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Beginning GIMP
Ravi writes "Any one who has had the opportunity to manipulate images would be aware of Adobe's Photoshop - considered to be the market leader in image manipulation software. But with its high price tag, buying Photoshop is akin to putting strain on your bank balance. What is interesting is that there is a very popular free alternative to Photoshop in GIMP. For those in the dark, GIMP is a state of the art image manipulation software which runs on multiple architectures and OSes and which is released under the GNU free License (GPL). I have been using GIMP exclusively for touching up images for many years now and it has met all my graphics manipulation needs." Read the rest of Ravi's review
Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional
author
Akkana Peck
pages
550
publisher
APress
rating
9
reviewer
Ravi
ISBN
1-59059-587-4
summary
A great book to learn Gimp
Unfortunately, for a beginner who is taking his first baby steps in GIMP, the interface might feel a bit kludgy and he/she might need some hand holding. This is where a book related to Gimp gains prominence. I recently came across this book called "Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional" authored by Akkana Peck. Divided into 12 chapters and 6 appendices, this book aims to cover the whole gamut of features found in Gimp.
In the first chapter, the author takes the reader through an in-depth tour of Gimp interface. This chapter introduces various dialogs,windows and configuration options that play an important part while working on ones images in Gimp. Even though I was conversant with most of the features of Gimp, I found this chapter impart a very good understanding of Gimp interface which is imperative for putting this software to productive use.
But it is not enough if one jumps right into editing images. It is important to have a good understanding of the various image formats used, their pros and cons as well as situations where different formats are ideal to use. The second chapter of this book titled "Improving Digital Photos" explains just that. The author further shows the image settings in Gimp which helps one to optimize the image while saving to disk as well as tips which could be very useful for photography buffs such as color correction, viewing the histogram to aid in bringing clarity to an image, rotating the image, fixing red eye and so on.
One of the most useful features of any graphics suite worth its name is its support for Layers. In Gimp, it is possible to save different images in layers. The third chapter of this book deals exclusively in giving an introduction to the concept of Layers and how it can be put to use in Gimp. At the end of the chapter, the author also explains how to create simple Gif animations.
Gimp has a great collection of tools at par with any other graphics suite in the market. These tools form the life line of any graphics artist in aiding his creations. In the subsequent three chapters , the author provides a detailed explanation of all these tools and how they could be put to use. Almost all the tools are covered in these three chapters and the author even provides the steps in creating images using these tools which gives it a practical touch to the whole narration.
In the seventh chapter titled Filters and Effects, one gets to know about the rich set of filters and scripts which are bundled with Gimp. There are hundreds of filters and effects categorized into three sections of Filters, Python-Fu and Script-Fu and most of them are described in this chapter with the aid of relevant examples.
From the 8th chapter onwards, the author turns to explain the more advanced concepts which pertain to graphics editing, knowing which, differentiates an expert from a beginner. Concepts such as color manipulation, compositing, masking and the different layer modes are described in detail with the aid of examples.
One of the biggest advantages a Gimp user has is the capability to create his own scripts in Gimp which allow him to accomplish complex tasks with the click of a button. Gimp scripts and plug-ins can be created using various languages like python, perl or C. But it also has its own scripting language called Script-Fu which also simplifies the process of creating scripts. And not surprisingly, there are hundreds of scripts bundled with the default installation of Gimp which makes it a viable option for creating complex graphical effects with ease. The 11th chapter of this book titled "Plug-ins and Scripting" gives an introduction to creating ones own scripts using different languages including script-fu. But I found this chapter to be more useful for a person who is interested in creating plug-ins than the normal users.
The final chapter of this well illustrated book deals with topics which couldn't fit in any other chapters such as tips on configuring Gimp to use the scanner and printer. There is a section which gives details of various resources found on the web which could be used to further enrich ones knowledge on using Gimp.
All along, the author gives interesting tit-bits on various aspects of image creation and modification which would be eye openers for most people who are getting introduced to the art of graphics manipulation. Reading the book, I was able to get valuable insights into different aspects of image editing such as antialiazing, hinting text and such, which plays an important part in creating good graphics.
In relevant sections, the author has provided important details which are highlighted in a bright vibrant color which makes reading this book a pleasant experience.
