Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Gimp

Gimp 1.2.0 Released 98

Posted by CmdrTaco from the merry-christmas-to-all dept.
&& writes was the first to tell us that The Gimp has now reached v1.2.0. Congratulations to all the hackers that made it happen. I couldn't live without my gimp! (God I love saying that)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Gimp 1.2.0 Released More

Gimp 1.2.0 Released

Comments Filter:
  • After such recent spectacular release flops as Netscape 6, Win 2000, Redhat 7, and the Pentium 4, it is great to see that the Gimp people have actually released something worth the upgrade. I have been using the 1.1.x releases for a while now and am rather amazed at the amount of UI cleanup and backend upgrading that went on between the 1.0 and 1.2. I am very excited to grab a copy of this wonderful piece of software. Perhaps other companies should aspire to be more like the Gimp developers. :)
  • I have a ArtPad II. Previously, under RedHat 6 (XFree 3.3.5), I had it working all good and peachy. However it doesn't work now that I've switched to RedHat 7.

    In XF86Config-4 I have:

    Under Module:
    Load "wacom"

    Then later,
    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "ArtPadII"
    Driver "wacom"
    Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
    Option "BaudRate" "9600"
    EndSection

    Why does this not work?

    Now that the gimp has better tablet support, I'd love to make the switch from Photoshop.

    *sigh* I just wish it had better text capabilities. (Like in Photoshop 6)

    Thanks, Keir
  • Oh man a Mac version of the Gimp would absolutely rule. If those MacGimp people are reading I hope they're working hard..I hope they sell CDROMS or something when they are done because I'd pay big bucks for one. As long as it's cheaper than PhotoShop, comes with source, and can be scripted with AppleScript for batch processing..
  • I don't mind the technology level -- my needs are modest -- but the crapulous interface restrictions still place the Gimp well behind Win* equivalents like Paintshop Pro, alas. Take a simple screenshot and try to save it as a GIF -- you can't, GIF is grayed out of the filetype selection dropdown. I'm sure there is some arcane reason connected with layers or channels, but the principle that software should not stand in the user's way seems to have been forgotten here.

    The user interface paradigm is the one remaining problem with what is otherwise an excellent program, but it's a big problem, and remains unaddressed by the authors for reasons I have never seen explained. To be told, when trying to do something simple like save the file as .eps, that it can't do it because the output format doesn't support some feature of internal representation is merely ludicrous: if I want it saved as PostScript, I want it saved as PostScript, please, and I want the software to immediately undertake whatever flattening or conversion is necessary to perform this simple task. Every other graphics editor does this without being told...why not the Gimp?

  • Well, besides the obvious CMYK and color stuff, PS seems to work better with huge files and/or many many layers. The Gimp seems to eat up a lot of memory and doesn't use it effectively (there is a setting somewhere that helps a little but not much). But otherwise for a lot of tasks The Gimp really is a damn fine piece of work.

  • Re:great program, but it isn't keeping up (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Take a simple screenshot and try to save it as a GIF -- you can't

    Wrong, at least with 1.1.32. Yes, the item in the pulldown list is greyed, but leaving it at "by extension" and using '.gif' explains exactly the problem: gifs can support only indexed color modes, and screenshots are typically RGB. Or, if you've done any web graphics work, you'll know this already and can convert the image to indexed easily.

    Every other graphics editor does this without being told

    It's not well handled with whatever old version of photoshop i have to use at work.

    Please, next time check your facts before you post.

  • Hmmm... does it do CMYK, duotones, or Pantone colors yet?

    How about editable type? With kerning and leading controls?

    Support any color management systems, or is it just for low-end web only graphics?

    How many levels of undo?

    Recordable history?

    REally, i'd like to know that. I just went to their site, and i can't find any specific document outline the features of the current release.

  • For those of us with Photoshop, what does Gimp have to offer?

    Freedom baby, Freedom.

    Also supposedly the gimp can be scripted easier (I think, I haven't figure it out.) PhotoShop scripting is more difficult because Adobe doesn't want people buying one copy and then setting it up as a batch processor, they want one copy on every desk or whatever.

  • Yep (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    The files do exist - I'll have to do a "make install" again as I just deleted it and went back to v1.1.30 earlier... I'll post back here.

    I did file a bug report with the GIMP crew as well...

  • Re:patch (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Per Jensen is the unoffical maintainer of the patch. It is available here [hackmack.org]. Be sure to do a "make distclean" before applying it.

  • Whatever happened to WilberWorks [wilberworks.com] .. some kind of commercial entity for the Gimp. Sold a handy CD-ROM with art and a copy of a Gimp manual. Will there be a 1.2 CD?


  • 1. It's too early to criticise The Gimp [gimp.org] for not supporting JPEG2000 [http] because the JPEG2000 image standard has not been finalised. To quote the Final CD [jpeg.org] from the official JPEG2000 website, [jpeg.org]

    • "anyone implementing software according to the description available in this FCD, risks not being compliant with the final JPEG2000 International Standard (IS), which is due to be published some time in 2001 as IS15444-1.
    So don't expect any projects either to implement JPEG2000 yet or to be able to get JPEG2000 patent licenses (see below) to do so yet.

    2. Another important issue (stated here [jpeg.org]) is that the royalty-free fee-free JPEG2000 patent licenses may apply only to conforming implementations. One such requirement of conforming implementations is to have copy control implemented including methods

    • 1) To protect access to the image
    • 2) To identify the image, source or owner in a secure way that cannot be removed by unauthorised parties.
    • 3) To indicate integrity (images that are not allowed to be edited).

