Gimp Hits 2.0

jf writes "Gimp 2.0 released! From gimp.org: "This release is a major event, marking the end of a three year development cycle by a group of volunteers and enthusiasts who have made this the most professional release of the GIMP ever. It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X." Get it from ftp.gimp.org or from the mirror sites."

Comments

Sweet!

[SillySnake]

Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

Re:Sweet!

[frs_rbl]

Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

In Soviet Russia... nevermind

Re:Sweet!

[Deusy]

Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

It's not difficult - you can find some good tutorials at gug.sunsite.dk.

Re:Sweet!

[gavinjolly]

My 14 year old daughter uses it with proficiency (better than my spelling). It took here about 1 hour to understand the stucture of the commands.

I could get her to write a simple tutorial in Open Office for you if you want. SXW or PDF?

Re:Sweet!

[XChilde]

It will be more sweet if we got a professional vector graphics program. The GIMP is at least as good as Adobe Photoshop, but all the free vector drawing programs (Sodipodi, Sketch, etc) are so limited. We need a program as good as Adobe Illustrator (I know some artist use Sodipodi to create beautiful icons for Gnome or KDE. That must be painfull). Personally, I have been waiting for it since Adobe Illustrator 7 was released.

Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's officially supported - where's the Windows binary then? :-?

Re:Windows?

[houseofmore]

Where's the nice little .zip with a setup.exe?

Right beside your colouring book and lunchbox!

Re:Windows?

[Chupa]

Here are windows binaries in a nice installer. 2.0pre4 is the newest release available at the moment, but it is working fine for me right now.

Re:Windows?

[pmsyyz]

I use the GIMP to take screenshots in Windows.

File > Aquire > Screenshot

Much better PNG saving options.

Re:Windows?

[13Echo]

You can just hit "Prt Scr" (Print Screen) and paste it into GIMP as a new image.

Re:Windows?

[BiggerIsBetter]

I use ecode tags because I'm such a fucking artist that I even care about how cool my text looks on Slashdot. Unfortunately, I'm not too bright so I'm still pasting into MSPaint on Windows to get my screenshots, instead of the Gnome Screenshot tool on Linux and saving directly to file. I secretly wish I was smart enough to learn The Gimp, but instead I'll just diss it. I also think that the way software looks is more important than what it does, so I'll keep using Photoshop for my fairly basic artwork - which takes some time, because I'm rather slow and because my Windows machine keeps crashing when I'm working on a big image.

Re:Windows?

[Trolling4Dollars]

Anyone who admits to using MS Paint for screenshots is a moron. If you are trapped in the MS world, at least use the "Print Screen" key and paste into GIMP. It's a hell of a lot more useful than MS Paint. This is assuming that you don't have the money to buy Photoshop or the unscrupulous nature to pirate it. I can't waste $600 on something just for screenshots and I will NEVER pirate software. Of course, I don't need to worry about that since I use Linux.

Re:Windows?

[houseofmore]

If you can't figure out how to run a batch file, you probably shouldn't be running photoshop or gimp.

Re:Windows?

[houseofmore]

Dear no... I would never suggest a windows user compile anything!!!

http://www.gimp.org/windows/

"This site, www.gimp.org, only distributes the source code to the GIMP (the building blocks). You can however download executable versions from the following sites:

Jernej Simoncic provides an installer program that automates the installation process. This is the most convenient way to install the GIMP for Windows.

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/

Re:Windows?

[tempest303]

Ok, that was cold, harsh, and probably just another brick in the wall to mainstream Linux adoption, due to elitism. It was also really damn funny. Have a sense of humor, people!

Re:Windows?

[MrPoopyPants]

Which is why Lunix is doomed to a life of howling obscurity.

Yes. So obscure that there are Linux commercials on TV, penguins all over the place, and groups all over the country dedicated to promoting Linux.

Oh wait... you said Lunix. Never heard of that...

Re:Windows?

[eggsome]

Look I detest stupid users as much as the next person, but come on! If you want Graphic artists to use this and make it popular you have to make it easy for them. Not because they are dumb, but because they have a different speciality to you.
(I'd like to see you create a stylish piece of artwork in Quark/Illistrator/Photoshop, it's a real skill - that's why they get paid decent amounts of money).

Re:Windows?

[BiggerIsBetter]

You nailed it with "I can tell you that when your customer is an artist, quite often it absolutely is more important how something looks than what it does". While I agree with the sentiment of targeting your audience with an appropriate design, they aren't my "customer" - I am.

These artists who are moaning about The Gimp are complaining about a free app they won't invest the time to learn. If they were paying me a few hundred dollars then fine, I'll worry about it and bust a nut trying to make it aesthetically pleasing for them. But they're not, so I'll make it functional to get the job done. If it's too ugly, these graphic artists are more than welcome to whip up a screen shot or concept of what they actually want. Maybe then some clueless programming like me can provide something that has both the functionality and mad stylz to keep everyone happy. Unfortunately, most of them seem more interested in prima-donna bitchings about how nasty and un-Photoshop-like The Gimp's UI is. I've heard similar moans when faced with PhotoPaint, PaintShop Pro and Photogenics too.

I should also point out that some of The Gimp users (and developers) are rather well respected graphic artists in their own right and produce some very nice artwork indeed, some of which lands in open source projects. The UI not withstanding.

Re:Windows?

[houseofmore]

Well I doubt they're going to come out with a stable one for win32.

Re:Windows?

[Frodo420024]

Well I doubt they're going to come out with a stable one for win32.

Damn, you're right:

The procedure entry point XML_SetDoctypeDeclHandler could not be located in the dynamic link library xmlparse.dll

Does GIMP have a Bugzilla somewhere?

Re:Windows?

[xveg]

You need to install expat:
http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html

Download the file, and copy contents of expat/bin to /program files/GIMP-2.0/bin/

I am gimping now!

Excellent

[Caedar]

I'm glad that this release improves the accessability to normal enthusiasts. A person pointed me to the Gimp once about half a year ago, and I couldn't stand to use it because of the god-awful interface that I encountered. I'll definitely give it a try.

Re:Excellent

[DarkSarin]

Except that its mostly cosmetic, from my point of view.

There are still tasks that I would like to do that are not possible in an intuitive fashion.

For instance, I frequently draw shapes (you know, circles, squares, rectangles, etc). In Fireworks, Sodipodi, and almost every other image creation/manipulation program I have used, this is a very simple task, and very easy to figure out how to do (click on icon, click on canvas, drag mouse, release button--bingo!).

In GIMP, I still don't know how to do this. I probably never will. Why not? Because this is a task that I use a lot, and if a program is going to make me work for that, then I don't want to use that program.

Sorry, but the UI is not that much better (at least on the windows version).

I will probably get flamed for saying this, and get called an idiot for not knowing how to do this, or told that that's not what the gimp is for, but I don't care--it is a tool that doesn't do what I expect--especially after seeing site's "made with gimp" logos and all their fancy stuff.

Yeah it looks cool, but I could do all that in fireworks much faster than the time it would take me to learn how to make a square in GIMP.

As a note-- I really like sodipodi much better. There are certain things it can't do, but in terms of fire it up and go, sodipodi wins hands down.

that's all i've got.

Re:Excellent

[vandan]

I've been using a pre-release version ( compiled via Gentoo's portage system ) and I'm very impressed with it indeed.

The text tool has undergone a MAJOR overhaul and is far more powerful than in the old Gimp-1.3. When you add text, it creates a layer of it's own instead of being dumped onto the current layer, and you can go back and edit the text and font etc after you've added it. This saves me a lot of time, because I often add text, add some effects, do something else, adn then come back and think ... 'maybe I should have done *this* with the text instead'. The text tool is cool try it out.

Also there are a lot of scripts and plugins ( at least in the Gentoo build ) that do some powerful stuff - bevelling & 3d outlining and all sorts of things.

While the addition of the menus at the top are merely cosmetic, it will at least shut up all the users who can't get the hang of the right-click menu system.

Win32 support is also interesting, as it means that GTK2 under Windows shouldn't be too far off. Personally, I'd LOVE to be able to write Perl / GTK2 apps that run under Windows, and it looks like I might be able to soon :)

Re:Excellent

[zerblat]

Sodipodi is a vector-based drawing program. GIMP is a raster image manipulation program. They have different purposes and can't really be compared.

If you really can't figure out how to draw a rectangle in the GIMP, I'm guessing you've never used Photoshop or any other similar image manipulation program. You probably want to read up a bit, there's plenty of books, online tutorials etc.

Anyway, the answer to your question: 1. Make a selection with the desired shape. 2. Fill the selection with the desired color.

Re:Excellent

[DarkSarin]

I have used photoshop, plenty, and I know the difference between image manipulation and drawing. All that's fine and dandy, but my point is that the impression I get, as someone not in the pro graphics business, is that GIMP is supposed to be able to handle *all* your graphic (non-moving) needs for images, and this is simply not true.

You may say that that's not what its for, and you're probably right, but the impression I had for a long time was just the opposite, and I know plenty of people who feel the same way.

As for your instructions on how to make a shape, I can do that, sure, but it is not intuitive. In fact, I would never have figured that out, but I can draw a box in photoshop easily enough.

I don't mind being told how to do something, but I think that one of two things need to happen: either GIMP needs to handle the drawing functions better, or progs like sodipodi need better community support.

I mention sodipodi in particular because it is the best of the drawing progs I've seen for linux for simple stuff, but is needs a lot of work, too.

Re:Excellent

[Seraphim_72]

Filters--->Render---->Gfig

Its actually in the help file - and a google turns up more help.

Sera

Re:Excellent

[chunkwhite86]

I'm glad that this release improves the accessability to normal enthusiasts. A person pointed me to the Gimp once about half a year ago, and I couldn't stand to use it because of the god-awful interface that I encountered. I'll definitely give it a try.

I think the interface is teriffic! It's so intuitive and easier for every-day use than have some omnipotent menu bar at the top of the screen.

Re:Excellent

[lunartech]

I've been using the beta version of 2.0 for a few weeks now and I think the user interface is a vast improvement. I've used The Gimp on a regular basis previously because it's great for the majority of graphics stuff. But I used to get a bit sick of right-clicking the image to get a menu in the old version. Simply adding a menu bar above the image has made a huge difference for me, not to mention the new docking features to reduce onscreen clutter etc. Top work guys !

Re:Excellent

[JoeBuck]

You're confusing vector programs (Sodipodi, Illustrator) with bitmap programs (GIMP, Photoshop). If you want to draw diagrams, you want one of the former, not one of the latter.

However, the simplest way to draw a rectangle in GIMP is:

• Choose the rectangle select tool, drag out a rectangle.
• Using the right mouse button, execute "Stroke" from the Edit menu. This will draw a rectangle, using the current brush tool, following the selection you just made.

To get an ellipse, use the ellipse select tool. Or use the Bezier curve tool to draw Bezier curves.

If you want to do this a lot, you can attach the keyboard accelerator of your choice to the Stroke function (it doesn't have one by default).

Re:Excellent

[salmo]

Ummm. I do it the same way in Photoshop and the Gimp. I make a nice square path, set the fill and the stroke. I'm not seeing your particular issue here. And for professional graphics (I don't mean drawing horns on pictures of your sister) it's quite flexible. It can be scripted in umpteen languages that are a lot more straightforward than actions and such. It's pretty great at photo editing and I might even say better for certain drawing tasks. Font support in Gimp 2 is finally up to my standards (ie I can now use all those True Type fonts I made and payed all kinds of money for, and they look nice).

And Fireworks a professional image package??? Please. What profession are you speaking of? It's horrible for print design, terrible for image editing and photo manipulation, and only seems to excel at making animated GIFs. I mean I switch between Illustrator and Photoshop regularly, but Fireworks performs the jobs of both very poorly. Honestly I think I'd be better with Photoshop or the GIMP alone than Fireworks.

And I won't claim that I'm fully a GIMP convert. Really Photoshop and Illustrator are the reasons I still have a Windows box handy. Really when it comes down to it, I use Photoshop because I use Illustrator and when Sodipodi or whatever has a decent path tool and fills out featurewise a little more, I'll probably go ahead and free myself of paying a crapload of money every couple years for a prettier version of the same thing. (I'm still holding out on the Adobe CS package or whatever its called).

Re:Excellent

[mcrbids]

Personally, I'd LOVE to be able to write Perl / GTK2 apps that run under Windows, and it looks like I might be able to soon

Dunno about Perl, but with PHP-GTK, I've been able to do this for over a year with PHP. Combined with the Ion Cube compiler, I've been writing cross-platform Windows/Linux/OSX programs for quite a while.

Gimp Hits 2.0?

[KodaK]

Is that on K-tel records?

Do I get one free if I order Mr. Microphone?

Re:Gimp Hits 2.0?

[Diamon]

Hey good lookin' I'll be back to pick you up later!

