
GIMP 2.8: Preview  - vgnet
http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2012/04/gimp-28-preview.html
======
possibilistic
This is _excellent_! Not only does single-window mode look much cleaner and
more organized (to me), but we'll finally be getting support for high color
depth images. That's one of the biggest reasons many photographers have stuck
with Photoshop. These are probably two of the largest, most significant
changes to Gimp to come about in a long time. I'm surprised the version number
wasn't bumped to 3.0.

 _edit:_ Is the GEGL backend port only partially complete? If so, how long
until it's in place?

Other tweaks are nice and cosmetic: tooltip progress indicators for
transforms, on-image text editing instead of awkwardly doing it in a separate
window, etc.

Layer groups are another important organizational touch.

I'm very much looking forward to this. Great work, Gimp team!

~~~
mattmanser
Straight from the article, note that it explicitly says you won't have the
high color depth image support:

 _What's really important, but maybe less user-noticeable, is behind the
scene: library work. GIMP 2.8 is an intermediary step in the progress for GEGL
integration (GEGL is a graph based image processing framework that will
provide the core for GIMP, allowing for much advanced features). This process
started with GIMP 2.6, advanced with 2.8, will be finished in 2.10. Expect the
real meaty features (like high depth color channels) in the release after 2.10
(is not know if it will be labeles 2.12 or 3.0). For now GEGL is used in some
UI elements and some optional filters and tools_

That also answers most of your questions.

~~~
angersock
It's funny, because we had this in the mid-90s.

And by funny, I mean sad.

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qznc
The article is a little bit out of date. The 16bit colors will already be
available in the next release (2.10). Michael Natterer and Øyvind Kolås had
three-week hackathon and now 90% of the work is done.

source: <http://gimpfoo.de/2012/04/17/goat-invasion-in-gimp/>

This is also on the official GIMP, but you cannot link to individual news
items there. :(

~~~
jacobolus
According to all the docs and pages I see online anywhere, GIMP won’t support
16-bit/channel color until version 3.0, and your source doesn’t really
contradict that AFAICT. (None of them give a good estimate what time frame
that is.)

But in any event, GIMP’s lack of support for real, powerful color management
features, high bit depths, CMYK – much less CIELAB or other perceptually
relevant color spaces (ideally they should use CIECAM02 or IPT) – etc. make it
pretty much useless for any of my own photographic workflows. GEGL doesn’t
look likely to overcome the main deficiencies, and so GIMP remains a cute toy
more than a power tool.

Here’s Graeme Gill from approximately 2 years ago:

    
    
      Graeme Gill:
      > Rupert Weber wrote: 
      >> (Then again, nobody complained so far and probably
      >> nobody would ever notice if we did it Right(tm)...)
      >
      > You've got a catch 22 situation: If Gimp doesn't
      > handle color conversions accurately, then noone
      > interested in accurate color transforms will use
      > it, hence you will get no complaints about not
      > doing in Right. So if you want to persuade people
      > who value accurate and reliable color
      > transformations to use Gimp, you need to do it
      > Right, otherwise they will continue to use something
      > else. (I certainly can't use Gimp in my work, which
      > revolves around checking color space
      > transformations.)
      > 
      > Graeme Gill.

~~~
sciurus
I think the source comes close to contradicting that without being explicit:

'GIMP 2.10’s core will be 100% ported to GEGL, and all of the legacy pixel
fiddling API for plug-ins is going to be deprecated. Once the core is
completely ported, it will be a minor effort to simply “switch on” high bit
depths and whatever color models we’d like to see. Oh, and already now,
instead of removing indexed mode (as originally planned), we accidentally
promoted indexed images to first class citizens that can be painted on, and
even color corrected, just like any other image. The code doing so doesn’t
even notice because GEGL and Babl transparently handle the pixel conversion
magic.'

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gamache
In 1997, me and my beige box PC spent about a day building the GIMP alpha,
excited for a Photoshop killer. Now it's 2012, fifteen years later, and we're
high-fiving GIMP for the single window interface.

~~~
oneplusone
For an app meant for the creative types, GIMP sure is ugly.

I also thought we were over mystery meat navigation, but it seems to be going
strong at GIMP. Not only does having icons for each tab make it look
incredibly busy, but it also makes it harder to learn and wastes a ton of
screen space. I can't see a single benefit other than it doesn't look like
Photoshop.

I wonder how hard it would be to redo the entire interface from scratch. I
would love to design it, but no way do I want to navigate their bureaucracy.

~~~
stuaxo
I doubt theres much bureacracy, there are not that many core developers -
probably going onto the mailinglist and providing some patches might be a
start.

