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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.
And still at the same low price! How do they do that?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
"Bring out the gimp..."
"But the gimp's prelease."
Well I guess you're just gonna have to go CVS him now won't you."
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Are any of these features NOT copied from PhotoShop?
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
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?
The UI is still clunky and cluttered looking, but overall GIMP is an amazing program for the right price. It may never be a substitute for Photoshop, CAD or Illustrator, but for the weekend graphics hacker who doesn't have 600 dollars, this is a step in the right direction.
IAALS.
Will this release have a compatible gimp-print plugin?
GIMP without the GIMP Tool Kit. I don't think you'll be seeing that any time soon.
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]
I know im gonna get marked troll, but I really would like the option of having the gimp ui as one cohesive window with moveable panels instead of 50 windows I cannot keep track of. I think there's a reason why there arent any other applications I can think of that use that layout anymore. They have all switched the the single window approach. It may not be as powerful or whatever, but it sure is easier for some of us folk. And no, I dont know enough to submit a patch and yes, I realize that the software is free.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
Why not save yourself a gazillion bucks and export it into the excellent (and Free) Sodipodi.
It's a fantastic vector graphics editor, one that reminds me slightly of Draw on the old Acorn, but more powerful.
Beep beep.
I have been waiting , obviouslly in vain for a version of the gimp to come out with REAL CMYK capablities. I personally know of about 10 people I worked with that would jump on the Gimp bandwagon. WHY in gods name hasnt this been implemented yet ?
Wake when there are gigawumpus improvements.
(Did I use that properly? Should I be ashamed?)
I'm sure the screenshots at Newsforge would be more impressive if the guy didn't have the ugliest desktop I've ever seen. I mean, a green background?
It should be noted that when you are trying to convince people that something is good, it helps when it also looks good.
Now, sure you can abstract the green theme (is that guy colorblind? maybe he likes red?) and see the improvements in the GIMP, but still. It just doesn't look very professional.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Docking doesn't count as "all new" re: the GUI.
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? Copying popular Windows/Mac apps isn't a bad thing if it is what people really like about the user experience.
Folks seem to like the "one window to bind them" approach. Additionally I (and probably others) can't stand to use GIMP with its bazillion windows cluttering my taskbar (as it gets in the way of quickly ALT-TABing throug different apps).
Also, would it kill them to mirror the prebuilt binary/installer packages on a machine larger than a Casio calculator? I spend more time trying to get Gimp on Windows than using it.
Ok... that's it... #def rant 0.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Why show the whole desktop (complete with terminal windows and task bars) that is 66% dead space when showing off one app that isn't a task bar or a terminal window?
Unfortunately, they couldn't figure out how to use the new selection tools.
ok, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of people won't agree with me, but I know of plenty of others that definitely will.
I'm not a Photoshop user. I use the Corel line of products. Why? Corel puts everything into one window. I'm aware of the pains in programming an interface, but I don't understand why a separate option isn't there for the rest of us?
Please?! If only the Gimp was like this, I would use it. It would be a learning curve, but I could do it. Instead, I have to make sure I have enough room on my desktop to fit all the tool windows I need, along with enough space to view the image I'm manipulating at a size bigger than 40x40. y'know? Every time I give the Gimp a try, I'm impressed with the features, but not impressed with the interface.
I just can't use it. "It's hopeless... utterly, utterly, hopeless."
but palletted drawing in The Gimp remains superior to Photoshop. Photoshop was neither designed nor marketed towards any of the markets that do pallete based art/graphic design.
A toolbar button to download the next upcoming Fark Photoshop contest.
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.
When I first took a look at GIMP several years ago, the first thing that turned me off was all the seperate palettes are treated as apps. Saw the same thing in Sodipodi and Inkscape. Seemed that it was the trademark for open-source drawing applications. Didn't like having 5-6 tasks on my taskbar for just one app. On inkscape, if I mistakenly close the last image, the whole app closes down.
All I want are dockable or floating palettes that use a small font size(ie not screen hogs) just like PSP, Photoshop and illustrator use.
And on a second note, I don't wish to see my desktop peep through. A big gray dull background would be less distracting. I've grown way too used to MDI in Windows apps to comfortably use the open source SDI way.
Mod me down for said redunant comments.
Ha! on this screenshot, I notice that they have the all imporant toilet paper template... a must have. :)
If my enemy's enemy is my friend, what happens if my enemy is his own worst enemy?
The gimp is a fine project as projects go, but it seems to me that there are a few things gimp needs before it will be able to really compete with Photoshop
First off, brushes, Photoshop 7 has a great brush system, being able to combine brushes is great. Photoshops size, color, shape dynamics as well as jitter control via pen preassure and tilt are great.
