First Preview of GIMP 2.0 Ready for Testing 563
molnarcs writes "The first preview of GIMP-2.0 is available. It can be installed side-by-side with GIMP 1.2 - so there is no need to uninstall 1.2 to test it. According to this README, some parts (gimp-perl and GAP) were removed from the main package, and will be released as separate modules. Use the mirrors listed on the homepage to download the source code. (Also available for FreeBSD via ports)." Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.
Ready for printing? Don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod away...
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether that makes it "harder" than the other tools is a matter of interpretation.
The largest problem with learning The GIMP right now is that if you go to a bricks and mortar book store, you will be hard pressed to find a "Teach yourself" or "24 hours" type book, especially for the current version. There are tutorials online, and some of the techniques documented in earlier books (look at the online used books) are still useful.
Photoshop has been around longer, and has more marketing muscle behind it because Adobe has earned quite a bit of money off the product. As a result of those two factors (and perhaps a dozen others I am not aware of) it is easier to find people willing to earn money teaching you how to use the product. If you drop over $200 on a piece of software, wouldn't you want to make sure you had some pretty good ideas on how to use it?
The GIMP on the other hand is more of a play with this tool, and see what you can do, how about that tool, etc.
Just my thoughts, others may think otherwise.
-Rusty
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone responded saying the problem has been partially solved in later versions of gimp, with "docking" ability. But I think Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing.
For the story of why MDI wasn't adopted earlier, read the following:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7379 [gnome.org]
Putting my own personal bias into it, attitudes like Sven's (for example, an exerpt from a message on 2002-12-10 08:31: "WiW is evil! Why do you want to put a large window all over your screen that hides everything but your application? Because your desktop sucks? Then get a better one.") are what I see as the big imediment towards adoption of open source. If someone in a commercial project vocally complained that the customers of that project wanted dumb things and that their environments were inferior, he or she would be fired.
I understand that these people have given freely of their time to improve GIMP, but they also claim to want widespread adoption of it; something that won't happen if they establish a mental wall between their personal agendas and the desires of other users.
Perhaps it was intentional? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:4, Insightful)
What genius! We'll conquer the world yet...
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's kind of the beauty of open source. I'm not disagreeing with Sven's opinion, just his closed-mindedness to other opinions. I'm all in favor of leaving MDI as a selectable option, like it is in NetBeans IDE, for instance. There will always be people in both camps, so neither one would really die out once they were both adopted.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:1, Insightful)
Agreed on MDI applications for inexperienced users (not for other users though, so having it as an option would be ideal), but the Gimp's (at least the earlier version; I haven't looked at the latest one) spawning of separate toolbars for each image is (was?) terrible. You select the crop tool and find out you chose the crop tool for the wrong image, and you're still paintbrushing in the image you wanted to crop -- things like that.
That combined with the philosophy of "everything is done from the context menu", the fact that said menu is broken down into hierarchies several levels deep (however logical) with few shortcuts (Adobe spent an insane amount of money on this part of their UI design and it shows) and the messy array of tool and property boxes that inevitably clutter the screen (on that point, Photoshop isn't much better), makes the Gimp slower to work with than I'd like, regardless of how impressively powerful the underlying framework is. I'm looking forward to see what has improved so far, though, and I have good hopes for the future.
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the goal is to increase GIMP market share, then Photoshop customers are GIMP customers. People who do graphic design for a living may have brand loyalty to Photoshop, but only because it's been so consistently powerful and usable for their purposes. If GIMP were truly "better", there would be a changing of the guard.
When I write a word document, I keep Word maximized. When I browse the web, I keep Mozilla maximized. When I need to do both, I keep them both maximized and switch windows. The times when I actually need visual attention to more than one program, however, I'll unmaximize and do split screen. But discounting programs like taskbar icons and IM, that is a rare occasion indeed.
On the other hand, it's quite frequent, when using the GIMP, for me to inadvertently click on a program in the background, and have to manually re-raise each GIMP window. Additionally, the unnecessary window decorations (full titlebar, outline, etc) waste a great deal of screen real estate when applied to several windows of the same program.
Your opinion is your own, and valid to you. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that open-mindedness to the preferences of others will win many more converts than proselytizing.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the current interface [gimp.org] of the GIMP (already much improved since the GIMP 1.x days) is very nice if you have a window manager that provides multiple desktops or virtual workspaces. This is good for most Unix users with modern window managers. But it is not as easy to use under Windows because all applications have to share the same workspace. An option for some users is to install some third-party Windows software that provides multiple virtual workspaces, but some users cannot or do not want to install such software.