Who's unix-based?

[Whosawhatsis]

Last time I checked, MacOS X was at least as "Unix-Based" (darwin) as Linux, if not more...

Re:Who's unix-based?

[mattjb0010]

Then why does OSX do so poorly on UnixBench?

Source? My 667MHz G4 powerbook (OS X 10.3.3) gets a higher score than my 2.4GHz P4 desktop (Redhat 7.3). And this has nothing to do with whether or not a system is Unix-based, let alone the Gimp! The parent post should be troll or OT, not interesting.

The biggest changes...

[bc90021]

- It uses GTK2.
- It is officially supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Now if only I could figure out how to use it. (I have no graphics experience whatsoever. ;) )

Re:The biggest changes...

[Wakkow]

"I have no graphics experience whatsoever."

That's probably a good thing.. That way you're not stuck thinking, "hmph.. that's not how photoshop does it."

Fantastic!

[thesupraman]

Well, I've been using the betas under both linux and windows for a month or so now, and I must say that this is a FANTASTIC improvement, which goes much deeper than just the improved UI.

Before this I used to use photoshop for much of my work, and Gimp for areas where I either needed the software on a machine that did not warrant a photoshop license, or to deal with alpha layers properly (which photoshop is terrible for). Photoshop is great for printing based people, but has some major miss-features for computer graphics use.

Gimp 2.0 however is much better than photoshop IMHO for many many jobs, although it is still just a bit lacking in the automation-of-tasks area.

Congratulations and Thanks to all the people involved in this fantastic piece of software!

Re:Fantastic!

[SuperBanana]

Photoshop is great for printing based people, but has some major miss-features for computer graphics use.

You obviously haven't used a recent version. Photoshop CS(8.0) works very nicely for computer graphics, including stuff Gimp doesn't do, like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers. Adobe has been improving the integration between all their apps, and I'm a big fan; I've posted about it before.

Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux.

Last but not least, Photoshop CS includes a RAW decoder for most of the pro digital cameras and many prosumer units. It is nothing short of amazing and almost worth the price tag alone; you gain quite a bit more color depth with RAW images(depends on the camera- without getting into digital medium/large format backs, the best you can get right now is 12 bit per channel) and the plugin lets you tweak many, many parameters- with nearly instant preview. Nothing compares, even on the Macintosh or PC side...only Capture One could be considered better. dcraw is a joke...

Re:Fantastic!

[irokitt]

The Gimp? Photoshop? Automation of tasks? Bah.

REAL nerds use a hex editor. Using a Dvorak keyboard!

Re:Fantastic!

[Deusy]

[Photoshop does stuff] like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers.

Um, I'm a web designer. How is that invaluable?

I think you're eating too much of the hamburger that Adobe is feeding you with buzzwords like that.

Gimp creates jpegs just fine. If you require ultimate fine-grained control over image creation then I'd wager:

1. You're using too many images in your website. Learn CSS.
2. You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg. It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).

Re:Fantastic!

[DVega]

"Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux."

You mean color managemnt like this ?

Re:Fantastic!

[Endive4Ever]

It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).

I hope you only design pages for corporate intranets, and other environments with flat, consistent bandwidth.

Otherwise you're coming off like you don't have a clue.

EXIF.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it handle jpg EXIF data? At least by giving
you an option to save them when EXIF data were found
in the loaded image... Prior to 2.0, the EXIF data
where lost. I wonder how 2.0 behaves...

Re:EXIF.

[mrgreen4242]

According to page 7 of this release document,

Data stored in EXIF tags by digital cameras are now handled in read and write mode for JPEG files.

Newsforge Article

[amigoro]

Here is the Newsforge Article about the new GIMP that appeared a couple of weeks ago.

The screenshots look simply awsome.

Going to install that now.

Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny

Got CMYK?

[User 956]

Still no proper CMYK support? I'll keep my Photoshop.

Thanks for Playing!

Re:Got CMYK?

[thesupraman]

And does photoshop still have broken alpha, there it tried to use a non-standard tiff layer to represent what 100% of other software places in a standardised alpha layer?

I'll keep my Gimp thank!

And yes, I use this professionally, very porfessionally, I produce live television graphics systems. Photoshop has the most broken alpha support of anything out there!

Photoshop was designed for prepress use, and is broken for most other purposes.

Gimp 2.0, which I have been using in beta for some time, does everything better than photoshop, other than CMYK support (not an issue for anyone but prepress) and automation, which is a little more clunky. It more than makes up for these things in it's fineness of control for basic functions, and speed.

Re:Got CMYK?

[Lalakis]

BTW, if you really need CMYK support in gimp now, you may look at http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml . It is a really nice plugin and gimp won't match its functionality for a long time (full CMYK support in gimp is planned to be complete sometime in spring 2005...).

Re:Got CMYK?

[stubear]

Photoshop is not broken but if you want to play the part of the drama queen, don't let me stop you. Here's a discussion about how and why Photoshop handles alphas and transparency. Here's a small hint, they're actually two seperate concepts. Chris Cox, by the way, is one of the Photoshop developers so he knows what he's talking about.

Re:Got CMYK?

[MooseByte]

"You need CMYK? CODE it or PAY someone to do it for you."

But isn't that what he's doing by paying for a commerical application (Photoshop in this case)?

"Open source is not about getting stuff for free, but giving and receiving."

At the risk of being called flamebait, that won't do spit of good toward a true Desktop Linux end-user solution. Those of us developing software can give as well as take. But Joe End-User just wants to get their job done. Take take take. The mantra of the end-user.

And that's exactly what desktop linux is going to have to address, heck embrace.

Re:Got CMYK?

[stubear]

CMYK isn't patented but Pantone colors, including the Pantone to CMYK (spot to process) color conversions. GIMP will likely never do spot colors or spot to process as they would need to license them from Pantone. I haven't really looked all that closely at GIMP though (Photoshop CS user and quite happy with it) so I could be wrong.

mac binary...

[millahtime]

the mac binary gimp.app is still prerelease 3. it isn't updated yet.

Free of Floating Window

[ospirata]

Yeah, I will finally get to know how to use it eaither. These floating window schema was the dummiest thing ever. Well, actually now there is Sun LookingGlass... DIA could do the same,

Re:Free of Floating Window

[Squareball]

I thought the same thing until I got a mac. Photoshop works exactly like the Gimp does in regards to the floating windows. After working with Photoshop like this, I have come to get used to it and don't mind it at all. But it is a bit of shock when you come from Win32 Photoshop to this crazy set of floating windows.

