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First Look at GIMP 2.4
Liam30 writes "Newsforge (ed: part of the OSTG family) is running a story that gives a first look at the next version of GIMP." From the article: " A major update to the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), widely regarded as the leading free software raster image editing program, is scheduled for this month. The 2.4 release is expected to include a number of new features and enhancements to existing features ... The first thing most users will notice about 2.4 is the addition of three new tools to the palette: the Align tool, the Foreground Extraction tool, and a new 'Simple' Rectangle Selector. The Align tool lets you vertically and horizontally align image layers -- a task you had to perform manually before. You can align an image to any edge or the center, specify an offset in any direction, and adjust vertical and horizontal alignment separately."
That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.
Anyway - good luck to the GIMP guys - a nice tool!
For a while, I've had fairly negative views on GIMP. Sure, it's powerful, but it still lacks what Photoshop has out of the box, and it's got some fairly abstract configurations. But taking a look at SOIX and all, it's really going to push up against Photoshop. But now GIMP has to stop adding little features like simple rectangle select, and start adding more features like SOIX and superseeding PS to get it out there onto the commercial market.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
http://micke.hallendal.net/archives/2005/10/gtk-ma cosx.htmli mp-on-os-x/
http://gimpfoo.de/2005/10/06/an-early-glance-at-g
Ok, ok, it's not quite there yet, but there seems to be a lot of progress lately.
So when can I edit CMYK screenshots of Duke Nukem Forever in GIMP?
I'm agneglectic, too lazy to care if there is a God.
In older version of The Gimp it was very difficult to draw perfect concentric circles in it. I had to manually measure and mark the corners of the bounding box around the circle, and then I had to adjust for the "Stroke" feature drawing one pixel down and to the left instead of inside ... and so on.
It's the little things that separate the good programs from the bad. Not the amount of features.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
A Leica M lacks what a Canon SureShot has out of the box; that doesn't make the SureShot a better or more professional tool camera. Ease of use and multitude of features are not the measure of how good a tool is for commercial use.
I think both the Gimp and Photoshop are poor photo editing applications for professional users because they have too many extraneous features and don't focus on addressing the essentials well.
In the case of Photoshop, its real problem is that, in addition to trying to be a photo editing application, it's a web design application, an application for creating computer art, and lots more. It's the typical feature bloat that successful Windows applications experience.
I have been a GIMP user for the past few years. I started using GIMP first on windows and then when I switched over to linux, it became my graphics package of choice. I think GIMP will become a real threat to Photoshop in the near future. The only thing stopping it is CMYK support which (most probably) will be added in the next version.
I think it pays to use open source or GPLed software.
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Technically speaking all graphics packages are based on "8 bit" technology. An image on a computer is made up of (usually) 4 channels .. red, green, blue and alpha. Each channel contains a greyscale image .. with 256 levels of greyness. 256 levels = 8 bit.
The format you describe is the standard, but there is also a higher-quality standard where each channel is 16 bits. This is supported to some extent by many graphics packages; certainly Photoshop has had fairly decent 16-bit channel support since Photoshop CS.
So the GP's question makes perfect sense: does GIMP now support 16-bit channels?
Why? If you use Qt you can just make GTK use the Qt engine (there's a special GTK engine which uses Qt, I don't remember what it was called), if you prefer to have them look the same way.
The one feature I miss the most in The GIMP is better text handling, like being able to have more than one font/bold/italic/sized text in each text area. It should also have text boundaries which can be properly enforced to do word-wrapping and stuff. It's also nice to be able to have text follow a path, or be stretched into certain shapes.
I also really like Photoshop's 'Save for Web' dialogue, and would like to see something like that in The GIMP.
These are the only things I use photoshop for, everything else is really nice.
One of the things I prefer about The GIMP is being able to have layer sizes different to the image size.
A feature I have yet to see in either Photoshop or The GIMP is being able to use the stamp tool to rotate the source image based on a path before applying it, this would allow you for example to correct problems around the edge of a circle without a whole lot of mess.
I think they are more than well aware that people want 16 bits per channel support. Too bad there's been too many hurdles on their way. You probably want to go for the FilmGimp/Cinepaint for 16bpc.
Also there'll be still no trace of color models other than 8bitRGB/Gray/Indexed. They were supposed to develop a whole new framework for colorspace management and port the GIMP to it, but apparently all of the developers who knew anything about colorspace stuff choked to death when they tried to pronounce the name of the framework, so the project's been in limbo for years. Man, I'd kill for L*a*b.
