Krita 1.6 — State of the Art

brendan0powers writes to tell us Linux.com is reporting that while Krita 1.6 may have been released with the rest of the KOffice suite this week it is anything but a run-of-the-mill piece of productivity software. Krita is a 'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse' definitely capable of standing up to most anything else available. Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look! A line tool! CMYK support! And layers! This thing may actually be usable!

Re:finally!

[kimvette]

Right, and alternative applications and OSes is always a bad thing. You know, Rehat should be everyone's choice distribution, and Gnome should be the ONLY desktop. Oh, and the Gnome theme you use on your desktop should be the ONLY theme, right down to your choice of wallpaper. Heck, let's take it a step further! Linux, BSD, OS X, and QNX should all be killed off in favor of Windows.

Not everyone likes Gimp. Not everyone likes Krita. Not everyone likes Photoshop. Not everyone likes Paint Shop Pro. Some people like the choices, and some people BUY Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, but still use The Gimp for some tasks. Why shouldn't the KDE folks continue Krita development?

But of course, you posted AC just to troll, so I shouldn't be wasting this bandwidth right now responding to such an assinine comment.

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

Actually, my prediction is this will fail for other reasons. Photoshop is the tool of choice for me. I am the production manager for a newspaper and even if this were 10 times more capable, we still would not budge. Photoshop is part of a larger suite. It is the ability to use Photoshop in conjunction with Quark/Indesign which makes it powerful. There are a number of people who only use raster editors, but they're not in the print world.

What I'm saying is that anyone who would need 8/16 CMYK editing and profiling would still be left empty handed by the Linux world. Before anyone starts getting on my back about Scribus and 'save to PDF' crap, get out in the real world. When your dealing with printers with very specific PDF requirements, you need the customisability provided by Distiller. When they send you a colour profile to work with, It needs to be a easy as hitting Load Colour Space in Indesign. I guarantee they will not send a Scribus compatible file. And finally about Scribus - it is not the defacto industry standard.

Therefore, if you need a raster editor for Linux, you are almost guaranteed of not needing it for the print world - except for a minuscule amount of people - and can do with anything like Gimp which is sufficiently advanced for that sort of work, ie web work, backgrounds, avatars, etcetera...

My Two Cents

Terence Boylen
Production Manager
The Record Newspaper.

(Perth Western Australia)

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

How thoughtful of you to speak on behalf of an entire industry. By your out-of-hand rejection of applications based only on the reputation of the ones you currently use, I would assume your work is the model of innovation.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the newspaper industry at the moment, but I've also worked in marketing / advertising / promotions industries as well. If there's one constant amongst every single graphics-based industry, it's that innovation is not something that people want.

Reliability, the ability to print what you see, when you need it, how you want it and with the most minimum of fuss is the true desire of almost 99.9% of the entire "graphics" industry. For the most part, this means using established tools that *everybody* else uses. This means not changing toolsets unless you absolutely must. This means that when someone does something funky, or tries to send a printer a file in some format that's not either a well-created PDF, inDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator file, that file's not going to get printed, or at best, it'll probably get printed wrong. And, when you're doing print runs (on a real press or imagesetter, not off of some office laser printer), and you do it worng, you've just wasted a whole mess of money and time.

This above attitude is why Quark was for so long dominant, and not Quark 5, 6 or whatever the latest version is. Quark 4. Up until everyone switched, virtually en-masse, to inDesign, the most stable, the most used version of Quark was a 5+ year old version. No body wanted to upgrade or change mainly because they knew if they produced something out of it, a printer would most likely be able to print it right the first time.

You want to start seeing a printer turn beet red and beat the living $#!^ out of someone? Have that someone send the printer a poorly formed PDF or, even better a GIMP or Krita or Scribus or whatever non-standard file and ask him to print it.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like the currently vogue software set will forevermore be so. I understand there are working stiffs out there who are set in their ways and have better things to do than toy around with in-development software, but that's no reason to rag on or dismiss the program that the industry might one day abruptly adopt. Like you said, it happened before with Quark.

Re:finally!

[redcane]

I'm not sure what you mean by "poorly formed", but I'm certain the open source PDF exporters do the most compatible PDFs around. They don't tend to implement the newer features that can cause problems (a la Quark 6 compared to Quark 4), until they have stabilised the ones they are using. Also Scribus saves standard pdf files. I did my wedding invitiations in scribus. They printed fine. As I understand it, if your business is in supplying a print service, you should be trying to supply it to as many people as possible, regardless of the file format they use. If you don't, your sending your customers elsewhere.

Re:finally!

[Tsuzuki]

I don't think this is a question of "failure". I could see an illustrator using this to create an editorial cartoon and passing it to you in whatever Photoshop-readable format you asked for, to be included as part of a layout on your end. Having a CMYK mode at all means less whining about the colours looking wrong when printed.

You have noticed that it's part of an office suite, right? It's not even pretending to be a Photoshop killer! IMO apps like these are never intended to unseat or usurp the app of choice for people who use entire suites like CS2 day in and day out, but I fully support anything that can help to cut down on the number of scary folks who think they really know how to use their pirated copy of Photoshop, do amazing graphic design in Word, etc etc etc... (yes I know, wishful thinking)

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you call "standard" format, some others would call closed or proprietary. Is it the fault of the contributor that publishing house requires a file format that only an expensive software can read? That seems elitist to me.

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

That reminds me also that whilst new versions of the software come out regularly, the machines we press on are 10 years old. We are using a system we know works with an obsolete press. Why reinvent the wheel?

Re:finally!

[Linegod]

Your absolutely right, given that the most progressive medium of the day is print, and that will never change. It's also the only thing in the world that people could possibly be using a graphics program for, so we'll just end all discussion with your insightful peek into the mystical world of newspapers. There, that should wrap up this discussion for a decade or so. Would the mods please mark everything else as 'redundant'.

Now, where did I put my chisel so I can bang out my signature block.... ..

Re:finally!

[justinchudgar]

I'd like to thank the parent for this comment. My experience as tech support for my graphic designer wife is that the publishing industry is a total pain to deal with even when you are using the same OS and app suite. One printer wants PDF done this way, one wants Quark files, one provides accurate color profiles, another makes me do "guestimate profiles by comparing prints to the original file and creating kinda-right correction curves by hand. I've been unable to figure out how to make our colorimeter work to generate a profile for my Ubuntu system; and, Scribus feels like going back to PageMaker on Mac OS 6 in the late 80s. I use the GIMP for messing with my personal digital pix; but, for anything going to press, Creative Suite / Xpress are the only viable solution I have discovered. Any bets on how long until Adobe ports CS to Linux?

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

Sure, but I think you are wrong on both accounts. There is not a single CMYK color space for starters and just because someone used a CMYK process to create the image, doesn't mean it will appear the same in my CMYK space. Realistically, the colour space of RGB is much larger and therefore it's arguably better to create the document as an RGB then do the conversion.

Secondly, of course I noticed it's part of an office suite. However CMYK process' are the realm of print professionals, not the DTP or average office user. I am a strong advocate of using the correct tool for the job. I think applications should be like the iPod, good at what they do and not over the top. This is the original philosophy behind Unix and I stand by it.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but features of the program indicate the market to which this program is aimed.

P.S. Your a cunt.

Re:finally!

[secondhand_Buddah]

When your dealing with printers with very specific PDF requirements, you need the customisability provided by Distiller
This is rubbish. I owned a small newspaper for a while. We used an free PDF renderer that used to print our final output in PDF format. This was perfect for our printing partners (a large national newspaper printer)
We also ran our entire operation (with the exception of layout and design on Apple) on Ubuntu Linux LTS with linux terminals serving most of the organisations IT requirements.

The parent poster should consider that there are alternatives. Krita replaces another piece in the puzzle, possibly initially replacing Freehand in our case, and even Quark in the future.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

> When they send you a colour profile to work with, It needs to be a easy as
> hitting Load Colour Space in Indesign.

Well, let's see. With Scribus you need to copy the profile to your color profile directory and then select it from the menu. Easy enough for you?

> I guarantee they will not send a Scribus compatible file.

I guarantee you that they can not avoid sending you one. Scribus reads standard icc color profiles.

> And finally about Scribus - it is not the defacto industry standard.

No, but Scribus works natively with PDF (even PDF/X for those with really, really specific requirements), which is an industry standard.

Re:finally!

[Registered Coward v2]

I think you missed his point - it wasn't to rag on Krita but to explain the challenges any new software program faces against an entrenched standard, namely:

1. People know the current one, how it works and its limitations

2. They are familiar with its tools, interface, and how to use it

3. They don't have the time nor want the risk and expense of solving problems switching brings when they can avoid that with their current tools

For most companies the software cost is a small investment relative to the ongoing production costs so being free is generally not enough; you need a compelling productivity gain or cost advantage to make it worthwhile. In addition, my experience with OOS software is that its design often does not take into account real world user needs - in terms of ease of use, features, etc. Companies can't or won't wait for something to be implemented in the future when their is something that has it now. There is a significant infrastructure built around the tools used in publishing that represent a significant barrier to entry. While abrubt shifts do happen they are much less likely to occur than a gradual evolution of the existing tools. In Quarks case I wonder what they broke in new additions that drove the shift.

Does that make Krita a bad program - no; but it does mean it faces some significant hurdles to becoming a standard.

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

Sure, that's great. However, Adobe provides flexibility. That is necessary when you print a number of publication at different printers or when you need/want to print at a certain size and there are a limited number of providers. Try finding options when you print broadsheet (sorry about the Australian size).

Re:finally!

[jakoz]

For those wondering about the parent post, I've lived in Perth most of my adult life, and if The Record is the one I'm thinking of (pretty damn likely, given the poster's sig), it is a very small newsletter circulated within Catholic churches.

By newsletter, I mean a couple of pages. Take of that what you will.

Re:finally!

[zeruch]

I don't think it will "fail" at all, since it is OSS and ergo if a sufficiently large user base evolves, then that is all that it needs. It does not require becoming a defacto standard to be a success. While I agree that for it to make the crossover it needs to be part of a functionally integrated suite of apps, I think even for just web-work,it could pose as a replacement for GIMP on *nix (even though it has been improving, GIMP seems to be suffering under its own collective weight).

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

Actually, Adobe products use a CSF file, not an ICC file. These can be imported into all adobe and quark products and not scribus.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

*Everybody* likes Photoshop

Re:finally!

[BiggyP]

There's no reason why they shouldn't continue Krita development, choice is a good thing, there are however a number of reasons why Krita shouldn't be tagged State of the Art in a slashdot story title.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried discussing this with the Scribus developers? Perhaps CSF support could be added?

Re:finally!

[zootm]

...there are however a number of reasons why Krita shouldn't be tagged State of the Art in a slashdot story title.

It's just an attempt at a pun, go easy on the poor editors.

Re:finally!

[FST777]

I did my wedding invitations in InDesign, and while that was in the suite they were using at the printer, they were able to make a mess out of it, just because one of the workers wanted it in Illustrator and copy-pasted every element apart (thereby misplacing them).

They had to do a second job since I rejected it. They were pretty mad at ME for that and wanted to charge double. Which didn't happen in the end.

The tools you use are a major problem when dealing with the printers world. But problem with people are always more prominent.

Re:finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux solutions are developing at breakneck speed. Come back in 5 years and admit your inability to accurately foresee the future.

Re:finally!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

It's likely patented, or copyrighted, or otherwise illegal to support.

Re:finally!

[tezbobobo]

The Record is one of three independant newspapers in Australia. I would suggest you buy it and read it. It pays to be educated.

I would also suggest you compare the amount of news content vs advertising to any other local newspaper in Western Australia. I think you would find that not only is the calibre of reporting higher than most locals, but it is also far less profit driven.

You say that The Record is a couple of pages - I would say that is unsubstantiated BS. Your position is indefensable and probably more motivated by your personal beliefs than anything else. It is certainly not fact. The Record has won a large number of ACPA awards and has an international distribution.

Re:finally!

[Tsuzuki]

Points taken, though I do believe it's nigh on impossible to tell "the DTP or average office user" what they can and can't do, regardless of whether the print professional is tearing their hair out or not further down the line. :)

I'm interested in Krita's potential to create images - in illustration there is no such thing as a "correct tool", and the best strategy is actually to try out whatever you can damn well get your hands on. You may demand that an image be sent to you in a Photoshop-readable format, but you're in no position to tell your illustrator what software they should use to make the image. If Krita's development continues to go in this "image creation" direction, maybe tablet support for Linux will improve further and give more chances to young, studying and/or struggling artists that don't involve pirating Photoshop.

As I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, CPaint is what really piques my interest. Digital Chinese brush painting with undo and without the mess? Count me in!

Re:finally!

[Frantactical Fruke]

Indeed. In 1999, I talked about GNU/Linux to a relative who managed four different operating systems at work. He said:

"Linux is a hobbyist OS. It will never measure up to an industrial strength UNIX like SCO."

Snicker.

Re:finally!

[Polly_Morf]

Not everyone likes Paint Shop Pro

You must mean "Noone likes Paint Shop Pro". A "tevery" too much. Small thing really. I don't know why i'm bitching about it..

One of the more useful KDE apps

[chill]

While the comparisons to Photoshop and The Gimp are inevitable, Krita is one of the more advanced components of KOffice. For me, it long ago replaced The Gimp as my image editor of choice. If you are looking for a good image editor for Linux/BSD, you owe it to yourself to investigate Krita.

Re:One of the more useful KDE apps

[reub2000]

My first impression of it was that it was sluggish. It feels unresponsive. Doing a sharpen has only one setting. Gaussian Blur has only one setting. The curves tool seems to suffer from a bit of lag whenever I make a change. I didn't see a levels tool.

Huh?

[Overzeetop]

Okay, so I've never heard of it. Not unusual - there are lots of killer apps out there I've never heard of. But, um, how does it stack up to the other "'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse'" programs out there. More importantly, what are those others. ATTFA, MS Office Picture Manager isn't one. Okay. So it must be more like...um...anything in the article...no.

Okay, so where does it fit in the Photoshop, PaintShopPro, GIMP arena? Is it simpler, easier? More powerful (it is a fully loaded workhorse, after all)?

Maybe this is just a "hey - all you guys with the old Krita - there's a new .x version now". Which is fine, but really front page news?

So, is this really sliced bread, or just a little bump in the feature set of KOffice?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so where does it fit in the Photoshop, PaintShopPro, GIMP arena?

Adobe Illustrator is the king of that category. Photoshop is (primarily) pixel-based, not vector-based. GIMP is a typical Unix casserole of everything.

Re:Huh?

[Tsuzuki]

Photoshop, Paintshop Pro and GIMP all tend towards the photo editing end of the spectrum. The natural media tools are what look really interesting... the main programs in that category would be OpenCanvas and Painter. I don't know about you, but that CPaint link got me all hot and bothered.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, in case you weren't aware "pixel-based" means raster, which is what Krita is. Not sure why you're throwing vector-based programs like Illustrator into the mix...

Re:Huh?

[Tsuzuki]

Adobe Illustrator is the king of that category.

From the summary: Krita is a 'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse'. Pixel-based = raster. Illustrator isn't even part of this category.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easier than Gimp, probably. More powerful than any of them? no. But the Krita team just got a working version of Krita out THIS YEAR. I'd say that's a hell of a evolution in a short time. And yes it is making huge strides even in the small revision numbers. Just keep that in mind when you consider how long (years) the other apps have been out. Paint Shop Pro 4 wasn't exactly a kill-all workhorse either.

Does it deserve front page on slashdot? I'm not sure, but I'm seeing a resurgence in the interest in graphics software on Linux again. The many people sat frustrated with the stagnating Gimp is finally getting to the point where they have something else to turn to. If you use any of the other apps and are happy with them, then there is nothing for you to see here.

Hidden Gem

[NereusRen]

When I first heard of Krita, I was surprised to learn that I already had it as part of the KOffice package! It quickly replaced The GIMP for my "basic advanced" image editing needs, since it offers a similar type of functionality but:

• Fits my theme, since I run KDE, and
  
• Manages to restrict itself to a sensible one window, with sub panels and panes that can be moved around within the window, or floated without losing focus on the other windows.

Can you tell what I didn't like about using The GIMP? :-) (Aside from system-specific bugs that I wouldn't blame on their developers, but still gave me trouble).

You don't hear about Krita nearly as often as The GIMP (or, of course, Photoshop), but it seems to be a great alternative. I can't speak for graphics professionals (not being one myself), but it gets the job done for what I need to do. I look forward to this new version, and I hope development continues on this hidden gem of an image editor.

Re:Hidden Gem

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to detest the gimp's interface, but then I got a graphics tablet. It's still not _perfect_, but Gimp's UI is basically totally designed for the needs of graphics tablet users. Almost all the wierd-ass stuff that gimp does makes sense once you get a tablet (and the rest when you realise that it's always been explicitly for image manipulation, photo retouching and whatnot, not original composition). [One thing strikes me though - "losing focus" hardly matters in a unix-style lazy-focus-follows-pointer world - you sure you're not running your desktop in utterly pants windows-style "click to focus-and-raise-argh"?]

Re:Hidden Gem

[kimvette]

[One thing strikes me though - "losing focus" hardly matters in a unix-style lazy-focus-follows-pointer world - you sure you're not running your desktop in utterly pants windows-style "click to focus-and-raise-argh"?]

That's fine when you're running a single application, or if you're running a multihead box with Gimp all by its lonesome on one screen, but as soon as you have multiple documents or multiple applications open on the screen where Gimp is, it becomes a PITA.

Where the hell is the tool palette? Where the hell is the layer palette? alt-tab or check the dock or the click window menu and search for it. When one brings a document window forward, all applicable contextual/sibling windows (palettes) should come to the foreground as well - or it should at least be an option one can enable.

Re:Hidden Gem

[dbIII]

but as soon as you have multiple documents or multiple applications open on the screen where Gimp is, it becomes a PITA.

It is a differnt way of doing stuff which can confuse people used to single desktops.

The gimp grew up on post twm X windows with multiple desktops - which I think is is why it went from orgininally one control window and one window per image to the luxury of being able to have one window per task group that many requested. If you don't have a spare desktop it is trivial in every window manager to add an extra virtual desktop quickly then dump everything you want onto it - many even have window grouping where you can move/iconify/whatever an arbitrary user defined bunch of windows at once.

To sum up - I think the idea is to run it all by its lonesome on one screen - and if your window manager has a limit of 64 virtual desktops like many then it isn't much of a constaint. If you are working on too many images to fit easily on one desktop the you make the control windows sticky so they appear on all desktops. There are virtual desktop tools on MS platforms as well - I found them useful for a lot of things.

To get back to the point - sometimes the current gimp behaviour is annoying for simple tasks and it is useful to have just one window for everything like the application in the article. For other tasks the simple behaviour would be annoying - you want a layer window etc but you don't want it on the foreground all the time.

Re:Hidden Gem

[Shawn is an Asshole]

If you're the kind of user that maximizes all the windows, I can see how GIMP would be irritating. However, I usually have a few dozen windows scattered across 4 virtual desktops. In my "web designer" desktop, I usually have GIMP and Firefox open. Bluefish, CSSed, and Firefox are open in a second desktop. The GIMP ui is extremely helpful, as I can drag the main window off to the right of the screen, have the layers window to the right, have Firefox in the center back, and a canvas in the center. I can work on a graphic and see the page in the background. Everything is clearly in view. In apps that try to make their own poor imitation of a desktop (ie, Windows Photoshop (the Mac version rocks in terms of a UI and GIMP is similar to it)) I would either have to either run a second head, alt-tab constantly, or control-alt-arrow (switch virtual desktops) constantly.

Please, before complaining about GIMP's UI give Photoshop on OS X a try. Or even the OS X version of Microsoft Office (toolbars float on the desktop, which is very nice).

Re:Hidden Gem

[kimvette]

Please, before complaining about GIMP's UI give Photoshop on OS X a try. Or even the OS X version of Microsoft Office (toolbars float on the desktop, which is very nice).

I have, and it does not sport the behavior I am pointing out. Bring a document forward - yep, toolbars/docks/palettes come forward as well.

And as far as virtual desktops go: I hate them, and much prefer multihead systems.

Re:Hidden Gem

[arose]

Bring a document forward - yep, toolbars/docks/palettes come forward as well.

If you are not on Windows you may want to play around with GIMPs window management preferences.

Re:Hidden Gem

[WWWWolf]

I have two tool docks open in GIMP: One has toolbox, another has layers/palettes/etc.

Having multiple documents open is never pain, because my toolbox is always on left, my other dock is always on right, and the windows are resized so that they overlap with the dock windows but leave a part of them at sight. Need the dock? It's right on sight, just click on it to raise it.

Multiple applications? Um, that's what virtual desktops are for. Need to use another application on the same desktop? I hit Alt+H to hide GIMP, along with all of its windows, to use them. Resume? Middle click on desktop, select any of GIMP's windows from the list, and there we go.

The lesson learned - GIMP isn't pain to use if you use a window manager that doesn't suck. Like Window Maker.

Re:Hidden Gem

[richlv]

it's hard not to use apps maximised on 15" screen. it's somewhat hard to use them maximised, too ;)
that said, i am using gimp and i've so used to it's interface that i found it _very_ hard to use krita...
i read something about ability to detach it's toolbars in a gimp-style, though, so 'ill probably try ot when slackware upgrades ;)

Re:Hidden Gem

[spitzak]

I'm not sure what you are getting at, as focus-follows-mouse helps considerably in your scenario of multiple documents.

However Gimp (and anything wanting working floating tool bars) is broken due to slavish copying of Windows and abandonment of stuff that was done intelligently in older versions of X window managers.

First of all, make point-to-type the default. It is better. No argument from anybody who seriously tries it. Anybody who argues against it has not used it.

Second, and more serious, but easy to fix, is STOP RAISING WINDOWS ON CLICK! This makes overlapping windows completely useless except as decoration. I want to look at an item in the top window and manipulate an item in the lower window. You can raise windows when the user clicks the border, or the PROGRAM CAN RAISE IT (this second solution is SO trivial to do that I cannot believe anybody thinks a window manager should raise on click, yet they ALL do, most likely because "Windoze does that so by definition it is user friendly".

Third, and harder, is to change the communication to programs so the program is just told "hey they are trying to raise this window" and the program can do what it wants, such as raise other windows. Right now about all that can be done are complex arrangements of marking windows as belonging to an application or marking "child" or "modal" windows. None of this allows a working floating toolbar that stays above more than one document window, while this, again, TRIVIAL, api would allow any such thing and would make Gimp work.

Installing it now.

[Ant P.]

GIMP gets a bit irritating after a while. Yes, they've made great improvements on the UI with 2.3 but it's nice to try something fresh sometimes...

Fully loaded pink pony?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Powerful, yet still easy to use?

what about RAW photo formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux? Does Krita handle those format(s)? It doesn't seem to....what does?

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[AaronW]

While I haven't played around much with Krita, I did see that it loads Nikon RAW NEF files correctly. I don't know about other cameras, but I would guess it uses the code from dcraw which handles many different raw formats.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[bobintetley]

What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux?

As with all *nix stuff, the RAW handling is done by a separate component. Investigate UFRaw and DCRaw. UFRaw even has a plugin for the GIMP that works well. As an amateur photographer I use and highly recommend UFRaw.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[billysara]

There's rawstudio or cinepaint. Ufraw I guess too which can act as a stand-alone editor and also has a gimp plugin. If you don't mind closed-source then there is Bibble too.

Rawstudio is looking quite promising for such an early bit of software.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[TheViewFromTheGround]

I admin a couple Gallery2 instances, and we've had good luck with its dcraw-based RAW support, from a variety of cameras (mainly Nikons, IIRC; I'm not one of the photographers, I just admin the app).

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually , Krita can open and edit RAW files

Read the following thread on the Dot if you want more information.
http://dot.kde.org/1161037713/1161068107/

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[josath]

What if I want to open/save really RAW image files? For example, no header, 32bits per pixel, and I will have to manually input the width & height? These are unrelated to digicam outputs, and can be used in things like GBA homebrew games.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[swillden]

What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux? Does Krita handle those format(s)?

There are several, and yes, Krita does, too.

1. dcraw is the basis for most all F/LOSS RAW conversion tools. It's just a converter, translating from various RAW formats to 24bpp or 48bpp PPM files. It is, however, an excellent converter, so good, in fact, that it's superior to most of the commercial offerings, and some commercial tools have taken advantage of its BSD-style license to replace their proprietary engines with dcraw. It's a command-line tool, though, and since good RAW conversion requires playing a bit with parameters, it's not all that easy to use.
2. ufraw is a GUI tool built on top of dcraw that allows you to interactively fiddle with the conversion parameters to get a good conversion. It provides a pretty nice interface, including a good curves tool which is really important when you're converting to a 24bpp format like JPEG. Since the RAW image may have more than 24bpp of dynamic range, the range has to be compressed, and by tuning the range compression with the curves tool you can often retain image details that a more naive compression (like the one done by a typical digital camera) would have lost.
3. gimp-ufraw is a GIMP plugin that uses ufraw to import RAW files for editing in the GIMP. With it installed you can open RAW files in the GIMP just like any other format, with the differentce that when you open the file the ufraw interface pops up to let you control the conversion process. Since the GIMP currently only supports 24bpp color depth, the gimp-ufraw must compress the dynamic range.
4. krita uses ufraw to do the conversion. Krita isn't limited to 24bpp, but it also isn't nearly as mature or as fast as the GIMP, making it, to me, somewhat unpleasant to use.
5. rawstudio is an up and coming competitor to ufraw. It's still immature but is shaping up to be a very nice tool. It's focused on making it easier to do large numbers of RAW conversions relatively quickly.
6. bibble and bibblepro (my favorite) are commercial, closed-source tools that provide very high quality conversions, lots of tunable parameters and (esp. bibblepro) workflow-oriented features that enable the user to process lots of images quickly. For example, I took a bunch of family portraits a couple weeks ago and had nearly 200 images to sort through, identify the best and convert. Since the lighting and colors in the images were consistent through most of the images I was able to carefully tune the conversion parameters for one image and then "paste" the same parameter set to all of the others. Bibblepro costs $150 but if you do very much of this stuff, and aren't dead set on Free Software, it's an excellent choice. The non-pro version is cheaper, but I don't remember what it costs (you can guess which one I bought!).

I probably missed one or two tools. In addition, there are lots of variants of dcraw floating around with different option sets. I sometimes use one by Robert Krawitz that has option sets focused on making it possible to get from RAW to paper (using one of the very high quality Gutenprint inkjet drivers) with no loss in image quality or dynamic range. The results are far better than you can get out of any commercial print lab that I know of (most of them don't even accept anything other than 24bpp JPEGs, meaning you *must* compress the dynamic range before they print it, even though many printers can handle greater color depths).

To summarize: Yes, you can convert RAW images on Linux, even with purely Free software, and you can get excellent results, as good as you can on Windows or OS X. It may take a little more effort, though. Looking forward to when the GIMP moves to the GEGL engine, or when Krita gets faster and more full-featured, RAW conversion will be as good or better on Linux than any other platform.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[m_chan]

bibble and bibblepro (my favorite)

Seconded. I use Bibble Pro on OSX and Linux (Fedora Core formerly 4 and 5, now on 6, and it runs on Windows, but i don't use it there). This is a product isn't worth the money that BibbleLabs asks for it; it's worth three times as much at least. Correction to the parent post: It's $130; if they raised the price to $500, I would pay it without blinking; it's that good at what it does. The licensing allows you to install the software on more than one OS so long as only the original purchaser uses the software and only on one machine at a time, which works fine by me. There isn't anything comparable on Linux. On OS X, there are many competitors; I've tried most of them, including Photoshop CS2 with Camera Raw, Aperture, iPhoto (yuck), each beta of Lightroom, and many others. Bibble is equal to or better than every alternative.

It's fast. It's multi-processor aware. It's extremely customizable. It's rock-steady stable (never crashed on me, ever).It's RAW processing engine is of very high quality, and it's highly tunable, though there are plenty of one-click default optimizers that are surprisingly accurate (decent auto-leveling, integrated NoiseNinja, Perfectly Clear). The batch queuing as referenced in the parent is extremely flexible to help you find the workflow that works best for you. Like to work within one window? Bibble does that. Do you want separate windows? Bibble does that; it's a highly customizable interface. The fact that you can run it on every major OS is gravy (it's a universal binary on OSX, unlike Photoshop).

One caveat: it does not work with DNG, due to some very well argued philosophical reasons.

I've processed thousands of images with it (Pentax PEF is mostly what I work with, and some NEFs). Along with VMWare Workstation, it's the finest commercial software I have used on Linux, though I use it principally on a PowerBook with OSX. I'm glad to hear there is progress being made on the open-source front for working with RAW on Linux, but for right now and likely a long time to come, Bibble me, baby.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[iangoldby]

I used to use the GIMP with UFRaw and was pretty happy with it.

I recently bought a copy of Bibble though and I must say I was amazed. It's not that Bibble does anything you can't achieve with the GIMP + UFRaw + other Linux/UNIX tools. But I never realised quite how clunky my workflow before, and how much more streamlined it could have been.

Developing RAW files, removing dust spots, cropping and rotating and fixing the colour balance is now almost enjoyable, rather than just a job that needs doing.

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[Fred_A]

Thanks to the OP for pointing out the bibble software. Wasn't aware of it and it certainly looks very interesting. Plus being able to have it both on my Linux desktops and on the Mac laptop would be an invaluable boon.

Plus it's quite affordable as these things go...

Re:what about RAW photo formats?

[KayosIII]

Theres actually a few options around.

The gimp has a few raw plugins - ufraw being my favourite... You get to make adjustments before it becomes 8bit per channel image

The current Version of Digikam (0.82) will convert Raw to 8 bits per pixel for editing. The soon to be released version (0.90) will convert raw files to 16bits per channel.
Digikam is an image management tool for linux along the lines of iPhoto or Picassa... It has basic editing features but if anything is a bit slow. also will do batch conversions

Speaking of which Picassa is a available for linux (beta) - I am only guessing that it also supports raw images.

On the commercial side there is support from Bibble labs http://www.bibblelabs.com/press/pr20060224-46.html (they make noise ninja - I don't know much else)

Thats just what I know about off the top of my head - most of the solutions I know of appart from Bibble labs use DCRaw a command line application to do the dirty work... and as such you are converting the Raw file to something else to work with. I believe that upsampling raw to 16 bits per channel will preserve quality (at the cost of some disk space) - generally I archive the originals in their raw format anyways... Even the workflow with the gimp is not to bad - (You get to do all the important adjustments before you downsample to 8 bits)

what about RAW wounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux? "

A hex editor.

Re:what about RAW wounds?

[advocate_one]

Lightzone for Linux...

Re:what about RAW wounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rawstudio

Re:what about RAW wounds?

[dalesc]

For many RAW formats, you can use dcraw to convert to another format. You may need to pipe the output into ImageMagick's convert to get a format you can work with.

Google's Picasa handles some raw formats, too, but the editing features are basic.

Impressive

[TheViewFromTheGround]

I've been poking around with Krita 1.6, and I'm impressed. The Krita developers seem to have a much better understanding of how a simple-yet-effective FLOSS raster graphics app should work and look like. The GIMP has always seemed too complex for the casual user, but too shaggy and feature-poor for the serious graphics person.

The Krita developers are doing a laudable effort to grow their application carefully and intentionally, just like the Scribus has done, adding high priority features and implementing them well (Krita's new layer-groups implementation worked very well for me without getting in the way).

If it continues this way, Krita is likely to grab significant mindshare from the GIMP.

Re:Impressive

[Repugnant_Shit]

The Krita developers seem to have a much better understanding of how a simple-yet-effective FLOSS raster graphics app should work and look like.

So it looks like Photoshop then? Why, yes it does!

Re:Impressive

[Abcd1234]

FLOSS raster graphics app

Who the hell puts graphics on their dental floss?

BTW, yes, I realize what FLOSS is supposed to stand for... I just think it's one of the most idiotic acronyms yet invented. :)

Tried it

[nagora]

Summary:

Very slow and clunky. Ugly as sin. Memory use a-go-go. Irritating KDE-style one-click interface for the file selector. Indispensable for its ability to handle CMYK and 16+bit.

I don't need it often and I'm always glad to close it afterwards, but until the Gimp handles 16bit at least for its working space, there's no way to live without it and do photo-manip under Linux.

Re:Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I think you mean "nice KDE file selector": I know I detest the GNOME one... So, in short, that's subjective preference.

2. Ugly as sin? That's probably a function of your KDE theme. Redhat/fedora STILL deliberately mangles KDE to look and work like ass. Never use a kde package built by redhat or fedora...

3. Slow and clunky? Well, I dunno. Certain things do seem plain slower to process than the gimp, but only things that kind of interrupt workflow anyway (filter application). Less mature code -> less performance tuning, probably. But the fact the interface doesn't actually suck makes up for it :-) Two things currently make a large speed difference on my machine: disabling brush-shaped cursor and using crosshairs (probably the programmer made the brush-shape->cursor routine run every event loop iteration, which probably kills performance on tablets with their relatively high sample rate and pressure sensitivity changing the brush shape every iteration), and enabling opengl. But the latter made the selection indicators buggy on my machine, sigh.

I do hate one _major_ thing about it, something the GIMP does vaguely right: in the gimp, every xinput device's brush selection etc. is independent. So my "eraser" on my stylus can be a blobby eraser brush, and the stylus nib a thin line. Krita munges them all together. This is probably beginner-friendly or something, but it's the one reason I still fire up the gimp to sketch in, despite the fact the gimp is "for" photo retouching, and krita has more of a from-scratch-art orientation ?! Sigh #2.

Re:Tried it

[Simon80]

Irritating KDE one-click style file selector? You can change that in KControl, and if you hate it that badly, maybe you should figure out how to.

Re:Tried it

[reub2000]

1. I think you mean "nice KDE file selector": I know I detest the GNOME one... So, in short, that's subjective preference.

I love it, the gimp one provides an image preview. Krita does not.

Plus Krita is as slow as molasses.

Re:Tried it

[Brandybuck]

Yup, Redhat/Fedora screws KDE/Qt. I do a lot of work with Linux using companies, and I can always tell who is using RH/FC and who is not. Everyone's tastes are different, but if they start bitching about KDE's performance, flicker, memory, etc., then they're invariably using Redhat or Fedora.

Re:Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you can even have video preview in a KDE file selector...

Re:Tried it

[Ash-Fox]

I love it, the gimp one provides an image preview. Krita does not.

Yeah... Krita only has thumblenails available in the file dialogs.

Note: You can control how big the thumbnails are too.

Re:Tried it

[Carewolf]

Dude, you can even have audio previews...

Re:Tried it

[nagora]

You can change that in KControl

I didn't know I had a kcontrol, and I'd never heard of it. Krita is the only KDE program I have knowingly installed but obviously it's dragged a lot of other stuff in with it. Where abouts in the kcontrol is the single/double click setting? There are a lot of sub-panels.

Re:Tried it

[vurian]

Hm, if you cannot assign a different tool to the eraser tip of your stylus than to the pen tip something went wrong somewhere. We spent a lot of time making sure that every pointing device can have its own tool.

Boudewijn Rempt
Krita Maintainer

Re:Tried it

[gringer]

peripherals -> mouse -> (General tab) -> (Icons) -> Double-click to open files and folders (select icons on first click)

KDE -- so customisable that 'settings' is a menu in almost every application

Re:Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

There are odd spots where Krita really drags. I've found if you zoom in "too far" and then do line/pixel brush drawing the entire app will become nearly unusable. I mean you draw something and literally 4 seconds later it shows up. I chalk that up to being an immature app that's got some rough spots.

I would say however that the gimp is faster on all levels... Except finding files with the stupid gtk file finder.

Re:Tried it

[fph il quozientatore]

>Irritating KDE-style one-click interface for the file selector
Please stop whining, open up KDE control panel, select peripherals->mouse and click on "double click to open files and folders".
KDE can be configured, you know

Re:Tried it

[nagora]

Please stop whining, open up KDE control panel, select peripherals->mouse and click on "double click to open files and folders". KDE can be configured, you know

I'm not using KDE; I'm using Krita. I know and care nothing about KDE other than it looks and feels like Windows. I came here to put that behind me.

Re:Tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is much less like Windows then Gnome. It doesn't remotely look like it. Krita is an app that builds upon the rich environment that KDE is, so if you want to use Krita, why don't you just deal with the fact that KDE is better than Gnome in every measurable way?

Re:Tried it

[Drinking Bleach]

Try kcontrol. Now careful, if you're running a DE named just like a garden decoration I hate, you might not be used to actually having software work the way you want.

Wasn't convinced...

[Chaffar]

After one month of Kubuntu, I just couldn't take it anymore. Krita was just too... unnatural. I'm not a graphic artist (far from it), but when I picked up the GIMP I was able to find out how to do things by using common sense. Krita felt really clunky and slow, and the buttons were never where you thought they should be. GIMP is the superior open source tool IMHO.

Re:Wasn't convinced...

[osi79]

Interesting, for it's just other way round. I never find what I search for in GIMP, and I never get my simple tasks done in GIMP without much trial and error. Well, I am a casual user and not a graphics guy at all. But I personally miss a graphics program that doesn't need you to be a graphics pro to use it.

  With Krita, I was far more productive and quicker for my simple tasks (which is color adjustments for photos, mark something in a screenshot with arrows or rectangles, adding text...).

Re:Wasn't convinced...

[vurian]

I strongly suspect the version you tried was 1.4. When I see screenshots of that version in magazines, I tend to want to hide under the table. We've made a lot of progress in the past year and a half :-)

Re:Wasn't convinced...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which just goes to show, one person's lentil dhal is another person's puke.

Re:Linux needs to get its act together

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but its still just as true!

How the heck do I load a jpg?

[thule]

I must be a complete idiot when it comes to KDE apps. I normally use Gnome, but I thought I'd try Krita out. I did a 'yum install koffice-krita' and it installed normally. I tried to load up a photograph in Krita, but I could not figure out how to do it. I tried 'krita somepic.jpg' and that didn't work. I tried a File->Open and that didn't work. Can someone that is a KDE expert tell me how to use a KDE app?

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bug your distro about it? Not opening a jpg file through file -> open sounds like a seriuos bug that I doubt very much that it comes with krita - maybe yum didn't install the neccesary libraries for krita to support the JPG format?

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at work, I am force to use fedora, and I also wanted to use krita, and I also couldn't find how to save or load png/tiff/jpeg (and I am a krita developers !), the simple answers is that they have hidden the filters in koffice-filters (an optional dependency, how can you consider jpeg/png/tiff to be optional ?), but sadly koffice-filters depends on other koffice application, so if you wanted krita only, you are screwed :)

And as a longtime KDE user and contributor, I strongly suggest you to avoid Fedora if you want a good experience with KDE.
-- Cyrille Berger

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Ben174]

Probably compiled without JPG support or something.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[zecg]

Gentoo has jpg as a USE flag for Krita (I always check them out and always do USE="-arts" for KDE apps). I don't know about Fedora, though... Maybe it's time for a distro change?

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[charlesnw]

Interesting.... you use Linux at work and are forced to use a certain distro. Somehow I don't buy that. Linux is about choice and freedom. I find it highly unusual it would be deployed in a corporate environment unless the users were mostly self sufficient.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yessiree, Bob, this Linux stuff has Adobe and Microsoft shaking in their boots, I tell you.

With this kind of user-centric design ethic, desktop market share might break into the single-digit percentages any day now.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[abigor]

"Interesting.... you use Linux at work and are forced to use a certain distro. Somehow I don't buy that. Linux is about choice and freedom."

What? If they say use this Linux, then that's what you use. There are distributions specifically designed and marketed for corporate desktops (like Xandros). It doesn't matter what Linux is "about" in your beady little brain.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[leenks]

Maybe you should buy it, or take a look at a few more corporate customers. I use Linux at work - a large UK organisation. On my desktop I'm forced to use Windows 2000 there, so I Exceed into Linux servers. We are essentially forced to use Redhat Enterprise Linux, although we do have 1 Fedora box (because what we wanted to run simply would not work on the version of RHEL we are told to use).

Corporate bean-counters think that it is safer to buy licences for something and get some kind of support contract, then completely lock it down to make it next to useless - even if it forces us to be somewhat behind where we want to be.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, yes, Fedora, where you download 4 CDs of software and then after installing, you can't play an mp3 file. Sure beats the "I got me an image editor and it can't load the most common image format out of the box" experience :)

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[MP3Chuck]

Erm ... it's not so hard to believe. As much as Linux may be about choice, if I were deploying Linux across an organization I'd standardize on a single distro. It only makes sense, from a support perspective.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[EvilIdler]

There must be a library missing or something in your OS. Krita opens any common format just
fine here.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting.... you use Linux at work and are forced to use a certain distro. Somehow I don't buy that. Linux is about choice and freedom. I find it highly unusual it would be deployed in a corporate environment unless the users were mostly self sufficient.

That's so naive I almost laughed. Have you ever worked in a corporate environment? Setting up computers is for the IT department. Everyone else is there to do something else. And the IT department's job is a hell of a lot easier (and cheaper) when all of the workstations are running the same thing. Everyone taking care of their own machine is fine for 3 or 4 people, or for special circumstances, but it just wouldn't work for huge deployments.

At work, the IT department has the freedom and choice. Everyone else just uses what IT tells them to.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[PeterBrett]

Well at work, I am force to use fedora, and I also wanted to use krita, and I also couldn't find how to save or load png/tiff/jpeg

Well, I use straight-out-of-the-repository Krita on Fedora Core 6, and "File->Open->double-click on JPEG file" worked perfectly for me. I suggest you go find your system administrator and give him a kicking.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your knowledge of software deployment in large IT infrastructures is impressive. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[ajs318]

You need a specifically-non-US distro.

MP3 isn't protected by patents in countries where software patents aren't allowed (such as the UK and the EU). Although the UK patent office has apparently already granted patents on software, you can't actually be sued for infringing them because UK law specifically disallows software patents; if they tried, you could use the defence of No Case to Answer and all software patents would be struck down. So nobody's going to sue you because they know it will never stick. Ignorance of the law is no defence, they say; but it's making a good job of defending the holders of bogus patents against people ignorant of their rights! If software patents ever do get allowed in those countries, patent holders will have to apply for new patents there; you can't apply a new law to an act that was done before the law came into force. Anything that would have violated those patents if they had existed before, will now become prior art that can be used to block those patents when they are re-applied for!

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>And as a longtime KDE user and contributor, I strongly suggest you to avoid Fedora if you want a good experience with KDE

It's probably nothing that we didn't know already, but hey ;)

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Builder]

Awww cute! Someone who's never worked in an enterprise with Linux deployed :)

At my last company our users use what we will support, and that means RHEL WS only. Use of anything else is a breach of their terms of employment and will result in them being fired.

When we chose to use Linux, we did not choose to have chaos on our systems.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Lisandro]

Linux is about choice and freedom. I find it highly unusual it would be deployed in a corporate environment unless the users were mostly self sufficient.

I guess you never worked in a corporate enviroment then. In my former work we used RedHat before we migrated to SuSE. The reasons? Besides having a commercial agreement with SuSE, corporations like things standarized. Flexibility and end-user comfort are a distant second.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[swillden]

At my last company our users use what we will support, and that means RHEL WS only.

That makes perfect sense.

Use of anything else is a breach of their terms of employment and will result in them being fired.

That, however, is ludicrous. My company has a much more sensible approach -- if you don't use one of the standard builds provided by IT, then you get no support other than for hardware problems, and the hardware problems have to be either reproducible with a standard build or obviously not related to software (where the obviousness is determined by the IT support tech, not the user).

The users who are less technically adept, or who don't want to risk system problems getting in the way of their real jobs, use the standard platforms and have support available 24x7.

Users who are willing and able to maintain their own systems use what they want, as long as it's legal, doesn't create problems and doesn't violate the ITSEC policies. Using unlicensed software, hosing the network or violating security policy are grounds for dismissal. Using what you think makes you most effective at your job, and doing a good job of managing it, is not.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Builder]

We're a regulated industry subject to audits. The cost of telling an auditor that I don't know what is on a box on my internal network, specifically on a trusted VLAN would be far too high.

"No sir, I have no idea what OS that person might be using to connect to those highly sensitive machines, nor do I know when it was last patched or how up to date it is. Why do you ask?" - That conversation would cost me my job and I think that's perfectly fair. Play with your favourite distro at home on your own equipment, not here on company kit. People in this industry get paid more than well enough to have their own toys at home :)

On top of that, these are company resources, they don't belong to the employees. If we need your machine in an emergency, we need to be able to use it and manage it. Hotdesking is important as well, so we need standards. I'm not paying for a load of extra desks for visitors from overseas branches just so that some 'free spirits' can use their preferred Linux distro :)

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/ with KDE//

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[zecg]

You need a specifically-non-US distro.

OR, a specifically-non-retarded distro. One that allows easy resolution of such annoyances. Package systems should only automatize the process that you would do yourself - if I want mp3 decoder, I'll download it. And I want it automatically done so long as there is one legal source of said decoder on the Internet.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[swillden]

The cost of telling an auditor that I don't know what is on a box on my internal network, specifically on a trusted VLAN would be far too high.

If that's something that's important in your environment, then you do need the control. Nearly every company has organizations that have similar requirements.

On top of that, these are company resources, they don't belong to the employees. If we need your machine in an emergency, we need to be able to use it and manage it.

That's interesting. Have you every actually taken an employee's machine because you needed it? What does the employee do in such a situation? Does that apply to all employees?

Hotdesking is important as well, so we need standards.

We don't do that, either. Mobility centers have cubes that are checked out to users, but they bring their own computer. As a consultant I work with a lot of different companies, and true hotdesking as you describe it is rare.

I'm not paying for a load of extra desks for visitors from overseas branches just so that some 'free spirits' can use their preferred Linux distro :)

It's not an issue of "free spirits" as much as one of productivity. Particularly for software developers, having their preferred environment can make a non-trivial difference in how rapidly and effectively they do their jobs. I don't run Debian on my laptop because I want to play with it, I run Debian because I want to *use* it.

I retract the "ludicrous" comment from my previous post; there are obviously very good reasons for tightly controlling the software installed on machines in some environments. However, I still maintain that such environments are not as universal as the post I originally responded to implied (and probably not even the norm), and that even in companies where most departments need to be tightly controlled by IT there may well be some that don't need it and would benefit from a loosening of the controls. If done correctly, the IT department also benefits from allowing users to manage their own machines, since it means that IT doesn't have to accept any responsibility for them.

All three of the companies I've worked with where Linux is widely deployed on the desktop are engineering and software development companies, and all three allow most users to use the distro they like, at the expense of reduced or eliminated support for use of a "non-standard" distro.

OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone compiled a stand-alone package for OS X (X11)? I don't want to have to install fink again and spend all night compiling just to try this out.

Re:OS X

[Em Adespoton]

http://koffice.darwinports.com/ http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home The second one's easier, as it's torrented dmg files :)

Re:OS X

[Cid Highwind]

http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home

I haven't tried it, but they say "it kind of works". No fink necessary (even though it's in the URL), just bittorrent and .dmg images.

You're obviously talking about old 1.5 - Try 1.6!

[Anonymous Coward]

One month? This is about Krita 1.6 which got just released a week ago. And Krita 1.6 is a HUGE improvement over the 1.5 you're talking about. It's a lot faster and has come a long way since. I'd really urge you to upgrade and give it another try. Like Amarok Krita had for sure its weak spots in its early releases but it's rapidly maturing and I predict that within 9 months - even through minor point releases it will become THE graphics application for Linux.

Re:GTK port of Krita

[BrigadierFrog]

I don't think you quite grasp the power of using KDE with its enormous set of shared libraries. So I'll give you a link to help you along http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/ Read that, then try it out for yourself if your not convinced. Then, come back, and don't make a fool of yourself next time ranting on how KDE has lots of "baggage".

Why is being KDE important?

[acidrain]

Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived within the GIMP codebase with less effort? E.g. different UI modes?

Surely a name starting with a K instead of a G wan't enough?

I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't providing choice supposed to be central to open source and the "alternative software" world? If everyone bands together and creates a single product that kills off microsoft (insert any 800lb gorilla here), then all you've done is replaced them as the dominant software provider and you are no better.

On the other hand, I find the constant backbiting and infighting that is rampant in FOSS to be quite amusing.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[pherthyl]

Does it achieve a goal that couldn't have been achieved within the GIMP codebase with less effort?

Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, Krita is surpassing the Gimp in some areas that people have been complaining about for years in Gimp, and nothing was done. As a developer, what would you rather do, argue on the Gimp mailing list until your face turns blue about wanting to change the interface, or just start your own project? Sometimes you have to make a clean break to get new ideas implemented.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[abigor]

Other operating systems run a variety of competing graphics software, and it doesn't seem to have affected their uptake.

Krita is a part of KOffice, an impossibility for the Gimp. It's about deep code reuse (koffice libs and kdelibs), not about a different UI.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Al Dimond]

Sometimes it's actually easier to make a clean break than to modify an existing codebase. Sometimes an existing design is tied to assumptions and that you don't want to make, design decisions that you want to make differently. And for people that are familiar with coding KDE programs writing a pure KDE app will be easier, and they'll produce better code that integrates better with KDE.

I'm not familiar with this case specifically, but these could be among the reasons that they chose to write their own.

I'm sure most of the developers have used the GIMP and are familiar with its strengths and weaknesses, and many of them have probably looked at GIMP code and perhaps borrowed ideas from it.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Surely a name starting with a K instead of a G wan't enough?"

Well I don't know about you but I think the name 'Kimp' sucks, so obviously they had to go and write their own image manipulation tool for kde from scratch.

In all seriousness: people do things because they can, developers especially. Also you learn a lot in the process.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[carlmenezes]

Well, I agree with you and I don't.

Look at the distros for example. Lots of em out there and then Ubuntu comes along - when it did, we were like, "who needs ANOTHER one" - and does something right. People notice that and move to it. Other distros try to adopt some of the plus points. That's not wasted effort. I guess evolution of a species is the closest I analogy I can get to. The best survive.

So if Krita comes along and even though it duplicates 90% of the functionality, if Krita gets it right, then all that 90% of the effort is worth it.

It's diminishing returns, yes, but in the end, its the extra mile that distinguishes the leaders from the also rans. It may not be any extra functionality at all - just the way its been put together that makes it a winning combination. Then the power of open source takes over and everyone benefits.

I think thats great and thats kinda what evolution is - varying the combination of a lot of existing stuff ever so slightly to see which one produces the best. So its a double edged sword - a freakin amazing one at that :)

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[chill]

Yes, it did. For the longest time The Gimp was bound by "that'll be in 2.0, using Gegl". Gegl languihed for YEARS, before recently resurfacing but still not done - not even close. This is one reason the project was forked into Film Gimp, now CinePaint.

Personally, The Gimp's interface gave me fits and I found it very hard to work in. Since I on't use it every day, it isn't something I was willing to put a huge effort into learning. Krita is much more "natural" to me and had a much shallower learning curve.

KDE integration is more than just a theme and a K-name. That would have been almost impossible with The Gimp.

Finally, there is the name "Gimp". It means "lame" or "handicapped", which was a totally stupid thing to call a program. Yes, I know it is an acronym, but ut was a stupid idea none-the-less.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[yo_tuco]

"I think the name 'Kimp' sucks"

Yes, it would given that there is no "K" in the GNU Image Manipulation Program

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[redcane]

Yeah, but this is the Koffice Image Manipulation Program

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would one want more than one OS? Wasn't Windows enough?

Get a clue. Its called CHOICE!

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[metamatic]

Finally, there is the name "Gimp". It means "lame" or "handicapped", which was a totally stupid thing to call a program.

Oh, I don't know, that's pretty much how the UI makes it feel.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Brandybuck]

I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.

The goal IS NOT to get Linux adopted on the deskoop. The goal is to create an image processing component for an office suite. This is Free Software, where developers are Free to do whatever the fsck they want. If it means Aunt Tillie ain't going to be using Linux this decade, so what?

You don't like it, start funding development on the stuff you want developed. Whines don't spend in this community, but sometimes cash does.

p.s. I'm not even using Krita on Linux to begin with, so what do I care?

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Louis Guerin]

---
Finally, there is the name "Gimp". It means "lame" or "handicapped", which was a totally stupid thing to call a program. Yes, I know it is an acronym, but ut was a stupid idea none-the-less.
---

Because Krita is a better name. At least gimp has one clear and universally known pronunciation and doesn't look like a word cobbled together from Czech and Klingon.

L

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[osi79]

> Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived
> within the GIMP codebase with less effort?

You assume that the goals of GIMP and Krita a similar enough so that "different UI modes" would satisfy both sides.

Then you assume that
- the GIMP devels are cooperative enough to follow suggestions by the Krita team. As the other poster points out, this is apparently not the cae.
- the gimp code base is something Krita devels want to work with. The Krita code is highly modular, and e.g. switching color models is simple, while the GIMP is struggling just to increase the internal color depth due to bad modularization.

All that of course doesn't prevent code reuse. E.g. for filter algorithms, Gimp code is probably often a starting point for Krita devels.

That call for unification and not wasting effort by implementing stuff twice often comes from people not developing larger OSS projects at all, and not knowing the code quality of the respective projects. E.g., KOffice and Abiword/Gnumeric devels tried to use OOo's filters for MS formats. Unfortunately OOo's MS filter code is crappy and unmantainable (just for example, with german comments from star division era), and not modular at all.
If the code isn't modular enough to be ripped out, or too bad to be mantainable by your team, you are better off doing it on your own.
(OTOH, of course one should evaluate existing code first, and not just start a new project because of NIH syndrome)

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Enselic]

In Swedish, Krita makes total sense, it means chalk.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It was named after the Gimp in "Pulp Fiction", which was popular at the time that the software was originally released. I thought it was a stupid name then, and it's still a stupid name now. It's just that idiot geeks have made the realization that "I can call my own product anything I want, and people will have to use that word! Let's call it something really stupid! Won't that be funny?"

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[MORB]

I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.

Sometimes things needs to be rewritten because the existing code base just cannot be extended in any sensible way because of its architecture.
Actually, the Krita folks probably learned from the design mistake of the gimp code base to avoid to fall in the same pitfalls, so in that sense they would have reused knowledge gathered by the gimp project.

I firmly believe that iterative development is the only way to get the architecture of complicated projects right. Rewriting code from scratch is not necessarily evil, as long as you are careful to really make the most out of the knowledge acquired in writing/working with the old code.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[vurian]

Basically, long before my involvement, KImageShop was started as a Gimp alternative because of hurt feelings over the Kimp demo hack. That was in 1999. When I bought a wacom pad in 2003 I wanted to hack on something to do natural painting and not start my own thing. So I looked around and the Krita codebase had a couple of advantages for me:

* C++, not C (I knew Java, so C++ was easier for me)
* I already knew Qt (I wrote the book on PyQt)
* Much smaller codebase than the gimp
* lots to do (basically only the move tool worked in 2003)
* helpful maintainer (Patrick Julien basically taught me C++)

And then the ball started rolling...

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, there is the name "Gimp". It means "lame" or "handicapped", which was a totally stupid thing to call a program. Yes, I know it is an acronym, but ut was a stupid idea none-the-less.

Krita sounds a lot like kita here. Kita is a kind of kindergarten. That perfectly matches to KDE=Kindergarten Desktop Environment.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[ioslipstream]

I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.

It serves in the same way having the Gnome project started after KDE was already around served. We have choice, which is one thing that makes Linux great.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[fbjon]

And also in Swedish, 'Krita' can be literally translated as 'Kdraw'.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[darkwhite]

What stupefies me is that hundreds of people have complained about Gimp's UI to the developers, which means a massive silent fraction of its potential users are probably uncomfortable with the UI, and yet for many years the developers did nothing and most tried to argue that the UI is superior and we just don't get it (one suggestion that resurfaces constantly is that I should use a separate virtual desktop for Gimp). This is remarkable hubris.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could end up being KIM-P instead of KIMP. But there are only a few people who would want to play with kim's pee. I guess it would depend on what kim looked like.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Frumious Wombat]

Which has always amazed me about the name sticking so long. Within six months of "Pulp Fiction" being released, a conservative Catholic woman of my acquaintence made the statement, "you used to be able to stop at people's house and ask to use the phone if you had car trouble, but now you don't know if they've got a Gimp in the basement or what!" At that point, any lingering questions about whether they were making fun of the disabled, or trying to make people squirm with that name, were pretty much settled.

I've really wondered about all the coy denials, attempts at cute mascots, etc, over the years, (such as Wilbur, the doggish icon), and why they didn't just roll with what they'd started. They could put up a leather-and-zipper logo on the home-page, or a caricature of Mappelthorpe with the bullwhip. Or they could change it to "Gnu Raster Image Processor", or follow the lead of the Squid team and just name it "Calimari".

Of course, if I have to make a choice, I'd still rather they added adjustment layers and 16-bit support rather than changed the name, but that's one more for the bug queue.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you gladly use amarok, and decry any attempt to clone it in GTK/Gnome? Or is it only a KDE thing?

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, yeah that's true, never thought of that!

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the same could be said for many open source projects that never seem to listen to or care about their less l33t users.

Looks like Painter

[Anonymous Coward]

At first glance, it looks more like Corel Painter than it does The Gimp/Photoshop. I haven't bothered to try it, that's just based on TFA and the screenie.

I wanted to like it, I really did...

[Mix Master Nixon]

Unfortunately, for me it's just excruciatingly slow and sluggish compared to The GIMP, which is installed and running fine and reasonably quickly on the same Kubuntu Edgy system. Too bad, as I liked pretty much everything about it except for the crippling slowness.

Re:I wanted to like it, I really did...

[Anonymous Coward]

Edgy only has 1.5, I understand that 1.6 has been improved somewhat.

Re:I wanted to like it, I really did...

[Ash-Fox]

I disagree with the slow statement -- I felt no 'slowness'. I also disagree with the version statement of yours.

You can get the latest version of Krita under Edgy by adding these lines to your sources.list:

# kubuntu.org packages for the latest Koffice version (packages, GPG key: DD4D5088)
deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-latest edgy main
 
# kubuntu.org packages for the latest Koffice version (sources, GPG key: DD4D5088)
deb-src http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-latest edgy main

It works now... but still lame

[thule]

I installed the filters and it does indeed now load up jpeg's. It's kinda lame for it to ask me what filter to apply when loading the jpg. Shouldn't it just know the file type?

Re:It works now... but still lame

[ThePhilips]

I installed the filters and it does indeed now load up jpeg's. It's kinda lame for it to ask me what filter to apply when loading the jpg. Shouldn't it just know the file type?

KDE is modular. And so Krita is. Krita uses KDE for all the low level file handling: import/export/save/load included. KOffice people said that many times: they have managed to bring up so powerful application suit so quickly only because of great KDE framework. It allows them to concentrate on the job instead of low level stuff, though does not bar them from low level stuff ;-)

As was stated in sibling thread, if you like to experience KDE, do not use RedHat/Fedora - they have screwed KDE packages to make it look and behave like GNOME. IOW, KDE in RH/Fedora is unusable. Better grab Kubuntu, Knoppix, Slackware or Debian - they do much better.

You probably want Image Magick

[Ayanami Rei]

ImageMagick will let you quick convert raw files to PNG or whatnot by specifying the width/height/pixel format/depth as options. You can have it process a whole folder if you want.

GIMP likes tagged formats. I recall there being a RAW import method in the 1.xx series but it looks like they got rid of it.

Re:Linux needs to get its act together

[Anonymous Coward]

no it isn't it completely ignore systems like click&run designed for morons who can write "apt-get" in a console.

Krita is complete shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical KDE app - too many buttons everywhere not enough sense and just like every kde app in every version, it crashes if you sneeze.

I dare anyone to actually use this piece of crap in production and have it actually not crash if you blink.

Why can't KDE devs actually make sensible interfaces?

Re:Krita is complete shit.

[Ash-Fox]

Typical KDE app

Yep.

too many buttons everywhere not enough sense and just like every kde app in every version

I disagree, I have no problem seeing the sense here, nor do I see 'too many buttons everywhere'.

it crashes if you sneeze.

I remember it was utterly unusable for me back in 1.4 because of that. But that certainly is not the case now.

I dare anyone to actually use this piece of crap in production and have it actually not crash if you blink.

I would if someone gave me the chance.

Why can't KDE devs actually make sensible interfaces?

What's wrong with the interface I showed in the screenshot?

Planned economy?

[alandd]

At an intersection not far from my house there are two strip malls on two of the corners. Each mall has a sandwich shop.

"Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived within the [one sandwich shop] with less effort? E.g. different [special sauces in the same shop]?

"Surely a [different] name for [each store] wan't enough?

"I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the [sales of sandwiches to the populace] in the long run." ;^)

Krita for Windows?

[tepples]

If it continues this way, Krita is likely to grab significant mindshare from the GIMP.

It depends. Now that Qt for Windows is free software, when does Krita come out on Microsoft Windows?

Re:Krita for Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now that Qt for Windows is free software, when does Krita come out on Microsoft Windows?"

KDE4 should be available also for Windows when released, so I'd guess KOffice along with Krita will be too.

Re:Krita for Windows?

[osi79]

KDE4 will be available for Windows (the platform and apps, not the window manager and panel). KOffice 2 (based on KDE4) will also be ported to Win then (which is not much effort when the KDE libraries are ported).

How about Karbon?

[JoeCommodore]

Krita is fine but I wish they would do some more work on the object based graphics program, Karbon, it has some great features that the others programs don't (making a large drawing and priting it in tiles) but it is sorely lacking some very basic stuff also (import of bitmap obnjects like in Inkscape and OOo Draw). Oh and providing ANY instructions for it would be a big bonus too.

I just don't do just plain bitmap graphics all that much.

Re:How about Karbon?

[EvilIdler]

Xara Xtreme (formerly LX) is getting tons of features with each release. You could have a look at that for
your vector drawing needs:
http://www.xaraxtreme.org/

Re:How about Karbon?

[osi79]

> Krita is fine but I wish they would do some more work
> on the object based graphics program, Karbon

You are welcome to join the team :-)
Manpower in FLOSS isn't something you can shift over to another app just because some boss or visionary says that karbon needs more love. Developers usually work on the apps they find useful (either "egocentrical" just for themselves, or for users in general), where they are skilled in, where the codebase is fun to work with, etc.

Re:How about Karbon?

[Ash-Fox]

I heard many people liked Sodipodi over Karbon.

Re:Linux needs to get its act together

[RobertLTux]

umm at this point you can just use the normal package manager (deb,rpm,e-build ect) and have everything pulled in automatically

1 2.2 series kernel ARE YOU NUCKING FUTS anybody running a 2.2 kernel and not using an embedded kernel is NUTS
2 GL drivers (should have been taken care of by the core install)
3 Why are you using x11 and not x.org?
4 the line switch should have been done by the driver install
5 use the native package
6 sound problems are 95% error code ID:10T (whos error code is a coin toss)

I propose a MOD KOS for this and any future postings of this SCOde pasting

The one thing Krita cannot do

[G3ckoG33k]

The one thing Krita cannot - run on Windows, wheras Gimp does.

That one feature is enough for me, as we have several computers in my family, and not all of them run Linux. Yes, it is installed on the Linux box.

Re:The one thing Krita cannot do

[PeterBrett]

The one thing Krita cannot - run on Windows, wheras Gimp does.

I imagine you're going to be looking forward to the Win32 port of KDE 4, then...?

Re:The one thing Krita cannot do

[Haeleth]

The one thing Krita cannot - run on Windows, wheras Gimp does.

Wanna bet?

(Sure, I'm cheating -- but X11 was designed for running applications remotely. You have a Linux box, so you too can run Krita "in" Windows today. Surprisingly, the performance is pretty good; not on a par with a native Windows or Qt application, but easily as good as GTK, which is a distinctly second-class citizen on Windows.)

Re:The one thing Krita cannot do

[Fred_A]

The one thing Krita cannot - run on Windows, wheras Gimp does.

From what I've heard of the experience of Windows users of Gimp, running it in Windows doesn't seem to be all that great anyway. Judging from the common complaints it seems to really require a Unix style of window manager. So while it may run on Windows it doesn't seem to be all that usable (compared to the native version).

Not that I've ever tried running it in anything but native Linux so I'm not really familiar with the current state of the ported version. It might well have gotten better nowadays.

In Linux I've used it since the first version was released and the interface never really bothered me (except when it changed with 2.0 and I had to learn the new one). But then I hadn't really used large image editors since Photoshop Mac (that was before it was ported to Windows) so I didn't have any reflexes to undo.

OTOH I'm sure that if I had to use the current version of Photoshop (which I don't think I've ever even seen), I'd have trouble with it because the damn thing wouldn't work like Gimp.

I use the gimp

[r00t]

There are two very nice importer plug-ins. (FYI, both are supplied by Debian) I can mess with things as desired during the import, properly handling color temperature and such before dealing with it like any other image.

If you mean to save something back as RAW format, well that is nonsense.

Also, Google provides photo software with some raw format support.

worse than "lame" or "handicapped"

[r00t]

A gimp is a midget or dwarf used for homosexual purposes.

You didn't want to know that, did you?

Re:worse than "lame" or "handicapped"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. What in the nine hells of Baator posessed me to click on this post? No, come to think about it again I didn't really want to know. :/

Swedish coincidence?

[wilper]

"rita" is Swedish for "draw". Add the KDE K to get "Krita", which means "crayon" in Swedish. A coincidence?

Re:Swedish coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a coincidence. Some very competent Swedish Linux hackers contributed to that project.

Re:Swedish coincidence?

[VolkerLanz]

Probably not. Krita used to be called Krayon, but the name had to be changed due to some trademark reasons. SUSE even got sued in Germany over the name -- which was in the KDE menu, although the application wasn't shipped with the distribution at that time. Must have been a couple of years ago (SUSE 7.x, I think).

Before it was called Krayon, the name was KImageShop. AFAIK, it was never called "The KIMP" ;-)

Re:GTK port of Krita

[Anonymous Coward]

ooo shared libraries.

Yes, Shared libraries are good.

Did you read what you sent.

The problem lies with uncontrolled dependencies.

kde is installed in big globs of applications.
You can't install just basic kde libs and perhaps konsole,

Run konsole in a non-kde desktop, and it needs to start some other daemons for some reason, and you need the whole kdebase package to get it.

I was a big fan/user of KDE. But really, you don't need most of it. And konqueror has yet to change the Location menu back to File.

it's too late to finish this thought.
thanks for reading this. bye. -ac

OpenUsability Sponsored Student Project: GIMP

[gnalle]

By the way I just found this on the web.. a little outdated, but fairly interesting and promising:

OpenUsability Sponsored Student Project: GIMP

OpenUsability is proud to announce the offering of a series of sponsored student projects. As the first project, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) has been chosen. We are looking for a student in usability or interaction architecture who wants to work on designing the user interface for the next generation of GIMP.

If you are a student of usability, user-interface or interaction design and want to enrich your education with a hands-on experience don't hesistate to apply:

http://www.openusability.org/studentprojects
http://openusability.org/projects/gimp/
http://www.gimp.org/announcements/open-usability-g imp.html

What's it for

[johansalk]

From the article: "Nevertheless, the vision is for Krita to be more about creating images than about manipulating them."

The killer feature: Image restoration

[petaflop]

I haven't tried Krita, and I mainly use Gimp, but I am very tempted to switch for the single reason that Krita provides a GUI to CImg. If you haven't met CImg, it is an image manipulation library which contains some incredibly powerful image resoration features.

The Cimg homepage is here. But if you want to see what it can do, check out some of the sample image restorations on page 6 of this paper. It does a very credible job of restoring missing parts of images, e.g. features hidden behind text.

Re:The killer feature: Image restoration

[SoapDish]

That is incredible! Thank you so much for pointing it out, I know of some specific uses I would have for those things.

It's really awesome how something like that is even practical for visualizing 2D flows, I can see that being useful for some math/engineering work I've come accross.

Okay, random questions...

[WWWWolf]

Hi, I'm just a GIMP fan; Krita has cool features, so I have some random questions on how Krita is progressing. (Obligatory disclaimer: Not intended as a troll or anything. I'm just clueless.)

1) Has the UI been fixed? The use of MDI made it difficult as hell to use - X11 has application window groups and virtual desktops for a reason, you know. Can the palettes etc. be docked in separate windows? In 1.5 the stuff can be undocked from the windows, but they're all separate, and their locations aren't particularly well remembered, which makes that feature pretty much useless (Eh, toolbox, 5 tool strips and 3 tool windows open, as opposed to my usual 3-window setup in GIMP, and those locations are remembered - plus they're all duplicated for each window, which is pretty odd)...

2) How's the tablet support? The pressure support in 1.5 appears to be pretty... strange, to say the least. Is there any equivalent of GIMP's ink tool? I couldn't find any from 1.5 based on a cursory examination, and the brush tool didn't work at all like I expected it to work (ticking on the brush transparency made transparency effect work pretty weakly, as happened with the size - I suppose this can be adjusted to have more dramatic effect, but I couldn't find it).

3) Is there anyone who's using both GIMP and Krita; how well does image interchange work between the two apps? I haven't investigated how well I could move .xcfs, for example, between the two apps. I know Krita can use some GIMP bits, like fill patterns and brushes and like; does the opposite work too?

Re:Okay, random questions...

[vurian]

1) No, the ui hasn't been "fixed" -- in 2.0 it'll be possible to drag & drop the palettes in different constellations (Qt4 provides that out of the box). And, in 2.0, you'll have only see the palettes that belong to the active view, but that's all. I like it this way and it's the standard for KOffice. There are people who like it, there are people who hate it, but I think spending development time on making it possible to accommodate both preferences is not worth it compared to features like better filters, speed improvements and so on.

2) It should be pretty good, we spent a lot of time making it possible to draw with different pressure curves for darkness, size and opacity. It is also possible to have a different current tool for your mouse, eraser and stylus (I tend to draw with the mouse set to pan and the stylus to brush). Oh, and the "paint directly checkbox" should fix your issues with the brush tool.

3) Gimp and Krita use the same gradients, patterns and brushes. File format exchange is problematic, hence the OpenRaster effort that is being spearheaded by Cyrille Berger for Krita and Oyvind Kolas for Gegl.

Personally,

[jesterpilot]

...I live in 2006.

Re:GTK port of Krita

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, the KDE shared libraries are released under the full-on GPL, not the LGPL. This means you can be sure no code-hoarder is going to take all your hard work -- which you intended to be for the benefit of the whole community at large -- and bundle it up into a closed application.

Brightness/Contrast

[Anonymous Coward]

How can I adjust an image's brightness/contrast? I can't seem to find it anywhere... Are there any Krita tutorials online?

Re:Brightness/Contrast

[Ash-Fox]

How can I adjust an image's brightness/contrast?

From the drop down menu:
Filter -> Adjust -> Brightness/Contrast...

Are there any Krita tutorials online?

I don't think there are any for 1.6 yet, but you could try reading the handbook [F1] in the meantime.

You keep using that word...

[Some guy named Chris]

This is not a personal criticism, just a slight tweak in your wording...

Evolution has nothing to do with producing the "BEST" anything. Evolution produces the "most fit for survival". Saying that "evolution is (...) varying the combination of a lot of existing stuff ever so slightly to see which one produces the best" implies a higher purpose or thought behind the random mutations that evolution exploits. The truth is that most of this "varying" produces less fit entities and they quickly die. That doesn't mean they were worse, just less fit.

There could arise a disease tomorrow that kills off everybody but hemophiliacs. Eventually, only hemophiliacs would survive. Does that make them the "best" humans? No, simply the most fit to survive that particular threat. Think that's a silly example? Tell that to all the people with sickle cell anemia who have a natural resistance to malaria.

Richard Dawkins once said, "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism". Thinking that evolution produces things which are better is one of those misunderstandings. It simply produces things which are more fit to survive and reproduce given a particular environment.

Too many missing features in Krita

[Anonymous Coward]

Krita looks much less capable than The Gimp. For example, there is no way in Krita to measure the distance between two positions in an image.

Re:GTK port of Krita

[paulbiz]

kde is installed in big globs of applications. You can't install just basic kde libs and perhaps konsole,

You can on Gentoo. All parts of KDE are broken into hundreds of seperate packages there. The package for Konsole, to use your example, has 2 direct dependencies: libX11 and kdelibs.

GIMP + Cinepaint for 16+ bpp? [was: Re:Tried it]

[jetxee]

I tried it too (1.5 though, I am not going to pull kde libs from Debian unstable). It feels so slow and non-responsive! Set of tools on the toolbar seems "mspaint-ish" (rectangle, star, zigzag...). In addition, layer blending is not working for me.

So, GIMP stays for most of the tasks, for 16+ bit and HDR color I use Cinepaint.

P.S. I don't like some of the GIMP UI features, e.g. huge crop dialog, which closes significant part of my laptop screen and stays on top of the image. New window placement is not very convenient. New windows often open just over the toolbar (I think GIMP should suggest WM where to open windows). Toolbars do not "pop-up" as I switch to image window. However, GIMP seems to be more capable and polished than Krita at this moment.

No, the cat does not "got my tongue."

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Krita

Man, I hated Krita!

She told me she would help me regain my strength, but it turns out she was the bitch Darth Trayus -- the Betrayer.

And you "get Jedi powers from the beginning" -- how misleading! It actually takes longer to get your lightsaber in the second game.

Re:No, the cat does not "got my tongue."

[JonJ]

Errr, her name was Kreia... And yeah, it took forever to get the lightsaber, but then again, that's what EnableCheats = 1 is for :p

Re:finally! (OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

... in the future when their is something that has it now. There is a ...

Ouch! Your random spelling of homophones drives me crazy!

"one-click interface" like internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you also irritated that the internet uses a one-click interface as well.

Why exactly do you like double-clicking? for the exercise?

RGB2CMYK

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

K=min(1-R, 1-G, 1-B)
C=1-R-K
M=1-G-K
Y=1-B-K

Easy as pie.

Re:RGB2CMYK

[tezbobobo]

Works on the monitor - not in ink

Re:RGB2CMYK

[Tsuzuki]

If only! CMYK works on a subtractive light model and RGB uses an additive light model - conversions from RGB to CMYK generally mean that all bright reds, greens and blues (or colours in which bright red, green or blue are a strong component) lose their impact. A fair amount of colours fit into both colour spaces but you really do notice the difference when converting like that.

Crash at the first run / not state of the art

[nihkee]

Cannot start Krita: no colorspaces available.

The application Krita (krita) crashed and caused the signal 6 (SIGABRT)

Which part was state of the art? Neither of them I think.