Re:Free of Floating Window

[EnderWiggnz]

we'll get away from the WIMP interface, as soon as we get away from hierarchical filesystems.

Re:Free of Floating Window

[Xabraxas]

Yeah, I will finally get to know how to use it eaither. These floating window schema was the dummiest thing ever.

I disagree. I prefer it. I think the "window within a window" style that microsoft often employs is cumbersome. I want to be able to put a window anywhere on the screen that I want to put it. It's much more managable. I guess when using windows it could get confusing if you have multiple apps open, and the gimp windows are scattered around. With Linux though I keep my apps spread out over multiple virtual workspaces so it's not an issue.

Re:Free of Floating Window

[ibbey]

I disagree. I prefer it. I think the "window within a window" style that microsoft often employs is cumbersome. I want to be able to put a window anywhere on the screen that I want to put it. It's much more managable. I guess when using windows it could get confusing if you have multiple apps open, and the gimp windows are scattered around. With Linux though I keep my apps spread out over multiple virtual workspaces so it's not an issue.

This shouldn't be an issue for anyone. All they really need to do is change the app so that if any GIMP window is brought to the front, then they all are. It's a nusicance to have to manually move three (or more) seperate windows to the front everytime you want to switch apps. The Mac uses a similar windowing style, except for this key difference. On the Mac, toolbox windows are not considered first-class windows. They only get focus when their parent app is active, and then they automatically become active. If GIMP handled things this way, no one would complain. But instead, each window is managed completely indepently, so you must manually activate each window.

Sure, you can move GIMP to a seperate desktop, but there are numerous reasons that people may not want to do so. For example, new users won't know how. In my case, I don't like switching desktops since it's considerably slower then just switching apps (at least on my system).

Re:Free of Floating Window

[robertjw]

My problem with GIMP is that I lose the main toolbar window. It gets lost behind various images, layer windows, tool property windows, etc.. When I need to change tools I have to go hunting for the right window.

Re:Free of Floating Window

[ibbey]

My problem with GIMP is that I lose the main toolbar window. It gets lost behind various images, layer windows, tool property windows, etc.. When I need to change tools I have to go hunting for the right window.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. If they would just automatically bring that window to the front when your image window is focused, it would eliminate about 90% of the complaints that I have heard.

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[phoenix.bam!]

Photoshop is definitely much better and more mature than the Gimp, but it comes with a $600 pricetag. The Gimp starts to become more of an option when you don't have to use some of the more intensive photoshop filters. (So people actually do pay for photoshop, enough-so that Adobe had some good earnings this quarter).

no reason to knock the gimp. It has an amazing cost to ability ratio.

Since the mirror list will be slashdotted...

[Troy]

Here is a formatting-free, cut-and-paste, hack job.

mmmmm.....karma...

Africa
ftp://ftp.is.co.za/applications/gimp/
Australia
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://gimp.zeta.org.au/
Austria
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/gimp/
Denmark
ftp://ftp.jaquet.dk/pub/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/ (web access)
Germany
ftp://ftp.fh-heilbronn.de/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org /
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/ (web access)
Greece
ftp://sunsite.ics.forth.gr/sunsite/pub/gimp/
Irel and
ftp://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
http://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/ (web access)
Japan
ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/packages/gimp /
ftp://ftp.u-aizu.ac.jp/pub/graphics/tools/gimp/
ftp://ftp.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/ (web access)
http://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/
Korea
ftp://ftp.kreonet.re.kr/pub/tools/X11/ftp.gimp.org /
Netherlands
ftp://gnu.kookel.org/pub/gimp/
http://gnu.kookel.org/ftp/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/ (web access)
Norway
ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/gimp/
Poland
ftp://ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl/pub/Linux/gimp/
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
Roman ia
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/ (web access)
Russia
ftp://ftp.sai.msu.su/pub/unix/graphics/gimp/mirror /
http://gimp.tsuren.net/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
Spain
http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/
Sweden
ftp://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gimp/
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/ (web access)
Turkey
ftp://ftp.hun.edu.tr/pub/linux/gimp/
United Kingdom
ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/X/gimp/gimp/
ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gi mp/
United States
ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/gimp/

Re:Since the mirror list will be slashdotted...

[FrostedWheat]

Most of these mirrors don't have it yet, but the Australian one (Planet Mirror) and the UK one (flirble.org) have it.

Re:Since the mirror list will be slashdotted...

[BigSven]

This one (in Sweden) has the tarballs mirrored as well: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gimp/gimp/v2.0/

This is great!

[Anonymous Coward]

They finally introduced 16 colors and three new brush sizes!!!

I had a dream

[N8F8]

I had a dream that I woke up surrounded by windows floating around before my eyes. I knew what I wanted was in one of the windows -answer just on the tip of my tongue. As each window passed by, confusing icons flashed symbols -almost helping me figure it out.

Re:I had a dream

[mvdw]

You wrote:

I had a dream that I woke up surrounded by windows floating around before my eyes. I knew what I wanted was in one of the windows -answer just on the tip of my tongue. As each window passed by, confusing icons flashed symbols -almost helping me figure it out.

Then your sig states:

Real programmers don't comment! It was hard to write, It should be hard to read!

There's some irony in there, somewhere...

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[Anonymous Coward]

> Photoshop still rocks it
> You know it's true.

The GIMP is good value for money.
The code is freely available.

It depends on what exactly you are doing on whether or not Photoshop is good value for money. If your time is valuable then learning the GIMP user interface is just too expensive. The GIMP is more unlike Photoshop than almost all the commericial graphics applications. The GIMP develpers may really like the GIMP interface the way it is but if they want to reach the widest audience (I dont think they actually do) then they will have to make more of an effort to accomodate Photoshoph users.

It's pretty good!

[gilesjuk]

I did a usability study of GIMP 1.3 running on Windows and most people who had Photoshop experience soon got the hang of it.

Finally they've added a menu onto each project window, but it is still lacking in one way, the number of entries on the window bar. Each tool dock creates its own entry which causes clutter. It should be possible to have one entry but who knows, maybe this isn't possible with current versions of GTK? Photoshop does this by having the dock windows within a container window.

Other minor niggles, the icons are much improved over v1.2 but I still find them a bit unclear. The knife icon for cropping resembles a brush and I don't really see how a drop of water represents Blur/Sharpen?

While I do like the new dock and the tabs, it's unusable if you resize the toolbox window into a very narrow strip. Meaning at the resolution I run at (1152x864) it takes up around a fifth of the screen width.

