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Graphics Software

Photogenics 4.5 Beta For Linux Released 84

Posted by Hemos from the bringing-it-into-the-light-of-day dept.
Vesuri writes "A couple of weeks ago the Amiga-originated graphics package Photogenics caused some heated discussion amongst Slashdot readers. Now there is a Linux beta version out. Grab the 363kb archive and judge for yourself. It may well be worth it. " Check out the original story about its announcement as well.
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Photogenics 4.5 Beta For Linux Released More

Photogenics 4.5 Beta For Linux Released

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  • Re:FREE KEVIN (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dude, Kevin's been free for months.

  • Re:How does this compare to the Gimp ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just in case anyone is misled by this - photogenics is not targetted towards phot retouching, desspite the name - it's mainly used for original compostion, which is why it has such a large range of "natural media" drawing tools. It's the most fluid, natural feeling drawing package I've ever used with a mouse or gfx tablet. (O.K. this demo has about 5 drawing tools, but the full version had shedloads)

  • Re:Anyone for Linux DeluxePaint ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Deluxe Paint was a fine piece of software indeed. I was wondering if there is any way of skinning the GIMP to give it the intuitive feel of DPaint for us old-timers? I'm sure all the functionality of DPaint is under the hood of the GIMP, it's just a question of trying to recreate the look and feel (patents permitting).

  • Re:Quick Techie Review (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Have you even tried the development version of Gimp? Don't be so quick to judge. The development version (1.1.19 is the latest, as of this moment) is far more advanced than 1.0.x... It does actually allow you to have the toolbox horizontal instead of vertical. In fact, you can make it any size you want, and it compensates.

    Plus, there are many thousands of more reasons you should be running the 1.1 series of Gimp (like tablet support, automatic export features, etc)

    For more info, Visit Sven's Gimp 1.1 page [gimp.org]. The page even has a picture of Gimp in a horizontal state. *g*

  • Re:Photogenics (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am sorry to say it, forget about Gimp... Amiga Graphic Apps like Photogenics and ImageFx are MUCH better. Finnally Photogenics for Linux! Huray! An interesting quote from Patrick Roberts, the lead animator for the upcoming movie "Dinosaur" from Disney. "Amigas are the best machines we have for animation. Amigas did play a part in the production of Dinosaur. In fact, Disney has 500 Amiga 4000's. 300 are in active use, and 200 were bought for spare parts when Commodore went bankrupt."

  • Pretty damn good (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Even this demo is great - while the GIMP may have a powerful engine, this package's User Interface is wonderful - hoepfully this will spur someone on to produce a decent UI for the GIMP. Or make a photogenics plugin that interfaces to the GIMP backend. I remember the original Photogenics on the Amiga - it was wonderful, for it's time.

    Good to see it's an Amiga-esque file size too - £64Kbyte download - admittedly, this is with reduced functionality, but this reduced functionality subset is roughly equivalent to the original amiga version (which, like this demo, only had one layer)

  • Just try to paint with it. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The big difference with the Gimp is that this program is designed form the bottom up to *paint* with. It is not about doing web graphics, or tweaking scanned images, but it is first and foremost about creating original images. It has got an extremely clever user interface for doing this, and when you have worked with it for some time, you wonder who could have ever come up with the concept of selections and filters. Just painting with filters is so much more easy! And about the GPL issue... Don't forget that this is not some big company trying to get you to pay more than $1000 for their product. It's just *one* person eho has to pay his rent!
  • The small size is nice, but am I the only one having trouble with it? Dialog boxes pop up with nothing inside them. Other ones come up looking odd, no scoll bars or something. I have to move them around a bit to get them to repaint. I open an image (after figuring out it only dose jpeg), and the image is only painted half of the height. Another move and repaint required. I go to another desktop where I'm typing this, type the above. When I go back, the toolbar and option bars are blank. Move, repaint. I play with the effects on the toolbar, it seems to work nicely. I close the image, a blank dialog comes up. Move, repaint. Oh, it's a "are you sure you want to quit" thing. Click ok. I go to the File menu to quit the program. What's this? The menu items highlight one below where the mouse is. Ok, I select About with the mouse so it highlights Quit, click the mouse. Again a blank dialog. I take a wild guess that it's the same quit dialog, click the area the OK button was in, it quits.

    It's nice that it's small and only uses the standard X libraries. But I'm not fully convinced I'd want to buy the real thing if this is how it behaves... The Gimp UI is strange, but I can see all the little widgets. :)
  • I think some folks might be missing something here.

    Many talk of "source code download size" or "binary file size."

    You can't compare downloading the source to the Gimp along with GTK to a binary that Paul is distributing. That's apples and oranges folks.

    As for binary size, my copy of Gimp v1.1.19 is 1.7MB in size, properly stripped down. Did you ever try a "strip --strip-all" on a compiled binary? Amazing, how much it shrinks when you remove debugging symbols and such. ;>

    It loads much quicker too.

  • Leave it to good old /. to whine about a good thing. Of course, because there is the gimp, and it's open source, it has to be the end all be all.

    C'mon folks, learn to welcome things with open arms, and maybe people *will* open up the source. Bash them like a bunch of rabid hounds, and next time they won't even port.

    And Photogenics rocks. It's possibly one of the best image manipulators out there, be glad you can use it. And Gimp isn't perfect. The last two Linux boxes I put Gimp on, it *crashed* them if I chose the wrong Script fu or font. It's a good package, but I'll be glad to see more out there.
  • I like the delivery method too. It's a shell script with the binary attached to it. copy the file under a different name and delete all the shell script lines. What you have now is a tarball. gunzip it and then untar it. You'll end up with an 800K binary named Photogenics and a directory full of supporting files. Doing an ldd on the binary reveals that it's linked to the standard X stuff plus libpthread. Otherwise everything else is selfcontained. If the look and feel of the widgets is authentic Amiga look and feel then it looks like GTK borrowed some of that look and feel. This is really cool. narbey
  • It just ran beautifully on Slackware.
  • The Gimp has the most goddammed awful GUI in the world, very illogical and poorly laid out.

    Well I for one like the Gimp UI. I find it both logical and intuitive. That's not to say it's perfect, but it's far from awful, IMHO. And before you ask, yes, I have tried other alternatives (currently, CorelDRAW is one of my favourite interfaces). Perhaps this is just another example of the differences between the hacker brain and the end user brain. While Gimp may be obvious to me, end users will think differently than I do, and hence may have problems that I can't see.

  • This is wonderful news. Photogenics was an outstanding, easy-to-use, and powerful graphics package. Now if only we could get ImageFX, TVPaint, and AREXX...

  • Re:Issues Raised (Score:3)

    by LetterJ ( 3524 ) <j@wynia.org> on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:48AM (#1127986) Homepage
    I and a lot of the others I know who do a lot of graphics don't use any one tool. I use Photoshop 5, Paint Shop Pro 6, GIMPWin32, and a couple of lesser known tools all together. In many cases, the benefits are small, but when you need that benefit it's there.

    Case in point. In Photoshop, create a 100 x 100 circle selection. Now expand or contract it. First of all, it limits you to a small expansion or contraction. Secondly, fill the changed selection and see how smooth(not) the shape is. Photoshop, for some reason, has a hard time with this. Now try the same exercise in Paint Shop Pro. It works much better.

    That isn't something you'd list on a "features list" or anything, and you'd only know it if you'd worked with both programs and needed to do that series of tasks. Choice is definitely not a bad thing. Use the best tool for the job. And NO, I repeat NO tool is the best tool for everything, even within a knowledge domain.

    LetterJ
  • I use GIMP, and while it's real powerful, it's rather slow (or, on fast hardware it is 'not as fast as it should be'). Still, every chance I get I plug GIMP... especially to those morons using *unregistered* Paint Shop Pro. Yes, GIMP also runs on Windows [gimp.org]. Consider that my obligatory " external link for +1 moderation whore" comment.. ;-)

    Anyways, Photogenics is a real FAST, dead sexy app for Linux. If you DO buy software for Linux... give it a serious look. I bought this at Linux World NY, and the last emailed beta was like 500ish *KB* and ran real fast on my now-modest K62.

    I talked to Paul at the show.. real humble guy. I never used this on the Amiga, but I do see this as evidence that even though the 80's are over, the LITTLE GUY can still come out with something cool and unique. You probably wont see this on the software aisles.. and that's my point. Store software generally sucks (gee want the latest shovelware from Metacreations or whatever).

    The unadvertised bit is Pg's toolkit set... he wrote his own so he could do straight compiles from the AMiga codebase. It's a pretty good toolkit and he should consider licensing it for other Amiga ports, or just general Linux users (it's an in your face reminder just how bloated Qt and gtk are).

    The effects? They's nice. I especially like the automatic masking when layering effects, and the lens flare utility is real nice.

    I still cannot believe this thing fits on a FLOPPY...

  • Trust me, open source/free software is a lifeline to students on limited incomes.

    Not where I live.. the lifeline here is called pirating. Why pay for Windows/Office/Photoshop/games when there's always a friend around who will copy it for you for a very friendly price, or lend it to you in case you have your own burner?

    Btw: I am not playing the devil's advocate here.. software piracy *is* wrong. Just observing that there are not many students I know that actually have to pay for their software.

  • I was there and witnessed Paul Nolan himself demonstrating the advanced features... amazing software.... download it immediately!

  • Photogenics vs The Gimp (Score:5)

    by Cid Highwind ( 9258 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:43AM (#1127990) Homepage
    round 1: costs
    Photogenics is payware
    The Gimp is free
    Score: Photogenics 0, The Gimp 1

    round 2: ease of use
    Sorry guys, but the Gimp UI sucks. I like having a toolbar rather than hunting thru 42 levels of menus to find a function.
    Score: Photogenics 1, The Gimp 1

    round 3: eye-candy effects
    Photogenics has more nifty effects than The Gimp 1.0.4, but the current devel versions have most of those features. (Gimpressionist, et al.) a point for each.
    Score: Photogenics 2, The Gimp 2

    round 4: drawing media
    Photogenics: Airbrush, Chalk, Pencil, Sponge, Watercolour, Smudge and Smear.
    The Gimp: Airbrush, Smudge, Smear (devel only)
    Score: Photogenics 3, The Gimp 2

    round 5: The Stallman Test
    Photogenics: no source (commercial)
    The Gimp: More source than you can shake a stick at. (GPL)
    Score: Photogenics 3, The Gimp 3

    round 6: annoying rabid zealot users
    The Gimp: Linux.
    Photogenics: Amiga AND Linux
    -1 for Photogenics
    Score: Photogenics 2, The Gimp 3

    round 7: the Slashdot test
    The Gimp: +1 insightful (pro-linux karma whore)
    Photogenics: -1 troll (aM1g4 0wnZ0rZ j00r l4a3 4ss)

    Final score counting only serious categories:
    Photogenics: 3, The Gimp: 2

    Final score: The Gimp: 4, Photogenics: 1
  • The Gimp has the most goddammed awful GUI in the world, very illogical and poorly laid out.

    • A poor workman always blames his tools. GIMPs user interface is very simple to use, if you take the trouble to get used to it.

    gimp's UI doesn't suck too badly, but it annoys me at times. The basic design philosophy isn't bad, but the choices of menu item placement aren't the best. While I'm not a great, or even good, computer graphic artist, I find Paint Shop Pro's UI easier to use most of the time. A menu bar that was always on (or could be set to always on) would be a big improvement fot gimp.

    Gimp will never evolve to be a truly usable program for the end user.

    • GIMP already is a truly usable program for the end user. Many people already use it, and love it. It is one of the killer apps of the GNU system.

    You're both wrong. There isn't a lot that is truly awful about gimp's UI, and almost everything can be fixed. Progress is slow, because new effects are sexier than UI improvements. gimp does have functions which are easier or work better than Paint Shop Pro, but the reverse is still very true.

    Anthony Argyriou
    c.g.a.psp faq developer
    http://www.alphageo.com/psp/faq.html [alphageo.com]

  • Photogenics was/is a good program -- used it a bit on a friend's Amiga years ago, and I wouldn't think that Paul Nolan would just sit on his duff and do nothing in the meantime, so I would expect this to be a top notch product when it's ready for prime time.

    That said, I wish the web site had more information on which versions of Linux the beta is supposed to be able to run under. I'm in the process of configuring a Linux system for a graphic artist I am working with, and not knowing which Linux distro Photogenics is aimed at keeps me from being able to seriously consider it as an option.

    Does anybody have more info on the beta's target platforms?

  • I believe the Regina Rexx interpreter compiles on linux. Alas, you'd need applications to support being controlled by it on their side too, like any other embedded scripting language (except maybe something like BRexx, part of Blitz on the Amiga, which automated programs by faking mouse + keyboard events in the amiga intuition input stream)

    What was good about ARexx on the amiga wasn't really the language (although it does make message passing very easy, and I did like the . constructs), it was the way that nearly all amiga applications included a message port for rexx scripting support. GNU wanted to do a similar thing with GUILE, but it hasn't really caught on to the extent that Rexx did in the Amiga world - possibly because scheme scares most non-compscis (although it shouldn't, it's actually a wonderful language). Embedded perl+python are becoming more+more popular too - I believe KOffice uses an embedded Python interface for scripting.

  • The Unix ethos (Score:3)

    by webster ( 22696 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:52AM (#1127994)
    The ethos of Unix is to have each program doing one thing, and for it to do that thing well. As the GIMP already does image manipulation perfectly well, there really is no demand for another graphics package

    There is a big difference between each program doing one thing and only having one program available to do any one thing. The former is certainly the Unix philosophy, even if it is observed mostly in the breach. The latter is the Microsoft philosophy - one ring to rule them all - and I, for one, would hate to see it become the dominant philosophy in the Linux community (whatever that happens to be).

    Choice is good for all concerned, even when the choice is between free, open source software and commercial, closed software. Let the community decide for itself what it wants.

    Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation

  • Re:Warning: Commercial Software Ahoy! (Score:4)

    by webster ( 22696 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:39AM (#1127995)
    I think I speak for the Linux community when I say that commercial closed-source software has no place on our operating system.

    No, I don't think you speak for the Linux community. The Linux community has no single voice, and includes a great many people who would like to see commercial as well as Open Source software running on Linux.

    And the Linux community certainly does not need an AC to speak for it.


    Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
  • For that matter, why should we use Photoshop? That thing has been around forever! Sheesh. Its sure to be ancient technology! (read:sarcasam)

    I'm ok with the 80's band thing, tho. As long as you don't diss The Cars or Devo, damnit. Whip it! Yeah! Right On! Yeah! Feel the passsion and depth that went into that one!

    BTW: Loose the 'thank you'. It makes your troll way too obvious :)


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

  • Its an alternative that is trying to compete in the graphics world under linux. If they won't try to be "better" than Gimp in one or more ways, they will have a failed product. But alas, if they want to make money, they will try to produce a better product, wich people may pay for.

    As for the opensource thing, it's sorta a theology that they may not choose to follow. But if their product is THAT good, it may cause people to still pull a little more towards *nix, wich in some people's eyes, is still good.

    ---

  • this is an awesome example of why GTK is complete crap. This thing is 400K and blows away the gimp. the gimp doesn't hold a candle against this...
  • Why AREXX?
    IBM already has Object REXX (backward compatible with "classic" REXX) for free download for Linux. REXX itself is an ANSI standard anyways
    See here:
    http://www-4.ibm.com/software/ad/obj-rexx/downlo ad.html#forfree

    Of course, my personal preference is to just go get OS/2 v4 which comes with ORexx built in...
  • Another workaround

    tail +160 PhotogenicsB86.sh | tar -xzvf

    Run this in a new directory.

    That autoself script package is rather flaky. It wouldn't work on my box at all.

    Mr. Nolan, I hope the retail version uses a different installer :)

  • Oh yes, faithfully-produced ports of Deluxe Paint for UNIXoid systems would be great, if for no other reason than because the GIMP is utter shite for working with paletted pictures (old-fashioned as the 320x200x5(!)bpp screen can seem at times).

    Electronic Arts have had their heads up their backsides since about 1990, though, so I have to confess that I don't see it happening any time soon. In the meantime, for paletted pics try xpaint or try Paint Shop Pro (even -- especially -- the old 16-bit v3.11) under wine.

  • I was at the Linux Business Expo today, and got a demo of Photogenics from Paul Nolan himself. I must say its a DAMN cool program. I'm not sure of the hardware specs he was running it on (other than whatever it was was running Linux), but the app was speedy, and it looked a lot friendlier than GIMP (which I do have experience using thank you). Thats not to say the gimp cant be friendly or that its a poor app, because neither of those are true.

    As for doing what gimp wont do, there was one thing Paul seemed to emphasize in the demo and that was applying transformations with a paintbrush instead of on a whole image or selected portion thereof. I'm not 100% sure that gimp cant do that, but I'd never seen it. For example, he'd take "pixellate", rub the paintbrush all over the image and it'd pixellate the "painted" parts as the brush passed over! Starting with a picture of a woman, he came up with a very cool facial collage like the one on his website when he was done appying and painting various transformations on the image. Very impressive! I think plenty of people even halfway serious about creating art under Linux would be interested (and well served) in purchasing this app. Besides, its still tons cheaper than Photoshop!

    Pretty sweet indeed!

    siri

  • Nobody complains about software not being open-source when Loki ports Civilisation, RT2 or Quake3 - why should games be different to graphics software?

    Fact of life: not every little software house in the world can afford to give everything away. And if you really need the tool, you're going to pay for it. Some people think *EVERYTHING* about Linux *MUST* be free - news flash to those people - it actually costs somebody something to get it out there. For example, I'm paying for web-hosting to get SCREEM [screem.org] out to people who appreciate it, at no charge to the users.

    In the case of Photogenics, it seems the UI is the attraction over the GIMP, and if somebody decides they need it - and they're willing to pay for it - are you going to make this Linux newbie feel unwelcome?

  • Pretty sweet... for a beta. (Score:4)

    by dlc ( 41988 ) <dlc@noSPaM.sevenroot.org> on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:31AM (#1128004) Homepage

    All in all, I like it. I love the fact that this is a 365K download and only takes a fraction of a second to load and start running on my system (500 Mzh PIII, 128 Megs, kernel 2.2.14).

    Well, it only does JPEG's (intentional, to keep the download size small), but it does them pretty well. I like especially the font select window: it creates a list of major fonts, then has a tree-type menu to see the subtypes (bold, italic, etc). I also like the color selection window, where the area under the mouse flashes across the screen while you go over it.

    However, it doesn't seem to do anything that the GIMP doesn't do, but it would have the advantage of being familiar to people from other platforms.

    darren


    Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
  • This is version 4.5 dimwit. It has moved on as well - you saw version 1.0, probably the coverdisk version as well.

    $99.99 is peanuts for most skilled computer people. But you are not willing to open up your closed mind. Open Source for Closed Minds indeed!

    Well, I hope you are happy when Linux fails due to lack of corporate investment and commercial software. Think of Photogenics this way: you are paying $100 for a box, manual, support and feel good factor, and the software is free. Okay, I know that you don't get the source code, but why do you want it? To steal it and put it in the Gimp? When the scripting language is powerful enough to express any possible action you might want to automate, you don't need the source.

    The Gimp has the most goddammed awful GUI in the world, very illogical and poorly laid out. I haven't got the time to go and delve in the guts of the program to change this, and neither do most people, so the Gimp will never evolve to be a truly usable program for the end user. This program has a natural intuitive GUI, and for graphics professionals and semi-professionals this is more important, and worth the measly asking price of $99.99.

  • No I am not trying to troll, just point out something that is not obvious to a lot of the die-hard Linux zealots, or to be more fair, the I-wanna-have-all-this-cool-stuff-for-nothing zealots.

    I was a student last year, and I didn't have much money to buy software. I stupidly bought a nice PC though, I should have bought a naff PC in retrospect. It ran Windows, and I hated it. $100 is around £70max - I paid that amount for Amiga software prior to buying the PC because the software was useful. I had to writeup reports, and Linux couldn't do that then unless I resorted to TeX (not worth it for quick homework, I used it the year after), the Gimp was prototypical, and Java was just as crap.

    So for the student and those not interested in graphic creation, The Gimp is pretty good. I use it all the time, but it does have a lot of problems, such as the GUI which is clumbersome. I doubt you have done courses on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) otherwise you would know that the Gimps GUI was not very optimal when it comes down to using it. Amiga software such as DPaint, PPaint etc on the other hand, was ideal. Single key shortcuts to all the major functions. Rubber-banding (still not employed in The Gimp, drawing a decent straight line using the dumb click shift-click method is not trivial), proper tools for drawing curves, ovals, etc, not just freehand.

    Open Source is worthless for the average user - the non-geek. They don't know that the program crashed because of a bad pointer somewhere in a rarely used bit of code. They don't mind reporting the bug _for free_ to an author who will do his best to fix it. They mind reporting the bug to a company that charges them for the benefit, and then doesn't fix it. See the difference, please.

    The killer apps of the Gnu system do not include anything to do with GUI's. GTK is good in my opinion. So is QT. The apps that use these powerful GUI toolkits do not use them in a sane manner, and the Gimp is one of those tools. I use The Gimp a lot, but I hate traversing 6 submenus after right clicking on the image to get to the tool or function I want. What is wrong with a common-tool palette (your most used tools in a palette, identified by a textual description or an icon), why isn't there an easily accessible menu system, but instead there is a menu system that breaks most rules of GUI design?

    Maybe you might want to send these complaints to the Gimp people, but they have heard them already and done nothing about it.

  • Exactly - QT is good, GTK is good. It is the apps on top that defines a killer application though. QT is semi-open source, GTK is GPL.

    Actually, I hadn't proof-read my submission, I pressed return when I wanted to edit my comment, and IE decided that I meant to submit it. Cheers.

    My point was: GNUs killer apps are all those apps that are good for server based applications. Except Apache (BSD). erm, great :-) THere is a place for both open source and closed source - the user has to pay somewhere.

  • In this case, the user does not need to see the source, the user does not want to have to install the software to only find out that it requires glib2.55.2 and gtk+++3.55.2.3.2000 to run. The user is paying for software that they don't need to know anything about.

    This software is not for you, Anon, but it is for me and many other people out there who don't want persistently broken open source software that won't work on their systems because they installed Linux over 3 months ago.

    And I don't think that Red Hat posted the kind of results that Microsoft will post. Not even 1%. For this $99.99 software, you are paying partly for support (a decent manual, tutorials, support from the author should there be any problems). The only thing that irks you is that you can't see the source code and rip it off, and you are so set in your ways that you are not even willing to try out the software to see if it suits your working methods or to see if it is any good.

    Of course, the Open Source method works great - clued up people get money from dumb people not being able to work their systems. But this methodology does not promote the creation of simple, easy to use software because that would affect the chances of you getting money for support.

    It is not how Linux works either, you should know that. Many Linux users want good quality software, it is preferable if it is free, and open source, but if you cannot get the quality software that you need, but you want to run Linux (e.g., you are creating graphics for a website, and you are testing it out on your machine running Apache etc) then this is the software for you.

    Maybe someone should release some decent music creation software for Linux. Don't see much of that around at all.

  • Graphics Software (Score:3)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:32AM (#1128009) Journal
    Photogenics is a kick-ass graphics program, it was great when it came out in 1992/3 and it was revolutionary. The problem with programs like the Gimp et al is that to perform an effect or run a script on a specific part of an image you have to do some complex selection procedure to get that area. Photogenics allows to to paint effects as well as normal painting facilities. Coupled with layers, normal mask editing and operation, and a demo for you to try you should get a feel for what good quality cheap software is like.

    And remember Paul Nolan did once comment that he was looking into open-sourcing the underlying GUI system.

    This will go great with the Gimp - both great software, but to get the best out of graphics you need as much software as possible, as each bit of software excels at certain things.

    I hope that Photogenics can open Layered Gimp, Photoshop and Painshop Pro files.

  • Re:Open Source is simply better (Score:3)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:47AM (#1128010) Journal
    Wrong!

    Commercial Closed Source Software written by corporations is worse than Open Source Software, but Commercial Closed Source Software written by someone by himself, who has to feed himself from the proceeds of his work, and who isn't a large faceless corporate entity - that can quite often be better than Open Source Software.

    It depends on the developer - but if you had just spent the last 3 years of your life writing the best software since VisiCalc would you suddenly give up any potential revenues you could get from it and give it to the scavenging hordes of the Open Source Movement? I doubt it.

  • Round 0: Installation
    The Gimp: Megabytes of downloading libraries, toolkits, plug-ins, extras and whatnot. Hours of hacking to get the darn thing to see everything.
    Photogenics:
    Verifying archive integrity...OK

    Uncompressing Photogenics....................................... ........................................
    ..................................
    The program returned an error code (139)
    Press Return to close this window...
    I exctract the tarred and gzipped contents.
    $ ./Photogenics

    segmentation fault
    What version of glibc does this need? It doesn't say...
    I am SOL and give up :(
    Gimp: 0, Photogenics: -1
  • Ah, this is a good thing for a variety of reasons:

    More than one good choice for paint software under Linux.

    A competitor with a nicer UI might spur some improvements to The Gimp's UI.

    It's nice to see some Linux software from a different background.

  • Quick Techie Review (Score:5)

    by tialaramex ( 61643 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @07:24AM (#1128013) Homepage
    Before starting out I should remind anyone who doesn't know that I'm a Gimp developer... I'm writing this only because I saw a lot of people comparing Gimp and Photogenics elsewhere, many of them without even trying either as far as I could tell.

    This is a painting app. Paul doesn't (so far as I know) claim that it's anything else. But many modern packages are more than this, and you shouldn't be surprised that there's a lot of stuff Photogenics just plain can't do.
    Anyone who's baffled by layers (say in Gimp or Photoshop) but needs more power than PSP4 or KPaint should check out Photogenics, at worst it will be a gentle introduction to layers and you'll understand other packages better after trying it.
    For the "from-scratch" digital artist, it's certainly not so hard to draw stuff in Photogenics as it is in Gimp, or for that matter Photoshop, but then it's even EASIER in MS Paint. Is this a good compromise? Perhaps.
    If "paintbrush" and "chalk stick" don't sound like cornerpoints of your days digital image work, then you don't need this app. Just as many drawings done in 5 mins in Photogenics would be an hours work in Gimp, there are many 5 minute techniques for Gimp that PG just can't replicate.

    For me, as both a non-artist and a Free Software developer, this app doesn't mean much, for some artists though, there is no doubt this is an important class of app on Linux and they should be trying this out.. now.
  • Seemed nice at first, but the area in which i could paint began shrinking, meaning i was only able to paint on a smaller box within the origional, the rest being unchanged. Also when I cropped the image i wound up with something of infinite heighth that was confused on what to display..finally just taking my wallpaper image
    onto the canvass. Too bad.
  • You've never used the new photogenics, have you?
  • Um, don't forget ASM-One [euronet.nl], the wonderful assembler/editor/debugger/monitor environment... Hm, on second though, who wants to code x86 assembly, regardless of the environment? I know I don't. ;^)
  • If memory serves me correctly, photogenics was an excellent package when I had a copy running on my old Amiga 1200.
  • You are missing the point. Wheter or not an app is open source is irrelevant to us non-os zealots. What matters is wheter the tool can do the job.
  • Didn't intend to mislead.. I just happened to be using Gimp to 'retouch' a photograph. Well, retouch is a little weak. I was pasting Alan Cox's head onto Bill Gates body. (one of the photos from the 'Billy visits the White House' press event.)
  • It's not really a question of 'better'. It's a question of 'better for what'. Gimp aspires to be the Script-Fu wielding ninja of graphics. It can do just about everything, and in that immense functionality quite a bit of 'ease of use' is lost.

    And what about feature set tuning? You can do that photo touch-up in the Gimp, scrolling through nested menu after nested menu of filters, plugins, and scripts, just to find the three filters you use, and then adjust those filters to do the standard set of stuff on the photo. Or you can use a commercial application that had its feature set tuned for photo touch-up. Only the options that make sense are present, they are all tweaked for the subject material, everything is easy to find. The tuned set is easier, quicker, and makes more sense!!
  • Does anybody know if photogenics has support for CMYK color chanels? I know that the Gimp 1.0.x versions don't. That is really where Photoshop comes in strong in print industry.

    I work at a local newspaper in the graphics department. The other day I took some work home because I was verry tired. What I didn't know was that Gimp doesn't support CMYK color chanels. Oops! SO I had to go back to work to finish the graphics on photoshop. It wasn't that bad but I think that computers that have only one mouse button are hiding something important.

    But anyway this is where there is really a need for a good graphics program. There are many good apps that handle imaging for web design or for presentations, but when you are using a printing press the only ones that are really any good are Photoshop and Freehand.

    P
  • Com'on, all gtk+ applications allows you to changed the menu-keybindings. _BUT_ no application that I know if actually saves the keybindings since the author has to implement that. And keybindings generally in GTK+ sux. Just try to use nothing but keyboard in the GTK+ demo (testgtk)

    as a matter of fact, gimp actually saves the keybindings, since it seems the authors have implemented that. although this doesn't compensate well for the random interface.
  • "I think I speak for the Linux community when I say
    that commercial closed-source software has no place on
    our operating system. Linux was written by the people,
    for the people, and it makes me sick to see companies
    cashing in on our hard work."

    No I don't think you speak for the Linux community. If
    you speak for the linux community then maybe you should
    ask Transmeta to open the source code for their morphing
    technology. People got to make a living. Even Linus has
    to eat. I don't think you should judge a piece of software,
    that sounds like you probably haven't even tried, just on
    the basis that it is binary only and you may have to shell
    out a few dollars for it. Paul is a great programmer.
    Linux and the Amiga community need more artisans like him.
  • Painter does the "paint with effects" thing really well. I assume there's a "PC" (by which I guess you mean Windows) version out there. Painter's compatible with Photoshop plug-ins, too.

    And, if you've got your shit together, you can brush on effects in Photoshop. But there's no menu for it, so you have to think about it for a second.

    PS(OT): You are not alone. Not wanting to use Linux is currently known to be cool everywhere but here, among everyone but textdroids, sheetspreaders, servents, and other corpo-corpses. Vincent Price-like "moo-ha-ha"s of derision can be found in the vicinity of anyone who even half-seriously mentions the GIMP outside these Perly gates. Do not speak of this again.

  • I'm still looking for a Deluxe Paint type program for my Daughter. The paint programs I've tried to get here to use are either way to simple (just painting, no animations) or to hard to learn.

    Anyone recomend a paint program thats functional like Deluxe Paint but easy enough to use for a 10 year old?
    --
  • If this small program can do all that it did then I can only imagine what the full release will do. Yes, free software is nice, but so are good programs. I don't mind paying if it will do what it does well and apparently, Photogenics does that very well. I don't think this program should be shunned just because it isn't free software---although that would be nice. :-) To compare it to Gimp is also not very practical because the two programs have completely different targets. I would use them both---each has different strengths.

  • Making it work... (Score:4)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <{bero} {at} {redhat.com}> on Monday April 17, 2000 @07:48AM (#1128027) Homepage
    Doesn't install on systems that have KDE 2.0, because it wants to execute a konsole with -title (invalid option), so you have to make it start something else.

    Workaround #1:
    # mv /usr/bin/konsole /usr/bin/konsole.DONTUSE
    # ./PhotogenicsB86.sh
    # mv /usr/bin/konsole.DONTUSE /usr/bin/konsole

    Workaround #2:
    Remove the -title stuff or change the order in which terms are searched.
    If you do this, you also have to remove the
    checksum code, because you just changed the code.
    To do that, comment out lines 116 to 121.
  • Hey now, [Hey now] (background singers) Hey now, [Hey now] Wacko, Wacko, Why a... Jackomo free Hu oh nanay, Jackomo free nanay! The good, the bad, the 80's. I could'nt resist.
  • Are you trying to troll or something? I'll discuss your points in order...

    $99.99 is peanuts for most skilled computer people.

    You don't seriously mean this do you? Do you realise how many skilled computer people are students and have very little money to spend on commercial software? I'm sure you wouldn't argue that Linus Torvalds was a skilled computer person when he wrote the first version of Linux, but he was a student at the time. Trust me, open source/free software is a lifeline to students on limited incomes. And that's not to mention people who are unemployed, or otherwise short of money through no fault of their own.

    I hope you are happy when Linux fails due to lack of corporate investment and commercial software.

    Linux has so far succeeded without commercial software, what evidence do you have to suggest that it needs commercial software to continue? Yes, there is commercial software for Linux, but the majority of Linux users don't use it. However, I would not argue that companies such as RedHat and SuSE who understand the community and the open source ethos are a bonus to Linux. Even in the absence of companies such as RedHat, there are still non-commercial distributions such as Debian. But at the end of the day, it does not matter whether Linux makes it into the mainstream, I think most of Linux's current users will continue to love it (and use it) anyway. Linux was never intended to be a method of world domination.

    Think of Photogenics this way: you are paying $100 for a box, manual, support and feel good factor, and the software is free.

    I am quite sure that Photogenics' manufacturers have never thought of Photogenics in this way.

    I know that you don't get the source code, but why do you want it? To steal it and put it in the Gimp?

    Are you serious? Open source is about more than "stealing code" as you put it. It's about empowering the user. Open source allows the user to find and fix bugs in the software without being reliant on the software company to do this for them.

    The Gimp has the most goddammed awful GUI in the world, very illogical and poorly laid out.

    A poor workman always blames his tools. GIMPs user interface is very simple to use, if you take the trouble to get used to it.

    Gimp will never evolve to be a truly usable program for the end user.

    GIMP already is a truly usable program for the end user. Many people already use it, and love it. It is one of the killer apps of the GNU system.

  • I'd just like to thank everyone for their kind comments and support. I wanted to reply to a few comments individually, but Comdex starts again in a few hours :( For those of you who had problems getting the beta to work, please check www.PaulNolan.com for an updated beta release. If you still have problems, please email me at paul@paulnolan.com with the symptoms, and what Linux distribution you are using. Thanks!
  • I am buying it.

    IMHO: It's cool and easy to use.

    I really like the effects, apply with left mouse button , erase it with the right. Cool!

  • Praise the man who can see beyond his nose, unlike most people on here.
  • Why is it that the prevailing attitude with the OpenSource community is that all bugs can be fixed when the source is freely available (aka many eyes find bugs faster), compared to Closed Source programs, where we're left to the grace of the developer to implement any fixes? As any maintainance programmer will tell you, it is a nightmare to jump into someone elses code, and start sorting and figuring out what functionality each module has, no matter how experienced they might be. It takes weeks (even months) to mentally break down the code into manageable functions, especially with the size of most projects today, with OO modularity, and the multithreaded nature of modern software. The developers have a mental picture of the architecture of their software, and they can implement fixes faster and in a structuraly more sound way than any outsider looking at the source for 1-2 hours. Software engineers spend months developing an architecture, and many more months coding, testing, and bugfixing. Any you think that a 21 year old student, halfway through obtaining a CS degree, or an enthusiest with no formal qualifications, can hack through the code in a few hours and fix bugs which the developers have spent weeks on tracking down. Not likely. You must remember that the developers are able hackers too, even more so than you because they have actually shipped a product, with millions of lines of code, and months of hard work and long hours. WE DEVELOPERS ARE GREAT HACKERS TOO!!! The only software which should be open sourced is abandoned software, where the developers are 2 generations ahead of the old software. The original Quake was open sourced when Q3Arena was almost done - and ID didn't plan on working with it any more (or milking it). Face it, Open Source software will always be 2-4 years behind the latest products. Don't be suprised to see M$ open sourcing M$-DOS 3 these days.
  • choice. may have features the gimp hasn't. More good apps on linux can only be good news.
  • This is a good thing simply because there aren't enough choices for a Linux user in the way of graphics programs. That was and still is the reason why I'm not running Linux. Macromedia and Adobe should get off their butts and start at least trying to make versions of their software for Linux instead of updating .2 of a version because they made new brushes...

  • No offsense, but first off it just plain doesn't SUCK. I mean, really, has anyone EASILY created some decent artwork with GIMP yet?

    I used it for the art in Vitamins [rose-hulman.edu].

    God, after playing with it for hours and hours I just went back to Photoshop on my Windows box. Gimp BLOWS

    Probably because you haven't learned to click and shift-click and keep commonly used menus open (click the dotted line at the top of the menu). I use GIMP or WinGIMP depending on what I'm booted into at the moment (I use Windows because some of my critical apps don't run in Wine).

  • Gimp's gui is deplorable

    Please elaborate. I somewhat like having the menu bar at my right-click fingertip, not having to move to the top of the screen just to pull down a menu. It also gives 20 extra pixels of vertical space at the top of the window.

  • Or you can use a commercial application that had its feature set tuned for photo touch-up. Only the options that make sense are present, they are all tweaked for the subject material, everything is easy to find.

    GTK lets you easily change menu key bindings. Simply hover over a menu item and press a key. You can assign single-key shortcuts for all your favorite filter commands.

  • Sorry guys, but the Gimp UI sucks. I like having a toolbar rather than hunting thru 42 levels of menus to find a function.

    So create your own toolbar...on your keyboard. Simply hover over a command (in any GIMP Toolkit app) and press a key; boom, instant shortcut.

  • Well for starters, piling all the doodads into one master menu is STOOOOPid. Only a programmer can fuck up like that. seriously.

    Or a Microsoft interface designer (the ::[+] Start menu). But aren't _all_ menus "one master menu" if you think about it? In most other apps, one master menu (with options "File Edit etc.") is displayed at the top of the screen; when you choose "File", a submenu appears: New, Open, Save, Quit.

    Then you have the extreme awkwardness of right clicking to get into the wonderland of overly nested menus, and dragging right from thence to get into the submenus, probably with your middle finger still depressing the right mouse button if you're like most people. Hello joint pain!

    Not necessarily. You can right-click on the image, and the menu will pop up, you hover into your command, and you left click. Sort of like the evil monopoly's start menu but different.

    But, remember, it's a GTK app. You can also click a menu's dotted line bar to make the menu stick on the screen (click the master menu's to get an interface similar to what you're probably used to), and you can reassign key shortcuts by hovering over a command and pressing a key.

  • Aren't the 1.1.x versions incorporating more of a (correct) menu-at-the-top-of-the-window approach?

    GTK+ menus have a bar at the top with a dotted line. Right click your image, then left click this dotted line, and the menu turns into a window. Move this window to the side of the screen, and you get a somewhat traditional menu. But I would like the right button to draw in the background color like it does in MS Paint and NeoPaint.

  • Their site says the were at Linux Expo Canada...

    I was there, and didn't see them... did I miss something?
  • Gimp is free, it's open source, it's extendible. What does this package offer which that's better ?
  • What does this package offer which that's better ?

    It doesn't have to offer anything new. It offers a choice. If it would be GPL'ed it would be even better....

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • Why would I want a new graphics program?

    This way you have a choice!!! (I know that you could just fork the gimp code into something new either....)

    Grtz, Jeroen

  • On the part that "It's just *one* person eho has to pay his rent!" this is very true. As a friend of Paul Nolan I know firsthand he is not wealthy. He is simply a very intelligent, friendly, cool hacker. Of course it would be cool to have the src for this app, but if that happened Paul would either be forced to work at some lame company to pay rent and devel more on Photogenics, or someone generous who has one of these jobs would need to donate a significant amount of money to the project. everyone has to eat.. so any of you post-ipo people out there who like Photogenics Im sure Paul wouldnt mind a nice contribution. Heck why not call him now! pick up the phone and dial. xxx-xxxx yeah whatever, shutup(\$me);
  • Miss that old program, loved the way you could "paint with effects", never saw that in the PC world since. Ie, choose an effect, emboss, blur, edge detect, whatever, and it would be applied where you used your brush (with whatever media you used) - only one problem...i don't wanna use Linux :)

    --
  • Yeah, that sure is how I'd describe it. Worked on the first time: NOT! Was debuggable: NOT! Come on. I've worked with linux for about 5 years now and I've done a lot of things and I've /NEVER/ seen a shell archive freeze, but this one did. I've seen plenty of closed-source programs freeze before making any output, though, just like this one. Odds are it's some bizarre library interaction that will only be found on my system, but if I had source I might just bother to fix it.

  • By God, It's Wonderful (Score:3)

    by Ftrain ( 152447 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:39AM (#1128049) Homepage
    Look at it! The beta download is ~340K! Small app size is a true Amiga legacy. Even if, as Paul Nolan says, the demo version is missing some functionality, it won't balloon to the GIMP's 4-8 megs source download, plus GTK. It runs out of the box, no compile for the most recent version, no strange errors, no ungainly plugin structure. Photogenics is quick and responsive. The menu system makes sense within minutes, not hours. The kitchen sink is not to be found anywhere in here. It's worth $99. This is not to trash The GIMP, which I use regularly. The GIMP would be worth at least $500+ to me, open source or not, if I could buy a pre-packaged working system with a manual, easy RPM install, better color handling, and an organized menu system, and all the plugins working together. The GIMP is beautiful, but there's too much there, and it's not tucked away like EMACS, where you can learn as you go. And Paul Nolan's windowing toolkit is cool.

  • Re:Not open source: don't contaminate Linux! (Score:3)

    by Ian-K ( 154151 ) on Monday April 17, 2000 @06:17AM (#1128050) Homepage
    Well, isn't Linux about choice? Then why not have tens of graphics programs?

    As for open sourcing: well, I wouldn't exactly mind if Corel didn't open-source Draw or Adobe didn't open-source Photoshop or if Newtek didn't open-source LightWave etc. Reason: they are all excellent packages at what they do and lets not start yelling about open-source all over the place. Some companies may think otherwise but if their software does the job, I don't really mind.

    For the GIMP: I don't exactly like it (I know I have blasphemied, forgive me!). I just can't wait till Adobe *eventually* decides to keep the Unix version of Photoshop up to date (any Adobe guys listening?????? Where are you????). I've been using it (PS) since version 3.0.4 in Windoze and it's evolved to a great package, thank you. Gimp is good, but it kind-of lacks the usability yet. It's a good program with a very nice lot of features but it isn't quite "there" yet. I'd love to help but I'm not a programmer (at least not of that skill). I'm a graphics designer.

    I mean OK, it's open source, it's free and everything, but I've seen better (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but that's a personal opinion, if I'm entitled to one.). Canvas 7-beta was also quite good, though its design is a bit of a mix of various image-manipulation and layout programs and therefore its usability and intuitivity do leave quite a few things to be desired.

    In summary: Linux is about choice and *your* choice is not necessarily *my* choice (as you have seen above).

    Trian
  • Photogenics was good, damn good
    but for pure nostalgia freaks how about DeluxePaint for Linux.
    Thats one olde Amiga program that deserves saving.

    Ahh nostalgia not what it used to be....
  • $99 is nothing. Most college books cost more than that(and you get a lot less usage out of them).
    As far as it not being open source..99% of the target audience don't care. How many artists actually want to fix C++ bugs or 'add new features'? A comphrehensive scripting language is much more valuable than having a directory of .c files.

    D

  • Issues Raised (Score:5)

    by ocelotbob ( 173602 ) <ocelot&ocelotbob,org> on Monday April 17, 2000 @05:34AM (#1128053) Homepage
    From the few comments that I've seen so far, I see an alarming trend. There are people out there, perhaps zealots, perhaps misinformed, perhaps something else, who feel that anything other than their OS/GFX Program is bad. People need to chill out and realize that this is a TOOL and everybody who has ever worked with any mechanical object, a 1/4" wrench, no matter how useful, can't fix every problem, you need other tools. The GIMP is great for a lot of people; heck, I use it myself. Photogenics is probably useful for a different type of problem/person. Politics suck, and too many people are trying to make everything political.
  • ohhhhhh, AREXX; ohhhhhh, ImageFX I am drooling ..... what I wish is that someone would convert some of the old file managers over. I was a registered user of the proggy filemanager 3.0 and it knocks mignight commander around the room. Filemanager 3.0 was only the third best one. DirOpus and Dirwork were even better.
  • YES!
    ImageFX the ultimate postprocessing program. I'm using AfterEffects 4.0 production bundle and I keep running into things where ImageFX would do a better job. - Especially because of the Rexx interface!

    I asked Novadesign [novadesign.com] whether they where going to do a Linux version or not.
    Their reply was:

    'There are no announced plans at this time.'

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