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The Gimp Books Media Book Reviews

Grokking The Gimp 131

Posted by Hemos from the such-a-cute-logo dept.
The Gimp, frankly, rocks. But like most pieces of complex software, it's a bit of a...problem to learn how to use. Enter chromatic's review of Carey Bunk's Grokking The Gimp. If you want to know more about image manipulation, check it out.
Grokking the GIMP
author Carey Bunks
pages 342
publisher New Riders
rating 8.2
reviewer chromatic
ISBN 0-7357-0924-6
summary Principles of image manipulation explained in the context of the GIMP.

*

The Scoop

One of the standout userland programs to come from Free Software development, the GIMP offers a powerful range of features for digital imagery. Unfortunately, not everyone's had the privilege of (or inclination for) sitting through 'Principles of Color' or similar classes. Not to fear, the author has - - and he's willing to share his knowledge.

Compounding the complexity challenge, the GIMP has its own way of doing things. Half of the work of editing an image seems to be making a good selection. Again, the author has theory to divulge and tips to present to improve your technique. Though only a few tools and methods are discussed, they are fundamental to all advanced operations. (Note that the book covers the as-yet unreleased 1.2 GIMP -- the 1.1.x betas have been quite usable for months.)

What's to Like?

This attractive book is well-printed, with plenty of full-color images and good figures. It's also well-designed and the layout is excellent. The decision to add a few common problems and frequently asked questions at the end of most chapters is commendable. It's not designed as a reference book, but the index and table of contents are detailed enough to locate specific actions later.

Banks assumes little prior knowledge of the GIMP. Chapter one is a brief tutorial of the program's features and functions. More experienced users can skip this, though I found a couple of timesaving tidbits. The same may be said of chapter two, on layers, though the material quickly moves beyond what an average user might discover in an afternoon. The selections and masks chapters form the real foundation for most GIMP work -- how do you choose parts of your image to edit? A little theory, a few tools, and some examples later, you'll have multiple answers for that question.

The next two chapters pile on the theory. First, Bunks discusses the theory of color -- running the gamut (so to speak) from additive to subtractive, RGB, HSV, CMYK, and grayscale. There's plenty of math (more than one would need), and the explanations here are quite detailed. It's fundamental knowledge, and most readers can probably pick up just enough to get by. Don't skip ahead and miss the very useful touchup discussions in chapter 6. (The author considers them worth the price of the book -- given the results on some of my images, I'm inclined to agree.)

The final three chapters each cover different tasks one might wish to accomplish. Bunks explores various techniques while creating projects. Screenshots and commentary accompany step-by-step instructions. It's in these sections that the full power of the GIMP comes into play. Rounding things out are a handy keyboard shortcut guide and a detailed index.

What's to Consider?

Things do get pretty heady in the theory section. Non-programmers (and people who haven't already worked with professional imaging) will have some slow going trying to absorb the math and colorspace information. It's not essential to use the GIMP, but knowing the differences between the modes and the limitations of each is necessary for most serious work.

Readers looking for a guide to the dozens of distributed plugins will be disappointed -- this book is more interested in the general techniques used in nearly every non-simple project. Finally, the book seems a little short. It's 342 pages, but the information is good enough that perhaps more subjects can be covered in a future edition. (That's a good thing.)

The Summary

Nearly anyone will benefit from the deep magic behind the menu operations. Move past cheesy banners and poorly-executed lasso operations. Double the size and power of your toolbox, and get to know the GIMP. (If you're not convinced, browse the book online!)

Or buy it at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

  1. GIMP Basics
  2. Review of Layers
  3. Selections
  4. Masks
  5. Colorspaces and Blending Modes
  6. Touchup and Enhancement
  7. Compositing
  8. Rendering Techniques
  9. Web-Centric GIMP
  1. GIMP Resources
  2. Keyboard Shortcuts
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Grokking The Gimp More

Grokking The Gimp

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  • Re:GIMP frankly rocks? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GIMP 1.0 holds well up against Photoshop 4.0 -- 3.0 didn't have anywhere near the layer capabilities that GIMP 1.0 has.

    But, GIMP 1.1.2x (development) stacks up much better against more recent Photoshop releases than your comments imply. For print work, the GIMP isn't even in the running. For web and computer display work, I've yet to find a graphics professional who doesn't admit that the GIMP is better suited than even Photoshop 5.5 or 6.0.

    Well, a graphics professional who has actually used both, and not just tinkered with it for two minutes.

  • But, gimp has been ported to Windows! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    when linux gets marked in the history books, the gimp will probably be the stand out application for the platform. Considering how well it has faired against its biggest contender, I think the gimp is a remarkable symbol of what open source and cooperation can provide to the community.

    What you're really saying is that GIMP is the outstanding project.

    Gimp has been ported to windows.

    Wo why do I need Linux just for that?

  • The above comment will probably be modded down to troll, but IMHO the AC has a point. Maybe not specifically in the GIMPs case, but in general.

    I remember a story a while back where someone who made their living selling software X was complaining about the free version that was created and made available.

    I know RMS would hate to see anyone *selling* software, but...

    Now in a lot of cases, including the GIMP, they are taking something that was copied originally. Isn't it possible that PS was originally a cobbling togeather of other software ideas? Different features from different packages all put togeather in one?

    Don't forget as well, the people who created the gimp didn't just copy photoshop. Sure, they used some of the same icons and keystrokes, but that's more (IMHO) for user familiarity and usability. They still have spent the greater part of the last 2 (3?) years writing the program. For free. For nothing more than the recognition of the community.

    The gimp rocks, but just because it can do color manipulation doesnt' mean that it's stolen. Part of the way that the net and software work are exchange of ideas and ways of doing things. Without that no one would get anywhere.
  • I'm with you there. It may be familiarity with GIMP, but I find things like layer manipulation and color changes more intuitive and easier in GIMP. Seems that gimp has a "nicer" way of doing things. Seems that it's a simpler program than photoshop in that the UI is far less cluttered.
  • The way that GIMP does memory tiling and caching does suck a bit. I haven't used it for images that large, but I do know that it "feels" a little sluggy with larger images.
  • Depends on experience :) A 5 year gfx vet will make far better images than random j. newbie in *either* program.

  • Overline in emacs is \

    $ is from vi.

    --
  • Robert H Heinlein a hack sci-fi writer?

    You've gotta be kidding!