But it's much better than 1.2 anyway!!!

Re:It's pretty good!

[_Sharp'r_]

I think your study may have had a flawed premise.

I mean, after all, anyone who can figure Photoshop out can probably figure out any other program in existence.

(Yeah, this is a backwards way of saying that I think Photoshop has always been the least intuitive program I've ever used, somehow managing to beat the various old DOS CAD/CAM software for that title.)

Re:It's pretty good!

[BigSven]

Try the Small theme from the GIMP preferences dialog then. You will certainly find it useful with your screen resolution.

Re:It's pretty good!

[pbox]

I managed to cram all palettes into the main window. It is actully as intuitive as Photoshop's way of handling it, without the Duck/Undock menu entries. Just grab the palette title (might look like folder tabs if placed on top of ach other) and drop it where you want it. When you drag the last one out the window disappears. If you drop it in the middle of nothing it creates a window. Thos funny little widgets in the main winows allow you to partition the window into sections, which serve as separate drop targets. You can create new partitions and get rid of them. All simple as a pie.

Re:It's pretty good!

[evilviper]

I don't really see how a drop of water represents Blur/Sharpen?

Good point... What would you recomend? Perhaps an icon of a few beers to represent blur?

Re:Gentoo

[S. Traaken]

mkdir -p /etc/portage && echo '=media-gfx/gimp*' >> /etc/portage/package.unmask

and never edit profiles/package.mask again.

Re:What about simple drawing functionality ?

[FooAtWFU]

You could always draw straight lines with a minimum of trouble.

Re:What about simple drawing functionality ?

[Kenja]

"Is it, at last, possible to simply draw lines or arcs ? It is pretty useful, so why do they snub such functionalities?"

For the same reason it dosn't serve web pages. It is not a drawing tool, it is an Image Manipulation Program. Not that I would mind if they addedd better drawing functionality.

Installer for Windows

[yivi]

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/development.ht ml

Re:Installer for Windows

[Hal The Computer]

Except that that is the pre-release version.

Re:What about simple drawing functionality ?

[prockcore]

is it, at last, possible to simply draw lines or arcs ? It is pretty useful, so why do they snub such functionalities ?

This has always been possible. To draw a line, select a paintbrush or a pencil. Click on the start of the line, shift-click on the end of the line.

To draw a circle, use the circle selection tool, and then go to edit->stroke. To draw an arc, just draw the circle on a new layer, and erase the part you don't want.

Missing the point of CMYK?

[El]

See a need? Meet it your self. Don't wait for some mythical "someone else" to do it for you. RGB to CMYK conversion is pretty well known and shouldn't be that difficult to implement, IMHO.

Re:Missing the point of CMYK?

[El]

If you can't code, then go to rentacoder or simular sites and pay somebody to add the features you think you need... chances are it will still be cheaper than paying for an equivalent commercial product. What part of "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness" are you not quite clear on?

Re:Missing the point of CMYK?

[Lalakis]

It really isn't that easy. For CMYK to be usefull you have to implement ICC profiles and do the conversion between RGB and CMYK based on them. It's not impossible to do, but gimp needs some fairly major changes for supporting it. Call them "GEGL (http://www.gegl.org) completion" and "Intergration of gegl into gimp".

Re:Missing the point of CMYK?

[mvdw]

If so, why hasn't it been done already?

Because of three things, essential to business:

• Time,
• Standardisation, and
• Competition

Time is important, because you can pay today and have product today with commercial software, whereas with OSS if you pay someone today, then you may or may not get the software tomorrow.

Standardisation is important, because the average PHB doesn't want to use something that no-one else uses. Put another way, nobody ever got fired for buying photoshop.

Competition is important because the average business doesn't want to pay for something that their competitor can then get for free.

I've often pondered this short-sighted way of doing business, and wondered how businesses can be talked into contributing to OSS projects. The organisation I work for pays big bucks for a couple of software components for which OSS equivalents don't exist, or are not as mature as the commercial equivalents. I wonder what it would take to convince them to pony up to pay a programmer or two to generate equivalent OSS software. The problem, of course, is that they will not put their business "on hold" while the software is developed. This is a reasonable stance, but it doesn't help the OSS community any.

Re:Missing the point of CMYK?

[mvdw]

I have read your post about three times, and what you are saying makes no sense.

Re:Photoshop!

[gilesjuk]

CinePaint (formerly known as FilmGimp) has been used in quite a few well known films and was forked from Gimp 1.x.

Link to CinePaint

Re:This sounds like a good time for you

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a graphic artist and I use gimp and photoshop, along with opencanvas, illustrator and painter. They are all essential parts of my work. Gimp may not be as good as photoshop, but I use it for small effects because I like the look it achieves. It's kind of like using a ballpoint pen instead of a pencil. Sure, graphite pencils or quality brush pens are better, but the look of ballpoint can't be duplicated by anything else.

Really though, you probably don't really understand why photoshop is better than gimp to begin with. You probably like it because of the crappy filters and effects that come with it, but those are a total joke to anyone slightly professional. Everyone who is serious uses his own custom brushes and textures, and I use photoshop the most because of the power it has over brush controls (especially with my wacom tablet). Gimp still has it's place though, and it's an important one.

It's not just me, either. There are several other artists in my studio who use gimp all the time, too.

Website is much improved.

[Chilliwilli]

Wow love the new website! If you've not seen how bad (out of date) the old one was then give it a look. The website has finally updated to reflect the quality of the software.. now if only Glade's website would do the same my two favourite apps would have made themselves presentable to others.

Gimp for Windows (version 2.0pre4)

[lent]

From: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/development.ht ml
GIMP for Windows
FAQ | Stable version | Development version | Source code | ] Installers for GIMP for Windows Development version download

This is the development version of The Gimp. It will open a console (MS-DOS) window when it's run to display debugging messages. Do not close this window.

It is highly recommended to update GTK2 to the newest version before installing Gimp 2.0pre4, as some bugs have been fixed since the last release.

Note: The Gimp binary available from this page was compiled for Pentium MMX or better CPUs.

