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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.
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?
It's close enough to photoshop that instead of spending the time to crack it, i'll just use gimp instead.
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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.)
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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.
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 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.
MDI is something that is particular to Windows, and Linux by extension since the general interface trend is to copy Microsoft.
Mac OS X (and probably prior, but I have no experience) advocates not using the MDI paradigm. I switched from MS to Linux and now I use both Linux and Mac. At first the absence of MDI was a little daunting and I didn't like it.
However, after a couple weeks of adjusting, I'd say I agree with Apple that MDI is a horrible idea and should be avoided. I find managing my workflow far more efficient when my windows are constrained only by my desktop rather than some application that deems itself smarter than I am.
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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.
...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!
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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?
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.