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The GIMP Now Has a Working Single-Window Mode
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix is reporting that The GIMP now has a working single-window mode, a long desired feature by the open-source graphics community to be more competitive with Adobe Photoshop. There's also a number of other user highlights in the new GIMP 2.7.3 release. The GPLv3 graphics software can be downloaded at GIMP.org."
I just learned the old interface! :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No they don't do this every couple of years.
But the main reason Photoshop people don't switch is that Photoshop isn't all that expensive if you use it every day. GIMP also does not have 16-bit color or CMYK.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Use it with care, as it is development release with rather large rewrites and therefore not suitable for production use. For this release I honestly don't care about single window mode as I'm not Windows drone - GEGL improvements and usage, new text entry mode, and lot of other small improvements interests me more.
Official release in fall/spring (as far as I understood).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Can I add proper detection of image dpi to you list? Gimp seems to think every jpeg is 72dpi which is kind of a non-starter when using it for anything but web images.
Get a web developer
More like because they've already learned the Photoshop interface, and can't be bothered learning another.. especially if they already suck with computers.
which is totally what she said
You still have to fight the layers system when working with PSD files though. ARGHH why do designers get CS5 and us web guys get to use whatever we can find ;)
I think you installed GimpShop by accident.
And maybe because Photoshop is actually good value?
Okay, cool, so they don't want to use it? Good deal! I guess we can stop porting their shitty 1980's UI and window management models to it now, then, can't we? Can we just rip this fucking single-window crap right back out and put the GIMP back the way GIMP users use it, and not the way a handful of Photoshop dilettantes keep saying the GIMP *should* be so they can switch?
Seconded! I want pics!
Gimp seems to think every jpeg is 72dpi which is kind of a non-starter when using it for anything but web images.
Exif data is supposed to handle this, but has anyone else figured out how to create Exif data for a new image? The "Save Exif data" checkbox in Save as JPEG appears to be grayed out unless the image already had Exif data when I opened it.
Wake me up when I can finally use 16, 32 or 64 bits per channel, and the channels aren't restricted to RGBA or integers ...
Actually I consider it very intuitive. Maybe it's because I've not been trained by Photoshop, and thus don't confuse "it works like Photoshop" with "it is intuitive".
But if they now have a Photoshop-like MDI interface, maybe they can undo some negative changes in the multi-window interface (like, add back the main menu to the tools window and don't force an otherwise useless image window without an image to be open just to have the main menu available). The Photoshop-UI-lovers can just use the MDI interface.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Whoa, you're saying the PHOTOSHOP users are the "dilettantes"? Does that mean GIMP users are the "professionals"? Because I have never met a graphics professional who used GIMP and most have never even heard of it. And no, a webdesigner is not a graphics professional.
As far as I can tell, it'll buy you familiarity: an easier transition from Adobe Photoshop software or other mainstream proprietary image editing software. It'll also buy you less frustration when working on a smaller monitor, as Ctrl+E (resize window to fit image) won't push the window controls under the tool palettes anymore.
You'd think a story about a major UI change would come with a screenshot or something...
I am saying that the Photoshop users clamoring for GIMP to be like this and GIMP to be like that are the dabblers, and don't represent the vast majority of Photoshop users, who as far as I can tell are happy with what they have and just have some work to get done.
So what is single window mode and what will it buy me?
The current GIMP interface is a multi-window affair which many find hard to grasp for one reason or another, or just find inconvenient.
A single window environment will improve your productivity if:
* you have trouble with the existing interface
* you have never used the existing interface, and are trying the program after using other graphics tools (i.e. less retraining effort as it should in theory be closer to what you are already used to using)
* you just don't like the existing interface
I'm quite happy with GIMP the way it is, though I would probably be quite happy with the single-window mode too if that became default (caveat: I don't do a lot of graphics editing, so I can't claim my opinions on the matter come from a position of expertise). I think the multi-window arrangement made more sense than it does now back when focus-follows-mouse was the dominant focus control method in unix-a-like environments, but almost everyone now uses click-to-focus.
You say many distros, and quote ubuntu&kubuntu (which have the same gimp package)? So it works in all but ubuntu?
Doesn't that just mean that ubuntu's packagers screwed up?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
No, the main reasons are: it's a recognizable brand, employers provide Photoshop for their employees, colleges have it in their labs, it supports most digital cameras' RAW formats, and everyone freakin' pirates it when they're studying photography or design or print media or whatever other visual art. Seriously, it's rampant. I know MANY people who pirated Adobe products and continued to use them in their careers. Basically, nobody ever paid for it except the odd one or two. I feel like the oddball, having actually purchased Photoshop CS rather than pirating it back when I was in college - my peers even made fun of me for it. "You mean you actually paid for that? Why didn't you just download it? I would have given you a copy." (Of course, mine actually worked properly, and theirs didn't always.) You'd think that would be something you could buy with your student loans, even though the 'student price' is still rather expensive for an average photo student.
GIMP is poised to be at least average in digital photo manipulation. It doesn't stand out as a shining example of technological achievement, but it's at least average.
Most digital photography goes straight to the Web, and you don't need CMYK for that. You need sRGB. If you're the one sending images to a printer, yes you want to handle CMYK. Once you profile your average photo printer, as long as you're outputting in the right color space - you should get really good results. CMYK is mostly of interest to electronic prepress: think books and newspapers. But your average photographer doesn't need that. They have a prepress department to handle the conversion and bit depth reduction. In fact, many printers and RIPs accept profiled RGB images these days, so converting to CMYK may or may not gain you anything in the end. Your mileage will most definitely vary.
Your point about HDR is valid. HDR has been the new hotness for years.
One thing Adobe products do well is decoding Camera RAW formats. That's a big deal, since you can slightly adjust your exposure post-shoot. Otherwise you have to either use 8-bit-per-channel JPEG, or pay the manufacturer for the full software. The 'lite' version usually comes with the camera but you can't do everything Adobe does. GIMP could really break into the market if they packaged UFRaw with the software.
It's actually just Kubuntu, some kind of screwup related to the Oxygen KDE theme.
No no no no no...there are two groups of PS users out there. Those who use it for their work (and bought it), and those who should that it is superior to everything else (illegal copies). Ironically, only those who didn't buy it seem to shout loudest that GIMP is bullshit and can't be used. I have yet to meet one graphic designer who says that GIMP is not usable for him because of the multi-window-environment.