This brings up point number 2
This is just from my experience, but getting GIMP to work with a pen/tablet is like pulling the teeth of a grumpy aligator, it's just not worth it. I have a wacom tablet that supposedly works with drivers from the wacom linux project, although I can get it to work as a mouse in X, I have had 0 luck getting it to work with gimp
The last thing is a UI improvment
I haven't used the new version yet, and its hard to tell from the screenshots, but GIMP has some major usability problems when working with multiple layers, history editing, and things of that nature. I think the multiple document interface is a good thing, and the tool selection window is not bad, but having to right-click on the document to get the standard utility menus is a pain in the rear.
Because of the afore mentioned problems I have not used GIMP extensively for actual work, instead I photoshop on my mac, but it seems to have a solid painting engine underneath it, and many of the filters are better than those available for photoshop, even if some of them are a little to flashy.
All that said, I do graphics professionally and so perhaps I just put more demand on an application than the average user, but right now gimp seems like just a nice toy untill they get some of that stuff fixed.
I do prefer to use Open Source software when possible and wait eagerly for the day when GIMP or another project is a usable alternative to Photoshop, and I will be sure to give this new release a go, but I think we may still have a while to go.
Off Topic but, if anyone has had luck getting a Wacom tablet to work under Linux with GIMP and can let me know how to do so as well I'd love to know.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
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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You can output to CMYK in gimp2 with an ICC profile, but you can't edit CMYK directly. Gimp is still 1 and 3 band 8 bit only.
To that, I'll remind you that your Linux window manager probably has multiple desktops. It sounds incredibly stupid for its simplicity, but once you realize it, there's absolutely no problem with the interface.
I'll also encourage you to use 0x808080 or something similarly neutral for the background on that desktop. You'd be surprised how much the surrounding noise can affect the way you work. I even go to the extent of making all my window decorations a soft grey when I'm drawing up stock schemes or otherwise doodling.
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.
And here's the deal: if you obnoxious Linux zealots keep responding to points like this with "d00d install linux u l00s3r" and comments about how stupid windows users are, you will continue to miss the point that Linux will survive by gaining mindshare and marketshare, and this will not happen if the majority of Win32 people (yes there are lots of them that don't love Win32, but they like to be productive) have the idea that "wow, the OSS tools on Linux are really hard to use". And that's the impression people get. I would think that if they go to the effort of building and releasing binaries on Win32, they could add some MDI support so people could actually find the product useable without burning through their ALT and TAB keys. My left hand is sore after ever GIMP session on my Win32 box, and I feel like I spend half my time minimizing/restoring windows to try to find the right ones. This is a problem, period. Many solutions, but a good one would be to support MDI, like nearly every other windows app in the world.
Does anyone know if v2 will support floating point or 16-bit image formats? We in the CG business could use a quality non-8bit paint package and properly supporting finer bit-depth data would go a long way towards making Gimp a standard production tool.
gimp16 looked promising, but it never went anywhere. Photoshop's 16-bit implementation is pretty weak; it can read it, but can't write it in any format other than a photoshop file and (last time I checked), it still only painted in 8-bit.
Everything from text layout tools (Photoshop CS uses the new InDesign text engine) to color management (Gimp's is still very poor in comparison) to widespread plug-in support by third-parties to...
Why am I even bothering? OSS people will always think of inane reasons their OSS version is superior (i.e., the multi-monitor feature, which Photoshop also does anyway).
You know, you can tell a lot about a product from its screenshots. So let's take a look at this one. First, I should say that I am not a graphics artist, nor do I play one on TV. I do some mild photo retouching, web art, icon design, stuff like that. I've used Photoshop and Illustrator, and currently use Paint Shop Pro (hey, its only $89 and it works).
...? Xtns? I have no idea.
... no idea, actually, since I assume that the second one is new. The third is probably copy (why can't I copy a circle(11) by the way?), the fourth is delete, and the fifth is - refresh? How often do you need to refresh your brushes that it gets the bottom-right corner of the window all to itself? That's prime real estate!
What's the first thing that I see? Well, we have a bunch of little windows with a terminal manager peeking through. Annyoing, but I can deal with it. Hmm - they're all showing up on the taskbar, too. More annoying, but lets move on.
Looking at what I presume is the "new" Gimp interface, on the left, the colored icons are much easier to understand at a glance. The menus, however, leave a lot to be desired. One problem with small windows is that, unless you're using Mac style menus, you have small menu labels. Like these ones. File: fair enough. Help: likewise. Xtns:
Looking at the bottom of the docked options window, I can see some buttons. I'd guess that the first one is Save, the second (greyed out) is undo/back, the third is delete (delete my ink options?) and the fourth is... erm... undo again? You've got me. Hope that they have mouseovers, but they really shouldn't have needed them.
