The GIMP Gets Ready for 2.2

An anonymous contributor writes "As promised, this time it didn't take another 3 years for a new stable GIMP version to be released. 8 months after GIMP 2.0 hit the road, GIMP 2.2 is almost done. The GIMP developers released 2.2-pre2 today and unless any major problems show up, the GIMP 2.2.0 release is going to follow later this month. The GIMP Wiki has a comprehensive list of new features in GIMP 2.2 and here are some screenshots of the development version."

Comments

GIMP on Windows vs Linux

[dan dan the dna man]

I wonder if the GIMP is slightly more useable on Windows in its next incarnation? I have been raving about the GIMP to anyone who will listen, for most people I know it's a very worthy replacement for Photoshop.

However I recently set up a dual boot laptop for my gf (the only way she will boot into Linux though is to play FreeCiv ;)) and put the GIMP on XP for her. When she complained it was unusable, I didn't believe her - I've found it very intuitive under Linux. But after trying it on XP, it really does feel like a crippled version of the package I know and love - it's clunky, ugly and restrictive.

Now of course, she is using a commercial package derived from a bittorrent source, and my OSS evangelism has fallen flat on its face :/

More than 24bpp support

[Ace Rimmer]

Yeah, fine, nice features but I wonder why there is nearly no interest in supporting more than 8bits per color. There is a lot of digital cameras out there, I scan my photos in 48bit mode. It's pretty annoying to to the basic color adjustments in (unstable and ugly) cinepaint which I have to restart after each load/save to avoid a crash and then to continue editing the image in gimp2. If more features are added it will be even harder to make everything properly work in a greater color depth.

Another thing that I miss for a long time is 'macro recording' similar to MS Office or Photoshop actions. Why do I have to write some weird script-fu skeletons and look up for functions and their parameters? It would be much easier if I could record my actions and then to parametrize them some way...

I asked about this at mailing list but the replies were a bit vague about those topics (or even angry)...

Animated GIF

[Anonymous Writer]

Anyone notice that the eyes on the GIMP icon move? That's the first time I noticed anything animated on slashdot other than the ads.

Still no non-destructive editing abilities

[t_allardyce]

I looked in the feature list but i couldnt find this feature, its been aching to be in there for years and its one of the only major reasons i dont use GIMP: Non-destructive filters, i.e being able to apply a filter and then later go back and edit the parameters of that filter or take it away, much like photoshops adjustment layers and effects panel. Theres no excuse for not putting this in because it could fit in the existing structure and filters. As my final year project im writing something similar to that idea but a kind of hybrid with connectable blocks. I really wish they would put this in, they could easily do it better than photoshop and make GIMP serious competition. If they already have someone let me know?