I'm pretty sure croddy meant the second group, because the first group does have constructive/good criticism and better things to do.
Here is some work by photoshop dilettantes
You can't handle the truth.
Yes but can you draw a straight line yet intuitively without having to look up a tutorial? :)
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Right. Because GIMP's only goal is to be usable to Photoshop users and make them stop using Photoshop.
Not!
And the photoshop people still don't switch, because it doesn't have their favourite plugin.
Why does it have to be about switching?
As an experienced Photoshop user let me give you a little tip: Instead of trying get Photoshop users to switch, why not tantalize them with how it can be an additional tool in their toolbox?
Let's say, for example, that GIMP has an extra awesome macro-recording/playback capability that makes Photoshop look like a toy in comparison. (I don't know if this is the case or not so please forgive my ignorance.) If you were to say to me: "You can record a macro in GIMP, then apply this sophisticated set of rules to it that PS doesn't have, and easily set it up to run on all the files in a folder", then I'd go and try it out!
Take out the switching talk and you'll gain a lot more interest. Otherwise you're fighting this huge uphill battle where you have to take into account way too many things that are of importance. Then you'll sit there thinking Photoshop users are mindless fans that lack your vision when in reality you just haven't addressed their needs.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't used Photoshop in years and I'm no professional. I have used GIMP and I can say that single window is a welcome change for me.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What is GIMP's goal?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason that the dabblers complain about the GIMP. Have you ever read through one of those tutorials on how to do some cool graphics technique, like floating semi-transparent 3D letters above a picture? They tend to be written as "go to the *X Menu* and select *Name*" so they can't be translated to a program that has different menus and names. The dabblers don't know how to do things, just how to follow recipes.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
This is a great step in the right direction. While I know the GIMP is far behind the current Photoshop in feature set, having a similar UI will encourage more users to give it a try. Even with the features of Photoshop years ago, the GIMP will be more useful with a decent UI than it is currently.
Prior to graduating, I used GIMP because I couldn't afford Photoshop and didn't want to pirate it. When I started working for the university, I used it and Open Office specifically to show low/no-funding educational organizations that they don't need to spend thousands of dollars so their workers could edit documents and make beautiful images.
I continued to use it in different departments so the departments wouldn't have to spend the $200 university license fees.
In all these instances, I used GIMP portable either from a thumb drive or from the desktop. No installation because no one has permissions to install programs on their computers. A couple weeks ago, though, a new campus-wide update prohibited the launching of ANY exe not explicitly installed by an IT admin. I appealed and they said to buy and use photoshop. /sigh
People wanted an MDI like Photoshop. Instead they get an SDI. It is almost as if the GIMP devs wanted to prove they could fail at even the simplest UI design choices.
Could I trouble you to elaborate more on what you mean by 'fight the layers system'?
Just curious.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
you are assuming that everyone knows what "gimp" means. yes we have computers too.
croddy falsely assumes that anyone who believes the multi-window approach sucks donkeys' balls has been spoiled by Photoshop. GIMP is the only application I have ever consciously encountered and used for more than two seconds that uses this paradigm, and it annoys the bloody hell out of me. Just how Microsoft's ribbons suck for me, and how I hate GNOME 3 and Unity for breaking conventions that work extremely well for me and replacing them with something that does not reflect my way of using a computer. The multi-window approach is one out of many possible paradigms. That very few other applications (relicts from the computational stone age excluded) use it should be sufficiently strong indication that it may not be an unproblematic approach. And that insight should, in an ideal world, lead to the conclusion that offering the dominant paradigm as an option will enhance the software and improve its usefulness for a significant number of people.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
As well there should be. Having a single window that spans two monitors only works well if both monitors have the same resolution. Otherwise it tends to be somewhat awkward. What's wonderful about the current system is that I can place my tools on one monitor along with a view of the whole image and do my manipulation on the other monitor.
Just as long as they keep the older multi-window mode I don't have any problems with this.
Erm, you mean 16-bit per channel right? I'm pretty sure it supports 32-bit color (24-bit if you don't use alpha)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I know, must be the same person who goes full screen on
EVERYTHING, even though he has a 24" screen to begin with. GIMP
makers can stop right there and call it a one-off, heck even
sell this on street corners, make it a really rare copy that you
can't even download on TOR.
Oooh, coffee's ready!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Please provide a link, as I don't see the news anywhere ...
Maybe they also managed to get [,],` and | characters printed on their keyboard ? Or at least have their shortcut mentioned in the system help.
The next revolution would be an application menu bar closer to the document itself : 9" screens of mac classic are over now, the mouse has quite a long way to go across the 22" screen to reach the file menu ...
What is GIMP's goal?
Being good at image manipulation?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
After all these years, all I've seen is complaints about the name but nobody steps up and actually forks it and changes the name.
I've spent hours learning the gimp (unlearning photoshop). I still run into several barriers and run back . And yes some have to do with my favorite plugin, several have to do with how layers are handled and just ease of use. But, I'm very excited! because the multiple windows of the gimp was just a mess to work with.
1% can be an awful lot of money left on the table. Corporations that ignore a subset of the market because it's only 1% tend not to do well in the long term.
Because they have this ludicrous notion in their head that if all they do is smash the floating windows into a single Window that Photoshop users will in droves flock to it. This is ignoring the lack of hardware acceleration, non-destructive layers, the high-bit depth support that is still lacking, etc. Not to mention the fact that the UI actually looks more hideous and cluttered now because they didn't do a proper redesign of the UI.
There's always Cinepaint. They forked from GIMP 1.04 IIRC and they do support 16bits per channel.
I've posted this several times since last millennium... Please consider the fact that the vast majority of people (myself included) do not speak English (as their native language). To us, GIMP means no more than IBM, and it sounds better than Photoshop.
How was it even remotely a good design choice? The UI is cluttered, the drawing screen has so much of it's real estate taken up by the cluttered Windows and you still have to trawl through so many tabs and shit just to find options. This is not even getting to the fact that it still lacks proper hardware acceleration, proper nondestructive editing, proper high-bit depth support, a proper support for professional workflows, etc. Duh GIMP is still a piece of shit but now it's UI is worse than had they not done anything to it at all.
