After New GIMP Release, Core Developer Discusses Future of GIMP and GEGL (girinstud.io)

GIMP 2.9.4 was released earlier this month, featuring "symmetry painting" and the ability to remove holes when selecting a region, as well as improvements to many of its other graphics-editing tools. But today core developer Jehan Pages discussed the vision for GIMP's future, writing that the Generic Graphics (GEGL) programming library "is a hell of a cool project and I think it could be the future of Free and Open Source image processing": I want to imagine a future where most big graphics programs integrate GEGL, where Blender for instance would have GEGL as the new implementation of nodes, with image processing graphs which can be exchanged between programs, where darktable would share buffers with GIMP so that images can be edited in one program and updated in real time in the other, and so on. Well of course the short/mid-term improvements will be non-destructive editing with live preview on high bit depth images, and that's already awesomely cool right...?

[C]ontributing to Free Software is not just adding any random feature, that's also about discussing, discovering others' workflow, comparing, sometimes even compromising or realizing that our ideas are not always perfect. This is part of the process and actually a pretty good mental builder. In any case we will work hard for a better GIMP

Comments

Software Modularity is a Dream?

[ramorim]

I think it could be extended to Inkscape too. Imagine the three software - GIMP, Blender and Inkscape - working as modules, sharing the same user file model.

Re:Software Modularity is a Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender is a nice name. Inkscape is a really nice name.

But "GIMP"? WTF?

Re:Software Modularity is a Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the name is a fork-bomb.

1. expansion gives GNU Image Manipulation Program

2. expansion gives GNU's not Unix Image Manipulation Program

3. expansion gives GNU's not Unix's not Unix Image Manipulation Program

4. expansion gives GNU's not Unix's not Unix's not Unix Image Manipulation Program

etc etc

Re: Software Modularity is a Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

The name is to remind you that when you can find that one stupid button within GIMP, that you'll then say: "I'ma get medieval on your ass" then whip out a Katana sword and hack the computer into a million pieces.

Re:Software Modularity is a Dream?

[invictusvoyd]

:(){ :|:& };:

Re:Software Modularity is a Dream?

[rasmusbr]

Blender is a nice name. Inkscape is a really nice name.

But "GIMP"? WTF?

It is an ill-chosen name for english-speaking users.

Good thing it's free software. It should be fairly simple to do a fork of every major GIMP release that only changes the name and some of the graphics and leaves everything else as-is. It's not like it would be hard to come up with a name and some graphics resources...

I guess the name isn't such a big problem after all.

Re: Software Modularity is a Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

On what planet is that actually a practical solution to anything?

Gimp... We're still waiting for something, right?

[fustakrakich]

CMYK.. I think? Can't really remember, but suddenly the Village People came to mind.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Drakster]

I wish the GIMP team will produce a stable release of the new branch, as CYMK has been in it for multiple years now.

Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[DERoss]

The current end-user version of GIMP is 2.8.18. Per the GIMP Web site home page, version 2.9.4 is a development version and not an end-user, stable version. The next end-user, stable version will be 2.10. Use 2.9.4 at your own risk.

Go to http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ and scroll down about 2/3 to "Development snapshots".

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[chipschap]

I must be getting in early as there is no whining so far about GIMP being far inferior to Photoshop.

What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP? I'm not trolling, this is a serious question ... often obscure seldom-used features get compared ... out there in the world of practical productive work, what are the true shortcomings?

In my own basic world, where I do stuff for the web and some (print) book covers, I've done fine with GIMP for quite a while.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[SolemnLord]

What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP?

It isn't that GIMP lacks features Photoshop has, it's that Adobe has focused on making work easier at the professional level. It simply has smarter tools and systems that are designed to help streamline workflows. Content aware fill is a decent example: GIMP has a plugin that can do the same task, but it's slower, not as effective, and doesn't come out-of-the-box. Sure, content aware fill isn't a necessary tool, and GIMP has its own version, but Photoshop's is faster and better. And in the real world, that matters more than straightforward feature parity.

I'm absolutely no fan of GIMP*, but for most people's needs it's absolutely got the tools necessary to do the job needed. But when your entire career is working with digital images** having that extra power and efficiency in your workflow makes a huge difference. And some of those benefits happen to pan out for everybody.

*I'm no pro, and Photoshop would mostly be wasted on me. I use Pixelmator for image editing.
**Print support is a red herring, since GIMP isn't concerned with it, so it's not worth bringing up beyond this footnote.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Kjella]

I must be getting in early as there is no whining so far about GIMP being far inferior to Photoshop. What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP? I'm not trolling, this is a serious question ... often obscure seldom-used features get compared ... out there in the world of practical productive work, what are the true shortcomings?