    Besides, it wasn't a made-up word, it was Martian...

    t_t_b
    --
    I think not; therefore I ain't®

  • Here are two ways to do this. I don't use the GIMP (I'm a professional - I use Photoshop)

    The quick and dirty way would be to use a wand tool with a fairly high tolerance (~16-32)

    The better way would be to create a silhouette with paths, and once they were done, select the area (or the inverse depending on how you did it) and mask it out.*

    *Generally it's a good idea to mask stuff out rather than delete it just in case.
  • $ is from vi.

    No. You're probably thinking of the way VI temporarily replaces the last character of a "change" (as in using the 'c' command) to a $. It doesn't use that for wrapping long lines though. It just wraps them without any special characters. (Lines that wrap past the end of the display are replaced with a column of @ characters.)
  • There are already other meanings [lurex.com] for the word "gimp". If there was a "media backlash" about the GIMP, then we should expect to also see one about crackers, since that's also a derogatory term. Or what about pet stores that sell frogs? (We all know how the French are [slashdot.org], so I'm actually somewhat surprised that this hasn't happened.) Almost any term has a derogatory or perverse meaning to some group...
  • Perhaps it's come along in leaps and bounds in the last six months, but the last time I tried it it did seem unresponsive, especially when I compared it to the Linux version running on the same machine, which I tried out when I had Linux running on there as well.

    The big problem with it not having native widgets really shows up when you try and us an 'open' or 'save' dialog - Many people who are not regular users of windows do not realise that the open and save dialogs work in exactly the same way as explorer - you can do all the same things - i.e. create new directories, change file permissions, rename files etc... - To suddenly be lumped with a rather clunky standard Motif-style file chooser is a big step backwards, and I imagine would be quite a huge turn-off for those who have not used X applications before.
  • It may have been coined by Heinlein in "Stranger in a Strange Land" but it is sufficiently succinct and useful that it made it into the dictionary.

    Language is either evolving or, like Latin, its dead.

    "Perchum et rotatum" dude... :-)
  • Can the "editors" actually fix the review so that it isn't truncated every other paragraph, please?
  • I guess that all depends on your point of view. The GIMP rocks when compared to, say, Microsoft Paint, but really can't hold a candle when compared to Photoshop 5.5 or 6.0.

    The GIMP is basically Photoshop 3.0, which did rock...back in the mid-90s. Yes, it's free. Yes it runs on Linux. Yes, it's open source friendly and all that stuff. But for professional (and even semi-professional) graphic designers, there's no question that Photoshop 5.5/6.0 is preferable to a Photoshop 3.0 clone any day.

    -jason
  • is CYMK color handling. Where's 2.0 already??

    Professional artists (not me, but my colleague) are going to stick to platforms that support CYMK, because that's how they ship their stuff to the service bureau. Hell, we don't even need it in GIMP if adobe would port photoshop to the linus. (and why port or switch to linus at all if win2k works just fine for it? because win2k still isn't stable like the linus.)

    GAIN EVERLASTING LIFE [alexchiu.com]

  • All right, I'll bite.

    What 3 commonly used words/devices? "Grok", "Waldo" and what else?

    -- Michael Chermside

  • I talk to friends and ask them " did you do that in photoshop?" and they say "No, I used the GIMP!" I've been using the GIMP for a while now, and I find myself always trying to use it. Even if I'm working on a Windows machine, I fire up X-win and edit images with GIMP instead of photoshop or PSPro. I think I'm gonna buy this book, since I'm not really bright on the theory.

  • Doesn't mean it's not a stupid word.
  • How about this word: Yaizo. Know that feeling you get when you buy a cool new toy and can't wait to get it home and play with it? That's yaizo. "I have a harsh yaizo to use my new joystick"

    Use it, love it.

  • Um, are you a troll, or just stupid? Photoshop is designed to edit images. Still images. To manipulate video, you'd use Premiere or After Effects.

    It's called irony, son. (See also the six million posts in this thread of people writing off GIMP completely because it doesn't do printed media).

  • I'm really surprised over how many people don't like the UI of the GIMP -- I definitely find it easier and more comfortable to use than that of Photoshop. I realize this is somewhat subjective, but having right-click menus rather than a menu bar is a big plus to me. I also like having lots of independent windows for different tools, rather than everything in one big parent window (though last I checked, Mac Photoshop worked like this also). Yeah, there's a bit of a context switch if you're used to Photoshop, but GIMP just feels easier to use for me.

    And another thing: I'm really surprised that nobody has taken Photoshop to task for what it really is -- an amusing toy, but absolutely useless for any kind of real-world editing of streaming video. Anybody who would recommend such a half-finished product as a serious tool for manipulating visual media is obviously a either rank novice or a sheltered geek.

  • I defy you to find an olde english word which means the same thing.

    understand, grasp, comprehend, know.

    do i need to get a thesaurus?

    just kidding, though. i think grok is a fine word.

    -c

  • I am neither a Gimp nor Photoshop guru -- an out-of-the comparision is appropriate and valid. For that test, Gimp failed. I changed the Gimp "maximum image size" cache setting (there is no equivalent setting for Photoshop that needs to be tweaked/tuned) and it performed significantly better. But still, overall not nearly as well as Photoshop. Don't take my word for it. Try both programs yourself. Here's an iDrive link to the image I was using: Berkeley_aerial.jpg [idrive.com].
  • The major reason for GIMP not to include the standard ways to get printable images, is that they are patanted (or has similar restrictions), and that makes it impossible to incorporate them without paying huge $:ars. But hopefully those patents/whatever will expire soon and we get all those nice colorformats and get to send out images directly to the presses.

  • "I'm really surprised that nobody has taken Photoshop to task for what it really is -- an amusing toy, but absolutely useless for any kind of real-world editing of streaming video"

    Uh, like, are you living in the same "real world" I'm living in? Because in the "real world" I'm living in, PS is by far the most commonly used professional photo editting tool. Go down to your local bookstore and pick up any magazine off the shelf that has any photos in - you guessed it, PS was used somewhere in making that magazine.

    PS isn't supposed to be used for editing streaming video, you twit. Who claimed it was?

    Your post is pure FUD.

    The GIMP is really excellent, and has some very powerful features that PS simply does not have - but please, lose that rabid zealotry and open your eyes, PS is also a really excellent, powerful, professional tool. I tend to prefer PS over GIMP, partially because I prefer the interface, but there are other reasons.

  • How's the developement of Gimp 1.2/2.0 coming? Is there any status page?
    --------------------------
  • Yeah, but I've written a fair amount of code, and I taught myself to use Photoshop. I did a bunch of stuff with the GIMP, and I think it's nice, but I find Photoshop to be much, much easier to work with. GIMP's UI needs a lot of polishing, in my opinion.

  • And another thing: I'm really surprised that nobody has taken Photoshop to task for what it really is -- an amusing toy, but absolutely useless for any kind of real-world editing of streaming video. Anybody who would recommend such a half-finished product as a serious tool for manipulating visual media is obviously a either rank novice or a sheltered geek.

    Um, are you a troll, or just stupid? Photoshop is designed to edit images. Still images. To manipulate video, you'd use Premiere or After Effects.

    Besides, as far as I know, there aren't any serious video-editing apps out for Linux.

    OK, I guess that was a troll...

  • I disagree with pretty much everything you've said here.

    First off, you state that artists have an easier time understanding GIMP than programmers - I disagree. I have a friend who prefers GIMP over photoshop any day. (and that's GIMP 1.0.x stuff - she's not even seen 1.1.x+). And she's definately not a coder. And I personally find GIMP much easier to understand and use - PS is confusing for me in comparission. GIMP just takes a much more straight-forward approach when implimenting it's tools, and doesn't make things too 'ms-word-friendly'... MS Word is almost completely unusable now with the 2000 version, with all the extra features they've added that make it crash all the time and the 'usability enhancements'... I would definately consider myself a coder variety, but I am also an artist, and much more so than an artist. That may be my advantage, but PS is downright evil.

    Also, I agree with what others have said on the topic of writing a book - books are helpful too; it has nothing to do with the usability of a program. Somebody doesn't want to use a program? Well, then they've got to learn. You honestly don't think that professional computer jobs can be done well without learning how to use your tools properly, do you? (or any profession, for that matter.)

    Also, realize that there are a lot more Photoshop books out there than GIMP books. So the facts even betray your opinion on the issue. It's best to keep the facts in retrospect, generally.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • "Gimp has been ported to windows.
    Wo why do I need Linux just for that?"

    I use GIMP under both Windows and Linux.
    GIMP was originally written to run under Linux, and the Windows version doesn't seem to be updated as frequently, at least in the few months I've been paying attention to the Win32 version.

    There are other reasons as well. The Win32 GIMP may well be an introduction to open-source software for those who have always relied on closed-source commercial applications like photoshop. This might be what it takes to get rid of confusion between free software and the old shareware ("crippleware") concept.
    Further, the GIMP's UI is the same whether you run GIMP on Win32 or Linux/X. Why then should a user continue to put up with the BSOD and other common Windows "features" when he/she can use the same applications running on a more stable platform?

  • i wish folks would quit using the term 'grok' in everyday parlance. this use of grok as a synonym for 'understand' does not fully convey the nuances of the word in its original context and will only succeed in reducing the impact and meaning of the word in its one true context.
  • "grok" has been in use in geek circles a lot longer than terms like "1337" or "404". If you were ignorant of the meaning, you no longer have an excuse; here's the Jargon File entry [tuxedo.org] for it.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
  • I built an autocompositing facility I'm calling
    Magic Hands (no hp yet, will be at telebody.com) when I was asked to do the impossible: based on a few photoshop layouts build a thousand page site (no database) with as many photos in a matter of days.. a combination of using Perl to grok file names, templates, and navigation rules, and execute various image processing tasks while considering the logic of the site.. for example the layout changes if the image is vertically or horizontally oriented. I also was able to set up alpha masks, and frames for compositing by trying out different sequences by hand (using a batch version I made of the pgshell script so I could paste in blocks of code and watch the Gimp try them out).

    It was both Fun and Terrible! An inability to open some of the Photoshop files was the least of the story. It all started with debugging Scheme on a deadline..

    But paid off when I got a whole CD of new photos to drop in at the last minute. Then I could just run a few scripts and it would all be reprocessed, rebuilt in 5 minutes. The most satisfying part was self highlighting thumbnails which would rotate in a circle as you clicked through successive pages (this was for a hotel chain called Mandarin Oriental), automatically adjusting for the number of photos available for each hotel. Program once and forget, it would have been even easier if we were allowed to use a database on the site.

    Until photoshop makes a server edition built like SGI versions of popular 3dcg tools (alias, softimage) Gimp is the last word. (Sorry maybe it is already like that on SGI, haven't felt the urge to drop that much cash lately.) But actually trying to do serious graphic design in it is far more difficult than in Photoshop.. the interface (partly not fault of Gimp creators) is difficult to use, and the feeling of using Photoshop on a Macintosh is just incredibly tactile and trustworthy in comparison, for now. Also Photoshop or batch tools like debabelizer probably could do a lot of simple jobs faster. For example a simple job like building an icon legend (click on the question mark in the corner of http://www.oranda.or.jp/) was accomplished in Gimp/KDE/Suse Linux, in a taxi cab, on my Inspiron7.5K but I felt like I had to scream at the Gimp's graphic interface in comparison to the quick strokes I knew could have accomplished it in maybe a minute or two in Photoshop on a Mac. Also, presentations just look better on Mac screens than any other computer I've seen so far.. though I haven't tried the latest version of X, things just feel more cinematic and satisfying on a Mac so far, the widgets and decorations feel real like you can sink into them if you get what I mean. Perhaps Eazel and friends are working to fix some of that.

    Also there is the problem that Mac OS and the feeling of the interface and its purity and responsiveness have convinced me that doing Photoshop in Windows for example will result in different work from an artistic perspective, either infected by the corporate droniness of Windows and its feckless mouse tracking, or the somewhat scientific ultraclarity of SGI Irix. I've felt this with CG tools as well. Win2K is better than Win98 used to be, and Photoshop in that environment might be more acceptable, no experience there.

    But now with the Gimp and the system I built, I feel like I have a swiss army knife that can tackle most any task, even if the client is allergic to databases for some reason. I can chomp() any template, build a thousand pages in 2 minutes (on a PIII), and wait until you sit a designer in front of the screen when the Gimp windows are popping in and out as if a phantom designer on megacaffeine was sitting at the keyboard. There are tools out there for people to build graphics programmatically, but the Gimp seems to provide relatively high quality operations.

    If Photoshop was there on linux, open source and with a perl server I'd be there, but then hey, that's the Gimp you're talking about! The best thing to do is figure out what tool is right for the task at hand, and unless you need to lift weights, use Photoshop on a Mac. Macs have been designers' best friends for a long time for a good reason. Then get a lot of free time and start studying the Gimp! You get out of it what you put in.
  • Being a major linux fan (and fortunate enough to use it all day at work), I have to admit that in the large image performance area the Gimp just isn't quite there yet. In fact, Photoshop is about the only reason why Windoze hasn't been completely wiped out of my home machine.

    Try edititing your typical PhotoCD image (3072x2048x24bpp) in both, even after giving the Gimp as much memory as possible (and on a machine with enough memory to do the job well, like 128 or 256Mb), and the difference will be obvious. It is true that tweaking the gimp's memory setting helps a lot (and thanks for the tip), but it's still very noticeably slower than photoshop.

    But we should take this as constructive information: it's actually amazing that in such a short time and without the $$$$ of Adobe the gimp is so close to photoshop in many areas, and even flat out better in others. But the Adobe guys have had many years to optimize their algorithms to death, so it should be no surprise to see differences in this area. Remember, this program is used to prepare 300Mb drum scans for LightJet printing by pros, so optimum performance is absolutely essential.

    Realizing this drawback simply points to one area of the gimp where the developers should now focus their attention a little more, especially now that the foundation of the program is so solid. Putting blinders on doesn't help anyone improve their work: if anyone, the open source community should be the pickiest critics of our own work. That's how it will become superior to everything else: because we won't take second place as good enough (not because we ignore our shortcomings, that's Microsoft's job).
  • Ditto, only more so - I script and toolbuild to drive the ortho rectification, colour balancing and mosaicing of tens of thousands of colour aerial photo's, each of which is a tad under 400MB.

    I find that Photoshop, without the appropriate plugins, currently chokes on 32GB compressed images.

    In four and a half years time when I can get a $300.00 terrabyte compact drive at the local shop for use as a school atlas, I'd like be able to use a GIMP derived viewer to roam, zoom & 2D/3D view about one and a third terrabytes of uncompressed height and colour data.

    That would be the whole state and some surrounding ocean at 1m resolution.

    Aside from using this to resolve issues such as state resource usage, housing development near sensitive river systems, and who's left their outhouse door open, the opportunity to apply daily diff patches to regions of interest can offer valuable insight into surf conditions 300Km up the coast.
  • So if photoshop is so easy to use why do I see so many photoshop books? (amazon returned 312 matches) Surely none of these would be necessary if photoshop was totally intuitive. I don't think any complex tool like the GIMP or Photoshop can every ditch the manual alltogether and rely totally on "intuition". Intuitive is what you're used to. If you're a mac person and that's what you're used to then the mac way of doing things is "intuitive". If you're a windows person then the windows way of doing things is intuitive (and possibly very frustrating to you). Of course if you're a professional artist who's used photoshop lots then it will be "intuitive". Cross-platform programs like photoshop and the gimp often can't leverage the experience users have on their particular platform, they have to aim for more common ground, or favour one platform over another.
  • I've been using the gimp for about 6 months on windows. It works fine. From what I've seen the development lags behind the Linux version a bit (I think I read that on the web site - I haven't needed to update it since I installed it), but I've never had a problem with it. If you're just bitching 'cause it uses the GTK+ widgets instead of the native windows ones then get over it. Just think of it as a very bland "skin" and you'll do fine.
  • Use the bezier select tool.

    --

  • I'd be interested in what you think of the color calibration used by Splash [splashtech.com] products. They are print servers that hook up to a large color copier, and do color calibration as well as other things.

    The calibration scheme used seems simple enough, using only a scanner, color strip, and the copier. Kodak makes high-accuracy color strips that have standard colors. The scanner scans that strip and is calibrated to it. Then, the copier spits out a sheet of paper with colored squares. That paper is placed on the scanner, along with the color strip, and they are compared and used to calibrate the copier against the color strip (via the already-calibrated scanner).

    The computer is then calibrated to the same standard used by the color strip. Then, you can use the copier as a printer, to print accurate colors, as the system is then completely calibrated. Simple enough.

    Unfortunately for the GIMP, this is patented [delphion.com]. I work at Splash, programming Linux [krellan.com] network stuff. This caught my eye, and I thought I'd add this to the discussion...

  • You obviously don't grok the meaning of grok.

    Let me recommend Heinlein's "stranger in a strange land".

    Have a nice day.

    --

    "I'm surfin the dead zone
  • While we're at it, let's drop the word "utopia," which was made up by another sci-fi writer (of sorts). :-)
  • has the gimp topic icon always moved it's eyes like that? or was the icon changed deliberately to scare the shit out of me for the month of october?
  • Get the "magic wand" tool, mark the white parts you want deleted (Shift+click to choose multiple regions), and press Ctrl+k to replace them with transparent pixels (provided you have Added Alpha Channel). GIMP will handle pixels "close" in color to the clicked pixel quite nicely; double-click the tool to set some thresholds.
  • We need more upright, upstanding American's like Heinlein to counteract the perverted filth that's being written today.

    Having just finished re-reading Stranger in a Strange Land this week, I found this more than a little funny. The sexism in that book was even more grossly overstated than many of his other works. Homophobia reared its head once or twice. (Granted, it was written ages ago, but still.) The really funny part about that previous post was calling what's "written today" something like "perverted filth," when the central focus of social interaction in the inner circle of Smith's church in Stranger is fairly well described as such.

    My small-fraction-of-two-bits.:P

  • It does not make his books "perverted filth."

    Didn't mean to imply that it did - just that I found it slightly humorous that his works were held aloft by a previous poster as something other than "perverted" when a fairly prudish reader (not me, per se) would definitely find RAH's stuff falling into that category.


  • "I think the GIMP's rendering..."

    "Well I guess you'll just have to go wake him up now won't you."

    --

  • About one month ago I downloaded the latest gimp beta version, and it really is a lot better than the stable one. Most of what I want to do is draw simple black-n-white line drawings for low-res illustrations on web pages. MacPaint 2.0 still seems to be the best program. I was hoping to finally be able to retire the old mac, but the gimp still has a ways to go before it can replace good 'ole MacPaint (from 1988).

    Before it was really difficult to draw single pixel straight lines, but now the pencil tool has a line draw feature. Still no tools to draw arcs, circles, etc. To get a single pixel circle, I had to make a circular selection and fill it, then carve away from the inside. Drawing a circle or other simple line shape really ought to be easier!

    The new version seems to be much easier to move selections around. Previously (stable version) I could only move the selection once, and any additional moves without using the move tool would do really strange things. Why is there a move tool anyways (still present in the beta version)? What is the purpose of the move tool? I always expect to be able to move whatever's selected with a click-n-drag.

    Another minor annoyance is with pasting from the clipboard, where there is no current selection. It seems to always paste to the center of the image, which is almost always off screen if you're zoomed in to a small part of the image. Most commercial programs paste to somewhere that is in the currently visible view, since you did a paste presumably to add to part of the section you're viewing.

