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GIMP – 2016 in review

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151–160 of 188 posts

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#151

Three words why The Gimp isn't taken seriously by anyone who uses Photoshop: "Non-Destructive Editing" [Oh yes. The interface is awful, too]

Non-destructive editing is overrated imho. If a user has been saving files all along reverting back is easy. They can even import certain layers if it's only a 'partial reversion'.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it shows in the clumsy menus that make sense if you went along for the ride but for a 1st-timer are just confusing. Would you mind being a wee bit more specific? :)

Sure! Running a script is under 'Filters' for some reason. To undo a brush, that's under 'Windows' inexplicably. Filters like Feather and Distort are under 'Select'. Keyboard shortcuts are under 'Edit'. The Plugin Browser tool is under 'Help' My favorite: 'File' has 'Open' above 'Open as Layers', as if you'd more commonly want to destroy all your image layer info when opening an image file. In fact, with 'flatten' th…

Please don't blame Blender for that! ;)

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it shows in the clumsy menus that make sense if you went along for the ride but for a 1st-timer are just confusing. Would you mind being a wee bit more specific? :)

Sure! Running a script is under 'Filters' for some reason. To undo a brush, that's under 'Windows' inexplicably. Filters like Feather and Distort are under 'Select'. Keyboard shortcuts are under 'Edit'. The Plugin Browser tool is under 'Help' My favorite: 'File' has 'Open' above 'Open as Layers', as if you'd more commonly want to destroy all your image layer info when opening an image file. In fact, with 'flatten' th…

I'm fairly sure that 'Open as Layers" allows you to open multiple files at the same time as layers in a single images, instead of opening and adding each individually. Open will open an image with all its layers as you would expect, it won't flatten it. Feather and Distort operate on the selection, so being under Select makes sense.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#154
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! Running a script is under 'Filters' for some reason. To undo a brush, that's under 'Windows' inexplicably. Filters like Feather and Distort are under 'Select'. Keyboard shortcuts are under 'Edit'. The Plugin Browser tool is under 'Help' My favorite: 'File' has 'Open' above 'Open as Layers', as if you'd more commonly want to destroy all your image layer info when opening an image file. In fact, with 'flatten' th…

I'm fairly sure that 'Open as Layers" allows you to open multiple files at the same time as layers in a single images, instead of opening and adding each individually. Open will open an image with all its layers as you would expect, it won't flatten it. Feather and Distort operate on the selection, so being under Select makes sense.

I'm probably out of date. Used to be, you had to have plugins to open exotic formatted files like "pdf"; initially the plugin for that just imported the flat bitmap. But that was long ago.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#155
post #17

Why stick with such an old codebase? Wouldn't it just make sense to start a new Rust project with editable shaders. It could have an extensible, clean task-based interface, instead of the antiquated control room with lots of buttons and switches. Or maybe even a dispatcher/server with protocols to send graphic commands from UIs to different image processors.

Because Rust is no fucking mature and old and experienced C developers know security and safety pretty well. Also, gobject, albeit odd, wraps a lot over stdio.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#156
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Gimp and Inkscape. The Gimp vs Photoshop debate is irrelevant to me because I can't afford Photoshop - it's Gimp or nothing for me.

Same here, but I am now genuinely interested to know what advantage Photoshop has over The Gimp nowadays?

Content Aware Fill (and other such things) turn a 30 minute job in GIMP into a 5 minute job in Photoshop.

Granted it's not perfect, but it's usually good enough™

Also I find Photoshop's UI to be a lot prettier and more fun to use, even though I tried learning GIMP first.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#157

This is a pleasant surprise, because I've noticed that newer versions haven't been coming too often. I use GIMP on both windows and linux and it seems like the windows version has stagnated, could be the same situation for linux as well. Not that it matters since I'm not really a graphics/UI person. And most of the time that I fire up GIMP, it's for very simple things, or else I'm forced to google how to do things. I…

Well for one thing, they're stuck on old GTK releases because GTK no longer cares about being cross platform.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#158

Three words why The Gimp isn't taken seriously by anyone who uses Photoshop: "Non-Destructive Editing" [Oh yes. The interface is awful, too]

Non-destructive editing is overrated imho. If a user has been saving files all along reverting back is easy. They can even import certain layers if it's only a 'partial reversion'.

There's more to Non-Destructive Editing than just a fancy 'undo'. It allows you to go back later and adjust/refine/tweak the alterations you've made to each layer in your image, individually. You would need to be saving dozens of copies as you went along, covering every possible permutation [number of layers x adjustments per player] to allow you the same freedom to re-adjust that non-destructive editing provides.

Then, you'd have to keep all those multiple copies in case you ever needed to make adjustments to that image in the future. With non-destructive editing, you have one file which contains everything. It's not just a gimmick!

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#159
post #5

I don't use the GIMP nearly as much as Inkscape (the two form an awesome free software graphics suite together), but I am always pleasantly surprised by the gradual improvements — the layer improvements look useful! What really impresses me though is how the GIMP has managed to remain such a constant ever-present factor on the free software desktop. It feels as if it has just always been there. Kudos to all the devel…

GIMP indeed just is always there, on all platforms. As a developer my needs are quite modest: editing screenshots, juggling graphics assets, etc. But I do use GIMP at least weekly, and it always delivers. Big thanks for the developers.

> on all platforms

I've recently tried GIMP after reading about an update on Hacker News (not this one) and it was an absolute disaster - took forever to start, nothing worked, UI was glitchy, and then I accidentally quit it because I didn't know what the empty, floating window was good for.

It's a pity that Gtk apps usually don't really work on macOS, it makes it much more unlikely for us Apple users to contribute on GitHub etc. :( I'd much prefer a native cross-platform toolkit to the web-based stuff that's popular now.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#160
post #88
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though I hear this quote ringing in my ear, and I can't seem to shake it, mainly because of who said it 1) Photoshop had a 10+ year head start and tons of patents. 2) Adobe can pay programmers to work on it as their main and sole focus. GIMP is stuffed by volunteers. 3) Adobe can pay programmers to work on boring parts. OSS programmers tend to navigate to the "glorious" and "fun" parts. 4) Adobe has extensive…

GTK is probably the main reason Gimp isn't a serious competitor in professional work, then. I can imagine what monumental task it must be to maintain a cross-platform GUI toolkit, but it's IMO the single most important aspect of Gimp. Let's face it, all the features are there. Maybe 5% of Photoshop's deep ocean of features is actually used by the average user, Gimp can provide almost the complete functionality. Some…

> GTK is probably the main reason Gimp isn't a serious competitor in professional work, then.

Xamarin Studio is built using Gtk and actually looks nice on macOS, or at least I have seldom heard people complain about it:

https://blog.xamarin.com/the-making-of-xamarin-studio/

I think the problem is that Gimp is understaffed to produce a Photoshop killer with any toolkit.

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