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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."
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'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"?
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.
A lot of the key algorithms, particularly for color space conversion, are patented. Guess who holds a bunch of those patents?
Gimp's UI makes more sense on a XWindows system where you can set the individual sections of the UI to stay on top. For instance, I can keep the image full-screen on one monitor while using the editing tools on a second monitor. I'd like to see a single-window app like Photoshop do that!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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).
IMHO:
Photoshop is going to soon suffer the same problem that i see for IBM. Open source is really starting to gain momentum. My fellow art nerds and I are all poor. We can't afford to go out and buy expensive software like photoshop; so what do we do? We go out and buy a wacom, get ourselves a copy of the GIMP and go to work. When we start getting ourselves into decision making positions, what are we going to choose? A very expensive and (imho) difficult to use piece of software like photoshop? Or a very familiar, and 100% free piece of software like the gimp?
Similarly, IBM has really shot themselves in the foot with the OS/400 platform. Here you have a a really really rock solid piece of software, arguably one of the most stable operating system/platforms in existence today, but you have a problem. If I wanted to go out and learn OS/400, I mean REALLY learn it (the way that i can with Linux/BSD) I wouldn't be able to. It is FARRRR to expensive for a hobbyist like myselft to get into.
Now ask yourself, if I, or my equally poor nerd brethren, go out into the job market and are tasked with building a database for whoever we start working for, what are we going to choose? Are we going to go with the familiar, very capable, and very FREE database called MySQL or Postgres (running on top of a *nix of course)? Or are we going to opt for a very cumbersum (I mean this from the perspective of somebody who has never developed on it before, it might be very elegant for all i know) very expensive, and VERY unfamiliar database such as DB2 (which is what runs on OS/400).
Both IBM and adobe have shot themselves in the foot in this regard. Today's hobbyists are tomorrows decision makers, and they are going to choose what they are accustomed to.
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You might be surprised to learn that some GIMP developers and Krita developers have been talking with each other for a while.
While the interface used by Krita is interesting, it is not suitable for everybody. In particular, several artists and graphics professionals using GIMP want to be able to use their dual-screen setups in the most efficient way, by distributing the image windows and the docks (with the tool options and other tabs) freely over both screens. This is difficult to do when everything is embedded inside a single large window.
The current GIMP user interface is far from ideal and all developers know that. But it is not so easy to redesign it without breaking some of the features that some users came to rely on. Some major improvements to the user interface are planned for future versions, though.
-Raphaël
I can tell you some things that drive me nuts in GIMP 2.2. (I haven't tried 2.4 yet.)
The Layers dialog has two modes for deciding which image's layers it'll tell you about: Either you have to explicitly select it from a drop-down, or have it auto-switch to the last image which had focus. Either way, more often than not, it seems to have the wrong image selected for me. Why?
If I'm hopping back and forth between images, say, cutting things from one and pasting them in the other, the drop-down selection will be wrong almost 100% of the time, simply because I'm hopping back and forth between images. So even though I've raised the imagine I'm interested in, and perhaps pasted something into it (which I now need to go anchor to a layer), the layers dialog points at the image I cut from, not the image I'm pasting into. So what about automatic mode?
That one sucks too. I have my window manager set to "focus follows mouse." I have only so much screen real estate. In all likelihood, the image I cut from or yet some other image lies on the path between the image I pasted in, and the layers dialog. In some cases, it can be next to impossible to move from the image I'm working with and the layers dialog without brushing past another image--thereby causing the layers dialog to select the wrong image. Again, it loses.
What I really want is the layers dialog to pick up the image I most recently interacted with. Gaining focus does not count as interaction. I should have to click something (even dead-air) or press a key to send an event into a given image's window before the layers dialog switches over to that image.
If you want to rename a layer in Gimp, you can double click its name in the layers dialog and start typing. So far, so good. BUT, if you don't hit [Enter], but instead just move along and click elsewhere, it'll revert your edit. This makes editing a large number of names really tedious and error prone.
(I've got a few other pet peeves with the layers dialog, such as lacking a way to select a layer AND make it the only visible layer in one go, or locking subgroups of layers together for motion rather than only having a global "lock together", or selecting groups of layers to act on simultaneously with a filter, or raising/lowering layers as a group, but I'll stop there.)
If your image is smaller than the image window, you can over-stroke an image, which is great. You can even do point-to-point strokes with both endpoints outside the image. This is fairly handy. You can't do this, though, if the image is greater than or equal to the visible area. There's no overstroke zone around the image. You either have to zoom out, or make an oversized canvas to center your image in.
Ok, suppose I go the oversized canvas route... oversized by how much? It really depends on how zoomed in or out you are. In reality, the amount of overstroke zone you need remains fairly fixed regardless of zoom level, so this isn't really an ideal solution.
