First Looks at The Gimp 2.5

desmondhaynes writes "The GIMP team announced today the first release from the 2.5 development series. It is true that this version is unstable, but a little bird told me to give it a try and see what's it capable of. First of all, let me tell you that its interface is quite redesigned and I think that some users will have problems adjusting with it, but that's just my two cents. On the other hand, version 2.5.0 of The GIMP includes some hot new features, like the integration of GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) which will finally get support for higher color depths, more colorspaces and eventually non-destructive editing."

Comments

Re:Have they changed the name yet?

[Rob T Firefly]

So call it the "GNU Image Manipulation Program" around your bosses.

Re:Jam Tomorrow

[tpwch]

Wrong. Finally getting higher than 8-bit depth is great news for anyone who does more than a bit of hobby work with the gimp.

To take myself as an example I take photos with a digital camera that gives me RAW files. Those are 12-bit files, which means 4096 colors per pixel rather than the 256 you get with 8 bit. Now I will be able to edit those in the gimp without loosing any quality, which means alot less posterisation when adjusting contrast and settings like that. The output image will simply look alot better, with the same tools that we already have in the gimp (assuming that the input image is of good quality of course).

Re:You *know* it hasn't noticeably improved when..

[gEvil (beta)]

Yep. My first thought exactly. You know the guy doing the writeup/review really has no clue about the GIMP's shortcomings when he touts a new splashscreen as an exciting improvement.

Appauling

[Stuidge]

This is a word for word, picture for picture copy of the original at Softpedia (I'm guessing, as the Softpedia article was posted 4 days earlier). The article linked is full of adverts as well. You would be better off reading the offical GIMP release notes.

Malware

[pelago]

Hmm, I'm getting malware popups from 'trustedbrowser.com' from the site in TFA.

Re:Yay New Features

[Coryoth]

You forgot "no interface elements that aren't batshit insane." I'm curious; can you tell me some interface elements that are batshit insane, and explain why they are insane? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to admit that GIMP has some interface quirks and problems around and about. Personally, however, I've found most things to work reasonably well, and, more importantly, to be steadily improving (the dockable palettes that showed up in 2.0 or so, and the Image Window + Tools Window shown in TFA for 2.5, etc.). That leaves me honestly curious as to what leads one to the point of view that apparently all the interface elements are insane -- so please: can you explain some of the things that bug you so much about the interface?

Solen content!!!

[theempire]

Dear Slashdot admin, be aware that the current article (http://techrunch.blogspot.com/2008/04/first-look-gimp-250.html) was completely stolen from Softpedia (http://news.softpedia.com/news/First-Look-The-GIMP-2-5-0-83090.shtml) which was posted, as Stuidge said above, 4 days ago....

Re:You *know* it hasn't noticeably improved when..

[Coryoth]

...the very first item in the list of "noteworthy" improvements is a new splash screen. :'( It's a development release. The odd numbered releases (2.1, 2.3, 2.5) are all unstable development releases when new features are integrated in. Usually there are around 20 such development releases (i.e., we got to around 2.3.20 before 2.4 was finally released). In this case we have 2.5.0 -- the very first development release, with just the beginnings to structural changes to integrate new functionality. In this case that means enough behind the scenes work to get GEGL working, and the beginnings of an apparent UI overhaul. Expect another 20 or so releases each adding more improvements before you get the next stable release: 2.6.0.

Re:Jam Tomorrow

[simcop2387]

To take myself as an example I take photos with a digital camera that gives me RAW files. Those are 12-bit files, which means 4096 colors per pixel rather than the 256 you get with 8 bit. just to be pedantic, i doubt you're raw files are actually 12bit per pixel, its most probably 12bit per channel per pixel (and in the case of the gimp it was a maximum of 8bit per channel per pixel). this gives you 12bits * 3 channels (assuming RGB here) per pixel, so its a 2^36 colors (68,719,476,736 ) instead of 2^24 colors (16,777,216). still a dramatic change, but i just figured it'd be nice to have the complete numbers there :)

Re:Yay New Features

[MobyDisk]

The problem with GIMP is that the interface is so far gone, so weird, so bizarre, so non-standard - that it is really tough for anybody to sanely explain what's wrong with it. It's just so darn self evident.

Having not used it in 2 years, I'll try:
1) The multiple windows thing
I think this is the most often cited issue so I will list it first. GIMP opens multiple top-level windows which means that normal shortcuts and window navigation doesn't work. (Alt-tab on Windows -- apple-tab on Macs, etc.) The only way to use GIMP is to have multiple virtual desktops, which not everyone likes. The barrage of windows clutters the interface, and windows move around a lot because when you select new tools they resize or change. You can see through to the desktop which is distracting. I know at least on the Windows version, the keys that hide windows so you can get to your image don't really work right. Maybe my experience is skewed though because of the Windows and Mac ports. But IIRC, this same stuff happened on Linux.

This problem has garnered enough hate that there are several open-source projects that are either modifications to Photoshop, or programs that re-parent the window so that it behaves more normally. Unfortauntely, all of them are hacks and don't work super-well.

2) Unusual use of menus
- The menus are just... oddd. To a new user, the app is useless because once you open something, you get a window with no menus. After much frustration, the user monkey-clicks the mouse and realizes the menus are on the right-click instead of at the top of the window. That might not actually be a bad idea, but it is definitely counter-intuitive. Especially for "file" operations where people are used to seeing File-New/Open/Save/Save As/Close and those just aren't there.

This is not an issue for an advanced user, but it is strikingly odd to someone new, and it might force a lot of people to give-up right away.

3) Things that are NOT problems
- I'm browsing the comments and I see comments about Photoshop having an odd user-interface. I see comments that one particular tool or another doesn't work the way someone expects. I think these people are missing the point. The problems with GIMP aren't that some particular tool is not as easy to use as a Photoshop tool, or vice-versa. The problem is that nobody can even find the tool in GIMP because the overarching user-interface is so strange. Once people can get to the tool in the first place, then think about how the tool behaves.

4) Other
If you really want to know, this comes-up on Slashdot every 6 months or so. Probably some searching will come-up with obvious things I've completely forgotten over time.