    It is not clear how the patent holders will interpret these requirements for open-source implementations that want to use a GPL license (as for Gimp) which requires the whole software to be modifiablefor any purpose, potentially in ways which could violate the conformance requirements.

    --William

  • The text capabilities are a limitation of X afaik.
    you should try gimp-freetype, which is truely excellent.


  • JPEG2000 copy control is described in the document JPEG2000 requirements and profiles version 6.3 [jpeg.org] under section 5.8 Security, p.12, published in July 2000.

    The JPEG2000 copy control requirements were apparently added only recently as part of the application requirements but the wider goal is to "ensure that appropriate tools and technologies are adopted in JPEG2000 standard to fullfil [the requirements]". They are not mentioned at all in the full draft ISO/IEC specification Final CD [jpeg.org] published on 16th March 2000.

  • Having worked in software, hardware, networking, AND graphic design/layout for many years, I would like to ask one question of those of you who've submitted posts comparing gimp on linux with Photoshop on Windows. Do you know anyone that uses Photoshop on Windows? All the designers I know (myself included) would always use Mac OS (given the choice). While the gimp is a good option, a powerful program, it's not designed for Mac OS. Since professional printers want files submitted on HFS format disks, generated using the AdobePS driver on Mac OS (if this combination is possible), it just makes sense to do it that way. Unless you have personally experienced the headache of trying to create files in Gimp's native format, then export them to tiff, then ftp them to a Mac, then import them into Photoshop-native format, make any necessary corrections, and export them again to .eps (if you use PageMaker, not necessary for InDesign), you'll realize that it's just so much easier to make your file in photoshop and place it into a publication. When gimp makes it to the platform that a majority of graphic designers use (Mac OS), is stable, and has the support of Adobe programs, I would pay as much for it as I pay for Photoshop (which is a lot). I don't see that day coming any sooner than I see Microsoft throwing Windows away, shipping a $200 version of Linux to the OEMs, and porting all their software to Linux. The gimp does, have a distinct advantage over Photoshop in one regard: since thousands of people bootleg Photoshop every day, they have another option where they can give away as many copies as they like without breaking any agreemets!

    Happy holidays all.
    Brandon
  • No. First, doing image processing the way he suggests has been tried by a number of others (me included). It's so much simpler to operate directly on a raster that the users themselves have abandoned this sort of program as they've gained access to machines that can handle the full resolution image.

    Second, listening to the customer on design decisions this is unfortunately a way to be a follower, not a leader, because the customer doesn't know what they want until it's too late. In the case of this idea, much too late.

    Third, that's just not the way Free Software works. Coders do what they want to do, and the user's needs are a distant second to those of the developer. A very large and healthy commercial market exists if you want things the ohter way around.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • That should read "design decisions this big".
  • Even two months ago I saw generic RAM for $60 - $75, but Comp USA will still charge you $120 or so for a generic PC100 DIMM. It just depends on "how deep" you dig into the RAM market, just like in any market.
  • One version is even GPLed.

    Now seeing as gtk became a standard lib and Photogenics' author Paul Nolan is working on the GUI for the new Amiga I wonder what what you just said could do for system design.
  • it'd be better if instead of linking directly to
    the ftp site for this project, you linked to the
    list of mirror sites around the world..

    e.g http://www.gimp.org/download.html

    -jason

    disclaimer, i run a gimp mirror site in australia,
    yes, 1.2.0 is available from it.
  • Man, nothing like a little coding elitism to put people in their place, eh?
  • Not quoting you:
    "
    This stuff could compete with Photoshop if it got more expensive.
    "

    That's _honestly_ what I read!
    Funniest thing is it's also true. Nothing free can be any good can it? (No - stealing doesn't count)

    FatPhil


    -- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards

  • Re:Bring out the GIMP (Score:3)

    by Brize ( 13181 ) on Monday December 25, 2000 @09:44AM (#1394809) Homepage Journal
    There is a Win32 port:

    http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

    It's not up to date with the very latest, but it's not bad.

    Brian
  • I'd also like to have 'live effects' (essentially effects like drop shadow, etc. that can be applied, removed, and modified at will without making a permanent change to the image). I find that I use this feature a lot with Photoshop. Support for vector types would be good too. The best overall image editor that I've been using lately is Fireworks 3. It can do much of what both Photoshop and Illustrator can do, has a superior scripting capability, and is much cheaper. Each editor has it's strong points, but I could have only one, Fireworks would be it. If Gimp is going to pick a direction to go in, aiming to reproduce the Fireworks feature set would be a good start.
  • There is a commercial plugin that does CMYK. You are free to purchase it if you wish.
  • The license strips you of your freedom.
  • http://manual.gimp.org/
  • Having CMYK support be an "optional" feature isn't likely to make the GIMP a photoshop killer anytime soon. For many, many people, working in any other color space or delivering files not in CMYK isn't even an option.

    Kind of like if say koffice decided to make saving files an "optional feature"....
  • Hmmm... does it do CMYK, duotones, or Pantone colors yet?


    No.


    How about editable type?


    Yes!


    With kerning and leading controls?


    Don't know enough about these


    Support any color management systems, or is it just for low-end web only graphics?


    Don't know enough about it


    How many levels of undo?


    Not sure exactly, but I've never hit it before


    Recordable history?


    Like macros? No, but it does have _very_ good scripting support. Check out http://www.cooltext.com/ to see what can be done with a little scripting.

  • To a large degree, 'multiresolution editing' can be achieved by specifying the resolution of everything - brushes, filter parameters, selections etc. in some kind of global coordinate system, instead of being pixel-based.

    So, when applied to a 100x100 pixel image, a blur filter with a radius of '2' has an effective radius of 2 pixels, but on a 1000x1000 image, has an effective radius of 20 pixels. This may or may not be the effect you desire, but a toggle between pixel and global coordinates shouldn't be a major.

    However, since bitmaps are necessarily pixel-based, you run into problems when you try and duplicate the effect of a 16x16 pixel brush to a 32x32 pixel image on a 3200x3200 pixel image.

    You either end up with an extremely pixelated brush, or you specify the brush in terms of a clipping path and a fill-pattern.. Nasty.

    You could also simply scale up the brush and apply a vector clipping path, but youd end up with a hopelessly pixellated brush with perfectly smooth edges.

    Either way, you might as well use a vector drawing program, or create your images at the largest possible size and invest in a supercomputer to render your edits in close-to-real-time.

    Image pyramids and wavelet/progessively encoded images have their uses, but i think most professional designers would rather stick with the tried-and-true Photoshop, working on fat machines with lots of RAM than work with these unconventional technologies.

    Thats not to say I don't think it will happen, but rather that these things take a lot of time to mature.

  • I don't see how having it as an "optional" feature differs much from it being a "primary" feature. GIMP is structured so that everything in it is a plugin.
  • I used to think that way ("why can't I just save as a GIF?") but then when I started using the program for some real work, and took a time to understand the issues involved (e.g. palettes/RGB, alpha channels, etc.), it was all very clear.

    I think now I'd rather not have it deciding what palette to use for GIF conversion (to take that example). My personal preference is to learn from an obstinate but knowledgeable teacher who forces me to work things out myself, than have some-one else just do stuff for me...

  • A few things:

    1) Doing things automatically, like image-type conversions for saving, is _not_ user-friendly. That's a terrible interface, because the user just thinks he's saving, when in fact, he is both saving and converting. That is very, very bad. File formats are more than just internal representation differences. The differences show up on the outside, too.

    2) In GIMP 1.2, for most conversions, it will actually notify you of the problem, and pop up a new window to show you what the preview of the saved version will look like. That is a _great_ design. You are both notified of the problem, and started into the process of fixing it. It works wonderfully.

    3) I actually prefer GIMP's user interface to most others I've seen. It doesn't take a lot of screen space, everything is easy to get to, and it just works really well. For newbies, having to right-click on the image sometimes takes getting used to, but once you tell them about it, within a day they love it!
  • Sorry but I can't agree with that, at least, in the following sense:

    Without wanting to start flame wars on this, I's like to give my gentlemanly opinion on why free software isn't going anywhere these days, but open source is:

    Open source is just a name, in many ways just a buzzword for the people with money, and in a lot of ways, it's the same thing as free software.

    I can understand the purity needed at this crucial time when the concept of what has long been seen as a service can now be provided for free without any corporates butting in and stealing it all. In a way, that's what sparks off complaints when one of these words or definitions is used rather than another.

    In a way, this is also how the commercialisation of GPLed software has damaged the ideal, so that top KDE developers for example can say that they they do this because they know there is money behind it in the end. Which is fine, but where do you draw the line? That's where purity is important.

    And I admire people like Bruce perens, like great leaders, trying to keep this thing pure until it's known well enough to be considered established. And maybe it'll happen.

    But it's that old myth that gets me, that is' made for the coders, by the coders, so anyone else can go and buy something instead. No, I'm sorry, I can't agree with that.

    I wonder if half of the people reading this see how important this work is? If open source commercialises, fine, if it's making this stuff known. THere are many, many causes for gpl software. Least of which projects like GNUMED (gnumed.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]) or any others that try to make this freedom cross the digital divide. It's crucial that the people who are not as able as the rest can benefit from this.

    Most people won't see this as an incredibly just cause, and it may become as complicated and sour as most other causes, but it's only as powerful as we make it. Even bill gates ahs given up on helping people through technology, and for all his faults, I believe him. Most people are beyond this kind of help, but this doesn't have to be the way.

    If everyone knew how important it is to have software that is free, and if that softwear were put to good use, we could really change this world around.

    Ok. Hmmm.. Have a good xmas.

    Ale
  • The only downside to automatic previews is that they usually appear regardless of the image size. I haven't used 1.2.0 yet, does it ask you whether you want such a display?

    I've been working with some large (9000x12000) images lately and the time taken to render so much as a zoom is horrendous (gimp 1.1 and 1.0). Not that this isn't what I expected. But having any kind of extra display load automatically can result in as much as a 5 minute wait or more. Previews/thumbnails need to have some kind of image size detection to deal with this.

    I find the user interface to be extremely useable as well. The elimination of menus in favor of a right-click system gives more of the screen to the image while still maintaining a windowed appearance. And almost every feature has a keyboard shortcut. I like that.

    No matter how slow the GIMP is, I bet it's still faster than Photoshop 6.. Wow.

    Lime

  • So where is the most recent "Trusssst meeeee" screen? That one makes me wonder if my copy of the gimp isn't "owned". ;-)


    --
  • Not even $150. I saw some generic 128MB PC133 SDRAM going for $45 the other week. The more name brand stuff like Micron et. al. goes for $60 or so. I even saw some generic PC133 256MB DIMMs going for around $100. No matter how you slice it, NOT filling your PC with RAM is a bad idea.
  • or, you can find it at:

    http://www.gimp.org/win32/ [gimp.org]

    Like the article said, it's not up to date, but it's still sweet for when you can't use Linux (I use it at school to do all my graphics for Computer Science).
  • Live effects are spiffy at first, and for some things they work okay. The problem I, and most other perfectionists have with them though is a lack of flexability. It is just as easy to make drop shadows without 'effecting the image' on grouped layers that you have TONS of control over. I'm the type that goes and airbrushes variations into my artwork. Stock shadows and such just don't cut it.

    Now though, they do have their place in scripting. If you want a bunch of cheaply made web images with drop shadows you can really smash them out with an "action." In general though I don't like them enough to ever use them. Something I would much rather see in Gimp now is a freakin' VISABLE BRUSH EDGE.

  • ftp://froody.res.cmu.edu/pub/gimp/

    Ah, a machine in a dorm room. That'll handle the load from the Slashdot effect really well! ;)

  • Now for those of us stuck in the windows world, the wait begins for it to be ported to the Windoze C Libraries and recompiled. I hope I can have my GIMP up and running in the next week.

    Secret windows code
  • Great! Where's your sourceforge project and how can I compile your code? :) Gcc, emacs, and vi are free...
  • Maybe I didn't express (know?!) my point very clearly... :-)

    First up, I have no comment about the technology issue - I agree a user doesn't need to be specially concerned about the underlying system architecture, as long as it meets her needs.

    I was replying to a comment that I felt implied someone shouldn't ask for any features if they weren't prepared to code them themselves. I personally disagree, for the reasons I stated about efficiencies of having specialists. I make no comment about the particular request(s).

    I believe access to source code is fundamental to advancing best coding practice and taking software development forward from its current very hit and miss results. But I don't really know if "Free Software" or "Commercial Software" is the answer to mankind's problems.

    It worries me a little to hear "coders do what they want, and the user's needs are a distant second".. what is this Free Software actually for? I'm reminded (with no accuracy!) of a comment Linus Torvalds make about comp sci masturbation or something.

    Is it just so we software hacks have a fun time and then maybe move into real or commercial software roles to actually meet some of the world's needs?

  • Corrected URL for the GIMP (Score:4)

    by mholve ( 1101 ) on Monday December 25, 2000 @08:20AM (#1394830)
    The REAL URL for the GIMP home page. [gimp.org]

    You can download it here. [gimp.org]

  • I dunno. I got a Corsair PC133 128MB SDRAM DIMM a few months back with my system, and i guess i over paid. My main criteria was to buy everything from one place, because i was confident that though i could probably find cheaper prices mixing and matching suppliers, i didn't want to face a situation of having a problem with something and having the people who sold me the motherboard tell me it's the video cards fault, and have the video card vendor tell me it's not their fault, but rather it's a rare glitch between the video card and ethernet card, or something...

    That plus, i only had to pay one shipping charge rather than get nickle and dimed to death...

    Oh well... With everything that cheap, i may as well upgrade to 256 or 384 megs... Drop a couple more bucks to get from my Athlon 700 to a 1 Gig Athlon, and i'll be happier than anything except for the fact that i wish i'd had a few more dollars at the outset so i could have had a G4 to run Mac OS and LInuxPPC on rather than Windows and Linux... I'm stuck learning one OS and having another OS on my machine which i hate, just so if i need to troubleshoot anything... oh, and run dreamweaver.

    I know i'm way off topic, but moderators should be kind, since it's near christmas an all...

  • If the standard really calls for copy control, then the people who thought it up are not being very smart, I think. Do they really think that there's anything they can put in the file format that is sufficient to prevent copying/altering of files? (remember CSS?)

    At the risk of sounding paranoid, this looks to me like another atttempt to take away our freedom.

    Besides, I think that Free Software should not acknowledge software patents. See Brian Martin's piece on information liberation [uow.edu.au].

    So the GIMP developers could do several things:

    1. don't support JPEG2000 if it uses patented algoriths.
    2. crack eventual safety algorithms, and support it anyway (civil disobedience)

    The first is politically most correct, but the second has more hacker appeal, I guess :-)

    I think the previous poster is right in assuming that Free Software will not get a license.

    Roland

  • GIMP 1.2.0 works ok on my machine (Solaris 8, SPARC). I don't know if Solaris 8 and Solaris 7 packages are compatible or whatever (I've never built a package before), but I can try to build a binary package if you need one.
  • It should be fairly easy to run X applets on OS X if you have the proper libraries installed. Since XFree86 now runs on OS X, all you need to do is to write a simple app to watch the X11 port and display the application, just like what you're able to do with X Servers for windows.
  • I've been using the Windows version of the GIMP for a week or two now, quite heavily.

    THE GIMP IS A MAJOR OPEN SOURCE SUCCESS STORY!

    And it's jolly fun showing the Windows users this GTK application on Win32. Explode they haids. Particularly when I break the news to them that we can't afford Aus$1000 for another Photoshop licence, so this is what they get to use. Heh.

  • Please use a mirror (Score:3)

    by Moderator ( 189749 ) on Monday December 25, 2000 @08:33AM (#1394836)
    US Mirrors:

    ftp://ftp.insync.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
    ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/gimp/
    ftp://froody.res.cmu.edu/pub/gimp/
    ftp://gimp.cs.stevens-tech.edu/mirrors/gimp/
    ftp://ftp.ameth.org/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/

    Thank you.

    --
  • Here [easynet.be] is a working mirror...
  • As of v1.1.31 up to 1.2.0, something broke along the way that causes serious (fatal) problems on Solaris 7 on SPARC hardware. GTK, Glib, etc. all up-to-date.

    Gimp-WARNING **: module load error: /opt/gnome/lib/gimp/1.2/modules/libcolorsel_gtk.so : ld.so.1: gimp: fatal: /opt/gnome/lib/gimp/1.2/modules/libcolorsel_gtk.so : open failed: No such file or directory

    Gimp-WARNING **: Failed to open palette file /RAID/home/michael/.gimp-1.2/palettes/Bears: can't happen?

    Fun stuff like that. v1.1.30 was the last known to work. With v1.1.31, SMP support broke and was quickly fixed in v1.1.32 so that it would at least compile again, but something is still wrong. Possibly something in the code re-organiation...

  • great program, but it isn't keeping up (Score:5)

    by q000921 ( 235076 ) on Monday December 25, 2000 @08:39AM (#1394839)
    The Gimp is a great program, well written, and very useful. But I'm afraid it isn't keeping up with technology.

    One area is probably fairly easy to address: photo manipulation programs are used more and more for web design and page layout, and for that, they need features like better vector drawing support, page layout and text support, and output plugins for formats like Flash.

    Another area is more fundamental. The Gimp right now uses bitmaps as its fundamental data representation. That makes even simple operations very compute intensive, and even simple operations take up a lot of resources to undo. Combining wavelet-based and multiresolution editing with edit lists provides a way out: it allows the results of operations to be displayed quickly, operations can be undone quickly, and often images (e.g., JPEG2000 compressed images) don't even have to be decompressed fully to be displayed or manipulated. I think addressing this issue will require a fundamental rewrite.

    Anyway, for now, I'm really grateful to have the Gimp available: it's a reliable workhorse, and even most commercial programs are still behind the state of the art.

  • This probably doesn't matter to most people, but The GIMP is open source.

    If over the course of your life you've grown frustrated and irritated with companies' lack of support and care, then you might come to appreciate open source for its own sake.

    While a proffesional graphics designed should use whatever tool best does the job, someone who only uses Photoshop casually might decide to use The GIMP even if it lacks a feature or two, just because it's open source.

    I don't know much about GIMP's technical superiority(if any) over Photoshop, but I use it because a) it runs on my machine, and b) it's open source.

    That's enough for me(but I don't make my money off it, either :).

    Dave

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)

  • How about proper CMYK support? Colour management profiles?

    As much as I dig the GIMP, it unfortunately does not do very well as a prepress tool yet.

  • For a second there, I thought the gimp was sleeping [imdb.com].


    -------
  • So, the win users get snubbed this time.

  • Hmm, most computer program users don't write programs. They are the users. You don't grow the plants and keep the animals that you eat, do you? Probably not, and if you do, you almost certainly don't mine (or whatever?!?) the silicon that goes in your computer. etc etc. The standard of living we enjoy is because the economy grows through the efficiency gain of people specialising in doing one thing well. A graphic designer shouldn't have to be a coder too.

    Is open source just about writing code for other people who write code? I hope not. The comments/wishes/*needs* of the users should be paramount to the coding effort, surely?

  • I think the worst part of GIMP, at least for a newbie is the documentation. When for example, I want to get help for the Text tool, I get

    toolbox help page
    Index

    (/toolbox/toolbox.html)

    Sorry but the help file for toolbox is not yet done.

    /Karin & Olof

    Any user of GIMP - even non-programmers - can participate in this effort. And for programmers it is nice if they sometimes do the necessary things and not only the things that are fun. Else Linus is right and we won't be able to compete on the "polish" front. I don't mind whether a program has a nice box or a nice picture while installing. But when in one of "my" projects I want to do some file conversions, and I can't get GIMP to do this straight away, why should I use it? I don't know whether the task really is difficult with GIMP. I found another program (ImageMagick) where I looked into the documentation for a few minutes, and then I had it working.

  • The Gimp has support for whatever types of fonts X supports. If you have True Type fonts working for X, they'll work for The Gimp.

  • How about editable type?
    Yes!

    By editable, i don't mean "can you type into it" but rather "can you type something into it, and later go back and change the type, or does the type immediately get rasterized as soon as you click "okay""? :)

    With kerning and leading controls?
    Don't know enough about these

    Kerning is adusting the space between pairs of letters within a word. Leading is adjusting the spacing between lines of text (in a paragraph, for instance).

    Support any color management systems, or is it just for low-end web only graphics?

    Don't know enough about it

    Well, it's a "no" for now, until it supports CMYK. Essentially, colormanagement allows you to input information about your monitor and viewing conditions, as well as your output device (laser printer, inket jet printer, offset printer) so that the GIMP can adjust the colors to of your image which you see on screen to more faithfully appear on your screen as it will when it's printed. But, native 4 color support is needed, as well as a device independant space, like LAB.

    How many levels of undo?

    Not sure exactly, but I've never hit it before

    Fair enough :)

    Recordable history?

    Like macros? No, but it does have _very_ good scripting support. Check out http://www.cooltext.com/ to see what can be done with a little scripting.

    Like recordable macro's. Tell it to record, do your work, save the recording of it, and apply those steps to other images... In such a way that an end user wouldn't need to learn C, C++, Perl, Python, or anything else besides how to operate the program itself...
  • How many months waiting for the next "jpeg progressive enabled" (progressive jpeg was added in version 1.1.1...) version to come out of unstable! Finally, i really hope Debian 2.2 "Potato" dumps the buggy "rotate broken" 1.1.17 version inmediatly, 1.0.x is just too old now, stable or not. Anyway, this is a good present, one of the few desktop open source products we can be proud of. Now if only one of the open source office suites could reach the functional and speedy level The Gimp now has... Alas, but it will be just a matter of time, after some years Mozilla is now paying off :)

    --

  • Wow... the prices dropped quite a bit since i bought my new computer two months ago... :)
  • GNUmed is an interesting example. It's a vertical-market application. I'm not sure that's near the bottom of the list of things we do best so far, but it's not at the top. For better or worse, we seem to do systems programming best so far.

    In their place, I would be writing grant applications right now. Having written those before, I can tell you it's a distinct possibility to get grant funding for this sort of application.

    Whether or not it succeeds depends on their finding programmers to do it while being paid, or (and this would be worse) volunteers willing to do it for the cause. Grad students on a grant will be willing to do it to an external specification. Volunteers? They will want to have a lot to do with the design, and will leave doors open for implementing those features they aren't interested in, but will they do them? That's a very chancy thing.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I actually think the interface is rather impressive. First, a couple corrections: you don't have to right click inside the image to bring up the menu: you can use that little arrow up in the top left corner, where the rulers meet to do the same thing. It may not be obvious, but it works, and I managed to figure it out on my own. Also, you are quite correct about the lack of need of a maximize button on a dialog, but some of that depends on the window manager being used. I myself like having it there...

    However, back to what I was saying about liking the interface. I like the ability to right click on the image wherever I am and get the menu. It saves my poor arm some mousing, and involves less thought and aim to hit a menu correctly. It also saves screen real estate: had it not been done that way, each image would have needed a menu bar to hold the menu. That would take up a lot of space when a bunch of windows are open. The only other alternative would be to use a big bounding window like Photoshop, which I personally can't stand - it is much too constraining. Being able to pull windows all over the screen is much nicer.

    Also, I am quite happy with the cleaning up of the Gimp's interface. The description bar at the top of the tool options and other dialogs is a simple thing that adds a lot to the look and feel. Overall I think this release is a huge leap over the previous one. Great work everybody!
  • The Gimp has support for GIF and TIFF with LZW compression, i.e. the Unisys patented algorithm.

    There is a warning not to use these plugins if you are a US resident, of course.

  • Like macros? No, but it does have _very_ good scripting support. Check out http://www.cooltext.com/ to see what can be done with a little scripting.

    Like recordable macro's. Tell it to record, do your work, save the recording of it, and apply those steps to other images... In such a way that an end user wouldn't need to learn C, C++, Perl, Python, or anything else besides how to operate the program itself...

    I'm a fan of Photoshop myself, but I think that anyone making a living using it wouldn't mind learning a scripting language if it meant more flexibility. There have been times where I would have killed to have some form of scripting to do basic if/then/else operations with images. If I'm paying $600 for an item of software, I don't want it trading user friendliness for flexibility.

    Of course, I think actions should stay there, as well, for the times when scripting simply isn't called for.
  • That's what I read too. Weird.


    See you in hell,
    Bill Fuckin' Gates®.
    • A GUI that works.
    • Real application support.
    • Real hardware support.
    • Non-Loki games.
    • COM and ActiveX.
    • A fast and functional web browser.
    • A userbase of millions.

    Linux's vaunted "stability" is fairly meaningless when you consider what it doesn't do. Hello, a piece of shit of stable. But all it does is lay on the ground and stink. Just like Linux.


    See you in hell,
    Bill Fuckin' Gates®.

  • I hope that they make a mac version. The folks at MacGimp.org [macgimp.org] have way too much work to do to get it to run, even under OS X.
    This stuff could compete with Photoshop if it got more exposure.

    Never trust a guy who has his IP address tattoed to his arm, especially if it's DHCP.
  • Gimp 1.2 lets you later change type after its been typed in. However, it does not let you change type after it has been put through effects.
  • I just told you what is wrong with it. The users don't have certain essentail liberties, such as the freedom to copy it, to modify it, and to redistribute the modifications. If a program does not pass the license test, I abstain from it, even if it would otherwise be suitable. The Photoshop license fatally flaws an otherwise good program.
  • The freedom you get with the GIMP is the freedom to modify, copy, and otherwise share the program and the source.
    The freedom you lose with Photoshop is the very freedom you gain with Free software. I consider such freedom to be of far more importance than a program being closer to meeting my needs.
    An analogy: Even if I have nothing to say against the government, I would still like to have the right to speak against the government.
  • Check out the Gimp Splash Screen History [gimp.org], funny stuff. Wonder what the splash for 1.2 looks like....
  • No duotones or pantones, and furthermore they never will happen due to legal issues. CMYK is only sorta supported -- you can decompose your image into CMYK, edit the layers and recompose, but it's a far cry than the seamless RGB support.

    Editable type is available via "Dynamic Text" support (a plugin?). Kerning (and possible leading) is available via the FreeType plugin. However, I don't know whether it works simultaniously with Dynamic Text (or reimpliments its features).

    No commercial color management systems are supported, or will be, due to licensing issues. Sucks, no?

    As many levels of undo are supported as you need.

    Not sure 'bout recordable history.
  • I just finished compiling and installing 1.1.32 literally an hour ago. Off to the ftp again...
  • Some things that I wish made it into the GIMP this time around , but maybe for the next version?

    Otherwise, the GIMP is coming along nicely - very well done! My only gripe is a bug under Solaris that's a show-stopper. [slashdot.org]

  • I say I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say "multiresolution editing"

    Probably he means the image you are manipulating is only a preview of the image (smaller resolution), while editing operations on the "real" image are queued, so they can be performed later on the real image.

    This would let you quickly edit an image using a lower resolution, and when you are satisfied with the result you could reapply the same operations on the final image (and go for a coffee or two).

    This could be implemented using scripting, of course. Basically, what is needed is a way for the Gimp to record macros and then apply them on another versione of the same image (with more resolution).

    Another possiblity would be to have the queued operations be performed in background while you are still editing.

    In any case, it should be really useful:

    • if your machine is not fast enough :-)
    • if the images are really huge, so working on a preview is OK.

    AFAIK, there is some work going on to separate the GIMP rendering engine from the GUI, so it can be integrated/reused in other programs). As a side effect, it could also allow doing this.

  • It looks like an older TigerT image, with a baloon over the moon, kinda bluish overall.

    I'm still using the file they include as "gimp_logo.ppm" but I tweak it's colors to suite my particular theme(s). :)

    • it's free
    • the filters are free
    • more flexible scriptability
    • ugly/confusing ui

    I think it's comparable to Photoshop 4, but since it's all free there's billions of filters and scripts that come with it.

    Another issue that's pretty minor unless you use virtual desktops is that files open in separate windows rather than in children of a main window.

  • I really think its amazing. The Gimp now provides us with every feature that Photoshop does, and then some. Why would anyone PAY for Photoshop now it defies belief.

    I honestly think that Gimp is the best advertisment for Open Source we could wish for, and now that PhotoShop is redundant, I look forward to the death of 3DStudioMax !!! :-)

  • The largest challenge the GIMP folks have is porting GTK+ to OS X. Eg. Replacing the X calls in the GDK library to Quartz calls. This really wouldn't be too hard. You can download Apple development tools (GCC based) from their developer web site. The nice thing about things that are GTK+ based is that all you have to do is port GDK to a new platform. Recompile glibc for OS X. And poof you can compile GTK+ and in turn Gimp, and GNOME. Don't forget, under the hood. OS X is essentially a Mach based FreeBSD.
  • The only problem is that it doesn't run under Mac OS X. You forget the Photoshop revenue for Adobe is still split ruffly 55/45 in favor of the Mac. Someone needs to spend a weekend porting over GDK in GTK+. The reason you wont see GIMP in more places is because most newspapers use Apple Script. A very powerfull scripting language that automates there work flow. Also I haven't seen Quark, or InDesign importing GIMP files as of late.
  • Probably he means the image you are manipulating is only a preview of the image (smaller resolution), while editing operations on the "real" image are queued, so they can be performed later on the real image.

    Live Picture and Xres did that... I *think* Live Picture was acquired by Adobe, while Xres was bought out by Macromedia. Then there was Specular Collage. All in all, they were impressive in that they let you perform manipulations on images which were too big to manipulate normally, due to RAM constraints. But in the end, their main purpose really ended up being for compositing (at least in my experience and those of others i've talked to).

    They arrived during the time of the first power macintoshes. 60-80 MHz PPC 601'. Their needs have disappeared across the years, since most people that actually have need for them also have photoshop, which, with it's layers performs the compositing just as well as the other programs. Plus, RAM got cheaper. And of course, Moore's law kept in effect, making todays computers (according to my calculator) somewhere between 64 and 128 times faster than they were back in 93-94.

    Really though, unless you're producing posters or using absurd amounts of layers, most machines available these days can handle quite a bit of image processing... Just remember to get enough RAM to hold your OS, image editting application, and 3 to 5 times the size of your uncompressed image.

    the ram issue was abit more of a challenge way back when. A 4 color 8.5 x 11 is about 28 megs. that'd mean 74 megabytes of RAM, outside the OS and app. Quite a bit of money. These days, 128 megs goes for what? $150? Seems like it's a better use of resources to buy more ram than it is to spend the time completely overhauling the GIMP for something speed, when that will come along just fine on it's own. Maybe some tweaking here or there, but just look at photoshop as a speed reference. If it's as fast as that, it's usable. If it's slower, figure out why and speed it up...
  • Its not open source, and it costs $$$$s.

  • Okay, now what's wrong with it?
  • I want to know how well it compares to ImageReady. We use it constantly when doing web graphics because it has excellent options for previewing compression settings and animating GIFS. And don't tell me animated GIFs are outdated, I know it already but they're still cool sometimes.
  • I believe a complete rewrite is in the works as we speak, for some of the very reasons you mention... The web page or CVS tree should have more info for you. I remember checking out a gimp-1.3 tree from cvs about a year ago which only consisted of a bit of documentation explaining what was going to be done post 1.2.

    I dont remember any of the specifics, I'm not a graphics person...
  • You're living in the ice ages.

    128MB DIMMs are $50 *including* shipping.
    256MB DIMMs are around $95 *including* shipping.

    See http://www.pricewatch.com.
  • For those of us with a stable, fast, reliable operating system, what does Windows have to offer?

  • "How The Gimp Stole Adobe's Employees' Christmas Bonuses".

    'nuff said :)

    - Rei
  • Well, recording and replaying is one approach to getting some of the benefits. But it isn't quite what I mean.

    If multiresolution representations are implemented well, you perform the image processing operations directly in the compressed domain and often never have to touch most of the coefficients in the image. Many forms of color adjustments (with or without masks), sharpening, smoothing, and painting fall into that domain. There is no need to replay anything, and you can inspect full resolution results instantly.