If a given layer has a lot of "thin" structures in a sea of transparency, the move tool often grabs the layer behind rather than the layer intended, even if the intended layer is the currently active layer. GIMP should "fuzz" the opaque areas out a little bit to make them more grabbable, because chances are that's what the user wishes to move. I don't remember a time when I accidentally grabbed a layer that was too high on the Z-ordering. I curse endlessly when I grab the layer below the one I wanted though, and that happens regularly.
If I click on a tool and move away too quickly, the tool gets a highlight box around it, but doesn't actually get se
Program Intellivision!
The single-window paradigm is a limitation of Windows, and not necessarily Photoshop. The mac version handles multiple monitors gracefully, and always has. The tool palettes also disappear when the app's not in focus -- there's no reason why they need to be separate windows, or even visible when the app's not being used.
Photoshop is also one of the few apps where the "Menus at the top" scheme makes sense virtually all the time. There are cases in which I don't like it, but for applications like Photoshop or the GIMP, which commonly manage several windows at once, there is absolutely no doubt that Apple's windowing paradigm is the best of the bunch. It certainly accounts for a good portion of Apple's dominance in the creative design industry dating back to the 90s.
I believe that recent versions of PS gained the ability to pop the canvas and pallets out of the main "root" window on Windows. You've still got the root window hanging out somewhere with the menubar in it, but you don't actually need to have anything in it. It's not optimal, but it's a limitation of the OS more than anything else.
(Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting Apple's got the best scheme overall. There are certainly situations where Windows or X are clearly more efficient, and there are a lot of aspects of the OS X GUI that "bug" me. My "ideal" GUI would probably be some combination of Windows 2000, Mac OSX, and Xfce)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Interesting. Have you tried WinImages (if you're working under Windows)? It addresses all those issues, and many more. The UI is not like Photoshop's or the Gimp's, and is demonstrably more efficient in terms of what gets done per UI interaction count.
Sounds like you're a real layers fan; WinImages has more layering power than anything else out there, hands down. 70+ blend modes, non-destructive geometric edits including scaling and rotation and a lot more.
I know this because I wrote a lot of it. ;-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ah. I suppose I was a bit unclear.
Windows' problem is not a technical one. IIRC, Windows 98 "properly" supported multi-monitor displays out of the box, and the support subsequently improved in Win2k and XP. I used to use Windows in a Multi-Monitor configuration all the time, and agree that it's about on par (if not superior) to Apple these days. There were also various extensions that ATI and nVidia added with their drivers that made the experience a bit smoother (ie. they did a better job of "remembering" where windows are supposed should be placed if an application is quit and re-opened).
Windows' problem is a conceptual one. The whole concept of "root" windows is arguably the Operating System's greatest limitation. Office did away with it in 2000 IIRC, and just gave each document its own window and item on the taskbar. Windows' metaphor of a document originally assumed that a given document will only ever need to interact with documents of the same type within the same application, hence the root windows. Apple took a more "multimedia" approach, giving us applications like ClarisWorks, which is still more or less unparalleled in its ability to seamlessly integrate dissimilar media types and sources into a single document. History has more or less proven that Apple's approach was the better of the two, and the whole "one app does it all" paradigm (ie. Microsoft Works) fell into obscurity.
I'd also peg this as the reason why Apple does drag-and-drop between applications SO much better. Microsoft's system of inter-application objects never really worked properly -- try embedding a not-officially-supported media file into powerpoint, and you'll see what I mean. Apple (and Quicktime especially) handle this much better -- if you install the proper (FOSS!) codec, you can seamlessly embed Flash (FLV) videos into any application that supports the Quicktime framework, which is virtually all of them -- iMovie, Final Cut, iTunes, Keynote, etc.....
Since then, Microsoft's been tweaking their "Window" metaphor to more closely match Apple's, and have been largely successful with it. However, vestiges of the "old way" are still seen in Applications like Photoshop. Because of the menubar issue, Adobe can't efficiently port Photoshop to Windows without ditching the root window (even though the technical limitations requiring the window were removed years ago). In order to do so, each canvas would require its own menubar, which would be hideously impractical unless the number of menu options were significantly reduced so that they'd fit (which wouldn't necessarily a bad thing in its own right).
As is its nature, X has of course had this capability since its inception, but like virtually every other aspect of X, it's so difficult to use and configure, it hardly ever gets used.
Multi-monitor support is one of the coolest and tragically underused technologies out there, and it's useful across the board -- have your source open on one monitor while writing a paper on the other, edit video on one monitor and preview on the other, canvas on one monitor - pallete on the other, code on one monitor, web preview on the other, presentation on one monitor, lecture notes on the other, and the list goes on and on and on.
Big honking LCDs are dirt-cheap these days, and the productivity increase you'll see by adding an extra monitor (or just having one big high-res monitor) are incredible. I've been cursing the heavens for the past few months, as I've been stuck on a tiny 12" 1024x768 PowerBook for the past few months -- great machine, but I find myself considerably less productive without a big screen (or more than one)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose