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GIMP 2.2 Released
wongn writes "Several weeks since the splash screen contest was first announced, the latest milestone release for GIMP has come about - GIMP 2.2.0 has just been officially released. Only the linux binaries and source have yet appeared. From the website: 'The GIMP developers are proud to announce the availability of version 2.2.0 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. About nine months after version 2.0 hit the road, we have completed another development cycle and can bring a new stable GIMP to our users' desktops.'"
Alright, animated topic icons!
I thought i was seeing things.
Runnin' On Empty
If GIMP was not open source, would you use it? Does it have anything over Photoshop in terms of Functionality or Ease of USe?
Details of the release: http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/WhatsNew2
gimp-print 5.0.0 yet? Yeah it's beta but so what?
GIMP 2.2.0 has just been officially released
Anybody have a link to a torrent?
Oh.... wait
Overall, GIMP is an incredible feat of OSS, so I dno't want it to seem that I'm being completely negative.
But, there's two problems I have with GIMP, and one of them might have been fixed and one definitely hasn't.
First is the interface. Much has been said about it, but it really is not intuitive at all. A UI overhaul would be very helpful, and could go a long way to get a lot of Adobe enthusiasts to check it out. I've been using Mac OS X a lot lately, and it's really pointed out a lot of the really horrid UI decisions that have been made with Linux-grown software. The right-click menu is horribly unintuitive, there's too many options cluttered on one screen instead of giving them a heirarchy of use and seperating them by tabs or other methods. There's a whole bunch of things that could be done to make the the interface better, enough to fill a whole research document, so I'll leave it at that.
Second is the name. It needs to change. This is not about being PC, it's about reaching out to as many people as possible, and getting them to try out the GIMP. Will universities ever teach classes in a program that's called 'the gimp?' Will companies ever take seriously an employee who says that he wants to install 'the gimp' on his computer? Y'all have to have gotten the same weird looks as me when you've suggested that people try 'the gimp'. Have you ever told it to someone who uses a cane or crutches or is in a wheelchair?
If you have, you probably felt like a real jerk right after it slipped out of your mouth.
C'mon, change the name, we're not kids anymore, alright?
You forgot one important statistic: 0% of the people here will take you seriously.
Did you notice that (a) it's easier to click once than to type in a file name, and (b) you can give the list focus and type the name if you want? Sometimes simplicity and useability can come hand in hand.
...just laugh that there's a big enough loser out there who feels the need to come to a website to post this. Seriously, imagine what this tool is probably like.
He probably is alone in his room, with no friends, sitting in front of a computer, making a difference in a society the only way he knows how, by trying to start shit on a website that is self-described "news for nerds." Wow. This is to you 'character assassin:' I feel sorry for you.
And I laugh at you, pinhead.
Is that because you've been using Photoshop for years and just tried out the Gimp and realized that it's not set up like Photoshop (gasp!)? Well I thought the same thing the first time I gave it a whirl. But I realized that if I've been using the Gimp for the past seven years, I would have had a hard time adjusting to Photoshop. It's all relative.
At last, ALSA support in the midi control module!
Now I can draw pictures while playing my 80's strap on casio keyboard!!!!
The splash screen that won the contest and some others that worth mentioning.
"Thorwaldes who publicly admits that he is in fact A HACKER???"
Not only that, but a highly respected one who can spell his name correctly.And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Just press Ctrl+L to type the filename and/or path...
Anyone willing to make a patch for GIMP 2.2 that will replace the horrific new open and save dialogs with the old ones?
Please...the new ones are completely unusable.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Windows torrent
Linux
And for the sake of everything holy, reseed and be nice to my tracker and server
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
That open dialog really reminds me of something. Hmm. Oh well, keep innovating guys!
"Baka, baka, minna baka."
P.S: Lameness filter is soooo lame
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
Many of your criticism is based on the fact that GIMP runs in X11 and thusly does not have a native OS X front-end. I don't think it's really fair to criticise that aspect. Apple has to ensure a native-feeling X11 environment. The GIMP developers probably won't build a native version, it will be too time consuming.
