GIMP 2.6 Released 639
Enselic writes "The GIMP developers are proud to announce the release of GIMP 2.6. The release notes start with: 'GIMP 2.6 is an important release from a development point of view. It features changes to the user interface addressing some often received complaints, and a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and non-destructive editing to GIMP.' The notes go on to say the toolbox menubar has been removed, the toolbox and docks now are utility windows, it's now possible to pan beyond the image border, the freehand select tool has been enhanced to support polygonal selections, and much more."
I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, just after I updated 2.2 to 2.4! @#@!#*!!!
One area I hope the GIMP team focuses on in the future is font rendering. I absolutely love working with GIMP, but the fonts still don't come out as nice as they do in Photoshop. I'm not graphical design savvy enough to know why, only that my fonts look like crud when compared to the smooth output of Photoshop.
Other than that, GIMP is an incredible product. Anyone doing casual graphical editing, just learning, or otherwise does not need the top-end features of Photoshop will be well-served by this package. Kudos for doing such an incredible job, guys! :-)
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)
A more needed update....
SOMEONE PLEASE FORK THE PROJECT AND GIVE IT A NEW NAME!
My Point of sales machine died a few days ago, and the tech asked if I had installed anything on it. I told him that I loaded up "the gnu image manipulation program" just to avoid saying "GIMP". Can't we rename it to something better?
I suggest we use: GNU Photo & Image Manipulation Program.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)
Fantastic.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)
But does it have electrolytes? It's what artists crave!
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gPimp, lol, sounds like an evil Apple product. Or a good one, depending on what side of the holy war you fight for.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)
gPimp, lol, sounds like an evil Apple product.
gPimp is actually google's pimping product, which I prefer since it is far more open. iPimp is way too locked down, it'll only let you work with ho's that Apple has approved.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Insightful)
Gimp developers don't care what you think. People have been very vocal in requesting this product undergo a name (as well as UI!)change to something less silly, childish, and stupid since it came out in the late 90's, and they haven't done it so it ain't going to happen now. GIMP is destined to always conjure images about either: a) that disturbing dude from pulp fiction as you mentioned, or b) children who have some affliction or disability that causes them difficulty when walking.
Houston, I think we have a problem here. (Score:3, Insightful)
.
There is really nothing I can add to this.
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In Soviet Russia, you don't care that Gimp developers think YOU!
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I checked, GIMP wasn't a Linux product. It is also for Windows, MAC, *BSD.
As soon as Apple drops the lame i prefix, and Sun drops the j prefix.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Insightful)
Winamp
[a digital current measuring program]
Photoshop
[an ecommerce program for selling Polaroids]
Yahoo Messenger
[a yodel-to-text converter for arranging bicycle deliveries].
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to feed the troll but...
"Drop the lame prefixes"
iPhoto, iWork, iPod, iMac, iPhone.
Prefixes are far from unique to Linux. Also, how long is it since you looked at Gnome apps? I can't of any that are "gSomething" or "gnSomething". Plenty are called "Gnome Something", but how is that different from the hundreds of "Windows Something" or 'WinSomething"? 'Winamp', 'Winzip', 'Windows messenger', 'Winrar'. Uhuh.
"This basically goes to show that the Linux desktop folk know they're names are completely dissociative, so they have to spell out exactly what each one does."
Skype, Flash, Adium, Daemon Tools. *Most* desktop apps have random names that don't mean anything, the only difference is that Ubuntu added labels to the names other people gave their apps to make it clearer.
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Prefixes are far from unique to Linux.
And they're still usually lame.
Mod this man to Mount Olympus! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sir, I wish I could mod you to infinity. That's one of OSS's biggest hurdles right now, keeping it locked out of mainstream awareness. OSS has great coders, but a real dearth of UI designers, technical writers, and basic marketing people. So you end up with coders (who think they don't need these people) designing great software that is rendered completely inaccessible by horrid UI's, poor to non-existent documentation, and stupid marketing moves (like this kind of poorly-thought-out naming).