A couple weeks ago, though, a new campus-wide update prohibited the launching of ANY exe not explicitly installed by an IT admin.
Then how do students and faculty in the computer science department test the programs that they're working on? Or are computer science courses at your university fully Dijkstra-style courses done entirely on paper?
I appealed and they said to buy and use photoshop.
Have you tried making it known to the heads of all departments that IT's policy of declining to approve GIMP, which you have shown to be the least expensive program that fits the departments' requirements, is counterproductive to the university's mission?
There's an option about whether to keep toolbars on top (it might be that this wasn't yet there when you used it, though). Of course it also depends on whether your window manager honours the request.
Isn't that the same complaint as before?
Never happened to me. Maybe I was just lucky, maybe my window manager is better (it's the window manager's job to put the window on the correct desktop, AFAIK GIMP cannot do anything about it), or maybe my usage pattern just doesn't lead to such problems.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I love how that was the biggest Whine from the Photoshop crowd. Yet Photoshop went to floating windows design with the advent of CS2 and I did not hear them all whine to Adobe..
Honestly, you cant make them happy. Dont even try.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For 16-bit color:
Image --> Mode --> Indexed --> Generate optimum palette --> Max colors = 65536, Convert?
For CMYK support, maybe this?
http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is how I have it set up on my work PC (and how I use it on a PDA - with the tiny screen, switching windows is easier than trying to cram everything into the already crowded 4" screen) but on most computers a single-window mode would be preferable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The GNU Image Manipulation Program. :-)
Problem solved.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yes. Their rationale is that they don't want to have to spend the time supporting (answering questions about and updating) another program which has such a small user-base. Of course, they said the same thing about Firefox and Thunderbird (both of which I was running that from a thumb drive for a quite a while) and now they're both supported programs.
Funny Bit: The supported campus email clients were Outlook and Eudora up until a couple years ago. Yes, EUDORA.
Also, I don't think that they would agree that part of the university's mission is to use "the least expensive program that fits the departments' requirements". I think they would argue that all the potential risk of using GIMP (I know, I know...) outweighs the monetary savings.
Such is IT bureaucracy.
The GIMP was around for a -long- time before that movie came out.
In the -real- grown up world, the adults recognize that GIMP is an acronym for Gnu Image Manipulation Program and then move on without ever even thinking of ass-rape (or anything else).
IOW, maybe it's time for -you- to grow up and get over it...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
They don't have aspirations of becoming the standard image editing app?
I'm not asking to argue, I've just never followed GIMP enough to know if they were just trying to make an image manipulation app or if they want it to be the app everybody uses.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Well those separate windows end up being a real pain in terms of finding what you want to do. Click to many Close of your images then you program quits... File -> New on one of your images you are working on to create a new window is very annoying. also with all that space you are wasting on having duplicate menus clutters things up more then they should. OS X handles this concept with that Global Menu bar, but for windows and Linux you need that Single Window Mode for the best UI for that platform.
Also those floating windows makes it so you cannot SNAP them in the same spot taking less overall space and giving you more room to work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No GIMP segfaults here, on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS...or any Windows versions.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It hasn't been called "The GIMP" for quite some time.
I use to use GIMP all the time... Then I switch to Photoshop and I found Photoshop being much better then the GIMP for the stuff that I needed to work with. GIMP has a lot of good features but getting to the ones that I need the most are more cumbersome, then with Photoshop.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The only movie I can think of with a Gimp in it, was Pulp Fiction, and that came out in 1994. That's two years before the software came out...
Something boring and commercial with no imagination in it, like PhotoShed or PicWorks.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Do they also refuse to give you a report of what they perceive to be the potential risk of using GNU Image Manipulation Program and why they expect that risk to average over $200 per seat?
I haven't used Photoshop in years and I'm no professional. I have used GIMP and I can say that single window is a welcome change for me.
Photoshop is good software. I haven't used it in years either, the Gimp does way more than I need. If I used it all day, every day, maybe Photoshop would be worth the megabucks, but I don't.
Long live the Gimp.
GIMPs UI has hideous usability issues that largely preclude it from any serious work. Last time I attempted to use it, the simple fact you couldn't see the brush when you moved the mouse over the canvas infuriated me to the point I doubt I'll bother with it again. Just because a photoshop user points out these flaws does not mean that it gives you the arrogance to simply ignore these comments. The GUI was hideous. If there is development work going on in this area, then IMHO it should be applauded. Taking your approach of simply poo-pooing everything because you absurdly believe GUI enhancements to be the work of satan (photoshop users), isn't really going to move the product forward now is it?
MDI is a terrible UI. All modern software is moving away from it.
I wasn't sure about this, and finally I agree...
MDI vs SDI
Especially when we think about multiple monitor and desktops. And now window managers handle the grouping quite well in the task bar.
Can we just rip this fucking single-window crap right back out and put the GIMP back the way GIMP users use it
Of course you can -- it's open source. You can change it however you want.
+1. I've been using GIMP for over a decade and recently had to start using Photoshop and, when you are used to GIMP, there's nothing intuitive about Photoshop's UI. I'm not saying GIMP is intuitive either but, if you are heavily invested in one program, then trying to achieve even a simple task in the other is going to make the UI seem like hard work.
Stupid flounders!
GIMP's UI is awkward because it differs from almost every program out there, not just Photoshop. It is harder to learn even for non Photoshop users.
Making software user friendly benefits experts not just the average user. People want to spend time actually manipulating images instead of figuring out a wonky new interface.
I have two monitors too and moving tools to the second one doesn't work for a single reason - you have to reach your tools with your pointer. Now, as long as you don't mind waving your mouse-arm like a madman every two seconds it's ok. But as soon as you pick up your stylus you're faced with the hard choice of either squeezing your two monitors into your tablet's space, effectively dividing its useful surface area by a factor of about 2.5 to 4, or confining the cursor to one of the monitors, in which case you can't reach your tools with your stylus. It means that for any tablet-wielding professional multi-window mode is mostly useless. Effective UI hiding and workspace organization is vastly preferable.
May the source be with you.
You're saying with a straight face you want to fork the gimp?
I like how people are whining about the single-window view, even though it's a mode of viewing, meaning it's not the only way to run GIMP.
Also..."the GIMP"? Is that a hipster term for GIMP, or something?
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
Last time I attempted to use it, the simple fact you couldn't see the brush when you moved the mouse over the canvas infuriated me to the point I doubt I'll bother with it again.
