GIMP's Next-generation Imaging Core Demonstrated 482
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.
It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
But the main problem with adoption is the name. Nobody who has seen "Pulp Fiction" (an american film) can take the GIMP entirely seriously. A simple name change would massively increase adoption in pro circles, if you ask me. Yes, arty people are that picky.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes you're right... Let's see, an new name... A descriptive name maybe... "Image Manipulation"? Yeah, that's good. And it's software, so obviously "Program". We really should highlight that it's open source, so we'll stick a "GNU" infront of it (as you are want to do with GPL licensed software). That's it! The "GNU Image Manipulation Program"! I love it!
Seriously though, it's not the name, dude. I mean, do you think people aren't using Linux because it has a strange name? Open source tools aren't used bec
Re: (Score:2)
At the end of the day, I dont mind too much because I use GIMP and its great! I havent used PS since about 2000ish (when I made the linux switch...jeez, its improved a lot since then!)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it. This guy will whine non stop at the developers. He will yell and scream at people for not helping him enough. He will fill the IRC channels with vitriol and he will not lift a finger to help anybody, will not file a bug report, will not write one line code, will not write one line of
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is a vastly superior name than GIMP. The word GIMP could easily offend some. Linux is a made up word. I've installed GIMP on many a windows users machine as a free image editor, and depending on who it is I feel uncomfortable calling it by name. Sure, it's probably not the biggest reason for the lack of popularity, but I don't think it's insignificant. libcaca is another one. Cool library, but seriously, libcaca? And the Do Whatever the Fuck You Want License? The name has honestly made me less interested in the library, as lame and irrational as that is. I don't paint my walls dissonant colors; I don't want my apps with unsightly names.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
When free means completely free!
I wouldn't be too concerned about the name if the software does something useful
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
patented and otherwise non-free technologies (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
The Pantone Color System is a system of ink formulas, based on about 12 Pantone inks with patented chemical formulas. You can mix any Pantone color with the Pantone primary colors plus CMYK. But you cannot mix any Pantone color with CMYK. For example, there is no way to achieve an intense orange like Pantone Orange 21 with CMYK, because it is beyond the gamut of CMYK inks. That's why Pantone Ora
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just 1 small example but it bothers me none the less.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd also like to be able to control how it reacts to things a little more. Like how it crops anything you use a magic wand on, so you can't slightly adjusted what it selected. You have to reselect the area.
Also it would be nice for windows to be a little less... every where. With Gimp there seems to be about 3-4 windows open and IMs get in the way and such. A minor thing but I would perfer a solid "raise all windows" type option when you click one. But this is a problem with the entire lay
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Graphic professional are color matching paranoid. A problem between a color of a design and the output from the output company cost lots of money and finding what is wrong in the flow requires the same sort of approach as finding a bug in an application.
What is also missing is maybe that Adobe build its tools closely with their p
Re:It's about time (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's misplaced options everywhere, needless mini-windows everywhere (instead of combining several within one), the whole retarted concept GUI (sorry guys, but outside the UNIX window manager world, that simply *does* *not* *work*), the non-standard file and print dialogs (GTK on Windows was always a klu
Gimp's problem are ideological (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the developers really want to know, else they would have responded long before since I've already told it several times. While the graphic drawing power of Gimp isn't disputed, Gimp sports the most uncommon GUI an application could have. This (and only this) GUI leaves a bad taste in the users mind so they start looking for other minor annoyances one finds in any application if looked for. Yet since most users a pre justice because of the bad taste they won't forgive any other annoyance.
This is all known in the Gimp community yet they don't want to acknowledge this simple fact but prefer to discard this as a flame bait. So it's now wonder Gimp gets flamed at all the time, rightfully or not. On the other side it's incredible easy for Gimp to drop off this flaming, they simply should change their GUI to the one outlined in wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]). All it needs is some willingness on the Gimp side and a little work. It might be that wyoGuide isn't the best but it certainly is good enough for Xara (http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/projectlist.php [sourceforge.net]) and many other fine applications.
O. Wyss
PS. You are free to rate this as flame bait but that won't help Gimp.