Many might wonder why some one would take time and efforts to write a book on Gimp when Adobe's Photoshop is considered the dominant leader in the graphics market. But the truth is Gimp enjoys a wider user base than all the other non-free graphics manipulation products combined as it is bundled by default on all Linux/Unix distributions worth their name. Considering that Gimp has also been ported to Windows and Mac OSX coupled with its hard to beat price (it is a free software released under GPL) and excellent features at par with any other professional graphics suite, this software has become a viable option for any one interested in developing graphics for the Web. And I found this book to contain relevant information which could be invaluable in ones journey into the fascinating world of image manipulation using GIMP.
You can purchase Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Unfortunately, for a beginner who is taking his first baby steps in GIMP, the interface might feel a bit kludgy and he/she might need some hand holding. This is where a book related to Gimp gains prominence. I recently came across this book called "Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional" authored by Akkana Peck. Divided into 12 chapters and 6 appendices, this book aims to cover the whole gamut of features found in Gimp.
In the first chapter, the author takes the reader through an in-depth tour of Gimp interface. This chapter introduces various dialogs,windows and configuration options that play an important part while working on ones images in Gimp. Even though I was conversant with most of the features of Gimp, I found this chapter impart a very good understanding of Gimp interface which is imperative for putting this software to productive use.
But it is not enough if one jumps right into editing images. It is important to have a good understanding of the various image formats used, their pros and cons as well as situations where different formats are ideal to use. The second chapter of this book titled "Improving Digital Photos" explains just that. The author further shows the image settings in Gimp which helps one to optimize the image while saving to disk as well as tips which could be very useful for photography buffs such as color correction, viewing the histogram to aid in bringing clarity to an image, rotating the image, fixing red eye and so on.
One of the most useful features of any graphics suite worth its name is its support for Layers. In Gimp, it is possible to save different images in layers. The third chapter of this book deals exclusively in giving an introduction to the concept of Layers and how it can be put to use in Gimp. At the end of the chapter, the author also explains how to create simple Gif animations.
Gimp has a great collection of tools at par with any other graphics suite in the market. These tools form the life line of any graphics artist in aiding his creations. In the subsequent three chapters , the author provides a detailed explanation of all these tools and how they could be put to use. Almost all the tools are covered in these three chapters and the author even provides the steps in creating images using these tools which gives it a practical touch to the whole narration.
In the seventh chapter titled Filters and Effects, one gets to know about the rich set of filters and scripts which are bundled with Gimp. There are hundreds of filters and effects categorized into three sections of Filters, Python-Fu and Script-Fu and most of them are described in this chapter with the aid of relevant examples.
From the 8th chapter onwards, the author turns to explain the more advanced concepts which pertain to graphics editing, knowing which, differentiates an expert from a beginner. Concepts such as color manipulation, compositing, masking and the different layer modes are described in detail with the aid of examples.
One of the biggest advantages a Gimp user has is the capability to create his own scripts in Gimp which allow him to accomplish complex tasks with the click of a button. Gimp scripts and plug-ins can be created using various languages like python, perl or C. But it also has its own scripting language called Script-Fu which also simplifies the process of creating scripts. And not surprisingly, there are hundreds of scripts bundled with the default installation of Gimp which makes it a viable option for creating complex graphical effects with ease. The 11th chapter of this book titled "Plug-ins and Scripting" gives an introduction to creating ones own scripts using different languages including script-fu. But I found this chapter to be more useful for a person who is interested in creating plug-ins than the normal users.
The final chapter of this well illustrated book deals with topics which couldn't fit in any other chapters such as tips on configuring Gimp to use the scanner and printer. There is a section which gives details of various resources found on the web which could be used to further enrich ones knowledge on using Gimp.
All along, the author gives interesting tit-bits on various aspects of image creation and modification which would be eye openers for most people who are getting introduced to the art of graphics manipulation. Reading the book, I was able to get valuable insights into different aspects of image editing such as antialiazing, hinting text and such, which plays an important part in creating good graphics.
In relevant sections, the author has provided important details which are highlighted in a bright vibrant color which makes reading this book a pleasant experience.
