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Paint.NET: The Anti-GIMP?
Arno contributes a link to Paint.NET, a free-of-charge raster-graphics program for Windows XP machines. "Quote: 'Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP. Paint.NET is jointly developed at Washington State University with additional help from Microsoft, and is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with GDI+ extensions.' It really seems like a nice tool. I definitely prefer its UI to GIMP's."
Before we all do the obligatory "GIMP r0xx0rz, .NET sux", please try downloading this... after it's Slashdotted. Very nice product, it doesn't have the advanced image conversion GIMP does, but very useful indeed.
I wonder if they used P/Invoke so I can run this on Mono?
If it's meant to be a replacement for MS Paint as the blurb states, I don't think the Gimp should feel threatened. The chasm between Paint and Gimp is lightyears wide. It's unlikely this program could attract the OSS devotion necessary to become really big, especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.
I do a bit of graphics stuff and i would never put my Photoshop to the side. it is by FAR the best graphics program out there. GIMP is nice for little things at work, but for personal use i would never use it.
You should care because one of the nicest features of GIMP, and indeed all cross platform OSS is that it DOES work on Windows. It's a major help to development to have that user base. If GIMP gets dropped for Paint.NET on windows ( which I'm not saying/seeing it will, but it DOES apparently have MS's interest ) then GIMP will lose "hands at the wheel" for development/testing and that will contribute to it losing a bit of steam, even if YOUR only concernt is linux. Ask not for who the bell tolls, sir, it tolls for thee.
I doubt that GDI+ is available in Mono. GDI+ is a 'free' download from Microsoft, but it's a DLL.
Considering that it IS open source, your post looks rather moronic. FYI, RTFM before putting virtual foot in mouth.
Why write something using Microsoft's .NET Framework and then say it's for Windows XP? I thought one of the advantages of .NET was that it works the same on all the supported operating systems.
('Course, having developed stuff in .NET myself, I can vouch for the fact that stuff doesn't always work the same on different OSes, but it's close enough to release a functional product)
"In the spirit of all this freedom, we welcome any suggestions, as well as provide the source code free of charge for anyone who wishes to tinker with it. Please explore this website, download the software and try out many of the things you would do on those expensive commercial applications."
and the license
" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
"
Well fuck me, MS is sponsoring not just free software but Free software, Very interesting! Oh and can we take this and shove it on Linux?
The fact is that the GIMP UI sucks and the developers don't care. Therefore it's inevitable that GIMP will eventually be replaced by something whose UI doesn't suck. It might be some evolution of Inkscape, or it might be a port of Paint.NET, but it must happen, and the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.
The mirrored copy will still be signed.
Yes, but warez-kid-in-basement isn't the Photoshop market.
This thing looks like people can install it on their computer at work and not get in trouble.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
I guess photoshop sucks too. Except for some rather erudite features needed for color printing and certain effects, the gimp has just every feature in photoshop that I've ever needed. I actually miss features in the gimp when using photoshop. But if you think Photoshop also sucks, I don't see how you could say the gimp does too.
I see several interesting things here. Note how they had to use a GDI+ 'extension'? And someone is reporting sluggishness anyway, even on hardware that is fairly new. Tells me .net suffers from Java's Disease along with any other emulated environment and that the move to add in native hooks is already well underway. And of course it is in Microsoft's interest to make sure that .NET is 'multiplatform' in the hype but Windows only in practice.
.net and all it's works are nothing but a trap for the unwary. And will never live up to the hype anymore than Java did, although there is now hope for Java to become useful by jetisoning the emulation and making it just another object oriented language that GCC will grind down to ELF executables.
Let this be an object lesson for all you Mono fetishists,
Democrat delenda est
The UI is fine if you make an effort to learn to use it.
I believe thats exactly what everyone is complaining about. I'm sure the GUI is certainly usable once you learn it, the problem is that there is an enormously steep learning curve involved that turns the majority of potential users away.
If I replaced your car's steering wheel with joysticks, I'm sure that once you learn it you'll drive just fine. But you'll still curse me for forcing you to learn to drive that way. Most people will probably just give up. At the same time, I'm sure that there will be someone out there who will indeed be willing to learn it and say to everyone else "put some effort in, you whiny idiots."