Looking at the "Brushes, Patterns, Gra" window. Ooh, nice title. Anyway, these seem pretty reasonable, although the weird icons at the bottom are back, and different. I guess the first one is
Okay, now onto the main window. Heh - they can't seem to draw their rulers correctly so that you can see the stops and read the numbers. Oh, well. Again, we have the problem of the window size - this time the menus are readable, but one of them seems to be "La" - possibly "Lay" - and who knows how many are inaccessible off to the right? Its good to know that I can cancel my picture, however - or could in some situations whenever the button is enabled.
All in all, from a first glance (which is all many prospective users will ever give it), I'll stick with Paint Shop Pro, thankyouverymuch.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Why that? What can you do with Photoshop that you can't do with the Gimp? Gimp now has the CMYK color scheme, so the only real pro-Photoshop argument has faded...
From the article:
"Admittedly, the current rendition of CMYK in the GIMP is far behind that of commercial offerings, but the mere existence of CMYK in the latest version means we can look forward to improved profile selection in future versions."
And that's just CMYK.
Where can i get the macosx version for (F,f)ree? Macgimp is selling it but i dont see a free download.
Does the current gimp source compile on osx? Does it need X or it works on aqua too? Am i stuck with fink?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Think about it for a minute ... a new interface is never as intuitive as the old one you are used to, let alone more intuitive. Maybe, once you get used to it, it will be better, or maybe not ... but it is going to take a fair investment in time and energy to figure out if moving ahead is good or bad, and a real pain to move back if you made a mistake.
Looking at the writeup, I saw only ONE improvement that I really, really want - the multi-line text tool. And the reviewer was careful to point out that other goodies (like a multi-COLOR text tool) were NOT implemented.
Personally, I'd be just as happy if someone would retrofit that new multi-line text tool into 1.2 and forget about the rest of it. I've taken the time to get used to right-click menus and floating toolbars and such, it wasn't that hard. So pardon me if I don't enthuse for changes that disrupt all the current users just to make things easier on a few newbies!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
Real diehards want a Gimp with a command-line interface. ;)
is the "Healing Brush".. That's my single favorite part of Photoshop; especially when touching up family photos from a digital camera.
Before everyone starts falsely claiming otherwise, Photoshop DOES do multi-monitor support. Honestly, you think Photoshop wouldn't after all these years?
Really, I see no reason for having eight taskbar buttons open for one app. I have to devote an entire desktop to Gimp. You can argue with me how "bad" MDI is supposed to be until the cows come home. It hasn't affected the success of Photoshop, and it's what people want.
I've been using PS for many years and as new features are implemented I recommend PS to people but the price is prohibitive to say the least. This is where Gimp owns the competition and particularly PS. Although Gimp isn't a dupe of PS it is very, very powerful and intuitive and with the price how can it lose?
Personally I am moving into Gimp from Photoshop as well as Openoffice from MS Office because I'm just tired of the ridiculous upgrades to keep compatibility issues in check.
Open source is the single greatest thing to happen in a very long time. It has opened up a new horizon for me and the people I recommend software to. I am our company's "IT Guy" for our state and my top recommendations of late are Firefox, Openoffice, Gimp, and SuSe for those looking for a change. This is coming from a strictly Adobe/M$ house. I figured I could use the "$" now since I'm an open source fanboy now!
It's pretty cool when I can move 100's of people in the direction of open source and this filters down to their families too so I am doing my part.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Ctrl+D or image->duplicate
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The original versions of GIMP used the Motif took kit. Since it was not Free, and Lesstif wasn't up to running the GIMP, the developers started work on a tool kit just for the GIMP. This was also about the time that KDE development started up with QT. Seeing how flexible the tool kit being created for the GIMP was, other developers started writing other programs using the same kit. Thus GNOME was born.
Seeing all the work the core GIMP developers put into GTK, I don't image they'll put the time into porting it to another widget set. That is not saying it can't be done. Just don't get your hopes up.
Actually there is a version of gimp for win32. Gimp for Windows It uses GTK even... There is even a nicely packaged version for those unwilling brave a .zip file here.
These are up to Gimp 2.0 pre2.
Cheers,
Joe
...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.
I agree 100% that the GIMP is not a Photoshop replacement but it sure as hell offers a huge amount of features, and finally, a decent GUI, for $0.
