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....

[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.

Screenshots?

[jeffkjo1]

Does anyone have any screenshots?

Re:Screenshots?

[locutus_borg]

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

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.

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: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?"

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.)

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/

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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: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.

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)!

[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.

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.

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.

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 ?

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: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.

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: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.

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...

[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.

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

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.

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)

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...

Copying?

[Theatetus]

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

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: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?

[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: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: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: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: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.

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: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.

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: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...

[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.

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!

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

[MarcoAtWork]

article, but have they finally put in adjustment layers?

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: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: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: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: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

[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: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: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: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.

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.

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?!

[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).

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.

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: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: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!).

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. (-: