Gimp 2.8 Finally Released 737
Posted
by
timothy
from the they-brought-out-the-gimp-again-and-again dept.
from the they-brought-out-the-gimp-again-and-again dept.
Cryophallion writes "After many years of development, GIMP 2.8 is finally released. Among its features: the oft-desired single-window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements, including some of the GIMP UI team's work. This might be the release that helps make The GIMP a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivaling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting of GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects." Here are the official release notes.
Application Frame (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of funny how, after all of this griping (from people like me) about lack of Photoshop like single-window mode in Gimp, Photoshop, at least for Mac, defaults to not having an "Application Frame"– which essentially means that it's not, by default, in single-window mode. It's easy enough to switch back, though.
CMYK (Score:4, Interesting)
True CMYK support yet? Nope. Looks like Photoshop is still the only option.
OMG Bold! And Italic! And Colors! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bold, italic, and colors!? Is this a joke?
Re:have they speeded it up any?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasn't a big fan of their dark gray on light black theme.
Don't ever do pro image work, then.
You may be familiar with those oddly-colored pictures that you stare at for a while, then look at a white wall and see the true-color image. Your eyes get used to whatever colors are around, and try to compensate by altering your perception. When working for hours on the same image, editors' eyes will start changing the color balance as they're working, and suddenly that bright red shirt is just a little too dull on that left side, so they raise the saturation until it looks good... then ten minutes later it looks like the shirt's plastic.
Professional retouchers often surround themselves with as much matte 50% gray as possible, because it doesn't affect the color balance. Sure, it's ugly, but it makes for better pictures.
Re:The Name (Score:0, Interesting)
To quote Star Trek:
Abraham Lincoln: "What a charming Negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some used that term as a description of property."
Uhura: "But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words."
Yes, that was one of their more ridiculous episodes, but this litte gem of a conversation was hidden in it. Stop being afraid and/or insulted by words and they lose their power.
Re:The Name (Score:5, Interesting)
well i tell people the "G" is silent.. so it's just "IMP"
Re:The Name (Score:2, Interesting)
Make it GNU Imp instead.
Re:Gimp still limping after all these years... (Score:4, Interesting)
Talking crap about the GIMP and its UI is very easy. What's far more difficult is designing that UI, programming the features, and getting it into a coherent program.
Seriously, most of the the posts here are talking about how bad it is, from people who probably wouldn't know how to use it or its brethren for anything more than applying an effect to a photo.
Without GIMP, you'd be looking at completely inferior open source projects for image manipulation. As it is, it still leaves a little to be desired, but it's close enough for comparison.