------
mbylstra
Single window mode is definitely the step in the right direction towards what
I think GIMP should be doing: ripping off Photoshop wholesale. Perhaps GIMP
has some features that are arguably better than Photoshop, but the problem is
that a huge number of people are very used to Photoshop's interface. Just
about everyone has messed about with Photoshop at some point either
professionally or just for fun (be it legally or illegally) and Photoshop's
interface (for better or worse) has become second nature. I would actually
argue that the lack of a familiar Photoshop alternative is holding back
mainstream adoption of Linux. Open Office or Libre Office are good enough
replacements for most people (and they have obviously gone for the wholesale
rip off tactic) but GIMP just does not suffice - the main thing being the
interface, not lack of features.

There are really simple things that could be done like making the toolbar the
same as photoshop's. I mean it's great that you can resize however you like,
but having it unresizable makes it easy to remember the button layout and
instinctively grab for a tool. The fact that completely different symbols are
used for the same actions does not help. eg: knife is crop in GIMP and slice
in photoshop.

Once Linux/GIMP has achieved good market share over mac/photoshop then it's
time to start thinking about improving the photo/vector publishing paradigm
and boy is there much remove for improvement. Adobe has pretty much had the
monopoly on 2D graphic design tools for the last couple of decades. With
almost no competitors - what incentive is there to truly innovate? I mean
compare the sophistication of something like 3D studio max or Maya compared to
illustrator. (3D being an area where stiff competition still remains) Why is
Photoshop and Illustrator even two completely separate pieces of software?
because they can sell two things separately for a combined total price greater
than one?

~~~
nicubunu
a verbatim copy of the Photoshop UI is a lawsuit waiting to happen. and
Photoshop is not the paradigm of UI design, is just something a lot of people
know how to use.

~~~
kijin
It doesn't even need to be a verbatim copy, just give users a similar
workflow. Just like LibreOffice gives you a similar workflow to MS Office
2003.

~~~
nodata
A much better workflow would be even better.

~~~
angersock
Wrong in one. That type of thinking is why the GIMP has been a painful program
to use.

Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.

~~~
nodata
> Wrong in one

(I don't like these quick put downs, they imply a finality that doesn't exist)

That The Gimp has been unsuccessful with a different interface to Photoshop
does not mean a different interface could not be successful.

Imagine that an amazing new interface was developed that was so much better
than what any product has now. Everyone asks why this has not been thought of
before. Now imagine that it belongs to version 3.0 of The Gimp.

Just because one alternative interface didn't work, doesn't mean we should all
give up and use the same interface. With that advice, nobody would ever try
anything new.

~~~
angersock
Replied to above.

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knewter
I'm depressed that so many of the comments here focus on the single window
mode, instead of being thrilled about GEGL/Cairo. Those are the killer
features that will underpin the GIMP's next few years of awesome features.

Also, layer groups ftw

~~~
Avshalom
They've been promising GEGL for so many years now it's hard to be excited that
it's _almost_ here.

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lukejduncan
OK I haven't read the article yet, but I was pretty disappointed the main
picture was large shot of cleavage. What is this, Business Insider?

~~~
AndyKelley
Why do you care? A picture of cleavage is just as valid as a picture of
anything else.

~~~
lukejduncan
It's pretty sexist if you ask me. A general complaint of mine: tech news (and
in this case this blog post) include meaningless pictures of woman in a way
that is embarrassing to the industry. I'm getting tired of clicking links on
HackerNews and LinkedIn today that look like US/People Magazine to any casual
observer walking by. We're better than that.

~~~
watty
The majority of the article is doing touch up work to a woman, which is a very
common task. There is nothing sexist about this work, and it's idiotic to
claim so.

~~~
lukejduncan
Why have the main picture a shot of cleavage? He doesn't touch up the cleavage
anywhere in the picture. If he did, it'd probably make for a pretty weird
demo. The point of the picture was to illustrate the single window mode. It
seems like there would be a common sense test where you think: "Is this really
how I want to represent myself and this software?"