This seems like a totally different issue from the single-window mode thing, and I don't see how any GIMP user would complain about this being implemented.
The GUI was hideous. If there is development work going on in this area, then IMHO it should be applauded. Taking your approach of simply poo-pooing everything because you absurdly believe GUI enhancements to be the work of satan (photoshop users), isn't really going to move the product forward now is it?
Going to a single-window mode isn't an enhancement, it's a regression. The GIMP's UI is superior for Unix-like systems, especially if they have multiple monitors, and allows the window manager to manage the individual windows rather than reimplementing a separate window manager inside the application. MDI is an abomination from the Windows world, and is only there to make up for the terrible window manager that Windows uses.
Right, people wanting a single-window interface are just a tiny niche of users. No, wait, they're practically every graphic artist ever.
But sure, go ahead and keep things "the way GIMP users use it." All three of them.
So this is done in photoshop
Oh, and here is what can be done in GIMP ;)
You can't handle the truth.
To the 1990's Gimp.
1% can be an awful lot of money left on the table. Corporations that ignore a subset of the market because it's only 1% tend not to do well in the long term.
Apple is just laughing their tits off at that concept, mate...
1% hell, they ignore the bottom 50% and still do fine. Adobe doesn't give a shit about the bottom of the market. It costs one hell of a lot of money to support a product. They're barely interested in supporting Apple at what, 10% market share, much less Linux.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's still called The GIMP. And the Linux fanboys can't figure out why their adoption rates are poor. Can you imagine getting up in front of a board and being asked what tool you used? Or trying to start a company initiative to switch people over to The GIMP?
I think you'll be fine.
Last time someone mentioned The GIMP, I made a joke about the name. This backfired completely, since no one else knew what I was talking about. Someone Googled the word and then asked how I knew about it. "Oh, a friend of mine..." wasn't the correct way to start my reply...
(And it is just a friend of mine. I tagged along to a fetish nightclub once, but didn't really enjoy it any more than a normal nightclub.)
For example, in gimp I normally level the image by selecting preview with grid, reverse rotation (correction), crop to result, then line up the grid with something vertical in the image. But in PE I can't find anything like that - it's rotate freehand, specify degrees, or let it guess for you.
Moreover, it's really hard to find any information about Elements on the Web. I have the feeling everybody either buys or pirates Photoshop, and photoshop elements only exists to be bundled with flatbed scanners or something? It hasn't lured me away from gimp, even though gimp has annoying windowing issues on OSX.
The correct fix for that isn't moving to a single window system, it's adding an option to switch between monitors.
And ultimately, even in your case, if you're better off with a single window then you're doing it wrong. Even in the case of those using a tablet, you're still better off under the current system where you can simply just use that second monitor for the second view and keep the tools on the same monitor.
You didn't answer the above poster's other question.... how do Comp sci students do any development if unlicensed executables are prohibited?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There's no miscomprehension. If you say "16-bit color", that means 16 bits per pixel, with 65,536 possible values. It's just like 8-bit color meaning 256 possible values, or 24-bit color meaning 16.7 million values. Computer graphics systems have used this terminology since the 80s, and probably earlier.
If you mean something else that's specific to the printing industry or whatever, then you need to spell it out. This is a general forum, not a forum for printing professionals.
I actually don't know what movie you're talking about, but the etymology of the word gimp dates back to the 17th century, and its usage as a derogatory (or at least anachronistic) word meaning lameness goes back to the early 20th century. That's the meaning that always comes to my mind (and I didn't grow up in the U.S.).
Yes, I love the people who think that Photoshop's UI is intuitive because they have been working with it for years. My wife plays Second Life. Another friend of ours develops content for Second Life (he actually makes pretty good money at it). He came out with a new product a couple of months ago and was very proud of his "intuitive" user interface for making modifications to it. My wife tried it out and found it difficult to figure out She told him that he needed to make it simpler and easier to understand. His response was, "What's the problem? It is intuitive, it works just like in Photoshop." She explained to him that she had never worked with Photoshop and had no idea how Photoshop worked and that neither would most of his potential customers.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
they just rolled gimpshop into the main program, fucking bavo only took what 6 years?
anyway its really not that convenient if your a fan of the split windows idea, I often keep all my tool windows on one monitor and my image on my large screen, its much harder to do that when boxed in
Monitor switching is a nice idea, but it also doesn't work because it disallows any drag-and-drop actions. Like dragging a layer from one monitor to another. And if I am to keep my tools on my primary monitor, I'd like them nicely organized so that they don't waste so much space. Single window mode does some of that. Actually, what I'd really like is customizable tool shelves where I can put my often-used tools from various windows and contexts and just turn everything else off most of the time. But I guess that's just too radical a concept for GIMP (and Photoshop too).
May the source be with you.
Don't know about the keep on top, but the other two complaints are still spot on, even on windows.
When I fire up Gimp it usually places toolbars on one screen and the main window on the other, regardless of me changing the positions each time I use it.
They're not on the "campus network". They are on their department's network with separate policies.
I remember reading an article years ago that stated they were going do to a complete rewrite of the GIMP code to get rid of all the "spaghetti code" -- not my words -- that GIMP is built upon; has this ever happened or is it still somewhere in the planning stages.
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
The single-window photoshop configuration does cause some problems. Images disappear behind subwindows (like the layers subwindow) and can't be brought forward of the subwindow. To see the image, the subwindow has to be turned off, then turned back on a few seconds later when i need it again. Nuisance.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
GIMP isn't going to become "the standard" by simply copying Photoshop in every single thing it does. To make a car analogy, when was the last time you saw a car company become a market leader by making an identical copy of their competitor's model, instead of making their own model?
Yea, it is not only an odd numbered development release, but it isn't really available for the vast number of potential users, the Windows community. It is available as a Linux tarball, but there is no Windows version. So we can forget about an alternative for Photoshop users again. Looks like Windows users will have to wait for 2.8, which has no planned delivery date ("it will be ready when it's ready"). That should have been mentioned in the Slashdot coverage.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I like the UI the way it has been. For one thing it works better with multiple monitors IMO -- I can pull my toolbars off of the main editing window and take up the full screen with the image unabated. Further, I like being able to move things wherever I want and still be able to see whatever I put behind it; the workspace can be spread out without all the grey area taken up by the useless space between MDI child windows and toolbars and such. I get that people like uniform UIs, but I never really understood why people hated the GIMP's so much except that it wasn't familiar.