Well in the stable 2.8.x series you only have 8 bit support, not 16/32 bit as far as I know. That alone makes it pretty unsuitable for any serious photography work. From the bullet points of the 2.9.2 development release last year:

16/32bit per color channel processing

So they finally did it in 2015... well except it's not stable yet. They've only been talking about it for like 15 years. The other big one is non-destructive edits, basically Photoshop will let you do many operations that you can tweak later because it'll reapply them to the original image. That way you're not stuck with a linear undo-redo history you can actually modify an operation you did several steps back. The rest are as you say obscure functions, but much like Excel many people need a few of them so they add up. And often it's not can you do it, but is it equally intuitive and powerful. Five minutes extra here and there add up.

Personally I've found Paint.NET on Windows and Krita on Linux to cover my needs and somehow they feel more right to me. Photoshop is more of a "I'm sure it's powerful if I'd only bother to learn it" tool, while GIMP... I feel it's just trying to be odd for no particular reason, it's not that it doesn't work but it feel like they have their own pet UX theory. Like the DVORAK keyboard of editing tools.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[chipschap]

Thanks for some good answers, which really boil down to mostly "time is money" and that is certainly true in the professional world. The difference between free and even $100 per month or whatever is immaterial for a professional who depends on his/her tools to make a living. Saving half an hour or an hour of work a month will seemingly pay for Adobe products. (The point about workflow is really about saving time as well.)

For the rest of us, who do graphics as a sometimes/non-professional thing, free is good if we can do "most" things.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Tapewolf]

I must be getting in early as there is no whining so far about GIMP being far inferior to Photoshop.

What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP?

Vectors. I'm not sure to what extent Photoshop can do them because I don't use it much, but I do receive PSD files with speech bubbles and such that aren't there once GIMP has imported it.

I think Photoshop can also do significantly more advanced layer effects than GIMP currently has - the nondestructive editing features may cover that, but it's maybe a decade away at the current rate of progress.

The most aggravating thing for me at the moment is the layer masking capability - GIMP can do it AFAIK but it can't import the masking in from a PSD file. Which is not altogether surprising given that PSD is proprietary and effectively undocumented.

A lot has been said about Krita as a substitute for GIMP, and although it seems to have made astonishing progress recently, it's aimed almost exclusively at digital painting. Last I saw (2.9) it fails miserably if you attempt to use it for pixel art, cel-shading and other comic-related tasks that I currently use GIMP for. I will certainly keep an eye on it, though as it shows a lot of promise.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

CYMK Print. As is you can print some stuff that looks like almost on-screen but don't worry if they change a bit. But if you need to have the exact color (ie pantones) in legal documents or other professional print tasks, GIMP fails terrible. But as you can see in the FAQ, CYMK is "not a feature that users need", since the ones that need print use Windows and Photoshop. We don't need that these people use Linux.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[postglock]

What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP? I'm not trolling, this is a serious question ... often obscure seldom-used features get compared ... out there in the world of practical productive work, what are the true shortcomings?

For me, the major shortcoming is adjustment layers. In Photoshop, you can apply a non-destructive layer/filter over your image to modify parameters such as brightness, contrast, colour levels, etc. You can then directly edit your image "below" this filter, e.g. cropping it. You can then modify the adjustment layer later.

In GIMP, once you modify brightness or contrast, that's it. You can't come back and remove/change these setting later. This has been a requested feature for at least 14 years.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[LWATCDR]

My wife uses both but yes Photoshop is easier to use and has a large ecosystem of add ons. Gimp is a fine replacement for photoshop elements.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the lack of features that make GIMP a huge pain in the ass to use. It's the speed. My God! Just about everything in GIMP is slow. Slower than any version of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (the real alternative to Photoshop). Not just booting it up, but every action from applying a simple gaussian blur to resizing layers often takes twice as long to complete. In Photoshop you can move large elements around the canvas with the mouse and it's smooth as butter. In GIMP the motion is chunky and sluggish as it struggles to repeatedly redraw the image at 2 FPS. Unacceptable for anything who does graphics work at anything above amateur level. Yeah, I know, GIMP is free, right? So, I shouldn't complain about the speed. -_-

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[JoeMerchant]

"Workflows" which can vary from "I trained on this other thing, so it's easier for me" all the way through "there is NO way to do this operation without 17 separate steps, repeated by hand 500 times in the BAD choice, while the GOOD choice enables you to get it done with easy to remember, naturally flowing operations that it automatically records into a macro for you and then you just point it at a folder and it repeats it on every image in the folder."