Re:Gimp UI and how it could be even better (Score:4, Insightful)
However, it would be good to have a completely tweakable interface. I have already commented somewhere that right now many 3D modeling apps are configurable to work like other apps, and that you have a vi mode for Emacs and Emacs bindings for vi, and nobody finds it strange that people like it that way. Problem is, vi and Emacs are used by coders, and coders can build their damn interface themselves. Most users of GIMP (and certainly most advanced graphics manipulators) can't. But they are right in saying they work better the way they do. Users are not idiots, and they know how they work better. What we need is not really "reskinning the Gimp, and more", but just the ability to tweak what really matters to you.
Not all features are equally important, or used equally frequently. Right now one can reassign shortcuts and move menus around, but modificator keys (keys that act as a "shift" to active tools) are still hard-coded, or were last time I looked. (Caveat: I haven't tried to configure it in a Photoshop way in a long time, as I am already used to the GIMP's UI, so I don't miss Photoshop's that much).
The thing I would love to have in GIMP is the space-alt-ctrl trio of modificators to invoke the hand tool and the zoom-in and zoom-out tools while in any mode. This is so powerful a way of working that I am almost religious about it, despite having retrained my muscular memory not to hit the spacebar with my thumb every time I want to readjust the working area. Also, later versions of Photoshop has evolved really nifty docked option palletes for tools (like the search feature in Firefox) that I haven't really used (as I am now a GIMP user), but they look fantastic.
Finally, some of us liked the MDI interface behaviour: sometimes, when you are editing photos, it is all you are doing (see below for single-app computing), and the focus behaviour of Photoshop is much saner than the Gimp's in many places. I know this is not the Gimp but the X11/WindowManager combo that provides window management; maybe what some users need is a PhotoGimpWM.
Contrary to popular Slashdot opinion, some of us who ask for certain Photoshoppy-features in Gimp don't want a clone of Photoshop. What want is the ability to really customise the way we work in a Photoshop-like app (and, like it or not, Gimp is Photoshop-like, see below) in the features that matter to us. Other people would like a Gimp preference option that adds a complete "behaviour" of the most-used and learned photo editor in the world. Think PhotoGimp on steroids, and if I were a coder working on the Gimp (sadly I am only a punter), this would be my first feature to add for propietary-software refugees' sake. Free Software being coded by volunteers, we can't make them do what we want... but that doesn't make our needs and wishes irrelevant or wrong. Just unenforceable
I have worked in TV with people using the Quantel series of graphical pallettes (concretely the superb HAL), and their gestural interface had nothing to do with Photoshop and Gimp's WIMP paradigm. However I would love the Gimp to have support for its dedicated clicker [note] for my left hand while I work with the pen in my right hand. I wouldn't mind to try the HAL's gestural interface either: it seems like a right timesaver, although I don't know how it would fare in a multi-purpose computer running other programs at the same time. In non-windowed environments where the only thing running is the graphics editor, however, gestural interfaces to be the right thing for bringing up pallett
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Informative)
Let's try:
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1-4 all depend on GEGL.
Will be in 2.4.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
As for the interface, so be it. If the other issues are fixed, the interface can be learned quickly enough. I used to use it for web images, and still have a certain fondness for 0.54, which ran on our SGI workstations. Maybe someone can ressurect that code-base and issue it as LIMP (Light Image Manipulation Program).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhhh... do you also think Photoshop should be rewritten from the ground up to use QT so it can run on Linux and BSD?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Informative)
Gtk for Mac (Score:4, Informative)
http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx [imendio.com]
Cheers... -Geoff
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
As for porting Photoshop to QT so it runs on Unices as well, sure. If they do that, then maybe they'll do pagemaker as well.
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's about time (Score:4, Funny)
Krita (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Krita (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Gimpshop! (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is forked up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Almost inevitably, when they do work, it's because the original project has been abandoned, or when it adopts the fork. Accordingly, when a fork is maintained, it must be a top priority to strive to "pay back" to the original project. I approve of any such fork.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever tried to do basic drawing in The Gimp? Like, say, drawing a circle?
First, there's a much easier way to draw a circle than the one you linked to. To draw a circle: use the ellipse select tool, holding down the shift key, then use Edit->Stroke Selection. Done. You can adjust the width, color, pattern, etc. of the circle on the Stroke Selection tool that pops up.