In any case, even if the current interface is still not ideal when you do not have multiple workspaces, it is easier to use than the 1.x versions. And the best way to know if The GIMP is difficult to use or not is to try it yourself! You may also want to read some books such as Grokking the GIMP [gimp-savvy.com]. That book was written for GIMP 1.2 and the interface has changed since then, but most of the concepts are still valid so it provides a good introduction to the GIMP.
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. I could see something like a checkbox in the config for "raise all tool palletes on document focus", that would raise all the tool palletes when the image being manipulated gains focus. This would be genuinely useful. Or better yet, make this model a standard type of development model in GTK and Qt, and add to compliant desktops the default behavior. This would kick some serious ass.
Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the plans have changed last year. There was a debate among the developers about whether the next stable release should be called 1.4 or 2.0, and the decision was to call it 2.0. It does not have the native CMYK support (only export), but it has many other new features. Also, the internal structure of the program has changed so much that a major change in the version number was considered useful. Even if the end users do not see some of these changes, they are very significant for script and plug-in authors and the improved structure and documentation of the code should make it easier for new developers to contribute to the GIMP.
A bit of background (if you are interested): after the GIMP developers' conference in 2000, the plans were to have CMYK support in GIMP 2.0. These plans for "the future of the GIMP" were published and were often refered to (in newsgroups, mailing lists and even here on Slashdot), until the middle of last year. At that time, the discussion started about how the new version should be called and it was decided to call it 2.0. This decision was confirmed at the 2003 edition of the GIMP developers' conference. Even if those who were expecting native CMYK in 2.0 will have to wait until the next release, I think that most users will be very happy with the new GIMP.
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can confirm that the OP didn't know what he was talking about.
On a more serious note, the perception that the Gimp has a terrible user interface is a fallacy. Most people who complain are Photoshop users. D'uh! It's got a different UI to Photoshop, try using it for more than 5 minutes and you'll find that it's quite a nifty UI that is arguably better.
Of course, most people are referring to Windows and their poor taskbar being clogged up. D'uh! Get a decent OS or WinXP that'll solve that for you.
On an even more serious note, there's some awesome UI improvements in Gimp2. Not only does it use the graceful gtk2, it has some awesome UI touches like being able to group together dialogues in a tabbed dialogue. Gimp2 takes all that was good about the Gimp UI and improves on it whilst dropping a lot of the deadwood.
I'm glad that they didn't listen the whining Why isn't it like Photoshop crowd and stuck to what is a good plan.
And I, for one, welcome our new Gimp overlords.
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:2, Insightful)
I took a few courses that focused on HCI at my school too, and while it had valuable theories about the subject, it is unquestionably a young science. Comparatively, in the "hard" sciences like Physics and Chemistry, most people shy away from statements like "I know these things". Even in systems with such strict rules, there's just too much possibility that there has been a fundamental misperception. When you translate that uncertainty into a young science, with few discrete quantitative metrics, and a person with only a bachelor-level degree specializing in it, it actually becomes quite arrogant to make such a lofty claim.
Even if you were right, and that the only advantage MDI has is that people have learned to use it, it is nevertheless an influencing variable. So-called "better" interfaces for things like the filesystem or keyboard layout have failed because people are already used to the interfaces made popular by Apple and Microsoft and QWERTY. More specifically, because people have a developed skill in the "inferior" interface, it is actually a better interface.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for MDI, only an idiot would believe that any specific kind of interface works across the board. MDI sucks in things like a word processor. It doesn't work because it just confuses the user. But MDI is absolutely perfect for an app that has several toolbars that need to be open all the time. What exactly is the reasoning behind having to minimize or move 15 GIMP windows around to do anything other than GIMP while it is running? Graphics programs are a perfect fit for MDI.
Re:They fixed the interface (mostly)! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:whats wrong with software? (Score:2, Insightful)
GIMP -does- this. Hover over the menu selection that you want to add a hotkey to, then just press the key combination you want to use in the future.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find Gimp hard to use. The Slashdot & Linux community will say that it just takes "getting used to" but I suspect that is the same crowd who will tell you that applications don't need to look & act in a consistent manner. I think the cause is that Gimp uses a number of old-skool interface concepts that fewer and fewer apps use these days.
Gimp uses the multiple-dynamic-windows approach, rather than the docking toolbar approach. This is the biggest headache, and probably the only one that it is impossible to "get used to." When you click on a tool, tool windows may appear, disappear, or resize. They may appear or resize right in front of another window that you need to see. Sometimes running a filter opens one or more windows, but you don't realize it because they open on top of each other and you may see only one of them, or none of them. Compare to MS Office, OpenOffice, or Photoshop, where the existing tool windows simply change their content.
Because Gimp "tool" windows are "top-level" windows, you cannot use alt-tab to switch between Applications anymore since you will have 5-10 more windows to go through. It also clutters the taskbar. (Some environments can group windows to help with this, but this causes other problems) If another window obscures Gimp, you can't simply click on one Gimp window and they all are visible. You must click on each window, or you must minimize the other application. Essentially, it has to have it's own desktop.
Gimp has a "main" window which has a menu for commands like File and Help. The image manipulation options (File, Edit, Select, Filters,
Gimp options are powerful and highly technical. For example, Photoshop has a median filter that asks you for the radius. Gimp has a median filter that asks you for radius, adaptive Y/N, recursive Y/N, black level, and white level. It is an excellent filter, but it is confusing at first.
It's tough to imagine these things without seeing it. I hope that Gimp 2.0 offers a more toolbar approach that is more consistent with the way most applications work. I think that will really help to make it more mainstream.
Re:keybindings and focus (Score:3, Insightful)
So do it, then. Open up a new image, right click, go to Tools -> Select Tools -> Fuzzy Select, and without releasing the mouse button, press your desired hotkey combination. Voila. That hotkey will now choose fuzzy select from that point onwards. You can do the same for all the tools, until you have the desired hotkeys configured.
Personally, I find Photoshop is lacking the right hotkeys, and I'm unaware of any way to reconfigure them so that they're more like Gimp...
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought it ugly and cumbersome for the first few days after I started using it, but I wouldn't go back to an MDI image processing application now if you paid me, if I used Windows 3.1 maybe, but in this day and age I have a lot of stuff open, and I work between apps and windows, often while having information, chats and email open in others, should I sacrifice massive portions of my display to an image processing application when, let's face it, all I *need* of it onscreen is the image? Of course not.
Having an application eat space on my screen damages my productivity because I have to switch between windows or just plain old move them out of the way. After all, I don't have a desk for my phone, a seperate desk for my computer, another desk for my paperwork and another desk for my mouse, that would be pretty crazy. So imagine IE, media player, Outlook, Word, [windows] Explorer and whatever other apps you use all used their own MDI interfaces... Do you think your life would be easier then? Or do you (deep down) just tolerate the imposition that is PhotoShop's MDI because you're so used to it?
GIMP Falling behind for digital photography (Score:4, Insightful)
A couple of quick examples of things I'd like to see (which aren't in the last gimp 1.3.2x version I have installed):
- crop which dims the area outside the crop to give you a better feel of what the cropped image will look like
- a "straighten image" function like MS has in their product, where you simply click a line on the horizon (or whatever) and the image is rotated and cropped automagically
- auto-[levels,colors]
Though I'm not sure if the gimp needs this sort of functionality, or if a branch using it's libs for digital imaging (gimp-elements?) needs to be branched off and started.
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:3, Insightful)
This despite the fact Photoshop handles multiple windows quite well anyway. You honestly think GIMP couldn't be MDI and multiple-monitor friendly? Welcome to the reason OSS has yet to succeed in the desktop market. Elitism and closed-mindedness. "I know what's best for you! Don't complain!" So everyone uses something else, and then people bitch when OSS isn't widely-adopted.
Script-Fu Hell (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The problem with gimp... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not nearly as closed minded as "[..] Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing"
That's closed mindness at it's finest. And to complain about closed-mindness of others just tops it off.
Re:how d'ya quit photoshop? (Score:2, Insightful)
Under OSX you can access the menu bars from the keyboard by turning on full keyboard access in the keyboard control panel.
I use it all the time to lighten up on my RSI problems.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'workaround' is start it up on its own desktop, but this is essentially just allowing you to do what MDI would have let you do in the first place.
Another solution would be to make all the windows leap to the front in unison a la Mac, which would make some sense but then this would probably bring its own issues.
Re:Ready for printing? Don't think so. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously.