    When moving a selection, there doesn't seem to be a modifier key to press/hold during the move, that constrains the move to be only horizontal or vertical. From the Mac, I expect to be able to hold the shift (or some other modifier) while I click-n-drag the selection, and have it only move horizontal or vertical, depending on the initial direction of my mouse movement. I think this is a really basic and very important feature and I'm amazed that it's still not in the gimp. Maybe there's some modifier I don't know about? I tried every reasonable key, and I spent quite a bit of time looks at on-line docs, which spend lot of time on the filters and color issues, but never seem to document the basics, like which modifier keys do what for each tool.

    Rotating a selection by increments of 90 degrees ought to be "perfect"... the pixels should only move and not be changed. The stable gimp fails miserably, but the beta version works pretty well, with only a minor bug where the resulting selection shaves one pixel width off the side. Better, but still a bug you'd not find in a commercial package. Some packages have separate tools for rotation in 90 degree increments, but the gimp does not, and the transform still doesn't work properly for 90 degrees!

    The gimp is cool, and it's a great program considering that it's free... but it's still lacking in the user interface. My overall experience is that it does really amazing things, but when you only want to do something simple, the user interface can be annoying.

  • The Gimp *ucking sucks. PERIOD. Now before you jump all over me read the rest of my post. First most of the people who thinks that the gimp is the shiznez, aren't graphic designs, they are more or less nerds, geeks, and techies. As a graphic design for a large firm, i can tell you that the gimp is very poor and lacking in most of the features required in design and creation, not to meantion color calibration schemes. I have used the gimp for quite sometime now, because i like linux, and wanted to see how it comparies with Adobe Photoshop. There is no comparison, sure the gimp offers complex features, but in the realworld it will always be just a toy. Sorry, peace out.
  • Lol i went to you site, you make the strongest arguement yet for use of photoshop without even trying, notice the terrible alpha fades of all the images? you can't do razor images nor anti-alias anything like photoshop in the gimp.
  • I used to use Paint Shop Pro back in the windoze days, and found that the Gimp now has many extra cool features as well as 80% of the stuff PSP has. The trick for newbies is right click early, right click often. Following this advice, your average web designer shouldn't need a book.

    The latest release makes it much easier to visualize how layers work, and is much more intuitive for exporting different formats.

    Before you buy the book, try upgrading your copy of the Gimp. You might suprise yourself how easy it is getting.

  • Is it possible to get this from a usable web site ? This one give javashit on me but no picture with either lynx or wget.

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • It is true that the gimp is ill-equipped to do professional-quality print work. Such work requires the use of specific palettes, such as pantone, so that the printed results will be exactly predictable and consistently print exactly the same, etc.
    However, for images that are intended to be viewed on a computer screen, there's nothing better, IMHO. I believe that that's what the gimp developers really intended it for, anyway. You can tell by the way the default measurements are all in pixels, and the default resolution is 72x72 pixels per inch.
    I don't really think it's true that the gimp is behind in plug-ins, either. Though some of the plug-ins can be somewhat unstable, there are a lot of them. Not all of them come with the distribution, you can get them from the gimp's page. Plug-ins for photoshop usually cost a lot of money, from what I understand.
    Personally, I find the gimp's UI to be very intuitive.
    Irecently recieved a copy of Coriolis's Gimp, the Official Handbook. It is excellent, from what I've read so far. It goes into a lot of very technical information about color models, etc., and also covers the plug-ins very welleven some of the ones that don't come with the standard distribution.
  • Guess I'm not an artist then - I find adobe's GUI is very bad, small and squeezed together

    --

  • I shall clearly have to buy the book. The Gimp has probably the crassest and most ridiculous set of interface restrictions I have seen since VMSmail.

    • It goes out of its way to make it hard to use, barring you from doing the simplest and most obvious things like saving a file in another format (on spurious grounds like the use of layers: so flatten the file, dodo!).
    • It runs counter to everything we stand for in the UNIX world, which is to enable things, not disable them.
    • It is a locus classicus of Knuth's criticism of dwelling on borderline cases and special parameters, providing some excellently-written and robust routines for doing stuff you want once in a lifetime and failing miserably to provide the simplest and most obvious requirements like easy cut and paste of image portions.

    Sadly, even the leading light in the other camp, PaintShop Pro, is going this way: the latest version is even less intuitive than the previous one.

    In their scramble to provide the latest and flashiest filters and the most sophisticated image-munging around (and let's not forget the Gimp is very sophisticated, as well as being extremely reliable), too many graphics programs are neglecting the basics we all need for everyday trimming and tidying up.

    Doubtless I shall change my mind once the book has explained everything to me. It's just a pity it needs a book, rather than using the interface, Luke.

  • You missed out that people who use the word "grok" come across as sad bastards with no lives.
    While we're at it. "The GIMP" - Oh joy, it's Gnu Stupid Acronymic Name Syndrome again. I mean, could nobody think of a decent name for it? "FreePaint", "Photo4Free", whatever, something more descriptive and catchy-sounding.
    (Yes, I know it's Gnu Image Manipulation Program, but nobody ever calls it that and it's a bit of a mouthful, as the actress said to the bishop.)
    As for the book "Grokking The Gimp", the title practically screams "GEEKS ONLY". Don't get me wrong, I like the Gimp - Linux and Windows versions alike. It's actually quite decent software - OK, it may lack the features that professionals need, CYMK etc, but for the ordinary guy who wants to play around with photos and make cool designs for their web page, it's the dog's bollocks.

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • I really don't see how that post got moderated to 3.

    Sincerly, the gimp is not too bad, but it can't match photoshop for usability or printed jobs.

    I love open source software a lot, but I don't think anything saying "wow that software is awesome so much better than any commercial stuff ever made" deserve to be moderated up...

    ---
    Guillaume

  • political incorrectness (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm surprised there hasn't been a 'media backlash' aimed at the makers of the GIMP program. I'm sure there would be if a program called the Nig or the Home-o came about somewhere. Why hasn't the special intrest groups tried to cash in yet through a lawsuit?
  • > Looks like it - has someone cut and paste straight out of Emacs by any chance? Looks like the over-length line indicator.

    FYI- Pico uses "$" as the out of space character. Emacs uses "\" and then continues on the next "line".

    ...these can no doubt be changed, but I'm pretty sure those are the defaults.

    Back to GIMP. I've never used it much, but the folks I know who do a lot of image manipulation (web site design, free style art, whatever) are pretty down on GIMP's abilities. I should corner them and ask them why they feel GIMP is so far behind Photoshop. Myself, I don't really know enough to judge.

    One thing I *have* heard is that GIMP is poorly equipped for print media. This has to do with the GIMP's limited support for non-RGB color palettes. My understanding is that virtually no one in the print world uses RGB palettes. Also, I expect that GIMP is behind in plugins, atleast in quantity, if not in quality. There are several companies who make their money off of writing plugins for Adobe software. Talk about a niche app, but they're still kicking, so I'm not going to knock it...

    Any graphic designers in the audience care to say on what grounds Photoshop or some other proprietary package might still be superior to our beloved GIMP?

    --Lenny
  • ...in their bargin books section. Here in Las Vegas anyway. I don't know how much the author gets of that, but its worth it to have handy instead of trying to read the HTML.
  • ...There was a decent Win32 port.

    I know that there is a Windows port, but unfortunately it doesn't use native Windows widgets, and as a result it's rather slow and clunky.

    As a result, there's a huge chunk of people who would probably rather use it than a demo version of Pain Shop Pro, but it's just not worth it on Windows.

    Ah well, I suppose I should look into doing a native widgets port of GTK...
  • I'd really like to use the Gimp but my LinuxPPC box is a little too slow (a five year old 7200/75 running my personal site.)

    My main machine is a well loaded G3 that I will upgrade to OS X when it gets here. (Don't talk to me about this week's fastest PC, they're all built like cheap, ugly, ephemeral crap.)

    I'd love to use the Gimp on it. In OS X, it would really rock!

  • Try drawing a perfect circle in Gimp, as opposed to Photoshop where they give you a "tool". Of course its possible in Gimp, but you need to know "shift-click" stuff.

    To use the Gimp effectively you _have_ to read a manual, while Photoshop, anybody can learn to use it with a little experimentation.
  • My point is that, to use the Gimp effectively, you _NEED_ to read the manual. There's no point and click figure it out usability.

    There's no arguing it.

    I'm not saying that the Gimp sucks, because it doesn't. I'm just saying the UI is what limits its marketability.
  • Hahah. Being the author of another Gimp book from the same publisher (New Riders, my book is 'Gimp Essential Reference'), I was contacted to see if I knew what the word grok means. I thought it was an excellent word to use, it implies understanding.

    I felt that most people who use Linux will probably know what it means, and apparently so did the other people they asked :)

    Alex

  • What about a more Photoshop-esque "select all pixels of color x (with tolerance y) from the current layer" w/ preview?

    It's there. Select->By Color from the right click menu. The only thing it doesn't do is change the preview in realtime as you move the tolerance slider -- you have to do an extra mouse click to regenerate the preview.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I havn't used Photoshop for a while. I'm curious to hear examples of where GIMP falls short on UI compaired with Photoshop.

    --Ben

  • As a result, there's a huge chunk of people who would probably rather use it than a demo version of Pain Shop Pro, but it's just not worth it on Windows.

    Pain Shop Pro is by far my favorite program - especially with its new "Distributed Suffering" features. I can make my boss double over in agony (using my favorite tool, the virtual 1/4" abdominal slice) with just a few clicks.

    In my opinion, the ability to inflict pain at a distance is well worth the minor pain of running Windows. And, as a long-time user of Pain Shop and Pain Shop Pro, I rather enjoy it.

    -c

  • Your artist friends think Photoshop is intuitive because they learned how to use it in art school! Any commercial art school worth its tuition teaches its students how to use the industry standard commercial tools.

    If you put a programmer in front of the tool and he can't use it, that's a deep sign the UI has problems -- programmers give the machine every benefit of the doubt.


  • but you fuck it up with pure stupidity. adobe doesn't want to 'sell you' a manual? excuse me, photoshop has a manual, and i'm sure its cost is built into that $600-900.

    A GIMP expert has to choose between "giving away" improvements that make GIMP better by patching the UI, or writing a book and making a quick buck.

    what?!? you are on crack.

    i agree, because i have been told from many reliable sources, that photoshop has a much better UI than the GIMP, but this is not the reason.

    the reason is, adobe has been working on photoshop for a long, long time. i'm sure they have usability experts, etc. etc. etc.

    the people who use the GIMP, obviously like how it works, and probably make changes where they see that they are needed, but obviously, they have no motivation to make it work 'better for the public' because they don't see the problem(s) with the interface.

    et cetera, et cetera,..
    ...dave
  • (although I still hate having to right click all the time - menu bar, people!).

    If you're using the current development version (1.1.x), you'll notice an arrow-shaped button in the top left corner of your image window. Click it (with button-1, usually the left button), and a menu drops down. This is the same menu you get when right-clicking the image.

  • Who marked this as offtopic? Jeez. Do we need an O'Reilly book with a Jackass on the cover? O'Reilly for /. Moderators? Anyway, you need to give the GIMP a bit more credit. It's more like Photoshop 4.0 without the features one truly needs for prepress, such esoteric stuff like dot gain and custom inking profiles. Good for 72 dpi RGB work, but I wouldn't use it for prepress unless I absolutely had to.

    ----
  • I've never encountered this scheme, so I can't offer that much of an educated comment, except:

    You're VERY dependent on the quality of the scanner from the way this reads. I've never expierenced the scanner you mention, but the majority of positive image scanners have a rathar dodgy rep.

    To get a REALLY good scan, you generally develop your film, but do NOT make prints. You then use a specialised negative scanner (NOT a positive scanner w/ negative attachment... blegh!) to get a good image into your computer.

    Also, your summary doesn't mention how this scheme handles monitor calibration. But I do notice from a quick skim at the web page, that everything outside the "T series" is reliant on a Macintosh of some kind. I suspect therefore that it does use Apple's ColorSync in there somewhere, at least for monitor calibration.

    See, the problem with CRTs is that the phosphors decay as they age. But the red, green, and blue phosphors decay at different rates, fscking up your colors. So you measure this decay, and boost the *signal* brightness of a particular phosphor over time, so as to keep the identical ACTUAL brightness.

    ColorSync measures the decay of the phosphors with sensors internal to the monitor. This information is sent back to the computer via USB (ADB on older units) and the computer boosts the brightness accordingly. This is why higher end Apple monitors REQUIRE a USB/ADB link back to the box.

    Many others, such as SGI/Radius/etc. use a more accurate, but much less convinent, external light meter to generate the monitor profile.

    The truely crappy schemes require you to hold colored cards to the monitor, and GUESS how much your phosphors have decayed... sad, very sad.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Um... "FreePaint" and "Photo4Free" sound mind-bogglingly stupid. They sound, respectively, like the name of one of those misguided open source projects that posted version 0.0.0 to Freshmeat and never got off the ground, and the name of a piece of Visual Basic shareware written by a teenager. Sorry to burst your bubble.