GTK+ 2 for Windows (version 2.2.4-20040124) 3619 kB GTK+ 2 runtime environment. This package is required by The Gimp 2.0.
MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download - Academic and research network Of Slovenia ftp.flamingtext.com Download - FlamingText --> files.akl.lt Download Download Atviras kodas Lietuvai ftp.freenet.de Download Download freenet.de --> The Gimp for Windows (version 2.0pre4) 6807 kB Gimp 2.0pre4 for Windows.
MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download - Academic and research network Of Slovenia ftp.flamingtext.com Download - FlamingText * --> files.akl.lt Download Download Atviras kodas Lietuvai ftp.freenet.de Download Download freenet.de --> Additional plug-ins for The Gimp 742 kB This package contains Gimp-FreeType (CVS 20040202) and Gimp Animation Package (1.3.25) plug-ins for Gimp 2.0pre2.
Warning: both these plug-ins are considered unstable.
Note: Due to a problem with the GTK+ installer, the FreeType plug-in will not work, unless you copy the file freetype-6.dll to freetype6.dll in C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin\ folder.
MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download - Academic and research network Of Slovenia -->

If you wish to compile plug-ins for use with this Gimp version, you can get the development files here.

Development version download This is the development v

Congrats!

[7-Vodka]

Congratulations to everyone who made this happen. From the major developers to the guys/gals who contributed little bits. I appreciate it. It's a very useful program used intensely by some and to a lesser degree (but still important) by many more.
Good luck on taking it to the next level.

Thanks.

Re:This piece of crap crashes on Windws for no rea

[Scutter]

This piece of crap crashes on Windows for no reason
Tried it, blew it off. Highly unrecommended.

Yeah, Windows has that tendency. Glad to see you've decided to switch to another OS. ;-)

Now if only sane would get updated

[mark-t]

While there is a patch available for sane to make it work with gimp 2.0, it hasn't been merged into the main source tree for sane, so if you don't install packages manually by compiling from source, you _still_ can't use your scanner directly from the Gimp.

Re:isn't this what bittorrent was created for?

[lart2150]

ya and that's why I made a torrent :-) now let's watch my tracker/web server die http://engert.us/gimp-2.0.0.tar.bz2.torrent

Mac OS X IS a Unix-based operating system...

[chaoskitty]

It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X.

That's like saying that it's supported not only on Windows, but on Windows 98. Mac OS X IS a Unix based operating system.

Re:Mac OS X IS a Unix-based operating system...

[fdobbie]

Yeah, except that the GIMP runs in Mac OS X's X11 environment. This is basically XFree86, so it has exactly the same API as it does on every other platform.

What about color calibration?

[MrScience]

Does it support ICC profiles? This is something that's really important to me. My old version of Adobe has a tendancy to crash when printing >100MB images, so I've resorted to tweaking in photoshop and printing in Gimp... but it'd be nice to do it all in Gimp.

Re:What about color calibration?

[Lalakis]

It's coming! From a really recent post of Sven Neumann to gimp-user list:
"GIMP 2.0 comes with a color proof display filter that uses ICC color profiles to simulate a proof on your monitor. Support for such filters is new in 2.0 and for the future it is planned to integrate display filter modules better into the workflow."

Big Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

First the Windows source gets leaked, and now all of a sudden every major OSS project suddenly supports the platform.

What a coincidence.

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[MooseByte]

Photoshop still rocks it ... but can you edit your last night's girl picture [...]?

No doubt to mask the pronounced adam's apple and large knuckles that didn't seem nearly as apparent when s/he approached after the third beer.

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[myklgrant]

I'd like to point out that for the price of Photshop (which is a very good program) you can get Photoshop+Gimp. So why put down the GIMP?

Re:This sounds like a good time for you

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't meant to be a troll or flame-bait, so forgive me if it sounds like it. The artists in your studio along with yourself probably all at least make a living at what you do because the work that is done is decent to exemplary. Without having ever seen your work, that I am aware of, I would wager that it is some good stuff since you obviously have an appreciation for the tools you work with. In my experience, people who appreciate all the tools available to them no matter what field they are in take the time to actually learn the tools that they use, and therefore do higher quality work. Kudos to you and the people you work with. Nice to see someone not being an elitist for a change about which tool or tools they think is superior to the others.

Re:Sweet

[Aliencow]

http://beepmp.sourceforge.net/

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[Polo]

Why is this rated -1 redundant? I think it's a valid point.

I think photoshop elements is pretty good and it doesn't trash the gimp to compare the two.

I have a canon scanner and it came free with photoshop elements which works on my mac. I don't know if gimp could invoke the canon scanner driver.

By the way, don't blow $99 on photoshop element because it comes free with canon scanners like the lide-50 which I believe is $99. It might even come with cheaper scanners, but I don't know.

It's almost as powerful as photoshop (I don't know what the differences really are), and it could complement the gimp.

It has some interesting features for beginners... dialogs to help correct certain problems with images and so forth.

Actually, I noticed the gimp can read .psd files, so it should be able to read in photoshop elements files. that's pretty cool.

Re:This sounds like a good time for you

[shadowbearer]

I'll agree with that.

Every time that there is a post about a gimp upgrade on slashdot, the posts degenerate into photoshop vs. gimp debates.

Seriously, who cares? Some of us don't run windows, and every version of Photoshop after 8 or so doesn't run worth a crap in Wine; so we use what works best in Linux, which is Gimp. Windows users can use Photoshop. Sure, it's better in a lot of ways - I won't argue that - but you use the best tool you have. Personally I will never have another windows installation on my systems, for many reasons. So.... Gimp for me. It works for what I do (texture creation for 3d models).

I'd like to see a post on /. where it didn't degenerate into the "this or that is better" arguements but where Gimp users shared their tips and tricks more.

So much to ask?

SB

web designers...siiigh.

[SuperBanana]

Um, I'm a web designer. How is that invaluable?

You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg

Variable compression(controlled by a mask) allows you to crank up the compression on low detail areas and use much finer compression at important parts, such as the edges of UI elements where compression artifacts would be noticed immediately. It can yield enormous savings, much greater than 1kB, and solves the #1 problem with JPEG- it's not dynamic and does NOT handle edges well.

Furthermore, even 1kB can have substantial cost savings for a client. If they get 1 million hits a day, they most certainly care about 1kB, because that's roughly $2-3/day in bandwidth charges. That's a thousand bucks a year, which pays for a whole lot of time for a graphics designer to squeek every last kilobyte out of an entire site's worth of images. Why do you think people install mod_gzip on servers to compress HTML? Why do you think many sites strip down the headers Apache sends in requests?

It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).

a)most people do NOT have broadband, b)56k modems typically get around 33.6kbps at best(22kbps is not uncommon for some folks out in the middle of nowhere), which works out to around 4.2kB/sec. If I knock 5kB off an image, you'll see it a second faster.

Re:web designers...siiigh.