Many might wonder why some one would take time and efforts to write a book on Gimp when Adobe's Photoshop is considered the dominant leader in the graphics market. But the truth is Gimp enjoys a wider user base than all the other non-free graphics manipulation products combined as it is bundled by default on all Linux/Unix distributions worth their name. Considering that Gimp has also been ported to Windows and Mac OSX coupled with its hard to beat price (it is a free software released under GPL) and excellent features at par with any other professional graphics suite, this software has become a viable option for any one interested in developing graphics for the Web. And I found this book to contain relevant information which could be invaluable in ones journey into the fascinating world of image manipulation using GIMP.
You can purchase Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Does it have a "healing brush"? That's really the only neat feature I can think of that photoshop offers that the gimp doesn't/didn't. The "healing brush" basically makes retouching a picture to remove, say, a zit a fool-proof 5 second job. Which is nice.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
While I can buy the notion that The GIMP is suitable for many tasks that programmers might require, does anyone on here who considers him/herself first and foremost a designer use The GIMP as their daily composition tool?
I've always seen it (rightly or wrongly) as a tool made by programmers for programmers who want to make/modify and image here and there, but I'd like to be shown to be wrong about this.
I tried and failed a few times to get into GIMP, but the interface just wasn't doing it for me. I recently discovered Gimpshop, an elegant hack of GIMP which emulates the Photoshop interface. It's fantastic, I find it much more intuitive than plain GIMP, and I've even managed to use it to get a Photoshop-trained graphic design guru to explore FOSS with it.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
See review, then see subject.
One thing that will save you tons of cash when buying PS is to get a used/old stock PS 5.5 and just buy the upgrade. At aprox $275 CDN you'd have to be stupid not to take this route.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
If you are looking to see if it has similar power to Photoshop without having to learn a new interface, try GimpShop, which is the GIMP with a Photoshop interface.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Unfortunately, for a beginner who is taking his first baby steps in GIMP, the interface might feel a bit kludgy
Photoshop has a really great interface. When I want to get work done I could care less if there is an "open source" alternative. I want the best tool for the job that's the easiest/quickest route to completeing that job. Not the tool that best suites my techno ideology.
Something the open source community needs to understand.
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
Hmm, well, for those who think GIMP is too hard and Photoshop too expensive, there does exist an $80 version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements.
Sometimes you can get a good discount with bundles for scanners or cameras or printers, too.
I figure the GIMP isn't the only player in the "low end" space. Of course if you are dedicated to free/OSS, you can feel free to ignore PE.
GPL Deconstructed
It's not perfect, and not quite yet a complete replacement for The GIMP, but it's close enough that I've started testing it on a regular basis. If you simply can't wrap your brain around GIMP, then it's probably worth your time to check out Krita.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Just for those who are interested in Photoshop's interface, but would like to use The GIMP, there is GIMPshop: http://www.gimpshop.com/
I've used it to do professional compositing work and with three books in front of me I managed to make it do the job.
I would love to recommend it as a free tool to my friends that do this sort of work 45 hours a week. But I can't. Not due to any single missing feature but because Artists are not inherently computer-people. It's not just a list manipulators to them, it's a set of tools like pencils or brushes-in-the-hand that they have invested their thinking in. Until GIMP does a great emulation of an existing popular UI it would be a crime to put someone through that painful learning curve to save a couple days wages on a toolset that they don't already "think in."
and I'm pretty sure Adobe enjoy this situation as well, as the ease with which people can get cracked copies of photoshop means fewer people are tempted to use The GIMP or other cheaper alternatives to PS.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"State of the art"? For web graphics, perhaps. In fact, for web graphics GIMP has quite a few nifty tricks up its sleeves.
But please don't pretend it's anything like a Photoshop competitor. It doesn't even compete with low-end professional tools like Corel Photopaint. Far from being "at a par with any other graphics suite in the market", for print work GIMP is no more "state of the art" than MS Paintbrush is. It can't even do trivial, bottom-of-the-range, entry-level stuff like simply working with CMYK images (no, the Seperate plugin is not a solution, or even the beginnings of a solution).
Let's not deceive ourselves here. GIMP is a great amateur tool for anyone whose needs begin and end with websites and cheap inkjet printers. But show me a professional who uses it, and I'll show you a professional who someone else has to clean up after before his work is any use to anyone.
