
GIMP and GEGL in 2018 - mlinksva
https://www.gimp.org/news/2019/01/02/gimp-and-gegl-in-2018/
======
pbhjpbhj
I still think the name is a critical failure that inhibits adoption, though
it's probably too late now to do anything. Look up about masks in The GIMP,
for example ...
[https://www.google.com/search?q=gimp%20masks](https://www.google.com/search?q=gimp%20masks)
for me in a fresh private browser window this search brings up "fetishwear"
sponsored links. The secondary meaning, the primary one from my childhood [en-
gb native]: "gimp" would be like calling someone a "spastic".

The software could never be widely used in UK schools IMO. The bracketing of
"I know it's a weird name, but I've used this programme for years, ..." is
just too cringey for me when sharing in polite [or perhaps timid] company.

I know it's hard to get cross-language, cross-cultural names, ... I still
don't know why they didn't go with Imp [nor what creature Wilbur (Wilber?) is
supposed to be!].

Sorry, not wanting to start a flamewar but it should be mentioned IMO. Here's
2 threads where it's raised so we don't need to cover any of that ground again
(both/all sides are represented I think; selective quotes):

1)
[https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22973](https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22973)
'Here's a sign of immaturity: Naming a product "GIMP".'

2)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/6cs6wk/small_gr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/6cs6wk/small_group_of_users_decide_theyre_offended_by/)
'the GIMP's name has long been the classic example of how bad open source
projects often are at branding and marketing'

~~~
blattimwind
Similarly MongoDB. Many commercial examples, too.

~~~
CamperBob2
What's wrong with that? Offensive to Mongols?

~~~
chris_wot
Mongoloid was the word that was used at one point for those with Downs
Syndrome. It's pretty close to this.

~~~
throes_death
So words that are just close to other words that are deemed offensive should
not be used? I'll avoid mentioning the well publicized political cases over
the last decade or so and just ask, should we use the word "pluck"? Should
those with the surname "Kuntz" or "Cockburn" have to change their name? Is the
offense created by similar spelling or similar pronunciation, or both?

~~~
ech000
We're talking about marketing here, and if something leaves you with an odd
feeling, it's no good marketing.

I must say as a non-native, I didn't knew gimp before and was not offended.
Googling in incognito mode, I can absolutely see why people might want to
avoid that.

~~~
throes_death
I'm simply replying directly to the comment which is not about marketing.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We're taking about freely sharing things by name, if there's a chance my boss
is going to fire me just for mentioning the name of your product then I'm
going to just avoid recommending it.

I've actually, conversationally, shared "gimp" with a couple of people in the
past but I don't any more because I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable
or think I'm making a joke at their expense. In a workplace I'm not sharing
something that could get me facing a sexual harassment suit (it's not likely,
but why risk it), or fired for offensive language (ditto).

This thread _is_ about marketing.

------
phkahler
For those complaining about slow progress of the GIMP (I'm guilty as well)
remember it's a part time project where most of the work is done by 3 people
(from reading this post). One thing about "free" is that everybody wants it
and almost nobody actually wants to DO it. I wonder how many projects that
take donations actually do reasonably in terms of paying developers - I doubt
it's very many.

~~~
reichardt
I'm unsure how blender is organized but they seem to compete with the
proprietary competition on a much higher level. Does blender have so many more
developers working on it than Gimp?

Edit: Seems like blender is indeed better funded:
[https://fund.blender.org/](https://fund.blender.org/) Nothing crazy tough.

~~~
Jach
At some point in the last 5-8 years Blender went from being "the gimp of 3D"
no one seemed to really want to use (like Gimp) given the alternatives to
actually being a competitor. I'm not sure what happened but it's on the list
of things to discuss if I ever sit down with an industry veteran in the
modeling space...

~~~
Shish2k
One of the things that happened is the Blender team hired a bunch of
professional artists to make real commercial quality movies using blender, and
when the artists had a complaint, the developers were in the same room to get
the issue fixed in real time.

Meanwhile GIMP has a reputation of being written by software developers for
software developers, and being actively hostile to suggestions from artists...

