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GIMP 2.6 Released
Enselic writes "The GIMP developers are proud to announce the release of GIMP 2.6. The release notes start with: 'GIMP 2.6 is an important release from a development point of view. It features changes to the user interface addressing some often received complaints, and a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and non-destructive editing to GIMP.' The notes go on to say the toolbox menubar has been removed, the toolbox and docks now are utility windows, it's now possible to pan beyond the image border, the freehand select tool has been enhanced to support polygonal selections, and much more."
Man, just after I updated 2.2 to 2.4! @#@!#*!!!
One area I hope the GIMP team focuses on in the future is font rendering. I absolutely love working with GIMP, but the fonts still don't come out as nice as they do in Photoshop. I'm not graphical design savvy enough to know why, only that my fonts look like crud when compared to the smooth output of Photoshop.
Other than that, GIMP is an incredible product. Anyone doing casual graphical editing, just learning, or otherwise does not need the top-end features of Photoshop will be well-served by this package. Kudos for doing such an incredible job, guys! :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
A question, is there CYMK color separation support already?
Sorry if this was implemented already, I havent checked on the Gimp in a while.
No sig for the moment.
The article you linked to says: it has "box, circle or freehand lasso selection tools." The Gimp 2.4 already had box, circle, and freehand selection tools; that's old stuff. If you look at the Gimp 2.6 release notes (you don't even have to read it), you will see that a polygon selection tool is quite different.
The closest I've been able to get to this sort of functionality before has been to repeatedly add and subtract open-ended freehand regions, where the Gimp will automatically make a straight line between the end and starting points.
I just love Gimp. But why does Gimp have to separate the windows like that? Can't it have everything as a multi-document all under one window?
Because MDI interfaces are an obscenity before god, and implementing one should be a corporal offense. Let window management be handled by the window manager.
Can't it have everything as a multi-document all under one window?
Please, no! Multiple windows are great for multiple monitors and / or multiple documents being edited at once. I can't stand programs which force you into one window. If you want, you can combine all the tool docks into one, and thus have just a document window and a tool window, but please don't force us to do so!
Cheers
A missing feature is still a missing feature, no matter the workaround. If someone was selling a car with no seatbelts, I wouldn't buy it just because someone pointed out I could make my own easily enough.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, what I want instead is a GIMP/Inkscape hybrid ;)
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
This train of thought here is exactly what's wrong with Linux and the OSS world in general. If it's already doable, no matter how hard and /or obscure the method, than that's just good enough,no reason to improve.
Until this attitude is corrected, OSS will continue to go nowhere.
Does he advertise projects he works on in his spare time as being comparable to Photoshop?
I've never seen any "advertisements" for the Gimp anywhere. I guess I haven't been paying attention.
That being said, the Gimp is comparable to Photoshop. You can compare anything to anything if you want, obviously. I myself enjoy comparing apples and oranges in my copious free time.
More importantly the Gimp is a free alternative to Photoshop, with different strengths and weaknesses. Both products seem to have a hellish learning curve, so you would be foolish to abandon Photoshop if you are already invested in it, and I suspect it'd be equally foolish to start an investment in Photoshop today when there is a free alternative available.
It is not photoshop... However if anyone wants to use photoshop in Linux they tell them use the Gimp, it is just as good... Which is bad advice. My output with Photoshop is much higher then with the GIMP, it may be just me and how I approach problems but in general I can get much more done and look a lot better with photoshop vs. the GIMP. It is not that GIMP is photoshop or the developers are trying to make it like Photoshop, However it given as a replacement where it isn't.
Photoshop is only a dog when dealing with HUGE Images.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
[note: I won't have a chance to try the new version until later tonight, so this post is based on earlier versions. This sounds fair to me, since the "MDI/SDI" debate has raged for centuries, and has, until now at least, been completely inapplicable to Gimp, which is neither]
Got it. Agreed.
Now show me ANY window manager which handles such a thing as well as, say, Photoshop's MDI for a single application.
It seems that everyone who makes this argument seems to be of the "virtual desktop" bunch (usually 1 application per desktop). ie: Those who don't actually use the primary feature of a windowed environment: Windows!
Meanwhile, GIMP tries to have it both ways, sharing arbitrary windows whose context depends on the last window selected, while (arbitrarily) putting "cross-window" features in [not a shared interface, but instead:] EVERY WINDOW.
There's MDI, there's SDI, and then there's GIMP, which has taken the worst features of both.
When I get home, I'll download the latest version, which may have actually addressed all of these complaints (the release notes tease more than any previous versions' has. I still expect it to be usability hell; but, for example, removal of the menu bar from the toolbox window sounds very promising.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It would cool if Photoshop made the same move too, eh? Its not written with Cocoa either, which is giving Adobe a few headaches now that Carbon has been even more officially deprecated than it used to be. Seriously, you simply don't seem to understand what is involved in switching an program that it totally rooted in its GUI from one GUI toolkit to another. People say this as though its a simple recoding. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even porting from one version of a toolkit to another can be traumatic, let alone porting between two different 'kits. Much more optimistic is the fact that the GTK/Quartz port gets better every week, allowing the GIMP guys to offer a "native" (non-X11 based) build with very few code changes.
No really I want GIMP to be able to do this.
It can.
Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
Circle somebody: Ellipse select tool, select an oval. Stroke selection. Choose a line style, you're done.
Cartoon speech bubble: Ellipse selection, shift-lasso select the arrow (if you can't draw a straight enough line, convert to a path, edit the path to put an arrow in, then convert back to a selection). Fill with background colour using the paint tool (fill whole selection). Stroke selection, choose line style. Put the words in it with the text tool. If you're doing that a lot, make a generic text balloon and save it, then insert it as a layer when you need one.
These things should be single step operations from the main control pane.
Why? What's wrong with a 2-step operation? It's still relatively quick considering how often people want to do what you described (not very often; heck, the people who just want to do that generally get by with MS Paint).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I know this is something of a surprise for people who hate the name GIMP but much of the world doesn't actually speak English (how the fuck do they manage to talk to each other? Nobody knows) and doesn't care, it means nothing. Can those prudish repressed souls who dare not speak its acronym please just use the full name and stop bothering everyone with your tedious hang ups? Thank you.
Why create entirely different "line", "rectangle", "polygon", and "ellipse" tools when "stroke selection" and "stroke path" do all of those -- and more?
For one reason because they don't. Stroking a selection gives a rather ugly circles compared to a real circle tools, since to much information gets lost along the way. And of course also usability, lack of proper circle tools has been an issue for a decade and yet it is still not fixed and still continues to be an issue and the issue won't go away by pretending its not there. Name a good reason why Gimp shouldn't have a set of geometry tools. I frankly can't think of one. If somebody worries that the toolbox is getting crammed, just add a way to remove tools from it.
All that aside, there is also a larger issue with the lack of those tools, namely that tools can't be plug-ins, so any new tool has to be done directly in Gimp and can't be supplied as an add-on. If they could be this issue would have already been fixed long ago.
As are books. Have you ever read one of them?
Some of us like the separated windows.
Yes, myself for one. I think it is an excellent idea to be able to leave a "family" of utilities floating there when they are to be called upon repeatedly. But it's a matter of habit and perspective: if you are used to working this way, Photoshop's approach seems unnecessarily clunky. It doesn't mean to say that one or the other is wrong.
Everybody else doesn't manage it just fine. I used GIMP for months before I figured that out. And I, just like the GP, am relatively intelligent and computer literate.
It's not a complicated process, and it even makes a bit of sense, looking at it in hind-sight. But it is not intuitive. When practically every new user of a program has the same issue, the user may not be the problem. Maybe the process is fine, but it needs to be told to the user more clearly.
I use GIMP nearly every day, and really like it. I'm a fan. I'm glad to see improvements.
Until it's all replaced with 32-bit capable code, GIMP will continue to be unusable for photography beyond the party snapshot level.
It's fairly rair that 16 bits per channel will make the difference.
Beetle B.
I agree, however it should be pointed out that there is a third option - have all the toolbars and pallets docked to the top/sides of the image window. This is what Krita and Paint.net both do, and new users generally find this layout to be much easier to manage. The disadvantage is that if you are editing more than one image at a time you end up wasting space with duplicate toolbars, but as long as you retain the option to undock the pallets for advanced users, then you haven't lost anything.
Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
These things should be single step operations from the main control pane.
...of Inkscape, as should be obvious given the relative complexity of a "cartoon speech bubble", and the obvious problems that'll occur when you try to resize it if you did it in a raster editor.
Photoshop needs to have everything and the kitchen sink, because Adobe can't expect normal people to pay more than $700 for their image editing needs. F/OSS has no such obligation, and is therefore free to follow UNIX's philosophy of "do one thing, and one thing well", and *drawing* is the domain of Inkscape and Xara.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Because MDI interfaces are an obscenity before god, and implementing one should be a corporal offense. Let window management be handled by the window manager.
Or they could just rip-off other (better) applications like Paint.NET that have the best of both worlds, and which would shut up all those complainers in one fell swoop.
Why don't they? Two possibilities:
1) Either the code is such a mess of spaghetti that changing toolbar behaviors would be a total and complete bear to accomplish, and as such nobody's taken that task on
2) GIMP developers don't care about usability or pleasing users
I think it's some mix of the two, personally.
Comment of the year
Am I alone in this? Is Gimp not getting users because of it? Is this in turn slowing Linux adoption?
1. No, I'm sure there's other PS people out there who don't like it.
2. Gimp has plenty of users: invalid premise in question
3. No, Gimp has little to no affect on linux adoption
Gimp is not intended to be a PS clone, nor cater to PS users. The devs feel the current layout suits the application just fine. They don't have customers or shareholders to answer to, so their word on the matter is final. If someone tries it out and doesn't like the interface and/or doesn't want to learn a new one, they can simply look for other options. Best of all, they didn't have to drop $130 - $1780 to find out they weren't going to like using it before moving on.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
I.E. http://anotherrandomday.com/ [shameless plug] BUT the talk about ugly circles is spot on. I have used G.I.M.P. for years but it still holds a personal record for being the only graphics app that forced me to google "how to draw a straight line"
For what 99% of people do with graphics, The GIMP DOES compete with Photoshop.
Or is Linux not a competitor to Windows because it doesn't do everything Windows does (even though it does many things better)?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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There is really nothing I can add to this.
Sir, I wish I could mod you to infinity. That's one of OSS's biggest hurdles right now, keeping it locked out of mainstream awareness. OSS has great coders, but a real dearth of UI designers, technical writers, and basic marketing people. So you end up with coders (who think they don't need these people) designing great software that is rendered completely inaccessible by horrid UI's, poor to non-existent documentation, and stupid marketing moves (like this kind of poorly-thought-out naming).
Just look at 99% of OSS websites, done by coders who have no idea how to present their software to anyone but other coders--leading to my tip:
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You sure you don't just want a better workflow between GIMP and Inkscape, but allowing them to remain separate programs?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Thing is, there are a lot of us that want to do more than what MSPaint allows (besides, it's not even available on my choice of OS), but don't need the CMYK separation or any of the other stuff. I still want to tweak levels and do color adjustments, resize pictures well, scale, crop, rotate, reduce red-eye, and so on. But I don't need Photoshop for that... I can get the capability to do everything 99% of people would ever want to do with an image for free with the GIMP, instead of paying for Photoshop. Which was my point, that the GIMP does everything with images that most people would use Photoshop to do.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
That post:
1. Was reasonable
2. Factual
3. Real-World
4. Concerned the GIMP
I'm checking out my window for winged porcine creatures now.
Multiple windows are great for multiple monitors and / or multiple documents being edited at once.
Talking of which, it would be nice if selecting 20 documents in Windows and "open with... GIMP" didn't launch 20 separate GIMP tasks (each with its own long-winded "loading plugins..." startup sequence)
I just threw out MSPaint as an example of something really low end - it does very little, but that very little is easy to do, and handles some fraction of my image manipulation needs. I too want to occasionally do stuff that it can't, primarily the sorts of things you mention.
I know both Photoshop and the GIMP are capable of everything I need, and much more. But I've tried to do the things I need in both, and in both I have pretty much utterly failed - or at the least taken an hour to figure out a 2 minute job. Either may be great for someone who uses them more than once a week, but the learning curve is just too steep for someone who wants to use it for five minutes a month.
For my image manipulation needs beyond paint, I turn to the (really fairly craptastic) program that came free with my low-end digital camera.
GIMPs learning curve means most people will never use it to "tweak levels and do color adjustments, resize pictures well, scale, crop, rotate, reduce red-eye, and so on." . It's only going to get used by people going well beyond cleaning up snapshots, so it's going to get compared to Photoshop on CMYK separation, etc.