Second, if even that seems like too much effort, well, I'm with the developers on this one: The GIMP is a photo manipulation tool, not a drawing tool. As a fairly heavy GIMP user, I don't want the interface cluttered up with additional drawing-related tools, not when (a) there's a perfectly good, if non-obvious, way to accomplish the task and (b) it's not the tool's primary job.
That's how software should be made, with a focus on what the user wants out of the software.
Which user? You can't be everything to everyone. In this case, people editing photos very rarely have any need for drawing circles, and it's a bad idea to clutter the UI up with stuff that they aren't going to use much anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The users want to be able to draw circles. They want a circle tool.
They do? Well, I'm sure some do. I don't, and I honestly don't see much complaining about the lack of a circle tool on the GIMP users mailing list, either. I think a few people who don't like the GIMP for other reasons find this a nice nit to pick at.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course they do. I've used the GIMP off and on over the years, and I wasted quite a bit of time searching for circle/rectangle/etc. tools before I came to terms with the idea that someone would bother to write such an elaborate program and leave those simple features out.
So what it's a photo manipulation program: people need to stick circles and rectangle into photos sometimes. The menus are already cluttered with dozens if not hundreds of obscure tools and scripts. Surely adding a set of shortcut commands to do a very common basic task in a non-ass-backwards fashion wouldn't make the clutter significantly worse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the tasks I perform with the GIMP is annotation of photos--you know, the kind of image that no one ever sees anywhere that has a particular feature circled with some text describing what it is, and maybe a line connecting the text to the circle.
I'm sure I'm the only person on Earth who ever has to do this with any photo so I guess I can completely understand why "people" never what to do this.
But I do, and the GIMP make
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For crying out loud, you're actually arguing that providing a simple circle primitive tool is UI clutter. It's this kind of dismissal of user demands that has cause so many people to turn against GIMP. "You just don't understand what the focus of
Total Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The shape drawing tools adds what... One button to the toolbar? And are easy and intuitive to use.
Having said that, I like the way you describe Gimp doing the same task, as long as I can edit the circle properties at any time afterwards, like stroke width and color.
Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the sort of answer that, if used frequently, could kill OSS. If the aim is to replace commercial software with 'free' software, then the 'customer is always right' motto still applies.
Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you cut and paste from Inkscape into the GIMP?
No?
Then STFU about "the right tool", because the right tool or set of tools that gives you the combination of features you need doesn't exist in the Linux world. And until that changes, people are right to ask for easy-to-use drawing functionality in the GIMP.
And even if it were possible to cut and paste between Inkscape and GIMP, there
Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Because you can in Photoshop!" is synonymous with "I'm more productive in Photoshop." I am not a 'painter' in Photoshop, but I use the paint brushes on a daily basis to generate textures. If I had to run out to another app just to paint a mask, not only would I lose a great deal of time, b
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The difference between The Gimp and Excel.. (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be nice to have one app that has excellent drawing tools, excellent retouching tools, excellent compositing tools, costs nothing, and makes toast. But even Adobe splits these tools into multiple apps, and they don't have to do it for free. So while "use Inkscape" isn't the answer you want, and it isn't the ideal answer, it's also not an unreasonable answer.
Drawing layers and bitmap layers in one document? (Score:2)
Then which Free program do you recommend for allowing a single document to have both vector layers and bitmap layers?
Re:Drawing layers and bitmap layers in one documen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, that's the situation with graphics editing. The GIMP has no vector editing capabilities worth mentioning, but it's good for raster images. Inkscape does vectors but not it's not good for raster stuff. The
Re: (Score:2)
If the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a difference in philosophy.
The philosophy you describe is the "bloatware" philosophy, where a single tool (program) tries to do everything. What happens is the program starts off not being able to do anything, it then grows to do something well. As circle drawing and shopping list features are added it grows to become unwieldy. Eventually it becomes unmaintainable and falls into decay, at which point someone starts a new project to write a "simpler tool". This bloats and the cycle repeats again for
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
GIMP needs fresh developers (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this as a confirmation of the stagnant GIMP developer pool, led by a few who are not interested in growing that community at all.
If the GIMP team would foster new blood, help new hackers learn the large and intimidatingly complex codebase, give any other reply besides a gruff "you want it, you code it" response to any artist who dreams of a good core feature, give specific progress feedback about modern image demands like 32bits-per-channel, CMYK, or fully functional ICC, then maybe we'd see a real alternative to Photoshop in the OSS world, not a Photoshop 1993 clone.
The only other path is "fork it," but with any complex project, it's very tough to fork away from the few experts.
It's clear the GIMP captains still see GIMP as a pet project, just as some major tech news sites see themselves as a pet blog, and refuse to take on the responsibility of being a leader or even trying to become a leader.
Re: (Score:2)
(To reply to my own post, yes, I am aware that GEGL represents many of the aforementioned limitations. The span of years that it took to shoehorn GEGL into place even to this unusable but promising stage is the real problem. I hope GEGL development is finally off the chocks and can start rolling thanks to this announcement.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you mean 16bits/channel or do you have superhuman perception?
32 bits/channel is actually what GEGL supports. Yes, it is more than your eyes can perceive, and much more than your screen can display, but there's a good reason for this overkill. It ensures that there's enough precision that perceptible and displayable information is not lost even when long sequences of operations are applied.
Re: (Score:2)
What, you mean nobody bothers printing out pictures anymore?
48 bits and color management (Score:2)
Don't say it's true... (Score:2, Funny)
So GIMP been limping all these years?
Rinse, Gimp, Repeat (Score:2)
Over the past six years I've been playing with gimp, people have written off the project as totally bass-ackwards enough times. But no matter what, the project seems to come back with a few surprises once in a while to prove those critics wrong (though it is debatable whether that would happen sans critics).
I'm not a graphics artist and in the rare occasions when I do have to draw something, these days I prefer Inkscape - there are days when I want the Macromedia Fireworks modes of bitmap-vector middle
Oh, for the Good Old Days... (Score:3, Insightful)
Schwab
modularization is the key (Score:3)
Too Late for Me! (Score:2)
Maybe if I didn't learn the PS interface so long ago, but I am quicker in PS then I ever am in GIMP. So sorry, there is a place for the GIMP, but not in my toolbox.
ØØØØØØØhhhs and (Score:5, Funny)
What about the User Interface? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe now the UI (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe now he can give The Gimp a decent UI instead of the trash it's had for the last 10 years
In the first place, the GIMP's UI has changed a great deal in the last few years, so much so that it doesn't make much sense to call it one UI. Second, the GIMP's current UI is very powerful and very usable. Personally, I prefer it to Photoshop's UI, mainly for the ease with which it can be customized to fit exactly the thing I need to do right now. Then, later, when I'm doing something different, I can flip a couple of hotkey assignments, tear off a different menu or two, and have a UI that is perfectly suited to what I need at that moment. For those who know it well, the GIMP's UI rocks. Much like PS, actually. The biggest difference is that there are a lot more people who know Photoshop's UI well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe now the UI (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that the GIMP's UI is not consistent with any other UI I've ever come across. Sure, it's probably easy-to-use once you already know it. But why not make it the same as other apps?
Because all of us who know the GIMP would then have to learn a new UI.
;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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].
Re: (Score:2)
given the previous version's reputation Gimp is pretty much doomed so I do not expect this will make much a difference
Seems likely. Even aside from reputation, people who've used PS to make their living for years know it inside and out and would be much less effective with anything else, unless it was vastly better than PS, which the GIMP won't be. The price of PS doesn't matter if you've already bought it and it's just another business expense anyway.
And secondly, being it open source, one may expe
The printer driver's responsibility (Score:2)
CMYK with one set of inks isn't the same color space as CMYK with another set of inks, just as RGB with one set of phosphors isn't the same as RGB with another set of phosphors. So isn't it the printer driver's responsibility [linux.com] to translate images from sRGB to whatever color model your printer uses?
Re: (Score:2)
I am suprised anyone uses it due to the fact that you can easily get your greasy little mits on a pirated / cracked version of PhotoShop or Fireworks...
Re:Major reason why GIMP will not replace Photosho (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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