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GIMP's Next-generation Imaging Core Demonstrated
brendan0powers writes "GIMP developer Øvind Kolås gave a public demonstration of the Generic Graphical Library (GEGL) on Friday at the Piksel 06 festival in Bergen, Norway. GEGL has long been slated to replace the core image processing framework of the GIMP, bringing with it entirely new data models and operations — but development had languished to the point where many critics had written the project off entirely." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
They need to get this integrated before http://www.koffice.org/krita/ runs them over :)
- barkholt
I see this as a confirmation of the stagnant GIMP developer pool, led by a few who are not interested in growing that community at all.
If the GIMP team would foster new blood, help new hackers learn the large and intimidatingly complex codebase, give any other reply besides a gruff "you want it, you code it" response to any artist who dreams of a good core feature, give specific progress feedback about modern image demands like 32bits-per-channel, CMYK, or fully functional ICC, then maybe we'd see a real alternative to Photoshop in the OSS world, not a Photoshop 1993 clone.
The only other path is "fork it," but with any complex project, it's very tough to fork away from the few experts.
It's clear the GIMP captains still see GIMP as a pet project, just as some major tech news sites see themselves as a pet blog, and refuse to take on the responsibility of being a leader or even trying to become a leader.
[
Maybe now he can give The Gimp a decent UI instead of the trash it's had for the last 10 years
In the first place, the GIMP's UI has changed a great deal in the last few years, so much so that it doesn't make much sense to call it one UI. Second, the GIMP's current UI is very powerful and very usable. Personally, I prefer it to Photoshop's UI, mainly for the ease with which it can be customized to fit exactly the thing I need to do right now. Then, later, when I'm doing something different, I can flip a couple of hotkey assignments, tear off a different menu or two, and have a UI that is perfectly suited to what I need at that moment. For those who know it well, the GIMP's UI rocks. Much like PS, actually. The biggest difference is that there are a lot more people who know Photoshop's UI well.
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Ever tried to do basic drawing in The Gimp? Like, say, drawing a circle?
First, there's a much easier way to draw a circle than the one you linked to. To draw a circle: use the ellipse select tool, holding down the shift key, then use Edit->Stroke Selection. Done. You can adjust the width, color, pattern, etc. of the circle on the Stroke Selection tool that pops up.
Second, if even that seems like too much effort, well, I'm with the developers on this one: The GIMP is a photo manipulation tool, not a drawing tool. As a fairly heavy GIMP user, I don't want the interface cluttered up with additional drawing-related tools, not when (a) there's a perfectly good, if non-obvious, way to accomplish the task and (b) it's not the tool's primary job.
That's how software should be made, with a focus on what the user wants out of the software.
Which user? You can't be everything to everyone. In this case, people editing photos very rarely have any need for drawing circles, and it's a bad idea to clutter the UI up with stuff that they aren't going to use much anyway.
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"Ask any Gimp developer why this is such a bitch and they'll tell you something like: The Gimp is an image manipulation program, not a drawing program, go use Inkscape or something if you want to draw circles."
That's the sort of answer that, if used frequently, could kill OSS. If the aim is to replace commercial software with 'free' software, then the 'customer is always right' motto still applies.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I see your "the customer is always right" cliche and raise you one "use the right tool for the right job".
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Linux is a vastly superior name than GIMP. The word GIMP could easily offend some. Linux is a made up word. I've installed GIMP on many a windows users machine as a free image editor, and depending on who it is I feel uncomfortable calling it by name. Sure, it's probably not the biggest reason for the lack of popularity, but I don't think it's insignificant. libcaca is another one. Cool library, but seriously, libcaca? And the Do Whatever the Fuck You Want License? The name has honestly made me less interested in the library, as lame and irrational as that is. I don't paint my walls dissonant colors; I don't want my apps with unsightly names.
Can you cut and paste from Inkscape into the GIMP?
No?
Then STFU about "the right tool", because the right tool or set of tools that gives you the combination of features you need doesn't exist in the Linux world. And until that changes, people are right to ask for easy-to-use drawing functionality in the GIMP.