    Incidentally, I believe that the GIMP was the program that started the whole trend of G* programs, so you can hardly blame it for that.

    I think you're right that only geeks are going to buy the book, though. But the vast majority of the people using the GIMP are geeks in the first place. The title appeals to geeks, so it's doing a good job focusing on its target market.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
  • OS X includes all the unix tools, GCC, that kind of thing. If linuxPPC would run on your G3, then I'm guessing a version of gimp compiled for that would run on OS X (Doesn't BSD run most linux apps natively?). If not, not much tweaking should be necessary, because I'm sure glib, gdk, and gtk+ are in use on the *BSDs, or easy to port.
    --
  • Hey, you stupid cocksucker:

    I probably read that Heinlein book before you were born!

    First, that's impossible. Second, judging from your level of maturity displayed above, I strongly doubt you were reading anything before I received my BS. It's likely that I read SIASL before you were born.

    I find it amusing that you think accusing someone of homosexuality is an insult. How very parochial. I bet you're getting a lot of mileage out of that one in high school right now, but a real insult either takes knowledge of a shameful truth or true creativity. You have displayed neither.

    A wise geek once said, "It is better to be silent and be thought a lamer, than to post and remove all doubt." But coming across it probably would have had no effect; if you'd stumbled across that wisdom in your short time on this earth, I suspect that you'd have picked yourself up and gone on. Something like the other six thousand times you've been offered a clue. At the very least, do something about your minuscule vocabulary before you try insulting anyone in the future. Yours shows the poverty of a fourth-rate mind.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • When did I ever say anything about sexual orientation. I'm probably gayer than you are!
    And you thought that calling me a "cocksucker" and talking about my "gay Macintosh" would make me feel bad. Are you full of self-hatred, or are you just a lousy liar?
    And, I read _Stranger in a Strange Land_ in 1961, when I was 18 years old.
    As I said, you couldn't have read it before I was born, and you didn't. (It hadn't been published.)

    Fifty-seven years old and you've been able to tackle new media like the Web, but you haven't outgrown your grade-school outlook. I didn't think anyone was trying to prove that you could ignore age and remain immature indefinitely, but here you are.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • > from the such-a-cute-logo dept.

    Why do I feel I'm being watched? ;-)

  • Not to fear, the author has -- and$

    Compounding the complexity challenge, the GIMP has its own way of doing things. Half of the work of editing an image seems to be making a good selection. Again, th$

    Broken HTML ??? Looks like it - has someone cut and paste straight out of Emacs by any chance? Looks like the over-length line indicator.

  • Ever since Tor Lillqvist (sp?) ported GIMP to Windows [gimp.org], I've never used Paint Shop Pro.
  • Huh? Last I checked, to draw a perfect circle in Photoshop, you had to make a circular selection (with the circular selection tool, hidden away behind the default rectangular selection tool), go to the Edit menu and select 'stroke'

    Huh? Last I checked, to draw a perfect circle in Photoshop (at least the Mac version), you simply hold down the shift key while drawing it.

  • Unlike the music industry, the author gets the same amount no matter the selling price. Hell, the author gets the same amount even if the book is stolen. This fact was part of the ironic counter cultural background of Abbie Hoffman's " Steal This Book."

    He meant it. He got payed for every title stolen and the corporations that printed, distributed and sold it got screwed. He that was pretty damn funny.

    In THIS case, however, since this is the way most computer books of this nature are handled on the business end, the author probably received a flat fee as a work for hire.
  • Huh? Last I checked, to draw a perfect circle in Photoshop, you had to make a circular selection (with the circular selection tool, hidden away behind the default rectangular selection tool), go to the Edit menu and select 'stroke'

    or...

    In the Gimp, you make a circular selection (with the circular selection tool, right there on the main palette), right click to get to the edit menu, and select stroke.

    Gimp uses the current brush, too, instead of throwing up a dialog.

    Me, I was a die-hard Gimp hater until sometime between this January and May. I tried it in January, it sucked. I tried it in May, it rocked. Kudos to the really cool guy that joined the team and fixed the godawful interface annoyances (although I still hate having to right click all the time - menu bar, people!).

  • They changed the layout of the gimp with the latest beta. His screen shots are all wrong. Oh well, this is why documenting software is not such a popular activity.
  • To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

    It has been used for quite a few years now exclusively by developers. If you had a problem, but didn't know what exactly it was, it was best to go to someone who *grokked* the entire system. I defy you to find an olde english word which means the same thing. Language evolves. New words are added all the time, as soon as they gain mass public use/understanding.
  • when linux gets marked in the history books, the gimp will probably be the stand out application for the platform. Considering how well it has faired against its biggest contender, I think the gimp is a remarkable symbol of what open source and cooperation can provide to the community.

    "sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
  • RAH was my favorite author (and is still one of the top 3). Hack!? He wrote more good sci fi than you've had hot meals! Hack!? He was a GRANDMASTER! Hack!? He invented at least one sub-genre of sci fi! Hack!? He invented at least three commonly used words/devices! Hack!?? Why, I'll.....ooooooohhhhhhhh
    --
    An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
  • Grokking The Gimp sounds like a good book, though I like using O'Reilly's Gimp Pocket Reference. It covers the basics, just what I need.
  • FreeBSD (on i386) runs Linux i386 binaries very well, and glib, gdk, gtk+ gnome, gimp etc. run unber all BSD's, but porting gimp to OSX would be a lot more than just that.

    For starters, gtk+ needs X-Windows, and Aqua isn't X-Windows by a long shot, so a port of GTK would have to be made (I'd be surprised if this wasn't underway, I know there was/is work on a BeOS port, and QNX photon uses its X layer to get GTK working..)

    Anyway, this would certainly be a non-trivial port. Apple's not using X-Windows on purpose (personally, I think X gets a bad rap. I think it's great.) but I wouldn't hold my breath for a GIMP port. Command-line stuff probably compiles cleanly, but something as complex as gimp....

  • writer vs. coder, wrong dichotomy (Score:3)

    by georgeha ( 43752 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @08:22AM (#692326) Homepage
    A GIMP expert has to choose between "giving away" improvements that make GIMP better by patching the UI, or writing a book and making a quick buck.

    This is an interesting viewpoint, but I disagree.

    I code a little, mostly PostScript, though I can do a little C. I've also written two books in Samba.