You may want to consider Photoshop Elements, which costs about $100 or less if you wait for a rebate. It's a surprisingly big subset of Photoshop, missing mainly the pre-press tools that are useful to professionals. It's also a useful training tool if you plan to move up to Photoshop one day.
It sucks if you are on Windows and don't have a program which gives you virtual desktops. Install that and you can use GIMP a lot better. (And FYI I hate programs with MDI style interfaces since I typically work with multiple monitors.)
especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.
.net towards those ends, avoiding any .net project like the proverbial plague is not only wise, it is critical to the self-preservation of any software developer wishing to work in an environment free of Microsoft's coercive control, be it Apple OS X, FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Palm OS, Solaris, or anything else.
.NET, and, as you say, it addresses a different niche of users.
Based on Microsoft's behavior past and present, its effect on the industry and emergence of technology in general (quite negative), and their publicly stated intentions with respect to Linux, software freedon in general, and freedom to innovate vis-a-vis software patents and ligitagion in general (of which their funding of the SCO debacle is but a precursor), I'd say there is absolutely nothing whatsoever "irrational" about the dislike an association with Microsoft inspires in any of us.
Now, the expression of that dislike can sometimes take irrational forms, just as the expression of anger can on any subject, but that by no means belies the entirely rational, indeed very justified, anger and dislike being felt.
Finally, given Microsoft's long history and ongoing policy of customer lock-in, and their stated strategy of leveraging
I do agree that this program is no threat to the GIMP. Its licensing is more restrictive, it requires
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
At most, they may plink down $250, but most likely will go home with the "Ph0t0 M4st3r 2.3" software for $9.99 in the 'Value Software' bin.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Features are objective, what interfaces you like or don't like on the other hand seems to be very subjective. So how does Paint.NET compare to Gimp in terms of features (-10 points for beeing windows only ;-).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It is not the features it is the interface. Example: Both Photoshop and GIMP support layers, It is easy to add a new layer and Minipulate it in photoshop. In GIMP I really need to look for it and moving between layers gets more difficult. It is an issue of making the more usefull features where people can access them the most and the more cryptic ones a little further Back.
The basic rule is that 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So it is not matching feature per feature with photoshop it is matching how well people can access the feature.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
According to one of the GIMP developers, BigSven:
"GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop and we aren't trying to win PS users over. We are creating a tool that gets the job done. Some approaches of PS are worth to copy, others aren't. GIMP is not a Photoshop clone and it was never meant to be one." -BigSven
"Gimp was not written as a competitor to Photoshop." -mac[LAG]
Please do not compare GIMP with Photoshop, because that's a very sensitive point with GIMP fanatics, who go out of their way to ignore Photoshop, and wear their ignorance as a badge of pride.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
True, you can never please all of the people all of the time, but there are good interfaces and bad interfaces. While you may not like the iPod, most people love it. Gimp is the opposite--a few people love it (mostly the developers), everyone else finds it completely unusable. I have never heard of a program that is as universally criticized as having a bad interface, but the developers completly ignore the critiques. Gimp is powerful, but it is needlessly hard to use.
Sure there's something to be said for coming up with a new, more powerful interface-- but only if it's usable. The argument that "people just aren't used to it yet" doesn't fly. The users of Gimp are by definition, some of the most advanced computer users around. If they can't figure it out, normal users never will.
Until the usability problems are fixed, it will never be used by more then a few geeks.
1. It requires .NET. Why? I don't have a clue.
.NET framework", not "make a better paintbrush.exe".
Because Microsoft's goal for the project was "get more users to install the
I can't comment on the UI since the site is so slashdotted that I can't get the screenshots or the installer...
0 1 - just my two bits
Well that's what I've been doing,
*dl GIMP
*Install GIMP
- ohh the UI still sucks
- doing anything is an unberable pain
- the damned thing crashes so often I never finish ANYTHING (yes I'm on windows)
- swearing at it,(note: it doesn't work)
- it's clunky, slow, and looks disgusting
* uninstall GIMP
* deleting all the crap it lefts in user profile
* promise never to try again
* see slashdot article about it, try again
guess I'm a lil' masochistic after all...