But at least they'll get good CMS stuff! I think GIMP already uses littlecms, just there's no GUI for it, but sweet that it's coming in next release =)
Or something along those lines - I try the PC port from time to time, and it always turns me straight off that it opens all its windows straight on the desktop (as opposed to one window with all the others in it)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I would love to see a comprehensive listing of what can't be done with GIMP 2.4 that you can do with Photoshop. Then, tack on a list of what features can be covered by other applications (open source or commercial) from the list of missing features in GIMP. That would give me a very nice look at comparing the two and deciding which way to go. Also, it would give me a sense of how much money, if any, I have to spend to acquire the capability of Photoshop or being better.
Anyone noticed that the gimp icon (on /.) is moving its eyes now and then? Funny ...
Yep, his eyes move. As far as I know, Wilbur (the name of the Coyote) is the only icon on Slashdot that is animated.
Summation 2
Use of SIOX will most likely increase Fark and Worth 1000 entries. No comment on if this is a good or bad thing...
Click here or here.
GIMP is an Image editor (Image Manipulation Program, afair), not a diagram creator.
However I do agree that there is a need for shapes often. Mostly there is a need to tweaking selections, paths, etc.. Much like you do in a vector drawing program (e.g. Inkscape - wonderful program, btw!).
But then I have to agree with your trolling a bit. Many new users find the GIMP very confusing simply because it forces them to change all their habbits. There aren't any shape tools, changing size of the brush isn't strait-forward (it isn't visible to new users).
An advice to the GIMP creators would definately be to make it more user friendly towards newcommers and improve startup time. Another thing is the much questioned window-hell they have. I am one of those users who just hate it. I know there are plugins for this, but they are unstable and extremely bad quality (i've tried).
Without an entire virtual desktop to work on, the GIMP is a drag to work with, since minimizing it takes ages wasting productivity time.
Many people do not use the GIMP because of the interface issues. It is useless for people to learn another interface. The reason many people do not use GIMP, the reason I do not use GIMP is sheer laziness, I do not feel like learning another interface.
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So, Scott Moschella made this modification. He isn't a programmer, he just is a GIMP user. It's called GIMPShop. A conversion that just rearranges the menu's to Photoshop style. Linkage for your pleasure... Gimpshop is available for Windows, Solaris/Sparc, Linux (detailed instructions), Debian, and RPM's. GIMPShop runs native under Mac.
ahref=http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294rel=url2
I have been using GIMP for a long time but when I switched to PhotoShop I suddenly got a lot better at doing graphics. It isn't any one feature that I can point to the Photoshop has or does better then the GIMP it is just the interface in photoshop is somehow easer. Layers seem so much easer in Photoshop then in the GIMP, Finding filters to run seems much simpler too. Perhaps it is because photoshop put the features you use the most more readily available while GIMP seems to give all the features all the same level (Cryptic). With tools like GIMP and Photoshop there is a fine line of usability. And if GIMP could get it right it would be a lot better. I wish I could give better deatails on what they should do but I am not sure myself. I personally don't care much for the photoshop interface as well but compared to the GIMP is is just more usable.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Features working in SVN include:
* CMYK
* OpenEXR
* 16 bit/channel RGBA images
* Many more filters
* Painting with watercolors
* Adjusting brightness and contrast with curves
yeah, I don't understand why people have such a hard time with that...
It's annoying when people try to use the "GNU image MANIPULATION program" to create illustrations... Same with photoshop. To people who ask me simple things like how to draw basic shapes in photoshop, I ask why they don't use illustrator. And to people asking those questions in GIMP, I point them to Inkscape (disclaimer: I have never used inkscape, so I can't vouch for its usefulness).
although photoshop added shape tools (mostly worthless, imo) relatively recently, there's really no reason for GIMP to follow. Unless, of course, they're trying to clone photoshop.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
You won't see any difference between 8, 12 and 16 bit per channel images with most cards.
This is 99% true for image VIEWING programs.
However for image MANIPULATION programs (like the GIMP) it's a very different story.
Say for example you have a photograph that is underexposed such that the brightest pixel is 25% gray. For the sake of argument let's deal with a grayscale image (or just one channel of an RGB image).
On a histogram all the 'bars' for this underexposed picture will be bunched up the left side, occupying the first 25% of the graph. If you want to fix it, you would normally spread out the histogram so that the bars span the whole graph (ie whites appear white instead of 25% gray). Since our shades were originally bunched up we only have a quarter of the possible number of shades available to us. Now if you only have 8 bits per channel there will only be 255/4=64 possible shades of gray in your picture, and banding effects will be very apparent. This will be apparent in the histogram since there will be distinct gaps between each bar.
Try it again with 16 bits per channel, hey let's do even 12 bits per channel. Our total number of gray shades is now 2^12=4096. Divide that by 4=1024 shades to spread out. You can downsample that to 256 shades and still get a full 24-bpp image with no banding. The histogram will now be a continuous solid shape with no gaps (unless any were present in the original image).
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