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Software The Gimp Linux

First Look at GIMP 2.4 317

Posted by Zonk from the he's-looking-at-me dept.
Liam30 writes "Newsforge (ed: part of the OSTG family) is running a story that gives a first look at the next version of GIMP." From the article: " A major update to the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), widely regarded as the leading free software raster image editing program, is scheduled for this month. The 2.4 release is expected to include a number of new features and enhancements to existing features ... The first thing most users will notice about 2.4 is the addition of three new tools to the palette: the Align tool, the Foreground Extraction tool, and a new 'Simple' Rectangle Selector. The Align tool lets you vertically and horizontally align image layers -- a task you had to perform manually before. You can align an image to any edge or the center, specify an offset in any direction, and adjust vertical and horizontal alignment separately."
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First Look at GIMP 2.4 More

First Look at GIMP 2.4

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  • SIOX (Score:4, Interesting)

    by prestwich ( 123353 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:27AM (#13749938) Homepage
    That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.

    Anyway - good luck to the GIMP guys - a nice tool!

    • Re:SIOX (Score:5, Informative)

      by idlake ( 850372 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:34AM (#13749954)
      SIOX is machine vision; this kind of algorithm has been developed before, but I don't know about the relationship between SIOX and previous methods--maybe the Berlin guys improved on prior work, or maybe they just didn't know about it.
      • SIOX is machine vision[..]maybe the Berlin guys improved on prior work, or maybe they just didn't know about it.
        I probably should have replied to you instead of the parent; summary of my other post [slashdot.org]:
        "the Berlin guys" are part of the same AI-workgroup that is behind the "FU Fighters" Robocup robot soccer team..
    • I've been wondering for ages why SIOX or something like it hasn't been implemented sooner. Now it is.

      Nice one, GIMP team! I already love the GIMP, now it gets better :)

    • Re:SIOX (Score:3, Funny)

      by big.ears ( 136789 )
      That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.

      It presumably would, as long as machine vision/AI people have pictures of their bosses that they want to place on supermodels' bodies, or need to prove to their girlfriends that they really were at the ballgame and not at the strip club.
    • Use of SIOX will most likely increase Fark [fark.com] and Worth 1000 [worth1000.com] entries. No comment on if this is a good or bad thing...
    • It's good to see an open source implementation of the Photoshop "Extract" feature. (i personally feel the extract function is so poorly written, that it reaches the point where it's easier to deep etch the image by hand than to use the built in touch up/clean up tools to hope that it returns the desired result.)

    • Re:SIOX (Score:5, Informative)

      by henni16 ( 586412 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @09:26AM (#13750199)
      That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.

      SIOX was developed for echalk [echalk.de].
      And echalk is developed by people of the AI-working group at the CS department of the FU Berlin.
      And that working group is also behind the successful robot soccer team FU Fighters [fu-fighters.de] who are currently World Champion in the small-size league of Robocup [robocup.org] and vice-champion in the middle-size league.

      So it wouldn't surprise me if parts of it are already in use for "machine vision/AI"..

  • SOIX! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kawahee ( 901497 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:30AM (#13749946) Homepage Journal
    For a while, I've had fairly negative views on GIMP. Sure, it's powerful, but it still lacks what Photoshop has out of the box, and it's got some fairly abstract configurations. But taking a look at SOIX and all, it's really going to push up against Photoshop. But now GIMP has to stop adding little features like simple rectangle select, and start adding more features like SOIX and superseeding PS to get it out there onto the commercial market.

    • professional tools (Score:2, Insightful)

      by idlake ( 850372 )
      A Leica M lacks what a Canon SureShot has out of the box; that doesn't make the SureShot a better or more professional tool camera. Ease of use and multitude of features are not the measure of how good a tool is for commercial use.

      I think both the Gimp and Photoshop are poor photo editing applications for professional users because they have too many extraneous features and don't focus on addressing the essentials well.

      In the case of Photoshop, its real problem is that, in addition to trying to be a photo

      • Re:professional tools (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nrgy ( 835451 )
        I agree with you in some degree, the problem I run into is I like useing the Gimp for little odds and ends jobs. Don't get me wrong the Gimp is a good application, I think of it as a middle weight tool. Something like a Flame, Flint or Inferno user views Combustion. Just like svg is the rave for icons so is a 32bit enviroment for images. This is not a feature that adds bloat, its more a feature of where the world is going.

        • Just like svg is the rave for icons so is a 32bit enviroment for images.

          All I know about SVG is that it's an open standard alternative to Flash that is supposed to eventually become popular for web sites once all the browsers support it. I haven't heard of it being used for anything else. How is it being used for icons? Is there a window manager that uses it or is it being used as a file type in graphics editing?

          • Re:professional tools (Score:5, Informative)

            by idlake ( 850372 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @08:40AM (#13750086)
            SVG is primarily a vector graphics format--kind of like a PNG or JPEG, only that you can scale it up without seeing pixels. Another way of looking at it is that it is roughly equivalent to Adobe Illustrator files. SVG can also be used for animation, like Flash, but that's not its main purpose in life, at least not in the short term. Right now, SVG is being used more and more for icons, user interface elements, diagrams, figures, and other static images.
        • Oh, I agree: 32bit is a must. It's a major deficiency that the Gimp doesn't have it, and it was a major deficiency when Photoshop didn't have it.

          I don't think retrofitting the Gimp is the right approach, though. Writing 32bit imaging tools (and I have been doing that for a couple of decades) is very different from writing 8bit imaging tools.
          • Writing 32bit imaging tools (and I have been doing that for a couple of decades)

            Then I'm sure you'll be aware that CinePaint (used to be called Film Gimp) does 16-bits per channel (64-bit RGBA).

      • Re:professional tools (Score:4, Insightful)

        by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @08:36AM (#13750078) Homepage
        Man, you must really don't know what you're talking about.

        The reason for the success of Photoshop is given by not trying to be a niche tool for either designers or photographers. Any designer can, in any day, need Photoshop under its multiple facets. Creating a photo album or a contact sheet, designing a webpage or touching a photo for that website, it all has to be under the same app, with the same familiar workflow. The photographer might need to add a frame to that photo, or maybe he wants to add some text to get a postcard out of his picture.
        • Man, you must really don't know what you're talking about.

          I'll second that... One of the reasons that Photoshop is so popular is that there's pretty much no limit to what you can do. Maybe you should take some time to sit down and actually learn the program. Find out what all these tools do and I bet you'll change your attitude a bit. There are very few, if any, tools in photoshop that I haven't found a use for at least once.

      • Re:professional tools (Score:4, Interesting)

        by nidarus ( 240160 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @08:47AM (#13750098)
        As a Photoshop (and, occasionally, GIMP) user, I would be glad to know of what, in your opinion, is a good photo editing application for professionals? Am I missing out on something?
      • Actually, that's not it's real problem. The fact it has the power to be a web design application, computer art tool and photo editing application is exactly why is it so successful and THE tool for design professionals. There absolutely is no other tool to touch Photoshop, simple as that. Ask any one of several million Photoshop using professionals.

        It focuses directly on exactly what was designed for - image creation and editing - and does it extremely well.

        • Re:professional tools (Score:4, Insightful)

          by arose ( 644256 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @09:49AM (#13750275)
          There absolutely is no other tool to touch Photoshop, simple as that. Ask any one of several million Photoshop using professionals.
          Why don't you ask Cinepaint using special effects professionals how great Photoshop is?

    • Re:SOIX! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eno2001 ( 527078 )
      Some good points. But I have to wonder why so many people are so concerned with getting "onto the commercial market"? This software is made for the sake of people who want to use it. Not to make money. That is to say, that the software is not made for people who want to make a profit by selling/marketing software. It's made for people like me who want to edit images. It's fine if GIMP is used by someone to edit images for profit. That's different. The point being that GIMP is simply a tool to many o

  • Still no CMYK huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by No Salvation ( 914727 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:35AM (#13749955) Homepage Journal
    So when can I edit CMYK screenshots of Duke Nukem Forever in GIMP?

  • What I want to know: Can I paint circles in it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:44AM (#13749972)
    In older version of The Gimp it was very difficult to draw perfect concentric circles in it. I had to manually measure and mark the corners of the bounding box around the circle, and then I had to adjust for the "Stroke" feature drawing one pixel down and to the left instead of inside ... and so on.

    It's the little things that separate the good programs from the bad. Not the amount of features.

  • 8-bit graphic ? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 )
    Please don't flame me if I am talking nonsense, but I've been told that GIMP is still based on the old 8-bit technology.

    If I am right, may I know if the new 2.4 version has any improvement on this front ?

    Thanks !!
    • Technically speaking all graphics packages are based on "8 bit" technology. An image on a computer is made up of (usually) 4 channels .. red, green, blue and alpha. Each channel contains a greyscale image .. with 256 levels of greyness. 256 levels = 8 bit.

      That's not the same as saying they're using 8 bit CPU instructions though. They're not. The code has kept up with modern CPUs and languages.

      • Re:8-bit graphic ? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Haeleth ( 414428 )
        Technically speaking all graphics packages are based on "8 bit" technology. An image on a computer is made up of (usually) 4 channels .. red, green, blue and alpha. Each channel contains a greyscale image .. with 256 levels of greyness. 256 levels = 8 bit.

        The format you describe is the standard, but there is also a higher-quality standard where each channel is 16 bits. This is supported to some extent by many graphics packages; certainly Photoshop has had fairly decent 16-bit channel support since Photosho
        • So the GP's question makes perfect sense: does GIMP now support 16-bit channels?

          And if either you or the GGP had read the article, the answer is no. It's been pushed back. Actually, most cameras don't operate with 16 bit/channel color. I know mine has 12 bits/channel in the raw format. That still means I lose a tiiiny little bit when processing with a 8 bit application, but I honestly can't see any difference. And I've kept my raw images for later, should I wish to redo them. It's not so much the end produc
      • That is wrong. Images with anywhere from 1bit to 64bit per channel are in use, with anywhere from 1 channel to hundreds of channels.

        As it turns out, even many modern consumer cameras give you 12bit or 16bit per channel, and many modern displays can display that.

        The biggest holdback right now is that common image formats like JPEG are still limited to 8bit per channel.
        • The biggest holdback at the moment is the very vast majority of consumer equipment like monitors and video cards can't handle more than 8 bit per channel. For 99.99% of use of graphics development software 8 bit per channel is enough.
          • Monitors, and to a certain extent video cards when they're not doing anything but display an image, don't *need* to support more than 8bbp to take advantage of HDR editing and display.

            The human eye isn't really capable of perceiving significantly more than 8 bits per pixel. Those extra bits aren't for us, they're for the computer to use in calculating the 8bbp it wants to display for us after a picture is edited.

            Say you want to adjust the brightness of a picture, if you change the brightness of an 8bbp ima

        • As it turns out, even many modern consumer cameras give you 12bit or 16bit per channel, and many modern displays can display that.

          I'll have to nitpick here a bit. Even on DSLRs there's sufficient amount of noise to make the bit depth somewhat theoretical. But in general , I agree that >8 bits per channel bit depths are commonly used in various contexts and it would be very nice if GIMP would also get the support.

          However, for digital camera use, UFRaw plugin for the GIMP does conversion from digital cam

    • Re:8-bit graphic ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      I think they are more than well aware that people want 16 bits per channel support. Too bad there's been too many hurdles on their way. You probably want to go for the FilmGimp/ Cinepaint [movieeditor.com] for 16bpc.

      Also there'll be still no trace of color models other than 8bitRGB/Gray/Indexed. They were supposed to develop a whole new framework [gegl.org] for colorspace management and port the GIMP to it, but apparently all of the developers who knew anything about colorspace stuff choked to death when they tried to pronounce the na

  • GIMP is becoming a real threat for Photoshop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ravee ( 201020 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @07:55AM (#13749992) Homepage Journal
    I have been a GIMP user for the past few years. I started using GIMP first on windows and then when I switched over to linux, it became my graphics package of choice. I think GIMP will become a real threat to Photoshop in the near future. The only thing stopping it is CMYK support which (most probably) will be added in the next version.

    I think it pays to use open source or GPLed software.

  • Text Editing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by n0dalus ( 807994 )
    The one feature I miss the most in The GIMP is better text handling, like being able to have more than one font/bold/italic/sized text in each text area. It should also have text boundaries which can be properly enforced to do word-wrapping and stuff. It's also nice to be able to have text follow a path, or be stretched into certain shapes.
    I also really like Photoshop's 'Save for Web' dialogue, and would like to see something like that in The GIMP.
    These are the only things I use photoshop for, everything el

  • I hope they add "tabs" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @08:55AM (#13750116) Journal
    Or something along those lines - I try the PC port from time to time, and it always turns me straight off that it opens all its windows straight on the desktop (as opposed to one window with all the others in it)
  • The only thing keeping me from using GIMP with no concern for PS whatsoever is the lack of support for 32-bit BMP files (BMP with Alpha). Even if it were implemented in a seperate (linux) program, that could a) convert a PNG with alpha or b) combine two BMP files, one grayscale. Until that point, I still have to use PS or some other tool to do the final edits for textures on MS Flightsim.
  • I'd like to see the GIMP libraries include window position/shape memory, intersession persistence. Groups of associated windows with their x, y, w, h params stored on disk. So I can open a workspace of multiple windows with a click, watch them spring back to their positions and sizes on the screen. Not just for the GIMP - maybe that feature will find its way to the general GNOME libraries, so all apps can do it. Then I might finally get multiapp window configs stored in a single config, opening multiple app
    • Metacity already does that, it was one of the reason why I switched away from Sawfish, since that one never got the windows positioned where I left them.
      • How do I store all multiple apps open Metacity window states?
        • As far as I can understand you are looking for session management, GNOME has had that for some time, try to check the "Save current setup" checkbox on the logout dialog.
          • It's kinda late to save window session state only on logout :). But that feature does indicate that the hooks are there. I'd love to see a GNOME panel applet that lets me "bookmark" arbitrary collections of windows across apps, then open the bookmark later. A really snazzy version would let me open a compound (multiapp) "document" in a single reader container (like FireFox or Nautilus), or in its multiple apps for editing, or in an app for "transmission" (email, WebDAV, etc). Eventually I'd like to see just
  • Can they PLEASE try to make sure it supports the Wacom graphics tablet series out of the box on mac osx. I've got an Intuos3 only to find that osx gimp doesn't respond to the tip pressure of my pen. I've read all the forums and the problem lies somewhere in the software.

    So far, I'm considering getting a cracked version of photoshop instead. Come on gimp!

  • Holes and what to use to get around them now. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jscotta44 ( 881299 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @09:07AM (#13750148)
    I would love to see a comprehensive listing of what can't be done with GIMP 2.4 that you can do with Photoshop. Then, tack on a list of what features can be covered by other applications (open source or commercial) from the list of missing features in GIMP. That would give me a very nice look at comparing the two and deciding which way to go. Also, it would give me a sense of how much money, if any, I have to spend to acquire the capability of Photoshop or being better.
  • Though this looks great, and will be soon to be added to my download list (once I get SuSE 10.0 loaded up), I cannot help but wonder when the GIMP team will ever allow for an MDI version.

    On another note, I am curious to find out if GIMPShop will be updated. I know several people who really like that port of GIMP.

  • It doesn't bother me personally, but most traditional Windows users will always be turned off to the separate GTK download. This is a form of "dependecy hell" that Linux users have come to accept and Windows users never will. Even PDF Creator managed to integrate AFPL GhostScript.
    • Because that would defeat the purpose of GTK. There are other programs that are used on Windows that also use GTK, and since GTK is quite a hefty download it's very redundant to integrate GTK, and all those other programs would also have to integrate it. In other words, just because it's called the Gimp Tool Kit doesn't mean that only Gimp uses it.

      As a sidenote what on earth are you talking about ""dependency hell" that Linux users have come to accept and Windows users never will". Have you been livin

  • For users that prefer Photoshop... (Score:4, Informative)

    by michaelzhao ( 801080 ) on Sunday October 09, 2005 @10:07AM (#13750336)
    Many people do not use the GIMP because of the interface issues. It is useless for people to learn another interface. The reason many people do not use GIMP, the reason I do not use GIMP is sheer laziness, I do not feel like learning another interface.

    So, Scott Moschella made this modification. He isn't a programmer, he just is a GIMP user. It's called GIMPShop. A conversion that just rearranges the menu's to Photoshop style. Linkage for your pleasure... Gimpshop is available for Windows, Solaris/Sparc, Linux (detailed instructions), Debian, and RPM's. GIMPShop runs native under Mac.

    ahref=http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294rel=url2h tml-5243 [slashdot.org]http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294>

  • Features are good but what about the interface. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Sunday October 09, 2005 @10:54AM (#13750515)
    I have been using GIMP for a long time but when I switched to PhotoShop I suddenly got a lot better at doing graphics. It isn't any one feature that I can point to the Photoshop has or does better then the GIMP it is just the interface in photoshop is somehow easer. Layers seem so much easer in Photoshop then in the GIMP, Finding filters to run seems much simpler too. Perhaps it is because photoshop put the features you use the most more readily available while GIMP seems to give all the features all the same level (Cryptic). With tools like GIMP and Photoshop there is a fine line of usability. And if GIMP could get it right it would be a lot better. I wish I could give better deatails on what they should do but I am not sure myself. I personally don't care much for the photoshop interface as well but compared to the GIMP is is just more usable.
  • On Linux, it isn't difficult to write cool plugins in C, which can do effects that are very difficult to do otherwise. On Windows, this is extremely challenging, because getting the build environment setup is a pain. This leaves one with their Scrpt-Fu (scheme)language for plugins. While I haven't been limited by its features, the lack of a decent debugger and manual makes programming in it extremely painful (though I program in scheme (well, one of it's derivatives) nearly every day).

    In one case, I foun

  • Krita (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Features working in SVN include:

            * CMYK
            * OpenEXR
            * 16 bit/channel RGBA images
            * Many more filters
            * Painting with watercolors
            * Adjusting brightness and contrast with curves
  • Why, with all the great features the GIMP has, does it still lack a simple shape drawing mechanism? A feature even MS Paint has.

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