Does anyone remember Fractal Painter's old UI? Noone liked that either. *sigh* Of course, I think they had things like icons which would slowly fade and disappear if you never used them... or was that some other piece of software? Brilliant idea in any case -- we should get the GIMP to do that.
>> They don't have aspirations of becoming the standard image editing app?
OMG!! THEY DON'T HAVE ASPIRATIONS!!
Yep, that's how Firefox, Thunderbid, Apache and all other Free/open/FOSS tools were conceived - let's become Photoshop, IE, Outlook and ISS.
I think the multi-window arrangement made more sense than it does now back when focus-follows-mouse was the dominant focus control method in unix-a-like environments, but almost everyone now uses click-to-focus.
I'm slightly surprised at that assertion, mostly because the very first thing I have to change when using a vanilla WM is the focus behaviour to focus-follows-mouse (or pointer). Clicking to focus seems a waste of a click - the pointer is already in the window, why should I click just to get focus? And in doing so, I've got to watch what I click on - if it's a browser I would have to take care that I'm not clicking on a link, etc.
Am I so much in the minority here?
And, just to keep this vaguely on topic, I like the MWD and have no plans to enable single window mode in GIMP.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
Starting out 'back in the day', *everybody* pirated Photoshop and Adobe looked the other way - but only until their de facto monopoly was permanently entrenched. Autodesk did the same thing, to a lesser degree.
Due to the way the X11 server is made in OS X, gimp multiwindow was plain disfunctional in OS X. You had to click a window to give it focus, then select the tool, then clic the image window to give it focus, then apply you tool. Obnoxious at its paroxysm. I have no strong feelings against of for multi window mode in OSes that handle that properly, but most don't ...
I do not understand the all the negativity behind the single-window mode, especially when it is an optional component and is not "forced upon" users without an alternative, save for using an older version for as long as it works and is maintained, waiting for or working on a fork, accepting the changes, or abandoning ship and seeking an alternative. As a user of a keyboard-driven tiling window manager that does not completely follow the WIMP model, I find the option of using a single window mode to be a welcome change.
> And the photoshop people still don't switch, because it doesn't have their favourite plugin.
No, they don't switch because GIMP is crap. I have a PSD created in 2003 that GIMP still can't render properly ...
Wake me up when GIMP supports ...
- 16-bit/channel
- Effect Layers
- implements ALL the PS layer blend modes
- Layer Groups (nested layers)
- fixes it stupid name
I suppose you don't have a dual monitor setup then. Being able to put the tools on one screen while leaving the workspace on the main screen is very, very nice. Having a one window UI breaks that ability. Hopefully, this one window paradigm is not the default setting in the new GIMP.
The thing I would like fixed, at least for the MS Windows version is that the image window is always popped under all other applications, but it is focused. Therefore, I have to go through clicking on another window and then back to the image frame to get it on top.
Haha too true. I use Gimp but I can't stand the UI on it. This will be a much welcome change for me.
As someone who often works with many small images at the same time, an MDI style interface is much easier to work with. No need to manipulate each window individually, just "set aside" the entire group like a real world cutting tray.
Having a separate desktop is an OK workaround, and I am glad that most Linux users can deal with that. But multiple desktops have been tried in the Windows world using third party or manufacturer software, and from my own personal experience the average Windows user can not wrap their head around the concept.
Back in the Windows 3.x days MDI was a little overused, but this is one area that it works well. Not sure why Gimp has had such an allergy to giving this to users as an option, except that historically Unix/Linux UIs didn't provide MDI as a native feature.
Forgot the most important option!
An option Out-Of-The-Box to have Photoshop key bindings / hotkeys.
If your users have to fuck around searching the Net for an alt. build / config just to set the default keys to something they are already familiar with, you're screwed.
The overwhelming majority of users run Windows and don't have multiple monitors. It makes no sense to optimize for the few at the expense of the many.
Dabblers have to learn somehow. Once they figure out cool technique, they can then modify the steps to their flavor. The problem I have with the tutorials is that they are mostly written for older to much older versions of the GIMP. The latest version has changed its menu names and some options - so finding the function from the tutorial is not as easy as it used to be.
The FF team wanted to dethrone IE. They made a better product as a result. Is that what the Gimp community is aiming for as well or are they more in the mind-set of satisfying their own needs with it?
Seriously, it's a straight-forward question, not a set-up for an arguement.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The overwhelming majority of GIMP users run Windows? I figured most Windows users just used pirated versions of Photoshop.
Photographers know what I meant.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If they were giving the identical car away for free I'm pretty sure it'd do well...
Naturally. We are talking about an image processing program, right? And in the context of a discussion about why Photoshop users won't jump. Not only that, but GIMP quite obviously supports 16 total bits.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Oh, good grief. The situation doesn't have to be black and white. Why can't both modes be implemented? (Just as long as the single window mode is NOT default.)
Tell me, how many graphics artists are out there that have only a single display? I hope not very many. For example, every "extras" I've seen on DVD movies that show the graphics artist doing his work shows that person with at least 2 displays (sometimes 3).
The open-source community needs a different Photoshop substitute that does a better job. What of GIMP is worth keeping? Not the stupid and childish name that will keep any reasonably sized professional organization from ever adopting it. Not the crappy user interface. Not the back-end code that can't handle 16-bit color/CMYK/Lab/etc. Time to give this project up for lost, and start from the ground-up building a better free substitute for Photoshop.
What if you could get the "genuine" car (the one that was copied) for free too, just by going to the dealer's lot and driving away in one, and the likelihood of them calling the police or pursuing you for the theft was almost zero, and lots of people did it all the time? Why would anyone get the identical car? They'd certainly think to themselves that the original is better somehow, and that the copy isn't a perfect copy, but only a cheap superficial copy and is inferior in some way that's not immediately obvious.
After all, GIMP isn't going to copy Photoshop's source code line-by-line, it's just going to change itself to look and work more like PS, but obviously lots of things will be different. So why would anyone bother with GIMP just because it's free, when they can already get Photoshop for free?
They do? Some guy who bought a $500 entry-level DSLR from Costco, so he can take nice pictures on his vacation, knows what 16-bit-per-channel color is? I don't think so.