~~~
watty
It's a female in a bathing suit! There's nothing sleazy about touching up a
female or male in photo editing software. In fact, these are probably two of
the most common things touched up for photo work.

~~~
nicubunu
not even a bathing suit, she is wearing a corset
<http://photoblog.nicubunu.ro/2012/04/siamb-2012-denisa.html>

------
angersock
We don't really need anything new in this space, though.

We need a free/open Photoshop clone. We need a direct, one-to-one monkey copy
of Adobe's product.

We don't need flights of fancy, we don't need to retrain existing users of
image manipulation programs, we don't need to experiment. Adobe already has
all the legwork done for us--the answer looks a hell of a lot like Photoshop
and its interface.

There is zero--ZERO--reason to try to come up with a new interface when there
is a perfectly good one in existence that just happens to be poorly
distributed.

The place where GIMP has screwed up (and Blender and the like along with them)
is in not parroting exactly the common tools in the ecosystem.

There are weird programs (Wings 3D, Paint.NET, etc.) that are able to
significantly depart from conventions, mostly because they have very narrowly-
defined functionality (something I don't believe anyone would ever accuse the
GIMP of).

The GIMP developers should either focus on making a monkey copy (and ignoring
everything else until feature/UX parity is achieved), or stop working on the
project entirely so they can do something else for a while. Once the monkey
copy is done, then innovate. Until then, stop wasting time with things nobody
cares about.

I used the GIMP as my primary art asset creation tool for several years. It
was miserable. The filters and procedural image generation stuff was awesome,
but everything else was at best hard to use. Eventually I switched to
Photoshop because it was a (comparatively) clean, tight tool with all the
bullshit removed.

~~~
frou_dh
Good shout with Wings 3D! It's definitely weird and awesome. For starters,
it's a desktop app written in Erlang. I recommend people bookmark it if they
think they will ever need an intuitive way to do basic-intermediate 3D
modelling.

<http://www.wings3d.com/>

~~~
angersock
I've used Wings3D to do static meshes for over five years. It's very, very,
very good at the type of modeling that it does--and miserable for anything
else.

But for UV pelt mapping, for box modeling, for those sorts of tasks? It shines
like a diamond.

It's got probably the most minimal interface I've ever seen on a modeling
program and, despite a few oddities, probably the most discoverable/fastest.

------
drostie
For those who haven't used GIMP, the big fix of single window mode is probably
one of the most important steps they're taking. I have occasionally used the
fact that I can stack the windows atop each other for hiding purposes, but
much more often I'm saying, "dammit, where the hell is my layer bar? Where the
hell is my toolbar now? augh! switching to my reference picture in the browser
has upset my window order" and so on.

On-canvas text editing and cage transforms might be useful; we'll see.

~~~
tbatterii
It's even more painful in a tiling window manager.

~~~
dkersten
Huh? Since I switched to using tiling window managers, I actually prefer
multi-window interfaces for the first time ever because, to me, when tiled
they essentially work like single window interfaces, except I have a lot more
control over it.

(I use a manual-tiling WM, not an automatic-tiling one - I wonder if that
makes a difference in this case)

~~~
tbatterii
maybe.

I'm using awesome and I will get funky stuff like the toolbox maximized on
occasion. But I'm still new to tiling window managers so maybe it's me.

~~~
dkersten
awesome is also dynamic tiling, while I use a WM that does manual tiling
(though I can make it dynamically tile by window class, application and other
parameters - though I have to write scripts to do it - its not automatic out
of the box) and maybe this is the difference: I can lay the windows out
precisely how I want, while if I understand dynamic tiling WMs correctly, they
will try tile the windows for you, which may not work well for multi-window
interfaces.

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qznc
Layer groups! This makes loading those PSDs the graphic designers send around
much more bearable. At least I assume that the PSD import can map the PSD
Layers to Gimp Layers.

------
stuaxo
This needs to come out soon so I can start the wait for 2.10 :)

Seriously though, this is a great step in the right direction, I can't wait
till post 2.10 when the geglfication is complete, then some really interesting
features should be possible.

~~~
nicubunu
go to <http://gimp.org/> to download and install the Release Candidate

------
lucian1900
I'm undecided about save/export in applications that support multiple formats.
I think users should certainly be warned if they're making a lossy save, but
perhaps they should all be in the same dialog.

~~~
wladimir
The drawback of making it a single dialog box in the user experience is that
the "current name" changes when you use "Save as...". So if you do a "Save"
next time, you save it as the exported name and format instead of the original
one. If, for example, your export format is .png, and your original format is
layered, this could bite you. Also you keep flipping between two names.

Sometimes an "autoexport on save" feature would be nice. Export it to the
derived format as well as save the original file with one keypress.

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ticks
Hopefully these new changes will make Gimp nicer to use. At the moment, the
way it handles fonts (or doesn't) is probably my biggest annoyance.

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comice
GIMP is some high quality software. I love it. An amazing achievement.

------
sparknlaunch12
One thing I don't like about GIMP is the dragging and dropping of selections.
Doesn't feel intuitive compared to other packages.

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Kilimanjaro
Name it Gimp 3.0 please

Just a stupid number but with enough magnetism to attract new users (like me)
curious about this 'new point oh' version.

~~~
notatoad
this is a transitional release. giving it a big version number bump wouldn't
make a lot of sense.

and since when do users start using a software just because the version number
changed?

~~~
chc
Since always. Major releases just about always lead to an influx of users.
This may be less true on Linux — I don't know — but it is generally true from
everything I have ever seen.

