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Graphics GNU is Not Unix Software

Gimp Hits 2.0 637

Posted by timothy from the break-it-out dept.
jf writes "Gimp 2.0 released! From gimp.org: "This release is a major event, marking the end of a three year development cycle by a group of volunteers and enthusiasts who have made this the most professional release of the GIMP ever. It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X." Get it from ftp.gimp.org or from the mirror sites."
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Gimp Hits 2.0 More

Gimp Hits 2.0

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  • Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SillySnake ( 727102 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:54PM (#8651274)
    Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Funny)

      by frs_rbl ( 615298 )
      Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

      In Soviet Russia... nevermind
    • Yeah, I will finally get to know how to use it eaither. These floating window schema was the dummiest thing ever. Well, actually now there is Sun LookingGlass... DIA could do the same,

      • Re:Free of Floating Window (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Squareball ( 523165 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:49PM (#8652179)
        I thought the same thing until I got a mac. Photoshop works exactly like the Gimp does in regards to the floating windows. After working with Photoshop like this, I have come to get used to it and don't mind it at all. But it is a bit of shock when you come from Win32 Photoshop to this crazy set of floating windows.
      • Yeah, I will finally get to know how to use it eaither. These floating window schema was the dummiest thing ever.

        I disagree. I prefer it. I think the "window within a window" style that microsoft often employs is cumbersome. I want to be able to put a window anywhere on the screen that I want to put it. It's much more managable. I guess when using windows it could get confusing if you have multiple apps open, and the gimp windows are scattered around. With Linux though I keep my apps spread out ov

        • Re:Free of Floating Window (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ibbey ( 27873 ) * on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:36AM (#8654156) Homepage
          I disagree. I prefer it. I think the "window within a window" style that microsoft often employs is cumbersome. I want to be able to put a window anywhere on the screen that I want to put it. It's much more managable. I guess when using windows it could get confusing if you have multiple apps open, and the gimp windows are scattered around. With Linux though I keep my apps spread out over multiple virtual workspaces so it's not an issue.

          This shouldn't be an issue for anyone. All they really need to do is change the app so that if any GIMP window is brought to the front, then they all are. It's a nusicance to have to manually move three (or more) seperate windows to the front everytime you want to switch apps. The Mac uses a similar windowing style, except for this key difference. On the Mac, toolbox windows are not considered first-class windows. They only get focus when their parent app is active, and then they automatically become active. If GIMP handled things this way, no one would complain. But instead, each window is managed completely indepently, so you must manually activate each window.

          Sure, you can move GIMP to a seperate desktop, but there are numerous reasons that people may not want to do so. For example, new users won't know how. In my case, I don't like switching desktops since it's considerably slower then just switching apps (at least on my system).

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Deusy ( 455433 ) <charlieNO@SPAMvexi.org> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:41PM (#8651671) Homepage
      Now maybe I can figure out how to use the thing.

      It's not difficult - you can find some good tutorials at gug.sunsite.dk [sunsite.dk].

    • Click and learn how to use gimp... (Score:4, Informative)

      by lent ( 164114 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @05:58AM (#8654219) Homepage Journal
      OK, click and learn :-)

      Note: Number 9 below is especially cool if you have an investment in Photoshop-plugins.

      From:http://members.home.nl/m.weisbeek/gimp/ [members.home.nl]

      Annoyances about The GIMP

      While The GIMP is such a powerful application, doesn't it have any drawbacks ?!? - Oh, yes, it has...

      I [Martijn Weisbeek] am writing this article just to show you some of these. I hope that it will make you're life with The GIMP more easy. This article is the result of about one year of experience with using the Windows-version of The GIMP (almost on a daily basis). Just remember that The GIMP clearly focuses on functionality (which is good) instead of user-friendlyness. Therefore some things just aren't that obvious, just until you get the hang of it... So just take your time to read through this article and you'll make yourself an immediate GIMP-crack.

      [...snip...]

      For your convenience I created a list with pointers to the items in this article:

      [...snip...]

  • Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:55PM (#8651291)
    If it's officially supported - where's the Windows binary then? :-?

    • Re:Windows? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Chupa ( 17993 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:26PM (#8651560)
      Here [arnes.si] are windows binaries in a nice installer. 2.0pre4 is the newest release available at the moment, but it is working fine for me right now.

    • Gimp for Windows (version 2.0pre4) (Score:4, Informative)

      by lent ( 164114 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:28PM (#8651574) Homepage Journal
      From: http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/development.ht ml [arnes.si]
      [gimp.org] [gimp.org] GIMP for Windows [arnes.si]
      FAQ [slashdot.org] | Stable version [slashdot.org] | Development version [slashdot.org] | Source code [slashdot.org] | ] Installers for GIMP for Windows Development version download

      This is the development version of The Gimp. It will open a console (MS-DOS) window when it's run to display debugging messages. Do not close this window.

      It is highly recommended to update GTK2 to the newest version before installing Gimp 2.0pre4, as some bugs have been fixed since the last release.

      Note: The Gimp binary available from this page was compiled for Pentium MMX or better CPUs.

      GTK+ 2 for Windows (version 2.2.4-20040124) 3619 kB GTK+ 2 runtime environment. This package is required by The Gimp 2.0.
      MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download [arnes.si] - Academic and research network Of Slovenia [arnes.si] ftp.flamingtext.com Download [flamingtext.com] - FlamingText [flamingtext.com] --> files.akl.lt Download [files.akl.lt] Download [files.akl.lt] Atviras kodas Lietuvai [www.akl.lt] ftp.freenet.de Download [freenet.de] Download [freenet.de] freenet.de [freenet.de] --> The Gimp for Windows (version 2.0pre4) 6807 kB Gimp 2.0pre4 for Windows.
      MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download [arnes.si] - Academic and research network Of Slovenia [arnes.si] ftp.flamingtext.com Download [flamingtext.com] - FlamingText [flamingtext.com] * [slashdot.org] --> files.akl.lt Download [files.akl.lt] Download [files.akl.lt] Atviras kodas Lietuvai [www.akl.lt] ftp.freenet.de Download [freenet.de] Download [freenet.de] freenet.de [freenet.de] --> Additional plug-ins for The Gimp 742 kB This package contains Gimp-FreeType (CVS 20040202) and Gimp Animation Package (1.3.25) plug-ins for Gimp 2.0pre2.
      Warning: both these plug-ins are considered unstable.
      Note: Due to a problem with the GTK+ installer, the FreeType plug-in will not work, unless you copy the file freetype-6.dll to freetype6.dll in C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin\ folder.
      MirrorFTPHTTPProvided by ftp.arnes.si Download [arnes.si] - Academic and research network Of Slovenia [arnes.si] -->

      If you wish to compile plug-ins for use with this Gimp version, you can get the development files here [arnes.si].

      Development version download This is the development v

  • Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Caedar ( 635764 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:55PM (#8651294)
    I'm glad that this release improves the accessability to normal enthusiasts. A person pointed me to the Gimp once about half a year ago, and I couldn't stand to use it because of the god-awful interface that I encountered. I'll definitely give it a try.

    • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DarkSarin ( 651985 )
      Except that its mostly cosmetic, from my point of view.

      There are still tasks that I would like to do that are not possible in an intuitive fashion.

      For instance, I frequently draw shapes (you know, circles, squares, rectangles, etc). In Fireworks, Sodipodi, and almost every other image creation/manipulation program I have used, this is a very simple task, and very easy to figure out how to do (click on icon, click on canvas, drag mouse, release button--bingo!).

      In GIMP, I still don't know how to do this.

      • Re:Excellent (Score:4, Informative)

        by vandan ( 151516 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:03PM (#8651809) Homepage
        I've been using a pre-release version ( compiled via Gentoo's portage system ) and I'm very impressed with it indeed.

        The text tool has undergone a MAJOR overhaul and is far more powerful than in the old Gimp-1.3. When you add text, it creates a layer of it's own instead of being dumped onto the current layer, and you can go back and edit the text and font etc after you've added it. This saves me a lot of time, because I often add text, add some effects, do something else, adn then come back and think ... 'maybe I should have done *this* with the text instead'. The text tool is cool try it out.

        Also there are a lot of scripts and plugins ( at least in the Gentoo build ) that do some powerful stuff - bevelling & 3d outlining and all sorts of things.