Or do you mean professional photographers? How many of those do you think there are on Slashdot? For that matter, how many of those are GIMP developers? This is Slashdot, not a pro photographer forum. When you say "16-bit color", it means 65,536 colors, and that's it.
If that's actually the case, then I strongly suggest that GIMP for Windows be forked off into a separate project to deal with the deficiencies of that OS's window manager. I am pretty sure most GIMP users run it on Linux, though, where the normal multi-window interface works really well.
You've just met one then. I've used GIMP since the 90's and I've worked professionally in print publishing since 2000. I used GIMP to accomplish effects that my PS peeps were utterly unable to accomplish because GIMP's open source nature allowed me to code my own plugins, which was nice since we had a limited budget for such things. One of our first uses was a photomosaic plugin(I think the code I modded for the SGI is still out there somewhere) for a front page of the paper.
Sure, it didn't do CYMK, etc. but we didn't even need the RGB->CMYK conversion done until 3 minutes before sending it off to the printer and Acrobat handled that for us automagically. I have PS laying around in case one of my clients gives me a file that requires it but I have used GIMP professionally a thousand times more than I have PS.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Dual window setup isn't an option when I'm on the road with my laptop. When my laptop is docked (which is rare), the multiple window mode still annoys me as the focus has problems as you mention. The multiwindow mode I suppose is better for power users who work in multiple layers at once. I'm not that kind of user.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I own some print shops, we take artist original prints and paintings and produce reproductions, a la Giclée
For those who don't know what this means, here's the <WP:Giclée>.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
When you say "16-bit color", it means 65,536 colors, and that's it.
Okay, God. LOL. GIMP doesn't support 65,536 colors like 1980s MacPaint.
But just go on assuming that I'm an idiot.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Agreed. Single-window design isn't the solution. The solution is fixing the floating palettes so you don't have to click twice, and all the other UI abortions that GIMP is guilty of. If a single-window design is the only way to solve those problems, then that means X11 needs a fairly fundamental redesign.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Forcing a large blank window to remain open with no image loaded was a mistake.
Nobody is forcing anything. It's an option.
Agreed. Calling it 16-bit color is just plain abusing the terminology. The correct term is "16-bit channels", not "16-bit color". Alternatively, one can call it "48-bit color".
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'd agree with you, except that photoshop handles multiple monitors in single-window just fine. The important part is that all of the functionality that's in any kind of menu or palette be clear, easy to get to, and associated with the thing you're working on. Gimp gets this wrong and always has.
I'm so delusional I honestly believe that a kid's exercise in scheduling the printing of A and B just for fun is at least as good of server than a multimillion dollar software ecosystem. Now could you drop the origin bullshit, it doesn't matter where things start, only where they are now.
PS: A bad hack of an early version of this school project was better for film retouching than Photoshop, explain that with your "logic" of origins.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
They also know that raw is an acronym.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
You can not "detect" DPI as it is meta information. There literally isn't anything in the image data that it could be derived from, you can tell it what the DPI should be, that's as good as it gets.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
One of the things I /liked/ about Gimp was that I could move all the toolbars/whatever to the other monitors.
That said, I haven't used GIMP in a while now.
I started using GIMP back in... god. 1996? 1997? I'm not sure. Version 0.54 I think. I was always a "Who Needs Photoshop" kinda person.
Then I started getting more and more serious about photography. I'm not anywhere remotely CLOSE to being a pro, but I do love photography and take a TON of photos.
Last year I did a year-long photo-of-the-day project, and that's pretty much where GIMP (and, sadly, Linux) kinda fell apart for me.
The workflow of Bridge->ACR->Photoshop is just SO much more intuitive than Shotwell/whatever they're using today->UFRaw->Gimp. Shotwell is OK when you're not doing anything with it, really. UFRaw is nice but nowhere NEAR the quality of ACR (and neither are rawtherapee or whatever the other guy is called).
Then I got a wacom tablet and Linux/GIMP just couldn't handle it. Perhaps it's the triple-monitor setup, I haven't tried multiple-monitors with a wacom on a Mac, but it just would not work correctly. And even when I single-monitored it, it just does not work as "magic"ly well as it does on a Mac/Photoshop.
It Photoshop expensive? Well, kinda, but the student edition isn't really that pricy at all. If you're serious enough to spend money on a nice dSLR and nice lenses and a nice wacom tablet, you should be OK spending another $200 on Photoshop.
No, it's not for everyone. Yes, GIMP is just fine for a lot of people. But the more serious work you do, the less usable it becomes.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
As long as Photoshop is the standard and Adobe doesn't go insane with copy protection, there is no (non-ideological) reason for most users not to use Photoshop on Windows systems.
As with Office 97, being able to use a legal copy at work yet pay nothing for home use makes the parent company a fucktillion dollars by chumming the market.
If Adobe moves to heavy copy protection they will lose market share.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Even if we assume your interpretation, you're still horribly confused. You're mixing up 16-bit indexed images (16 bits per palette index), which pretty much don't exist (and which GIMP doesn't support - if you actually try what you just described you'll see that GIMP clamps the number of colors down to 256) and 16-bit RGB images (RGB 5-6-5), which do exist in many embedded devices, and which as far as I can tell GIMP has no support for either (other than perhaps via a plugin). I had to dither/quantize a PNG down to 16-bit RGB565 color recently and I ended up having to resort to an ImageMagick recipe, because GIMP couldn't do it. I also suspect you might also be confusing all of this with 16-color (4-bit) images, given that you mentioned bootloaders (grub1 bootloader backgrounds are 14-color images, i.e. 16 colors minus two reserved colors, that *can* in fact be made using GIMP's indexed mode).
16 bits per channel RGB != 16-bit indexed != 16-bit RGB565 != 16-color (4-bit) indexed. Get them straight.
Exactly - Photoshop is an unusable piece of crap *simply because of this stupid single-window thing*. I already have a perfectly good window manager. Let *it* manage the damn windows, and stop trying to run another half-assed excuse for a window manager *inside a damn window*, of all the retarded places to do it.
For those who only use it to edit one picture at a time (and for those who are complaining but never actually USE it), it's no big deal, but the fact that you are complaining about an improvement that many want makes me wonder if you even have a dog in this debate.
(Just as long as the single window mode is NOT default.)
