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A First Look At The GIMP 2.0
An anonymous reader writes "Brice Burgess has given everyone a good peek at what's coming in 2.0 for the GIMP in his review over on NewsForge. Don't like the old UI? It's gone. All new. There have also been megawumpus improvements in the text tool. Brice says he sees some room for improvement still, but overall he is "very impressed."" (Slashdot and NewsForge are both part of OSDN.) The new text tools are a big step up, though the interface as a whole remains a love-it-or-hate-it thing.
Let me just say that you WILL NOT be disappointed.
It's amazing all the new features, even just the small little useability things, that were added.
Watch out PHOTOSHOP!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Looking at the pictures, the old GUI is hardly "gone". It's changed a little bit, and they've added docking capability. Great.
Great tool, but the GUI makes it difficult to find things, IMO. I was hoping for something more from a "new" GUI.
So, does it finally have mouse pointers like Photoshop, that are the size of the currently selected brush so that you can actually see how big an area you are affecting?
What about those of us that *do* like the 1.3 GUI? Fuck you?
Fortunatly it seems that they kept it quite similar. I had these horrid visions of a photoshopesque MDI that will probably give me nightmares now. I like to manage my own windows, thank you.
Will this release have a compatible gimp-print plugin?
I see they didn't go with an MDI-style interface. Having independently floating windows makes GIMP practically unuseable, unless it's the only program running... [grumble]
Can anyone tell me what the OSX-ish dock thingamabobber at the bottom of the screenshots is?
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
It's close enough to photoshop that instead of spending the time to crack it, i'll just use gimp instead.
It's helping people stay legal.
http://use.perl.org
You're not just flamebait, you're a troll. Of course there's R&D...it's just at the user-developer end. There's plugins that do things nobody wants to spend the time to implement in Photoshop.
The core system does a lot, but the real usefulness of the GIMP (at least for professional folks) lies in that they can write up a perl script to accomplish any damn thing they can think of. Of course, you can write C plugins as well.
You can't do that so easily with Photoshop unless you've already invested the time and money to make it common practice. (Which, sadly, a lot of firms do. It's easier to commit to trudging an extra couple of miles in familiar territory than risk learning something new.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Indeed, I've been using a 2.0 pre-release for awhile, and the improvement is cosmetic mostly. The dockable tool windows are great, but a functional MDI would be much more useful. Why? Window management is fine on linux with virtual desktops (one of mine is dedicated to gimp), but (a) it doesn't really work if you need GIMP on windows, which even with virtual desktops added has clumsy window management, and (b) more importantly, it is impossible to have windows automatically and intelligently resize themselves "around" the toolbars. MDI can do this easily and well, I and see no reason for this constant MDI-phobia (or is it SDI elitism?). Apps like Kdevelop have already proven that MDI can be done well, and the GIMP's SDI is the first complaint I get from people who might consider switching from Photoshop.
Probably because print people, who make up a very small minority of graphics program users, aren't providing the code for CMYK.
This is like the desktop problem with Linux. For most of the people making Linux, the desktop is essentially done. I personally can do 90% of what I need on the desktop as soon as I can open multiple xterms. I can do 100% of what I need with Gimp without CMYK. I imagine most other people contributing and using Gimp are the same.
t
I take it you're not a member of the development team then? I never understand where people get off criticizing OSS solutions because it doesn't do some random thing you want. The code is all there - if you want a native Cocoa version, get coding.
:)), but I can't code my way out of a wet paper bag and am just greatfull for having the tools I have.
Sure there are things, I'd _LIKE_ done to some of my favorite OSS projects (plug for GNUCash 2.0 to get finished
Oh and gimp 2.0pre2 works fine on my G4 at work now that I've installed yellow dog. YMMV.
and many people will like the fact that the menu is in the window now (you do not have to right-click)
Hah! I spit on your menu! That was the first thing I turned off, in fact -- I find the right-clicking to be the best part of the gimp's interface; it provides convenient, quick, and easy access to basically everything. It's probably my number-one wish when using Photoshop that it had a similar right-click menu.
Really, the fact that all tools are under a single window hasn't seemed to hurt the Adobe family of products from being wildass popular. So what, other than being different for the sake of being different, is the point?
With multiple virtual desktops (a feature Windows and Macs lack), I can have one bit of The GIMP on one desktop, and other dialogues on another. This means, for instance, that I can keep informative dialogues open and switch over to them when I need them.
I'm sure serious graphic-heads find uses for it too, but there's one. And really, unless you have a very busy background, it doesn't make much difference.
I view the Gimp as a very extensible, flexible program.
That being said, it's completely unusable for long periods of time by a guy who, admittedly, is NOT a graphic artist.
I use graphics programs like secretaries use computers. I want it to do what I want it to do, I don't want to know why, I don't want to know when, and I sure as hell don't want to have to spend a half hour figuring out HOW to do something. Ever tried to do something like a inner bevel in Gimp? I'm sure it can be done, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. And that, to me, is a failure of the program for users such as myself.
Maybe you graphics types find it just fine, but it certainly doesn't work for us reg'ler folks.
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I use Gimp for a couple things for jpgs coming out of my camera:
rotate-left abc.jpg
rotate-right abc.jpg
thumbnail abc.jpg
I'm working on a smarter resize script that bring pictures down from 340k on the camera to something more manageable like 100k.
How is this accomplished with photoshop? Can it be done with just photoshop or does it require another purchase?
t
Don't get me wrong...The Gimp is great and I was impressed with all it's features. There are some very nice filters. But whenever I need to quickly do something (like get a screenshot of a webpage and quickly figure out what colors are what) I keep falling back on Paint Shop Pro. I was never able to do things quickly in the Gimp.
I don't understand why anyone would want a box covering the very thing they're working on. Is there some option to make it that way, or customize it - say 'Adobe 7' or 'Corel 4.5' profiles?
I use Photoshop more than 10 hours a day - if Gimp wants users, it should make it easy for Photoshop users to migrate with as little adjustment as possible. Why would I want to throw my years of PS experience away? Adjustment is necessary, but not full-blown re-education.
would be to have most things accessible in one panel which can be hidden and revealed with the space bar. TV Paint was like this and you could use almost the entire screen for drawing instead of a dinky Window.
I imagine that many of the features are generic enough that any imaging package would possess them.
:-)
Two features in particular that are certainly NOT copied are:
1.The amazingly low price tag (free)
2.The ability to run on other platforms then Windows and OS/X
Personally, I think these are important and useful features
Does any know whether some EXIF support has been
introduced? For starter, it would be nice to just
preserve EXIF information found in the file when
the image is saved...
Does this version support 48-bit color (16-bit per RGB channel)? Right now I have to use Cinepaint to view and edit my 48-bit photos and I'd really rather just use the Gimp for everything.
I've been thinking of buying Photoshop Elements for much the same reason (enough functionality). I cut my teeth on Adobe graphics tools, and am comfortable with the interface (ctrl-drag for this, ctrl-alt-click for that). However much I appreciate a good OSS tool (like The GIMP), I'm willing to pay $100 for software I like better.
So, how do you feel Paint Shop Pro stands up against Photoshop Elements?
Also, any idea how either one of them runs on WINE or CrossoverOffice?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
is the "Healing Brush".. That's my single favorite part of Photoshop; especially when touching up family photos from a digital camera.
No, the GIMP still is not a Photoshop killer, the CMYK support is still in its infancy, no where near ready for use in pre-press. I am watching it eagerly, as my boss is more concerned about what we spend than the work we get done... *sigh*...
I can use it for web stuff (color precision doesn't matter), but for pre-press we cannot get away from Photoshop... beyond CMYK and ColorSync support, paths, clipping, masking, and RAW support is not up to par.
It is kind of funny that one of the last major applications to migrate to GTK2.0 is the application that created GTK in the first place (hence GTK - GIMP ToolKit).
Although I guess it kind of makes sense since GTK and GIMP are pretty tightly integrated - it would be far from trivial to switch versions.
I have never looked at some software as killer of other one. Right question is: is it good enough for me and my needs? I think that Gimp is good enough for lot of people who work with graphics. Photoshop is nice piece of software, but is it necessary that everyone pay for features that won't use anyway. If you really need it, and don't have OSS alternative, then pay for it. Not before.
/ss
The GIMP is only $0, and it works.
Costs you nothing to try, and nothing to buy, but your time is so valuable that one screenshot you don't like is enough to get you to shitcan the whole idea.
But somehow, you've got spare time enough to write approximately 200 words of nit-picking screenshot analysis.
If you had used the actual program and wished to comment on its user interface problems, I would cheer you on, for bitching about the UI is the first step on the journey to better design.
But no, you've only seen screenshots, so your comments aren't useful to anyone. They don't enhance argument against use of the GIMP, and they don't provide anyone with useful feedback or ideas.
Please limit your "insights" to subjects about which you have more objective knowledge than a screenshot. If you use the GIMP and then have something to say about it, then I will respect your opinion.
Right now, you don't even have an opinion.
Taskbar buttons and MDI have nothing to do with each other. Gimp has all those task bar buttons for a single app because they choose to (or choose not to change it). In Photoshop (at least version 7), the tool pallets are not part of the MDI interface (they are not constrained to the parent window). No one really wants a MDI. We just want a clean interface -- including the removal of all those tool pallet task bar buttons!
BTW, Photoshop on the PC would be a lot better (IMHO) if they rid themselves of the MDI. Photoshop feels a lot less constrained on the Mac - especially on multiple monitors.
...is buggy.
I routinely switch between a single monitor (think notebook) and multiple monitors (think notebook with nice big monitor at work). When I'm only using the single, Photoshop often leaves certain dialogue boxes on the non-existant monitor. The effect is that the app is broken until the next time I'm at work.
I'm pretty careful, now, about where I use and leave dialogue boxes, but it still happens. The "Reset palette locations" command works for palettes, but not for dialogue boxes. Adobe confirms that this is a known bug; I can only hope they'll fix it in the next release. Otherwise, I loooooove Photoshop. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Agreed. The Gimp's greatest flaw is it's interface. And from the screenshots it doesn't look like it's improved much. If the interface is as flexible as they claim, they really should do some interface-templates. When you start the Gimp, it should ask whether you want the UI to look like Photoshop, MSPaint, or Paint Shop Pro, and set things up accordingly. Then Users could define their own templates to improve the UI over time. That should solve all the interface problems.