        While the addition of the menus at the top are merely cosmetic, it will at least shut up all the users who can't get the hang of the right-click menu system.

        Win32 support is also interesting, as it means that GTK2 under Windows shouldn't be too far off. Personally, I'd LOVE to be able to write Perl / GTK2 apps that run under Windows, and it looks like I might be able to soon :)

        • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Interesting)

          by mcrbids ( 148650 )
          Personally, I'd LOVE to be able to write Perl / GTK2 apps that run under Windows, and it looks like I might be able to soon

          Dunno about Perl, but with PHP-GTK [php.net], I've been able to do this for over a year with PHP. Combined with the Ion Cube [ioncube.com] compiler, I've been writing cross-platform Windows/Linux/OSX programs for quite a while.

      • Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

        by zerblat ( 785 ) <jonas.skubic@se> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:26PM (#8651986) Homepage
        Sodipodi is a vector-based drawing program. GIMP is a raster image manipulation program. They have different purposes and can't really be compared.

        If you really can't figure out how to draw a rectangle in the GIMP, I'm guessing you've never used Photoshop or any other similar image manipulation program. You probably want to read up a bit, there's plenty of books, online tutorials etc.

        Anyway, the answer to your question: 1. Make a selection with the desired shape. 2. Fill the selection with the desired color.

        • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Insightful)

          by DarkSarin ( 651985 )
          I have used photoshop, plenty, and I know the difference between image manipulation and drawing. All that's fine and dandy, but my point is that the impression I get, as someone not in the pro graphics business, is that GIMP is supposed to be able to handle *all* your graphic (non-moving) needs for images, and this is simply not true.

          You may say that that's not what its for, and you're probably right, but the impression I had for a long time was just the opposite, and I know plenty of people who feel the

          • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Flamebait)

            by salmo ( 224137 )
            Ummm. I do it the same way in Photoshop and the Gimp. I make a nice square path, set the fill and the stroke. I'm not seeing your particular issue here. And for professional graphics (I don't mean drawing horns on pictures of your sister) it's quite flexible. It can be scripted in umpteen languages that are a lot more straightforward than actions and such. It's pretty great at photo editing and I might even say better for certain drawing tasks. Font support in Gimp 2 is finally up to my standards (ie

      • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Informative)

        by Seraphim_72 ( 622457 )

        Filters--->Render---->Gfig

        Its actually in the help file - and a google [google.com] turns up more help.

        Sera

      • Re:Excellent (Score:3, Informative)

        by JoeBuck ( 7947 )

        You're confusing vector programs (Sodipodi, Illustrator) with bitmap programs (GIMP, Photoshop). If you want to draw diagrams, you want one of the former, not one of the latter.

        However, the simplest way to draw a rectangle in GIMP is:

        • Choose the rectangle select tool, drag out a rectangle.
        • Using the right mouse button, execute "Stroke" from the Edit menu. This will draw a rectangle, using the current brush tool, following the selection you just made.

        To get an ellipse, use the ellipse select tool.

    • I'm glad that this release improves the accessability to normal enthusiasts. A person pointed me to the Gimp once about half a year ago, and I couldn't stand to use it because of the god-awful interface that I encountered. I'll definitely give it a try.

      I think the interface is teriffic! It's so intuitive and easier for every-day use than have some omnipotent menu bar at the top of the screen.

    • Re:Excellent (Score:4, Informative)

      by lunartech ( 697653 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:31PM (#8652500)
      I've been using the beta version of 2.0 for a few weeks now and I think the user interface is a vast improvement. I've used The Gimp on a regular basis previously because it's great for the majority of graphics stuff. But I used to get a bit sick of right-clicking the image to get a menu in the old version. Simply adding a menu bar above the image has made a huge difference for me, not to mention the new docking features to reduce onscreen clutter etc. Top work guys !

  • Gimp Hits 2.0? (Score:5, Funny)

    by KodaK ( 5477 ) <`sakodak' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:57PM (#8651310) Homepage
    Is that on K-tel records?

    Do I get one free if I order Mr. Microphone?

  • Who's unix-based? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Whosawhatsis ( 721927 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:57PM (#8651313) Homepage
    Last time I checked, MacOS X was at least as "Unix-Based" (darwin) as Linux, if not more...

