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: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:Screenshots?

[locutus_borg]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

[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: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:Screenshots?

[jcupitt65]

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

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.

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.

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: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: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: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.

Screenshots

[ghostis]

Here are some decent screenshots

-ghostis

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

[mirko]

Did these arabs pay him using phony money ?

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: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.

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!