I have also been annoyed by all the taskbar entries (as others have already commented). There's really no excuse for opening so many windows.
I'm not a coder, but I have to say that I'm surprised that Gimp hasn't split off/forked into more projects. If I were a talented coder, it seems like these interface problems could be fixed relatively easily?
OSS people??? who the hell are they...anyway for what i do Gimp kicks the hell out of photoshop...and it is all becouse of PRICE!!
My view of the interface is that it's not so much that the interface is flexible, but that they've broken each thing that would be a single feature in other graphics programs into multiple sub-features. The result is that to draw a box, you have to go through a a bunch of steps to do what would be one step in another interface. But you can also combine the sub-steps in different ways to do something different.
This makes technical sense to programmers, but it's insane for a user interface. What it needs is a mechanism for providing an interface to reassemble the sub-features back into the one-step feature you can find in other interfaces. This is closely related to your suggestion, and would be one step in implementing it.
I shouldn't have to select a box area, use fill, and deselect or merge layers to draw a damned box (or worse if I want a border around the box). I should be able to click on the "box" tool, mouse-down for the start point, drag, mouse-down for the end point, and be done with it.
Even other drawing applications that use layers allow for this, and then allow you to customise the appearance of the box later.
I am running Gimp 2 beta and it still needs Adjustment Layers like Photoshop.
Adjustment Layers allow adjustments to be made to all layers underneath on a separate and changeable adjustment layer.
Don't like your first choice for "color levels", just select the layer and change it.
Want to change the text layer that was part of an image you just "color leveled", just change the text layer.
In Gimp these adjustments are lossy and final, in Photoshop they don't have to be.
When will Gimp support the awesome "healing brush" that Photoshop has?
After discovering Photoshops new "healing brush" for touching up photographs I will never be able to go back to just the clone tool.
The healing brush clones, makes the clone match the color characteristics of the surrounding pixels, and blends the clone with the surrounding pixels.
A 20 minute job can be done in 3 or 4 minutes.
Ranting how crappy Gimp is compared to [fill in comercial product here] is just as unfitting as stating that Gimp is about as good as PS.
I'm a mulimediadesinger and have worked with a wide range of tool on a professional level.
Gimp 1.3 actually _is_ a usefull tool. It's not the tool of choice for most things, but in some scenarios it can actually deliver results were other grafics tools get in their own way with feature and algorithim bloat.
The habit of putting every thing in it's own window made pre-1.3 Gimp absolutely unbearable for production. Unless you had Fluxbox, maybe.
But the simple level Anti-Aliasig and some other nice features along with the one or other workaroud trick make Gimp a nice Pixeleditor to work with. Praise the Gimp team for getting the message and introducing tabs and other must-haves for GUI work.
On top of that, - and this is one of the most notable things of this OSS project imho - as long as I can remember, Gimp has allways been an absolute breeze to install. I wish all OSS would install that way. For instance, right now I'm debugging a default Postgres/ODBC Setup and it's taken up 30 workhours allready with no end in sight...
To me the undo stack in Gimp 2.0 looks promising, as it hints in the direction of the PS protokoll. Which, btw, proves that PS is still waaaaay ahead of any competition, be it comercial or OSS.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to Gimp 2. Cudos to the Gimp team for their good work.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I love Gimp and use it almost exclusively when on my Linux box (at home).
But lately I've not had as much time as I'd like to work on my puter at home.
So I use Gimp at work... when I can.
GTK for Windows has a bug in it when dealing with digital tablets and.. yep.. I draw with a tablet. Gasp.
Fix that single bug and Gimp will be absolutly perfict. Else I'll be using other software to draw my images and then the gimp for image editing after the fact.
But that kinda sucks.
I don't actually exist.
A true 48 bit support would be a great plus for such an app: no concurrent, great market. And if you optimize it for 64 bit AMD processors, you could potentially create the first killer app for 64 bit processors (remember, you need 64 bit registers to handle 48 bit colors simply).
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Okay, y'all, I know I'm ringing in on this late, and it's 6:00am without any sleep for me, so I might come off as brusque. Everybody says "I'm not a graphic designer, but..." Well, I actually am a graphic designer.
The GIMP may, someday, be as good as Photoshop. Right now, it's not even close. Photoshop's interface is so polished and so wise, and its tools are so powerful but easily accessible, that all of these debates about the GIMP are frivolous. I've used both extensively, and for anything other than fucking around, there's no comparison.
I will pay $600 for a program as powerful as Photoshop. But, I'd really like to have Photoshop (without the use of CrossoverOffice) run on my Linux desktop machine. I can boot into Windows or I can walk to my Win98 box to run Photoshop, but it's frustrating not to have Photoshop accessible when I'm doing other sorts of serious work.
What I think graphic designers who want to use Linux should do is lobby Adobe to make PS available on Linux. I would pay, and I know others who would, too.
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