The GIMP Gets Ready for 2.2 478
An anonymous contributor writes "As promised, this time it didn't take another 3 years for a new stable GIMP version to be released. 8 months after GIMP 2.0 hit the road, GIMP 2.2 is almost done. The GIMP developers released 2.2-pre2 today and unless any major problems show up, the GIMP 2.2.0 release is going to follow later this month. The GIMP Wiki has a comprehensive list of new features in GIMP 2.2 and here are some screenshots of the development version."
GIMP on Windows vs Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
However I recently set up a dual boot laptop for my gf (the only way she will boot into Linux though is to play FreeCiv
Now of course, she is using a commercial package derived from a bittorrent source, and my OSS evangelism has fallen flat on its face
Can I not have so many floating boxes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I want the good old Photoshop/Illustrator/Dreamweaver layout, without having to shuffle 4 floating tool windows about that do different stuff. I'm sure that there is a really good reason to the layout, but I just can't get beyond this unusual interface, and just switch to windows graphics packages because of it.
Even if I make the image take up my whole screen, I don't like the fact that the tool window etc can wander around and aren't fixed - like every other graphics package that I've ever used. Why oh why does it have to be different?
Copy and paste (Score:4, Interesting)
Improved ability to copy and paste between GIMP and other applications, including OpenOffice and Abiword.
Yes! The number of times I've seen Linux newbies ask "Why can't I copy and paste from GIMP" is huge. Looks to be a great release
More than 24bpp support (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing that I miss for a long time is 'macro recording' similar to MS Office or Photoshop actions. Why do I have to write some weird script-fu skeletons and look up for functions and their parameters? It would be much easier if I could record my actions and then to parametrize them some way...
I asked about this at mailing list but the replies were a bit vague about those topics (or even angry)...
Windows (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:GIMP on Windows vs Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can I not have so many floating boxes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, gimp clutters up the task bar, which makes it harder to switch applications, and means that when you want to switch to gimp you will have to click each of the gimp taskbar buttons instead of clicking just one.
Does this mean I'll be able to (Score:1, Interesting)
Or intuitively select a specific image from a picture and crop everything else or move that specific image to another picture?
I know these two things can be done with Gimp, but I haven't been able to figure out how to draw a line yet (without reading a book), and I have a great deal of trouble isolating images from a picture (I'm sure I'm doing it wrong/manually by erasing pixels, etc.) after trying out every option I can find in gimp, in the meantime my brother can easily do both in photoshop 4.0, and he doesn't even know what version of windows he's using, or how to access the internet without using the AOL interface (we have a persistent dsl connection).
Not meant as criticism. Just pointing out that Gimp still has usability issues because a non-technical user can easily figure out how to do things in Photoshop, and doing the same simple things in Gimp is very difficult in some cases. Working in these areas will help Gimp spread farther and faster, which is better for everyone, including Photoshop users because it will increase competitive and pricing pressure on Adobe.
Thanks to all the gimp contributors for their work to date, and I hope it continues getting better and better!
Re:Can I not have so many floating boxes? (Score:1, Interesting)
With Gimp, particularly on Linux, this isn't a problem at all. I can completely hide all the other windows behind the main image window that I'm working on if I want. And a middle-click to the title bar will drop that window to the back so I can see the ones that were hidden. Though usually I just leave a corner sticking out and rely on my focus follows mouse and auto-raise to get at the tool panels.
Maybe it's time for all these Windows users who hate Gimp to try it the way it was meant to be used. Since it's pretty damn sweet when the operating environment doesn't suck.
Re:The new GTK file chooser? (Score:3, Interesting)
Animated GIF (Score:5, Interesting)
Still no non-destructive editing abilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Done to death (Score:1, Interesting)
Most people don't even have their monitors calibrated yet I see people asking for CMYK support all the time, 1 in 10 may know basic color theory and even fewer know why they would need it. You should quantify who needs it and why, the uninformed 'GIMP suX0rs because it has no CMYK support' needs to stop.
Re:GIMP on Windows vs Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Why didn't you install The GIMP on Linux then? She was already using Linux for FreeCiv anyway.
Re:Why? -- For slicing, obviously! (Score:2, Interesting)
Presumably so I can remind the developers to get their act together and add slicing functionality, like Fireworks and, later, Photoshop have done.
That's the big feature that's holding up efficient web dev with the GIMP. For an image tool to be practical, you need to be able to run off 10 or twenty adjacent (but arbitrarily arranged) sub-images in one step, from the one master file. It was the feature that originally gave Fireworks the jump on Photoshop for a year or so, and it's now a sheer necessity for web work.
You can use Python and Perl guillotining scripts based on guidelines, but for real web design with arbitrary shapes, there's just no substitute for slicing by transparent rectangular overlays.
It would probably only require a specialized layer type to be created, one which only holds rectangular objects, which can remember their individual 'save' settings and filenames.
That's a hint for developers, while we're here.
Re:Can I not have so many floating boxes? (Score:2, Interesting)
looks good (Score:3, Interesting)
Especially the many preview screens will make a big difference to average users.
While I still have a Photoshop around (several years old) I won't go for the Gimp, there's no incentive, but it is slowly becoming a program you can actually reccommend to people on a budget...
Yeah yeah, that sounds blasé... but I do like PSD's text tools, multiple undo's, actions and well, just about everything. It grows on you. Someone just starting could now get used to the Gimp and maybe feel lost in Photoshop? It's possible.
Top Reasons I hate Gimp (Score:3, Interesting)
* lack of a proper fullscreen mode, while its there is quite limited in they way that one can scroll, dialog boxes cover the drawing area so that one constantly has to move stuff around, again proper docking to the image borders might help a lot
* lack of advanced brushes, currently all of gimps brushes are quite primitive, just the bare basics and there is no way to write new-ones as plug-ins, making it hard to actually create new ones. That said it was been tried to implement new cool stuff, but it never made its way into the Gimp:
http://www.levien.com/gimp/wetdream.html
* lack of macro recorder, my 1996 version of Corel Photopaint had already a kick-ass macro recorder, making it a joy to create scripts, you just recorde a macro, do what you want, go into the script editor add a few parameters to it, add a GUI dialog and you have a nice script in basically no time, Gimp today is still stuck with only Script-Fu and friends which are both a pain to write and debug, no macrorecorder there at all
* lack of power in the scripting, plug-ins and PDB interface lacks functions, there are a bunch of functions that are available in the GUI, but not available in the scripting, so that one has to manually build-them, making scripting even more a pain than it already is. The GUI should ideally be just a 'container' that connects scripts with each other, everything in the GUI should be available in the scripting and each part of Gimp should be modifiable via scripting/plug-ins, brushes, gui, whatever.
* tablet support, while its there it is not really that good, double-clicking is almost impossible on the Gtk components, with a tablet the clicks end up at different positions, Gtk+ seems to lack the tolerance to still register it as doubleclick, might be a Gimp, Gtk+, Xfree86 issue or whatever, however its causing quite huge throuble in Gimp (if there is some fix/hack/patch for it I would like to know)
* load/save dialog, these are really just the standard Gtk+ ones with a single thumbnail, however for a graphic application it would be quite usefull to have full thumbnail view of all images, like you get in Nautilus or any fileviewer
* very bad suport indexed images, one doesn't need them all that often these days, but still sometimes one need them and then Gimp is just a pain in the ass, a decade old version of DeluxPaint was way better at handling them
* no quick&easy way to create brushes, ie. I would like to use a layer click a 'to-brush' button and then paint with it, however thats more or less impossible todo today, I have to save the image as brush, tweak some parameters, then select it from the brush dialog, etc. cost by far to much time for an operation that should really be 'single-click', beside from that brush handling itself is quite a arkward, some brushes are resizable, some others not, while idealy all should be modifiable and it even shouldn't be that difficult to implement
* developers seem to be quite hostile against any suggestions from the outside, both on IRC and on the mailing list, other people seem to have made similar experiences so its not just me, other OSS projects seem to be quite a bit more friendly to their users
There are probally a lot of more issues I have forgotten, but well, that should be the more important ones. Last not least, yeah I know, many people will now say that its OSS so I have no f*** right to critic it and if I would like the features I should implement them myself and beside Gimp is of course doing everything right and I am the one that is just using it wrong (wondering how that can happen after 6 years of gimp usage...), but well, go start flame me now...
Re:Top Reasons I hate Gimp (Score:3, Interesting)
I do most of the time, however having thumbnail for all files in the open/save dialog would still be extremly usefull. This functionallity might be good to have in the Gtk+ filedialog itself, however it wouldn't have been rocket-sience to implement it in Gimp already years ago.
### It is possible for a long time already by means of "Script-Fu->Selection->To Brush".
I know, it however fills the brush dialog with junk which I then have to manually select and delete. What I mean is functionality like provided by DeluxPaint, select a region, select paintbrush and instantly you are able to use that selected region as brush, extremly usefull sometimes and its a better of seconds to use and discard a brush, Gimps current brush handling is far more tricky to use.
### Now do you seriously expect to get friendly response when you address volunteers in such a way? You get back what you throw at people.
Guess why I have written that subject line, its not that I was being hostile against Gimp back then when I started using it, it mainly where the mailing list, IRC discussions and the lack of progress that made me feel that way.
Re:Not an answer (Score:1, Interesting)
I wrote the top post. And I'm glad a developer saw it. That was why I took the time to write it. And though I'm not a developer or coder, I'm fully aware that code doesn't fall from the sky. I'm fully aware that it takes a lot of effort to make even small changes. And how tough some even minor changes are because it affects other code. I should have covered that in my top post. And I thank you for your coding efforts. And for the code you've written in the past that didn't even make it into the project. While I'm not a coder, I have friends who code and who've taken the time to explain what they do, what they don't do, and why they do things the way they do them. And why many things fail for many reasons.
One of the frustrations from an end user perspective, one who has been using FOSS including GNU/Linux for more than three years, is seeing simple things (from an end user perspective, not a coder perspective) not implemented. Drawing a straight line has been brought up before. A year ago. Two years ago. Three years ago. Probably longer. Where is it? This is one of the disconnects. You point out that Gimp developers set priorities. And I'm fully aware that in FOSS, developers code what they want to code, because in most cases they aren't getting paid to code. And even in cases where developers are getting paid, if they don't like what they are doing, very often they move on. But the disconnect, the problem, with Gimp is that the ability to simply draw a straight line, and the ability to do that easily and intuitively, is not a priority.
I was made aware what a problem the code behind OpenOffice is. Or was. During the StarOffice 5.2 period, a couple of years ago, I was educated on what a mess the code was, from a coders perspective. So that gives me an appreciation of a project that contains a lot of code. And of projects where decisions were made, and commitments were made, to go in a specific direction. And once a direction was chosen, how hard it would be to make changes that required rewriting a lot of code. And how easily things break.
It may be very difficult to make it easy and intuitive for a user to draw a straight line. But why do we have Gimp on windows? What's the goal of this end of the project? We aren't talking about MythTV, where the developers state outright, that the project simply exists for their own enjoyment, are we? Because I find it hard to believe that Gimp developers involved prior to the port to windows would want to bother with the effort to port to windows, unless they were doing this to increase the user base, and not to scratch their own itches. So unless I'm wrong, there is some history in Gimp to increase the user base. So that begs the question, where is the easy and intuitive ability to make a straight line? It's been years. Coding takes time, and code doesn't fall from the sky, but years to write this code? It's not a problem of coding, its a priority problem. Or a problem with recognizing that the problem exists to begin with.
Is it a priority problem? If not, then does the problem exist? If that isn't it either, then what? Perhaps, the attitude of, we aren't going to make it easy for windows users (like the same attitude with Quanta Plus, where they vehemently shoot down any suggestions of wysiwyg because it may attract frontpage users, god forbid, so they redefine wysiwyg to vpl, and avoid wysiwyg at all costs to keep the frontpage users away). Is that it?
I'm not stating that you're ignoring the problem. My observation was over the gimp defenders (not necessarily, and in this case due to the numbers, not likely to be the developers themselves) shooting down the usability problems outright. This isn't the first time a discussion on Gimp has come up on
I prefer GIMP's interface. [shrug] (Score:2, Interesting)
I prefer the GIMP's way. It's true that I'm more used to the GIMP now, but I used to use PhotoShop a fair amount (not professionally, but often enough to have an opinion), and the transition to the GIMP's style was a hitch, but a quick one. I soon preferred it, and still do. My Wacom tablet came with a copy of PhotoShop LE, and I was surprised when I tried it out to note how much I missed GIMP's click-anywhere-get-a-menu approach. (Also, the annoying install and license-code entry reminded of why I prefer Free software in general, but that's another story.)
Your mileage varies, but there are lots of people (judging from personal experience as well as other comments here) who like the GIMP's interface at least as well as PhotoShop's.
"Perhaps you might consider fixing it rather than telling us (how) to "deal with it".Dear GIMP Developers... This is your #1 useabilty issue. YOU may like it, but appearently everyone else HATES it. Perhaps you might consider fixing it rather than telling us (how) to "deal with it"."
a) But they *have* told you how to deal with it; if there's a way to make PhotoShop act more like the GIMP, I am unaware of it. (Which is a perfectly likely scenario.) However, I have a workaround: I use the one I like better. To "fix" the current way, IMO, would really mean breaking it, unless an interface change was introduced such that I got to keep the old way
Also, note that GIMP is forkable -- it's happened at least once, with CinePaint; the developers added features they needed, and the result is a product with its own strengths and weaknesses. Someone (you?) could take the code, and modify it as they like, or pay someone else to modify it to their specs, or convince enough other people to do one of these things that the same end is reached. However, the GIMP developers quite legitmately get to decide on their own priorities wrt to aesthetics and engineering.
Re:Gimp developers afraid to try Photoshop?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Pathetic. You're sticking your head in the sand. It's a classic example of Stallmanesque Software Fanatics cutting off their nose to spite their face.
What is your reason for wimping out about making Gimp easier to use than Photoshop? Are you actually setting your goals lower than Photoshop for a good reason? Why are you so intent on sabotaging Gimp's potential? Are you embarassed to try Photoshop yourself, and afraid to face the fact that it's much easier to use than Gimp?
Don't give me that line of crap about not having access to Windows, not being able to afford Phoshop, and being too politically correct to use a pirated copy. You're just making excuses, and not motivated enough.
If you're developing Gimp (or even evangelizing it), you have a responsibility to figure out a way to learn what Photoshop is all about. Otherwise you're working blind, trying to reinvent the wheel without properly researching the field.
Photoshop has a lot of flaws as well as successes, and you should learn from those, instead of blindly repeating the same mistakes.
-Don