  • The ideal solution is, of course, to have the program offer you to perform the conversion, and you can choose whether to cancel, let it do that with default parameters, or let it give you a popup window with all the parameters.

  • Re:Who was complaining the other day... (Score:3)

    by q000921 ( 235076 ) on Monday December 25, 2000 @09:20PM (#1394880)
    Those are good and valid questions. Let me provide a bit more information.

    It seems like there may be a paper that you should have provided a link to...

    A readable reference is Stollnitz, DeRose, and Salesin: "Wavelets for Computer Graphics".

    First question: why isn't Moore's promise of faster processors+more RAM sufficient for the GIMP (I've only used it casually, so I may have not noticed it as being as slow as other people...)

    Depends on what you want to do with it, how much time you have, and how much you are willing to pay for the hardware. You can edit a single 2000x3000x8 image on a PentiumIII with a few hundred megabytes just fine. If you want to composite six of those images, it's going to be painful. If you want to color correct a hundred of them, it's going to be painful as well. If you want to edit a 600dpi 16 bit scan, you are talking 210Mbytes just for a single image: a lot of data to move around, and a big chunk of address space.

    Second question: if the GIMP isn't keeping up, and other commercial programers aren't keeping up.... then who is? And even if these hypothetically Jonses do exist, what is the quality of images using their edit-while-compressed technology? Who said it was commercial quality? The computer scientist who invented it... or a professional graphic artist?

    Done right, there should be no difference in quality. Not all operations can be done fast in the compressed domain, but enough common ones can be to make this useful.

    Who is doing it? I think you are going to see a lot more of that coming pretty soon in systems like Photoshop. In part, they are probably waiting for JPEG2000. There are also a number of research packages (downloadable) that do wavelet-based image processing, although often with different applications in mind.

    Incidentally, the fact that the commercial market hasn't picked it up doesn't mean it isn't mature. Photoshop users for years thought that "scripting" was an obscure and advanced functionality.

    Third question: I beleive I'm not alone when I say I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say "multiresolution editing"... at least not in a way that would require a total rewrite of a program... care to elaborate?

    See my other response; basically, what I mean by it here is being able to perform many image operations without touching every pixel (I should perhaps have said more properly "compressed domain editing" or "wavelet-based editing", but those terms have their own problems).

    Let me emphasize again that I'm not complaining about the Gimp: I think it's a great and useful program and its developers have done a terrific job. However, I regularly hit its limits and there aren't any good commercial alternatives out there either. I think this is a good opportunity to start applying some pretty well understood computer graphics technology in an open source project.

  • How many levels of undo?

    Not sure exactly, but I've never hit it before

    There's a setting that lets you specify the maximum undo levels you want to have, and the maximum memory you want it to give for that. So I'd guess that the true limit lies with your RAM, and with virtual memory, is theoretically extremely high (practically, it would of course slow down to a crawl if you work out on paged-out memory all the time.

  • First, doing image processing the way he suggests has been tried by a number of others (me included). It's so much simpler to operate directly on a raster that the users themselves have abandoned this sort of program as they've gained access to machines that can handle the full resolution image.

    Well, I have implemented image processing routines of both types myself. Yes, implementing filters on the full resolution image is simple and well understood. It is also the most general, and you can implement a great variety of filters easily that way.

    But the most common operations can be implemented in a pretty straightforward way in a compressed multiresolution representation as well. I'm pretty sure that a system that performs such operations would help a great number of people doing day-to-day operations much more efficiently. I also think that it is possible (with on-the-fly decompression) to reuse many of the full resolution filters in such a system without rewrite (but also without the associated performance gain).

    Third, that's just not the way Free Software works. Coders do what they want to do, and the user's needs are a distant second to those of the developer. A very large and healthy commercial market exists if you want things the ohter way around.

    Speaking as a user, I think there is nothing wrong for the authors of free software to be aware of what users think and what limits they hit. The Gimp is really hitting its limits for me, and I suspect for many other users as well, when it comes to dealing with the kind of data digital cameras and scanners spit out these days.

    Now, let me emphasize again that I think the Gimp authors have been doing and are doing a great job, they are under no obligation to even consider this issue.

    But even as the step towards a new free software project, talking about the limits of existing systems and possible new approaches in the context of an excellent and established free software system like the Gimp seems like the right place to start: that's where people with similar interests are likely to be found, after all.

  • It looks kinda like this. [gimp.org] The only difference is that the text is right below "GIMP" now and says, "VERSION 1.2" (no longer saying "Gnu Image Manipulation Program" at the bottom).
  • ...that faster processors are useless and dammit what we need is more bandwidth?

    Hmm.... in light your post, I want a recount!

    On a more serious note, I have some questions for you ;)

    First question: why isn't Moore's promise of faster processors+more RAM sufficient for the GIMP (I've only used it casually, so I may have not noticed it as being as slow as other people...)

    Second question: if the GIMP isn't keeping up, and other commercial programers aren't keeping up.... then who is? And even if these hypothetically Jonses do exist, what is the quality of images using their edit-while-compressed technology? Who said it was commercial quality? The computer scientist who invented it... or a professional graphic artist?

    Third question: I beleive I'm not alone when I say I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say "multiresolution editing"... at least not in a way that would require a total rewrite of a program... care to elaborate?

    (It seems like there may be a paper that you should have provided a link to... ;)

Slashdot Top Deals

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!

Close