And even if it were possible to cut and paste between Inkscape and GIMP, there's another reason they're right to want easy-to-use drawing functionality in the GIMP: because it's not uncommon that you'll need to perform some drawing on a photo or other complex image, and using another program for that isn't possible because the nature of the drawing operation requires that the drawing dimensions be taken from the photo itself. That's trivial to do if the drawing functions are in your image manipulation program, and difficult to do if they're not.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I don't think the developers really want to know, else they would have responded long before since I've already told it several times. While the graphic drawing power of Gimp isn't disputed, Gimp sports the most uncommon GUI an application could have. This (and only this) GUI leaves a bad taste in the users mind so they start looking for other minor annoyances one finds in any application if looked for. Yet since most users a pre justice because of the bad taste they won't forgive any other annoyance.
This is all known in the Gimp community yet they don't want to acknowledge this simple fact but prefer to discard this as a flame bait. So it's now wonder Gimp gets flamed at all the time, rightfully or not. On the other side it's incredible easy for Gimp to drop off this flaming, they simply should change their GUI to the one outlined in wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/). All it needs is some willingness on the Gimp side and a little work. It might be that wyoGuide isn't the best but it certainly is good enough for Xara (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/projectlist.php) and many other fine applications.
O. Wyss
PS. You are free to rate this as flame bait but that won't help Gimp.
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I too like the GIMP interface in many places, and use it exclusively for retouching my photographs (professionally published, as for instance in the Spaish edition of Rolling Stone). I export my results to a Photoshop .psd file, including a layer with the untouched photo for the editors to have a reference of what came out of the camera, and I send it to the photo editors. I don't miss CMYK or colour matching because, you know, they have that at the magazine.
;)
However, it would be good to have a completely tweakable interface. I have already commented somewhere that right now many 3D modeling apps are configurable to work like other apps, and that you have a vi mode for Emacs and Emacs bindings for vi, and nobody finds it strange that people like it that way. Problem is, vi and Emacs are used by coders, and coders can build their damn interface themselves. Most users of GIMP (and certainly most advanced graphics manipulators) can't. But they are right in saying they work better the way they do. Users are not idiots, and they know how they work better. What we need is not really "reskinning the Gimp, and more", but just the ability to tweak what really matters to you.
Not all features are equally important, or used equally frequently. Right now one can reassign shortcuts and move menus around, but modificator keys (keys that act as a "shift" to active tools) are still hard-coded, or were last time I looked. (Caveat: I haven't tried to configure it in a Photoshop way in a long time, as I am already used to the GIMP's UI, so I don't miss Photoshop's that much).
The thing I would love to have in GIMP is the space-alt-ctrl trio of modificators to invoke the hand tool and the zoom-in and zoom-out tools while in any mode. This is so powerful a way of working that I am almost religious about it, despite having retrained my muscular memory not to hit the spacebar with my thumb every time I want to readjust the working area. Also, later versions of Photoshop has evolved really nifty docked option palletes for tools (like the search feature in Firefox) that I haven't really used (as I am now a GIMP user), but they look fantastic.
Finally, some of us liked the MDI interface behaviour: sometimes, when you are editing photos, it is all you are doing (see below for single-app computing), and the focus behaviour of Photoshop is much saner than the Gimp's in many places. I know this is not the Gimp but the X11/WindowManager combo that provides window management; maybe what some users need is a PhotoGimpWM.
Contrary to popular Slashdot opinion, some of us who ask for certain Photoshoppy-features in Gimp don't want a clone of Photoshop. What want is the ability to really customise the way we work in a Photoshop-like app (and, like it or not, Gimp is Photoshop-like, see below) in the features that matter to us. Other people would like a Gimp preference option that adds a complete "behaviour" of the most-used and learned photo editor in the world. Think PhotoGimp on steroids, and if I were a coder working on the Gimp (sadly I am only a punter), this would be my first feature to add for propietary-software refugees' sake. Free Software being coded by volunteers, we can't make them do what we want... but that doesn't make our needs and wishes irrelevant or wrong. Just unenforceable
I have worked in TV with people using the Quantel series of graphical pallettes (concretely the superb HAL), and their gestural interface had nothing to do with Photoshop and Gimp's WIMP paradigm. However I would love the Gimp to have support for its dedicated clicker [note] for my left hand while I work with the pen in my right hand. I wouldn't mind to try the HAL's gestural interface either: it seems like a right timesaver, although I don't know how it would fare in a multi-purpose computer running other programs at the same time. In non-windowed environments where the only thing running is the graphics editor, however, gestural interfaces to be the right thing for bringing up pallett
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