I haven't used Photoshop since the 1990s versions, new GIMP is better than _that_, but I'm not "up" on the latest Adobe excuses for charging $700 per seat license fees.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to throw in that it is also not just saving an hour or a half an hour of work a month. I do tech work for a creative group within a standard company (but my stories compare closely to tech guys at post-production houses I've talked with) and I constantly find myself at odds with the "creatives" playing around in photoshop (and I even have an art degree...). I have had complaints that the 5 lines of instructions on how to install and use a 1-button replacement (1 line of the instructions was "push the button") for a 10-step workflow were too complicated, so they had just decided to run the manual 10-step workflow 20-30 times a day instead...for months...

Re-branding GIMP 2.9.4 to "GIMP 2016" and holding off any updates until 2017 would be worth $100 a month in productivity gains from my co-workers not getting dazed and confused. The GIMP download page has an MD5 hash on it, and the Cinelerra download page (we do a lot of video...) is basically a shell script transcribed on a web page. If I showed most of my co-workers those, they'd fall out of their chairs and vomit. Not really, but they would say "I don't have time for this" and go get some cheese from the fridge while I did the download for them. Adobe has you sign in, download the "Creative Cloud" program, and then pick and choose your apps like you're a phone. Even my sound guy can figure that one out...(I'm a lighting guy, we've got a pretty solid rivalry...)

Also, we need better than 8-bit color (our video cameras record at 10 or 12 bits per channel and Premiere handles that fine). And we need the integration of video/audio/raster/vector/3d/ingest/logging/etc. to achieve reasonably paced results. Even for corporate messaging, being able to pull a psd with a 3ds Max model thru After Effects into Premiere and retain easy adjustments to both the skinning and the animation can save hours in a single day, much less over a month. I'll keep donating to the OSS projects (Blender, Apache, and OpenOffice being my current top choices), but I can't convince corporate finance to drop that $1300 a month while telling them it will take us 10x as long to achieve results that are 1/10 as good...

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Kjella]

The most aggravating thing for me at the moment is the layer masking capability - GIMP can do it AFAIK but it can't import the masking in from a PSD file. Which is not altogether surprising given that PSD is proprietary and effectively undocumented.

*cough*

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

For me, the major shortcoming is adjustment layers. In Photoshop, you can apply a non-destructive layer/filter over your image to modify parameters such as brightness, contrast, colour levels, etc. You can then directly edit your image "below" this filter, e.g. cropping it. You can then modify the adjustment layer later.

In GIMP, once you modify brightness or contrast, that's it. You can't come back and remove/change these setting later. This has been a requested feature for at least 14 years.

I wanted to quote this, not just for agreement, but to point out that ... yes.. this is a seriously large issue for professional work. I'm not sure that the 'why' of its importance is widely understood around here either so I just wanted to add some detail to it.

I think that the common mindset might be that once you've made a change, you're done, there's very little journey for you after that. That's true in many cases, such as simple photo editing etc. The value in having what amounts to variables in your stack of layers may not seem high enough to warrant Adobe's price.

When you consider that professional work being done means there's an economic advantage to getting done faster, then the idea of being able to create non-destructive templates in Photoshop means $$$ becomes a little clearer. Some time I invest in creating image 1 could mean I spend half the time creating image 2. It also means that if an image is kicked back to me for revision I can really quickly make that adjustment as opposed to re-tracing a number of steps. Again, time is money.

If I were asked to come up with a programming metaphor I'd give you this really shitty one: Imagine people urging you to switch to a clone of Python that doesn't let you create your own modules. Many of them don't need or want to create their own modules, but for plenty of people who have dug deep into it they feel they'd need them from day one, suffering greatly from the lack of that feature.

I've mentioned before that GIMP may be free, but that it wouldn't actually save me money over Photoshop, this is precisely why.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[mrchaotica]

My wife is a professional graphic designer. I don't know that there's anything she can't accomplish in GIMP, but she does complain that it takes her a lot longer than it does in Photoshop.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[HiThere]

Do remember that *part* of that is the learning curve. Not, admittedly, all. Additionally, the last time I checked there were some add-on tools for PhotoShop that weren't available for The GIMP. (I don't check often, so this information may be stale...but I doubt it.)

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[postglock]

To be fair, you can save "presets" in GIMP, allowing you to use the same (e.g. level) settings as a template. However, I'm not sure if you can save multiple levels of presets in Photoshop... you can't in GIMP anyway.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you need to have the exact color (ie pantones) in legal documents

You NEVER need color in legal documents. They will work just as well without color.
If you are trying to trademark a color combination then any color they have been printed with will be ignored in favor of the description of those colors that has to be there.