[whitegold]

As another web designer, I feel I should make a point. First of all, I don't know what mask thingy compression stuff is. Except what the earlier post told me. I don't use Photoshop CS, I still use 7, and it does fine for me. I have to say, though, $2-$3 is NOT all that much money. But bear one thing in mind. That's PER IMAGE. If you have 10 images like that, that's $20 - $30 a day, which is starting to add up.

Better compression is ALWAYS good. If you run a site that uses a lot of images (Gallery, porn site, whatever) then the cost saving in better compression could be HUGE, and if it doesn't take any longer (or much longer) to do, then it's basically free money.

Also, on the 1 second thing... yeah, one second is not long, but once again, that's one second PER IMAGE. It all adds up.

Oh, and just so I get to put forth my opinion. The release of any new software like Gimp is always good. I'm a Photoshop guy and have neither reason nor inclination to change, but Gimp provides particularly programmers, and low end designers a free way to achieve the simple tasks they require. Its not worth a $600 photoshop license to make buttons. Sure, it's not Photoshop, but it doesn't have to be.

The real GIMP ...

[cpu_fusion]

... is the gimp.org server at the moment. ;-)

Physically Challenged Hits 2.0

[AvantLegion]

What's that supposed to mean? Or are my content filters messing with stuff again?

Re:isn't this what bittorrent was created for?

[Bob9113]

now let's watch my tracker/web server die http://engert.us/gimp-2.0.0.tar.bz2.torrent

:) That was fun. Here's another one we can try to kill: http://www.pfloss.com/tmp/gimp-2.0.0.tar.bz2.torre nt

Re:Gentoo

[_Sprocket_]

What has the world come to when you have "Professional Linux Installer" on your business card?

There's a snide remark about "MCSE" to be had here, but I'm not going to touch it. :P

Got Math?

[LFS.Morpheus]

Or, bandwidth doesn't cost that much, at least not where I will likely buy my next server.

1,000,000 hits/day = 365,000,000 hits/year @ 1kb/ea =
365 GB.

I can transfer 365 GB for as little as $25.19. Alternately, this is $0.07 a day.

So yes, you are probably wasting your time.

Great Accomplishment!

[firewrought]

Why all the flamewars b/t Adobe fans and Gimp fans? The news here is that the Gimp team has delivered us a significant upgrade that addresses many long-standing problems of the software (especially in terms of usability). Congratulations!! That's awesome!

If you prefer Adobe to Gimp, that's great too... buy it and use it. Judge the tradeoffs in cost and functionality for yourself and choose the best tool for you.

Alpha works great in Photoshop 8.0

[User 956]

You've obviously not used Photoshop 8.0 (Creative Suite). Alpha works great. It's been out for 6 months; the fact that you've not seen it casts serious doubt on your claim of being a "porfessional" that produces live television graphics systems.

And to your comment about CMYK being only for prepress, I say this: If you plan on doing any sort of printed work (newsletter, flyers, posters, magazine graphics), GIMP is completely useless without CMYK.

Using GIMP instead of Photoshop to do print work is like being a Carpenter, and using your fist instead of a hammer. Yeah, it's "free", and you may eventually get some nails into the piece of wood, but is it really the best use of your time and energy?

Likewise, you could take RGB files to your Print Shop, and either be laughed out of the building, or have it end up looking like complete ass.

Gimp 2.0 may be a milestone, but it's by no means a complete, professional-level application by any stretch.

Re:Alpha works great in Photoshop 8.0

[ChaosDiscord]

It's been out for 6 months; the fact that you've not seen it casts serious doubt on your claim of being a "porfessional" that produces live television graphics systems.

Because real professionals have lots of time and money to spend upgrading.

Here the real world lots of people live with older software because they are too busy to upgrade or because management refuses to pay for the upgrade. If your job is producing print media, especially photographic work, regular upgrades to PhotoShop are something you probably plan for. If your job is producing television content it's probably not so high on your list of requirements, especially if you've got something that basically works now.

If you plan on doing any sort of printed work (newsletter, flyers, posters, magazine graphics), GIMP is completely useless without CMYK.

Bwuhuhahahahahahahahaha. Nice elitism. It might come as a shock to you that there are people across the world doing exactly this sort of printed work who just don't worry about it. These same people are often working on cruddy monitors that have never been color calibrated to match their output devices. Yet millions of newsletters, flyers, and newspapers manage to get printed and sold despite imperfect color reproduction. Yes, large magazine and big companies have exacting color standards, but there is a huge undercurrent of small-time publications that just don't care. The bread and butter work of print shops is small runs of publications for local businesses. These local businesses don't really understand color correction and CMYK, yet they manage to get output that is good enough for their needs.

Maybe you're in a situation where you need the power of PhotoShop, but don't forget, you are in a minority.

Re:torrent for gimp 2.0.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you ment to do this: Gimp 2.0.0 Torrent

Troll

[bogie]

So basically you have no insight here or have even used Gimp 2.0. You just felt like being a troll?

I swear Adobe users are some of the biggest Trolls I've met on the Net. Everywhere I go where someone dares to mention an alternative, the Adobe trolls freak out and show up in massive numbers to diss anything non-Adobe. If it wasn't cmyk it would just be some other thing.

Why can't you Photoshop snobs just accept the fact that Gimp is a decent image editor that differs from Photoshop and leave it at that. Why are you so freaking insulted that non-Adobe products are available? You have stock in Adobe or something?

Gimp is certainly the best Free image editor available and for home users it will do anything you could possibly want, especially when it comes to digital photography.

But then again I guess I'm just wasting my breath.

Re:Troll

[mav[LAG]]

Agreed. There are also some of us who will never buy Adobe products ever again because of what the company did to Dmitri Sklyarov.

Re:Photoshop still rocks it

[HenchmenResources]

No doubt photoshop is better, for professionals, but gimp also has it's place in the professionals arsenal.

I personaly work in a professional setting and I use Photoshop on a daily basis and Know it like the back of my hand, But I personaly prefer GIMP's effets filters to the base effect filters that come with Photoshop (currantly using PS7).

When working in a fast paced high number of images situation though GIMP can't compete and that's when the $600.00 price tag becomes acceptable. If you don't need the features offered by Photoshop over GIMP, by all means use the GIMP, don't wast your money on something you won't use.

Gimp.app for OS X

[ttjervaag]

Efforts are also being made in providing a stable application bundle of the Gimp for OS X.

It is still being tested, but works fine for me:
http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net

It requires only Apple's X11 to be installed.

Maybe it is the subject itself that is difficult.