I use it for my sketches on windows with a wacom tablet and it's nice enough. Working with the paths to "ink" is pretty straightforward and only took me a few days to figure out fully. Part of my problem was thinking that I didn't need to use the tutorials on gimp.org. They're basic, but very helpful (like for drawing a straight line). The layers are nice and intuitive, but sometimes when I undo after switching layers I forget that I'm on the wrong one. Also, it's crashed once or twice so badly that it seems to be able to destroy my work despite pressing save often.
The options for working with a tablet are great as far as being able to make my eraser another pen (just wish I could get it to initialize as an eraser instead of the default brush), and having the pressure control different things (thickness/opacity/whatever) is super easy. One annoying point is that you have to have your pen/eraser active to change the brush for that pen/eraser. So I have to hold the tip close (but not close enough to draw) and use my mouse to change brush, since just using the mouse won't change the brush for the pen.
I also have tried to make some cartoons with the gimp animation package, but it made almost no sense to me. I just didn't understand the GUI at all.
The GIMP has a very bad interface. I know there are many people who love its interface, but as someone who has used every graphics suite in a professional setting, the GIMP's interface is by far the worst. It's inconsistent, confusing, and almost nothing behaves in the expected way. There are plenty of good open source apps with decent interfaces (Inkscape is great for instance), but the gimp is a program you have to aggressively memorize every bizarre thing it does. It's not a program where you get used to a few early eccentricities and then everything else makes sense once you understand how it works. Every single app and control works in its own way that has nothing to do with the way anything else works.
However, even if you can get past that, it's missing a lot of basic features. The brush system is years behind Photoshop (making a new brush everytime I want to change brush size is not acceptable). You can't rotate a canvas easily, directly work in a CMYK color space, all sorts of basic things.
Now the next response is, it's free. And that's right. There are a lot of tools in this for free software and if you were comparing it to photoshop you could say that ends the debate right there. But that only works if you don't need the power of photoshop, and if you don't, then you should spend 50 bucks on Ulead Photoimpact or Jasc Paint Shop Pro, since each is much better than the GIMP for under 100 dollars. Granted they don't have every single tool photoshop does, but neither does the gimp, and they at least are usable as professional tools.
I love GIMP, but I am still waiting for GEGL and/or 48 bits per pixel (16 bits per channel per pixel) support. I conduct scientific research and the thought of trowing away extra data to work in the 24 bits per pixel space is unnerving. I mean most digital cameras support 48bpp pictures now using the RAW format which is supported by linux.
No, you get Pigshop!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Actually, it is quite useful. My girlfriend uses it for doing her own basic image editing. I pointed her to GIMP because I know that it could do everything she needed, and didn't feel she should buy or pirate something she didn't have to. Once you realize that it isn't photoshop, and that not everything will be done exactly the same way, it becomes easy to use. She has no problems using it, and really likes all the cool effects that GIMP has built in. I realize it's just anecdotal evidence, but for me it shows that non-geeks are capable of using GIMP.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"But with its high price tag, buying Photoshop is akin to putting strain on your bank balance."
:)
Which leaves me asking if this could be one of the most warezed applications ever. Photoshop is a must have for a lot of teenagers nowadays and since no one gives a shit about Photoshop Elements, I wonder how many actually buy it. Sure, I bought my own copy but even I started out with a cracked version because I simply couldn't afford it. Adobe knows it: it is better for them to let pirates copy their software rather than funding competitors like Paint Shop Pro and Gimp, which ultimately results in more competition. They might even turn out to buy Photoshop in the end when they can actually afford it - like I did.
The price of Photoshop is so steep that most people who get it don't even know if they want to use it as a serious tool or not. When I first got it, I only manipulated a few images. When I discovered that I had skills, I purchased the copy. Before that, if there was no pirated version whatsoever, I would NEVER consider buying Photoshop simply because it would seem like buying something I don't have enough time to evaluate.
All in all, Photoshop requires a year of evaluation. Amusing but true
Full Tilt
Middle click and drag. Those other buttons are there for something. Click the cross in the bottom right hand corner of an image window to scroll over a thumbnail.
Also, it's impossible to recommend a program called "GIMP" to anybody without sounding like a complete tool.
