GIMP's Next-generation Imaging Core Demonstrated

brendan0powers writes "GIMP developer Øvind Kolås gave a public demonstration of the Generic Graphical Library (GEGL) on Friday at the Piksel 06 festival in Bergen, Norway. GEGL has long been slated to replace the core image processing framework of the GIMP, bringing with it entirely new data models and operations — but development had languished to the point where many critics had written the project off entirely." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel..

[ben there...]

Ever tried to do basic drawing in The Gimp? Like, say, drawing a circle?

That's actually a really old version that those instructions are for, as evidenced by the fact that Shift constrains circles now, not Ctrl. You can either select a circle, then use Edit->Stroke Selection and select the width of the line, or Select->Border after selecting a circle, then fill it with a color or pattern. Neither option is as simple as a circle tool, but both are easier than those old (1.x?) instructions.

Re:Cool But...

[dgatwood]

It's a more modern, extensible architecture under the hood, so it can be extended to do things like CMYK, it has some nice performance optimization capabilities, and if I understand the way it is written, it sounds like it might be a good fit for image pipelining in the GPU a la Core Image, but that's just from a skimming of their FAQ, so I could be wrong.

For more information, see http://www.gegl.org/faq.html [gegl.org].

Gimpshop!

[BeeBeard]

Ahem:

Gimpshop. [gimpshop.net] It's a great attempt at making The Gimp more comprehensible to people with a Windows/Photoshop background. And like The Gimp, it too is free.

Re:GIMP needs fresh developers

[swillden]

If the GIMP team would foster new blood, help new hackers learn the large and intimidatingly complex codebase

Look at the GEGL web site. They provide pretty good support for new developers interested in helping, and the IRC channel is pretty friendly.

Hopefully this announcement will generate some interest in GEGL, and provide some new blood in that project. And since lots of work has already gone into preparing the GIMP for the new engine, things should move very quickly in the GIMP world once the new engine is in place. The new architecture will make GIMP development much more accessible, too. In spite of lots of cleanup work, the existing codebase is very crufty, which is a lot of the reason it's hard to understand.

Re:It's about time

[Cinder6]

From over here, I'd like to see the X11 dependence on the Macs go away. Pitch the GTK base and use QT, which is already efficiently cross-platform on Macs, Linux, and Windows.

I'll agree there shouldn't be an X11 dependency on Macs, but I think the odds of the GIMP, of all things, being ported to Qt are rather slim. After all, it's the original source of GTK.

Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel..

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but in graphics editing, you can get the best results by combining vector (draw) and bitmap (photo manipulation) in the same document using different layers. Otherwise, vector-only apps are crap with bitmaps, and bitmap-only apps are crap at dealing with vectors. The best way of handling this in this case is to have both in the same application, which GIMP does not do. (But its competitors do.)

Re:Why I'm not satisfied with Gimp

[Blakey Rat]

Are you using MS Paint? Or Paint.NET? PLEASE tell me it's Paint.NET... once you tried that, you may find that you don't miss GIMP at all.

Re:Why I'm not satisfied with Gimp

[Bagels]

What I want is a program that is as intuitive as MS Paint and lets me create in 3-D.

You're wanting Sketchup [google.com], then, I think. For creating in 3D, that's about as intuitive as it gets.

Re:It's about time

[xrayspx]

Layer grouping is one of the biggest gripes I've gotten so far. Dealing with a 120MB image with 60 layers isn't easy when they're not grouped in some hierarchy. I think the rest was general "I hate this because it's different from what I know", rather than actual lack of function, but honestly, the artist involved was...unmotivated...to give Gimp a fair shake. At the risk of having to hire a food taster to test my meals, I decided to let it go.

Gtk for Mac

[ghutchis]

I haven't used it myself, but it's certainly for real (as in, contributed code back to the gtk trunk)

http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx [imendio.com]

Cheers... -Geoff

Re:Why I'm not satisfied with Gimp

[Nicholas Bishop]

Hiya, I happen to be the developer of SharpConstruct. SharpConstruct is no longer under active development; I've been moving the source code into Blender over the summer (Google Summer of Code 2006) and the sculpting tools will probably be in the next version of Blender. I don't plan to develop SharpConstruct any further as an independent app.

What about the User Interface?

[filesiteguy]

I think GIMP is a fantastic cross-platform photo manipulation tool. I had been using and advocating it for awhile now. In fact, all the logos on my sites were done with the GIMP Script-Fu routines.

HOWEVER - I am still sick of the horrendous UI that is presented to me. No matter how many times I argue with the developers and the "holier than thou" Gnome community, I cannot see their reasoning for a trashy un-comforting UI. Make a MDI interface and they will come. I see no reason why they couldn't have a two-option interface. SDI for the really geeky people and MDI for us normal users.

GIMPShop was a nice step in the right direction. Now, fix the bloody UI and the File Open/Save dialog (talk about garbage!) and you'd have a decent app.

Oh, wait - Krita is out. Oh - it doesn't work on Windows, and I still use Windows once in a while. Bummer.

Okay, guys, mark me down as a troll. I've said what I feel. GIMP could be a great tool, if only the developers would get off their respective high horses and listen to us normal users.