  • The biggest changes... (Score:3, Redundant)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <`bc90021' `at' `bc90021.net'> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:57PM (#8651319) Homepage
    - It uses GTK2.
    - It is officially supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

    Now if only I could figure out how to use it. (I have no graphics experience whatsoever. ;) )

  • Fantastic! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:59PM (#8651331)
    Well, I've been using the betas under both linux and windows for a month or so now, and I must say that this is a FANTASTIC improvement, which goes much deeper than just the improved UI.

    Before this I used to use photoshop for much of my work, and Gimp for areas where I either needed the software on a machine that did not warrant a photoshop license, or to deal with alpha layers properly (which photoshop is terrible for). Photoshop is great for printing based people, but has some major miss-features for computer graphics use.

    Gimp 2.0 however is much better than photoshop IMHO for many many jobs, although it is still just a bit lacking in the automation-of-tasks area.

    Congratulations and Thanks to all the people involved in this fantastic piece of software!

    • Re:Fantastic! (Score:4, Informative)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:18PM (#8651500)
      Photoshop is great for printing based people, but has some major miss-features for computer graphics use.

      You obviously haven't used a recent version. Photoshop CS(8.0) works very nicely for computer graphics, including stuff Gimp doesn't do, like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers. Adobe has been improving the integration between all their apps, and I'm a big fan; I've posted about it before.

      Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux.

      Last but not least, Photoshop CS includes a RAW decoder for most of the pro digital cameras and many prosumer units. It is nothing short of amazing and almost worth the price tag alone; you gain quite a bit more color depth with RAW images(depends on the camera- without getting into digital medium/large format backs, the best you can get right now is 12 bit per channel) and the plugin lets you tweak many, many parameters- with nearly instant preview. Nothing compares, even on the Macintosh or PC side...only Capture One could be considered better. dcraw is a joke...

      • Re:Fantastic! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Deusy ( 455433 ) <charlieNO@SPAMvexi.org> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:49PM (#8651723) Homepage
        [Photoshop does stuff] like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers.

        Um, I'm a web designer. How is that invaluable?

        I think you're eating too much of the hamburger that Adobe is feeding you with buzzwords like that.

        Gimp creates jpegs just fine. If you require ultimate fine-grained control over image creation then I'd wager:
        1. You're using too many images in your website. Learn CSS.
        2. You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg. It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).

        • web designers...siiigh. (Score:5, Informative)

          by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:36PM (#8652074)
          Um, I'm a web designer. How is that invaluable?

          You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg

          Variable compression(controlled by a mask) allows you to crank up the compression on low detail areas and use much finer compression at important parts, such as the edges of UI elements where compression artifacts would be noticed immediately. It can yield enormous savings, much greater than 1kB, and solves the #1 problem with JPEG- it's not dynamic and does NOT handle edges well.

          Furthermore, even 1kB can have substantial cost savings for a client. If they get 1 million hits a day, they most certainly care about 1kB, because that's roughly $2-3/day in bandwidth charges. That's a thousand bucks a year, which pays for a whole lot of time for a graphics designer to squeek every last kilobyte out of an entire site's worth of images. Why do you think people install mod_gzip on servers to compress HTML? Why do you think many sites strip down the headers Apache sends in requests?

          It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).

          a)most people do NOT have broadband, b)56k modems typically get around 33.6kbps at best(22kbps is not uncommon for some folks out in the middle of nowhere), which works out to around 4.2kB/sec. If I knock 5kB off an image, you'll see it a second faster.

      • Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Informative)

        by DVega ( 211997 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:32PM (#8652035)
        "Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux."

        You mean color managemnt like this [littlecms.com] ?

    • Re:Fantastic! (Score:3, Funny)

      by irokitt ( 663593 )
      The Gimp? Photoshop? Automation of tasks? Bah.

      REAL nerds use a hex editor. Using a Dvorak keyboard!

  • Newsforge Article (Score:4, Informative)

    by amigoro ( 761348 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:59PM (#8651337) Homepage Journal
    Here [newsforge.com] is the Newsforge Article about the new GIMP that appeared a couple of weeks ago.

    The screenshots look simply awsome.

    Going to install that now.

    Moderate this comment
    Negative: Offtopic [mithuro.com] Flamebait [mithuro.com] Troll [mithuro.com] Redundant [mithuro.com]
    Positive: Insightful [mithuro.com] Interesting [mithuro.com] Informative [mithuro.com] Funny [mithuro.com]

  • mac binary... (Score:4, Informative)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:00PM (#8651352) Homepage Journal
    the mac binary gimp.app is still prerelease 3. it isn't updated yet.

  • Since the mirror list will be slashdotted... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Troy ( 3118 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:01PM (#8651357)
    Here is a formatting-free, cut-and-paste, hack job.

    mmmmm.....karma...

    Africa
    ftp://ftp.is.co.za/applications/gimp/
    Australia
    ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/
    http://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/gimp/ (web access)
    ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/
    http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gimp/ (web access)
    ftp://gimp.zeta.org.au/
    Austria
    ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/gimp/
    Denmark
    ftp://ftp.jaquet.dk/pub/gimp/
    Finland
    ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/graphics/packages/gimp/
    France
    ftp://ftp.minet.net/pub/gimp/
    http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/gimp/ (web access)
    Germany
    ftp://ftp.fh-heilbronn.de/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org /
    ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
    http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/ (web access)
    Greece
    ftp://sunsite.ics.forth.gr/sunsite/pub/gimp/
    Irel and
    ftp://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
    http://ftp.esat.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/ (web access)
    Japan
    ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/packages/gimp /
    ftp://ftp.u-aizu.ac.jp/pub/graphics/tools/gimp/
    ftp://ftp.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
    http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/ (web access)
    http://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
    ftp://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/mirror/gimp/
    Korea
    ftp://ftp.kreonet.re.kr/pub/tools/X11/ftp.gimp.org /
    Netherlands
    ftp://gnu.kookel.org/pub/gimp/
    http://gnu.kookel.org/ftp/gimp/ (web access)
    ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/
    http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/ (web access)
    Norway
    ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/gimp/
    Poland
    ftp://ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl/pub/Linux/gimp/
    ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
    Roman ia
    ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
    ftp://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
    http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/ (web access)
    Russia
    ftp://ftp.sai.msu.su/pub/unix/graphics/gimp/mirror /
    http://gimp.tsuren.net/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
    Spain
    http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/ (web access)
    ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/gimp/
    Sweden
    ftp://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/gimp/
    ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/
    http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/gimp/ (web access)
    Turkey
    ftp://ftp.hun.edu.tr/pub/linux/gimp/
    United Kingdom
    ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/X/gimp/gimp/
    ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gi mp/
    United States
    ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/gimp/

  • I had a dream (Score:4, Funny)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:03PM (#8651378)
    I had a dream that I woke up surrounded by windows floating around before my eyes. I knew what I wanted was in one of the windows -answer just on the tip of my tongue. As each window passed by, confusing icons flashed symbols -almost helping me figure it out.

    • Re:I had a dream (Score:5, Funny)

      by mvdw ( 613057 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @10:07PM (#8651835) Homepage

      You wrote:

      I had a dream that I woke up surrounded by windows floating around before my eyes. I knew what I wanted was in one of the windows -answer just on the tip of my tongue. As each window passed by, confusing icons flashed symbols -almost helping me figure it out.

      Then your sig states:

      Real programmers don't comment! It was hard to write, It should be hard to read!

      There's some irony in there, somewhere...

  • It's pretty good! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:05PM (#8651395)
    I did a usability study of GIMP 1.3 running on Windows and most people who had Photoshop experience soon got the hang of it.

    Finally they've added a menu onto each project window, but it is still lacking in one way, the number of entries on the window bar. Each tool dock creates its own entry which causes clutter. It should be possible to have one entry but who knows, maybe this isn't possible with current versions of GTK? Photoshop does this by having the dock windows within a container window.

    Other minor niggles, the icons are much improved over v1.2 but I still find them a bit unclear. The knife icon for cropping resembles a brush and I don't really see how a drop of water represents Blur/Sharpen?

    While I do like the new dock and the tabs, it's unusable if you resize the toolbox window into a very narrow strip. Meaning at the resolution I run at (1152x864) it takes up around a fifth of the screen width.

    But it's much better than 1.2 anyway!!!

    • I think your study may have had a flawed premise.