Honestly... Isn't it time somebody came up with a name for this app which can be spoken out loud in polite society???
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Street prices:
Beginning Gimp (book) - $40
Photoshop Elements 4.0 (software) - $80
Note that Photoshop Elements includes a printed manual with tutorials, and extensive help files. Gimp does not.
I've been reading and using this book for a few weeks. It's great!
One thing not mentioned in the review is how badly the open source community needed an updated gimp book. Gimp is already a mature open source project, and two books that came out a few years ago were long outdated.
The best thing about the book is the generous use of images to illustrate her points.. A Press did a fantastic job with layout and making it easy to find things.
I appreciate how the book reviewed a few basic points with general information. In short, this book has a little bit for everybody.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Certainly. Your problem is that you're only thinking of consumer desktop software. IIS sucks compared to Apache. Windows CE sucks compared to embedded Linux. CMD.EXE sucks compared to Bash. ASP sucks compared to Perl or PHP. Windows Terminal Server sucks compared to Openssh.
While I can buy the notion that The GIMP is suitable for many tasks that programmers might require, does anyone on here who considers him/herself first and foremost a designer use
Really? I tried to create myself a simple test image in GIMP and needed 5 tutorials to do anything. Sure I can do "burn marks" with a single button, but drawing a straight line requires a tutorial. It may be powerful, but it is so unintuitive, and made me long for MSpaint.
Sure, such a name already exists: call it the "GNU Image Manipulation Program."
Glad I could help clear that up for you!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This comes up in any discussion of GIMP, and has been answered many times. RAW isn't one image format, it is any proprietary unprocessed image data from a scanner or camera. Proprietary, that's the key word. GIMP, being free, can not afford to license the necessary file conversion software from the scanner and camera manufacturers, but every scanner and camera out there comes with software to convert its proprietary RAW format to TIFF or JPEG. Why would GIMP need to do this?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
First off let me just say that I've never used Adobe Photoshop so I can't speak to its features as compared to Gimp, but I can say that my wife uses Gimp for all of her photo editing needs. My wife is not a pro, yet. She does do some cool things with our photos, and I would say that Gimp is very competative with Photoshop Elements. (I have used this once.) My wife feels that the Gimp is superior to elements.
Just to point out a few things that make the Gimp great for your average user with a digital camera.
1) Most consumer digital cameras, including mine, use RGB color space and usually JPEG as storage. The Gimp does RGB so you can edit your photos. You are not creating original art for commercial printing as much as a derivative work based on your photos, as such my wife doesn't need CMYK.
2) The Gimp, in its attempt to lure creative types, has features that PS elements will not have for fear of poaching on full Photoshop teritory.
3) The Gimp is free. Let me just stress this. I am a student. My wife enjoys digital photo manipulation and digital scrapbooking. The Gimp meets all of our needs. My wife also is somewhat of a Gimp evangelist now on some of the digital scrapbooking forums where PS elements reigns supreme. I don't know how many converts she has, but she has received inquiries and is very outspoken on the economic advantages of a free program that gets the job done well.
That said, there are a few "rich ladies" (my wife's term) on the message boards who have the full Photoshop and expensive DSLR cameras. Some produce, by my wife's admission, spectacular photos and pages, but some others produce the highest resolution garbage you've ever seen. Often money cannot buy results.
I am very happy with the Gimp. It provides a creative outlet for my wife and doesn't break the bank. For editing your personal digital photo collection, I and my wife think it is a first rate piece of software.
How to use Gimp ... use Pixel Image Editor and help support alternatives to the overprice PS.
\
If you're talking print, you'll probably find very few designers who use GIMP. But if you're talking artists and web designers, there are plenty. GIMP might lag on some features and tools that Photoshop has, but it's every bit as useful as Photoshop. I dropped Photoshop from my DTP business some years back when the costs were too much to justify and I don't believe in piracy. I haven't looked back since. GIMP can do everything that Photoshop can but in some cases might require the workaround skills you learned in Photoshop 3.x and up. Most of the timesaving features of the newest versions of Photoshop might be missing, but that doesn't mean you can't get the same output. The only issue remaining is print...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You were using the wrong tool (Paintbrush Tool). All the paintbrushes are images that you can paint with and therefore aren't sizeable. There is a wide selection of paintbrushes available by default, by clicking on the Brush setting either on the Gimp Tool window or in the Paintbrush tool preferences.