Major reason why GIMP will not replace Photoshop

[pjludlow]

I have a degree in graphic design. I currently work at a photography studio doing Photoshop work full-time. I've used Photoshop for around 10 years now. That is my background.

Let's assume for all purposes that GIMP can do everything that Photoshop can do (yes, I know it can't). For me to learn the GIMP UI and become as proficient as I am now in Photoshop would take some time. If it took me more than 8 hours (which is pretty much assured) then it makes no sense for me to use GIMP. I could buy a Photoshop upgrade for less then the productivity time I lost learning GIMP. Even if I had to buy a full new version the time lost learning the new program would be more and would actually cost me quite a bit. Although GIMP may appear to be be free, it really is not to anyone who uses a image editing program such as Photoshop to make a living. It may be great for the hobbyist, but not for the professional.

Re:It's about time

[the_olo]

I'd love to hear specifically what is missing, as I'm sure the devs would too. Is it just the color management for print design, or something else?

Let's try:

• Support for various additional color spaces in addition to grayscale and RGB, e.g. CMYK [wikipedia.org], LAB [wikipedia.org], HSB. I'm not speaking about the color chooser, which AFAIR lets you pick colors using CMYK already. I'm talking about the image being stored in memory (and on disk in .xcf) and processed using particular color space representation, e.g. for CMYK the image is stored with 4 channels (look at them like color planes) representing the intensity of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK pigments in a subtractive model (RGB on the other hand, is additive). Some color corrections are done most easily when working in LAB color space Read some books by Dan Margulis [wikipedia.org] to get an idea.
  
• Support for color separations [wikipedia.org] (including various settings like dot gain [wikipedia.org], black point compensation [newsandtech.com], additional spot colors [wikipedia.org] beside CMYK) and color management [wikipedia.org] is an essential feature for any professional wanting to print the results of one's work and have them match the screen representation.
  
• Support for 16-bits or more (32-bit, floating point etc.) per channel for color spaces, integrated through all the workflow (possibly from the camera RAW files, through all the color curve corrections, levels, filters, hue mappings, up to the output file) so the dynamic range is high and minimal information is lost during colors / tones manipulation
  
• adjustment layers [myjanee.com]
  
• needs lots of usability fixes, like:
  
  • panning with a single keypress + mouse drag (one cannot simply press space and pan around the image with the mouse)
    
  • ability to scroll the image window beyond the image border regardless of zoom level (GIMP doesn't let you scroll beyond the image's edge which is quite irritating)
    
  • more GUI manipulation flexibility - ability to reorganize the whole UI into single MDI window similar to Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint; but not at the expense of usability - it should be extremely hard to reorganize the GUI unintentionally (no tear-off toolbars like in MS Office - it's a usability disaster)
    
  • support for "workspace themes" - named sets of window positions, docker layouts, and so on. There should be 2 predefined themes available: "GIMP standard" and "Photoshop-like" - this would help the photoshoppers make the switch and do their first steps in GIMP.
    
  
  

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to educate yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabelais [wikipedia.org]

Re:It's about time

[arose]

1-4 all depend on GEGL.

panning with a single keypress + mouse drag (one cannot simply press space and pan around the image with the mouse)

Will be in 2.4.

more GUI manipulation flexibility - ability to reorganize the whole UI into single MDI window similar to Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint

AFAIK the developers believe this will be much work with little benefit, because Windows is neither the platform they use nor their main "market". By analogy: is the Macintosh version of Photoshop MDI capable?

support for "workspace themes"

Someone would have to keep this up to date and evidently the GIMP developers would rather concentrate to improve user expierence for GIMP users then to conventrate on Photoshop switchers. As I see it if there actualy is demand for a Photoshop like GIMP then Gimpshop [gimpshop.net] will flourish, time will tell.

patented and otherwise non-free technologies

[BigSven]

GIMP explicitely allows non-free plug-ins and the main reason for doing that is to allow such technologies to be added. Someone just needs to do it.

Re:Gimp UI and how it could be even better

[BigSven]

Yes, you can use a gamepad with GIMP, assuming that a driver exists that makes it available as a Linux Input device. Otherwise you could also write your own GIMP input module. That's a pretty small well-defined interface and there's example code that you can base your module on.

On a related note, see ahref=http://gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.htmlre l=url2html-27183 [slashdot.org]http://gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-m idi.html> for a HOWTO on controlling GIMP with MIDI devices.

Gestures might be a nice idea for the future. Perhaps you want to try to come up with a more detailed proposal on how this would work?

Re:It's about time

[pilkul]

My point is that scrapping and rewriting the entire UI (which is probably 2/3 of the code) for the sake of one minority platform is ridiculous. A more sensible request would be for Mac GTK to be improved to use native Mac APIs.

Re:Why I don't use the Gimp

[Ant P.]

The GIMP:
1. Use one of the selection tools to select an area.
2. Use the fill tool to fill the area.
3. Shrink the selection.
4. Delete the contents of the selection box.
5. Write text using text tool and style it appropriately.
6. Adjust colors / transparency.

Looks like you've been reading bad instructions.
1. Draw shape using appropriate selection tool.
2. Choose whatever paintbrush tool and options you want the shape drawn with. (optional)
3. Edit -> stroke selection.
4. Write text using text tool and style it appropriately.
5. Adjust colors / transparency.