Gimp 2.8 Finally Released

Cryophallion writes "After many years of development, GIMP 2.8 is finally released. Among its features: the oft-desired single-window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements, including some of the GIMP UI team's work. This might be the release that helps make The GIMP a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivaling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting of GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects." Here are the official release notes.

Comments

Gimp still limping after all these years...

[Anonymous Coward]

...with an interface worse than Penn & Teller's driving game.

Re:Gimp still limping after all these years...

[schroedingers_hat]

I find having it list slowly to the left is actually quite good for drawing curves once you get used to it.

Re:Gimp still limping after all these years...

[Savantissimo]

"... massive improvements, including some of the GIMP UI team's work."

1. There's a Gimp UI team?!?
2. This phasing indicates that most of the UI team's work was not only not an improvement, but unmentionable in polite society, or even on Slashdot.

Re:Gimp still limping after all these years...

[Smauler]

Talking crap about the GIMP and its UI is very easy. What's far more difficult is designing that UI, programming the features, and getting it into a coherent program.

Seriously, most of the the posts here are talking about how bad it is, from people who probably wouldn't know how to use it or its brethren for anything more than applying an effect to a photo.

Without GIMP, you'd be looking at completely inferior open source projects for image manipulation. As it is, it still leaves a little to be desired, but it's close enough for comparison.

Re:Gimp still limping after all these years...

[John Bokma]

from people who probably wouldn't know how to use it or its brethren for anything more than applying an effect to a photo.

Which most likely is how most people use this program. I used Irfanview a lot in the past and it took me quite some time to get used to Gimp's quirks and what I still see as too many extra steps to do exactly the same. Some of my complaints still are valid (IMO, of course), others were caused by switching to a different UI and not taking the time to RTFM. The problem is that the valid complains make it easier (to me) to bitch about things like: Oh, I expected it to do X, but it does Y. Or: I expect this key to do that but instead I have to use a different key.

Finally, a feature doesn't care about the UI. "Unsharp Mask" for example, doesn't care that the defaults for it are totally retarded; radius 0.5 and amount 0.50. But people using this filter, do. No idea who came up with those defaults but I guess he uses his foreskin as a filter for his digital camera.

Maaaaaan...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gimp Users website is a design trainwreck.

Re:Maaaaaan...

[DeathToBill]

Well, I think the prominent headline, "GIMP on Linux - Compile it yourself!" tells you the sort of people who designed it.

Re:Maaaaaan...

[TheNextCorner]

The Add under the article leads to a site wrapping Gimp with Crapware, toolbars and other installers. here is a screenshot of the ad, don't download it from Download-nation.com!

Re:Maaaaaan...

[jellomizer]

Your assessment isn't broad enough.
The Gimp <strike>Users website</strike> is a design trainwreck.

Re:Maaaaaan...

[miknix]

GIMP on Linux - Compile it yourself!

I use Gentoo you insensitive clod!

Re:Maaaaaan...

[davester666]

No, you are using GNU, with a soft Linux underbelly!

Re:Maaaaaan...

[Wintervenom]

http://wintervenom.brandonw.net/Boredom/Gentoo_Redux/

Re:Maaaaaan...

[miknix]

LOL

I'm sure you already tried:
$ emerge moo

?

Re:Maaaaaan...

[unixisc]

Not everybody who's good at drawing or using something like Photoshop or GIMP is necessarily going to be able to compile the software. It typically is more than just .configure && make && make install

Re:Maaaaaan...

[dave87656]

Well, I think the prominent headline, "GIMP on Linux - Compile it yourself!" tells you the sort of people who designed it.

I use gimp and have for many years and i never had to compile it. I think the gist of that statement is that you can modify and compile it if you need to.

The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

They really ought to consider re-naming it. Try installing it in - say - a junior high school some time. See how that goes over.

Re:The Name

[Zontar The Mindless]

They really ought to consider re-naming it. Try installing it in - say - a junior high school some time. See how that goes over.

They can name it "Love Child Of roman_mir And APK" for all I care. I'm just glad to see they grew a brain cell and adopted single-window mode. Y'know, for human users.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

I actually used to teach a class where I wanted to use it. But the name stopped me. A real shame. Wish someone would fork it with a name that isn't so childish and offensive. They can improve it all they like, but no one is ever going to take it seriously with that name.

Re:The Name

[Lord Lode]

Warning: non native English speaker here.

I didn't know gimp was an offensive word. Do children recognize it as offensive? Is it because it sounds like "chimp"? Are monkeys offensive?

Re:The Name

[Desler]

'Gimp' is a perjorative for disabled people.

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

It's an offensive slang term for handicapped people. And it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks.

Re:The Name

[CanHasDIY]

Warning: non native English speaker here.

I didn't know gimp was an offensive word. Do children recognize it as offensive? Is it because it sounds like "chimp"? Are monkeys offensive?

Children? Nah, the only reason they think the word might be offensive is because of the way idiotic, childish adults react to it.

Re:The Name

[DrData99]

It is a slur:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gimp

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

It is, and I didn't know it was an offensive word before looking it up, which I did a looooong time ago when I first read about people here finding the word inappropriate. It's a less nice word to say "cripple" and "cripple" isn't exactly nice. There is also this, but I'm not sure how it's related That said, I don't think kids should know what a Gimp is.

The thing that irks me, is that you could simply say "GNU Image Manipulation Program" instead and nobody would bat an eyelash. It's not as is "Adobe Photoshop" is short.

However, both Adobe Photoshop and The GIMP are both way overkill for schoolchildren. Personally, I'd go Paint.NET, which is a great product. Just too bad there is no real Linux equivalent for it.

Re:The Name

[torgosan]

"....Childish and offensive?" GNU Image Manipulation Program was GIMP long before P.C became vogue and began screwing up this country. Deal.

Re:The Name

[schroedingers_hat]

The multi window paradigm is popular among all the major operating systems in use on Vloxtar, don't be so small minded.

Re:The Name

[jzuccaro]

This

Re:The Name

[Nadir]

Just too bad there is no real Linux equivalent for it.

You stand corrected sir: http://pinta-project.com/

Re:The Name

[MnemonicMan]

There is a Linux alternative for Paint.NET: Pinta. It's coming along and is already decent. It's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty lazy thinking. Slavery was also in use for hundreds of years, long before P.C. became vogue; how long something has been done has no relation to whether it is something we should be doing.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

GNU
Image
Manipulation
Program

It is only offensive to those who feel a deep seated need to be offended.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who just can not spend a whole day without being "Deeply Offended" by something.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

Retard is just short for Retarded.
It derogatory status is created by those who want to be degraded.

Re:The Name

[Hatta]

Boo hoo. If you can't get over the name, it's pretty clear who is the childish one.

Re:The Name

[djlemma]

Did you ever use it in the pre-1.0 days, when there wasn't yet support for layers? You had to open each "layer" entity as a separate file in a separate window, and then it would let you combine/multiply/divide/etc between multiple files to come up with a composite. Now, THAT was a lot of windows to keep track of.

Re:The Name

[DrData99]

I tell people that it is a self referential acronym:
GIMP
Is
Most of
Photoshop

Re:The Name

[santosh.k83]

Mod parent-up...

Re:The Name

[DeathToBill]

I'm a native English speaker, living in England. I've never heard 'gimp' used to mean anything other than the software.

Must be an American thing.

Re:The Name

[jockm]

Considering your signature, I fear this is going to fall on deaf ears. You have a very high threshold for offense, and believe everyone should too. I suspect this because you are willing to equate a piece of computer hardware to criminal sodomy out in public, but please correct me if I am wrong.

But here's the thing, if you are a disabled person then Gimp is just like "the N word", and insult hurled at you in anger and derision. It is also a word you reserve the right to yourself. You don't have to like it, you don't have to agree, but you do have to accept that, because that is the reality out in the world — at least with enough people to matter.

And I can see why you think your explanation, giving the name in full, is cogent. But here's the thing: If the default were to say "The GNU Image Manipulation Program" and some people shortened it to "GIMP" then that would be one thing. Unfortunately that isn't the case. The devs of the program called it GIMP from the beginning, and took a very long time to accept that anyone could be offended by that. And now it is a line in the sand to them, one they will not cross.

The name is a problem. It stops people using it, it stops schools teaching it, it hurts the app.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

So I assume you use the word "nigger" often? It might be offensive only because of the way idiotic, childish adults react to it. Or perhaps because it has developed a meaning which means something bad. Do you come home and call your wife "bitch"? No? But it's just a female dog... no.. it's actually taken on a different definition to most people. Just like the word "gimp".

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

It's only offensive to people who are crippled, know somebody who is crippled, feel the need to not offend people who are crippled, or who work in a professional business and don't want to potentially offend customers/employees/etc. who may be crippled, etc.

In other words, it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks. Just as I said. If I created the worlds greatest network monitoring system and named it "Portable Enterprise Network Information System" it wouldn't matter. Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment.

GIMP is a stupid name. You may not care. I may not care. It's still a stupid name.

Re:The Name

[optimus2861]

As an engineer I have to fight the tendency to assign acronyms to things that don't need them, or even discard/alter acronyms that come out "wrong". GIMP does not get off the hook for having a silly name because it's an acronym. In fact the full name of the program looks like it was chosen to create the acronym - which is doubly silly.

Bemoan it all you want, but GIMP is a stupid name and it ought to change if it wants to be taken seriously.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

They didn't have to use that name or acronym. They could have just as easily called it GNU Graphic Editing Program and called it "GEP", or any other number of more appropriate name/acronyms. Obviously they thought they were being cute.

I've never worked there, but I suspect that making software naming decisions after a night of smoking weed and watching Pulp Fiction is probably not the kind of thing they do over at Adobe. That's one of the reasons people take *their* software seriously.

Re:The Name

[nine-times]

Also, ever since Pulp Fiction, the word "gimp" has had a pop-culture meaning of a male sex slave or sexual submissive. So... it's really not a word you want to toss around in a professional environement.

Re:The Name

[jockm]

Ah those glory days when we could just toss around racial slurs, and insulting terms about women, the disabled, and the mentally handicapped; and we didn't have to worry because we were white men... is that what you were talking about.

Political Correctness might be a bad idea, and certainly one that can go to far; but let us not confuse PC for not insulting huge swaths of people for your entertainment. It was never a good idea.

Deal.

Re:The Name

[L4t3r4lu5]

Gimp = Perjorative term for a disabled person.
Gimp = Sex slave.

You're deliberately missing the point. It's not about offending someone's sensibilities, it's about the bad connotations of the word. Would it hurt so much to rename it "GNU Licensed Image Development Environment" or similar? Then I might be able to convince the boss to actually consider it as an alternative to MSPaint.

Re:The Name

[KlomDark]

be == being

Re:The Name

[TigerTime]

It doesn't matter if the acronym works. It's an offensive word. If CHINK, HONKEY, WETBACK, or NIGGER were legitimate acronyms would you say they're a good idea for an app's name?

Re:The Name

[clickety6]

GNU
Image
Manipulation
Program

It is only offensive to those who feel a deep seated need to be offended.

Great, if no-one should be offended by an insulting acronym then there should be no objections if we replace it with the name " New Integrated GNU Graphics Editing Resource" for instance..

Re:The Name

[__aacvzh55]

really makes you wonder about the FAIL mentality of genius devs

Re:The Name

[chemicaldave]

It's still not marketable. There's a reason Amazon sells the Kindle and not The Amazon Reading Device.

Re:The Name

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Cripple isn't nice because of what it describes. Every single word we ever use to describe the condition will, over time, become a pejorative.

The concept of calling it "developmentally disabled" or whatever seems like a good idea though. It's such a stupid term that it has a high probability of replaced by something else before it gets the chance to be offensive. Although ... it's already starting to be used sarcastically. Give it a decade or so, it'll have a shortened version that's exclusively offensive, and once that becomes well-known it's only a matter of time before the long version becomes offensive too due to its connotation with the shortened form. The best part is, the euphemism treadmill has been going on for the entirety of recorded history, so there's basically no chance it's not just human nature, so we'll never get to stop! Yay!

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

The name was not a problem.
First came the name. Then came the problem.
Also.
The "N" word is fucking stupid. If someone is being offensive and says the word "Nigger" then they are an easy to spot dumb fuck.
Blacks can use the word nigger all they want. I will be modded down because I have used the word twice.
I did not use it offensively. The word itself is not offensive because blacks can say it all they want.
That means that is is only offensive because I am not black.
That is racism. That to me is offensive.
I am not often offended, but people who corrupt language to change thinking are in my opinion evil and highly offensive.

Re:The Name

[IcyHando'Death]

Gimp is an offensive term when used to refer to someone who is lame or handicapped. It may also evoke "the Gimp" from Pulp Fiction in some people's minds. However, it has other meanings, which are perfectly acceptable in polite conversation. Furthermore, it is a refreshingly straightforward, unforced, (indirectly) recursive acronym.

Personally, I am fine with the name and I picture the cute little whatever-it-is logo when I hear it, if I picture anything at all.

Re:The Name

[19thNervousBreakdown]

up in arms

I got fuckin no arms, asshole!

Re:The Name

[alen]

check out the movie Pulp Fiction

the GIMP was the guy in the bondage outfit who was a sex slave and lived in a box

Re:The Name

[demonbug]

We should call it

New

Internet

Graphics

Generator

Editor &

Retoucher

that way no one who doesn't feel a deep seated need to be offended will object

Yeah, but then it will just come in at #1 on every list of "Programs That Annoy You".

Re:The Name

[kiwimate]

Your stubborn refusal to consider someone else's feelings, combined with your signature, makes me think you have a remarkable lack of sensitivity, empathy, and social awareness. As such, you may not get much out of this post.

Sometimes one has to pick one's battles. You can choose to fight on the naming of a piece of software based on your assertion that it's only offensive to people who want to be offended. Alternatively, you can choose to accept that whether you agree with the sentiment or think it's foolish, nonetheless the term is offensive and/or silly and/or nebulous to potential users. The bigger issue could be that you want to spread the word about free and open source software and this is a great example of something that has come out of the community and matured, but which potentially is being held back by its name.

I'm not a FOSS evangelist, but if I were I'd think it was a valid concern and wonder if I could give up the battle ("I wanna keep the name GIMP!") so that I have a better shot at winning the war. (And I really dislike using that terminology, by the way, because it should be about choice and giving people something that's better, not a fight against the enemy.)

Look, it comes down to this. Like it or not, the name is a problem for more than a handful of people. Do you really want that to be the impediment that stops one of the best examples of free and open source software from being more widely adopted? Is it really that important to you? Where do your priorities lie?

(And no-one is going to call it "GNU Image Manipulation Program". One syllable versus eleven. Easy choice.)

Re:The Name

[doodlebumm]

gimp Noun: 1. Twisted silk or cotton with cord or wire running through it, used chiefly in upholstery. 2. offensive. A physically handicapped or lame person.

Re:The Name

[nine-times]

Yeah, I wrote a new spreadsheet program called "Ninetimes International GNU General Excel Replacement System". Who could ever be offended by that? Only people who have a deep seated need to be offended.</sarcasm>

Look, they chose an acronym that is a pejorative term, and most likely they did it on purpose because they thought it was clever or funny. And ok, fine, so what. I don't care. I'm not offended. On the other hand, if I were going to recommend this program to a bunch of uptight office workers, the name would give me pause. I have no doubt it would lead to jokes, and my HR department would be at least a little concerned that someone would take offense and complain.

As a practical matter, if they want people to adopt their application in serious work environments, they should probably change the name. If they don't care whether people use their application, then good for them, they can name it whatever they like.

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

Well, I see what you mean, but I don't exactly agree with calling it "offensive". You see, just calling out the truth shouldn't be insulting. That, assuming we really would be talking about someone with a physical disability. It's political correctness fucking up everything again. So, I'm a balding nerd and guess what, you can call me that. I reserve myself the right to call someone who can't walk correctly, a "cripple".

It's the same thing as not being able to say "Negro" any more, you have to say "black" or even "coloured". Know where "Negro" comes form in Latin? "Niger", which means nothing more than "black" for crying out loud! It's completely asinine. It makes it worse that black people do say "nigger" (you also see the "niger" root in it) amongst themselves. That utterly blows my mind. I'm sure somebody is going to call me racist now, but it really is an example how valid words with a well-defined meaning get corrupted by political correctness crusaders.

Oh, well, everyone should just stop being so thin-skinned, but hey, that's probably just me. Tough chance, that'll ever happen.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

The "Bigger issue" is not in my opinion FOSS.
The bigger issue is PC.
Political Correctness of speech is what offends me.

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

it's about the bad connotations of the word.

Well, I don't know. I just... use it. I've seriously never once thought about or even cared about the name. Do some people really get hung up on that kind of thing?

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

In fairness, "retard" is a derogatory term. Retarded is a non-derogatory term which aptly described one's mental facalties. "Retarded" became derogatory only because of hyper sensativity created by the use of the actually derogatory term, "retard."

Retarded is a very accurate description for those with specific mental challenges. Furthermore, retarded is aptly used in other cases too. In either case, its used to describe something which is bind in comparison to the norm. Thusly saying the timing an engine in behind its normal firing timing is retarded, is completely accurate and not derogatory in the least. Likewise, saying an individual is behind in mental development compared to their peers is retarded, is completely accurate and not derogatory in the least.

Its only because of massive politically correct stupidity that the term, "retarded" is the least bit derogatory in any context. On the other hand, "retard", from its inception, has always been a derogatory term. The fact this common usage is commonly conflated speaks wonderfully to the low intelligence of the hyper politically correct. In fact, one might be completely justified in saying, they are themselves, retarded.

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

Thanks for pointing it out. I knew about Pinta. I tried it out a few years ago. It wasn't pressure-aware with my Wacom. That's why I ditched it and continued using The GIMP. Has it become any better? Back then it' really was a bit more than a glorified paint, and Paint.NET was lightyears ahead.

Re:The Name

[nine-times]

It's only offensive to people who are crippled

Er... I think if you actually want to avoid offending crippled people, you should probably stop calling them "crippled". That word is also considered pretty politically incorrect. Shoot, these days, I think even "disabled" is considered offensive in some circles. It's supposed to be... maybe "differently abled"? I can't keep track.

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

Cool. I used it a few years ago, but left it behind me as it wasn't compatible with my Wacom (pressure-awareness was lost). Does it include that yet? I admit, this would be hardly a concern for schoolchildren, though.

Re:The Name

[bashibazouk]

It used to have that connotation. Then the movie Pulp Fiction came out. Now Gimp is associated with leather bound masochistic homosexuals...

Re:The Name

[circusboy]

I suspect a lot of children probably think it's the name of the flat plastic string with which you make braided lanyards at summer camp.

many tend to forget it exists after age 14-16, when a lot of people begin to see brightly colored things as being immature.

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

So I assume you use the word "nigger" often?

About as much as I use the word "fuck." That is, not often. Not because I think it's offensive, but because I just don't feel like using it. But even if I heard someone use it, I really wouldn't care.

Or perhaps because it has developed a meaning which means something bad.

It has many uses, just like "fuck." It could be used in a joke, for instance. But I guess some people just can't help being oversensitive. Truly a shame. The best thing to do is to ignore them completely.

Do you come home and call your wife "bitch"?

What does not using a word have to do with finding it offensive? There are many words that I do not use, but that doesn't mean it's because I find them offensive or bad. I use them when I feel it is appropriate. Your analogies are nonsense.

Re:The Name

[Lumpy]

If their logo was a ball gag, I think a Lot more people would use it.

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

Your stubborn refusal to consider someone else's feelings, combined with your signature, makes me think you have a remarkable lack of sensitivity, empathy, and social awareness. As such, you may not get much out of this post.

I think you pretty much nailed it right there. He's way too out of touch with society to notice or care. He may as well run for public office at this point.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

However, it has other meanings, which are perfectly acceptable in polite conversation

Yeah, and "faggot" can also be used to refer to a bundle of kindling. But I would be pretty stupid to name my software that and expect serious people to adopt it.

Re:The Name

[shiftless]

What, that geeks don't value marketing?

No, that 99% of geeks are so clueless about marketing that they don't even understand why it's desirable.

This isn't a business that's seeking to conquer the world and "gain market share", it's an open source project where people want to create a tool for others to use.

If they want others to use it........then change the fucking name. How difficult is this concept, really?

It's been extraordinarily successful in that regard.

No, it's been somewhat successful. It could have been and could still be extraordinarily successful, were the developers not clueless twits.

If some people can't get past a name just to use a product, then why is that the developers problem and not the people who choose to not use a product for childish reasons?

It's the developer's problem because the developers will go down in history as clueless twits who provided a marginally useful tool, rather than smart folks who genuinely "got it", understood their user base, and provided a seriously useful tool for them.

I mean, as another poster suggested, why not call it NIGGER? I'm sure there'll be leagues of those "childish" people flocking to it, right?

A good mechanic when shopping for used cars, can tell the difference between a car maintained by a fucking moron, and one by a person with half a clue. Guess which car he will gravitate towards purchasing?

A materials scientist who is a plastics expert isn't going to buy some cheap ass garbage plastic basket made out a material which he knows won't last 6 weeks; he's going to buy the one next to it that costs a dollar or ten dollars more. It's not even that the cheap one will break; it's the *knowledge* of it being a cheap piece of shit that would haunt him in his sleep if he knowingly bought such garbage.

So given all the above logical, reasonable statements, why the fuck would you assume that an artist is any different? Why would a person who is finely attuned to artwork and design sense gravitate towards a half assed graphics program so moronically designed that the very name gives it away?

I think it's a stupid name, but I also think if someone is that hyper-sensitive to a name, then perhaps they should fork over a few hundred bucks for photo shop so they won't be offended. I kind of like the idea that being hyper-sensitive to things costs people money.

No--being hypersensitive to things makes people money.....a concept the "GIMP" developers might have half a hope of understanding, were they actually artists rather than your average geeks with zero artistic sense. It is precisely because the GIMP geeks aren't anything like their ideal user base (you know....artists) that their tool is nowhere near as good and as popular as it could be.

Re:The Name

[Lumpy]

He has a gimpy leg. Sorry but you must be a very young Englishman. AS it was said at least 80X a night on Monty Python.

Re:The Name

[Kozz]

The name was not a problem.
First came the name. Then came the problem.
Also.
The "N" word is fucking stupid. If someone is being offensive and says the word "Nigger" then they are an easy to spot dumb fuck.
Blacks can use the word nigger all they want. I will be modded down because I have used the word twice.
I did not use it offensively. The word itself is not offensive because blacks can say it all they want.
That means that is is only offensive because I am not black.
That is racism. That to me is offensive.
I am not often offended, but people who corrupt language to change thinking are in my opinion evil and highly offensive.

A couple of points for you to consider...

• If you think that all Black Americans feel the same way about the word "nigger", you're sorely mistaken.
• The speaker doesn't get to decide whether his words are offensive. That's up to the listeners. If it's well known that a word is deemed by many to be offensive, the speaker ought to at least attempt to be respectful of that, even if he doesn't agree. To do otherwise seems anti-social, antagonistic, a jerk... pick one.
• Of all the things in this world worth of the word "evil", I'm pretty sure you're stretching the definition.

As for the naming of GIMP and whether it should be changed... would it be such a big deal? We've watched many projects go through forks and renames and changes of ownership. StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice. Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox. I think we'd get along just fine with a name change.

To be obstinate on this topic is short-sighted if we (as a community) would like to see this product succeed at an ever-growing rate. If the name is holding it back from adoption or acceptance to any measurable degree, isn't it a good thing to seek improved marketing?

Re:The Name

[circusboy]

most of the 'physically challenged' people I know refer to themselves as crippled.

being actually crippled they can't see any reason to put up with the bullshit of being polite or indirect about it. generally the only time they use PC terms is when they run into the obviously not PC. (i.e. badly sized doors, lack of alternatives to stairs in public spaces, insensitive assholes (clods, sorry) etc.)

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

Funny, I just ranted about exactly the same below.... You're not alone: I think it's stupid too. Especially the double standard regarding "Nigger". What can you do, eh?

Re:The Name

[couchslug]

They don't care, they will never care, and Photoshop is free off torrent sites so anyone not liking GIMP has an industry-standard home alternative. (Adobe, wisely understanding that "market chumming" maintains their product as standard, don't make it too difficult to pirate.)

Part of geek vanity is naming things a certain way. They coded it and it's THEIRS to do with as they like. It belongs to them.

Re:The Name

[weszz]

Yeah, but then it will just come in at #1 on every list of "Programs That Annoy You".

I see what you did there... If i had mod points I would mod you up for the reference. However, the correct answer is Naggers...

Re:The Name

[ShieldW0lf]

Geek is also a seriously derogatory term for someone who is crippled. You see them at the circus, waving their flippers at you.

Didn't stop Best Buy from using the term in their marketing...

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Like when someone is slow to understand something. You know like how bad branding can really hurt the adoption or use of something. Yeah, I could see that being retarded thus making the person slow to understand a retard.

Re:The Name

[VMaN]

Maybe it's a silly name.

But they are burning through the english dictionary too fast with their gimp/crippled/handicapped/disabled/physially challenged/diffrently abled

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

I agree. Some people are needlessly oversensitive. It would be a smart business decisions to avoid defending them. But I never really meant otherwise.

It's just that I can't believe people honestly get offended by things that aren't even intended to offend to begin with. They don't even care about context or meaning, just strings of letters.

Re:The Name

[VMaN]

Why would we want to replace it if no one was offended?

Re:The Name

[Jahava]

I tell people that it is a self referential acronym: GIMP Is Most of Photoshop

Well, in that case they should rename it to something more friendly like PIMP.

Re:The Name

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

It's an offensive slang term for handicapped people. And it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks.

It can be called "BiSexualLameRetardFishFrog Raster Graphics Editor" for all I care. Its a free suitable alternative to Adobe Photoshop and that's all that matters to a casual user like me.

Re:The Name

[MnemonicMan]

Heh, sorry I've never used it. :) On Windows I use Paint.NET and on Linux I use the GIMP. But, hey, it's up to version 1.3!! ;)

Re:The Name

[jockm]

Let's take one last run at this: Do you believe context ever matters in language or word choice? Are there words you should not expose children to until a certain age? Is the way you talk to your lover in the bedroom the same as how you address your boss? If the CEO of where you worked disabled, would you call him a gimp to his face?

If you believe that language has context, or If the answer to any of those (or questions like them) above was "no", then why is it appropriate to name an image editing program with a word that is — in this day and age — primarily used to insult, demean, and/or hurt?

Re:The Name

[ifrag]

boss to actually consider it as an alternative to MSPaint

Of course after using GIMP for a minute, the (almost guaranteed) reaction is going to be "fuck this, MSPaint will do..."

I've started recommending Paint.NET for people who need a minimal image editor.

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

You may be near-psychopathic but your logic sucks. Being sensitive to a term which insults you, others you know, etc. is not the same as "being offended by everything." You're just using that phrase to belittle others and post-hoc justify your beliefs that "GIMP is a good name."

The name insults some people and justifiably so. That is a fact. You may disagree that it *should* but you cannot deny that others have a right to dislike it.

Re:The Name

[Rick17JJ]

Several years ago, a husband once brought his handicapped wife to a Linux users group meeting. Another women in the group briefly said something about the GIMP. The handicapped older woman than angrily demanded that her husband take her home at once. She incorrectly thought the other younger woman had disparagingly referred to her as being a gimp.

When I was in high school, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a couple of guys I knew used the word gimp as slang for a handicapped person. I have not heard the word used since then.

For those who have not heard the word gimp before, here is a link to a short article that uses the word several times:

http://www.scottsandsalive.com/gimp-fraud/

Re:The Name

[ifiwereasculptor]

If people fail to take seriously one a major expoent of free software solely because of an acronym that can be read as a socially stigmatized word, then I feel they don't deserve to use it in the first place. I mean, by all means, feel free to protect the children against the offensive power of the GIMP. But why stop there? Might as well censor biology classes, lest they find out about the existence of animals with names such as cock, ass, beaver, crab, peacock and sperm whale. (This was a joke, at first, but then I realized that no one calls a female dog a bitch anymore, so that sort of social censorship of animal nomenclature is not exactly unprecedented.)

Re:The Name

[amRadioHed]

Gimp = heavy thread used for decorating fabrics
Gimp = plastic cord used for children's arts & crafts

If they chose a word that had only offensive meanings then I could see people being offended by it, but the word Gimp is only offensive in some contexts.

Re:The Name

[Artifakt]

Count me as one of those who feels a "deep seated need to be offended". I have an autistic nephew who has been called a gimp by various ignorant fools in the past, and hell yes, I'm offended. You have offended me, by being a total jerk. You should be ashamed of yourself, but on slashdot, vile and abusive speech evidently gets you modded plus five.
            Silly me, I thought abusing people who cannot help their disability was the sign of a person with a crushing inferiority complex, desperately trying to elevate themselves by attacking those they percieve as even weaker, and doomed to eventually fail. But Slashdot calls that insightful.
            You have a problem, a personality problem as large as alchoholism or heroin abuse, and the four people who gave you mod points are enabling that problem, encouraging you to go farther down a road that leads eventually to your own distruction. You can realize that it is the very worst aspect of your own nature that attempts to justify abusing some of the most helpless of our society, or not, but you probably consider those who modded you up as friends so you will have less incentive to grow up and learn to give a damn about other people. That's a pity.

Re:The Name

[DeathToBill]

Thought I knew my python pretty well, but don't remember a gimp. What sketch?

Re:The Name

[Windwraith]

Actually, one of the splash screens of the 2.7.x branch did actually put the GIMP mascot into a gimp suit.
Which bothers me, because they are aware of the connotations but still adhering to it like kids who think they are funny.

Re:The Name

[roman_mir]

But if somebody does it, they should really avoid making a similar mistake as this:

--

"I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
"Oh. What's it called now?"
"Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you."

---

Also don't let Mark Shuttleworth name it for you, or it'll be known as:

Here, kids, this is Limpy Aye-aye.

Re:The Name

[Zontar The Mindless]

Huh? I was saying exactly the opposite, IMNSHO.

Re:The Name

[sdnoob]

well i tell people the "G" is silent.. so it's just "IMP"

Re:The Name

[nelsonal]

You should have downloaded one of the test versions. The splash screen left no doubt about which meaning of gimp they intended it to be.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

If someone is calling your nephew "gimp" then they are being offensive.
If some hick walk up to a black man and says "outta my way nigger", then he is being offensive.
GIMP as the name of a program that has nothing to do with disabilities is not offensive.
Nigger when used by a black comedian is not offensive.

Let me go slowly here.
Words are not in and of themselves offensive. People can be. People who are being offensive use words.

If I were to say that "Your nephew is a strange looking person with limited intelligence and no hope of being a full human being."
That would be highly offensive and a horrible thing to say to someone.
What word there is at fault? Which of those words are "offensive"?

Words are not and never have been the problem. As long as we try to fix the words we will never fix the problem.

Be offended all you want about words that in and of themselves are not offensive.

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks.

Not marketing ability, but the wish to market in the first place. GIMP isn't a commercial product, you know. Why does something that's non-commercial need marketing?

It's the same thing with "Linux market share". Who cares? Why care, unless you're Mark Shuttleworth or somebody.

Actually, that puzzles me with all marketing. McDonald's "Over ten bajillion sold"... why should I care how many other people are buying a damned hamburger? Why should I care how many of my make and model of car is sold as long as mine runs well?

See, there's the point. It's not marketing ability, it's simply not giving a fuck about popularity. I think Billy Joel must be a nerd:

What's the matter with the car I'm drivin'?
Can't you tell that it's out of style?
Should I get a set of white wall tires?
Are you gonee run the miracle mile?

Have you heard about the new fashion, honey?
All you need are looks and a whole lot of money.
Hot punk, cool funk, even if it's old junk
It's still rock and roll to me.

Re:The Name

[NotBorg]

So by that logic we shouldn't have sex education in JHS either since the students are just going to poke fun at it. At some point students realize that you take the subject matter seriously and either stop being disruptive or are disciplined.

Same with GIMP, just warn the student that they are using the word out of context, that their behavior is inappropriate, and discipline them as needed.

Also, it's very common for students in that age bracket to make light of teacher's names. Does that mean teachers should change their names?

Re:The Name

[jbeaupre]

Fortunately the software has color correction. All traces of white can be easily eliminated.

Re:The Name

[actiondan]

>That acronym would not be offensive if used by a black person.

You keep saying that. Why is it surprising to you? The same is true for words used towards all kinds of groups.

I don't think it is words themselves that are offensive but the intent behind them. Obviously as we are not all mind readers, people have to take a guess at intent based on the words used, the tone and, yes, the person doing the talking. When a member of a particular group uses a potentially offensive term for their own group, it is usually pretty clear that they do not intend to offend. When someone outside the group does it, it is not so clear.

As well as racial groups, this applies to all kinds of groups like gays, jews, ginger haired people, nerds, people from specific cities/countries/regions.

People can sometimes be over sensitive (I have certainly come across people who look for opportunities to be offended) but if you know a word will be considered offensive when you use it, why not choose a different word, assuming you don't intend to offend?

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

No, you don't use the word "Nigger" because you know if you use it in front of the wrong person, he's going to beat the dogshit out of you for being a fucktard.

Appeal to force. Just because someone would beat you up if you did/said something, that doesn't mean what you did/said was wrong.

And you don't name your software "NIGGER" because you know that this is the equivalent of naming it "THIS SOFTWARE IS MADE BY A FUCKTARD."

As I said, I honestly don't care what they name the software. It's a wise decision to not piss off random people if you're a business, but it doesn't really matter to me, specifically.

Re:The Name

[actiondan]

Quite right.

Aside from any offensive connotations, which of these names clearly fails at being clear about what it does?

Photoshop
Paint
GIMP

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

So enlightened that idea is.

Coming from the guy with a sig that compares dell servers to anal rape..

Re:The Name

[jones_supa]

Your comment does not make sense.

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

Even if you have no sensitivity issues to a word, it's being insensitive to use it and spread its use if you know others might be (some of them with good reason).

I'm not going to worry about random oversensitive people. I couldn't speak if that were the case, since some people really do get offended over just about anything. I'll keep speaking as I do now (though I don't think many would consider my manner of speech offensive anyway).

It's not like your life will end if you suddenly stopped using the word "gimp".

My life also wouldn't end if someone stole my computer, tv, and various other things. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

Yes, except using "geek" in that sense fell out of popular use in the 1940's. But if Best Buy were selling their service in the flapper era, then yes, it would be pretty stupid to use that term.

Re:The Name

[ColdWetDog]

I've never worked there, but I suspect that making software naming decisions after a night of smoking weed and watching Pulp Fiction is probably not the kind of thing they do over at Adobe.

No, marketing seems to go to work after a week long bender on ketamine, Red Bull and Everclear. That is the only way I can square their upgrade / crossgrade strategies and their predilection for putting customer service centers in Non English speaking countries.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

People are offensive or they are not. Words are not offensive.
Midget racing. the word midget used this way it is in no way offensive.
So the word midget is not offensive. Can be used offensively but it is not offensive in and of itself.
Bitch. Used on your wife is offensive. Used to describe my female dog not offensive. The word bitch is not offensive.
Nigger. Used by Chris Rock while doing stand up comedy is not offensive. Used by a white guy telling a black guy to move it is. The word is not offensive.
You can keep going for yourself.
You can try to fix ignorant offensive people by restricting language for all. But offensive people will just use new words.

Re:The Name

[s73v3r]

Unfortunately, we still have to live around and work with those people. And telling them to "get over it" doesn't really work. Part of getting along with other people is understanding where they are coming from.

Re:The Name

[ColdWetDog]

If their logo was a ball gag, I think a Lot more people would use it.

You're hanging out with the wrong crowd again...

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

GIMP was not considered all that offensive when it started.
Language has become much more PC over the years.

Re:The Name

[CSMoran]

If they chose a word that had only offensive meanings then I could see people being offended by it, but the word Gimp is only offensive in some contexts.

Sure, because an ass can also mean a donkey...

Re:The Name

[s73v3r]

That means that is is only offensive because I am not black.

That's not racism, that's how it was historically used. Whites would use the word "nigger" as a derogatory name for blacks, as a way of treating them less than human. Same thing with the word "fag" for gay people.

And the problem came after the name because the program was not widely popular when it was first named. Among a small group of people, it was likely they had our high tolerance for offense, and didn't care. But in the larger world, many more people, with a much lower tolerance for offense, were exposed to it.

Re:The Name

[jones_supa]

GNU Image Manipulation Program

It is only offensive to those who feel a deep seated need to be offended. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who just can not spend a whole day without being "Deeply Offended" by something.

While you are correct, it would just be a practical thing for OSS projects to have professional names to help promoting them a bit easier.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

Why not educate people.
If they can not be educated then they are not worth (in my opinion) worrying about.
Fix people not words.

Re:The Name

[s73v3r]

It's not based solely on the color of the speaker. It's also based on the history of that word. You cannot deny that the word nigger has a very, very negative connotation, especially when coming from a white person to a black person.

Honestly, you're starting to sound like one of those jackasses who likes being offensive purely for the sake of being offensive.

Re:The Name

[s73v3r]

Would it hurt so much to rename it "GNU Licensed Image Development Environment"

Yes. Because then it would conjure up memories of licensing debacles the user has experienced with other programs.

Re:The Name

[Compaqt]

>Do some people really get hung up on that kind of thing?

Yeah, they do. I mean, come on, you know that, right?

It's one thing to say stuff in geek circles, quite another among "normal people". I know it's funny and all to alarm "normal people" with geektalk (not just "GIMP", but the whole shebang from Star Trek to Dr Who, etc.), but in business you have to make an effort to make people comfortable.

As far as GIMP not changing their name, whatever.

But this is the sort of thing that Ubuntu could do. Global search & replace?

Re:The Name

[NotBorg]

One could argue the same for Git... but it's used in professional environments all the time despite it being "unparliamentary language."

Stop fussing about one definition of the word. You're just like the asshats that want to preserve the purity of the word "hacker."

Re:The Name

[ColdWetDog]

As a practical matter, if they want people to adopt their application in serious work environments, they should probably change the name. If they don't care whether people use their application, then good for them, they can name it whatever they like.

This.

Every once in awhile this comes up.

"I need Photoshop."
"No you don't, you just want to crop that picture and brighten up a bit."
"But I need Photoshop."
"No you don't, I'm not pulling $600 out of the budget for that - here have GIMP."

Yes, there are other Windows-based pixel editiors. I think we got our budding digital artistes Paint.Net. Which of course didn't work with some bizarre plug in el Artiste wanted to use but that's another story.

Re:The Name

[datavirtue]

I'm only offended by the epic fucking waste of marketing power for such a good application.

Re:The Name

[ColdWetDog]

Not sure who 'they' are but lots of businesses care. You don't want to go downloading warez copies of PS on a business network. Nice way to get you in trouble. There is Paint.Net for Windows - that's really basic (which is good), but not much else in between.

There is Corel Paint - for $400, probably a few others. But there is not much in the mid range.

I've specifically NOT suggested GIMP to co workers because of the name. We just don't need the hassle. As somebody else pointed out, in the real world you have to pick your battles.

Re:The Name

[Hatta]

In other words, it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks

Marketing is evil. The lack of marketing ability on the part of geeks is one of their greatest strengths. If you can't deal with that, it's your loss.

Re:The Name

[geminidomino]

It can be called "BiSexualLameRetardFishFrog Raster Graphics Editor" for all I care.

Actually, it can't. That's already been claimed for the new slashdot B2B portal site.

Re:The Name

[onkelonkel]

As you say, euphemisms get less acceptable over time. They had a marvelous example on the TV the other day. A local teacher showed a letter she had just received from the school board advising them to not use the words "retarded" or "mentally retarded" but instead they should use "cognitive impairment". She also had an identical letter from 25 years ago saying to not use the words "simple" or feeble minded" and instead they should use "mentally retarded".

Re:The Name

[Hatta]

You can choose to fight on the naming of a piece of software based on your assertion that it's only offensive to people who want to be offended

Offense is always a choice on the part of the offended. Maybe they should pick their battles.

Do you really want that to be the impediment that stops one of the best examples of free and open source software from being more widely adopted? Is it really that important to you? Where do your priorities lie?

As long as the software is good, it doesn't matter. Those who choose not to use it based on the name are missing out. The developers lose nothing if they don't use it.

If it was really such a big deal, why hasn't GIMP forked yet? Just do with GIMP what Debian has done with Iceweasel and you're good to go. The fact that this hasn't happened yet indicates that people aren't really serious about their objection to the name.

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

You may pretend words don't have a connotation. But you're wrong.

Re:The Name

[serviscope_minor]

Your comment does not make sense.

Sure it does. On quality operating systems with well designed windowing systems, there is a program called a "window manager" whose job it is to decorate and arrange application windows as the user sees fit.

Well behaved applications would bring up lots of independent windows since they understood that the user knows best and has chosen a windows manager to suit.

Then came a raft of awful window managers designed to emulate popular but less well designed operating systems. Along with that came lots of whining about the GIMP since it wasn't so easy to use if the user chose a window manager whic was incapable of managing windows in a sane way.

To stem the flow of bitter griping, the GIMP developers ended up having to combine all the windows together into one big window, and then provide user interface elements to allow users to manipulate these subwindows. This stops the poor quality window managers from making a hash of things.

In other words, the GIMP has now taken over the role of the window manager.

Re:The Name

[serviscope_minor]

Huh? I was saying exactly the opposite, IMNSHO.

No, the GIMP used to rely on windos managers to, well, manage all the tool windows. Now it has had to reimplement all that window manager functionality and manage all the tools etc in one large window because users kept consistently selecting very bad window managers and then whining that the gimp was at fault, not the window managers.

Re:The Name

[G3ckoG33k]

Did you ever use anything on Windows before Gimp came out. There was just one blue window, and damn hard to edit.

Re:The Name

[G3ckoG33k]

"leather bound masochistic homosexuals"

Hmm... Where is the pejorative?

Re:The Name

[serviscope_minor]

They can name it "Love Child Of roman_mir And APK" for all I care.

That's what a TRULY UNREGULATED free market would do.

Re:The Name

[amliebsch]

So the name *itself* is not offensive, it only reminds him of hateful, offensive people that have hurt him and the people he loves.

When it comes to public acceptance, it's a distinction without a practical difference.

Re:The Name

[thetoadwarrior]

Yeah they should give in so all those prudish Americans can use it without feeling like they're offending Jesus.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

You will need to show how exactly it is that it is the words themselves that are offensive.
I have been quite clear about how it is that words are not the issue. I used actual examples and facts. I did not just say "You are wrong"
If you would like to present some facts that back up your statement then I would be happy to hear them.

You can take your massively unsupportable and ill thought out position that could I can only assume be given to you by a three year old developmentally disabled child and place it securely in your anal cavity.

Let me know which of those words you found offensive.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hi Mr. Washington. I have something important to teach you. Another word for "black person" is "nigger". It's only a word. It doesn't matter that you were called a nigger while being beaten by racists in the 60s, it's just a word. So if you wish that people wouldn't call you a nigger, then you aren't worth worrying about."

"Yes Billy, your mother and I both accept the fact that you are gay and love you just as much as before. Just make sure that you aren't offended when someone calls you a fag, okay? It's just a word! If you find it offensive then you're thin-skinned and not worth worrying about. Love you!"

"Yes Mrs. Meyers, I called you a gimp. You see, even though there are plenty of words I could have used that you would not have found offensive, I find it crucially important that words be treated as magical, free-of-sin entities that contain no connotation beyond their simple definition. 'Pejorative' is just a term made up by people who like being offended as a tool to oppress those of us who feel this way. There offense is clearly indefensible and they're not worth worrying about."

No thank you. I'd rather just use words that people don't find offensive. But you can keep tilting at windmills if that gives you some amount of happiness.

Re:The Name

[Barefoot Monkey]

I agree. Now please excuse me while I go play with my Wii.

Re:The Name

[houghi]

Now I understand why people are against teaching evolution in school. It would mean we need to talk about Homo Erectus.

Re:The Name

[eldorel]

the only reason they think the word might be offensive is because of the way idiotic, childish adults react to it.

This may be true, but it can still cause issues for people.

At a company I worked at the legal team vetoed using this software (despite all of the design team offering to use it to save the company money).

Why did legal say no? The name could "be construed as a sign of a negative work environment for those who may be physically disable or handicapped".
In plain english, the name could be used as lawsuit bait.

So the gimp team can either change the name, or accept that the entire business world will never be willing to pay for support for this software.

Which is really sad, because they could easily be making a hefty profit from training and support for businesses. If the name wasn't a legal liability.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

I have to tell you. Large black trucks sitting in left hand turn lanes reminds me of a massively painful and debilitating situation I had.
Does not mean that I can ban the ability for large black trucks to use left hand turn lanes.

Once we stop trying to fix what is not the problem we can start to fix what is the problem.

Though as long as people are focusing on evil words they will continue to just change as they always have.

Re:The Name

[ShieldW0lf]

Fair enough.

So, when did "Gimp" fall out of popular use? Personally, I've never heard ANYONE ever use the word to describe anything but this piece of software.

Re:The Name

[DroolTwist]

I get it now. I don't get it.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

Words can be used offensively. No one is saying that they can not be.
"Non offensive" words can be used to offend.
"Offensive" words can be used in "Non Offensive" ways.
WORDS are not offensive.
Faggot used to describe a bundle of sticks is not offensive.
Midget used in Midget racing is not offensive.
Nigger used by Chris Rock on stage is not offensive.
Bitch used to describe my female dog is not offensive.

I could say "Your mothers rounded face and lack of any real intelligence has made me believe that she has no hope of ever achieving full human status."
I am sure you would find that offensive. It would be. What offensive word did I use?

Words are not offensive, people are.
Fix the problem, not the word.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

They probably could make it a better name.
Never thought it was a great name.
My issue is with people who think that words are offensive.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really want that to be the impediment that stops one of the best examples of free and open source software from being more widely adopted?

Wow, way to turn it around. So, the project's refusal to change its name is to blame and not the knee-jerking idiots that let their emotions govern their choice of (FREE) software?

At some point people have to start taking responsibility for what offends them.

I'm not a FOSS evangelist, but if I were I'd think it was a valid concern ...

Clearly you aren't because if you were it would not be a concern. I'm sure when the developers started writing GIMP they were concerned about things like market share and the opinion of sensitive, self-entitled assholes.

"I won't use your product because of its name" -- say it aloud a few times. Suffering this type of idiocy is the reason we're raising a generation of eternal adolescents.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

That would certainly explain a lot about CS5.

Re:The Name

[shutdown -p now]

The "leather" part. Do you have any idea how many poor animals are murdered in a very cruel way to make one gimp suit?!

Re:The Name

[fahrbot-bot]

'Gimp' is a pejorative for disabled people.

Perhaps, but GIMP is a *acronym* for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" - grow up people.

Re:The Name

[shutdown -p now]

You know what? Go ahead, release an app or library named Nigger on Freshmeat. Let's see how that goes in a professional environment. After all, only asshats fuss about one definition of the word, true hackers redefine words to fit their needs.

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

It's not random anymore once the majority agrees, then it becomes socially accepted behavior.

Okay. Then I guess I'm in the minority. I don't really care.

A little bit of sensitivity doesn't = weakness.

How do you figure that? How is getting offended not a weakness? Granted, some people can't help it, but I wouldn't construe it as a positive thing.

Words have different meanings to different people, why do some people discard that fact and assuming that their understanding of a word is the correct and only one that should stand?

Good question.

If you happen to find the word "gimp" offensive for any reason, I'll do you the personal favor and not use it regardless of whether I think you need to suck it up or not.

Good for you. You're free to self-censor. But if someone finds the word "the" offensive, I for one am not going to cease my use of it.

Not everyone is as emotionally stable as a rock, and it's not necessarily a trait that can be learned.

I agree. That is unfortunate. But it is also necessary to recognize that not everyone is going to cater to your arbitrary needs.

Re:The Name

[fahrbot-bot]

True, but as George Carlin said,

There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And woooords.

Words should be taken and accepted in context and the only thoughts and intentions be judged.

Re:The Name

[CanHasDIY]

Thank you for offering a rational, logical response, it's quite refreshing.

Another issue along the lines of legality would be that certain parts of the GiMP license could be an issue for certain commercial business, although I admit I have not read through it myself.


BTW, The grammar nazi in me wants to say one thing: English is a proper noun, and thus should be capitalized.

Re:The Name

[shutdown -p now]

Well, duh - that's because gimps are sent to NHS death panels in England as soon as they are discovered. ~

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

So the gimp team can either change the name, or accept that the entire business world will never be willing to pay for support for this software.

Not only the business world, but also in the education world, the public sector, and pretty much anywhere else where the software could be seen in public.

Re:The Name

[The Wild Norseman]

The speaker doesn't get to decide whether his words are offensive. That's up to the listeners. If it's well known that a word is deemed by many to be offensive, the speaker ought to at least attempt to be respectful of that, even if he doesn't agree. To do otherwise seems anti-social, antagonistic, a jerk... pick one.

My girlfriend (white) has this one teenage son (white) who was angry at her one day while talking on the phone. He ended up calling her a nigger. Unoffended, she thought about it for a moment and then asked him, "Okay, so what's it like being the son of a nigger?"

It was meant as an offense, but she wasn't offended because she didn't take it as such.

I don't see GIMP as offensive, but I can see how others can and I agree with your point about just changing it to get along better in a wider community.

Re:The Name

[crazyjj]

If people fail to take seriously one a major expoent of free software solely because of an acronym that can be read as a socially stigmatized word, then I feel they don't deserve to use it in the first place.

I'll concede your point if you'll agree to never, ever again ask the question "Why aren't more people using FOSS?"

Re:The Name

[Martin Blank]

Would it hurt so much to rename it "GNU Licensed Image Development Environment" or similar?

That's actually one of the best name suggestions I've seen. It would certainly open up some interesting new logo possibilities.

Re:The Name

[CSMoran]

Also? That's what the word means. It can also be used as a mild euphemism for "arse".

Yup, just as ASS CRACK is freebase cocaine for donkeys.

Re:The Name

[The Grim Reefer]

Gimp means lame or crippled. Calling someone a gimp is an insulting way of calling them defective. Similar to calling someone a retard.

Not the brightest name for a software package.

So I suppose that they better change the name of this project too then. My wife has MS and walks with a crutch most of the time now. She often refers to herself as "a gimp". Of course the name of the program in question is not "a gimp", it's GIMP.

Is it offensive when I retard the timing on an engine? Isn't that entirely different from calling someone "a retard"? What about setting the Master or Slave for an IDE drive?

Context matters. But frankly I do not understand why people give so much power to these words when they are used as insults. They are only words, generally used by small people and used to make them feel somehow better about their own pathetic lives. Political correctness has run a muck in the US. Don't they teach "Stick and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me" in school anymore? I've been called a "cracka" and a "honky" before that and have had black friends refer to me as a "nigga" too. They are only words.

I didn't find out until I was in my twenties that my family, on my mothers side, left Germany in the late 30's because they were Jewish. They were so scared that they hid this from everyone, including their own family. I couldn't tell you how mayn people called me a "heb" or a "kike" after finding that out. These terms are only offensive if people let them be as such. And making them taboo when they are not even being used in a derogatory fashion is just stupid.

Re:The Name

[chill]

Thank you Captain Obvious!

Yes, context matters and it is a juvenile response. The fact remains it has a strong negative connotation with the general public to the actual detriment of its adoption.

As for "heb" (alt. "heeb"), that is similar to Nip or Jap. All are simply single-syllable adaptions of ethnic designations. These are similar to "Brit" or "Yank". Not really offensive, unless you're looking for a reason to be offended. Unfortunately, lots of people seem to have that as a hobby.

Also, I think "Heeb" is a magazine dedicated to Jewish (Hebrew) culture in the New York/New Jersey area.

Finally, regarding your wife, you probably already realize the use of potentially derogatory terms as self-reference is not only politically correct but a form of self-empowerment. (For reference, see "nigger" as used in popular black culture versus use by anyone else on the planet.)

Hmmm...I should have found a way to integrate usages of "hacker" in there somewhere. Oh, well. See the previous /. article on B&N pulling a copy of Linux Format for more of that than you can probably stomach.

Re:The Name

[Kozz]

Thank you for being the first reply to understand the distinction between "intent" and "perception". I'm not certain how much name recognition value there is in the current "GIMP" name, but anyone who wants the software or already uses it will certainly be able to track down a new release with a new name. I'm not particularly offended by the name, but I'm sensitive enough to appreciate that it could piss people off or alienate some potential users who find they wish they could use the product in their workplace or institution but opt to use something different as to not ruffle feathers.

Re:The Name

[Alien Being]

You were modded up because you predicted that you would be modded down. I'll be modded down because the moderators are smarter than I am.

Re:The Name

[BootysnapChristAlive]

If someone is slandering your family and your reputation out in public, being sensitive is most certainly a positive thing.

Not really. Being sensitive could lead you to be emotional. Few can think logically when they're too emotional.

You do not need to be sensitive to take care of such threats.

And an argument taken to extremes loses the essence of the original discussion.

Claiming it's "extreme" means nothing. Extremes can be correct.

People can be offended by just about anything. There is no objective reason I should worry about every little thing.

Can you honestly say that you've never self-censored yourself before?

Irrelevant. I self-censor when I wish to do so. You're free to do the same. Of course, if I don't wish to do so, I'm free to not do so.

But I guarantee you, though, that I'm not going to refrain from mentioning the name of a piece of software. There's not even an intent to offend there.

No one is forcing you to do anything, they just might not like you if you don't.

Okay.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

Regardless. I am sure that many people were offended that I used the word at all.
The same people who are not offended but laugh when Chris Rock uses it.

Re:The Name

[ChrisMaple]

It takes two to have an obstinance.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it GNU Imp instead.

Re:The Name

[LihTox]

Besides the offensiveness of the name, it just *sounds* uninspiring. Look at the words it sounds like: limp, wimp, pimp, whimper, simper. Blimp is an exception perhaps, but in general it's just a blah-sounding word, ok for us UNIX geeks maybe, but not if you want to market it.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

What I stated were perfect examples of how the very same word can be used and not be offensive.
That means that it is not the word that is offensive.
If it were the word itself that was offensive there would be no non offensive ways to use it.

Re:The Name

[ChrisMaple]

The term gimp is NOT derogatory. There is no classier man than David Niven, and he used it to refer to himself in one of his films.

Re:The Name

[ChrisMaple]

The chemical reaction was going too fast, so I added some cognitive impairer,

Re:The Name

[Kozz]

It takes two to have an obstinance.

I appreciate the idea of people sticking to their principles. Rather than re-typing my argument, I'll ask you to re-read my final two paragraphs.

Now explain to me your principled argument in defense of keeping the name. Do you foresee some kind of irreparable harm that would be caused to the project? Do you think it would make marketing even more challenging? How do you see the pros and cons weighing against one another?

A quick glance at your comment history suggests you're not a troll. I'm not trying to engage in verbal combat of any kind, just to have a constructive argument/debate. In a way, changing the name may seem like some kind of a surrender, or an admission that it was "wrong", but resisting on that basis alone only strokes the ego. Moving past any kind of emotional reaction to the suggestion of a name change, I'm hard-pressed to provide any lengthy list of practical reasons to be strongly attached to the name.

Re:The Name

[GiMP]

If only we could change our slashdot ids... alas!

Re:The Name

[ChrisMaple]

Consider the name a Darwinian test. Those smart enough to use GIMP despite its name have a competitive advantage over those who refuse to do so.

Posted from the Sam Houston Institute of Technology.

Re:The Name

[Atzanteol]

We all market all the time. You, me, everyone. It's not just about flashy ads and lying to people. It's about convincing others that you, your product, your is of worth. If you can't do this you will fail at life. Some people are better at this than others. From the replies I've gotten - I'd say my point stands.

Re:The Name

[interkin3tic]

Also a term for a sexual fetish involving latex. Double whammy.

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

Blacks can use the word nigger all they want.

Ever notice that it's only young, punk-ass "gangsta" blacks (like the rappers and their listeners) that use that word? Their aim is to offend the grownups.

A black friend of mine when I was in the Air Force explained it to me. It comes from the days of slavery: "nigger" meant "slave" and a slave was no more human than a dog or a horse. A slave was considered another farm animal. Just like you have house dogs and working dogs, slave owners had house niggers and field niggers.

So when you call a man "nigger" you're calling him sub-human. The young blacks are using the word 1) because the (white owned) record companies are pushing the word and 2) to piss off the old people.

Re:The Name

[IntlHarvester]

GIMP isn't a commercial product, you know. Why does something that's non-commercial need marketing?

You have a six-digit ID, so you might remember the days when GIMP was considered the flagship open source desktop program. Slashdot was full of stories where someone showed their buddy the GIMP and they immediately cast-away their Windows chains and switched to Linux. The GTK toolkit was spun-off of GIMP, as it was considered such an advanced program.

OK, except it had an offensive name and a bizarre UI, and doesn't really matter that much anymore. But at one time GIMP was considered a very important marketing point by Linux advocates.

Re:The Name

[interkin3tic]

Oh, good. We've moved on to how unfair it is that not everyone gets to use the N word, and reverse discrimination. There are so few places on the internet where you can discuss things like this.

Preach on how it's silly that people are offended by words, please.

Re:The Name

[Shoe Puppet]

I am fuckin no arms, asshole!

Here, FTFY. How do you fuck an arm anyway?

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

No, you're incorrect. The ones waving their flippers are freaks. The ones swallowing live animals are geeks.

Didn't stop Best Buy from using the term in their marketing

That's because like "gay" and "hacker" the meaning of the word has changed completely and no longer means college kids swallowing live goldfish. Now it means someone who knows how to fix a broken computer.

Re:The Name

[Petaris]

It also depends on the language, and if you were actually talking about Niger, Africa (even though this should be pronounced ny-jer) or the river in Africa by the same name. Note that in speech you wont be able to tell there was one less g in the word/name. In language niger/negro can also just mean black (as in the color) and isn't at all offensive when speaking in those languages. From Wikipedia (Negro): "The word negro means 'black' in Spanish and Portuguese, from the Latin niger, 'black', probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nekw-, 'to be dark', akin to *nokw- 'night'."

This isn't any excuse for not thinking when you speak though. For example, there are English words that are not offensive at all in English but if you go to another country they may be very offensive. The same is true for many languages.

All this being said, I have GIMP installed in a pK-12 public school district and no one has ever complained about the name. Its been installed for the last 6 years at least and it does get used.

Re:The Name

[The Grim Reefer]

Thank you Captain Obvious!

Yes, context matters and it is a juvenile response.

There is nothing juvenile about it, and judging by some of the responses regarding this topic, it's certainly not obvious. Frankly I find it pretty funny how politically correct so many on /. are about this. Especially considering how anti politically-correct most are regarding other matters.

The fact remains it has a strong negative connotation with the general public to the actual detriment of its adoption.

No more so than my reference to Lame, retard, master/slave. But good of you to completely sidestep anything you don't find convenient.

As for "heb" (alt. "heeb"), that is similar to Nip or Jap. All are simply single-syllable adaptions of ethnic designations. These are similar to "Brit" or "Yank". Not really offensive, unless you're looking for a reason to be offended. Unfortunately, lots of people seem to have that as a hobby.

Also, I think "Heeb" is a magazine dedicated to Jewish (Hebrew) culture in the New York/New Jersey area.

Plenty of people are appalled by the use of those "single-syllable adaptions". Actually surprisingly so. Most derogatory names can be traced back to a rational root that was not intended to be as such originally. It makes it no less offensive to some. You are correct about Heeb magazine. It also caused a pretty interesting divide among younger and older people in the Jewish community. Many older people found it to be very offensive.

Finally, regarding your wife, you probably already realize the use of potentially derogatory terms as self-reference is not only politically correct but a form of self-empowerment. (For reference, see "nigger" as used in popular black culture versus use by anyone else on the planet.)

No, it's not politically correct. Many still find those terms offensive no matter who uses them. Frankly I find it a little racist/sexist/whatever, that any group of people can use a term that everyone else cannot. It's either offensive or it's not. Anything else is just being childish.