What you wanted was the ink tool (quill pen icon). It allows several settings including brush shape and a simple slider for size.
Don't assume that just because you can't figure it out that The Gimp is missing the feature or The Gimp sucks.
cat sig >
Check out http://www.bn.com/apress/ -- it's 40% off. And if you are one of their members, you get the additional 10% discount. For once, BN is cheaper than amazon! Pretty good deal if you want to buy the book.
Everyone is whining about The Gimp's interface, and I can't see why. I like the interface. Could someone please tell me what is so horrible about it, 'cause I feel like I'm missing something here.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
By the same token, don't assume that because The Gimp does something differently than Photoshop that it's a better way. Traditionally in image editors (and not just Photoshop), the brush icon does the bitmap painting and the pen does the vector drawing.
Without claiming that "the Gimp sucks" just because it's unfamiliar, I do think there's PLENTY of room for improvement in its interface (my opinion, based on screenshots and descriptions and admittedly never having used it).
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
- Supports only 8 bits. My scanner has 16 bits/channel. I have been using cinepaint, which now is going through a transition period, but Photoshop is definitely nicer than cinepaint for photo editing.
- No support for color profiles. This is a killer if you want to do any kind of digital darkroom with some accuracy.
- No decent support for stitching photos to make panoramics. Before you say that you can twiddle with layers to do this, go see how Photoshop handles this, there is a huge difference. Photoshop can detect similar areas and distorts the photos (to make up for perspective change and lens distortion) to stitch them together properly. In GIMP it's hopeless.
Aside from this, GIMP has more than its share of bugs. Just yesterday I was doing a complicated selection from an image, and trying to bucket-fill it with solid color. For unknown reasons the filling would alter also non-selected areas. Go figure. In Photoshop this worked fine.I use linux for everything else, but for photo editing, Photoshop IS much better. Also, the GIMP code is an undocumented mess. At some point in time, I wanted to hack into it to add some functionality, and I spent 2-3 hours staring at the code without being able to figure out how to access the image pixels. At that point, open or closed source, what's the difference to me?
One of the biggest reasons to like the Gimp is the Gimp devs won't have you jailed and arrested, while Adobe just might. http://www.freesklyarov.org/
we will end no whine before its time
"Sure, such a name already exists: call it the "GNU Image Manipulation Program."
Thank you Captain Obvious.
One fumble fingered boss filling out a requisition for a "GIMP Suite" and it's all over, baby.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Your link might be fruity, it's not to the developer's site but rather to a "fan" site, whatever that means. The exe wouldn't load and gave a suspect error message, also it is a different size than the one from the real site.
http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294
You get what you pay for.
Hi, I've had exactly the same problem with myself, then I remembered that Gimp stands for GNU image manipulation program, not GNU image making program. Now, if I want to make an icon, logo or graphical button, I use MS-paint to create the basic image and then prettify it with Gimp.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Disclaimer: I'm a fan of the GIMP and am extremely glad for it's existance.
I've used GIMP for some years and on the odd occassion have used it to do professional 2D work. While it is extremely powerful when used with knowledge, the core developers are a guarded and decidedly stubborn bunch with a penchant for ignoring basic feature requests from users that they feel might somehow 'threaten' their political differentiation against Photoshop. Of course they care very little to admit this overtly apparent and often discussed tendency.
As a result we are still stuck with an insane GUI windowing model whereby all palettes, brushes, dialogues, and main toolbar need to be *managed* as separate windows. This makes GIMP a very click-intensive application to use, and this is something that no RSI-fearing designer worth their weight in pixels would want to dance with.
Is it really such a demoralizing design concession that GIMP adopts the 1 parent window, many-child-window model that nearly every graphical application (including 3D modelers) use? Providing a toggleable full screen option (tricky in X I know) and the ability to quickly define which of your child-windows are visible would boost productivity with the GIMP (for most) a great deal (currently GIMP is really only as productive as Photoshop with a dual-screen setup - a luxury not all have). It would also aid those that want to transition from Photoshop - and there are many, believe it or not.