How about it asks you during installation/upgrade? A picture of the two modes and you click on the choice you want. It will tell you that you can switch at any time by going to Menu -> Menu Item. There could also be a checkbox for "Send my choice to the developers to vote for this as the default setting." Another checkbox for "Always use this choice when upgrading."
.conf file) on installation and configure it just right anyway?
To everyone, not just the parent:
Does EVERYTHING have to be a freaking fight? The crybabies here want choice until the choice presented is not THEIR choice. Make it a damn choice, choose the one you want and get on with life. Damn, people... I thought we were nerds and geeks here. Do you people really not go through all the menu items (or
I use GIMP daily. I like this program very much (by the way, the multiple widows do not bother me at all). I would like to thank the authors of this great program: Spencer Kimball Peter Mattis Michael Natterer (maintainer) Sven Neumann (maintainer) ... and dozens of others listed here:
http://www.gimp.org/team.html
http://www.gimp.org/about/authors.html
Thank you!
PS: A bad hack of an early version of this school project was better for film retouching than Photoshop, explain that with your "logic" of origins.
fluke.
Computer graphics systems have used this terminology since the 80s
And stopped using them in the 90s, I don't think a young person today has ever seen a 16 bit color device nor know WTF it is, even the geeky ones. Or maybe the 00s for mobile devices I guess. That there once was a time when computers didn't have real colors is like hearing there used to be black & white TVs and movies, it's like back in the stone age some time and we're cave men.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A guy who bought an entry-level camera from Costco doesn't care how many bits his channels have. GIMP's support (or lack thereof) for 16-bit channels are irrelevant to him. Any halfway-decent editor will support 16/24/32 bits-per-pixel images, so when someone is discussing 16-bit color support in regards to photo editors the default assumption is that it refers to bits per channel. Context is everything.
It looks like they are working to make it conform better to the single window gnome "desktop" that most people absolutely hate. I like gimp. I especially like how I can have the image full screen on one monitor and the tools on another. I hope there is a user preference option available to break it back up like IMHO it should be. MDI in art/music applications completely sucks. This, in my experience, is why artists preferred BeOS and cried LOUDLY when they had to switch back to either OS/9 or Windows.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The overwhelming majority of users run Windows and don't have multiple monitors. It makes no sense to optimize for the few at the expense of the many.
even if one is stuck with Windows (I have to use it at work), why would somebody actually do graphics work on a single monitor?
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Where do you change that option, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Kia. Hyundai.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Sounds like you need a new window manager?
What about metadata that tells it?
I'd give up the multiple monitor and gobs of little pallets for a streamlined Full screen, "Kai"-like interface for us newbies. Most people use laptops now, so The Gimp would get more mileage building a streamlined interface, with fewer gadgets and better previewing features. .... THAT is what Gimp needs to target versus Photoshop.
People are mopping up apps on iPhones and iPads
That's a marketing/perception thing, which is completely non-technical. I'm not saying it isn't a great idea, but such things are normally outside the programmer wheelhouse.
Can't we at least get a fork that just changes the branding?
Go ahead. It's OSS, so you're free to do this if you feel strongly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The problem is that Gimp needs to go after mobile and laptop apps ... Lighten up, build a streamlined branch that can port to iPads and android!! Inkscape needs the same treatment...
The computing world moved to MUCH simpler apps... OSS apps should be jumping at the new expectations.
My mistake, the new single-window mode is an option, the older empty-window thing is not to my knowledge, that's forced, but understandably so, as having the menubar ontop of the toolbox was always rather awkward.
What are you talking about? Those were never identical-looking copies, they were just inexpensive cars when they started out.
Are you going to call the Yugo a copy too? It wasn't a copy of anything, it was just a dirt-cheap car.
Hyundais and Kias have never even had the same kind of styling as the Japanese cars they were trying to take marketshare away from; Korean styling is distinctly different from Japanese styling.
Depends on whether the given metadata is understood by GIMP. If it doesn't read the metadata of a given format correctly you might want to file a bug/feature request.
Anyway, datapharmer complained about JPEGs in particular. Thing is, most cameras explicitly specify a DPI of 72, you can hardly blame GIMP for using that.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
According to the reasoning that one has to be 'delusional' to believe that a school project is more professional than a multimillion dollar project it is not a fluke. Clearly everyone involved in picking that as their tool was delusional. The logic is flawed because whether or not something is professional depends solely on a professional's decision to use it.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The dabblers complain about GIMP, the pros ignore it entirely, and with good reason.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
You can put the Photoshop toolboxes on a separate monitor. That feature has been available since forever.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
I wish programs for monitors and cameras would not say DPI. It's PPI, pixels per inch, which is not at all the same thing as the DPI that a printer produces.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I am an Australian and I don't know a single person who finds the name awkward. But then again everybody I know is either intelligent enough from the context to figure out that I am talking about a computer program and not a sex slave or a cripple. Some of them are intelligent enough to know that the word gimp also has meanings other than the American slang meaning.
you missed
gimp (uncountable)
A narrow ornamental fabric or braid of silk, wool, or cotton, often stiffened with metallic wire or coarse cord running through it, used as trimming for dresses, curtains, furniture, etc. Also guimpe.
Any coarse or reinforced thread, such as a glazed thread employed in lacemaking to outline designs, or silk thread used as a fishing leader, protected from the bite of fish by a wrapping of fine wire. [quotations ]
The plastic cord used in the plaiting and knotting craft Scoubidou (lanyard making); or, the process itself.
(dated, chiefly NE US) Gumption; spirit; ambition; vigor; pep. [quotations ]
and
Adjective
gimp (comparative more gimp, superlative most gimp)
(dated, Scotland and N England) Neat; trim; delicate; slender; handsome; spruce; elegant.
Cheap shilling of your site + not being able to keep artists and drafters straight. Troll.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Yes, you are WAY wrong, so wrong you either avoided or didn't even know to look for some things.
First of all, find me a free compiler that would work with Adobe's SDK from around Y2K. Go ahead, I'll wait. Remember, I said our budget didn't really have room for a lot of things and a compiler that would work with the SDK cost quite a bit back then. To add to your difficulty, you might note that since we were publishing, we were also using Apple primarily thereby it wasn't going to be cheap by any stretch of the imagination. So keep telling yourself how I didn't think of any of this and how I'm blinded by the fact that I was able to do something for free that would have cost the paper a few thousand dollars before we even got started if that makes you feel better about your purchases but rest assured that you're not as bright as you want to make everyone thing you are, Mr. Adobe shill.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
You do realise that this is an optional feature and not even on by default.
