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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.
It's rather amazing that after years GIMP hasn't been improved to a point where it is a serious contender for graphic designers and photo editors. I love using open source products where I can, but GIMP has always seemed subpar. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty of creating such tools, or am just too used to Photoshop. I can't wait to check it out!
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Ever tried to do basic drawing in The Gimp? Like, say, drawing a circle? 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. What's this got to do with Excel? Well, Excel is a spreadsheet program. It's ment for making reports or doing accounting or playing "what if" games with money. About 10 years ago the developers of Excel went and did a survey of what their customers were using Excel for. Turns out the vast majority of people were using Excel to make lists. Shopping lists. Laundry lists. People to Kill. That sort of thing. Did the Excel developers say "hey, Microsoft Word has better support for making lists, go use that!" .. no, obviously. What they did was study the way people use the software and make it better for what they are doing. They made it so you could hide the cell lines when you print and so you can print the numbers of the cells if you want. They made it so when you enter something really long into a cell it automatically overlaps the cells next to it, and so it would print that way. That's how software should be made, with a focus on what the user wants out of the software.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Integrating The Gimp and Inkscape would be interesting.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Krita is already set to run them over, it's just a matter of time. The application has gone to a crash prone app with a barely useful featureset, to fairly stable with a modest featureset in a very short timespan. And it seems like it's just gaining more momentum as it goes on. For now development will probably slow as everyone works hard on porting to KDE4, but make no mistake that this app is the graphical interface many have been begging for on Linux. Many of us use the Gimp because there's no other option (or we don't feel like using photoshop in wine), but there will soon be a point where the gimp is going to end up a rather orphaned application as far as their userbase goes. With QT being cross platform, I might even be a bit conserned if I were Corel - the {now} owners of PaintShop Pro.
Let me tell you a little story, a story about the little school kid who used Gimp (which was functionally equivalent to Photoshop) while all his buddies used Photoshop. When they all become professionals, the Gimp user still has free software, updated regularly for free, which is very powerful and useful. The other kids all use Photoshop, which is expensive, updates cost a lot, and it's not as easily scriptable, nor are the developers as approachable for feature requests. Who is wasting more money keeping their technology up to date now?
What you're bitching about is that you're basically too lazy to learn something new, because different is bad. Still using an abacus to calculate your finances, because them newfangled calculators use numbers, and they aren't what you're used to and it'd take you more time to learn how to use 'em?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.