      I mean, after all, anyone who can figure Photoshop out can probably figure out any other program in existence.

      (Yeah, this is a backwards way of saying that I think Photoshop has always been the least intuitive program I've ever used, somehow managing to beat the various old DOS CAD/CAM software for that title.)

    • Re:It's pretty good! (Score:3, Informative)

      by BigSven ( 57510 )
      Try the Small theme from the GIMP preferences dialog then. You will certainly find it useful with your screen resolution.

    • Re:It's pretty good! (Score:3, Informative)

      by pbox ( 146337 )
      I managed to cram all palettes into the main window. It is actully as intuitive as Photoshop's way of handling it, without the Duck/Undock menu entries. Just grab the palette title (might look like folder tabs if placed on top of ach other) and drop it where you want it. When you drag the last one out the window disappears. If you drop it in the middle of nothing it creates a window. Thos funny little widgets in the main winows allow you to partition the window into sections, which serve as separate drop ta

    • Re:It's pretty good! (Score:4, Funny)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:02AM (#8652747) Journal
      I don't really see how a drop of water represents Blur/Sharpen?

      Good point... What would you recomend? Perhaps an icon of a few beers to represent blur?

  • Website is much improved. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chilliwilli ( 114962 ) <tom.rathbone@g m a i l.com> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:18PM (#8651494)
    Wow love the new website! If you've not seen how bad (out of date) the old one was then give it a look. The website has finally updated to reflect the quality of the software.. now if only Glade's website would do the same my two favourite apps would have made themselves presentable to others.

  • Congrats! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 7-Vodka ( 195504 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:28PM (#8651578) Journal
    Congratulations to everyone who made this happen. From the major developers to the guys/gals who contributed little bits. I appreciate it. It's a very useful program used intensely by some and to a lesser degree (but still important) by many more.
    Good luck on taking it to the next level.

    Thanks.

  • Now if only sane would get updated (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:29PM (#8651591) Journal
    While there is a patch available for sane to make it work with gimp 2.0, it hasn't been merged into the main source tree for sane, so if you don't install packages manually by compiling from source, you _still_ can't use your scanner directly from the Gimp.
  • It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X.

    That's like saying that it's supported not only on Windows, but on Windows 98. Mac OS X IS a Unix based operating system.

  • What about color calibration? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrScience ( 126570 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:38PM (#8651645) Homepage
    Does it support ICC profiles? This is something that's really important to me. My old version of Adobe has a tendancy to crash when printing >100MB images, so I've resorted to tweaking in photoshop and printing in Gimp... but it'd be nice to do it all in Gimp.

    • Re:What about color calibration? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lalakis ( 308990 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:54PM (#8651762) Homepage
      It's coming! From a really recent post of Sven Neumann to gimp-user list:
      "GIMP 2.0 comes with a color proof display filter that uses ICC color profiles to simulate a proof on your monitor. Support for such filters is new in 2.0 and for the future it is planned to integrate display filter modules better into the workflow."

  • Physically Challenged Hits 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @11:01PM (#8652270) Journal
    What's that supposed to mean? Or are my content filters messing with stuff again?

  • Great Accomplishment! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by firewrought ( 36952 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:10AM (#8652810)
    Why all the flamewars b/t Adobe fans and Gimp fans? The news here is that the Gimp team has delivered us a significant upgrade that addresses many long-standing problems of the software (especially in terms of usability). Congratulations!! That's awesome!

    If you prefer Adobe to Gimp, that's great too... buy it and use it. Judge the tradeoffs in cost and functionality for yourself and choose the best tool for you.

  • No 48 bit support !!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <[ten.duagradg] [ta] [2todhsals]> on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:06AM (#8654407) Homepage
    There is still no 16 bit per channel support in Gimp. This is important if you want to do anything more than just playing with jpeg files. A (mostly dead) brach of Gimp called CinePaint supports 16 and 32 bit per channel images but it's very buggy.

    There is talk about having gimp support it in the future, but it's a big undertaking. Sorry to sound like a troll, but in the meanwhile Gimp will be little more than a toy.

    48 bit RGB is supported natively by the PNG and TIFF images formats and many RAW files created by almost every recent scanner or digital camera. It's a shame to have hardware which creates images you cannot fully use.

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