~~~
boudewijnrempt
That was a turning point for us as well. We had a sprint at the blender
institute in Amsterdam and had invited artists to come as well. And we sat
down a whole Saturday, taping them while they were painting and complaining.
Us developers, we weren't allowed to chat back, we were just there to look and
listen. Very illuminating, and fun for the artists.

~~~
prokoudine
HN doesn't allow any more replies there, so...

> "How did you dare to hack on Gimp, doing this, without doing us the courtesy
> of asking for permission first!"

That is a bit of an overstatement.

"It would be nice if you talked to us first" != "How dare you do this without
asking for our permission"

Yosh wasn't even demanding permission, just basic courtesy.

Source: [https://marc.info/?l=gimp-
developer&m=90221516928016&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=gimp-
developer&m=90221516928016&w=2)

Free software projects don't usually have an abundance of contributors, as you
very well know. So I kinda get why Yosh was disappointed, although I don't
think he should've fretted that much.

------
sigjuice
In case there are others like me unfamiliar with what GEGL and babl are:

[http://gegl.org/babl/](http://gegl.org/babl/)

babl is a dynamic, any to any, pixel format translation library

[http://www.gegl.org](http://www.gegl.org)

GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) is a data flow based image processing
framework, providing floating point processing and non-destructive image
processing capabilities

------
buovjaga
It was nice to hear that Jehan got hired by the French National Center for
Scientific Research to work on GIMP and G'Mic related stuff for one year:
[https://girinstud.io/news/2018/12/the-dream-of-lila-and-
zema...](https://girinstud.io/news/2018/12/the-dream-of-lila-and-zemarmot/)

~~~
xvilka
I wonder how actually useful all these cool features without the most basic
thing - updated toolkit. GTK+ 2 is being washed out of Linux distributions
like Qt4 before.

~~~
prokoudine
All these cool features are perfectly usable on GTK+2. And there is a GTK+3
port in the master branch.

------
TekMol
When Non Destructive Adjustment Layers finally arrive, it will feel as if Gnu
Hurd 1.0 is released.

Been waiting for those for years now.

Common, MAKE IT HAPPEN!

~~~
resoluteteeth
It's pretty ridiculous since GIMP is 22 years old and GEGL is 18 years old.

In a lot of ways gimp feels like it's perpetually stuck as a clone of
Photoshop 4.0 or 5.0. If it can finally get adjustment layers that will help
somewhat.

You can theoretically do almost everything in gimp that you can in photoshop,
but since CS, photoshop has lots of functionality that makes things much
easier (fewer steps), so the ergonomics of GIMP seem pretty bad in comparison
now.

~~~
newnewpdro
My understanding is there are very few people contributing to GIMP
development. The only regular GIMP-related anything I see on planet.gnome.org
comes from the ZeMarmot project.

It's hard to progress anything without participation...

~~~
mschaef
This is my understanding, as well. I don't know why it happened that way, but
contributor mindshare really moved away from Gimp years and years ago. Other
similar projects have been released and surpassed Gimp in feature
compatibility in the time since Gimp has been released.

Sad, really, given the important role Gimp played back in the late 90's. Gimp
was initially the G in GTK, and was closely related to the foundations of
Gnome. (And Gnumeric.... which, to my understanding, has the same sorts of
issues as Gimp.)

~~~
jay_kyburz
I have read that there are few contributors because the current maintainers
are a little hostile towards people who want to try and improve GIMP.

~~~
prokoudine
Mmm... Hostile how? Improve how? :)

If you want to write a public API to access text layers and then patch the PSD
plug-in for text layers support, you are welcome.

If you want to make the tool's options dock optionally horizontal and docked
to the top (a-la Photoshop, Inkscape etc.), you are welcome.

If you want to improve OpenEXR support, you are welcome.

If you want to improve the text tool (easy text on path etc.), you are
welcome.

There are hundreds of things GIMP could do better. We know that. We welcome
contributions.

The only thing we don't feel good about is when people tell us to make GIMP
look and work like Photoshop "because Photoshop". GIMP is not a clone of
Photoshop. We need better reasons than that. Apart from this, you are welcome
to come and propose changes.