Frankly, although Inkscape is a vector graphics application, it's general interface model is light years ahead and GIMP should really take note. If you haven't tried it, you should. Inkscape is one very sensibly designed graphics application and is an absolute pleasure to use.
Furthermore, GIMP has bizarre and difficult keybinds in place for the most common operations. SHIFT-CTRL-A (note not the easier CTRL-SHIFT-A) to select nothing, and then depending on what window is in focus, it may simply not take at all. There is also counter-productive persistence in the tool-states. Should you have cropped an image with the crop tool and then click somewhere on the image, the crop tool dialogue will pop up again (very likely and annoyingly *on top* of the to-be-cropped area). Why not just go back to a default pointer tool after a tool operation? What are the chances I'm going to want to crop an image twice instead of do something else with it? This persistence leads to all sorts of back-tracking and I for one have never quite got used to it. There are several other gripes but one line more would qualify as a rant.
If I've spoken wrongly about GIMP, or am missing some fundamentals on it's use, please let me know about it.
You got scored as a troll, unfairly.
The truth is your comment is spot on.
Quoting the original posting:
"Beginning GIMP - From Novice to Professional" authored by Akkana Peck. Divided into 12 chapters and 6 appendices, this book aims to cover the whole gamut of features found in Gimp. "
I submit that any software that takes a 12 chapter book before any kind of comparitive prodictivity can be obtained needs more than a glue on interface change. I've never read a book on photoshop, (I don't doubt that they exist), its never been necessary. Its interface is transparently intuitive compared to GIMP.
GIMP has been a most appropriate name since day one, and the product is so maddening and obtuse that I keep a copy of Photoshop Elements installed under wine on my linux computers just because any trip into gimp will result in a huge waste of time learning what was immediatly obvious in Photoshop.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
In PS, Ctrl-T while clicking on an object will select that object's layer. In GS, this does not work, exactly as in Gimp. But the Gimp method of PgUp/PgDn to select next/previous layer works.
In PS, while moving, both the outer edges and the center of the object will snap to guides. In GS, only outer edges will snap, exactly as in Gimp. I quite often want to make the center snap, so this one is really annoying.
In PS, while scaling, holding down Shift will preserve the aspect ratio, and holding down Alt will scale around center. In GS, none of these works, exactly as in Gimp. Also quite annoying.
I am not saying that the interface of GimpShop is bad, but it is not a PS interface. I would call it a Gimp interface with rearranged menus.
By the way, not related to the UI: Crashing this application is as easy as File | New | Cancel. Instant crash for me everytime. The Gimp (2.2.11) is able to survive that.
In Photoshop, the user can record actions that she performs on an image and save them as a script. In GIMP, this is not possible. I'd love to do some things, save what I did as a Script-Fu script, and then hand-tweak the resulting code, but GIMP makes me start from scratch. Learning curve is a big issue for creative professionals.
SHIFT-CTRL-A (note not the easier CTRL-SHIFT-A) to select nothing
Um, those are the same thing... It doesn't matter what order the "modifiers" are in, all that matters is that all the specified modifiers are pressed before pressing A. I know because I just tried it.
Is it really such a demoralizing design concession that GIMP adopts the 1 parent window, many-child-window model that nearly every graphical application (including 3D modelers) use? Providing a toggleable full screen option (tricky in X I know) and the ability to quickly define which of your child-windows are visible would boost productivity with the GIMP (for most) a great deal (currently GIMP is really only as productive as Photoshop with a dual-screen setup - a luxury not all have). It would also aid those that want to transition from Photoshop - and there are many, believe it or not.
Do you even use a desktop environment? Put GIMP on its own workspace and there you have it; all in one place. I have 8 workspaces and one monitor (at 1280x1024), and I can use GIMP just fine... Perhaps the MDI you want could be the worst thing to add to GIMP because every major desktop environment allows multiple workspaces. Working on multiple images? Span them across your workspaces, set the main dialogs to appear on all workspaces (and perhaps set them to always on top) and with the click of a mouse button, you're switching between your images. Done!
Come on, people, face the reality. GIMP needs some serious loving put into it if you want anybody other than the most hardened geeks using it.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer