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GIMP 2.4 Released
Enselic writes "After almost three years since the release of GIMP 2.2, the GIMP developers have just announced the release of GIMP 2.4. The release notes speak of scalable bitmap brushes, redesigned rectangle/ellipse selection tools, redesigned crop tool, a new foreground selection tool, a new align tool, reorganized menu layouts, improved zoomed in/zoomed out image display quality, improved printing and color management support and a new perspective clone tool."
How long since GIMP 2.3 was released or am I missing something important?
In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
CMYK colors and other functionality that keeps it from being able to replace Photoshop completely? Not to understate all the effort that has been put into it, but something like that does seem pretty basic for three years of development.
I hope they moved the gui closer to that of Paintshop. I can't tell you how many times I've been unable to edit an image for one reason or another, or the expected behavior is what happens. I know a lot of people love GIMP and its scripting abilities, but seriously, when they're trying to enter the market dominated by a few programs with that same gui and behavior, they should replicate it.
No 16bit per pixel support unfortunately. Cinepaint has added that, but Cinepaint is not as good for what gimp does. So the whole thing is kinda bad.
Nope, still missing. Guess I'm still stuck with Photoshop ... :-(
I've recommended some artists to try gimp instead of proprietary stuff. The major complaints were about drawing tablet support. Gimp has tablet support, but the options available to the artist are very limited. Also, there are no smoothing algorithms for tablet-drawn strokes - a pretty major drawback if you draw on the computer instead of scanning things in. /.)
Other than that, gimp is awesome - and almost everything you can think of is available as a plugin - I've already tried the new context-sensitive resizing plugin (context-sensitive resizing has been mentioned a few months ago on
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
I do hope they've added support for colour depths greater than 8 bits....
This isn't really breaking news: GIMP 2.4 was installed on my Debian sid machine along with yesterday's update.
Maybe 5 of the posts will have something actually illuminating. The rest of them will be GIMP and Photoshop fanbois going at each other. Let me save everybody the trouble.
GIMP has an unprofessional name! Waaaaaaaaaaah!
GIMP only does 8-bit color! Waaaaaaaaaaah!
GIMP isn't UI identical to PhotoShop on every menu 3 levels deep! Waaaaaaaaaaaah!
GIMP manages windows sucky! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Does not! Does too! Does not!.................
for feedback when you develop a paint program. The GUI is horrible, and it only takes a five-minute interview with a Photoshop user to understand what needs to be done. I think GIMP is suffering from a serious case of bad focus.
It's still better than Gimp. And I keep trying Gimp because I have to use windows if I want to use Photoshop.
I tried a release candidate of GIMP 2.4. It's clearly optimized for photos, not pixel art such as icons or sprites. I use the rectangle tool to drag out a selection. Then I try to drag the selected area to move the pixels inside the selection, which is a common operation in pixel art when making something bigger or smaller. Instead of moving the selected pixels like every single other paint program on earth, it makes another selection! In order to actually move pixels, I have to move my right hand from the mouse, press Ctrl+Shift+L, then move my right hand back to the mouse.
Is there an easier way to nudge the pixels in a selection in the final release?
I've been using this in the debian unstable repo for a few weeks now and I've found the redesigns are both intuitive and useful. I especially like the new selection tool, it's much easier to select an area and then change the selection after you realized you didn't hit the right pixel. Kudos to the GIMP team!!
P.S. Although the GTK2 (i.e. GIMP Tool Kit) file picker is still slow as molasses in directories with large numbers of files. I had to hack firefox to get it to use it's native file picker once again because I got tired of waiting 30 seconds or more each time I wanted to save a file.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
It took 3 years to go from 2.2 to 2.4? And the new features are underwhelming compared to closed source products. Where's the innovation? They can't even play catch-up at a decent speed.
:(
Great poster child for OSS.
Adjustment layers. If you're not familiar with the adjustment layers that Photoshop 5 software introduced, they're layers that copy pixels from layers below them and run a filter on them, and they automatically update when the layers below them are changed. It's been said that GIMP is one of the best Photoshop 3/4 clones around.
The rhetoric of this post is a little overstated. ANYTHING you'd want a serious tool for? Please, there are plenty of "serious" activities that do not require such color channels. Sure it's a drawback, but to call the program worthless over this one shortcoming is going a little overboard.
A lot of the key algorithms, particularly for color space conversion, are patented. Guess who holds a bunch of those patents?
Have you tried inkscape for tablet support? This appears to come from GTK so YMMV but is stated to support pressure and angle sensitivity.
I haven't, but I love the app. They've made considerable advances in the last couple of releases. I know there's a tutorial by a guy who draws and shades comics using it. Also that you can simplify lines or using some (built in python) scripts add jitter or add jitter as you draw.
If you've not tried it recently it's worth a punt.
I'm using Slackware 12 and installed the development release via autopackage (http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en).
And instead of helping them get there, you bitch and moan about it on slashdot. This is the great irony of the Gimp, those people who bitch the loudest about it to not being as good as Photoshop have absolutely no desire to help them get there.
I think as long as the program remains unattractive to professionals, they may as well keep the unattractive name. All the more incentive to fork the project, I guess, and it's got a built-in incentive to give it a new name.
Oh hey, they put in a new scheme interpreter, good for them. Clearly artists have been clamoring for THAT feature for ages now.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
8 bit color is fine for online graphics and CMYK is only needed for prepress. If I wanted to process digital photos I'd use filmgimp, if I want CMYK I'd not use a raster image editor anyway. Perhaps you should get a DTP package (eg: scribus) and decent RIP?
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
Peace sells, but who's buying?
...that you can control with a sample area. Instead we still have that mickeymouse auto-white balance thing which is useless.
I am constantly amazed how consistently this project misses the mark on the most basic qualities and features, even while trumping up some of their arguably less desirable additions. Show me their requirements and use-case documentation and blow me over with a feather ('cause I'd swear they never used such a thing).
The linked site looks 'shopped.
The gimp should have a lolcat mode where you can automatically append impact text to pictures.
Perl script to automatically garble grammar and mispell would be nice, too.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
This is coming. The devs have previously stated that once 2.4 was released they will start integrating GEGL which will add the ability to do adjustment layers, as well as lots of other stuff. So just hang on.
Despite your lame attempt at humor, you make a very good point. Photoshop is a tool, and a very versatile one at that, which is used by professionals to get the job done right. It's expensive and complicated, and for good reason.
The GIMP, on the other hand, is a comparatively simple tool, though still very useful and quite versatile in its own right. It is what us amateurs use because the pro tools are overkill and/or too expensive. It also happens to be free, in more than one sense of the word, which makes it ideal for its target audience. For example, I do web graphics sometimes. Why in the world would I spend close to US$500 for something that is rarely used and would be overkill to boot? I'd rather use my free image program with more tools in its toolkit than I would ever need for that task.
This is why I will never understand the PS vs. GIMP debate. GIMP will never be a Photoshop killer because there is no need for a Photoshop killer. Those who need the power of Photoshop will buy it (or steal it), those who don't will use GIMP or another simple tool.
On the other hand, Gimp 2.4 has SIOX builtin, the single best tool for manipulating photographs.
(For those who don't know : you make a coarse free-hand circle around your object, then you scribble on the object, and SIOX takes care to extract the object from the surrounding).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They are using some junk javascript which doesn't even resize even properly.
That javascript doesn't even work for me, the only way to view the screenshots is to right click and open in a new window. I'm using Firefox 2.0 on RHE4.
Like many will say where is greater then 8bit support, where are the layer filters and so on. I won't lie for the average joe and minor tasks gimp is probably just fine.
:/
My beef is that as of the present day Linux utterly blows when it comes to anything that fits the bill of a Photoshop style of application. And I say Photoshop because quiet frankly its the dominate player for what it does.
I will admit however that I am a little surprised at Krita. If any OSS application has me wishing that it has good fortunes its Krita. Better then 8bit support and the UI is a SDI not a MDI like gimp. One thing I've never liked about gimp is that when you click on a window that belongs to gimp all the other windows don't come forward as well on the desktop. If there is an option for this I would gladly welcome to hear where it is.
I don't personally use gimp. I either use Photoshop 7 running under Crossover Office or Krita. However the times I have played with the filters etc I couldn't help but notice some of them are mind numbingly slow and work in weird amount of passes. I went and looked through the source code for some of the filters and I must say some of them are writen with performance not in mind. I write plugins for a film compositing application that works strictly in float. Import a jpg and it is converted to float for working in the compositor. Working with 2k film plates and huge compositing trees I work at the speed gimp idles at. If I wasn't so busy with work, personal life and my own plugins for the compositing application I use, I would probably pick up gimps source code and fix all the slowness that the current filters work at. Its a shame really. Why an 8bit applications filters go so slow you can actually watch the application doing the work is beyond me.
So in the end I'm cheering for Krita. It's already got greater then 8bit support, a great looking UI, and its part of KDE so hopefully it has some backing. Gimp is an ok tool and I'm sure some people have put there hearts into it. But that doesn't mean that it just isn't up to par for where it should be. Gimp isn't some year or two old application, it has been around a while yet its progress moves at a snails pace. For the average Joe gimp is ok and probably is all they need. For us power users on the other hand we are still waiting for a decent fully featured image manipulation application for Linux. I could care less about the year of the desktop, just give me a bloody image tool I can use for all things on Linux.
GIMP was NEVER intended to replace, duplicate or mimic photoshop. Neither was it created to draw users from photoshop. Unfamiliar doesn't mean bad or uncomfortable. They go their own way. Some like it, some don't. You are free to use gimpshop if you like to. I really see no points in this interface discussion.
As I am already on Ubuntu (7.10) and GIMP is already installed and the version (at the moment) is only source code, do I have to uninstall the old version and then compile the new one?
A skilled operator will get decent results with the gimp, a bad operator will get poor results with photoshop. While Lack of support for >8bpp image formats is a definite show-stopper for photographers, I suspect very few of those who moan about gimp lacking CMYK actually work in prepress, understand color space or ever set eyes on an offset printer.
But let's not be too harsh; how else are idiots to justify paying for Photoshop and all these professional features they'll never need?
I'll probably catch some flack for this one, as I suspect that GIMP is primarily by *nix people, for *nix people. Indeed, I use it primarily on my FreeBSD boxes.
However, I had to set up a windows 2000 box for myself at work, due to some specific tools that I need that I don't have time currently to get running in anything else. As I also needed image manipulation software on there, I figured why not save the $400 cost of photoshop and install GIMP instead. Being as I use it often enough in FreeBSD, I figured it should be familiar...
However, I then realized that the windows distribution of GIMP is in some ways less complete than what I got from the FreeBSD packages version. Namely, if you don't manually install the prerequisite libraries in windows, you don't get support for some common image formats (PNG and GIF, IIRC).
I suspect there is a reason why this is so, but it would be nice if they could resolve it. I have installed photoshop on windows boxes before, and never had to install anything for those formats to open.
Otherwise, I will say I very much love having GIMP 2.2 on my windows box, and I'll up it to 2.4 when I get a chance later on. But this little catch did make it exceedingly difficult to explain to a colleague how to install it on her machine (she "came up" with a copy of photoshop instead).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Respecting your software freedom to share and modify the program has never been an option with Photoshop, no matter how much you pay. Freedom has always been a part of the GIMP.
Why stress software freedom? I want the social solidarity that you only get in freedom; I want to be independent from masters and make sure my computer only obeys me. I'd rather have less functional or powerful free software than a more powerful or reliable proprietary program because I can hire people to improve the free program or I can ask the community to help me improve the free program. I can't free Photoshop. The catch here is that most people haven't been taught to value their software freedom, so they don't know to look for it and they haven't been taught to think of the consequences when their freedom is absent. I aim to change this by teaching people to value freedom for its own sake. I hope you will too.
Digital Citizen
I just installed Photoshop CS2 using Wine on my new Ubuntu box. And surprisingly, it works great. Should I still check out Gimp?
I just used the Gimp again for the first time in a couple years and was reminded of where it can really lack for even non-professional users. Font support sucks completely, both from a looks perspective as well as from a feature perspective (kerning, strength, etc). The other feature I had an immediate use for that wasn't there was text along a path, if you can't apply an object like text to a path how useful are they?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Running photoshop under Linux is not supported. That is a problem for many.
Exactly. Considering how much we have to pay for Gimp, it's surprising they can't hire more professional web designers.
... a single document interface yet? It's not a chat program, why can't it have a single document window that I can alttab into and out of? And no, I don't like Gimpshop, thank you very much. I really, really, like the Gimp and find it no less intuitive than Photoshop for most jobs. Unless I need to alltab into a browser or PDF tutorial. In those cases it has me pulling my hair out.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Probably the most useful thing in this new release is the barrel distortion correction abilities and red eye tools. I haven't gotten to play with it yet, but I hope it enables setting/saving lens parameters for different cameras.
This will definitely streamline my photo editing, as I had to go to panotools and hugin to correct the barrel distortion in my point-and-shoot cameras, but the gimp for color correction, cropping, etc. The improved color menu layout and cropping tools will be great (I always hated that alternate-diagonals cropping system it had before).
The 16 bit color and CMYK, I couldn't give half a crap about. I mean, what proportion of gimp users need that stuff anyway? One percent? Half a percent? I think most gimp detractors just like panning something for the sake of it.
Signed,
A GIMP user for years.
I have been watching the 2.4 development for months. In my experience it is quite a visible improvement from 2.2 in many aspects. I e it for my work daily, and would find it very difficult to revert back to the last version. Comparisons to photo$hop aside, the gimp is shaping up quite nicely.
or CMYK. Surprise!
What people really want is Photoshop without having to pay for it.
All these Windows/Photoshop users will complain because Gimp is not an exact clone of PS so the user interface sucks. What's happened is that they have invested years learning Adobe's horrible interface and don't want to learn something new. Gimp is easy to use if yo are not already trained in Photoshop.
Very few of these winers care anyingh about Open Source or freedom they just want a free (as in free beer) Photoshop clone.
Well it's Open Source so you can fix it yourself if you like.
If you want Photoshop then just go and get Photoshop.
That said Gimp does lack some features I'd like. First off is "deep color". Would be nce if they could do some "exotic" formats like Cinepaint. Floating point color would be outstanding.
It loads much faster than the previous version I had, 2.3.18 I think. That's a good improvement, if nothing else.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I had to spend a lot of frustrating time learning to do things GIMP's way. It takes longer if you're used to working with other programs. But if you stick with it over time it starts to make its own kind of sense. Now I have to think about how to do the same thing in PS.
Blender is the same way. If you learn other 3D programs, you'll be tearing your hair out with Blender. If you learn it the other way around, Blender has its own logic about how to do things.
I do still wish the GIMP team would change the name.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I know GIMP isn't supposed to be everything to everyone, so it's not fair to say "Well program X can do it, so why can't GIMP?!?!?"* But seriously, should it be this hard to make a freaking circle?
*BTW, "program X" in this example is MS Paint.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
Photoshop will kill itself when Adobe decides to move to a raw subscription model that requires a network connection to use the application. And the thing is, for the types of people and organizations that are inclined to shell out the money for photoshop in the first place as opposed to pirating it, this sort of setup would probably work quite well for them.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
when your trying to paint, a vector program is not ideal. in fact, it just plain blows. there are certainly other options for digital painting (corel painter for example is in many ways far more powerful than photoshop), but GIMP/inkscape absolutely blows at it.
The digital color world is slowly but steadily shifting to an RGB workflow. The one thing that has impeded this move is the use of 8-bit color, which effectively means mapping a 32-bit color space to a 24-bit space. This mapping is a cube-hypercube mapping done via an ICC colorspace conversion. The cube-hypercube mapping is subject to error. This error is trivialized once the RGB colorspace is in 16-bit. Then the conversion is 48-bit to 32-bit, relegating conversion errors to noise that is below the threshold of vision, or even of the output devices.
Furthermore, RGB colorspaces almost always have a wider gamut than standard CMYK colorspaces such as ISO, SWOP, and GRACoL. Here again, the 8-bit problem comes into play. When RGB color is converted to a standard CMYK colorspace, the conversion is not really even 24->32 bit, since part of the RGB space is outside the gamut of the CMYK colorspace. Effectively, this means that instead of getting a 256-step gradation in any given channel, you get a smaller gradation, sometimes (for instance in the case of Adobe98 RGB -> SWOP) a MUCH smaller gradation. This leads to stepping problems in gradiants and a loss of detail in images, particularly in shadows. Once more, the move to 16-bit RGB color eliminates these problems.
So, here's the point: By working in a 16-bit RGB color space, one can effectively do anything that they could in a CMYK colorspace. (Yes, the extra channel is nice for color correction, but not necessary). The final step, conversion to CMYK, has already been implemented in at least two open source engines: ArgyleCMS and LCMS. The conversion to CMYK in an RGB workflow, is the final step. (Unless, of course, you are printing to a lightjet, lamba, etc). The CMYK colorspace that would be used is the colorspace of the output device.
In professional color, this is not even an issue, for the most part, since most modern RIPs do this conversion for you. 16-bit color support is now starting to become universal in the RIP world. As that happens, the Gimp becomes a viable tool for professional color work.
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
Another excellent point. I'm a musician, not a visual artist, so regardless of whether it's GIMP or Photoshop on my computer, my results are limited by my own skill. And I suppose I never thought about it but you're probably right about most of these folks screaming about missing features that they would never use anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are a few professional artists and photographers on here who really can justify the expense and trouble of using Photoshop based on those advanced features. It's just that most of the whiners here are probably spoiled on Photoshop from using it in college or getting it from their favorite warez site, and they fear change. I used Photoshop in college before I ever heard of GIMP, and my first contact with GIMP was indeed awkward. I've learned to utilize it for my rare graphic needs though, as I cannot afford Photoshop and I refuse to obtain it illegally.
Next time I post anything pro-gimp I'll do it under the username pHoToShOp0wNs.
(forgive me if I'm not the first to bring this up):
I have read several people extolling the virtues of FREE software. Free is better, right? Well, free as in speech: Yes. Free as in beer: Not so much.
Read one of the posts on this thread about how users should use free software. Then imagine a less technical user reading that. OK, now imagine that less-technical user getting frustrated when their tech buddy yells at them for installing free software. Bonzi buddy is free. "Awesome Free Desktops!" is also free. Do you see where I'm going with this?
I would never tell my mom to use free programs; I would tell her to use Open Source software. Open source is good because it's open, not because it's free. That is an important distinction to make.
Sorry I'm so off-topic, but I had to say it.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Not everywhere, but in enough places that I'd think people would notice.
For example: The Linux kernel. I'm running 2.6.22. The 2 is most likely incrementing normally, since there was a 1.0.0 release, that was considered "stable", or as much as it can be. The 22 also increments normally, I think -- though I may be wrong about that.
But I did upgrade directly from 2.4 to 2.6. This is because Linux 2.5 was a development branch. Highly unstable, but it went on for quite awhile, with the most essential parts backported to 2.4. When it was stable enough, 2.6 was released, starting with 2.6.0_rc1 (I think) -- but 2.4 is still maintained, maybe even 2.2 (or did they finally drop that?)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Free software doesn't mean "inferior quality".
My point is that most of the free softwares doesn't need more features but more QA.
One year back, once i wanted to use GIMP and had not Internet. I recollected that I have one ubuntu live CD and it should have GIMP for windows. I was correct, it had GIMP but no GTK. So i couldn't install. Why Ubuntu couldn't do a simple QA if someone can install GIMP from live CD or not. Why they assumed that people will be having GTK installed. I don't think they target audience with GTK installed with windows version of Linux programs.
Why are people deviating from Unix philosophy "Do less but do it well"?
PS: I am a big Linux fan and run ubuntu 7.10 on my new dell vastro 1500 laptop.
Well stated. I've never once felt held back by all the wonderful functionality available in GIMP.
SD
yes, but we're talking 5 years since filmgimp/cinepaint forked to make 32bit because it was needed for professional work then. Why is gimp competing with MS-Paint in 2007, when in 2002 it was obvious that 8bit-channels were obselete?
I think you mean "faze", unless you're worried about the price tag synchronizing you with a waveform.
(Sorry--you just happened to overflow my patience counter for this mistake.)
What I'm wondering is how much their user response program aided in the changes in 2.4 and if it will continue to help shape future releases.
Now I can make free porn of my fictional girlfriend on my fictional website. Itchingmyballs.com
there is a CYMK plugin for the gimp called separate+ @
http://cue.yellowmagic.info/softwares/separate.html
it is, as many solo projects, has always been in beta, but it worked well for me (though I am not really a graphic artist).
And as screwed up as the whole patent system is, you still can't patent something like CYMK because it is something fundamental to nature. What would be patentable would be the process. Two things can have the same end result as long as they don't use the same method, unless of course that method is fundamental to nature.
So yeah and stuff. Enjoy.
What I really want to see in TheGimp is a Python script recording tool! Since the toolkit itself is the fundamental part of the program with a graphical front-end, shouldn't a macro recorder be insanely simple to implement?
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Photoshop on the Mac is horrible for use on multimon setups. Why? Because the menu bar is stuck to the top of your primary monitor. What if you want to edit your image on an auxiliary monitor? You have to keep moving your mouse between the two. Odds are you have a huge monitor if you're doing serious PS work, and that makes the trek between the menu bar and the image all that much more cumbersome. On Windows I rarely ever have to use the mouse to access Photoshop's menus because they almost all have keyboard accelerators (the underlined letters), but on the Mac there's no such convenience. As a matter of fact, I suspect that if Photoshop was originally written for Windows, it would be far easier to use with the keyboard.
If you ask me, if would be much more convenient to allow the user to place the menu bar where they see fit, or at least allow the user to access it with a command-click or something. This is definitely a feature that they should have kept from NeXT.
dom
I like GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ and use it a lot. My work requires treating several hundred photos per day. GIMP adds to a photo some magic. No other soft does it to my knowledge. Thank you guys. Thank you Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. Thank you Jernej Simoni for Windows installer http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Yes, Gimp is not perfect, yet. Please go ahead and buy Photoshop.
I'll use Gimp and spend the thousand+ euros for something else.
Who gives a fuck about CMYK? If you need it that badly, you can convert the image once done and ready for turning it into dead tree. It's not important at all during editing, save for, maybe, channel splitting, which is something you'd rarely do with a useless colour model such as CMYK.
GIMP's real problem is its interface. Its toolboxes suck. They can't be made fat and short or thin and tall, they can't be docked into anything, they'll get in the way all the time, your image file will overlap with them, you can't possibly accomodate them in any decent fashion, a lot of screen space gets wasted, and its stupid windows such as the crop window will pop in right in front of the image you were trying to edit. You need an hour of KWin tweaking to get it working half decently, and still waste screen space. On top of that, some of its tools suck (such as the way gradients work or the poor control for transparency and antialiasing), the right mouse button is wasted, and zoom sucks (though this is getting fixed in this release, as far as I can see).
I think they should take Paint Shop Pro 9 or later as a model of a proper interface and proper design for tools. It allows you to be more productive than you are with other software, it has a nice dockable interface which, after 15 minutes of tweaking, can get reduced to a minimum (and you show/hide tool options or select tools with keys), it treats colours, gradients, patterns, textures, etc. as attributes, you have a foreground and background colour to paint with the left and right mouse buttons, can easily navigate through your image with the mouse wheel, and unlike Photoshop or GIMP, it supports vector drawing as well, so you don't need separate programs for vector and bitmap draw; in PSP you can have bitmap and vector layers intertwined.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
The tool in question is improving with each iteration. Eventually it will get to a level when it is usable by professional people, as it is it is good enough for many people.
We had *nothing* 10 years ago.
Some people simply don't understand the dynamics of open software and how the cumulative improvements are not lost and will eventually get you where you need to be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You seem to think CMYK is somehow 32 bit (8 bits of each?) and that because 8-bit rgb has 24 bits it can't represent it, but because 16-bit rgb has 48 bits it can.
This is wrong. CMYK has FOUR dimensions. It is completely impossible to represent it in a 3 dimensional space. You claim is like saying that if I put finer graduations on a ruler, it can suddenly measure 2 dimensions rather than one!
The converters you talk about (and incidentally are in Gimp already, and in printer drivers when you send them rgb colors) map the 3-D space into the 4-D space. But they cannot fill the 4-D space, any more than you could fill a room with a piece of paper (while keeping the paper's shape a non-fractal). Thus there are CMYK colors that are not output. This has NOTHING to do with color resolution. No useful RGB->CMYK converter will produce both CMY=0,K=1 and CMY=1,K=1 output. Even if the CMYK device was 1 bit per ink and thus only capable of printing 16 different colors, you could not represent all those 16 possibilities with 24, or even 48, or 96 bits, or an infinite number of bits of rgb!
In reality the highest quality CMYK printing devices available have much less than 8 bit resolution in how much ink they lay down (once you take into account errors in ink delivery and spread). The resolution is so low that the volume represented by the RGB->CMYK conversion is over-sampled by many times when the source is 8 bit rgb. So actually 16 bits does not help one tiny bit in the area you are asking for.
The reason for more than 8 bits is for processing in the digital realm. For instance if your picture is 1/4 as bright as you want it, and you multiply by 4, then you lose two bits of resolution (as the bottom 2 will be zero). If your screen shows 8 bits and the original was 8 bits, you have effectively reduced your screen to 6 bits. If the original was 16 bits (and your screen was showing the top 8 bits) then after the multiply your screen is still showing an 8 bit image (the top 8 bits of the remaining 14). (that is not real accurate, a correct program with knowledge of sRGB would do something more complex and you would lose more than 2 bits at the bright end, less at the dark end).
Also more than 8 bits should absolutely use 16 bit half float data. 16 bit integers is a total waste of effort. Float data has the advantage that it is not clamped (this eliminates gamut limitations), and that a vastly larger range of useful data. Even 16 bit data would start to lose resolution on an 8 bit screen if multiplied by more than 256 (actually somewhat larger if sRGB is correctly followed). But 16-bit float would allow a multplication by 65540 or so before there would be loss. The only reason for 16-bit integers was that older computers could not do float fast enough, but this is not a problem now, modern graphics cards even take half-float data directly.
And the GIMP UI is perfectly adequate.
The problem is that people want the GIMP to mimic some other application they have already learned.
I call that the "Windows eye candy syndrome" where it is assumed that if something does not work as in MS Windows then it is badly designed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If what people want is a Photoshop clone, they should really go and get the real thing.
Usability reasons should point out why a procedure is clumsy and how to improve it, how to make an interface predictable and on ocasions how to make it simpler.
Pointing out about how another product does the same thing is completely pointless because it ignores the context in which each application is designed and intended to run.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... and it only takes a UI expert 30 seconds to tell you so (I am telling you now).
The problem you are referring to is familiarity with another UI (in this case Photoshop's one), this problem is not intrinsic to the GIMP, the developers can't do much about people unwilling to try new things, nor should they.
People happy with other tools should keep using those tools, people trying to use a new tool (for whatever reason compelling them to do so, perhaps a different set of features, or in this case perhaps about legitimate concerns with openness of the source code, or the price) should at least make an effort to understand the idiosyncrasies of a new tool (sorry, but 10 minutes of biased assessment is not good enough).
This problem is normally overcomed by abundant, easy to understand documentation, you would have a point if you were highlighting this problem.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Is the UI still as horrendous and unintuitive?
Or did you pull that one out from where the sun shines not? CinePaint uses 16-bit but the GIMP developers didn't take it on for a good pragmatic reason: they were going to HAVE to take the colour system out anyway to implement other colourspaces. So why put out something that "just about works" just to have to whip it out later? Add in that, although this could be there for a year or two, the work would take time from people working on the proper solution, delaying the final work.
And what about the Script-fu work out there, the API will either have to make 8-bit colour transparent (and hope there's no jiggery-pokery going on in the memory contents in the script) or break it completely so that you can't accidentally call the 16-bit-colour API in an 8-bit expectant script (and breaking all the cases where this isn't a problem...).
Mind you, if it's so simple, work on a transparent plug in yourself.
The one thing that makes GIMP better than Photoshop for anyone who is not a professional is that it's free. I would rather have a mutt than a full blooded dog any day. Let the bluebloods and the pros have the inbred dogs, I'll take a free range (OMG, I can't believe I said that) mutt any day.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
That doesn't mean it IS photoshop. If you want photoshop on Linux, talk to Adobe.
The reason why GIMP is brought out is that it's a decent shorthand. How many ordinary people know the difference when you talk about "raster graphics editing"? How many know about "Photoshop"?
So GIMP is a raster graphics editor. It is optimised for workflows involving photo/image manipulation. It therefore does the same task as Photoshop. CMYK is the last process and you can take the output of GIMP and process it in something that is designed SPECIFICALLY FOR such preprint work.
Maybe the graphics industry should (if they really are feverish) is pay for some coders to work on GIMP. Or tell Adobe to get their arse in gear and get a linux client working. Nonlinear video editing has some closed applications that you can PAY for that work well on Linux and if you must have a FOSS version, pay for some coder time working on them, but the gap IS filled and you have no worse an option than you do on Windows: pay for the commercial application to edit your movie.
Oh, for Hanging Chad, what should they change their name to? Firebird? (oops, database company that already sued a browser of that name). GIMP is not going to be taken, so keep it.
Now if only they'd written their website so that it didn't depend on scripts to get the CSS files imported. Being a user of Firefoxs NoScript extension I went to look at their website and found a right old mess !
Until I looked at the source, and temporarily allowed "gimp.org", I actually thought this might be some strange GIMP GUI idea for a website ?
n.b. you'll need to view the site with "NoScript" to get the joke !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
That's one feature that would be really important. Not all of us do just web graphics.
Everything is not in one window. Krita is not MDI, it is like Photoshop, a content-centric design rather than a control-centric design like the Gimp.
All the tools for editing one image are in that image's window. If you are working on two images with one on each monitor, like you suggest, then you have two sets of tools, one for each image.
I fail to see how this is inferior to the Gimp over multiple monitors. IMO it is far superior. With the Gimp for example because there is only one set of tools you would have to move your mouse from one monitor to the other all the time to use the tools.
When you are talking about editing a piece of content, it only makes logical sense to tie the tools being used intrinsically to that document.
I've noticed that Mac users often don't maximise but instead have windows laying like a lot of clutter on the desktop. I think this is something to do with historically better management of application focus and memory (but I don't know).
Linux users? Don't know haven't had the pleasure of seeing any other linux users at work!
Corel PhotoPaint beats them all! - imho I have both PP and PS. PP can do all that PS does and is a lot easier to use doing it. I know PS has the rep as being for professionals but the truth is there are a lot of professionals using PP. They just don't want to argue with the PS snobs. I know, I'll probably get stomped for saying this but as long as its only on the web it won't hurt too much. I will start using GIMP when I have to totally quit using XP but I think that will still be a few years away. Who knows, by then GIMP may be what everyone says it should be.
Why in the world would I spend close to US$500 for something that is rarely used and would be overkill to boot?
You wouldn't. You'd use Paintshop Pro, or Photoshop Elements, or Corel whats-its-name or any of a dozen other graphics programs designed specifically for that use. If Photoshop is overkill for you, buy something with fewer features than Photoshop, and for a hell of a lot less than $500. You're putting forward a kind of goofy argument, as if Photoshop is the only image editing program ever made.
I'd rather use my free image program with more tools in its toolkit than I would ever need for that task.
You mean Paint.NET? Yeah, it's a lot better than GIMP, isn't it.
Comment of the year
Each subpixel subtracts from white to give a particular color of red, green or blue. But those are added together to create any other colors. So LCDs are in essence additive, not subtractive.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Gimp 2.3 and above now does Lanczos resampling optionally on all its operations.
This resampling method approximates the ideal sinc filter, and provides an excellent balance between ringing and antialiasing. For downsampling, it removes frequencies about Nyquist rate (antialiasing), and for upsampling it correctly interpolates between sample points based on the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation formula. Resampling allows subpixel accuracy so I'm very happy to see they've included the Lanczos resampling kernel.
It's briefly touched upon on this link from the summary under "Improved display when zooming in or out".
I've implemented a 3D Lanczos filter for CT scan data (to eliminate staircasing when reconstructing an isosurface from marching cubes) and it was cool to view the Gimp's code for inspiration.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
And some versions of PhotoShop has JavaScript support. If you are a serious digital artist, you should know your tools well enough to do some programming. As well as if you are a serious traditionall painter/photographer, you should know some chemistry.
Sooner or later you reach a level where premade tools is not enough. Or your favorite tool gets discontinued.
I use mostly premade paint for oil paintings and watercolour paintings. Knowing exactly how these paints work, give me an extra edge. And there are rare occations where I can't use premade paint. Despite it's convinience, premade paint is technically very, very limited compared to your own, fresh, homemade paint (and usually result in less durable paintings). Do I use premade egg tempera. Hell no! Premade egg tempera sucks.
I use mostly premade tools for GIMP. Knowing exactly how they work, give me an extra edge (the wonders of open source). As of today, I've only made some small modifications in already existing plugins. Knowing that it is easy to create my own plugins the day when I will need them, give me confidence. Do I use PhotoShop for creating images. Hell no! PhotoShop sucks. It's only useful for preprint corrections.
(And the reason I took interest in programming and math, as a small kid, was that I wanted to do pretty pictures on my VIC 20.)
Well actually I think you missed my point entirely. I wouldn't buy a program for very light web graphics use at all, be it Photoshop, PSP, PhotoPaint or whatever else is out there. To me, spending any money at all on a tool when I can get a free tool that is more than enough is quite silly. It's also quite silly to argue whether Photoshop or GIMP is the better editor, when they have completely different target audiences.
As for Paint.NET, I'm not sure where that comment came from. I didn't bring up that program because I don't use it. If you do, and it does the job for you, then that is great and I wish you luck with it!
I disabled JavaScript and opened it and it looked fine (it was the same, in fact, except that the fade-in effect on the nav-menu was missing and there were no rounded corners). Does NoScript do more than just block JavaScript?
There don't have to be only two types (super expensive & powerful vs. free & limited). There's plenty of room for mid-range stuff that gets the job done without being really annoying (the way that GIMP is to some people).
Also, not that this has much to do with the above but, even though everyone says "GIMP isn't meant to be a Photoshop clone", it seems to me that it definitely is meant to be that. Maybe the active developers have an identity crisis.
Anyone used XARA? XARA Xtreme & 3D are both great products, don't feel like Adobe clones, and have a decent interface. Similarly, Macromedia was making good products that were awesome, and though expensive, not CS-expensive. Of course, we all know how that ended.
If you take a look at the other graphics programs out there, you will see that there are many of varying prices, that have different UI styles, some of which are easy and intuitive. GIMP, by comparison, definitely appears to be a PS clone, and an extremely mangled one, at that. It's too bad, too. But then, I use CS, I like it, it works, and I have no need to switch, so there you go. I'm not asking for a free-as-in-beer PS or AI.
That said, it is getting better. I wish everyone involved with it the best of luck. It will be nice when there's a killer open source photo editor, if only to increase competition and sustain awareness of the FOSS ideals. Also, let's consider it to be insurance, because Adobe will eventually buy everyone else that matters. Goodbye CoolEdit, goodbye FreeHand. *Sniff* you shall be missed, but not forgotten.
it's not that they aren't professional, it's just that they can't afford better graphic design software. it's a vicious cycle, actually.
...and why would I want it on my computer?
...and how can you make it produce adequate imagery on cellulose sheets?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Well, this is more in response to all the replies claiming "patents" than anyone else -- but, Gimp DOES have color conversion. It has CMYK and sRGB for sure. It uses lcms library to perform color conversions. It also supports icc printing and display profiles. I don't do prepress or whatev, I can't comment if it's CMYK internally.. but I can't comment if Photoshop is truly CMYK internally either. But it will input and output files in whatever colorspace you want.