I have used both PS and Gimp each for about four years now, making 5 or 6 wallpapers a week, editing images for website upload, etc. Gimp is orders of magnitude easier to use.
Want to switch to Beizer without having to click on its icon? Hit "b". Want bucket fill instead? "B". And so on. Plus, if you hover over the icon in Gimp, it tells you what the shortcut is. Not so in PS, where I still don't know what the damned shortcuts are.
The _really_ big thing that Gimp has over PS is obvious for anyone who makes a lot of images. PS bitches each and every time you close a file without saving it in the native PSD format...this is exceptionally frigging annoying. What's worse, anytime you try and save a newly created file, it defaults to trying to save as PSD, so instead of being abot to simply type in the name you want for the file and choosing the format by typing the extension, you have to take the mouse and scroll down to the format you want. What's still worse than that is that if you try and save a previous file in a different format, it adds the word "copy" to the filename, which takes even more time to fix. Nor can you select the default image file format in which you would like to save.
Continuing on, one of the nice things in Gimp is that right-clicking in ANY image window brings up the menu, whereas if you've got an image on the far right of the screen in PS and you want to get to the menu, your ass is dragging the mouse all the way back over the screen.
I've heard people say that there things you can do in PS that you can't do in Gimp. Yes you can - it's called Script-Fu. Any functionality that exists in PS that is not included in Gimp, can be extended to Gimp via Script-Fu.
As a last example: in EVERY program I've ever used, ctl-Z is undo. PS, for some ungodly reason, breaks this rule. Ctl-z in PS is last undo, then to go back more, you have to add alt to that recipe. Why? If I wanted to redo the step I undid, I'd hit ctl-r for Chrissake.
I could go on and on about PS annoyances, but I'm starting to get pissy.
In short, Gimp's UI is about 50x more efficient than PS, and this is coming from someone who has used both of them quite extensively.
About the only thing I use PS for anymore is when I need a font that I don't have on my FreeBSD box. An upgrade to the latest gnome will fix that as soon as I get around to it, which will mean the end of the road for me and PS.
Re:Difficult to use or? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the taskbar, I'm sure you can make it work in a number of ways. Personally I like an individual tab for evry window. Irrespective of the way you use it, it is still a poor substitute for an app which has UI shortcomings.
Re:No, The GIMP's GUI just plain sucks... (Score:4, Insightful)
You didn't tap its power. Yes it looks like ass, and it seems really braindead, but looks can be deceiving. If you come from Windows, you'll have a hard time guessing what the dialog can do.
Say you have an image that you want to reopen and edit to create a totally new image. You can't remember its exact name, though, because you initially added this file to your home directory months ago and since that time you've made several versions of images derived from this original already --always keeping part of the name of the original in the names of its derived images. Let's say the file has "cat" somewhere in its name. So there are several maybe a dozen and a half "cat" images that are associated with this original all jumbled in your home. And some of these are .jpgs some are .pngs, and some are "master images" in Gimp's native xcf format that have color tinting or have been cropped. And these files are all mixed up among a thousand or so other files in your home dir. You don't want any jpegs or processed .xcf's --just the original. How to find the one you want?
Well this apparently stupid looking file selector actually has some powerful tools to help you find that one desired file very quickly. Down in the file name text area you can type *cat*.xcf and hit TAB and then the listing of files in the right pane of the dialog will change. Only those master images with "cat" and suffix .xcf will appear now. Instead of a rightpane list of 987 filenames, now there's maybe only six files to choose from. (I am basing this description off of an example I am trying out as i write this). Let's say you can't tell at a glance which .xcf file out of these six filenames is the one that you wanted to start with. Clicking once on each of these filenames will give you a graphic preview of the file to the right of the 'selection' text area.
So the GIMP fileselector is actually a shitload faster than many people think.
I long for "shortcut" buttons in the Gnome/GTK+ fileselector dialog (Ximian has long had these and I can't understand why Gnome hasn't incorporated them already). Basically a "home" shortcut would satisfy me. Others pine for a shortcut to removable media. But I also wonder how many of the people who piss and moan for that kind of feature are still unaware of how fast you can use TAB autocompletion to navigate directories in the file selection dialog? Once you learn that you can do this, and get some practice using it, I can't imagine that you'd believe that poking through a visual tree of directories and subdirectories could ever be as fast. TAB completion rules. Of course it assumes you know something about your filesystem. But then, UNIX was created for intelligent professionals unafraid of a keyboard, not porn surfers who always need one hand free.