Hmmm...I should have found a way to integrate usages of "hacker" in there somewhere. Oh, well. See the previous /. article on B&N pulling a copy of Linux Format for more of that than you can probably stomach.

For more of what than I can stomach?

Re:The Name

[jimicus]

In other words, it speaks volumes about the marketing ability of geeks. Just as I said. If I created the worlds greatest network monitoring system and named it "Portable Enterprise Network Information System" it wouldn't matter. Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment.

I may just have to fork Nagios...

Re:The Name

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Several years ago, a husband once brought his handicapped wife to a Linux users group meeting. Another women in the group briefly said something about the GIMP. The handicapped older woman than angrily demanded that her husband take her home at once. She incorrectly thought the other younger woman had disparagingly referred to her as being a gimp.

Uhm, good riddance? Since people with real brains usually have some linguistic intelligence? Sometimes they even have sense of humor. I, for one, am all for making fun of myself. You know, life is too short for me to be pissed off for petty reasons.

Re:The Name

[Hatta]

If you really think your success in life hinges on your ability to convince other people of your worth, you've already failed at life. Personal satisfaction comes from within.

Re:The Name

[schlachter]

don't be such a gimp about it.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

I am not saying that people don't get offended by the use of words.
People are offensive sometimes and they use words to do it.
Banishing of words has never and will never stop people from being offensive.
If you look to getting rid of words to make you feel better you are not going to feel better.

Re:The Name

[PylonHead]

Unless you've invented a device to transmit people's thoughts and intentions, then their words are all we have to go by.

Re:The Name

[WankersRevenge]

Umm yeah ... so the guy who equates Dell Servers to anal rape is giving lessons on what-is and what-is not offensive? RIght ...

My problem with the GIMP name is that we are all talking about what-is and what-is not offensive instead of discussing the actual program. That alone would make me change it.

Re:The Name

[19thNervousBreakdown]

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Re:The Name

[ewibble]

It's not about if it is was intended to be offensive or not, or they should be offended, or have the right to be offended, its about marketing.

You wouldn't sell coffee called "Nigger coffee" once you found out it was offensive, to a significant portion of the population because a lot of people would not buy it because of the name even if it was the best coffee in the world.

I wear a suite to a job interviews (even though I dislike it, since it is a bit of a deception, I'm a slob) since I want the job and I know most people judge you on such shallow things, I think they shouldn't but they do. But I want the job so I suck it up.

If the developers of GIMP want to GIMP to be successful and the name offends people, or more likely makes them think the product is not that professional, then they should just change it.

Providing the world with a free (or even affordable) quality image manipulation tool seems like a much more noble cause than fighting over a name.

Re:The Name

[zidium]

That's from the Pulp Fiction basement meme... ;-/

Re:The Name

[mk1004]

The sad part is that if the developers had chosen a name that would be acceptable in professional and school environments, and if it had a well-designed user's group, GIMP could possibly have made a sizable dent in Photo Shop's market share. It's a powerful image manipulation program, but if users are put off by the name, they won't try it. If they try it but can't resolve issues they have using it, via a user's group in this case. And the UI needs to be at least somewhat intuitive/logical or they won't use it.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

lols

Re:The Name

[Savantissimo]

So that'd be:

Gimp's
New
Annoying
Acronym?

Re:The Name

[chill]

Frankly I find it pretty funny how politically correct so many on /. are about this. Especially considering how anti politically-correct most are regarding other matters.

I agree.

No more so than my reference to Lame, retard, master/slave. But good of you to completely sidestep anything you don't find convenient.

I didn't sidestep anything. I addressed "retard" in a different post and didn't think of master/slave -- a simple relationship moniker. (Side note: I seem to recall a city in California that tried to ban the usage in purchase requisitions. Laughably brain dead.)

Plenty of people are appalled by the use of those "single-syllable adaptions". Actually surprisingly so. Most derogatory names can be traced back to a rational root that was not intended to be as such originally.

I know. I, too, am mystified by what is simply a verbal shortcut and hardly derogatory.

You are correct about Heeb magazine. It also caused a pretty interesting divide among younger and older people in the Jewish community. Many older people found it to be very offensive.

Thanks. I was always curious as to the perception, but I've never remembered to ask someone who would know when I had the chance.

Frankly I find it a little racist/sexist/whatever, that any group of people can use a term that everyone else cannot. It's either offensive or it's not. Anything else is just being childish.

Agreed.

For more of what than I can stomach?

Politically correct absurdity. I gathered from your original post that you found much of the issues petty, absurd and those offended as overly sensitive with too much time on their hands.

Re:The Name

[pjt33]

Native English speaker here. I didn't either until the first time I read a /. thread about the software.

Re:The Name

[formfeed]

It used to have that connotation. Then the movie Pulp Fiction came out. Now Gimp is associated with leather bound masochistic homosexuals...

and:
gimp: ambition.

Surely, that's what the developers had in mind when they named it.
If any fellow-teacher or parent tells you otherwise, shriek out in complete horror, tell them that you're shocked where their mind goes and that that is not the attitude of someone who is around children.

Re:The Name

[ifiwereasculptor]

Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment.

Really? And how do you think politicians are made?

Re:The Name

[The Grim Reefer]

I feel I need to apologize. I completely misunderstood your original post and the response. I didn't realize that you were explaining this to a non-English speaking person with a very valid question to begin with. After reading the 50 or so posts above my brain kind of shut down temporarily. Sorry, all this PC crap makes me a little nuts. ;-)

Re:The Name

[fahrbot-bot]

Unless you've invented a device to transmit people's thoughts and intentions, then their words are all we have to go by.

True to a certain extent, but the context of those words and any conversation can help. In general people often get too cranked up over the little things.

Re:The Name

[theguyfromsaturn]

What's wrong with the name? Does it have some significance in the English language? (not a native speaker, so the only think that Gimp evokes for me is a graphics software)

Re:The Name

[colinrichardday]

What about tuxpaint?

http://tuxpaint.org/

Re:The Name

[UltraZelda64]

Yes, why not? Come on... get a sense of humor.

Re:The Name

[onkelonkel]

Single malt or blended?

Re:The Name

[Smauler]

Sure it does. On quality operating systems with well designed windowing systems, there is a program called a "window manager" whose job it is to decorate and arrange application windows as the user sees fit.

As mentioned in another post, the GIMP used to bring up a window for ever layer you were using. Forcing more windows on you is not necessarily a good thing.

To stem the flow of bitter griping

Why do you think there was this "bitter griping"? Do you think it was just Microsoft users who couldn't figure out more than one window? Or perhaps, maybe, just perhaps it could be that the UI for the GIMP was just weird. I personally learnt to live with it, and got along with it.... but it was a hurdle.

Re:The Name

[Smauler]

Maybe the speaker's a jerk. Maybe the listener is a whining crybaby.

This is the problem with the name GIMP.

It makes people think "Maybe the speaker's a jerk".

Re:The Name

[Smauler]

I wear a suite to a job interviews

Ok, this is a start of a comedy sketch show. What, you didn't get the job?

Re:The Name

[ooloogi]

In the past it may have been a perjorative for the disabled in some limited circles, but since it's been the name of an image editor, the new meaning has replaced the old, thus making the world a slightly better place for the disabled.

Re:The Name

[Smauler]

Git is a general term of abuse, which can be applied to anyone. Gimp is a specific term of abuse which can be applied to a small subset of people. There is a difference.

That being said, I've no problem with it being called gimp.... but others have, and it would be advantageous IMO to rename.

Re:The Name

[DualDescription]

ImageMagick :)

Re:The Name

[LesFerg]

Well I can still remember the time and place where people thought it was ok to suck on a fag in public.
They would even lend a fag to their friends or co-workers, who had run out of cigarettes at the time.
Then a fag became something entirely different.

Re:The Name

[mug funky]

photoshop used to be like that...

Re:The Name

[mug funky]

in the user's defence, a program should be robust enough to function adequately in any desktop environment. something as fundamental as the UI can't be left to chance!

such an approach would work in windows or OSX, but the linux world is too varied an ecosystem.

Re:The Name

[mug funky]

what's your OSS project called? nigger?

Re:The Name

[MaskedSlacker]

I wear a suite to a job interviews (even though I dislike it, since it is a bit of a deception, I'm a slob) since I want the job and I know most people judge you on such shallow things, I think they shouldn't but they do. But I want the job so I suck it up.

How does one wear a suite? And which suite is it? I imagine wearing the Honeymoon Suite would go over....interestingly.

Re:The Name

[kc9jud]

Ah, the endless euphemism treadmill...

Re:The Name

[chill]

I didn't realize Mr. Niven was in Pulp Fiction. Thanks for the trivia bit. :-)

Re:The Name

[__aaltlg1547]

Order reversed. The usage to label disabled persons is the only usage most native English speakers recognise.

Prediction: in twenty years most native English speakers will be unable to tell you that Ginger is also the name of a spice.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Guns don't kill people, rappers do

Re:The Name

[walshy007]

Actually, nigger meant negro which is literally the word for 'black' in Spanish and Portuguese, it stems from the latin word 'niger' which also means 'black'

Re:The Name

[Trogre]

I'm glad they included the option to turn single-window mode off. Y'know, for human users with more than one brain cell.

Re:The Name

[Trogre]

Yes, I too prefer the multi-window paradigm for the reasons you stated.

The one gripe I have with their implementation (at least on 2.6) is that the palette windows don't show up in the taskbar or alt-tab switcher, just the main window and editing windows. This is probably by design and I'm sure there are good reasons for that, but it would be nice to have each window as fully managed by the user's window manager.

Re:The Name

[Compaqt]

Agreed that political correctness is a problem.

Now, coming back to the subject: GIMP is stupid name.

Cinepaint? That's a great name. So is OpenOffice.

VLC is fine because it doesn't spell anything in particular.

I think the developers should have taken this opportunity to change the name ("a new UI, and a new name").

Re:The Name

[The Wild Norseman]

Might as well censor biology classes, lest they find out about the existence of animals with names such as cock, ass, beaver, crab, peacock and sperm whale.

TITMOUSE!!

You speak of censoring biology, but don't forget great literature, too. Edgar Allen Poe, for instance: "The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.

Heh. He said, "ejaculate."

Re:The Name

[dillee1]

"Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment."

I will. Just for telling my boss "I use my PENIS to monitor the network".

Re:The Name

[semi-extrinsic]

I've never hear "honkey" before. Thanks, do you have any more I should avoid?

Re:The Name

[udippel]

Absolutely.
I remember, in German, there's a word considered pejorative: "Kanacke" and likewise. Then I visited the island of New Caledonia (east of Australia), and then everyone was proud to declare that they were "le peuple kanak". That's at least confusing. And there is much more of this "corruption of language to change thinking".
Back to German: What used to be gypsies in the old days have now become "mobile ethnic minority". I mean, what an utter BS for an enlightened society of 2012. Where are we going if we continue to disallow all sorts of descriptors? Leave out the N-word. Why is it unacceptable to call a black man black? Why "coloured", when actually (s)he is black? The people of the Malayan Archipelago are seriously brown. Is brown not a colour? And the yellowish people? Do we mean them when we say "coloured"? No, we don't. How confusing must that be for a child growing up. How much does this corrupt thinking? I myself am white, and tend to say so. Because the politically correct term "Caucasian" is totally wrong. I am not in any way a descendant of some tribe from the Caucasus, a mountain range somewhere in eastern Europe.
And I could go on and on and on. Therefore thumbs up to your post.
Mod me OT if you think so, because I haven't argued on why there is nothing wrong with the brand name of GIMP. It is unfortunate, I agree, in sales terms. But in FOSS, we don't have to sell and we don't need to bend over backward neither. Now I am not longer mod-able as OT.

Re:The Name

[udippel]

Let's take one last run at this: Do you believe context ever matters in language or word choice?

Yep. But in our language and our age it has become a mostly artificial context and semantics. And it is transient. 2 generations ago, calling someone 'gay' was a totally non-sexual term of appreciation.
And yes, I have met physically handicapped people who preferred to be called 'cripple' because they hated the smoothing-over of their state as they perceived, it by softening up reality.

Re:The Name

[serviscope_minor]

in the user's defence, a program should be robust enough to function adequately in any desktop environment. something as fundamental as the UI can't be left to chance!

I disagree. The windowmanager feature of X11 is one of those wonderful features which allows a huge variety in the different types of environment. It's also very much in the philosophy of unix: the user knows best and if the user makes a poor decision, then that's their own problem.

The problem with making something robust to the users decisions is that it does not put the user in charge, it puts the developer in charge. I like being in charge of my own mahcine and environment.

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

Very popular with the kids. I know a few kids who got an original EEE and it came with TuxPaint. One of the most used programs.

Re:The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

rational, logical response?

legal, logical response maybe, but legal and rational seased being synonyms a long long time ago

Re:The Name

[jez9999]

Man, get over the name thing. I've said to a few people now that "I use GIMP for most graphics editing" (notice the lack of the definite article) and there's no problem. It was the same thing with Git - for a short time it sounded weird to say that I used it but it became commonplace enough that it stopped sounding weird. In that context it's just the name of a software program.

Re:The Name

[L4t3r4lu5]

I have too, but I'm looking into Linux clients in the workplace. Pinta isn't there yet, and Paint.Mono is buggy and abandoned (no updates since early 2009).

Re:The Name

[Sifonki]

Unless you're in the professional male sex slave business.

At least in that environment the word doesn't imply a dysfunctional user interface.

Re:The Name

[tr897]

Wasn't that a gammy leg?

Re:The Name

[thejynxed]

Paint.NET is actually a pretty good program, and more than adequate for most home users. I've installed it many times for clients after giving a small demo of what it can do, because they didn't want to fork out several hundred dollars for Photoshop.

Re:The Name

[tehcyder]

Warning: non native English speaker here.

I didn't know gimp was an offensive word. Do children recognize it as offensive? Is it because it sounds like "chimp"? Are monkeys offensive?

Have you never seen Pulp Fiction?

"Bring out the gimp...."

Re:The Name

[DeathToBill]

Ah, now, gammy leg I know. "You'd better eat me." "Ew, with a gammy leg?" "Well, you needn't eat the leg, Johnson." And so on.

Re:The Name

[tehcyder]

The word itself is not offensive because blacks can say it all they want.
That means that is is only offensive because I am not black.
That is racism. That to me is offensive.

The vast majority of non-racist white people would find the idea of using the word "nigger" to a black person offensive. That is just the way things are. Some words in some contexts are offensive, and it's no use pretending that it's some freedom of speech issue and everyone should be able to say anything they want, anywhere, at any time and expect no criticism or comeback..

If you were visiting me and called my twelve year old sister a fucking cunt bitch, you'd get a slap, simple as that. Yes, they are only words, but yes they would be offensive.

Words have meaning, they are not just a series of arbitrary, meaningless noises.

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

That is accurate, it is in fact where the word came from (I speak Spanish as a second language). But the word "hacker" doesn't mean what it originally meant, either.

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

You have a six-digit ID

I suggest you have a little more coffee before doing the math on your research (five digits :)

I never used to follow the "vi vs emacs" wars and stuff like that, but I started using Mandrake in 2002. You know, I don't think I've ever opened GIMP even though it's been on my computers for ten years. I may play with it this weekend, I need to design a dust jacket for The Paxil Diaries.

Re:The Name

[worf_mo]

You could give MyPaint a try. It is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows, and can be installed from the FreeBSD ports collection.

Re:The Name

[ArsenneLupin]

... and then, of course, there's this leather character in Pulp Fiction...

Around kids, that reference is actually even more dangerous. It's far worse to be accused of being a pedophile than being insensitive against the disabled.

Re:The Name

[dskzero]

It's a common term in the BDSM community. And in MMORPG. The connection is funny.

Re:The Name

[jawtheshark]

That looks amazing! Thank you!

Re:The Name

[ArsenneLupin]

Nobody is going to install PENIS in a professional environment.

Except if the profession in question is the horizontal profession...

But most software developers would be surprised to hear that they would need to pay to install their software somewhere...

Re:The Name

[sudonymous]

The earliest known use of the word was in the 1600s. "Gimp" was a coarse, sometimes flat, braid or cord, sometimes strenghtened by weaving wire into the cord, which was used for ornamental trim. It is still used in this manner, e.g. a "gimp" lanyard, an ornamental cord or strap (lanyard) made from plastic "gimp" thread ( photos).

In the late 1800s, the word meant energetic spirit ("spunk" has a similar meaning, as a matter of fact; "pluck" also). Webster's suggests that this might stem from referring to "gimp" fishing line which had a wire woven in for strength, similar to the decorative cord. Since the line had extra strength, it might have followed that someone with a little extra fortitude was described to have "gimp".

In the early 1900s it began to be used unrelatedly to its original meaning, as a verb to mean a limp or a hobble (perhaps because it rhymes with "limp"), and as a noun to mean someone who walked with a gimp. This use still exists and may or may not be perceived as perjorative (offensive).

Lastly, and possibly most recognizably in the current culture, "the gimp" was used in the movie Pulp Fiction to refer to a cripple who was a sex slave and wore a leather bondage suit. Though the word "gimp" was used because the man was crippled, many people failed to realize this (being unaware of the word's actual meaning) and instead associated the word "gimp" to a leather bondage suit and/or sex slaves.

Re:The Name

[ArsenneLupin]

Would it hurt so much to rename it "GNU Licensed Image Development Environment" or similar?

Not during this year's Republican primaries... well maybe now, but certainly not until a month ago...

Re:The Name

[ArsenneLupin]

Sure, because an ass can also mean a donkey...

Unless you first put some lube in, then it means an elephant...

Re:The Name

[tnk1]

They are at fault, for not controlling their UI to the point where it is effective. Blaming the window managers is not really an excuse. It is well known what X-Windows can do to your apps. If you let just any window manager mess up your UI, then you need to make it so that you have a consistent experience across most, if not all window managers.

UI is extremely important in an app like this. Users are very concerned with efficient workflow. They don't just want the ability to make or alter images, they want to be able to be able to access the most powerful features of the app in an intuitive fashion so that the UI doesn't get in the way of the creativity.

Bear in mind, I'm glad someone took the time to write something like GIMP, but what I have never understood is why the most consistent complaint about the application was the one that seemed to be the most resistant to being addressed.

Re:The Name

[ArsenneLupin]

At a bank were I used to work, we were considering buying the java optimization and obfuscation tool dash-o . Pretty inoffensive name for English speakers. But when French people pronounce it, it sounds the same as if they pronounced Dachau. Understandably, this was quite a hard sell to the management of this mostly French-speaking bank...

Re:The Name

[jockm]

More like three generations since the word entered the lexicon in 1952 (or thereabouts). But I do take your point. And I know people who prefer to be called crippled as well. But far from the majority of people.

And this is what I was saying about context. Even in the case of words who have a hateful history, it is still inappropriate — in most people's minds — to use them generally, in public, in what we might call the "default context". Gimp is one of those words.

Even if you say, as many people in this discussion have, that the GIMP team meant Gimp in the Pulp Fiction S&M sense; I don't get why that is anyway more appropriate.

Context matters and you have to walk a very long way to get to a point where Gimp is an appropriate name for a program intended to be used by the masses. Most people aren't going to take that walk with you. Just like if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny; so it is that if you have to explain why something isn't offensive, it is a lost cause.

The name hurts the app. To the best of my knowledge they have no corporate sponsorship, no companies donating developers and other resources. The closest you get is CinePaint which is a fork of GIMP, isn't worked on by the GIMP team, and (we should all notice) changed the name.

I am not saying all will be rosy if they change the name, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

The problem is that it is not the word.
You just used the word. In what I consider a completely appropriate manner.
But in almost every publication the use "The N-Word". That is incredibly stupid.

Re:The Name

[jockm]

"...Aimed at a crip?" Charming.

I have personally seen it happen more than once. Up here in the PC land of Portland. But why is it any more appropriate in the S&M sense?

Re:The Name

[Undead Toaster]

They really ought to consider re-naming it. Try installing it in - say - a junior high school some time. See how that goes over.

My school actually had an entire class (for 7th grade) on graphic design in GIMP.

Re:The Name

[Zigbigadoorlue]

Yes words are just collections of syllables or phonemes that one utters from ones mouth. It is not physically striking someone or disenfranchising them or taking there homes and property or enslaving them. But words carry with them all the power of history and potentially all the things I just mentioned.

Like other people when I hear a word I go back into the file of words in my brain and bring up what that word means to me. For example if I hear a word like "file" it makes me think of manila folders, file systems, methods of organizing data, etc. When I hear a word like "gimp", as a disabled person, my primary exposure and association to that word is as a weapon being used against me. It can bring up all the pain, sadness and anger of being attacked over and over again my entire life for things I can do nothing about. Of being pervasively, systemically and viscerally devalued not just by institutions that have no concept of accommodation or dignity for people unlike themselves but by bigoted and patronizing attitudes of the public as a whole.

In short "It's the person being offended's choice to be offended" is fucking bullshit. All the trauma of a life time can be brought to bare in just a few words. It sounds like some of the folks on this thread have a lot of privilege when it comes to things like ability, ethnicity, gender, etc. You may not have experienced pervasive attitudes of prejudice so you don't know what it is like. But unless you die young you will. Eventually you will experience what it means to have ability loss and to be old in this society that no longer wants to have anything to do with you. Good luck getting a sympathetic ear when people have attitudes like what you have displayed here.

Re:The Name

[eldorel]

Here's a funny suggestion.

Since a fairly large chuck of the gimp development team are russian, why don't we produce a fork (with only a name change) and name it to something derogatory in Russian?

No lawyer team in the Usa or UK would bat an eye at a name like "Shalava image editor", but I can guarantee that anyone from eastern Europe would at least comment on it.


Hell, I might just go look into that right now......

Re:The Name

[eldorel]

What if we just forked the blasted thing and renamed it?

"Shalava image editor" sound good to me, and it would make the russian gimp developers blush.

Re:The Name

[eldorel]

Unfortunately, "Nigger" is still used in a very derogatory way in the southern portions of the United States to describe uneducated black people.

Additionally, the word is also used by those same uneducated black people to describe each other.

However, if I were to say "Yo Nigger, throw me a drink!" at a party one night, I can guarantee you I would be defending myself from a major beating within minutes.

Re:The Name

[eldorel]

Hold on.

I think you are missing the forest for the trees, so lets take this down a level.

I agree that words are not in and of themselves offensive.
This is a fact, just like a firearm is a tool, words are tools to convey meaning.

However, just like with any other tool, the context is what will define how people will react.

With a gun, context can be "the belt of a police officer", or the hand of some random guy on the street.

However, taken out of context a firearm will make most people nervous. (Why is there a gun on the coffee table?)

The same thing is true with words.

The issue is that an average American/UK citizen who sees or hears the word "Gimp" out of context is NOT going to think about an image editor.

Additionally, as I said elsewhere in this thread, even if the word is used in context it can cause issues with legal liability.
( Whether this is a stupid fact is irrelevant, in both the US and the UK "sexual harassment" is a very flexible definition, and the word GIMP has a sexual meaning available for misinterpretation. )

So PLEASE, stop trying to argue that the default context of the word is not offensive.

Just like Nigger, bitch, or midget, if you yelled it in a crowded area people would assume that you meant the meaning they are familiar with.

If you don't believe me, go perform this test.
1) Go to the local mall on a busy sunday.
2) Stand outside the pet store, facing the window.
3) Exclaim loudly "Wow, that's a nice looking bitch!"
4) Time how long it takes for security to show up, and ask them how many complaints they received.

( Note: if you do this, please post a video. )

Re:The Name

[ancienthart]

A lot of people have been talking about renaming it in the comments, but it seems no-one is making sensible suggestions.
How about we:
a) put a hyphen in the name and pronounce it as two words, the G - IMP, or
b) call it the GNU IMP?
My vote is for the second option. And then on Linux machines we can still call the executable gimp. (Because hey, I'm the first to admit that Linux users have a purile sense of humour.)

Re:The Name

[doccus]

Agreed.. so how about Linux Image Manipulation Program.. or is "LIMP" gonna threaten us geek's manhood? ;-)

Re:The Name

[peawormsworth]

A black friend of mine when I was in the Air Force explained it to me. It comes from the days of slavery: "nigger" meant "slave" and a slave was no more human than a dog or a horse. A slave was considered another farm animal. Just like you have house dogs and working dogs, slave owners had house niggers and field niggers.

So when you call a man "nigger" you're calling him sub-human. The young blacks are using the word 1) because the (white owned) record companies are pushing the word and 2) to piss off the old people.

Well, your friend was wrong. The word "nigger" comes from the latin adjective "niger" meaning "coloured black". It just means "black"... so if the word "black" is an offensive definition, then so is "niger". But words take different meaning over time. I'm saying that words only mean what the speaker intends them to mean. So any word used to describe a group with the intent to offend and belittle will eventually take on the meaning of that intent. It was the repeated usage of the word in a way to describe and treat people in a derogitory way that made the word offensive and eventually politically incorrect.

Im not saying we should continue to use the word at all. I'm just saying that to imply that the original intent of the word was to offend is incorrect. We have just decided to agree to use the term would be to validate the way it was used and the horrible treatment of the people to which it was applied to in the past.

You can search this information for yourself... just check wikipedia, which is the best source of true and useful information in the world (flame bate, but true)

If ur friend was going to guess at the origins of the word, why didnt he guess that it came from the country Nigeria? Being that a "nigger" would be a person who came from Niger-ia? And isnt it strange that we dont we ask the UN to rename the country Nigeria to something else to be more politically correct? I mean it is pretty obvious that the english word is really implying nigeria means: "land of black", "blackia"

Words are not letters or sounds, they are ideas and they only have meaning to how we use and interpret them. Lewis Carroll wrote: "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less".

Re:The Name

[Just Some Guy]

Photoshop. What does it have to do with ecommerce?

Re:The Name

[mug funky]

that's a nice OS philosophy, but why is it that almost anybody who's used both programs prefers photoshop to gimp for usability?

photo editing is a specific enough use case that changing the whole window manager around it it likely to break something, no matter how good the implementations are. reducing that variability is a good idea,

of course, i love the freedom of choice with window managers, and would not have it any other way. but making a program out of piles of windows rather than just 1, then letting the window manager handle how those piles of windows behave looks like a recipe for confusion.

Re:The Name

[hobarrera]

Yeat, it should work on every enviroment, but not *identically*, and even compensate for the user's poor choices.

If a user chose a crappy WM, it's not gimps fault.
Heck, would you want it to re-implement Xorg for users who decided not to install it as well?

Re:The Name

[hobarrera]

There's a limit to how consistent you application can be.
If a user installed a WM that has FOUR close buttons on every corner, the application can't show just one: it need to respect the enviroment at some level. Otherwise, we'd end up having grub > gimp.

Re:The Name

[Dishevel]

The people that made it liked it.
They are all that really matters since they do not have to turn a profit.
All they have to do is build the program they want and it is really awesome that they share it with the rest of us.
Of course some would rather bitch at the developers of their free open source program than thank them for it.
Whatever floats your boat.

Re:The Name

[CanHasDIY]

I vote Shisno.

That way, it's offensive and derogatory to everyone! Win-win!

Re:The Name

[mcgrew]

Actually, "nigger" is a mispronounciation of "negro," which is Spanish for "balck". It's not a slur because it means "black," it's a slur because like "hacker" has changed from meaning a hardware tinkerer or someone who writes quick and dirty single use code to a cyber burglar. During slavery the word "nigger" changed from its original term for the pigmentation to "farm animals that look almost human."

I'm saying that words only mean what the speaker intends them to mean.

What is conveyed is what the listener hears. Misunderstanding isn't hard to do, and being clear is. Does that jingle from a sex toy commercial say "where fun and fantasy meet" or is it "we're fun and fantasy meat?"

Words are not letters or sounds, they are ideas and they only have meaning to how we use and interpret them.

Very true. I doubt American blacks will ever get over slavery, the Jews didn't and theirs was thousands of years ago.

Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready yet

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready yet

(Still on version 2.6.12, as per: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html)

Application Frame

[RandomUsername99]

It's kind of funny how, after all of this griping (from people like me) about lack of Photoshop like single-window mode in Gimp, Photoshop, at least for Mac, defaults to not having an "Application Frame"– which essentially means that it's not, by default, in single-window mode. It's easy enough to switch back, though.

Re:Application Frame

[RandomUsername99]

Photoshop CS5 for Mac defaults to not being grouped in a single window, brochacho.

Re:Application Frame

[nine-times]

Yes, except that windowless toolbars have a place in traditional Mac OS UI conventions. In recent years, MacOS has included toolbars as part of the main application window, but the old style of doing things was much more object-oriented. The idea was that the window itself was not meant for the application, but for the document itself, and you had floating toolbars that allowed you to work in the document.

However, GIMP has typically violated the MacOS object-oriented approach too. In MacOS, the menu system for the image (e.g. the "File" and "Edit" menus) were integrated into a consistent bar, and the toolbars were for tools only. Also, the toolbars would disappear when the document using them was not actively selected, and you didn't close the application by closing the toolbar. In GIMP, the toolbars are generally working as a Windows-style single-window application, but then they also have the image windows at the same time.

Basically, GIMP doesn't really follow any set of UI conventions that I'm aware of. It may be following the conventions of an old Unix desktop environment that I'm not remembering or that I never used, but there's really not a good reason for the way it handles things on modern desktop operating systems.

Re:Application Frame

[Beetle B.]

It's kind of funny how, after all of this griping (from people like me) about lack of Photoshop like single-window mode in Gimp, Photoshop, at least for Mac, defaults to not having an "Application Frame"â" which essentially means that it's not, by default, in single-window mode. It's easy enough to switch back, though.

Thank goodness.

Whenever this comes up, what really irritates me is people pretending that everyone wants single window mode, despite numerous comments in any such discussion stating that their like for multi-windwo mode.

Re:Application Frame

[Fri13]

What is very smart move because OS X has great window manager what includes awesome features like Exposé and Mission Control and Virtual Desktops.
Adobe knew that graphic artist use multiple screens and they scatter stuff around them. And to quickly find a other image, you don't need to use any list or alt tabbing. You just swing mouse or press shortcut to summon Expose effect and you see at glance every open image and window and you just click what you want.

Windows has window manager what lacks all the awesome and useful features.
So far best is KWin what allows to make even custom rules per application or per window and own shortcuts for those as well if application does not have them.
Support for multiple displays, virtual desktops and advanced window manager is something what is not supported in single window mode.

Thanks that at least GIMP developers maintained the possibility to switch back to better multi-window mode instead that stupid single window mode what only wanna-be Photoshop and Windows users have demanded so much.

And who doesn't remember or know how Exposé was presented to world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktTNcj0fAM4

Re:Application Frame

[Luyseyal]

It may be following the conventions of an old Unix desktop environment that I'm not remembering

What, like TWM with Athena widgets or something? Heck, even today, you can launch xsane and other X programs and see the many-window model. The Unix model was more about multiple desktops with windows arranged however you felt like than one desktop with single-window applications you could pop up or minimize. You just switched the desktop and voila, new program[s], new windows, arranged however it was you arranged them.

The web browser specifically made this an untenable model after awhile. Having 16 Netscape windows open got annoying quick and you didn't necessarily keep 16 virtual desktops around unless you used Enlightenment... but I digress. Application switchers were useful for management. But I would argue that tabbed windows really made things saner.

I keep 5 virtual desktops. 3 are fullscreen application specific, 2 are general. I remap my shortcuts to Alt+F1 - Alt+F5 for switching because it's nicer than arrowing or whathaveyou.

Whew that was longer than intended.
-l

And! Another feature!

[DeathToBill]

I've just discovered a new key! Called an exclamation mark! On my keyboard! How did I miss it all these years!?!

The guy who wrote the new feature summary is just a bit too excitable for me to be comfortable with him at large in society.

2.6 for Windows

[Jamu]

It's still stuck on version 2.6.12 for Windows. It's a shame they don't support a (binary) Windows download.

Re:2.6 for Windows

[wahaa]

There is a release candidate for 2.8 here (bottom of the page): http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

Re:2.6 for Windows

[JDG1980]

I have tried that release candidate, and while it works (mostly), it has some serious problems:

• It can't properly estimate the size of JPEG files before saving. Instead, it shows an absurd number (1.3 GB, I think) for any JPEG preview on save, no matter what the actual size is.
• It doesn't save the dock positions in single window mode. for example, if I expand the right dock and contract the left dock, they return to their default sizes every time I close the program and open it again.
• It won't remember it was in full-screen mode. It always opens in windowed mode, no matter what.
• There is no option to close the left or right dock entirely in single-window mode. You can minimize it all the way by dragging to the edge, but that's not the same thing.

Re:2.6 for Windows

[wahaa]

I just installed it (rc1). It seems to be a (slightly) different build from the one you described. Here's what I observed:

• JPEG size "estimation": it seems to always show "File size: unknown" now.
• The dock positions also seem be working as expected (i.e., the positions are saved), with one exception: if I minimize the left dock (by dragging to the edge), it will restore itself the next time you open GIMP. The right dock seems to be working fine and remains minimized.
• It still always opens in windows mode.
• I couldn't find a way to hide a single dock either, which is annoying.

Re:2.6 for Windows

[CronoCloud]

It can't properly estimate the size of JPEG files before saving. Instead, it shows an absurd number (1.3 GB, I think) for any JPEG preview on save, no matter what the actual size is.

That's a standard GIMP "feature" I think, "size is unknown", unless you have "show thumbnail" in that dialog on. Annoying, yes.

Re:2.6 for Windows

[_0xd0ad]

The option is "Show preview in image window". If you're tweaking the quality settings, it also shows you what the compressed image will look like (in addition to showing you the file size).

I kind of assumed that GP knew you have to click this before it will calculate a size. Maybe not.

Re:2.6 for Windows

[JDG1980]

Yes, the false ~1.3 GB figure was displaying when "Show preview" was checked. (When it's unchecked, it won't attempt to estimate the file size, which is expected behavior.)

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Ksevio]

I had the same issue with it, but it seemed to be just when starting up, after a couple minutes it sped up a bit more.

Wasn't a big fan of their dark gray on light black theme.

... better then Adobe Photoshops window management

[cristiroma]

From TFA: "- Single window mode has arrived in GIMP ... - you’re now able to group layers and move/duplicate/make-visible/delete/etc many layers at once that you combined in the group" - extremely improved text tool - a brand new tool to transform an image on a polygon base - Take care of hundreds of brushes now and only show “flower” brushes, for example, by filtering them! - a new on-screen-indicatior that shows you how far an operation is to be finished (this is more intuitive than just the status bar progress text). - new slider widgets which allow you to use them in different very effective ways" In another words, welcome to Photoshop 7 without easter eggs

CMYK

[virgnarus]

True CMYK support yet? Nope. Looks like Photoshop is still the only option.

Re:CMYK

[Nadir]

Even if GIMP supported CMYK, you'd still complain about it not being useful for professional work for some other reason (e.g. font rendering). GIMP is quite good for screen graphics, and that's what most people do.

Re:CMYK

[dan325]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/17/1826215/gimp-core-mostly-ported-to-gegl

Not in 2.8, but it will be in 2.10.

Re:CMYK

[virgnarus]

I don't understand. You imply that GIMP isn't sufficient for professional work for stuff like paper publications, yet you state that GIMP is good for screen graphics. This is despite the fact you mention one of the inadequacies with it which is font rendering, an issue that is very much existing with screen graphics no less than on paper. Am I reading your statement incorrectly?

Re:CMYK

[virgnarus]

Which is exactly what the publications we are sending the graphics out too are doing. Yes, CMYK is not for non-professional work, but for pro work it commonly is.

I would just like to find an alternative to Photoshop that has the capacity of working with CMYK. Evidently, all open source alternatives fail to deliver in this regard, as if CMYK harbors some sort of plague or it's something way out of their league.

Re:CMYK

[Lumpy]

Who the hell still does Print?

Maybe instead of complaining about Gimp you should look for a job in a non dying business sector. Even Billboards are all going jumbotron and CMYK is irrelevant.

and as soon as we get Minority report type displays on cereal boxes, even that printing process will be gone.

Re:CMYK

[nine-times]

GIMP is quite good for screen graphics, and that's what most people do.

It's sounds more like you mean "GIMP is quite good for amateur work, and that's what most people do."

An awful lot of graphic design professionals do need to do some kind of print work at some point, so CMYK is pretty important. Beyond that, if there are any problems with font rendering, that's huge for professional designers too. An amateur might not care very much and might not notice the difference, but subtle changes in font can create a dramatic difference in the impact an image has.

But that's not where it ends. I did some work a while back where I really needed to optimize the hell out of the exported images for screen display. I had a bunch of images that needed to be exported to JPEG/GIF at very small file sizes while protecting quality as much as possible. Adobe's products did a far better job than GIMP or other FOSS solutions.

I could provide other examples, but I think I'm straying off into a GIMP hate-fest, which isn't what I want to do. It's a great program for Linux users who want a free image editor. It just happens that there are good reasons that professionals tend to use Photoshop instead.

Re:CMYK

[virgnarus]

A glimmer of hope amidst a realm of discontent. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. While the features list for GEGL mentions only scRGB, it still paves the way to using the CMYK color space as mentioned in the summary. Now I just have to figure out how many more years I have to wait till this comes about.

Re:CMYK

[dutchwhizzman]

16 bit per color editing? Import is nice, but if the first step is to toss 8 of those 16 bits, it's still useless for proper photo editing, which is what a lot of people that do screen graphics do, would like to do.

Re:CMYK

[virgnarus]

When you have the capacity to alter scientific publications and their antiquated approach to journalism, then more power to you. Until then, we have to run by their rules.

Re:CMYK

[JDG1980]

I would just like to find an alternative to Photoshop that has the capacity of working with CMYK. Evidently, all open source alternatives fail to deliver in this regard, as if CMYK harbors some sort of plague or it's something way out of their league.

Krita supports CMYK. Unfortunately, there is no stable version for Windows.

Re:CMYK

[Max Littlemore]

I would love to see full CMYK support. Luckily all the pro print graphics I have had to do of late have worked by converting from RGB to CMYK and trusting the colours will come out right which is obviously a crappy way to work. I just don't do enough print graphics to justify buying PS.

Re:CMYK

[JDG1980]

I would just like to find an alternative to Photoshop that has the capacity of working with CMYK. Evidently, all open source alternatives fail to deliver in this regard, as if CMYK harbors some sort of plague or it's something way out of their league.

Krita supports CMYK. Unfortunately, there is no stable version for Windows.

Re:CMYK

[Nadir]

That's what I find absurd: people gripe about the GIMP about not being useful for professionals. Professionals make enough money to buy themselves the best tool for the job (Photoshop or other tools). Otherwise it is a hate-fest.

Re:CMYK

[Nadir]

No, I don't think GIMP's font rendering is inadequate, I just said that even if it had CMYK you'd find something else to complain about. So keep using Photoshop, nothing wrong with that.

Re:CMYK

[ColdWetDog]

Converting between RGB and CMYK (or the more general question of how do you commercially print an computer generated image) is non trivial.

If you don't do enough to know what you're doing, it's best to send the file in RGB to someone who does and pay them to make it their headache. Some for most folks, RGB is just fine.

If you do CMYK, then you probably make enough money or spend enough time at it to justify PS.

Re:CMYK

[vurian]

Working on that. The unstable version actually seems to work well for quite a few people, it was even used to preset Krita at LFNW. Please download it and tell me whether it works or not so I can fix issues and make it stable... http://www.kogmbh.com/download.html

Re:CMYK

[Internal Modem]

You must not buy products in packaging (printed), or really do much of anything if you think Billboards represent a fraction of print. People were saying print was dead before you joined Slashdot. You comment just shows how stupid you are.

Re:CMYK

[ColdWetDog]

Who the hell still does Print?

The rest of the world?

For some reason, my paper recycle bin is 5 times the volume of plastics / aluminum and glass combined. When I go to work, I see piles of the stuff on my desk. All manner of professionally done color glossy things attempting to entice me to purchase any one of millions of expensive objects (for the good of mankind, of course).

And 99% of that stuff came from Photoshop.

Re:CMYK

[nine-times]

I'd be inclined to agree. My response is colored by the fact that I've read an awful lot of comments along the lines of, "Ugh, why do people buy Photoshop instead of supporting FOSS projects like GIMP? GIMP does everything that Photoshop does, and I know because I used it to make a picture once! People who buy Photoshop are morons who've been brainwashed by marketing."

So when you say, "you'd still complain about it not being useful for professional work for some other reason," it sounds like you're implying that those gripes are unfounded, which makes me want to argue with you. GIMP is great, but of course if you try to argue that it makes Photoshop unnecessary, you're going to get some arguments.

Re:CMYK

[flyingfsck]

Here you go: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/03/8-handy-tweaks-to-make-gimp-replace-photoshop/

Re:CMYK

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, I think you meant to reply to another post I made about a 'bizarre Photoshop plugin'. And, in fact, I'm pretty sure I tried PSPI or something like it. But it was a pretty odd little plugin and, in point of fact, the world is better off with it remaining obscure and unused. I told the budding artiste that I did give it a try and no, she couldn't 'borrow' my copy of Photoshop.

But thanks.

Re:CMYK

[Xtifr]

CMYK is built into GEGL.

Re:CMYK

[rastos1]

Who the hell still does Print?

The rest of the world?

For some reason, my paper recycle bin is 5 times the volume of plastics / aluminum and glass combined.

But all that pales in comparison to volume of my Trash desktop icon.

Re:CMYK

[Max Littlemore]

Like I said, I have been lucky that the colours have worked. I've used a domestic laser printer that supports CMYK to do proofs. My usual work doesn't involve CMYK so it's not worth the investment having done two print graphics jobs in the past 3 years. Also, I prefer the workflow I have on a gnome2+compiz desktop so dual boot or wine for PS is not ideal.

Re:CMYK

[Compaqt]

You're saying you need GIMP for images you're going to send to scientific publications?

Why would you manipulate images meant for scientific publication?

Or are you from the University of East Anglia?

Re:CMYK

[olau]

Some people have been working on it in GIMP for some years (that's the GEGL thing). It looks like that recently got a tremendous boost, so it may actually land in the next version.

Yeah, it's slow, but remember that these people aren't getting paid and changing the image format in an image editor is a really big change, basically a rewrite.

Re:CMYK

[virgnarus]

I'm just the sysadmin. I have no clue what the rationale is behind the need for us submitting images to the publications. All I'm aware of is that we do, and some of them require it to be CMYK.

Re:CMYK

[eldorel]

Can you imagine trying to justify "$1200 for custom GIMP Plugin" or "$1200 for Gimp programmer" to the company accountant?

Re:CMYK

[FrootLoops]

I'm sorry but I have to ask: is your handle intentionally similar to "virgin anus"?

Here comes the complaning...

[vladilinsky]

Every time there is anything posted about GIMP the entire comments consist of nothing but people complaining that it is not photoshop. What does it contribute to the discussion? We have all heard it before, many times. If you irrationally hate some piece of software, don't use it. If not enjoy the progression and the new features.

I for one, am glad that GIMP exists and want to thank all the people involved for all their hard work. It is not perfect but gets better with every release. I happily use it for all my photo manipulation needs.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[slim]

I tried Photoshop, and I didn't like it because it wasn't the GIMP.

I'm sure PS is fine, but once you've learned one UI it's difficult to adapt to a different one.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Desler]

Well the summary is claiming it rivals Photoshop so it's only fair game to point out it's still missing features that Photoshop had in the early to mid 90s. Hell, even Paint.net has high-end features that The Gimp doesn't.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[cristiroma]

Let me think ... because THEY compare themselves with Photoshop?? From TFA: " .... So it is even better then Adobe Photoshops window management now!" How about that?

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Wattos]

Thank you for posting this.

You get a feature rich, stable, complete application for absolutely free and you still complain about it not being something else. Gimp may have a very steap learning curve and may lack some features of photoshop but it is still a solid package and we should be absolutely greatful that there are people out there who dedicate their time to provide the package to us for free.

I am absolutely sure that most people here, who complain about gimp not being photoshop, do not even have a valid license for photoshop. Additionally, if you think its so much worse, why dont you go ahead and try to make it better, its open source after all. But that would actually require you to do some work.

I am happy that gimp 2.8 finally got released. I continue to use and support it :)

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the GIMP also has features neither Photoshop nor Paint.NET have. So, we can call it a tie ;-)

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[slim]

So if you had any substantial amount of work beyond basic scaling, cropping and simple filtering, you'd have switched in a heart beat.

I'm first to admit I don't have high end needs.

But "scaling cropping and simple filtering" is IrfanView territory. Very basic indeed. GIMP gives me layers, masks -- and scriptability way beyond my needs.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Frosty Piss]

Every time there is anything posted about GIMP the entire comments consist of nothing but people complaining that it is not photoshop. What does it contribute to the discussion?

The reason people complain is that they really *WANT* to get away from Photoshop and its 600$+ price tag (no everyone can get away with using a pirated copy), but the Gimp Team will not prioritize features that *professional* users want.

Are they features that *everyone* (or even most) users want? Maybe not, but before Gimp can gain widespread acceptance among the various *professional* users, the Gimp team needs to set a high priority on addressing their needs.

And this would be a good thing, many of those people whining about Gimp desperately want to dump Photoshop - It just isn't possible with Gimp in its current state.

And, they lame-assed come-back "It's Open Source, why don't YOU write some code" is, well, lame and doesn't really need addressing.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[NetDanzr]

Same here. I was never willing to spend the money for Photoshop, so I "grew up" with GIMP. And with Inkscape, instead of Illustrator. So when my company, where I designed the marketing materials as a side job, decided to "professionalize" and get me Photoshop and Illustrator (I believe versions C2), I struggled for a while with the UI and then decided to go back to my old software. I'm sure Adobe products are amazing - otherwise they wouldn't sell so well - but after all the time, it's difficult for me to readjust.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[JDG1980]

Every time there is anything posted about GIMP the entire comments consist of nothing but people complaining that it is not photoshop. What does it contribute to the discussion?

What it contributes is that we wish the GIMP coders would stop trying to be "creative," and instead just work on an open-source clone of the best-in-class proprietary software. Their attempts at creativity and innovation frankly all suck.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

I don't care that it isn't photoshop. I do, however, care that when it comes to features GIMP 2.8 still compares badly to Photoshop 7. No non destructive editing, no CYMK, I don't see anything in the announcement about high color depths, etc.

I don't need GIMP to be a clone of photoshop. I don't need the keystrokes, the icons, even the core philosophy to be the same. But I do need it to compare well against the feature set of PS7, which came out a decade ago.

We know that small teams can produce apps that are comparable to PS7, in much less time than the 16 years it took us to get to GIMP 2.8 — Paint.NET, Acorn, Pixelmator, etc.

It is more than time to stop giving the GIMP team a pass, and start holding them to a higher standard.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Darfeld]

It's funny how people just can't stop saying PS have huge features that lakes Gimp. I'm sure that's true, but I never see what those features are or why they are so goddamn importante.

I mean, normally, in a good flameware KDE/Gnome or Linux/OSX/Windows or vi/emacs, you gets some details, but here, pretty much nothing.

So I'm curious : What's so great about PS that it's worth paying for? ( And yes, I know it isn't hard to get it free, but it's not what I asked, you pirate's scumm! )

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[westlake]

Every time there is anything posted about GIMP the entire comments consist of nothing but people complaining that it is not photoshop. What does it contribute to the discussion? We have all heard it before, many times. If you irrationally hate some piece of software, don't use it.

It is not unreasonable remind the geek that other users do not value a FOSS app for its ideological purity or political correctness. It has to deliver the goods.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[vladilinsky]

I agree with everything you said, and would love if some of the more glaring "professional" missing features were addressed. But as I can't code/or if I tried GIMP would be far worse off, and at this time I am not able to contribute financially I don't feel that I have any right to dictate what features need working on. (Not that I am implying you feel that you have a right ether.)

What I am saying is if people want to get away from Photoshop, they need to find a constructive way to help. Even if it is bug checking, writing tutorials, or any other simple job that helps out the cause.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[mapuche]

I think you have hit the nail. I run an animation studio, and at certain point decided to change some tools for open source options. The first move was from PS to gimp. I certainly can afford and own PS licenses; full and/or Elements versions. Most of my colaborators changed slowly to PS again. They can work with old PS versions, son it's clear the don't need all the bloated features of the Creative Suite bundles.

I want to use gimp, because morally is the best thing to do, even technically not always ideal. From time to time BSA minions send extortion emails to my inbox, or even they call me to make threats. I'm not interested to buy their software if they treat me like a criminal.

 

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[BanHammor]

I have to agree that the window management in GIMP is pretty damn good. Do they compare, like, graphics editing?

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[erroneus]

I also use GiMP for most things and I still have Photoshop available to me as well. The thing is, I like the way GiMP handles layers better. The grouping thing will be an improvement, but that just saves clicks you know? When I want to work with layers, I don't want to care how big the thing is I'm pasting or dragging in. Photoshop does some really annoying things the last time I used it. Being able to crop layers is just a natural way for me. Not saying Photoshop can't do it, I just don't know how to do it easily the times I tried in the past.

Yeah, I'm quite accustomed to GiMP. It's really easy to work with for me.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Lumpy]

" but once you've learned one UI it's difficult to adapt to a different one."

No not really. Microsoft proved that by changing the UI layout of things every fricking release. and the Office Ribbon changed it so drastic that people should have been committing suicide in the streets.

It didnt, people adapted in 24 hours, life went on. Learning a new UI is not hard at all, it's just inconvenient.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Lumpy]

"So I'm curious : What's so great about PS that it's worth paying for? "

well if you are a crappy photographer, Content aware deletion and replacement is killer. IT makes a lot of really mediocre photographers look a lot better.

Oh and the new video editing features! I'm waiting for the Send Email plug-in.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[oldmac31310]

Very good point.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[amRadioHed]

Every time there is anything posted about GIMP the entire comments consist of nothing but people complaining that it is not photoshop...

Seems complaints about it not being Photoshop take a very distant second to complaints about the name. So far about 75% of the comments are about the name.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[nelsonal]

GIMP had content aware deletion before PS (via a free plugin).

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Paul Slocum]

Long time GIMP user who has released several design-heavy iOS apps and shown work in New York museums made entirely with GIMP. Haven't had Photoshop installed in 10 years except for a brief attempt at switching recently.

To me, the key to using GIMP is to reassign all the keyboard shortcuts so that the stuff you use the most is super easy to access. I rarely have to click outside the image window (or even move my left hand much) to do anything anymore. Photoshop is much much less flexible about how you can reassign keyboard shortcuts, and that was the dealbreaker for me when I attempted to switch from GIMP to Photoshop recently.

I gave Photoshop a shot, honestly thinking it would be a lot better if I really spent the time to learn it. But for what I do, I honestly like GIMP better.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[virgnarus]

I concur with this statement. Hopefully 2.9 and 2.10 will help shorten the gap.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

Here are the big three I care about:

• High Bit-Depth Colorspaces
• CYMK Support
• Non-destructive editing

And then let us look at two things that just came in with 2.8:

• The ability to group layers
• Curves

I will never say you can't get stuff done, or do good things in GIMP; but if you are used to using such fundamental things as what I enumerated below then GIMP is just painful to use. Doubly so for photography.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[ColdWetDog]

Photoshop is actually a nightmare for a beginner. It is a hodgepodge of the old and new. The advantage for professionals is that most things still work The Way They Always Have. So if you have a workflow that your fingers dance around, you can upgrade (which Adobe gratefully makes incredibly easy by dropping support at the drop of a hat) and still charge along. Hell you can even used 'Indexed Color' and a bunch of formats and file structures that are tiny edge cases.

That's incredibly important to people who make their living. Productivity is important and spending hours reworking things isn't very functional. But if you're plunked down in Photoshop CS5 for the first time, it's pretty daunting.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[serviscope_minor]

The reason people complain is that they really *WANT* to get away from Photoshop and its 600$+ price tag (no everyone can get away with using a pirated copy), but the Gimp Team will not prioritize features that *professional* users want.

Are those professional users contributing anything at all to the GIMP? Will they? No? Then why on earth should the GIMP team prioritize them.

Are they features that *everyone* (or even most) users want? Maybe not, but before Gimp can gain widespread acceptance among the various *professional* users, the Gimp team needs to set a high priority on addressing their needs.

I imagine that the people working on the GIMP are making the features they want if they are personal contributors, or making ones their employer wants if they are professional contributors.

Why on earth should the people writing the gimp lift a finger to help people who will never contribute a single thing?

Some people have a really strong sense of entitlement.

And, they lame-assed come-back "It's Open Source, why don't YOU write some code" is, well, lame and doesn't really need addressing.

If you want a feature, (a) code it yourself or (b) form a consortium of like minded people and pay to get it developed.

If you don't do either of them, you're demangind that other people do stuff for you for free. Now that is lame.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[DittoBox]

Designers like myself have a hard time because so many people say it's, "photoshop for free!!11@omgwtfbbq," whenever a new release comes out. If people stopped making the absurd assertion that they're remotely comparable for most pro work, we wouldn't make a stink about it. But even the summary here is saying it's that good—it isn't. I would call it a decent tool, one worth spending time with, but it's not in the same league yet. It needs layer styles (which from the way most open source projects go, I can see them pulling off a far better version than Adobe currently does), better typography tools, nested files and other non-destructive techniques.

Just quit comparing them and we'll stop complaining.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Wattos]

And, they lame-assed come-back "It's Open Source, why don't YOU write some code" is, well, lame and doesn't really need addressing.

No, its not lame. It is the entire idea behind Open Source Software. If you like something, you contribute to it (in any form). It's easy to simple demand and require things from developers. The hard part is to actually contribute.

Please do not blame the developers that they do not share your world view of what gimp should be. If you want a feature, implement it and share it with the world. This way we all win.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[samwichse]

You're incorrect they're not working on features "professionals want." It says right in the summary the porting to GEGL is making huge advances... this will give the GIMP CMYK, 16/32 bit colorspace, non-destructive editing. This release has already given it single-window mode.

The greatest hits of the people that say it's not ready for the big time.

http://www.gegl.org/

It's a great free tool, I use it almost every day and have for years. You're right it's not photoshop, but I don't much care.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Fri13]

And that is reason why people can not do work like?

Like what people should possible do with Photoshop what GIMP can not do? And don't say anything about CMYK or some very special needs.
GIMP offers almost all tools what are needed and only limit is your imagination and vision to see it trough how to make it.
Photoshop is so much used with scripts and automatic functions. And because Photoshop isn't good for Photographers, Adobe made Lightroom for that purpose for them.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[Xtifr]

So in other words, you want the devs to treat you like a paying customer, even though you're not. You want them to prioritize your needs, even though you're not even a user, let alone a potential contributor. Why should they pay more attention to your needs than to the needs of their existing users?

You don't even seem to have any idea how hard it might be to implement these features you want. You just want them to do it so you can save a few bucks. You're a self-centered ass.

Professional graphic artists have to be the least interesting audience for the Gimp devs, because they're the least likely to be able to contribute. No matter how lame you may think the "write some code" come-back is, it's really the bottom line, and pretending it's not just exposes you as the self-serving ass you are.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[excelsior_gr]

Just a very minor correction...

A steep learning curve means that you learn a lot in very little time. A steep learning curve is something good. GIMP is rather hard to learn, and it therefore has a flat learning curve, not a steep one.

Anyway...

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

In how many more years? This morning I looked at the GIMP Roadmap, and it won't be until GMP 3.6 before it will have a rough parity with Photoshop 7 (released in 2002ish). GIMP development has been very slow to date, but if we were to assume they could do one release every 6 months, then we are talking 2.5 years before we get to that point.

In the mean time the goal posts keep getting moved forward. GEGL reached a stable release in 2006. GIMP still doesn't have support for high bit dept.

It is time we stop giving them a pass, and saying things like "now that they have supported XX, this feature can happen". It is time to hold the GIMP team to a high standard.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

I am not saying this out of a sense of entitlement. What I am saying is that lots and lots of FLOSS folk point to GIMP as a full blown alternative to Photoshop. Say it is just as good, and point to it as a victory of Free Software.

My point is that is isn't. For far too long it has been given a pass because it was more or less the only game in town. People have been making excuses for its shortcomings, and defending the insane name.

When I talked about other software titles, I was saying "look how far other people have gotten in less time". If the GIMP team had been smart and changed the name, found a corporate sponsor, or been able to get some kind of consultancy going; then they would have the luxury to speed up the pace of development and provide a real challenge to photoshop.

Instead people are exited that it just got Curves. If it were any other app people would be calling that a joke.

PS: And Paint.net doesn't run on OSX or Linux ;)

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[eepok]

Same here. I prefer GIMP. I know where the tools are, what they do, and can use it quite proficiently.

However, my university won't install nor let me install nor let me run GIMP from a non-installed executable on my workstation because they "don't want to support it" and think I have no need for it because the department pays for CS4.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[stevenfuzz]

You know, I disagree. I think the GIMP team really wants to develop a professional application. It's just not quite there yet. Professional designers (myself included) aren't going to use GIMP because it just can't do even some of the simple stuff that we need. Now, if the GIMP team doesn't care about creating a professional tool, I just don't get what they are going for. Why waste their time on an extremely difficult tool with limited abilities? Furthermore, stop telling people who don't code, but want to be part of the open source community, that there needs and wants are not valid, because you are missing the point.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[dbIII]

When the professional users say something more contructive than "I've used it for two minutes - the menus are in the wrong place - why isn't it photoshop" then it may get closer to something they want to use. Use it and put in bug reports or feature requests if you want it to improve. Guys like me that do quick and nasty web graphics every now and again don't know what we are missing so think it's good enough.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[dbIII]

as a full blown alternative to Photoshop

For a lot of purposes it is - I'm not buying photoshop for people that just want to scan, crop and resize pictures for internal company use. For a lot of purposes even Irfinview is a full alternative to photoshop.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[dbIII]

How so? Show me examples instead of an entirely pointless insult.
Also stop jumping to conclusions about who I am whether my listening makes any difference or not without even bothering to read the final line of a very short post which will tell you outright. How lazy can you get? Why blame another user for the state of some software?

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[swillden]

It didnt, people adapted in 24 hours, life went on. Learning a new UI is not hard at all, it's just inconvenient.

For simple tasks like word processing and spreadsheet manipulation, this is true. Image editing is far more complex.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

There was a time I was quite willing to donate the same amount I spent in Photoshop upgrades each year to the GIMP team. If they would just change the name to something that wasn't offensive. However they drew a line in sand and refused to even consider it. I personally believe that if they had been willing to change the name back when they also could have gotten corporate sponsorship, had it taught in more schools, and other things that would have been to the good of the app and the community.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

Please point me to the plugin that supports high bit depth throughout the entire application and plugins, or the one that adds non destructive editing (aka layer effects). Because if you can't, then you are wrong...

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[serviscope_minor]

The GIMP team have made a few odd comments here and there, but what makes you think that they are in it for anything other than themselves and for the hell of it?

Furthermore, stop telling people who don't code, but want to be part of the open source community, that there needs and wants are not valid, because you are missing the point.

They want something for free and aren't prepared to lift a finger of dollar to help. So yes, their needs and wants aren't valid.

I want a hundred bucks. Why won't you give it to me? My needs and wants are valid too!

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jez9999]

You just listed 2, count 'em 2, shortcomings. Here's a shortcoming of Photoshop: it costs $700 (extended version costs $1000). Those 2 shortcomings of GIMP you mentioned will likely be addressed in the next version. 90% of would-be Photoshop users are probably OK with GIMP's features as it is, now that it has a single window mode.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

Did you miss the etc at the end of the list? I mentioned those two because they happen to be big for me, but it is a bigger list than that.

But let us take the two I mentions: High Bit Depth, and CYMK. If you are a photographer, or do prepress work that is like saying "sure the compiler doesn't support strings or floating point numbers, but look at everything else it supports!" Those two are worth $700, because without them, I can't can't use GIMP.

And if you look at the GIMP roadmap, GIMP won't reach a rough Parity until version 3.6. RIght now the team is running a couple of years between releases, but let's pretend they can get it up to one every six month. In that case it will still be 2.5 years before they get to that point.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[jockm]

It might be single platform. Have you actually used it? From where I sit it is either GIMPs equal or better in almost every way? The GIMP team has been at it for 16 years, and still aren't at the level of Pixelmator... at least when it comes to vital features like, say, high bit depth. I can do real commercial deadline critical work in it and I can't in GIMP.

But I also like how you dismiss it for costing $60 when GIMP is free. How is that even relevant?

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[stevenfuzz]

Ok, I will change my angle then. You are saying that the open source community only works for selfish reasons? Well, that sure is an interesting sentiment; seams to go against the ideology that open source software represents.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[tangent]

...such as??

Seriously. I'd like a list of features in the stock version of Gimp that have no equivalent in Photoshop, please.

I'm only aware of one: the Lanczos resampling mode in the image resize dialog.

I happen to know that one only because it's emblematic of the Gimp usability problem. Its naming says it's a good idea to give a creative app a feature named after a mathematician with an unpronounceable name. (Yes, I know, LUNT-shosh. A fact maybe 1% of the 1% Gimp community knows.) Why not name it after its effect, or after its raison d'etre? For all I know, Photoshop does have Lanczos resampling, but they've named it something sensible.

The closest you see Adobe coming to this problem is Gaussian blur, and the past several releases of Photoshop have been moving away from it. One of the banner features of Photoshop CS6, the blur gallery, should do wonders for sweeping plain old Gaussian blurs into the dustpan of history.

So is that it? Is there anything else Gimp can point to and call its own?

I guess you could point to the scripting languages. Yes, Photoshop doesn't have a Scheme or Python interpreter. But it does have JavaScript, and you have a choice of VBScript on Windows and AppleScript on OS X. This doesn't count in my book. These two feature sets are comparable. I'm asking for features Gimp has that actually make some difference to an artist. Artists don't care what language their scripts are written in.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[tangent]

Valid Photoshop license holder speaking here.

Yes, it's great that Gimp exists and that it's free in both senses of the word.

The problem is that Gimp keeps getting compared to Photoshop, as though it's any kind of contest.

If this were a racing event, the only way you'd get Gimp up against Photoshop is to do away with the class system. They call it an outlaw race, in automotive racing.

If you want to compare Gimp to something in the commercial world, compare it to Photoshop Elements, or Pixelmator.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[dbIII]

Got anything worth listening to yet?
Odd calling me impolite when you opened with an insult.

Re:Here comes the complaning...

[tyrione]

Gimp gets financial sponsorship and the developers get notoriety and job placement for their work. If they can't manage that then they are completely incompetent at selling themselves.

how about a new name?

[larry bagina]

I want to use GIMP at work, but I need to get permission from my boss first. He's a into the leather scene so I'm afraid he'll get the wrong impression.

Re:how about a new name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and ask, but be direct and forceful about it. Who knows, maybe you'll get that assistant you always wanted.

Re:how about a new name?

[Walterk]

[..] I'm afraid he'll get the wrong impression.

Your sig seems to contradict that..

A poll

[the_Bionic_lemming]

How many people here comparing Gimp to Photoshop have....Actually PAID for the licenses for all the version of photoshop they used?

I'm just happy there's a free alternative to photo editing out there. No, it may not be as slick as photoshop - but you don't have to steal gimp to use it.

Re:A poll

[Desler]

The GIMP people themselves and the summary are the ones claiming it rivals Photoshop so whining about people pointing out that it's still behind in features of versions of Photoshop from 20 years ago is only fair.

Re:A poll

[Sarten-X]

And that's my #1 reason for preferring GIMP to Photoshop. I rarely do any image editing these days, so usually I find myself installing GIMP onto a different computer than last time just so I can clean up one picture. Having something freely available that does what I need to get the job done is what I really care about, not a duplication tool that lets me add floors onto a building, or whatever features Photoshop's adding these days - the last time I used Photoshop was in the early 2000's (licensed, in a professional photo lab).

If you need absolutely every imaging algorithm discovered in the past 20 years, use Photoshop. If you just need to manipulate an image now, use GIMP. The two are comparable, yet different, in the way that a Dodge pickup truck is comparable to a Mercedes-Benz convertible.

Re:A poll

[AHuxley]

Government Income (no) Money (for) Photoshop

Re:A poll

[_0xd0ad]

Unpack the iTunes installer with 7-Zip. Install the applications that you actually want. There are about five separate applications bundled in the standard iTunes installation, iirc.

Note that either QuickTime or QuickTime Alternative must be installed before installing iTunes itself.

Re:A poll

[game kid]

Most importantly, GIMP doesn't have this gem of a term that comes with a validly licensed copy of Photoshop:

13. Compliance with Licenses.

If Customer is a business, company, or organization, Customer agrees that, in addition to any license compliance checking performed by the Software, Adobe or its authorized representative have the right, no more than once every twelve (12) months, upon seven (7) business days' prior notice to Customer, to inspect Customer's records, systems, and facilities to verify that its use of any and all Adobe software or service is in conformity with its valid licenses from Adobe. For example, Adobe has the right to those of Customer's records useful to determine whether installations of the Software have been serialized, and Customer shall provide such records to Adobe promptly upon request by Adobe. Additionally, Customer shall provide Adobe with all records and information requested by Adobe in order to verify that its use of any and all Adobe software is in conformity with its valid licenses from Adobe within thirty (30) days of Adobe's request. Additional information on serialization is available at http://www.adobe.com/go/elicensing.

Obviously GIMP staff or the wider community will check or notice if you violated the GPLv3+ for your distributed version of GIMP, but I don't have to worry about getting my private property felt up to make sure the software I got is prim and proper.

For that alone GIMP is already massively better.

Re:A poll

[daniel78]

I'd like to know too. I'm always surprised (Well not really) at the number of ordinary people (ie. non professionals) who seem to have access to Photoshop (And no, not, "Elements"), then ridicule (or act bemused towards) others for using GIMP

"Soooo... you spent $500 on Photoshop... Really? Really?"

I agree GIMP objectively isn't as good (I'd love to be able to justify that $500) but at least i didn't steal it.

Change the name, please!

[mapuche]

The first unnatractive GIMP feature is its name. Please change it to something more appealing while describes what it does. Photoshop, Paintshop, Illustrator,Inkscape, Pencil, etc. are good names for similar programs, please find a more clever name.

Re:Change the name, please!

[CanHasDIY]

The first unnatractive GIMP feature is its name. Please change it to something more appealing while describes what it does.

GNU image Manipulation Program isn't descriptive?

please find a more clever name.

Wait, do you want it to be clever, or descriptive?

Here's an idea: write your own image manipulation program, then you can name it whatever you want.

Re:Change the name, please!

[Lord Lode]

Hmm, Photoshop, Paintshop and Photo-Paint are already taken.

So maybe Imageshop, or Pictureshop Pro, or Picture-Photo?

Re:Change the name, please!

[Stuarticus]

Hi, I've forked it for you, I thought a better name would be "paintbitch" please PM me for a download key.

Re:Change the name, please!

[Anonymous Coward]

They could always change it to the Photo and Illustration Manipulation Program, or PIMP.

Re:Change the name, please!

[mapuche]

>GNU image Manipulation Program isn't descriptive?

Yes, but appealing or even funny. Calling a creative tool like ths one gimp, dork, dick, etc is not very smart or creative.

>Wait, do you want it to be clever, or descriptive?

How about both, is it possible? we're all here smart people, I'm sure we can end with a clever name.

>Here's an idea: write your own image manipulation program, then you can name it whatever you want.

So I can't contribute with a positive opinion to make The GIMP (sigh!) more appealing to the masses?

Re:Change the name, please!

[flyingfsck]

So install it and then, you know, name it something else! Wow, what a concept. Right click, Rename. Wow man, just WOW! I mean, gee whizz, you can rename your copy of The Gimp to Gnu's Not Photoshop! Gnop! Wow! just think, how revolutionary that would be... Sorry, but people who complain about little things that they can change themselves are just a pain in the derrier.

Re:Change the name, please!

[Dishevel]

Hell. Even if he is a slightly competent lazy bastard he could fork GIMP and change nothing but the name.
My guess is he does not really care about the name at all. Changing the name would not do anything for people like him.
He just needs something to rail against.

Re:Change the name, please!

[mapuche]

So you're part of the gimp team?

Re:Change the name, please!

[KlomDark]

Grow up

Re:Change the name, please!

[voidphoenix]

+1 :D

Re:Change the name, please!

[CanHasDIY]

Hell. Even if he is a slightly competent lazy bastard he could fork GIMP and change nothing but the name. My guess is he does not really care about the name at all. Changing the name would not do anything for people like him. He just needs something to rail against.

Indeed; elsewise, why would he be here bitching and not doing something about it?

Then again, perhaps we are giving him too much credit in the "slightly competent" department... apparently, the only thing some folks are competent at is complaining about what other people do.

Re:Change the name, please!

[mapuche]

I thought that giving my opinion to change the name of a program that suggests it's crippled was positive enough. How about names like FreePaint, PhotoMagic, CreativeImage, CreativePhoto? (Imagemagick is already taken) None of these names suggest crippled.

Re:Change the name, please!

[CanHasDIY]

I thought that giving my opinion to change the name of a program that suggests it's crippled was positive enough.

Calling a creative tool like ths one gimp, dork, dick, etc is not very smart or creative.

You didn't suggest the name implied that the software was crippled, you suggested that the name implied something sexual. Sorry that I, like the rest of the population, lack the clairvoyance to know what you meant to imply. You may want to keep that in mind when posting in the future.

How about names like FreePaint, PhotoMagic, CreativeImage, CreativePhoto? (Imagemagick is already taken) None of these names suggest crippled.

Perhaps not, but IMO they also lack marketing appeal, don't have an established base of users like GiMP does, and at least the first and last of them sound like malware.

Also, I'm pretty certain PhotoMagic is already taken by a brick-and-mortar. You're thinking, though, not just bitching for the sake of it, and I have to respect that.

Re:Change the name, please!

[FreeUser]

It's GPLed, anyone can fork it. The trick is to get a critical mass of users and constributers to buy into your fork.

Take for example my fork of the GIMP, entitled QuitYourPurileBitchingAboutCallingTheGimpTheGimp. Exactly the same feature set as the Gimp, and it's even launchable via a shorthand symlink "QuitYourBitching".

Not much uptake, though.

Re:Change the name, please!

[ChrisMaple]

Porn Enhancer

Re:Change the name, please!

[Ginger Unicorn]

How about Colour Ugliness Neatening Toolkit?

OMG Bold! And Italic! And Colors!

[svyyn]

Now it is possible to change text inside the bounding text box and also use certain styles! For example select a word and press a “Bold” or “Italic” button. You can also change the size, line-height and font! Not just that – meanwhile it is also possible to change the color of certain words and characters.
This feature is absolutely great!

Bold, italic, and colors!? Is this a joke?

Re:OMG Bold! And Italic! And Colors!

[_0xd0ad]

In previous versions, the entire text region was a single font, style, and color. If you wanted one word to be bold, you would have to put it in a separate text layer.

Re:OMG Bold! And Italic! And Colors!

[psydeshow]

Now it is possible to change text inside the bounding text box and also use certain styles! For example select a word and press a “Bold” or “Italic” button. You can also change the size, line-height and font! Not just that – meanwhile it is also possible to change the color of certain words and characters.

Bold, italic, and colors!? Is this a joke?

If only. Little-known fact: software engineers are allergic to typography.

That's just one of the reasons why Adobe can still charge $600+ for a program as shitty and bloated as Photoshop. Back in the day they locked some programmers in a room with some type designers and wouldn't let them out until they built up an immunity to each other. That sort of corporate IP is a wicked money-making machine.

Re:OMG Bold! And Italic! And Colors!

[flyingfsck]

Yah, the next release will have flashing text in CMYK.

Open Source Project Releases

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with the new version number, years in dev, and list of features, I'd like to see these projects list how many man-hours were actually spent.

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Sarten-X]

Wasn't a big fan of their dark gray on light black theme.

Don't ever do pro image work, then.

You may be familiar with those oddly-colored pictures that you stare at for a while, then look at a white wall and see the true-color image. Your eyes get used to whatever colors are around, and try to compensate by altering your perception. When working for hours on the same image, editors' eyes will start changing the color balance as they're working, and suddenly that bright red shirt is just a little too dull on that left side, so they raise the saturation until it looks good... then ten minutes later it looks like the shirt's plastic.

Professional retouchers often surround themselves with as much matte 50% gray as possible, because it doesn't affect the color balance. Sure, it's ugly, but it makes for better pictures.

when will someone build the damn windows binaries?

[DragonTHC]

I'd love to use 2.8, but I'm not going to build it from source.

Someone needs to build the windows binaries already.

Re:Typical M$ Shill/Astroturfer

[Lord Lode]

No need to compile it yourself if you don't want to, let the community do the work for you and use your package manager. Or does Windows not have such a package manager?

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Sarten-X]

Poor form replying to myself and all that, but 100 points to anybody knowledgeable and/or ambitious enough to find the right term for the phenomenon, and preferably a better (yet layman-accessible) description of how it works.

Re:Typical M$ Shill/Astroturfer

[hackula]

But how does that make you feel?

Re:how about a new name? Use name, not acronym

[Jeng]

Rather than introduce it by it's acronym why not use it's full name when recommending it?

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[torgosan]

Chromatic adaptation possibly...

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Pieroxy]

... 100 points to anybody...

And what are those points exactly? And also how do you intend to deliver them?

Straight Line

[Yo Grark]

Can I draw a straight line without following a website yet? /me ducks

Yo Grark

Re:Straight Line

[flyingfsck]

Shift, click.

Woo-Hoo!

[bbbaldie]

Thanks, Gimp team! Can't wait to check it out. Add me to the list of folks who hated the multiple windows...

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Cristofori42]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[_0xd0ad]

The term is "afterimage". The best analogy is monitor burn-in (if any of the kids here are old enough to remember that). It's basically the same, except that in the case of your eyes, it's not permanent (usually).

When the light receptors have received the same thing for so long, they eventually just stop responding to it, or their response drops by some significant fraction. I.e. if you're staring at a red object for a while, gradually the "red" receptors in your eye just stop firing that information to your brain so quickly, and the object will gradually look more dull, though you probably won't notice it. If you then rapidly shift your gaze to a white object, however, it will look very noticeably cyan (blue-green) because the "red" receptors still aren't running at 100%. Staring at something that's gray or black gives them a chance to recover.

I've heard it described in terms of both the light-sensing cells gradually lessening their response, and of the neurons in the brain gradually learning to disregard the stimulus; I'm not sure which is primarily the cause for the visual effect, or if it's a combination of both (likely).

Actual release notes

[MoogMan]

Announcement: http://www.gimp.org/
Release Notes: http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html

mod parent up

[crazyjj]

Well said, sir.

Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready

[Tarlus]

Really? Go to the Gimp home page. I downloaded 2.8rc1 from there over the weekend

Maybe you downloaded the source, but not a Windows installer. Gimp's homepage states that the Windows build is not yet available.

Re:when will someone build the damn windows binari

[DragonTHC]

sure I can.

I'm just so tired of 2.6.12

It's really just a clunky hobby program at 2.6

2.8 I feel just made it a serious contender.

Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready

[mapuche]

The windows port usually takes some time, maybe in a couple of months will be ready. Be patient.

Stupid

[shiftless]

The only "children" in this discussion are those who, rather than attempting to understand how others think, simply dismiss them as "childish." The rest of us understand that whining and crying and bitching and moaning about the fact that people don't like the name GIMP, and calling them names to boot......doesn't change the fact that they don't like it, and isn't going to make people want to use your product.

Re:Stupid

[CanHasDIY]

The only "children" in this discussion are those who, rather than attempting to understand how others think, simply dismiss them as "childish."

So, instead of attempting to understand how others (in this case, me) think, you go off on a tirade doing the exact same thing you accuse me of? Yea, no, hypocrisy isn't childish at all, man...

The rest of us understand that whining and crying and bitching and moaning about the fact that people don't like the name GIMP

Nice generalization there, too bad it's bullshit... unless by "the rest of us" you're referring to yourself and the mouse in your pocket.

Anyway, how many people "don't like the name?" For that matter, why should I fucking care? If you're childish enough (yes, childish) to boycott a perfectly good, useful, and best of all free piece of software simply because you get all butt-hurt about the name, then don't fucking use it. We (i.e., those of us who aren't pedantic douchebags) don't care if you call it the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist-BDSM Simulator, so long as it does the work we need it to do.

isn't going to make people want to use your product.

GiMP obviously ain't hurting from their lack of participation, and besides, if a person has that strong an objection to the name of the software, they're welcome to A) fork it and rename the software whatever they want - this is open source, B) suggest a few alternatives instead of merely bitching so they can hear the sound of their own voices, or C) eat a big ol' fat cock and go fuck themselves.

Re:Stupid

[shiftless]

So, instead of attempting to understand how others (in this case, me) think, you go off on a tirade doing the exact same thing you accuse me of?

Are you kidding me?? You're the one talking about childishness, and how people who refuse to use GIMP because they don't like the name are "childish." No, you're the childish one.

Nice generalization there, too bad it's bullshit... unless by "the rest of us" you're referring to yourself and the mouse in your pocket.

No, I'm pretty sure this discussion is full of twits like yourself who not can't see why people don't like this name, but are militant about the idea that anyone who doesn't like the name is probably just a childish moron.

Anyway, how many people "don't like the name?" For that matter, why should I fucking care?

Yeah, why should you or the GIMP developers care? Why should it matter?

I don't know. How do you explain "attention to detail" and the "desire to be excellent" to someone? How do you make someone understand why it's a "good" thing to put their egos aside and make the best software they possibly can?

If you're childish enough (yes, childish) to boycott a perfectly good, useful, and best of all free piece of software simply because you get all butt-hurt about the name, then don't fucking use it. We (i.e., those of us who aren't pedantic douchebags) don't care if you call it the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist-BDSM Simulator, so long as it does the work we need it to do.

Cool. And you'll continue in your isolated little community, all alone, never getting the credit you "deserve" or the attention most of you actually do desire......because you fail to actually deserve it, through your mediocrity.

GiMP obviously ain't hurting from their lack of participation

If it had a better name it would have twice the participation.

a person has that strong an objection to the name of the software, they're welcome to A) fork it and rename the software whatever they want - this is open source

LOL no....why would I waste my time doing that?

B) suggest a few alternatives instead of merely bitching so they can hear the sound of their own voices

Photoshop.

Oh, you meant free?

Microsoft Paint.

Re:Stupid

[CanHasDIY]

So, instead of attempting to understand how others (in this case, me) think, you go off on a tirade doing the exact same thing you accuse me of?

Are you kidding me?? You're the one talking about childishness, and how people who refuse to use GIMP because they don't like the name are "childish."

Exactly; like how a child will refuse to eat calamari, regardless of how tasty it may be, because it has a funny name. I.e., childish (or child-like) behavior. Glad you can finally see clearly.

Nice generalization there, too bad it's bullshit... unless by "the rest of us" you're referring to yourself and the mouse in your pocket.

No, I'm pretty sure this discussion is full of twits like yourself who not can't see why people don't like this name, but are militant about the idea that anyone who doesn't like the name is probably just a childish moron.

Says the guy going off on a rage-filled tirade because another person doesn't share their opinion.

Pot, may I introduce you to Kettle.

FYI, you do realize that responding in such an idiotic, childish way only serves to further my point, yes?

Anyway, how many people "don't like the name?" For that matter, why should I fucking care?

I don't know. How do you explain "attention to detail" and the "desire to be excellent" to someone? How do you make someone understand why it's a "good" thing to put their egos aside and make the best software they possibly can?

WTF does making the best software possible have to do with the fucking name? What, is there some coding secret that changing the name of a piece of software will magically transform it into the best thing since sliced bread 2.0? Gimme a fucking break.

If you're childish enough (yes, childish) to boycott a perfectly good, useful, and best of all free piece of software simply because you get all butt-hurt about the name, then don't fucking use it. We (i.e., those of us who aren't pedantic douchebags) don't care if you call it the Islamo-Nazi-Fascist-BDSM Simulator, so long as it does the work we need it to do.