[RedLaggedTeut]

I'm not very good with neither Photoshop or Gimp. So my views are more the kind of a beginners views.

I found it hard to find the relevant menus in Gimp. But I also found it hard to find the relevant window to change something in Photoshop, where you have lots of opened tool windows, which most of the time don't do anything because you haven't selected anything relevant. Maybe image manipulation and drawing really requires a lot of skills to create an interface which does the easy stuff but also allows complex manipulations.

The only program I came to terms with was IRIS Showcase, but that is mostly a vector/object program. I liked the way you could group/raise/lower parts of the graphics. It sure was quicker than dragging all those layers around in Photoshop with the mouse.

Also what happened to Paintshop ?

Digital Photo tutorials

[ahto]

Could anyone recommend a good tutorial for photo touch-up using the GIMP? Everything I have found so far is for Photoshop. Being a newbie in both the photography and GIMP departments, and having never used Photoshop at all, it's quite hard to translate Photoshop advice to GIMP (it seems the terminology used by the two tools does not overlap too much).

Click and learn how to use gimp...

[lent]

OK, click and learn :-)

Note: Number 9 below is especially cool if you have an investment in Photoshop-plugins.

From:http://members.home.nl/m.weisbeek/gimp/

Annoyances about The GIMP

While The GIMP is such a powerful application, doesn't it have any drawbacks ?!? - Oh, yes, it has...

I [Martijn Weisbeek] am writing this article just to show you some of these. I hope that it will make you're life with The GIMP more easy. This article is the result of about one year of experience with using the Windows-version of The GIMP (almost on a daily basis). Just remember that The GIMP clearly focuses on functionality (which is good) instead of user-friendlyness. Therefore some things just aren't that obvious, just until you get the hang of it... So just take your time to read through this article and you'll make yourself an immediate GIMP-crack.

[...snip...]

For your convenience I created a list with pointers to the items in this article:

1. How do I edit an image ?

2. I hate going through this rightclick-menu each time !!!

3. Doesn't The GIMP support GIF's ?!?

4. Lots of GIMP-functions do not seem to be available !!!

5. But how do I know on what type of image a plugin works ?

6. How do I make parts of the image transparent ?

7. How do I remove the Alpha-channel (transparency-information) afterwards ?

8. How do I change the size of my image ?

9. Extend The GIMP's functionality with Photoshop-plugins

[...snip...]

Crazy idea !

[Herkules]

If you really want try paying a GIMP developer to implement it.

If you feel you cant aford to pay $ XXX checkout mailing lists to see if any one is also interested in this, and share the cost.

(Just a idea... o! This is one of the good things with Free/(Open Source) software)

No 48 bit support !!!

[dargaud]

There is still no 16 bit per channel support in Gimp. This is important if you want to do anything more than just playing with jpeg files. A (mostly dead) brach of Gimp called CinePaint supports 16 and 32 bit per channel images but it's very buggy.

There is talk about having gimp support it in the future, but it's a big undertaking. Sorry to sound like a troll, but in the meanwhile Gimp will be little more than a toy.

48 bit RGB is supported natively by the PNG and TIFF images formats and many RAW files created by almost every recent scanner or digital camera. It's a shame to have hardware which creates images you cannot fully use.

Re:No 48 bit support !!!

[ChaosDiscord]

Sorry to sound like a troll, but in the meanwhile Gimp will be little more than a toy.

Was PhotoShop little more than a toy in 1994? It lacked 16 bit per channel support. Apparently that made it a toy. Dispite this it was heavily used and lots of great work was done with it. Even today most PhotoShop users are not working with 48 bit per pixel images.

Yes, 48 bpp image work is the future and the Gimp definately needs to catch up. But to suggest that it's just a toy, unsuitable for professional work makes it clear that you either don't do professional work or are oblivious to your fellow professionals. Not everyone is doing the level of work that demands 48 bpp work. Maybe you need the functionality, but not everyone does. You might as well mock Microsoft Money for being a toy in face of Peachtree Accounting. Is Microsoft Word unsuitable for real work because QuarkXPress exists?

Whenever the Gimp advances there is a stream of "The Gimp is just a toy until it gets X" posts. Yes, the Gimp trails Photoshop in functionality. It's likely going to for the foreseeable future. But reality is that these same features are completely unused by most people. It's not surprising since people got on just fine until PhotoShop added the feature in the first place.

To pick a popular target (Gimp's lack of color correction) a friend of mine works for a newspaper and often prepares images for publication. I was surprised when 1. she said that the Gimp was just about as easy to use as PhotoShop, and 2. She was certain no one had ever done any color calibration, so she didn't miss it in the Gimp.

The new GIMP is great

[DarkDust]

Especially its path tool is really, really useful.

I'm using the 2.0pre4 version for two weeks now. I wanted to have a unique background image and my image drew me a "grim reaper tux" which I'm now coloring with the GIMP. The path tool makes this a whole lot easier, especially when deciding that some details of the form are not as I'd like them to be: you can then just throw away the layer with the outline and with the filling, tweak the path a bit and redraw the two thrown away layers in a few seconds.

The path tool now allows you to specify which tool to use when "stroking" the path, so I used a fuzzy brush... you could even use an elliptical brush or pen here. And you can get a selection from the path, which you can even combine/intersect which other paths.

The picture I'm working on is not completed yet but I've made preview available.

Getting the GIMP to compile correctly is a really hard though... I'm not going to repeat that loooong list of dependencies here, but you have to watch out sometimes. I guess it was the GTK+ 2.3.5 where I had to explicitly enable XInput to get my Wacom tablet to get recognized by the GIMP, and somewhere else I had to explicitly enable Xft or something like that...

But the new GIMP is a heavy improvement to the 1.3.x series, mainly from a GUI point of view, as the GIMP's drawing qualities where already quite good, IMHO (but then, I'm a programmer, not an artist ;-).

Re:It's all swell and shit, but

[cdyson37]

Why on Earth would you want to do work on photographs in 16 bit mode?

You've misinterpreted him. He means more than 8 bits per pixel per colour (the 24bit you talk about is 8 bits per colour per pixel, not including alpha). For instance my camera can produce pictures with 12 bits per pixel per colour = 36bits per pixel excluding the alpha channel (no, my camera cannot take photos with an alpha channel:). It is annoying that I can't use all the of the information in my photographs in gimp, and the grand-parent post makes a good point, but maybe someone will include this feature - it is apparently on the wish list. This is the one single feature that is holding gimp back in my opinion.