I have just waded through about 20 +5 insightful modded posts about how bad GIMP 1.2's GUI was. Sigh, I know this is slashdot, but is even reading the editor's comment to much, even if RTFA is?
How on earth can you say that the GIMP 2 is crap unless you've tried it. I can see this working quite well for web graphics and standard home printer stuff, and the new interface with dockable palettes and menus in the image window saving one from having to right-click all the time are fantastic.
I don't know what pisses the PS people off more: the fact that the GIMP is finally improving or that they spent an enormous amount of money on Adobe's tools that they only use for web graphics in the end.
When I tried to introduce my wife (graphic designer/QuarkXPress/Photoshop/Illustator ninja) to The Gimp 1.2, the first thing that happened was this:
Where's the shape drawing tool? Whaddya mean I have to use the selection tool to draw a circle? That's stupid. Weeellllllll, let's make a little text instead. One line? I can't auto-kern? Where the hell's the preview? Ok, there we go.....dammit, maybe not. Where in the fuc.....oh, there it is. Hey, how do I select multiple layers--the damn shift key doesn't work. The hell with this...what good is this thing, anyway?
There's a lot to be said for standardized user interface elements if you want to get the professionals on board..........
Don't Panic!
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'm rather shocked to see all the complaints about the Gimp here. The comments seem to be divided into two categories:
1. I've never used it, but from the screenshots it looks scary! It sucks!
2. I've used it, and it didn't work exactly like Photoshop. It sucks!
As a person who has used Photoshop (and a bevy of other paint programs, all the way back to the days of DPaint) extensively, I feel the Gimp is by far the best program available for creating (pixel-based) graphics, especially in the realm of web imagery.
I have used it to create from-scratch graphics for countless websites, including: this, this, this, and this. I have also used it to do many print items, such as this flyer. (Amazingly enough, CMYK is not really that necessary if you don't mind slight variations in the color on the final product. If you are doing serious print work, you should really be using a vector illustration program for everything but photo retouching anyhow.)
I think perhaps the Gimp's strength is how a non-artist (ie, me) can create pretty nice looking art with it - as I believe the links above will attest. It has a number of features not found in any other paint program, such as highly configurable tablet sensitivity.
Unfortunately, the hardest thing about using it for someone who has switched from Photoshop is that it looks _very_ similar to Photoshop, but yet it is really not very similar at all. Much like an expencied Windows user switching to KDE, they will find themselves fooled into expecting the interface to behave exactly the same way - and it doesn't. It's a different program, with a different interface.
But those who either have the patience to un-learn their Photoshop habits, or are not burdened by them to begin with, will find the Gimp to be one of the most powerful graphics tools available today. It is also quite likely one of the most impressive and mature applications available in the realm of free software - on par with Mozilla, OpenOffice, and Evolution. I'm not sure why it doesn't get the same respect that these packages do.
Anyhow, I was very impressed with it. Admittedly, there are some things that are still rough around the edges, but this is a significant improvement over previous releases. Things I especially liked:
- Relocation of the line stroke button that makes it easier to use Bezier curves and the like.
- Better resizing and resampling algorithms that produce that nice, anti-aliased effect.
- Quick, no frills approach to plugins and features.
Things that I still think need improvement:
- I think that rather than have a smattering of premade brushes with the option to make your own that Gimp should adopt a system like Paint Shop Pro where the menu for the paintbrush (and other relevant tools) lets you adjust the brush size, density, step, etc. in one convenient panel, rather than having to go through the effort of making an entirely new custom brush for the task. The current approach is functional, but unnecessarily clumsy.
- Have something akin to the Browse feature in Paint Shop Pro. This feature analyzes all graphics in a directory, produces thumbnails of all of them, and displays them in a window where you can pick and choose which ones to open. It's like a pictoral file selector.
- Implement more features that can be done with Layers, like adjusting gray channels for example and allow layers to modify layers beneath them (e.g. a Multiply layer or a Screen layer). If this ability exists, I haven't found it.
- I'm not still not a huge fan of the MDI approach. If you have related taskbar icons cluster in Windows or Linux, it's not too bad however, and there are pros and cons to both approaches.
But it's not at all bad. For free, it's a remarkable product. As an example, I selfishly submit this plug for my webcomic whose most current chapter was done with Gimp (true until this Sunday, unless I decide to use Gimp again): http://dragonangel.keenspace.com
It's just that with Paint Shop Pro already costing about $60 on sale (as low as $15 for previous users), and being more substantial and feature packed than Gimp, I don't have a reason to switch to Gimp (unless PSP 9 is a similar flop), but I would certainly recommend it for the graphic artist on the cheap.
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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