Edit: to be fair, two other topics we don't exactly like are project name
change and save/export :)

~~~
jay_kyburz
Yes, but the number one thing wrong with GIMP is that it is hard to use,
"because Photoshop" is what everybody knows.

Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a few
things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation.

I switched to Affinity a few years ago, and it was tough to "unlearn"
photoshop, but it was worth it. (But it could have more painful if Affinity
was as weird as GIMP)

~~~
prokoudine
> Perhaps GIMP would have more users and more contributors if it embraced a
> few things that have become de-facto standards in image manipulation.

Such as...?

~~~
mschaef
I was about to say 'draw a shape with a toolbar button'... but after looking
at historical Photoshop toolboxes, it doesn't appear to have had that feature
either. :-) (Pixelmator, however, does...)

I almost hate to write what I'm about to write, but...

When I needed to add some text and labeling to an image, it was easiest just
to drop the $30 on a Pixelmator license. For dealing with RAW photos from a
handful of cameras, it was $120 on a license for Adobe Lightroom. Both have
generally served their purposes well. Some of those features I could've
implemented myself, but some I couldn't, and none of that work fits into a
schedule full of other obligations. (Technical and otherwise.)

I think the difficulty with open source end user app development is that it
can ask a burden of its community that few people have the skills to bear up
to and even fewer have the time or inclination to do so. From my point of
view, this leaves me with a combination of gratitude for the people like
yourself that actually do step up, but also a degree of frustration that
there's no easy way to make the situation better.

At the end of the day, I think the strength of OSS application software is
that, by virtue of being OSS, it's possible for it to be things that closed
software cannot.

------
agumonkey
I stopped following GIMP dev, but something that bothered me everytime I tried
using it, is the subpar ergonomics. Kinda like blender pre 2.8.

I hope blender new release give people some ideas.

~~~
slondr
Ideas are easy to find. People willing to spend time and effort implementing
ideas are very difficult to find.

------
lateralux
I've been waiting for CMYK support for years

~~~
foolrush
Anyone that says they need CMYK doesn’t understand printing. At all.

Suggesting CMYK is holding something back is literally suggesting that the
individual wants discrete control over the inks in the machine, without
considering the colour of the inks, the paper colour, the saturation level of
the paper, etc.

Clean plates for spot printing? Fine. CMYK painting? No.

Late binding has been the path forever, and is the only way forward. As a
result, anyone suggesting they need CMYK has a debilitating grasp of how
printing works.

~~~
blattimwind
Remarkably some professional(!) printers don't want to do late binding,
instead telling clients to supply "CMYK PDFs" (color space? doesn't matter!
Pick any CMYK!).

~~~
foolrush
You realize that late binding means supplying the CMYK based on a conversion
from RGB? Good.

> (color space? doesn't matter! Pick any CMYK!)

You realize that “color space pick any” has an implicit connection to the
actual physical inks and what colours they print? Good.

As in it is a clear beacon that you don’t understand a shred of what you are
replying to. I’m sure your professional(!) print runs that you have done have
taught you that, though.

~~~
prokoudine
You realize he was agreeing with you?

~~~
foolrush
Entirely misread in a blind fit of rage.

------
xvilka
It would be interesting to hear, probably in percentage on how GTK 3 porting
is going, what is missing and what is work in progress.

------
vinc
I wish at one point in the future it will allow us to save a picture as JPEG.
And then to be able to simply quit the program.

It's pretty basic, I know GIMP have a reason to make it more complicated and
painful, but I don't agree with it.

~~~
nzb
It used to, years ago, and then they made that change to "export", making it
simply harder, I will never understand, it was a huge step backwards.

~~~
buovjaga
In professional creative software, you save to the project format (xcf in
GIMP's case) and export (or render) to a "flat" format. Graphics, video,
audio, it is roughly the same behaviour.

~~~
nzb
I know but before you could do both actions using the same dialog.

~~~
bscphil
That's a good point. I understand the importance of having a default format
that can preserve every bit of data Gimp is capable of creating. But it makes
a lot of sense to have one dialog that can save in both formats, especially
since the dialogs support choosing the format automatically based on the
extension.

------
altern8
I've been using photopea.com for a while, is much more usable than GIMP.

~~~
Qwertystop
I use Krita, though it's perhaps not quite the same use case.