    My choice was, practice coding and networks and NetBUIE for a few years to make a meaningful contribution to Samba, or spend six months writing a book on Samba. If I had chosen the first route, I'd still be coding and practicing, and hoping someone on the Samba team would notice my patches.

    Also, not every good coder is a good writer, and not every good writer is a good coder. To be a good writer, you need to write to the level that other people can understand, especially if they don't have your level of knowledge. To be a good coder, you just have to code so that your software works, and other coders can work to understand it. My coauthor helped me out immensely in making my second book readable, precisely because she is not a Linux guru, once she could understand a concept, your average person looking to implement a Samba server should be able to understand it.

    Thanks,

    George

  • Linux sites for creative types? (Score:3)

    by steelerhead ( 112535 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @08:46AM (#692327) Homepage
    I know about LinuxArtist.org and CreativeLinux.com. Are there any other good sites that specialize in news about Linux tools for creative types? Things like GIMP, Broadcast 2000, HTML editors, etc...

  • Beer goggles, I say (Score:4)

    by RovingSlug ( 26517 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @10:23AM (#692328)
    > I can do my editing twice as fast with Gimp than I can with photoshop.

    I pieced together a 6200x6200 pixel grayscale aerial photo of Berkeley, CA with images from Terraserver. There were brightness/contrast differences between tiles I wanted to manually tweak.

    Editing that image sounds like a big job. But, representing each pixel with a byte (because it's grayscale), the image is 38.4MB. Since I have 128MB of RAM, I thought editing it in Gimp would be feasible. Nope, it just thrashed my swap space. Note, I had to go to a machine with 256MB of RAM just to merge the tiles using ImageMagick.

    For the same file, Photoshop performed exceptionally well. For instance, it quickly loaded the image and allowed real-time arbitrary zooming and panning. Of course, I also fixed my brightness/contrast issues. If I took the time to figure out how to batch-append those tiles using Photoshop, I assume it would have been significantly faster than ImageMagick.

    Kudos to the Gimp team for building something that is both usable and something people enjoy using. But, I'm getting tired of people proclaiming various open source projects as being superior applications than their commercial counterparts just because they're looking at them through Open Source Beer Goggles. Evaluate the application on its merits, not on its religion.

    I suppose I'm peeing into the wind asserting something like this on Slashdot... c'est la vie.

  • Well, (Score:4)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @09:19AM (#692329)
    >Any graphic designers in the audience care to say
    >on what grounds Photoshop or some other
    >proprietary package might still be superior to
    >our beloved GIMP?

    Sppeaking as a Linux/Mac/Vider/Graphics geek who worked on the newspaper whilst in college; and who made the mistake of mentioning this at my previous job, and wound up getting loaned to the design dept as the resident Mac guru as a result...

    The GIMP is a fine little tool. I use it a lot...

    ... for WEB graphics!!!

    >One thing I *have* heard is that GIMP is poorly
    >equipped for print media. This has to do with the
    >GIMP's limited support for non-RGB color
    >palettes.

    You have heard 100% correct sir. If you're ever going to commit to hard copy, the GIMP (as well as paint shop pro and the like) is absolutely WORTHLESS.

    If you ever plan to PRINT your work to PAPER (and not have it look like crap) you MUST have a tool with support for: CMYK, Pantone colors, and COLOR CALIBRATION!!!

    And I can't emphesize enough the importance of color calibration. Without it, you can be pretty much assured that the work you get printed will in no way resemble the work you submitted; your colors will be off not only between monitor and printer, but from computer to computer as well. And forget color calibration that involves "hold this card up to this square on your monitor and enter the number of the closest match". If you're going to print your work, you *MUST* have HARDWARE calibration!!! I've only seen a total of TWO calibration schemes that are worth more than a cup of warm piss. Those schemes are those of Apple Computer, and Silicon Graphics (big suprise, eh?).

    >My understanding is that virtually no one in
    >the print world uses RGB palettes.

    Correct again. RGB are your component LIGHT colors; fine for web work where you can be sure that most ppl are viewing it on a shitty, non calibrated monitor. If you commit your work to PAPER, you use CMYK or Pantones. CMYK are the component colors of PIGMENTS... used if you're printing something like a photo, with MANY colors. Pantones are custom colors mixed in large batches... used if you're doing a large run of a product with FEW colors, like corperate letterhead w/ logos, etc.

    Hope this helps.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • GIMP books (Score:4)

    by rknop ( 240417 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @08:14AM (#692330) Homepage

    This page has a link to several Gimp books:

    http://www.xach.com/gimp/books/

    I've got the "Gimp Essential Reference" myself, and find that it's by and large an excellent book. Before this book, I didn't really understand layers.... My one complaint is that the chapter on writing scripts and plugins is sketchy enough that it should be presented as more of an introduction. Additionally, with the intorudction of Gimp-Perl, I expect more people will want to use that than the Scheme language which is the default described in the book.

    -Rob

  • Gimp vs. PhotoShop (Score:5)

    by magic ( 19621 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @08:16AM (#692331) Homepage
    One of the things the GIMP taught me to appreciate was how excellent Adobe is at creating user interfaces. While many programmers find it a bit awkward, I've discovered that artists are perfectly at home in PhotoShop. Many of PhotoShop's features don't need any manual to figure out how to use (provided you think like an artist).

    Texts on open source projects are great; they are a way for some people to generate revenue, and support the wider user base who doesn't want to have to work on the project to understand how to use it.

    There is a tension that is not (as) present in commerical software, however: selling support and manuals vs. improving the interface to the product. Adobe sells PhotoShop for $600-$900. They'd rather keep the software ideal and not sell you a manual.

    A GIMP expert has to choose between "giving away" improvements that make GIMP better by patching the UI, or writing a book and making a quick buck.

    -m

  • Portable knowledge from Photoshop (Score:5)

    by wheel ( 204735 ) on Thursday October 19, 2000 @09:23AM (#692332)
    My mac-centric (employed) graphix artist pro sis-in-law came over to see the GIMP a few weeks ago. She was blown away. Her words were "This is free?!"

    Also groovy was when she tried random Photoshop commands such as CMD+click to do things with the bezier curve (I'm not a real gimp gear-head so ymmv) and other tools, and they worked!

    Within minutes she was totally at home w/ the GIMP. Most keystrokes are the same, or a substitution of ALT for that "apple" key. The other factor on the learning curve was geting used to having 3 buttons instead of 1 on the mouse.

    In short, people who are reluctant to switch from 'safe' mac to 'tecchie' linux should take some heart from the near total portability of knowledge between photoshop and the GIMP.

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