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."

Comments

NOOOOO!!!!

[MightyYar]

I just learned the old interface! :)

That's development release

[Pecisk]

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).

Re:to be competitive

[datapharmer]

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.

Working on the right features, I see

[MSojka]

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 ...

Re:Working on the right features, I see

[vlm]

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 ...

Overkill slightly? Power dynamic range from single photon starlight to laser eye damage is only about 100 dB... You can't buy 64 bit A/D converters, unless you're talking about some kind of marketing thing where you have 4 16 bit A/D in the same box. LCD monitors are very low contrast, just barely above 20 dB, paper and ink's only about 10 dB.

There does not seem to be a practical input or output technology that can use more than 16 bits. 8 bits is probably too low. I would advocate for 16 bit, but 32 is as pointless as using scientific notation for each channel.

Re:Working on the right features, I see

[dada21]

16bits per channel is really important.

I own some print shops, we take artist original prints and paintings and produce reproductions, a la Giclée. We scan as high res as possible, with as many bits per color channel as possible.

Since no scanner is eprfectly color accurate, we do some post production work in Photoshop. 8bits per channel does bring some loss to saturation, contrast and gradients during post production. 16 bits per channel lessens these effects.

Do we use 32 bits? Almost never, but it does come in handy in *rare* instances. Recently we had to scan a painting with metallic inks. 32 bits per channel actually allowed us to properly map the metallic colors to our metalic ink on our printer.

Re:to be competitive

[maxwell demon]

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.

Re:Don't they do this every couple of years?

[djdanlib]

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.

Re:Don't they do this every couple of years?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Re:Screenshot?

[whoop]

Everyone here would just say it was photoshopped.

Re:Don't they do this every couple of years?

[silanea]

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.

Re:to be competitive

[R_Dorothy]

+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.

Re:Don't they do this every couple of years?

[bonch]

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.