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.

Comments

It's about time

[Salvance]

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!

Re:It's about time

[Cinder6]

From over here, I'd like to see the X11 dependence on the Macs go away. Pitch the GTK base and use QT, which is already efficiently cross-platform on Macs, Linux, and Windows.

I'll agree there shouldn't be an X11 dependency on Macs, but I think the odds of the GIMP, of all things, being ported to Qt are rather slim. After all, it's the original source of GTK.

Krita

[barkholt]

They need to get this integrated before http://www.koffice.org/krita/ runs them over :)

The difference between The Gimp and Excel..

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel..

[chill]

I see your "the customer is always right" cliche and raise you one "use the right tool for the right job".

GIMP needs fresh developers

[Speare]

GEGL was first proposed in 1999, but the GIMP's existing code base has remained in place over several revision cycles since then. As recently as summer 2005, GEGL appeared for all practical purposes dead in the water.

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.

Gimp's problem are ideological

[wysiwia]

I'd love to hear specifically what is missing, as I'm sure the devs would too.

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.

You see Gimp's problems aren't technological, they are ideological.

O. Wyss
PS. You are free to rate this as flame bait but that won't help Gimp.