Why o why o why do soooo many people whine about the UI of the GIMP? I dont get it at all.
What's so hard to understand about the GIMP?
There's a toolbox - double click the tool for options - a colour picker and a brush selector. Easy. It does reasonable AA text, albeit a little clunkily and it has a whole lot of load/save options per supported filetype. Easy. There are options per image under the right mouse button and there are options per session of the gimp application in the menu at the top of the toolbar. Easy. It allows for any number of views of the image you're working on and it has configurable shortkeys for lots of stuff. Easy. It has most of the image manipulation filters you's expect from a heavy duty gfx app and a kick-arse animation plugin. Easy.
The only thing about recent versions of the GIMP that really annoys me is the Gtk+ 2.x/Pango/atk/glib complex. This has become so slow that it's almost unbearable. Gtk+ is now a dog of a behomoth of a bitch of a toolkit. Die Gtk+ die.
Finally, the fact that there is very minimal (non-existant really) support for the CMYK colourspace is an annoyance too. Other than that the GIMP is simply great value and a lot of fun to use.
Oh, one thing though - the GIMP really needs to be run on a Unix. Win32 versions of the GIMP suck _really_ badly.
- It took western civilisation 2000 years to ensure popular literacy, and now we work with icon driven GUI's. Go figure.
Both Photoshop and GIMP support layers, It is easy to add a new layer and Minipulate it in photoshop.
That's funny...I find it easy to add a layer in the GIMP, yet have to look around for the functionality in photoshop.
Imagine that...the program you spend a whole lot of time with ends up feeling more familiar to you. Who ever would have thunk it?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
That is a completely subjective and unverified argument you make. I myself can't use photoshop, but have no problems with the gimp, and that is because I'm used to it, whether you beleive it's possible or not. Anybody who started out on gimp is better with gimp and prefers gimp, the same thing with those who started out with photoshop(thanks to piracy, that is most people). People use your exact arguments against OSX, and for XP everyday, doesn't make them valid or informed.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
I agree that a lot of Linux apps sucks
.. ie you still can do stuff on lower windows, while some dialog is open.
but i really really don't get it when people says GIMP sucks
are you talking about GIMP 2.0 ???
For me the UI surpasses in ease-of-use and functionality compared to many competitors.
1. You hardly get stuck with modal windows
2. If all fails and you panic- just right click. Right click gives you a pop-up menu that let you navigate to any operation you want performed.
I agree GIMP 1.x sucked horrid.
But GIMP 2.x ??
I use it a lot - its very user friendly.
If it was horrid I would agree you - believe me.
I can be a Linux zealot but I am not into praising any software that is downright crap (independant of vendor or OS)
Microsoft Excel for example - still (imho) unsurpassed.
While Inkscape is no way as near as good as Corel Draw 12 (if you don't count stability of course)
GIMP 2.x = brilliant powerful intuitive app.
Trying to draw any comparison between Paint.NET and The Gimp is just plain silly. It will not, and cannot do any of the myriad tasks that I have been able to use the Gimp for.
Warts and all, the Gimp is a fully developed application with a history of growth.
Paint.NET is exactly what it purports to be- an application developed by a number of students to be a replacement/upgrade for the MSPaint application. It performs that function extremely well. MSPaint is a notoriously limited application that has little or no purpose.
On the other hand, I can see users who need relatively simple answers using PAint.NET for simple needs.
As built, the Gimp will not challenge beyond a discrete community of users who have both the technical ability to use its power and the imagination needed to take advantage of everything that happens to be in there.
Just try using the animation abilities to make shorts that resemble Terry Gilliam's animation work. The Gimp makes it wholly possible. It's dissolve function makes the impossible seem simple- seamless transition from frame to frame in animations.
Paint.NET? Good work students, and I'm sure that MS will enjoy putting you to work for them for long hours with little pay when you are ready.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
Am I missing something? There's that Layer menu in Photoshop. or shift+ctrl+n. How hard is it to see?
Am I missing something? There's that Layer menu in the GIMP. Or ctrl-l, n. How hard is it to see?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.