I forgive your ignorance, but I feel compelled to respond here by saying that it's actually the other way around. Photoshop has an awesome recording/playback capability (called Actions). You just hit record, perform the steps you desire, hit stop and there you go.
With the GIMP the nearest equivalent are scripts, but you have to write them yourself using a pseudo-scripting language. There's no simple recording feature, and I wasn't going to sit and waste time learn how to code up a script for an equivalent workflow of what I was used to doing in Photoshop, because the scripting is actually very complicated, particularly if you can't find the commands to do what you want.
People have complained about this (from 2001! - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937), but nothing has happened because as the last post in said thread says, "we simply don't have
enough developers."
I won't bug them about it, but I won't bother with GIMP anymore because it simply lacks easy of use and important functionality. Open source doesn't always work in practice.
It's about time!
Yes! Down with the clicking twice. I use it regularly and still don't feel comfortable with it. It's just all sort of out of sync with what I expect.
I couldn't disagree more.
First, people want simplified user interfaces on tablet-based devices because the hardware design (touching the actual screen) cannot handle more complex user interfaces. I'm not convinced that dumbing down the desktop to look like mobile devices is a win for anyone. Different devices are best served by different interfaces.
Second, for the people who want simplified UIs, there are already plenty of cheap or free apps out there that provide basic drawing (or, more commonly, basic photo cropping, scaling, and color correction, which turns out to be what 99% of novice graphics work entails). For GIMP to be useful, it needs to focus more on the underserved high end, not the thoroughly served low end.
A streamlined interface for newbies certainly isn't a bad idea for tripling the newbie traffic on the help mailing lists, if that's your goal, but it benefits few current GIMP users, whereas fixing the flaws in the existing UI would help current users and would make it more attractive to (moderately advanced) new users as well.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is a non argument. Photoshop for Mac doesn't have a single GUI interface either, just because the Windows version has.
I personally think the single Window interface is horrible.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
I said "I consider it very intuitive" not "it is very intuitive". That's a big difference.
The UI 10 years ago was very different from today. It didn't even have a menu bar back then!
Well, it's OK if you decided for yourself that you don't want to look at it again, it's your decision. However if you have no idea what the interface looks like today, you should refrain from claiming it to be very bad. You simply don't know the current interface, therefore you're simply not qualified to say whether it's good or bad.
Note that I don't say the GIMP UI is perfect. It isn't. But overall I consider it quite well. It allowed me to discover a lot of functionality without reading manuals or tutorials.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
How about: to be more intuitive in the first place? Having multiple windows was always such a bother, for several reasons.
I am not devoid of humor.
The way I'd have attempted to do that is separating the 3 channels (hide two then shift-ctrl-c to copy the visible image), then separately dither them either to custom palettes with 32/64 shades of R/G/B or use the levels tool to quantize them (0-255 -> 0-32/64 -> 0-255), depending on whether or not I wanted them dithered or just plain converted. Then recombine them into a single image using layer mode "addition".
I'm not sure why you're going to the trouble, though, if you're saving them as JPEG. It's lossy compression... it doesn't save 8 bits per channel anyhow.
*facepalm* obviously I meant 0-31/63, not 0-32/64.
Don't forget that GIMP's palette mode only supports up to 256 colors
So do indexed PNGs, so I don't understand what the big deal is. Indexed PNGs can contain a full 24 bits per palette entry but only 8 bits per pixel, so you're limited to a palette size of 256. Unless the Wikipedia article was wrong about that...
Are they supposed to switch? They bought an expensive graphics package, for crying out loud.
No, the GIMP is more useful for people who like me, who don't even want to think about cashing out too much cash for something that is ultimately only marginally better than the GIMP.
I am not devoid of humor.
But also more bugs.
I am not devoid of humor.
So you choose #1 correct? I got it in 1, woo hoo! Oh and it isn't my site, I just found it when hearing the same string of horseshit from FOSSies over and over AND OVER again. It is ALWAYS "U no leet, u M$ Ninja!" if you don't suck teh koolaid, it is always "U don't need that" and "Freedom by missing features" and "freedom of hypocrisy".
So please, wrap that tux blankie tightly over your head, or even better pull it over your head while you cry "Why are u picking on us? Leave poo Gimpie alone!" maybe you and the Britney guy can team up on Youtube!
it will NOT change the facts. FACT-It is a lame piece of software written as a kid's class project. FACT-It is a bad joke and the fact that dumbasses like you even have the nerve to compare in the same breath to professionally written software is both an insult to real software as well as the intelligence of anyone who has actually tried your garbage, FACT-It has abysmal support for things that ALL commercial photo software has had FOR A DECADE or MORE, such as CMYK, Decent layer and object control, hell I could write a fucking book on all the shit Gimp CAN'T do, and finally FACT- While I'm sure it gives neckbeards a chuckle to say "bring out the Gimp" it has to be the worst fucking name you could have possibly used. what's next Goatse email client? Its open!
But don't worry I simply added FOSS to my list of "things I should ignore" so you can go back to your circle jerks while myself and the professional world ignores your asses. You go be leet little tuxie, nobody fucking cares. hey maybe you can pay RMS with a sandwich to sing the hacker song for you!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That it started as a project, hobby, whatever is totally irrelevant. I'd have to say that most people wanting GIMP to copy photoshop (though of course there are exceptions) are not the professionals, they are the newbies who are used to photoshop because they pirated it. GIMP's UI is excellent on a multi-monitor setup as has been mentioned before- and I think it's better than photoshop's even without. There's no reason to ditch one of its best features for the sake of copying photoshop to get these users- wait... yeah I think I told you the exact same thing the other day about the command line in linux.
Suffice to say, (FOSS PROJECT X) does not need to gain users from (PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE Y) by copying (Y) (especially if it means removing incredibly useful features), it needs to do it by being better than (Y). Bitching about the somewhat unconventional UI is detracting from the technical shortcomings of GIMP, which are numerous in comparison to photoshop. The learning curve is not steep, it [the UI] is rewarding, and lacking features will turn potential users away.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.