You want CMYK for marketing reasons, primarily because many logotypes are chosen to be "vibrant" in print which often puts them outside of the RGB space.
It can be argued what "need" means in this case, but whatever, CMYK would be nice, I'm just nitpicking about your example where you try to make it sound that the world ends if you can't use CMYK.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Tapewolf]

*cough*

My bad - last I heard the documentation was under NDA, the terms of which were that you weren't allowed to use it for a rival product.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so by your own admission GIMP has the same feature as your singular example. So what is it missing specifically? Detailed list please.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never experienced a problem with speed in GIMP. Besides, with the load of money I save by not having to buy Windows or Photoshop, I can buy faster hardware.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[houghi]

I would love if their CLI ability would be easier. They lost me there and also that default safe is not the same as the file you started to edit. You need to do 'safe as' if you want to do that. So basically I need to do non-standard stuff when I want to edit an image with an image editor.

Re: Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Jack_the_Tripper]

Save As does a conversion on the original jpg/png/whatever while Save doesn't. Seems like a 'feature' to me.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

Presets are completely unrelated because they don't save the order of the operations. Non-destructive editing in Photoshop is in essence the creation of a fancy macro that records all the steps for replay. There just isn't any obvious programming involved. Everything is presented in terms that completely programming-illiterate artists can grasp rather intuitively.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

I've brought that issue of CMYK for years in /. and the most common response? "Who uses CMYK other than some hippie t-shirt makers?"

Take a walk in your grocery aisle sometime. And that's just a start.

I tried GIMP at work again the other day, it involves 3-5 additional operations than Photoshop. I brought it up at my ad agency's meeting, the name gets scoffed by the non-tech people, and the IT folks smirk. It will never get deployed enterprise-wide.

When I was in the visual effects industry, folks still preferred Photoshop. "GIMP can do everything Photoshop can" I disagree. It can do most, and even so, it's like saying a lawnmower engine can do everything a car/ truck/ motorcycle/ boat can do. I'm sure it can, but it takes so much more effort to 1) hack it to fit your workflow and 2) write your own code to extend the power. Let me put it this way: GIMP decreases *productivity*. It's like me telling you, why use an IDE when Windows Notepad can do everything you need to write code?

The only place I hear people loving GIMP are /. self-appointed "graphic designer/ web master" who designs a home page that looks like a Geocities template. You're probably a talented programmer, but you are *not* a graphic designer. It really belittles those who work professionally (100% of the income derives from it) or have formal training in this area. GIMP is not a professional tool. It's a pain to transfer assets in large teams.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a great rant about the psd format from a few years ago. The problem is that it has evolved over about 20 years ago. so has many many ways of doing things, which make it a complete arse to implement.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

Non destructive editing is coming, once the move to GEGL is complete (also CYMK).

There just aren't that many people working on GIMP (and most open source projects). GEGL is moving now, but it had at least a couple of abortive phases where it didn't move or moved very slowly for about 10 years.

(To be fair, changing the graphics system in a program like GIMP will eventually touch pretty much everything). Open source is a like waiting for a fine wine, it takes an age.

Re: Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

I went from GIMP to PS. Not much of a learning curve, and I work 4x faster.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Blaskowicz]

Maybe GIMP is not compiled for AVX or AVX2 instructions, if it supports them at all. Or it's just slow, and being twice as slow as Photoshop is not entirely terrible.

For moving your stuff? Must be because Photoshop uses OpenGL. (which on a Linux distro would add dependencies, and suffer incompatible or crashing drivers...). So, you're "spoiled". Not that I'm trying to find excuses. At least these technical details allow it to run on your Pentium III and/or with remote X11 graphics.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[UnknownSoldier]

> I must be getting in early as there is no whining so far about GIMP being far inferior to Photoshop.

Yup, you're early.

> What real world work can be done in Photoshop but not GIMP? I'm not trolling, this is a serious question ... often obscure seldom-used features get compared

Layer Effects are hardly obscure user features.

I have a Photoshop file I created with CS 2. Yes, years ago, back in ~2004. Gimp _still_ can't import it properly without screwing something up. (Every few years I test to see how Gimp handles importing it -- it doesn't -- but it slowly gets better every new version.)

i.e.
Gimp didn't support layer folders. That took years.
Gimp didn't support all of Photoshop's blend modes. That took years.
The latest stable version, Gimp 2.8.18, still doesn't support all of Photoshop's Layer effects properly. This isn't rocket science, just basic computer graphics.

I've downloaded a nightly snapshot of 2.9 but I'm not holding out any hope that this has fixed basic Photoshop compatibility.

Is Gimp capable of basic stuff? Sure. I've created fonts with it, and created a RTS "cheat sheet" showing every unit and their counters. Gimp can do the basic stuff of Photoshop but it doesn't hold a candle to the advanced features such as Layer Effects and HDR support.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[UnknownSoldier]

Just tested Gimp 2.9.5 on my .PSD file. Gimp still has broken PSD support for Layer Effects.

Reference of Layer Effect Styles:
* https://helpx.adobe.com/photos...