Just look at 99% of OSS websites, done by coders who have no idea how to present their software to anyone but other coders--leading to my tip:
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The first page of your application's webpage should explain what the software *IS* and *HOW TO USE IT*, not just provide a long list of your bug-fixes.
The same could be said about a lot of /. stories:
Technology: FRXM 4.0 is out!
posted by: CmdrTaco
from the It's-Like-Christmas-Morning dept.
FRXM_Fan37 writes: FRXM 4.0 is out with a brand new Python API, and now runs on Windows as well as Linux and OSX. The community has been waiting a long time for the bugs in the 3.x version to be sorted out, and with 4.0 y
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I loaded Ubuntu (5 minutes ago), the menu looked more like this:
How much clearer can it possibly get?
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Insightful)
So call it by it's full name. Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
If you must rename the icon.
I am pretty sure that Photoshop Elements is actually called PSE or some such thing.
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Since they've already taken GNU out of the acronym, why not just go with IMP? The mascot is kinda impish anyway.
Realistically, I don't think a name change will ever happen. There should just be a fork with literally nothing changed but the name, so that people who want to deploy the software but feel the name will impede them in doing so have another option. GIMP not only has unpleasant associations, it implies that the applicati
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Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Funny)
The LaTeX name hasn't hindered its adoption because it references neither extreme sexual domination or physical deformity. GIMP does both.
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Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Funny)
Where do you work, Starbucks?
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Re:Your workplace is scary! (Score:4, Funny)
You should have seen the shit-fit a colleague threw when I remarked on the picture of her hairy pussy(cat).
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I still think that name is the worst. I remember a certain incident where someone said "I'm going to go home and play with my boyfriend's Wii"... and I said "Maybe you'd like to try saying that differently."
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Other things we could call it:
IMP (image manipulation program)
LIMP (libre image manipulation program)
RIMS (Raster Image Manipulation Software)
None of these other options are working for me...
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"IMP" would be fine.
(I don't know if it's regional, but in the UK "gimp" would usually be an insult, a more offensive version of "idiot". Wikipedia says it's also the term for a role in BDSM, but I think that is less well known.
know a couple of teachers who were keen to use the GIMP in schools, but didn't because the name is just asking for trouble.)
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How about non-GNU apps? Not so much. Why My theory is that most GNU Developers don't care as much about software but the license. Which is too bad and helps the stigma of poor quality GNU Software.
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GEGL (Score:5, Interesting)
So now with GEGL worked into GIMP, how long will it be until we see something equivalent to Photoshop's Layer Groups? Is it already in this release? (I didn't see anything about it in the release notes.) Sometimes simple projects grow in size to the point where it'd be very convenient to be able to better organize layers in groups and sub-groups. I like GIMP, and it would be much more practical for me to use it more often with this feature.
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I absolutely love working with GIMP, but the fonts still don't come out as nice as they do in Photoshop. I'm not graphical design savvy enough to know why, only that my fonts look like crud when compared to the smooth output of Photoshop.
Could it be the kerning [wikipedia.org]? I don't use GIMP, but kerning is one of those things that can be hard to put your finger on, but make a huge difference on whether or not text looks good.
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Kerning is definitely part of the problem. Even with the auto-hinter on and/or forced, the text kerning is still a bit bizarre. But even then, Photoshop appears to emit smoother edges on the text. GIMP fonts often look rough around the edges, and I can't figure out why.
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:5, Informative)
I experienced the same problem with crappy looking fonts, specifically when printing. I have gotten around this by changing the ppi to 300 (the default is 72) when creating a new image. This has made a huge difference and the fonts look much better. The option is under the advanced section when you create a new image.
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You know what? I think that does the trick! I never would have thought of using the DPI to increase the resolution of fonts. But if you think about the way that font renderers are implemented, it makes a lot of sense. Kudos!
Re:I just got 2.4! (Score:4, Informative)
CYMK (Score:5, Insightful)
A question, is there CYMK color separation support already?
Sorry if this was implemented already, I havent checked on the Gimp in a while.
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I don't see it anywhere in the release notes, though the potential for CMYK support was one of the reasons for the move to GEGL.
There is a plugin called seperate+ [yellowmagic.info], though I'm not sure if that still works properly with the new version.
There's also a potentially useful article [archlinux.org] on this on the Arch Linux wiki.
Re:CYMK (Score:5, Informative)
CMYK support for the GIMP [archlinux.org] - Why you might not need CMYK support in the GIMP.
Separate+ CMYK separations plugin for GIMP [yellowmagic.info] -- And if you really need it, get this. Very nice. Supports ICC color profiles.
Re:CYMK (Score:5, Informative)
Re:CYMK (Score:5, Insightful)
The default response to "does open source software do X?" is "you don't really need to do X."
I've gotten that response so many times, I can't count them. "Can open source apps paste spreadsheet cells into an email?" "Is there an open source app to do Gantt charts?" (Disclaimer: these are old examples; for all I know these scenarios work perfectly now.)
The second-most common is, "oh, you must have something weird." I usually get this one when I install a driver that claims to run some model of hardware, and then my hardware still doesn't work. "Sure, IVTV says it supports Hauppauge WinPVR 150 cards, but it doesn't work." "Oh, you must have something weird, maybe Hauppauge changed their chipset."
Whatever. I don't like the whole "pass-the-buck" culture.
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"Sure, IVTV says it supports Hauppauge WinPVR 150 cards, but it doesn't work." "Oh, you must have something weird, maybe Hauppauge changed their chipset."
Whatever. I don't like the whole "pass-the-buck" culture.
So, "maybe Hauppauge changed their chipset" wasn't coupled with a request for you to run lspci and see what it said? Hardware manufacturers are notorious for making their Windows drivers forward-compatible when they know they might switch from chip-maker X to chip-maker Y. Even worse, they often make these changes and don't even revise the model number for the device.
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I understand that, and that's fine.
What I'm saying is that by decreeing that their driver works with the card, and it actually doesn't work with the card, that's a huge waste of my time and effort. It's a negative cost for me; not only do I still have a non-working card, but now I've lost tons of hours trying to debug their driver which doesn't work.
I have nothing against volunteers, I just want them to be honest with me.
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Yes, but they say that because there are a bunch of people who DON'T work in the professional publishing world who think they need CMYK support for their family photos.
If you know you need CMYK, it's not even a discussion. If you THINK you need CMYK, you don't.
Perspective adjust (Score:3, Interesting)
Still no high colour depth? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not completely clear from the release notes: does this mean that the GIMP can now load and save images with 16 or 32 bits per colour channel, or is it still limited to 8-bit RGB despite the new GEGL engine under the hood?
It's still essentially 8-bit. (Score:3, Informative)
It's a long story, but the short version is that there's a ton of archaic, horribly outdated 8-bit legacy code gumming up the works. Until it's all replaced with 32-bit capable code, GIMP will continue to be unusable for photography beyond the party snapshot level.
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Until it's all replaced with 32-bit capable code, GIMP will continue to be unusable for photography beyond the party snapshot level.
It's fairly rair that 16 bits per channel will make the difference.
Re:It's still essentially 8-bit. (Score:5, Informative)
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The difference between 8-bit and 12-bit when working with DSLRs is actually pretty significant. You can pull a surprising amount of detail out of underexposed regions with 4096 shades that would otherwise be lost with 256.
Rounding errors (generally banding artifacts) will also be much quicker to appear with lower bit depths. If you're going to support 16 bits per channel, one may as well go all the way and support higher bit-depths too.
Re:It's still essentially 8-bit. (Score:5, Informative)
I think that what GP is getting at is that...
- Unless you're shooting RAW (DNG, 16-bit TIFF, EXR or whatever your camera supports there), you're not going to get those 12 bits anyway.
- Not too long ago, Photoshop didn't do 16bpc itself.. and it still doesn't on a ton of commands. That never stopped anybody from processing photos in the past, why should it now? Clearly it's nice if you -can- work in 16bit, but it's not going to stop hundreds of thousands of people from working with photographs for the sole reason that 16bit is unavailable.
In short, GP's parent poster acts a bit like an audiophile, claiming that every non-goldplated-connector is completely useless for listening to music the moment goldplated-connectors became available.
Oh, and I'm a graphics professional - I work with 32bpc imagery all the time as sometimes that's what you need to run film footage through extensive colorgrading processes without incurring losses.. so yes, I know very *very* well what the advantages are.. and I certainly agree that Ol' Gimpo needs at least 16bpc, but preferable 32bpc, workflow. ( Cursed lack of support for Cinepaint. )
Re:It's still essentially 8-bit. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that's not necessarily the case.
I am a professional commercial photographer and editorial photojournalist. Sure, CS3 is still my editor of choice, but the GIMP is moving ever-closer to being a viable option.
There is not a single application I can think of where someone working as a photojournalist would ever need more than what the GIMP offers.
File submission standard for newsprint is still 10 inches on the long axis @ 200 ppi. Files are then compressed to clock in at betweek 650kb-900kb. sRGB colorspace and 8 bits-per-pixel are more than enough. Pre-press does the CYMK conversion and Web crop, usually.
The level of editing (painting) done to editorial photos is minimal by standard ethical practice; and so really the tool need only be able to crop, resample, dust spot and adjust the exposure.
In fact, for funzies, I just did a complete start-to-finish editorial shoot post in GIMP 2.4. The EXIF/XMP/IPTC stuff hurts bad (please, please, please, please FIX THIS), but the actual post went fine.
Making stuff screen-ready can easily be accomplished in the GIMP as well.
I don't have a whole lot of experience with making multimedia presentations (audio slideshows, etc.) for Web and screen display in the GIMP/Linux, so I'll leave that alone for now.
On the commercial, every-photo-is-a-painting side, the GIMP might be a bit of a hindrance. The more advanced layering, color conversions, spot toning, etc. typically deployed in, say, advertising post is probably more than can be reasonably handled by the GIMP.
Admittedly, some of that sentiment may come from my being a lot more comfortable in Photoshop than GIMP.
Generally speaking, some of the resizing plugins and effects plugins that we have come to count on are not available for GIMP, and even if the same thing can be accomplished with a different set of tools, we're disinclined to learn them.
Keep in mind that more than half the professional photographers out there are self-employed, and the time required to learn a new toolset can be killer.
The GIMP has come a long way since I first started playing with Linux about 10 years ago.
It even plays fairly nicely with RAW files from my cameras.
Today, I have it (under Hardy Heron) installed on my non-production workstation, and have no doubt that in years to come, it may very well become a full-fledged alternative to Photoshop.
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It's a long story, but the short version is no
The future of GIMP (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's be honest here. I like GIMP, I generally prefer it over photoshop (for what I do). But it's not photoshop and it gets shit on for that reason. The solution: GIMP should ditch GTK/GDK and use GNUStep/Cocoa. This provides a number of advantages - free CMYK and pantone support, better font rendering, an improved UI, and direct access to artistic types. Photoshop on OS X is a dog -- the look and feel doesn't match and Adobe won't provide a 64-bit version until CS 5 (if then). An OS X native GIMP would kick it's ass.
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Just what are you running on? A Newton? PS CS2 / CS3 is / are quite happy with any recent Mac this side of a mini. And PS for Windows isn't exactly snappy on anything but a reasonably fast, memory stuffed PC. As for the 64 bit version, you're just blowing smoke. It's a 10-20% speed increase, at best, on gigabyte sized images. If you do these routinely, well then, go get Vista. I
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It is not photoshop... However if anyone wants to use photoshop in Linux they tell them use the Gimp, it is just as good... Which is bad advice. My output with Photoshop is much higher then with the GIMP, it may be just me and how I approach problems but in general I can get much more done and look a lot better with photoshop vs. the GIMP. It is not that GIMP is photoshop or the developers are trying to make it like Photoshop, However it given as a replacement where it isn't.
Photoshop is only a dog when dea
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Gimp fork. (Score:3, Funny)
I don't like the name GIMP.
Is it possible to fork GIMP and change absolutely no functionality but the name? Or is this in violation of some kind of licensing or other issue?
Re:Gimp fork. (Score:4, Interesting)
What about non-destructive text manipulation? (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that causes me problems in the Gimp is that text is rasterized as soon as it's scaled or otherwise manipulated by any means other than changing the point size in the text dialog. This means that if I have a block of text that I've resized by drag handles, or if I've rescaled the image, as soon as I edit the text content it reverts to the original point size.
Has that been fixed in any recent versions?
No Binaries (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:4, Insightful)
Why create entirely different "line", "rectangle", "polygon", and "ellipse" tools when "stroke selection" and "stroke path" do all of those -- and more?
For one reason because they don't. Stroking a selection gives a rather ugly [seul.org] circles [seul.org] compared to a real circle tools, since to much information gets lost along the way. And of course also usability, lack of proper circle tools has been an issue for a decade and yet it is still not fixed and still continues to be an issue and the issue won't go away by pretending its not there. Name a good reason why Gimp shouldn't have a set of geometry tools. I frankly can't think of one. If somebody worries that the toolbox is getting crammed, just add a way to remove tools from it.
All that aside, there is also a larger issue with the lack of those tools, namely that tools can't be plug-ins, so any new tool has to be done directly in Gimp and can't be supplied as an add-on. If they could be this issue would have already been fixed long ago.
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:4, Informative)
Then you want Inkscape instead.
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:5, Interesting)
Then you want Inkscape instead.
No really I want GIMP to be able to do this.
Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
These things should be single step operations from the main control pane.
Rich.
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:5, Insightful)
No really I want GIMP to be able to do this.
It can.
Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
Circle somebody: Ellipse select tool, select an oval. Stroke selection. Choose a line style, you're done.
Cartoon speech bubble: Ellipse selection, shift-lasso select the arrow (if you can't draw a straight enough line, convert to a path, edit the path to put an arrow in, then convert back to a selection). Fill with background colour using the paint tool (fill whole selection). Stroke selection, choose line style. Put the words in it with the text tool. If you're doing that a lot, make a generic text balloon and save it, then insert it as a layer when you need one.
These things should be single step operations from the main control pane.
Why? What's wrong with a 2-step operation? It's still relatively quick considering how often people want to do what you described (not very often; heck, the people who just want to do that generally get by with MS Paint).
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:4, Funny)
Cartoon speech bubble: Ellipse selection, shift-lasso select the arrow (if you can't draw a straight enough line, convert to a path, edit the path to put an arrow in, then convert back to a selection). Fill with background colour using the paint tool (fill whole selection). Stroke selection, choose line style. Put the words in it with the text tool. If you're doing that a lot, make a generic text balloon and save it, then insert it as a layer when you need one.
I'm seriously waiting for someone to mod this +1 funny ...
Rich.
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Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
These things should be single step operations from the main control pane.
...of Inkscape, as should be obvious given the relative complexity of a "cartoon speech bubble", and the obvious problems that'll occur when you try to resize it if you did it in a raster editor.
Photoshop needs to have everything and the kitchen sink, because Adobe can't expect normal people to pay more than $700 for their image editing needs. F/OSS has no such obligation, and is therefore free to follow UNIX's philosophy of "do one thing, and one thing well", and *drawing* is the domain of Inkscape and Xar
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Nope, you still want Inkscape. Take the cartoon speech bubble example: how do you decide how big you want it to be? The answer is "big enough to fit the text I want inside," of course! And the easiest way to do that is if the speech bubble is a vector object, so that it can just expand as you type text (also inherently vectors) into it. And the program suited to working with vec
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a complicated process, and it even makes a bit of sense, looking at it in hind-sight. But it is not intuitive. When practically every new user of a program has the same issue, the user may not be the problem. Maybe the process is fine, but it needs to be told to the user more clearly.
I use GIMP nearly every day, and really like it. I'm a fan. I'm glad to see improvements.
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You sure you don't just want a better workflow between GIMP and Inkscape, but allowing them to remain separate programs?
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Re:Windows version still lagging. (Score:5, Informative)
The 2.6.0 installer for Windows is basically ready. It just needs a little more testing and should become available in a day or two.
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to 1985 [wikipedia.org], GIMP developers...
Care to point us at a project you work on in your spare time so that we can mock it?
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:5, Informative)
Does he advertise projects he works on in his spare time as being comparable to Photoshop?
Where does GIMP advertise? And where do they claim to be comparable to Photoshop? In fact, I found
this document [gimp.org], which has the "Gimp Vision", part of which includes:
What GIMP is not:
* GIMP is not MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:4, Informative)
In their own words, "GIMP is our answer to the current lack of free (or at least reasonably priced) image manipulation software for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general."
It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor. Other (proprietary) raster editors include Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop Pro and the humble Microsoft Paint. An alternative free editor is the KOffice project, Krita. Users wanting to edit photographs will certainly want a raster editor like GIMP. Graphic designers and illustrators may prefer a vector editor depending on their tastes.
If you're not trying to compete, perhaps you shouldn't mention them and critique their pricing in the official FAQ.
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:5, Insightful)
For what 99% of people do with graphics, The GIMP DOES compete with Photoshop.
Or is Linux not a competitor to Windows because it doesn't do everything Windows does (even though it does many things better)?
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got Gimp and Photoshop on my machine. Until this latest version of Gimp was released, I had the most current version of both.
I'm always grabbing Gimp for the simple photo editing I do, because I'm more familiar with it than I am with Photoshop.
What's amazing is that my daughter, who was not familiar with either application, has decided on her own to use Gimp more often for her (admittedly basic) photo editing.
Yes, I've made a cash donation to gimp.org more than once in the past several years.
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Thing is, there are a lot of us that want to do more than what MSPaint allows (besides, it's not even available on my choice of OS), but don't need the CMYK separation or any of the other stuff. I still want to tweak levels and do color adjustments, resize pictures well, scale, crop, rotate, reduce red-eye, and so on. But I don't need Photoshop for that... I can get the capability to do everything 99% of people would ever want to do with an image for free with the GIMP, instead of paying for Photoshop. W
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I just threw out MSPaint as an example of something really low end - it does very little, but that very little is easy to do, and handles some fraction of my image manipulation needs. I too want to occasionally do stuff that it can't, primarily the sorts of things you mention.
I know both Photoshop and the GIMP are capable of everything I need, and much more. But I've tried to do the things I need in both, and in both I have pretty much utterly failed - or at the least taken an hour to figure out a 2 minut
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does he advertise projects he works on in his spare time as being comparable to Photoshop?
I've never seen any "advertisements" for the Gimp anywhere. I guess I haven't been paying attention.
That being said, the Gimp is comparable to Photoshop. You can compare anything to anything if you want, obviously. I myself enjoy comparing apples and oranges in my copious free time.
More importantly the Gimp is a free alternative to Photoshop, with different strengths and weaknesses. Both products seem to have a hellish learning curve, so you would be foolish to abandon Photoshop if you are already invested in it, and I suspect it'd be equally foolish to start an investment in Photoshop today when there is a free alternative available.
Re:It really didn't have this? (Score:4, Funny)
I myself enjoy comparing apples and oranges in my copious free time.
that sounds like a really boring hobby, you should try comparing apples with jet engines and oranges with elephants, it will make you a much more rounded individual who is happier about life in general.
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You could already do a polygonal select, it's just not the tool you'd expect to use.
"Paths Tool: Create and edit paths (B)". Click point-by-point to create the polygon; don't bother closing it, it'll connect the first and last points automatically. As a bonus, you can create arcs instead of line segments if you so desire. Once you have the polygon, just hit "Selection from Path" and presto, there's your selection.
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I just love Gimp. But why does Gimp have to separate the windows like that? Can't it have everything as a multi-document all under one window?
I thought that was the whole point of:
This enables window managers to do a much better job of managing the GIMP windows, including omitting the Toolbox and Docks from the taskbar and ensuring that the Toolbox and Docks always are above image windows.
Frankly, I liked it as it was. I hope there's an option to get back the old behavior. I often have different images in different work spaces.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In Photoshop CS3 you have the best of both worlds, you can undock the various elements and have them independently anywhere on the screen, or you can dock them in the main application window. That's always been the problem with the GIMP UI, those of us that don't like the default behaviour don't have the option of changing it (short of becoming a GIMP developer and forking the code, anyway). It doesn't look from the screenshots as if the old GIMP UI behaviour has really changed in the way implied anyway, bu
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since Gimp 2.0 (which was released years ago), you can dock any tool dialog.
Re:I just love Gimp (Score:5, Insightful)
I just love Gimp. But why does Gimp have to separate the windows like that? Can't it have everything as a multi-document all under one window?
Because MDI interfaces are an obscenity before god, and implementing one should be a corporal offense. Let window management be handled by the window manager.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
[note: I won't have a chance to try the new version until later tonight, so this post is based on earlier versions. This sounds fair to me, since the "MDI/SDI" debate has raged for centuries, and has, until now at least, been completely inapplicable to Gimp, which is neither]
Got it. Agreed.
Now show me ANY window manager which handles such a thing as well as, say, Photoshop's MDI for a single application.
It seems that everyone who makes this argument seems to be of the "virtual desktop" bunch (usually 1 appl
There is another option (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, however it should be pointed out that there is a third option - have all the toolbars and pallets docked to the top/sides of the image window. This is what Krita and Paint.net both do, and new users generally find this layout to be much easier to manage. The disadvantage is that if you are editing more than one image at a time you end up wasting space with duplicate toolbars, but as long as you retain the option to undock the pallets for advanced users, then you haven't lost anything.
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Because MDI interfaces are an obscenity before god, and implementing one should be a corporal offense. Let window management be handled by the window manager.
Or they could just rip-off other (better) applications like Paint.NET that have the best of both worlds, and which would shut up all those complainers in one fell swoop.
Why don't they? Two possibilities:
1) Either the code is such a mess of spaghetti that changing toolbar behaviors would be a total and complete bear to accomplish, and as such nobody's t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because MDI interfaces are an obscenity before god, and implementing one should be a corporal offense. Let window management be handled by the window manager.
Helloooo, tabbed interface?
Damn you, Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and unnumerable other applications with your ungodly tabbed interfaces! Why won't you just let the window manager do its job?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if you hit the option to not have all the toolboxes show up in the alt-tab window (under ubuntu), then you have nothing to alt-tab to once all your documents are closed and you want to start a new one.
It's crufty and it shows. I use linux on all my machines, and despite trying my damndest to get the gimp to play nice, it simply won't.
Re:I just love Gimp (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't it have everything as a multi-document all under one window?
Please, no! Multiple windows are great for multiple monitors and / or multiple documents being edited at once. I can't stand programs which force you into one window. If you want, you can combine all the tool docks into one, and thus have just a document window and a tool window, but please don't force us to do so!
Cheers
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Multiple windows are great for multiple monitors and / or multiple documents being edited at once.
Talking of which, it would be nice if selecting 20 documents in Windows and "open with... GIMP" didn't launch 20 separate GIMP tasks (each with its own long-winded "loading plugins..." startup sequence)
Re:No native OS X support? (Score:4, Informative)
I would tell you that, no, you should not install the Gimp if those are your requirements. Congratulations, you're free to use whatever fits your actual needs! However, the Gimp does fit my requirements and plenty of other people's, so kindly stop bashing it and go quietly use whatever your tool of choice is instead. Thank you.