inkscape".

Please learn how to use links

[Anonymous Coward]

<a href="http://manual.gimp.org/">The GIMP Manual</a>

yields "The GIMP Manual".

CMYK patents? (was: Re:Ready for printing?)

[Raphael]

Actually, there's a bunch of patents on CMYK->RGB conversion methods.

I am not aware of patents covering the CMYK->RGB conversion. There may be some patents about the RGB->CMYK conversion because it is not always easy to find the best way to generate the right amount of K (black), but even for this case I am not sure that any valid and relevant patents exist in that area.

As a software developer, it is better to ignore patents anyway: do not waste your time checking if an area is covered by patents, unless your lawyer tells you explicitely that some patents cannot be ignored. There are many reasons for that:

• Checking for patents takes a lot of time that would be better spent coding.
• If you do not have experience reading or writing patents, the finer details of the language of the claims can be confusing. You may think that a patent covers more or less than what it actually covers, so your conclusions about the applicability of a patent to your area may be wrong.
• Even if a patent covers the area in which you are working, this does not mean that it is valid. A patent is granted because the (overworked) patent examiner at the EPO, USPTO or other local patent office could not find any prior art, but this does not mean that none exists. Ultimately, it will be up to the court to decide if the patent is valid and it is not rare for a patent (or at least some of its claims) to be invalidated because some prior art is discovered during trial.
• If you are aware of the existence of some patents but you decide to write the code using similar techniques anyway, then you would be comitting willful infringment. Depending on the law in your country or state, this may put you in a much bigger trouble than if you could have a plausible denial of their knowledge.

So I doubt that there are any patents in this area that would prevent the GIMP from having a good CMYK support. And even if there are any, then I will not actively look for them and please do not tell me about them.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[BadDreamer]

Just because something works "quite fine" doesn't make it the end-all, be-all solution. Personally I find MDI's to be a PITA to use and a nightmare to conceptualize.

Horsed carriages have done just fine during the whole of civilization, all through the 19th century. Accept it and deal!

Re:The problem with gimp...

[BadDreamer]

For me, it's the other way around. I can't wrap my head around seeing "windows" as "processes" - I'm much too used (ever since the Amiga days) of processes spanning across not only several windows, but several screens. MDI makes absolutely no sense to me as a computer interaction concept, even though I see and can appreciate the real world metaphors for it. Computers just don't work that way to me.

For me, the concept *is* "I want this image to blur itself". I'm not concerned with applications when I work; I'm concerned with documents. To me, in a word processor, the document is where I look to spellcheck. I also dislike MDI in word processors and always run documents maximized and open several word processor windows if I can.

The mixed MDI/windowed interface of Photoshop feels incredibly clunky and messy to me; the worst of several worlds combined into one. Photoshop on the Mac feels a lot more natural.

Re:The problem with gimp...

[BadDreamer]

Reconstructing most of a window manager in a graphics program is nothing but a waste of resources better spent on core functionality. MDI is not "functionality" from a graphics program perspective. It has nothing to do with graphics, or editing, or any other part of GIMP core functionality, by any stretch.

The idea is worth insulting and dismissing. Build a window manager that can group windows into an MDI if you really want it, let the GIMP developers do a graphics program, not a window manager.

Re:d1ff1cul7 70 u53 0r?

[JoshRoss]

It looks interesting. But, if I were to switch window managers I would want something that could have a giant virtual desktop that I could scale, in fine increments, to fit my screen. So, if my windows were taking up 100% of my screen i could zoom out, say to 90% giving me 10% more work area. Slashdot really needs a scribbler inline with the posts. If each message could get a 4 kilobyte black and white drawing surface to illustrate ideas that would ROCK.

YES. Windows version!

[Anonymous Coward]

=D> The windows version of GIMP 2.0 pre 1, I founded at: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/unstable.html So, windows users, try and buy! :D

reply to small-minded person

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing in the world changes the fact that people are signing over their hard work for no compensation."

Except that it is not a fact?