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you are doing. I do web development work for a travel tour company. We have a couple of designers that do image work for the web site, print catalogs and print ad work. I'm not a designer, but I know my way around the GIMP. In a pinch I can (and have) filled in for designers who were on vacation, etc. I don't know my way around PS, so I always use the GIMP (and occasionally Ink Scape). I can't think of anything I can't do that we need apart from importing some Adobe files -- usually I just recreate them if I need to do that.

I've suggested that the designers check out the GIMP, but there are a couple of issues. First, they are trained (at school even!) on PS. They are experts with it and are very good at using it. They aren't interested in using something else just for the sake of it. The GIMP offers nothing compelling to get them to change. Even though the price tag of PS is high, it's peanuts compared to the IT budget. Secondly the use of PS is standard in the industry. If they want to get the next job, then they have to remain experts in PS. It's kind of stupid, but that's just the way it is.

So, even though the gap is pretty narrow between PS and the GIMP, the only thing the GIMP *really* has going for it is software freedom, which is mostly a non-issue for designers. It's a big deal for me as a programmer, and I'm happy that I can do everything I want with the GIMP. But I don't think we'll see a revolution in designer tool usage any time soon. I think some people want to justify their decision to use PS and imagine that it must be miles better than anything else out there, but that's not my experience.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[TechyImmigrant]

Thanks for some good answers, which really boil down to mostly "time is money" and that is certainly true in the professional world. The difference between free and even $100 per month or whatever is immaterial for a professional who depends on his/her tools to make a living. Saving half an hour or an hour of work a month will seemingly pay for Adobe products. (The point about workflow is really about saving time as well.)

For the rest of us, who do graphics as a sometimes/non-professional thing, free is good if we can do "most" things.

Although I'm no graphics professional, technically I've done professional work on Adobe products, GIMP, Inkscape and whatever else comes to hand, in the sense that it was graphics for my wife's business. What the clear benefit of Adobe is is that it is 'compatible' with real graphics professionals. They can take a file out of photoshop or illustrator or whatever without complaint or problem. Give them something out of GIMP or inkscape and the SVG won't work with their tools, or they'll bitch about the colour space in the bitmap images.

This is known as effective vendor lock in. I'm reasonably certain the wonky treatment of SVG in Adobe products is for that reason.

Re: Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[NominalLoss]

I had the opposite experience. Went from Gimp to PS. Hate PS.

Re:Current Version is GIMP 2.8.18

[Xtifr]

Well in the stable 2.8.x series you only have 8 bit support, not 16/32 bit as far as I know.

The 2.6 series had 8 bits per channel (32 bits per pixel with the standard four-channel RGBA). The 2.8 series added 16 bits per channel internally by switching to GEGL, but didn't modify the UI to take full advantage. The 2.10 series (of which 2.9.4 is the latest dev pre-release) fixes that.

Nobody uses 32 bits per channel. Standard computer hardware only supports 8 bits per channel. The only reasons to even include 16 bits per channel are: it is provided by some cameras, and you don't want to lose precision, and it makes some transformations less lossy.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

CMYK is not needed anymore. Almost nothing is done for print anymore. And even then CMYK is not really required.

Hell I designed the box for a board game in Gimp and send the resulting file to the printer, it did not have CMYK anything. it was a standard RGB TIFF file.

Those that claim they MUST HAVE CMYK are lying. Nobody uses it anymore.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly just CMYK. It's missing an awful lot of stuff for most professionals. It doesn't have to be Photoshop, but that's very much the other extreme. It barely compares to Paint Shop Pro 3.x from the 1990's.

As for GEGL, I can remember oiaohm (?) on LHB saying it would make it all better "real soon". That was back in 2008... 8 years have passed and zero progress has been made.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[fluffernutter]

Honestly, I do a lot of graphical work and I find Inkscape (vector drawing) to fit the bill in almost every single case. I go to gimp when I must and it has sufficed for the simple things that are left over.

Re:Fuck Gimp

[chipschap]

Hipsters all use the most expensive Macs. They couldn't handle Linux. Or probably even Windows.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The name "GIMP" still makes the program seem like a cripple.

conversion

[bigtreeman]

I would like to see an associated feature - converting to different formats, using capable, standard libraries.
I use three applications which use their own code for the same conversion.
Each resulting file is quite different, although each fits into parts of the file standard.

Re: Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off. You sound really stupid telling other people what they should do. At least have good advice, and you may sound less stupid.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes it quite appropriate then!

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[quetwo]

/EVERY/ printer I've gone to prints in CYMK. They can convert RGB to CYMK, but the colors won't match 100%. Hell, many desktop printers (Canon, Epson, etc) use CYMK in their printing process, and upscale from RGB.

OLE/COM

[CockMonster]

Microsoft did it

Re:OLE/COM

[reboot246]

. . . in the kitchen with a lead pipe.

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

Re:OLE/COM

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but in this case, I'd prefer it done well. And we all know you can only pick two from fast, cheap, and good.

Re:OLE/COM

[phantomfive]

COM - a great architecture that was buried under one of the most miserable APIs in existence. It was so bad, Microsoft created a macro library to make things easier, but even that didn't help much. It took me years of using COM before I realized there was anything good in it at all.

Re:OLE/COM

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite. It seems like every reasonably complex project ends up evolving its own COM-like metaprogramming / binary object orientation architecture. I'm guilty, too ;-]

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

The GIMP has caught up with Kid Works 2.

The UI is Changed Yet Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The GIMP's UI has always been atrocious - why waste time fixing it?

Re: The UI is Changed Yet Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey it has a black theme now! It is... uh, was... cool, like in 2004, you know! (looks down at his shoes, scratches his head, walks away)

ink vs pixels is still a thing

[globaljustin]

/EVERY/ printer I've gone to prints in CYMK. They can convert RGB to CYMK, but the colors won't match 100%

IAA(part-time)SP and I can confirm.

Saying 'CMYK is not needed' goes too far.

Yes, plenty has changed but making color on an opaque surface is still completely different than rendering it in pixels on a screen.

Re: ink vs pixels is still a thing

[Threni]

The artwork is always developed on a normal rgb screen though, using photos taken on cameras with normal rgb sensors. Call it what you want but anything else is just a conversion from rgb.

Re: ink vs pixels is still a thing

[silanea]

[...] anything else is just a conversion from rgb.

Absolutely true. But only in a universe where "just a conversion" is defined as "that one step in the whole weeks-long process that will make or break the final product and decide whether you will be throwing away a truckload of stuff because QA/your boss/your customer says the colours do not match what they want".

Re: ink vs pixels is still a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of CMYK is mostly a problem when a color was selected outside of the screen, for example when the logotype color was picked from a Pantone color chart.
The RGB and CMYK color spaces aren't perfectly overlapping so there are colors that can be represented in CMYK that can't be represented in RGB unless the file format allows values over 1.0 (Or 255 depending on what your 100% value is.)
Sure, you can crop it down to whatever fits, but then the printed colors won't be as vibrant.

A skilled designer/artist won't need a perfect representation on screen, but being unable to even chose the color you want is a bit frustrating.

There are also visible colors that can't be represented as either CMYK or RGB but the actual boundary for what is visible or not varies between individuals.

Re:Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

They couldn't handle Linux.

Oh yeah Linux is totally elite and not complete shit at all. Jesus christ, they should have stopped registration after the first hundred thousand.

SJWs

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, GIMP is gonna be SJWd, if it hasn't been already, and moved to the cloud, and given a dumbassly-unusable UX, telemetry and app analytics. No thanks, I'll pass.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

You being an overconfident amateur doesn't actually mean other people have zero need for something you don't understand. Sorry.

There's still plenty of people using the Pantone system and spot colors too.

Fuck that article on an .io domain but

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP rocks. The portable version for Windows is on portableapps.com. I suggest always use portable everything so it doesn't make your faggot ass Windows registry cry.

It takes a lot of gnome libraries in Linux but it's worth it. KDE is still night and day better than Gnome. On FreeBSD it is flawless.

Re:Fuck that article on an .io domain but

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that might not have noticed the .io domain is pretty much named after an ethnically cleansed military base used for bombing campaigns in the Middle East.
I tried for a decade to comprehend the scale of the death, destruction, and number of dismembered, widowed, orphaned, tortured and ruined people, all enabled in part by the military base on the territory of the .io domain. As these days there's much homage and mourning we're asked to pay to victims in the West and Europe, I want to have a thought for these people too.

Open source as a weapon.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood why a company such as Microsoft who competes with Adobe doesn't invest more heavily in the rivals open source alternative that they don't directly compete with. It would be a very smart way of operating.

GIMP is one of those amazing apps on Linux that just can't get good enough. And it's so much better than 12 years ago.

Re: Open source as a weapon.

[c.s.carlson6]

Maybe all it needs is a solid enterprise backer... I am not a professional artist, I haven't ever had the money to spend on a photoshop license, so instead I have been clumsily using gimp for many years. I totally buy it when my designer friends tell me they can't consider Gimp a viable replacement for Photoshop, but it has been getting better over the years. I sure do like the idea of them getting the support they need to make gimp a more competitive alternative to photoshop.

Forget about Gimp already. Krita has surpassed it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to use an open-source graphics package, Krita is light years beyond anything that Gimp has to offer, and is the real Photoshop competitor, even though it's supposed to be a digital painting app and not a general image manipulation app. CMYK? layer effects? smart objects? live filters? Krita has those and much more.
and as for Gimp being "released"... sure, they have a source code package, and a *promise* to have a compiled executable... same as the last developer snapshot that was "released" months ago, and I'm yet to see a compiled version for that one.
No matter if you're on Linux or Windows, if you're an artist most chances are compiling from source is not an acceptable way for you to install a program.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I do a lot of graphical work and I find Inkscape (vector drawing) to fit the bill in almost every single case. I go to gimp when I must and it has sufficed for the simple things that are left over.