Cool. And you'll continue in your isolated little community, all alone, never getting the credit you "deserve" or the attention most of you actually do desire......because you fail to actually deserve it, through your mediocrity.

Ah, I see, you mistakenly believe I'm like you, in that I am narcissistic and live for the approval and attention of others.

I am not, nor do I give 2 shits what you or anyone else thinks. So... yea.

GiMP obviously ain't hurting from their lack of participation

If it had a better name it would have twice the participation.

Riiiiight... 'cause if you're the type of douche who will avoid using software (which may in itself be awesome) because of something as stupid and petty as the name, bowing to your demands will instantly translate to the end of your bitching and the beginning of your use of the product... or, more likely, you'll find something else to bitch about to perpetuate your need for calling attention to yourself.

Seriously, "twice the participation?" That's not even anecdotal, it's just plain ol' fucking stupid.

a person has that strong an objection to the name of the software, they're welcome to A) fork it and rename the software whatever they want - this is open source

LOL no....why would I waste my time doing that?

Uh... maybe because it's more productive than fucking arguing with me about it? Of course, by taking that attitude you prove to the world that you really don't give a fuck about GiMP, you just want something to use as an excuse to draw attention to yourself by bitching about it.

Jog on, you ego-maniacal fuck.

does it finally support photoshop (PSD) layers?

[darkeye]

the biggest obstacle for us with Gimp now is that it doesn't open PSD layers properly. whenever we receive a PSD file from a designer, which includes layers, we have to open a virtual machine with Photoshop in it to just to open it properly.

but I don't see PSD layer support in the new features list - I wonder when gimp will support this?

Re:does it finally support photoshop (PSD) layers?

[toadlife]

Former coworker of mine who does web and graphic design for a living just commented on this exact subject in regards to GIMP a few weeks ago. He is a die-hard open source advocate, but he cannot use GIMP due to it's lack of support for PSD layers.

Re:does it finally support photoshop (PSD) layers?

[Tapewolf]

the biggest obstacle for us with Gimp now is that it doesn't open PSD layers properly. whenever we receive a PSD file from a designer, which includes layers, we have to open a virtual machine with Photoshop in it to just to open it properly.

but I don't see PSD layer support in the new features list - I wonder when gimp will support this?

Depends what your PSD file is doing. I've got hundreds of them which work perfectly, and I've done back-and-forth editing work with photoshop users. However it's very likely that most of the artists I've been working with aren't doing anything sufficiently advanced to freak it out - it's almost entirely comic art.

Of the 790+ files on my system, exactly two have done strange enough layer effects to cause problems. Photoshop is $1000 in this country and I can't justify that just to look at two files. These two files are still glitching in 2.8rc1 though IMHO they look better than they have done in earlier versions, so they may have added a few more features, I don't know.

FWIW there was also an issue where it couldn't export additive layers and a couple of other effects to PSD - maybe Photoshop itself can't do it, or else the PSD export filter can't. Whatever the case, that would cause it to flatten the offending layers down in the exported file. I don't know if 2.8 still does that offhand.

Re:does it finally support photoshop (PSD) layers?

[darkeye]

we have the same problem here - and this is the only reason we have to fire up a VM with a Photoshop on it when we receive such files :(

How about just IMP?

[Immerman]

Just leave the reference to GNU out of the name and it goes from invoking an insult to invoking images of playful/mischievous sprites. I'm sure there'd still be objections from some who find it "demonic", but it seems like that would be a lot less likely to cause institutional resistance.

  And heck, that little smiley bug-eyed guy would finally make sense as a logo/mascot - tell me he doesn't look impish!

Re:And! Another feature!

[DeathToBill]

Fine, thanks. Well done. Click the link to 'its features'.

Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready

[Paul Slocum]

Yes, so why is the news being posted now? It seems like terrible marketing to release the news on huge news sources when only about 2% of people are actually able to try the new version. The large majority of GIMP users are on WIndows. I think it's partly because gimpusers.com posted the news when the saw the source on the FTP before GIMP actually announced the release.

The GIMP developers' response was this:

Not a release until we say so.
Truly yours, GIMP developers

P.S. And please don't make us think of evil things like banning your IP for FTP access. Spreading the news is great. Doing it before an official announcement is evil. It's our right to reserve a certain level of surprise. Have some respect.

GPL v3???

[mark-t]

Would that not mean, for instance, if I run a commercial shop that does photo restoration and touchups, and I use a in-house customized version of GIMP to produce a result for a customer, that I must also make the source that I customized available to that customer?

Re:GPL v3???

[z0M6]

No. You are distributing photo restorations and touchups, not a modified version of GIMP.

Re:GPL v3???

[mark-t]

It was my understanding that, with GPL v3, that if the users interacted with software in any way whatsoever, even if only by supplying it input and receiving its output, that such a person would be considered a user of the software, even if they never actually directly used it.

Re:GPL v3???

[RobertLTux]

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

read that while not "chemically impaired" and then could you show me where that clause is??
seriously try not getting your info from your local Microsoft Platinum Provider Partner when dealing with FLOSS stuff get it from the Gnu HisSelf

Re:GPL v3???

[mark-t]

From here:

...It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

If that provision *ONLY* applies when the user is utilizing the server via some direct network communication then it seems to me that one could effectively make a loophole in that provision simply by introducing an arbitrary layer of indirection that does not involve any actual network communication between the user and the software (possibly even an automated service). I had figured that the designers of the GPL v3 would have anticipated that loophole and plugged it, which is why I presumed that in my aforementioned hypothetical scenario that that a photo restoration placed which used a customized GIMP would have to distribute its modified source.

If I'm misunderstanding something, by all means, enlighten me.

Re:GPL v3???

[muridae]

Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

That's what you are missing. The indirection layer of a human employee is a valid indirection, and should* get you around that clause. However, now matter how many networked misdirections you use, the public is still using the software on a publicly accessible server. Now, if there existed a front page on one server that served data to a GPL v3 app on a non-public server, and got data back and displayed that to the public, you might* have a point and a way around the license clause.

*: read as "get your own lawyer if you want to be a dink about this"

Re:GPL v3???

[mark-t]

The indirection layer of a human employee is a valid indirection

I'm not so sure... why should a human employee be a vlaid indirection, but an automated service that performs the same task not be?

Humans are, after all, little but some reasonably sophisticated learning software running on massively parallel meat-based computers, with assorted peripherals to interact physically with the world around them. If humans are somehow a valid layer between the client and a GPL program, why can't another piece of software be?

Re:GPL v3???

[Compaqt]

Your link is referring to the AGPL (Affero GPL).

Normal GPL (even version 3) doesn't have such a clause.

Hope that clears that up.

Re:GPL v3???

[muridae]

Because GPL 3 states:
1:"The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work."
2:"To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying."
In no particular order, as long as the object code is run on the server and not the user's machine, the source code does not need to be distributed. The hole that was closed was javascript/flash/etc where code was distributed and run on the user's machine, but code was not made available because 'they have to use our website to access the app, so it isn't really running on their computer'. I run GPL apps feeding data to a webpage; since people visiting my website do not interact with the code directly (webserver runs on my machine, and the output is not covered by the GPL, see part 1), I do not need to give them the source. Source is only required if the work itself is conveyed.

Now, the GNU Affero GPL is a slightly different beast. But still:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.

Your hypothetical is not access through a computer network, but to a work produced by a person using the GPL code/program. An AGPL webserver would need to have a notice of where to download the source on every page it served. Making it a crappy license for a webserver, imho.

Why are humans a valid abstraction layer? Because the license doesn't say they aren't. The license lays out what is not a valid abstraction, i.e. a computer network. Since it specifies that the output is not necessarily covered by the GPL, and does not rule out a human abstraction layer while it does rule out other abstraction layers, then humans are valid. This has been a lesson in contract law 101, please see your local bar association for more details. While there, order me a scotch, neat.

Re:GPL v3???

[Just Some Guy]

That's from the AGPL (not the GPL), which is GNU's new EULA. It doesn't apply to GPL'ed software.

Really?

[bashibazouk]

How about you take your eyes off the screen and turn around. I bet you will find quite a few printed examples with in your field of vision.

There's a fork

[mapuche]

A guy renamed it Cinepaint. It's a paint program for image sequences now. But he announced the fork unleashing the ire of The GIMP developers, it was an akward situation.

http://www.cinepaint.org/

Re:when will someone build the damn windows binari

[NotBorg]

Ironically the gimp OS that doesn't come with a compiler is full of users which can't get the latest GIMP.

"micro"...."soft"

[globaljustin]

you've been advertising your reproductive potential on your tools of work for decades...and you wonder why you don't get laid....

but seriously...GIMP is fine as a name...Gnu Image Manipulation Program....perfectly succinct and descriptive

sure, I love saying "Bring out the GIMP" whenever I run the program working in a group....but that Pulp Fiction bondage reference only hits a few people...seriously no one gets it except geeks

see also: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conoscenti

Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready

[vld]

keep an eye on partha.com

Koolaid

[Compaqt]

All good points.

Here's another one, about Kool-Aid.

Oh, and by the way, it's fair to say Gimp has none of the original developers. New ones have come on board, one by one.

Now, I'm sure they weren't all rabid endorsers of the word "GIMP" as having nothing to do, good sir, with the word "gimp." But, once they become part of they organization, they become invested. And so they have to defend every little thing, include the lame name.

It's sort of like Python programmers having to reflexively defend whitespace-based delimitation. Python is a great language, other than that one thing. But you won't hear (almost) any Pythoners admitting that.

Obligatory

[ThatsNotPudding]

'Niggardly'

"Yes, I know what it means. No, you still can't say it."

does it support Photoshop (PSD) layers?

[darkeye]

for us, this is the single biggest issue with gimp: it can't open PSD files which contain layers, properly...

I wonder if this will be added anytime soon...

Re:does it support Photoshop (PSD) layers?

[flyingfsck]

http://telegraphics.com.au/svn/psdparse/trunk/ ?

Re:does it support Photoshop (PSD) layers?

[tangent]

That is a lame-ass cop-out.

All it would take to figure some of these things out is some reverse engineering. Similar feats have been accomplished by the FLOSS community for less return many times.

I suspect what the GP ran into is a lack of support for layer styles, a feature Adobe added to Photoshop about a dozen years ago. No one's been able to figure this addition to PSD out in a dozen years? Really?

No: the truth is that everything you can do with Layer Styles, you can do by hand, so the Gimp culture's knee-jerk reaction is "Why bother?"

I'll tell you why: Layer Styles greatly speed up one's workflow. You can apply an effect with a few clicks, change it dynamically, save it, and keep editing it when you open the file again later. That's powerful stuff. But because it only amounts to smoothing out a workflow, and we all know how much the Gimp project cares about workflow issues, the feature never gets any attention.

Stone knives and bearskins, I tell you. That's all you really need!

Re:how about a new name? Use name, not acronym

[houghi]

Also please use the whole name for any abbreviations in the name. Oh, also use the full name if there are abbreviations in the abbreviations.

A RENAMING IS VERY IMPORTANT

[G3ckoG33k]

A RENAMING IS VERY IMPORTANT.

Read the comments below parent and you'll see why.

I for one had no idea it was a bad nick-name for handicapped people. That alone makes a re-naming priority one.

Any other argument I can joke about. But that one, no.

Layer groups!

[Barefoot Monkey]

Layer groups? The lack of layer groups was my personal pet peeve with GIMP. I'm glad that they added that feature.

Re:... better then Adobe Photoshops window managem

[psydeshow]

Sure, but what is it with the people that build image manipulation software also wanting to design and implement their own effing window managers?

I know GTK has been useful and all, and it's arguably better than whatever Adobe calls their pos windowing system, but wouldn't the product be better if the developers just focused on image manipulation and left the UI widgets to the OS?

Carlos Mencia

[tepples]

The concept of calling it "developmentally disabled" or whatever seems like a good idea though. [...] Give it a decade or so, it'll have a shortened version that's exclusively offensive

Decade or so my foot. Carlos Mencia has already turned "developmentally disabled" into "D.D." into "dee dee dee", much to the chagrin of Brawl fans.

Windows Store

[tepples]

Windows will not have a proper package manager until Windows 8, and even then, home users apparently won't be able to connect to any repository other than the one operated by Microsoft. Furthermore, the developer agreement for the repository operated by Microsoft appears incompatible with copyleft licenses such as the GPL, if Windows Phone 7 is any indication.

Patents

[tepples]

True CMYK support yet?

Have relevant patents owned by Pantone expired yet? The last time I heard, Pantone was unwilling to license them under terms compatible with copyleft licenses such as the GPL.

Re:Patents

[tepples]

You realise that Pantone codes are just color names with numerical codes right ?

You realize that that's not the only thing that Pantone owns? And even otherwise, there are other companies owning patents on color correction. Adobe can afford to take a royalty-bearing license; GIMP Team cannot.

Re:Patents

[tepples]

Moving all users is not practical.

Re:how about a new name? Use name, not acronym

[Jeng]

If you tell people it's the Gnu Image Manipulation Program they will gladly call it GIMP so they don't have to say the whole thing.

Or you can just drop the G and just call it "The IMP", could even create a neat little Imp mascot for it. Actually that would probably be the best route.

Re:... better then Adobe Photoshops window managem

[VanessaE]

I dunno, having used 2.8rc1 for a while now, I have to say: I HATE that popover text entry thing, because it blocks the image I'm editing (and no, switching to the "editor" mode doesn't do any good).

Furthermore, I can't say I like the slider widgets either, but that's more a matter of them not matching my overall desktop theme.

Okay so try this

[RobertLTux]

get a buncha "professionals" together and have they chip in to give a contract to a programmer to write the code Y'all need (and cover the various IP "tickets needed for say Pantone (r) support).

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Ksevio]

I don't plan to do any pro image work, and I don't have the best monitor either. At certain angles I can't even see the scroll bar.

Yes, yes...

[bashibazouk]

We all know that. Doesn't change the fact that GIMP has become the poster boy for poorly chosen acronyms. Maybe the GIMP people should grow up and admit they screwed up and come up with a better name...

Re:Yes, yes...

[cayenne8]

I'd never heard of anyone refer to handicap people as 'gimps'.

We just usually refer to them as 'crips'....

Re:Yes, yes...

[zidium]

Isn't that the gang that goes up against the Bloods?

Saying that word in LA is likely to get you shot.

Re:Yes, yes...

[ArsenneLupin]

But by now, the name has become sufficiently well known that changing it will be difficult.

The same problem as the pirate party has, basically...

InstaGIMP

[skoval]

anyone?

How's about two: GNU-IMP

[John.Banister]

- for editing images of wildebeest

looks good except...

[daniel78]

The list of new features looked awesome until i read this:

"GIMP 2.8 relies on a newer version of GTK+2 that unfortunately has partially broken support for graphics tablets such as Wacom. If your graphic tablet doesn't work in GIMP 2.8 as it should, we recommend downgrading to 2.6 until we release GIMP 3.0 that relies on GTK+3 which has fully functional support for advanced input devices."

Shouldn't reliable graphics tablet support for image editing software be a huge priority? If broken tablet support is merely a footnote, who exactly are they aiming this software at? Because its apparently not graphics designers...

I don't want to sound negative, because the software is free, and its actually pretty good, and no, i don't have time to go fix the bugs myself, so i shouldn't complain. It just seems that there's constantly some major issue that seriously decreases its usefulness. Oh well, 2.6 it is then (though tablet support in 2.6 is flaky too - at least on windows)

Re:looks good except...

[cratermoon]

This GTK+ bug is also holding back to port to other platforms, like OS X.

The main hurdle seems to be people with tablets who can test and report bugs.

It's a shame it depends on GTK and X11 on OS X anyway. A native port would be great, but I don't ever see that happening.

Winding back how far?

[dbIII]

As mentioned in another post, the GIMP used to bring up a window for ever layer you were using

It's possible that Slashdot didn't even exist before that was changed - after all the graphics was originally done using gimp, which was a few years old by then.
Back then photoshop didn't even have "undo" and nobody gripes about that now. Back then of course I was told "real professionals save frequently so don't need undo" - fanboys will be fanboys.

Localised slang

[dbIII]

It's not actually English - it's some sort of uncommon slang for a crippled person. The first place I came across it off the net was the movie "Pulp Fiction", and it's so uncommon that a lot of people still think it means a guy in a rubber suit instead of a guy with a bad leg that just happens to be in a rubber suit.

Let's put down that putdown

[dbIII]

In my case photoshop pissed me off because it didn't have undo so was very unfriendly for newbies - and I got the same sort of stupid elitist putdown you laid on the guy before "true professionals don't need undo". Now both gimp and the new photoshop (which does have undo despite "true professionals" not needing it) blow the features of that old photoshop well out of the water. I'm no pro and have never pretended to be one, but people have been doing "real work" with a lot less than gimp provides now for many years.

How about IMP?

[The Wild Norseman]

Yes, it's not the intent to be insulting, but it is perceived as such and so I don't really see anything wrong with changing the name.

How about just dropping the "GNU" portion? Make a cute little Icon of an imp and be done with it.

"What program you use?"
"I use IMP. It's cute and powerful!"
</drama>

It might look something like this: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5RQcRPYRGco/S-mBUh4Ky4I/AAAAAAAAARQ/MgmCFZ50nhY/s400/Little_imp.png (used without permission as a simple example).

About F'n Time

[tyrione]

Blender has to be the best run Open Source Project that has ties to the GPL around and the Gimp has to be one of the worst run examples of Open Source Project Management. Inkscape has had its hiccups but is churning right along. GIMP's had nearly a decade of ``what it could be'' and nearly 10 years to get GEGL off the ground. I'm glad it's here. Hopefully, it will accelerate it's advances in the future.

Complaining to the wrong people

[dbIII]

Shouldn't reliable graphics tablet support for image editing software be a huge priority?

Despite it's name GTK (gimp tool kit) was long ago taken over by the gnome people who have very different priorities. If they say thay won't do anything more to fix broken parts in 2.6 there's not much the gimp people can do other than move to 3.0.

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Trogre]

apt-get remove liboverlay-scrollbar

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Ksevio]

'apt-get' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

The second name change

[G3ckoG33k]

http://www.gimp.org/about/prehistory.html
1995-07-29: "a graphical image manipulation program" [yet unnamed]
1995-11-21: "The GIMP: the General Image Manipulation Program"
1996-02-15: "The GIMP v0.54 -- General Image Manipulation Program"

http://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html
1996-97 "A name change also occurred; The General Image Manipulation Program became the GNU Image Manipulation Program."

So, there was already a name change. Please, consider one more. The second name change.

From what I have read here, Gimp is an offensive name for several reason. Go find them in the comments above...

Re:how about a new name? Use name, not acronym

[Compaqt]

Hey, wait, we said full name, right?

So, boss, can I install the "GNU's Not Unix Image Manipulation Program"

"What's a GNU?"

"Well, GNU's Not Unix"

"OK, I know what it's not, but what is it?"

"It's GNU's Not Unix"

"Yeah, you already said it's not Unix. So, what's GNU?"

(Who's Hu)

Waiting for builds

[anared]

And how many months will it take for a Windows installer be around? This is so exciting

Re:Looks like Windows installer isn't quite ready

[vandamme]

It would only take an hour for a Windows user (usee?) to download and install a Linux distro.

Re:have they speeded it up any??

[Branciforte]

I'm not sure of the name. Sorry. But the same thing happens very quickly underwater, for divers. The brain tries to make everything white balanced. You go an a dive, the deeper water starts filtering out the red spectrum, and everything looks normal because your brain compensates. When you get back to the boat, you wonder why your photos all look washed out and blue. Your brain augments your reality.

It even seems to work with patterns. When I used to meditate, I would spend hours staring at a spot on the wall. If there was a flat, untextured spot, my brain would try to cover it with texture from the area around the bald spot.

What you think you "see" is just reality that's been run through a compression algorithm.

GIMAP, GIMA...

[surveyork]

GIMAP: Gnu Image MAnipulation Program. GIMA: Gnu Image Manipulation Application. GPIM: Gnu Program for Image Manipulation. GIEP: Gnu Image Editing Program. And many other possibilities.

Windows Builds Released

[caspy7]

Partha.com now has Windows (32 & 64 bit) builds.
http://partha.com/

The Mac build is not yet ready.