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20 Years of GIMP (gimp.org)

Posted by samzenpus on from the happy-birthday dept.

jones_supa writes: Back in 1995, University of California students Peter Mattis and Kimball Spencer were members of the eXperimental Computing Facility, a Berkeley campus organization. In June of that year, the two hinted at their intentions to write a free graphical image manipulation program as a means of giving back to the free software community. On November 21st, 20 years ago today, Peter Mattis announced the availability of the "General Image Manipulation Program" on Usenet (later "GNU Image Manipulation Program"). Over the years, GIMP amassed a huge amount of new features designed for all kinds of users and practical applications: general image editing, retouching and color grading, digital painting, graphic design, science imaging, and so on. To celebrate the 20th anniversary, there is an update of the current stable branch of GIMP. The newly released version 2.8.16 features support for layer groups in OpenRaster files, fixes for layer groups support in PSD, various user interface improvements, OSX build system fixes, translation updates, and more.

7 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Fork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As anyone stepped up to create a fork yet?

    Unless the code base is truly awful, I wouldn't mind maintaining some user interface sanity patches if there's interest.
    I've certainly had enough of XCF being the default saving format when 95% of the time I'm just doing a quick edit on a image.

    1. Re:Fork by kmh79 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The codebase *is* quite awful. I had a brief look at it a few years ago, and I was not impressed. It's written in plain C, and emulates concepts such as OO or generics via very hacky means, since they're not built into the language. Heck, the whole program should have been re-written in modern-style C++ 10 years ago. Assuming constant maintenance and modernization we would have a nice, readable and maintainable C++11 codebase now, but no... Just because the current maintainers seem to be stuck in the proverbial middle ages.

  2. Re:Sadly.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Also GNOME, Mozilla, systemd, and so many of the, "Tomorrow belongs to me!" crowd of spoilt geeks who think just because they were successful in their 20s now have reached a nirvana of technocratic wisdom.

  3. Re:A Few Years Ago.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Still on going... it's a rather big engine rewrite, last that I checked gegl was going through the final stages. I would assume that it's in use by this point, and most fixing to it would be for edge-cases.

  4. Re: Get some perspective. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Been using GIMP to do real, "professional" work for about 15 years.

    But I'm not some AC with a propensity for self-serving generalisations, so what do I know.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  5. Re: Get some perspective. by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I notice you put "professional" in quotes.

    That says a lot, really.

    I'm not entirely sure what you meant to imply by that, but I have been using GIMP to do pixel art work in projects for which I was paid.

    • The graphics for the menu in the anthology STREEMERZ: Action 53 Function 16 Volume One, as well as its "Concentration Room", "Thwaite", and "ZapPing" activities, were made in GIMP.
    • The graphics for the menu in the anthology Double Action 53: Volume 2, as well as its "RHDE" and "robotfindskitten" activities, were made in GIMP.
    • I did most of the programming and the art conversion pipeline for Haunted: Halloween '85. The lead artist presumably made the game's graphics in Photoshop, but my retouching to prepare them for insertion into the game was all in GIMP.

    What's a "professional" again?

  6. Re:Tried it, couldn't use it by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, there was basically a feature request for single-window mode that languished in "WONTFIX" status for fifteen years or so, with the same developer repeatedly shitting all over the latest chump who asked why GIMP still didn't support it in 20XX. Then that developer had a kid, or discovered girls, or something, and he kind of retired from GIMP. Sometime after that (2008-ish, maybe?), the team hired out a sort of a freelance UI consultant, and he took one look at it and said, "OMG, why don't you have a single-window mode in 2008, it's not like your users don't want it", and nobody had a good answer for that. So they finally implemented it. I had been eagerly following the saga for years at that point, installing each new version within a week of release, and it still took me a few days to figure out that they'd added it, they were so bitterly reticent about it.