Other parts of your critique arise from misinterpretation of the displayed screenshot.
I would say: download and install it and try for yourself
My problem is that I do not use the gimp daily, and therefore I forget where things are hidden. But, surely, it needn't be so difficult to guess.
One thing I do a lot is to edit the contrast of an image that I've scanned. But, every time, I have to try a lot of menus to find that function. Image? Layers? Tools? Dialogs? Filters? All of these seem to be likely candidates. So, each and every time I want to adjust the contrast, I click each of these things, often a few times, missing the brightness/contrast function I'm looking for.
Does it really need to be this difficult?
I am not writing to suggest a reconfiguration of the menus -- folks have got used to the present state -- but rather to suggest something simpler. How about a menu action that stores recently chosen menus? In my case, a buffer of previously-selected menu items would contain just 3 items: "open", "brightness/contrast" and "save as". I imagine quite a few folks would have a small list of recent commands.
Q: is it technically feasible to store recently-used commands in this way? It would seem to be, since so many applications have recently-used file menu items.
It's also intuitive to RTFM or google when you don know the shortcut.
By definition, it's not intuitive if you need to RTFM just to use a basic function.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Second is the name. It needs to change. This is not about being PC, it's about reaching out to as many people as possible, and getting them to try out the GIMP. Will universities ever teach classes in a program that's called 'the gimp?' Will companies ever take seriously an employee who says that he wants to install 'the gimp' on his computer? Y'all have to have gotten the same weird looks as me when you've suggested that people try 'the gimp'. Have you ever told it to someone who uses a cane or crutches or is in a wheelchair?
If you have, you probably felt like a real jerk right after it slipped out of your mouth.
Well, as a non-native speaker, I never knew the word "gimp" had a meaning in the English language. Just looked up m-w.com... gimp means cripple, but it also means spirit and, curiously, vim (which is also a word!).
If you feel bad saying "gimp" as ['gimp], I suggest you to pronunce the "g" as in "ginger", making it ['jimp]. I've already heard people saying it like that; it's not that weird.
The filesystem is the package manager
If I had the time I would start up "legittorrents.org" or something
To compete with LegalTorrents.com?
It's not up to 2.2 yet, but Gimp.app manages to integrate into MacOS X in a surprisingly elegant manner. It's got a dock icon, which I drag photos from iPhoto on to; it can take screenshots with Grab.app; it can read images from the Mac clipboard. It comes as a single program package (Gimp.app, imaginatively) which you just drag-and-drop into your Applications folder, like any other decent Mac program.
;-)
:-)
My only real complaint about it is the default theme - I've replaced it on my iBook with one called Milk 2.0 which manages to look a lot cleaner and smarter than the standard.
There's this general opinion that The GIMP is somehow utterly impossible to use, but I really do disagree. I taught myself to use it very quickly some years ago, merely by sitting down and playing around with it. Compared with something like vi or Blender, it's absolutely brilliant - while it's a bit quirky in places, it's generally very consistent in how it does things, and menu entries are logically named and placed. There aren't multiple modes for the program to operate in (beyond indexed, greyscale and full-colour), and with a comprehensive help system, tooltips and so on with no hidden basic functionality, it's more akin to pico than vi...
I started off using The GIMP because it was all that I could afford. I continue using it (towards my paid work as well as hobbies such as photography and computer game design) because while I could probably afford Photoshop these days, it doesn't really offer me anything useful in addition to what I already have for free.
If you want to use The GIMP, try it with an open mind. Don't expect Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or whatever, it's its own program in its own right, with its own advantages and disadvantages. Do appreciate that it's a cross-platform thing with its home on X11 and UNIX - the Windows and Mac ports are very close in user interface to the original, for ease of maintenance and porting. And above all, have fun.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
But the dialog provides access to that feature.
just because there is a box does not mean that it is obvious how to use it, you need to RTFM or know that anyway.
I'm not debating whether this feature is difficult to use and whether or not you may have to read a manual if you are not accustomed to a unix-like shell. All I'm saying is that feature itself should be easily accessible through the graphical user interface if it is accessible at all.
A shortcut should be exactly that: a shorter way to access a feature. But, that feature should nevertheless be equally accessible though the graphical user interface for people who do not know the shortcut. Whether you might have to read a manual to actually be able to use the feature really has nothing to do with that. Though the program could probably provide contextual help in that case.
Try using the dialogs? While it may not be exactly the same as these gtk2.6 dialogs, I've been using very similar dialogs in Gnome 2.6/2.8 every day for the better part of a year now, and I find them to be both easy and simple to use. I welcome their use for all GTK applications which will provide a consistant interface for nearly all the applications I use. Hopefully a future Firefox and OpenOffice will detect a running Gnome session and use these new dialogs also, giving users a completely consistant file and open save dialogs across all applications.
How is it better? You can easily define locations to store files which can be easily accessed by any application, allowing for quick and simple navigation without having to navigate the filesystem. And with a simple ctrl-L, you have a text input box that allows for file and folder autocompletion. It is better because it is far simpler for new users, and still very powerful for experienced users.
501 Not Implemented
The Gnome-HIG and especially their new dialogs are just a pain.
Easy solution: Make the text box viewable in the box and make ctrl-l focus it.
It's still obvious that you can type the filename in if you'd like and you no longer have to use the mouse (unless you wish to) to make the text box have focus.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
SuSE binaries are uploading even as I type this. Enjoy.
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
CMYK... cmyk... CMYK... cmyk...
For the love of god!!!
A fair number of those issues have been resolved with MacGIMP. You might give that a try. I know it puts the proper icon in the dock, and you install it via drag and drop etc., so it is a much more mac-like install.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Very good point. This has been in their bugzilla (as a feature enhancement) since Sept '03.
Check this out, from their wiki:
What a joke! Without CMYK, the Gimp is a toy, useful for web graphics but little else. No good to design pros, or to anyone that wants to be able to produce documents to print -- I fall into that second category, and without Photoshop and/or Illustrator, or a Gimp with decent features like native CMYK, there's no way I'm shifting from OS X. Trust me, graphics people do not give a monkeys about Python-Fu .. they want decent tools, they want them to have professional features, they want a decent intuitive UI (anyone that claims the Gimp has this is either a fantatic, a troll, or has the pleasure nodes in his or brain switched with the pain ones). I am not saying this for my own sake, I'm happy using Photoshop, but for the sake of FL/OSS in general. The lack of a decent graphics package This may not sound such a big deal, but without a *n?x version of Photoshop, and the Gimp being in the state it is, this effectively cuts out the viability of using a FL/OSS OS as a graphics workstation.
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Sorry, I use photoshop quite often, and GIMP is, among other things, exceedingly slow; filters that take a second or two in Photoshop CS take a half minute in GIMP. I got tired of watching the filter progress bar all the time, and switched right back.
Professionals buy new $3k Macs when there's a new model out if there is even 2-3 seconds difference in how long a task takes. Why should they "save" $650 on something that will take them ten times as long?
Nevermind that macros in GIMP are a royal pain in the ass. In Photoshop, you just do the action while recording it, and Photoshop makes the macro for you. You can then apply the macro to images in the image browser instantly, control where things go, have a report generated on failures/successes, the whole nine yards.
If the GIMP team wants Photoshop market share(which I don't think they do), then repeat after me: productivity, productivity, productivity. They'd do well to sit down with a bunch of pros and write down everything they say, and weigh it very heavily into future plans.
Please help metamoderate.
Man, Mac users are a bitchy lot, aren't they. "Why haven't the developers of the GNU Image Manipulation Program spent their valuable development time making their program work on my non-Free platform?"
And for most peoples needs, GIMP or PSP is more than enough.
I'd guess that most of the people using Photoshop do so just because a) they got/pirated it for free, and b) it's popular. Pros use it because there is no viable alternative. And then there are the non-pro fools that actually shelled out all that money for it.
The "unintuitive interface" argument seems to apply in reverse as well, for me at least - I've been using the GIMP for several years, and recently ended up using photoshop because that's all our art dept had. I found the UI to be quite horrid; nothing was where I expected it to be, getting anything done was slow and painful, overall it just felt wrong - having seen things from the other side, I find it hard to take PS user's complaints about the GIMP seriously; I'd think it change that they (and I) don't like, not the new UI itself.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
While I can't really argue about the name, I think your UI criticisms are somewhat less valid.
Almost everybody I know with a problem with the GIMP's UI is an experienced photoshop user. I learned both apps at roughtly the same time, and find the GIMP 2.0's UI acceptably usable in comparison to that of Photoshop (on MacOS - the Windows photoshop UI makes the GIMP look like UI heven). I'm hardly one to claim it's perfect, but the GIMP 2.0's interface is IMO quite usable. (Lets just not talk about 1.x - ugh).
For those who want the GIMP to be Photoshop (not saying you're one of them) I think it would be valid to have a "photoshop user mode" for the GIMP, but in the end the GIMP is _not_ a photoshop clone, and the developers are trying to make a usable UI not clone the photoshop UI. I would also argue that there are better ways for them to spend their time than redoing the already working UI.
At least you don't seem to expect the app to just clone the Photoshop UI, which seems to be the most common expectation from folks who dislike the GIMP's UI. Seriously, Photoshop is not the be-all and end-all of user interface design - I find it cluttered and frustrating, though mostly due to the train wreck that is window management under MacOS. I find the Windows MDI version even worse. I think it's the best UI out there for a graphics app, but it's hardly perfect and it's severely limited by the braindead window management of major platforms.
For me personally, the real issue with the GIMP is technical limitations. The lack of CMYK support, colour management, and 48 bit colour means that for my personal needs - prepress photo manipulation - it's basically useless. Of course, that's only one small area in a very big field.
I've been using the Gimp for four years now in an educational setting. For a variety of reasons, it is a compelling choice. 1. Students can use the Gimp at school and at home. It's a natural to stop them from violating copyright law. 2. The Gimp is a remarkable testimony to GNU software's ability to create powerful application software. 3. With limited documentation, The Gimp is perfect for teaching kids how to actually learn a software package. 4. Once they "get it," they appreciate what the Gimp can do for them. 5. There's no better way to teach them the real nature of cell animation. 6. For Unix kids, the Gimp is an awakening. When they move from Windows Gimp to Unix Gimp, they suddenly discover that the difficulties inherent in Windows file structure are an impediment to their computing. 7. Even of they move on to Photoshop, learning on the Gimp provides them a much better understanding of the nature of image manipulation. 8. It's not an easy answer. Kids like easy answers. 9. Nobody can figure out what the icon is, and it's hilarious when a kid shouts out "I love the gimp!"
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
Can you please, in the future, consider an emergency reserve of "Redundant" moderation points so that we will have enough to use when stories like this get posted? This story was a true disaster, overwhelming moderators with 537,221,400 unique posts all saying the same thing within 4 minutes and twenty-two seconds. The regular amount of mod points simply didn't cut it. Experts estimate that over one billion "redundant" and "off topic" points were necessary due to massive number of posts about Adobe Photoshop in a gimp release story, and there were only a few dozen.
I know this shortfall of redundant points is a completely false scarcity and there is dire need for redress, unless somehow the number of assholes who feel the need to post crap about photoshop in a gimp story is reduced.
I have been using it for most of my image manipulation, but I often get frustrated, and here's why. Say you need to crop an image. You select the Crop tool, and click at the upper left corner of the cropped region, ready to drag a rectangle around the region of interest. Up pops a damn dialog that completely OBSCURES what you're doing! The same thing happens with the dropper tool. I was also reminded just yesterday that you cannot select more than one layer at time (say I want to move a group of objects), and worse, you have to keep moving back and forth between your image window and the Layers dialog, because pressing an arrow keey while the Layers dialog is active will change your selection. To add salt to the wound, the selection tool MUST be selected in order to nudge objects with the arrow keys. Why?
I like the Gimp - I think it has a lot to offer, and I use it when I can. Even though the interface is a lot nicer in 2.0, more work needs to be done.
Well, for that kind of stuff you really should be using a vector-based editor like Inkscape.
TODO: Something witty here...