Going to second a suggestion another AC made: give Krita a try for the parts you use Gimp for. It's artist-oriented instead of a focus on image manipulation, but there's a lot of overlap and it's a lot nicer to use overall. Another option might be showfoto (the standalone version of digiKam's image editor) depending on what you need.

Other FOSS graphics software has come a long way since the days of Gimp being the only contender. I personally mostly use Krita and digiKam/showfoto, but there's also options like mypaint, darktable, inkscape's great for vector, and blender can do a lot of odd non-3d things you wouldn't expect, etc.

I haven't needed to use Gimp for anything in a long time, and I'm glad for that, because at some point an update made it start ignoring the mouse wheel with no way to bring it back other than, possibly, changing the hardware because it just doesn't fucking like the mouse any more. I don't even know when it happened, since I'd already been moving away from heavy gimp use, but it seems to be because of gtk2 problems. gtk apparently turned into "the gnome toolkit" at some point, and the gnome/gtk devs don't care about gtk2 any more, so it's been broken for a couple years now...

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Khyber]

"CMYK is not needed anymore"

Wrong. You fail at understanding additive and subtractive color blending.

Why GEGL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would GEGL be the standard everyone adopts here? why not OpenFX (http://openfx.sourceforge.net) - that would be a better fit for blender, and Natron is already heavily based around it - it doesn't seem like GEGL has anything going for it except for being originated by the worlds slowest development team.

Re:Why GEGL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic, but OpenFX is also a 3D modeller software (http://www.openfx.org/). Brought up some memories and questions, when you mentioned it, because it was just a same name on two software.

Re: Why GEGL?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

OpenFX is kind of a pita, takes a bunch of work to integrate it into an application and then you have to build plugins for every OS/compiler version. Not to mention that you have to deal with 'artist types' whining when it doesn't all Just Work (tm) because they downloaded MS Super Fancy Millennial Edition Compiler Suite while the app is compiled with MS Poor Folk Express Edition. Plus it's just a plugin system and not designed for cross app image compatibility hoohaw with built-in indestructible image whateverness.

Re: Why GEGL?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

Eh, /me needs to use proper html tags...

Re: Why GEGL?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is GEGL, if not a plugin system? And how does GEGL avoid the need for both it, and its plugins, to be compiled for every OS/compiler version?

And GEGL doesn't make 'indestructible image whateverness' possible - that is a function of defining image editing operations as plugin operations, and arranging those plugins in a graph.

GEGL sort of defines a graph, but will also result in a system that is hard to multithread, is inefficient for image sequences rather than stills and is just generally super basic. This should have taken a few weeks to design and get ready for action, not 15 fucking years.

Why would anyone want to adopt a crappy, minimal-functionality, poorly thought through standard for image editing ops which has taken 15 years to get off the ground in its flagship implementation?

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention raster images are the worst format to use for print. You should be using vector graphics.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the amateur living in the past. CMYK is completely obsolete. NOBODY prints shit any more.

Don't forget the awesome gtk+

[Anonymous Coward]

which had broken pen tablet support for like 6 years, making gimp literally a gimp.

Re:Don't forget the awesome gtk+

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno I use a cheap genius pen tablet, it works on my linux machine and on my mac too. On ubuntu it's out the box, on my mac there was even genius's very own utilities. Feels good man having bought my first mouse from them like 26 years ago. Money well spent...
Anyways, pressure sensitivity works on both machine in GIMP, and in Blender too.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

It's missing an awful lot of stuff for most professionals.

What specifically is it missing?

Re:Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did that, then none of you M$ shills would have accounts here.

Re:Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Re: Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

cry moar

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

I can honestly say that Inkscape is superior to Illustrator.

Re:Forget about Gimp already. Krita has surpassed

[Anonymous Coward]

You really didn't look very hard, did you?

http://nightly.darkrefraction....

Re:Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

If your advice is as stupid and ignorant as that, you just might be a fucking moron.

Re: Gimp... We're still waiting for something, rig

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes me think of gas mask bongs.

Maybe that's how really creative artists get their inspiration.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep further demonstrating your ignorance. You're doing a great job of it!

Re: Gimp... We're still waiting for something, rig

[Jack_the_Tripper]

The silk screen press taking up space in my living room would disagree. Just need a four color press to do the CMYK thing...

My Dream, from dreaming this for years

[John Allsup]

Consider how scripting languages use lists, dicts, and so on. Having data structures which are binary compatible would enable these structures to be shared copy-on-write between processes running different languages. The approach clojure takes (functional data structures) is useful here. Likewise for stuff like Gegl. The thing is unlike 15 years ago, we have Llvm, and so rather than think in terms of binaries, most of the time stopping the compile at a higher level and distributing that would make more sense. As for source languages, having the authoritative source be a data structure which you manipulate would make much of our developer tools much simpler, removing the round trip between character data and the Ide's attempt at parsing it. None of this seems particularly new, to my mind, but I just wish this dream would be reality.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

CMYK?

Re: Gimp... We're still waiting for something, rig

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure you're rolling in the dough selling t-shirts, coffee mugs and mousepads.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you and the other three people still receiving print newspapers must be proud.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, that's bad news for 1% of graphics artists. Now what's missing that will impact the other 99%?

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[TheReal_sabret00the]

I'm a fan of Inkscape but the UI is terrible.

Sadly a dying project..

[thesupraman]

Just perhaps, before the GIMP people go trying to entice others, they should clean up their own back yard.

The number of years GIMP has been limping along on minimum life support is embarrassing, for a project that was once highly active and supported.
A LOT of that comes down to them being taken over by a small cadre of people at the top with a 'vision' for GIMP, and that vision was basically that it should only work well for them, and who the hell cares about the rest of the users.

The classic example of that was the removal of the ability to save back to the loaded file format. Save *STILL* requires saving to GIMPs own file format, and you can only export to other file formats. After a LOT of user complaints they finally allowed there to actually be a faster hotkey path for export, but refuse to budge on saving. Why? God only knows, they need to be special, it seems.

Windows support is another notable area, where the GIMP 2.9 series was broken for a long LONG time due to a few rather basic screwups, and they really just didnt care because... well, I can only guess users dont matter. They finally got around to fixing it, but it was a long LONG time, for little reason.

Also take for example the newer builds icon sets - changed to new icons that seems to be someones pet project, but make very little visual sense other than confusing long time users, and therefore slowing down workflow significantly. They also seem to enjoy moving areas of the UI for little obvious reason other than change - again messing with users workflows. These things can be put back, but change for change sake is good?

Most of the issue comes down to the fact that too many active contributors got burnt with 'no, your overlords and masters dont want you to do that, go away and redo it the was WE want' thinking, iften with little or no reason or consideration.

So, no, I doubt GEGL is a good idea for anyone else, not because of a technical reason, but because of a much more practical one, GIMP has been a withering and dying project for a few years now, which is a great pity.

Re: Sadly a dying project..

[Ash-Fox]

As a long term user of GIMP on Windows and Linux, I never really noticed anything you mentioned. Is this really a problem?

Re: Sadly a dying project..

[NominalLoss]

I second this. I use it daily and have yet to find a release that was disruptive to my workflow, particularly on Windows.

Re: Gimp... We're still waiting for something, rig

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly nobody had ever given you a business card. It's also clear that that has nothing to do with the non-use of CMYK.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in the roadmap for part of version 3, if I remember.

Re: Gimp... We're still waiting for something, rig

[Anonymous Coward]

Business cards are so passe and colour business cards were always unprofessional.

People give me their contact info via NFC now.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same way about the UI in Illustrator. Objectively, I don't think either UI is bad, it's just a matter of what you are familiar and comfortable with. I have been using Inkscape for a long enough time now that it feels second nature to me.

Re: Fuck Gimp

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Linux before there were hipsters, you insensitive clod!

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[TechyImmigrant]

Not to mention raster images are the worst format to use for print. You should be using vector graphics.

Great. I'll go and get my vector camera.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad news for anybody who wants to do more than just distort their funny cat pictures, which probably does only amount to 1%. But hey, it's all hobbyists stuff anyway...

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to your CMYK camera, right?

Know how I can tell you aren't a graphics artist? You don't know about raster to vector conversion or that printers prefer vector images. This discussion doesn't concern laymen like you.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[Anonymous Coward]

CMYK is only for people who design for print. That's approximately nobody.

BTW, welcome to 2016.

still no 16 bit

[Anonymous Coward]

As another user mentioned, still only 8 bit support. Documentation is garbage, UI is incomprehensible. I gave up on GIMP years ago. I probably will not live long enough to see it become usable. 15 years for each new usable feature. Expected usability date: 2063.

Re:Gimp... We're still waiting for something, righ

[fluffernutter]

I think the UI in inkscape can get glitchy from time to time. I recently learned how to control the options menu ribbon at the right and that has helped a lot. The gradient editing took a long, long time for me to get used to but I get it now. There are other things here and there but ultimately I don't find the UI slows me down much when compared to illustrator. There are some things that work better in inkscape. I actually like the way there are large handles to grab in selections.