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Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

gimelstudio.github.io

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Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#41

Post by pronlover723 »

breck wrote: post #2

Interesting! I've done some visual node based editors in the past. One design principle I might suggest: develop a DSL and have the editor just be editing programs in that DSL. You might be able to use Racket—not sure—but alternatively you could copy what I've done here ( https://ohayo.computer ) and design a Tree Language ( https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/ ). It makes the problem simpler IMO, as then you get…

This is one of the things I used to like about Maya. It appeared to be a command driven editor and everything you did in the UI translated to a command line command. You could set it to show the commands and even capture them and use them as a start for generating a script

I don't know if it's still that way after the transition from Mel to Python. I haven't used Maya in 15 years

Even more, Maya also was like a 3D editor OS/Engine. The UI itself was written in the scripting language (~1500 melscript files) using the primitives from the "engine".

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#42

Post by berkut »

Seems a bit odd to have a 16-bit workflow (clearly not full float32 then?) if it supports EXR files, which natively support 32-bit float (in addition to half float)? Given they appear to be using GLSL for the pixel processing, surely 32-bit float would be trivial to support as well?

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#43

Post by Ralfp »

dylan604 wrote: post #37
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s UX improvement and we are taking about a v0.6. Maybe the devs were simply focused, on you know, making the image editing part work before working on quality of life improvements.

But with enough prior research into what was there, this is the kind of thing that gets added to UX immediately, not in v1.x

This is an open-source project with 13 contributors and initial commit made two years ago you are talking about. Is it really fair to expect them to have everything from version 0.6? It's likely that they have 2137 other must-have features or blockers they have to divide their attention between.

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#44

Post by dylan604 »

Ralfp wrote: post #43
dylan604 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with enough prior research into what was there, this is the kind of thing that gets added to UX immediately, not in v1.x

This is an open-source project with 13 contributors and initial commit made two years ago you are talking about. Is it really fair to expect them to have everything from version 0.6? It's likely that they have 2137 other must-have features or blockers they have to divide their attention between.

Don't post your not ready for prime time project to the public if you're not open to public opinion.

"here's my project i've been working on for 2 years, but don't tell me anything about what needs improving because i'm not done yet" it just farcical

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#45

Post by SeriousM »

lastdong wrote: post #5
DoctorOW wrote: post #4

This looks really similar to Blender's node editor. Is there a relationship?

Hi DoctorOW, nicely spotted! The original creator, Noah, has posted a short introduction in the community chat[1] where he highlights the influence of Blender 3D and the node-based workflow for the app [1] Gimel Studio community chat (Zulip, needs sign-in) -- https://gimelstudio.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/320145-intr...

Would you mind to post that short introduction here instead luring the interested reader into making an account on a chat platform, please?

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

S0und wrote: post #11

2d image editor aka. node based compositor?

> node based compositor

Whatever that is.

Based on replies in the subthread, I understand you mean that this obviously has been done many times before, and the authors didn't know, based on the naming. But let me offer a different perspective.

Gimel Studio looks exactly like what I was searching for. If I found out about it a month ago, I would hold off upgrading Affinity Photo to their newly released version 2, to get more layer-based non-destructive editing features, because Photoshop-style layer-based interface sucks (mostly it's too twiddly and requires too much high-precision mouse operations on a tiny side panel). I actually briefly looked for some 2D node-based image editors, and didn't find any. "Node based compositor" sounds like something from Blender or the film industry, so despite sort of being aware of this, it never occurred to me to search in this space.

Or, in short: for people like me, who are looking for software competing with GIMP, Photoshop, Affinity or Paint.NET, and not Blender or Houdini or whatever else VFX people use, "2D image editor" is obviously meaningful, "compositor" is not.

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

kybernetyk wrote: post #6

Simplicity? Well, if you're used to GNU Radio maybe ;) The graph view on top will be very off-putting to normal users. It's even off-putting to me and I'm a huge nerd. I'd rather hide the non-destructive nature in a normal graphical editor UI people are used to. So people can edit away and when they're happy with a version of the file they can just flag it. And then they can jump between those flagged versions or bro…

> The graph view on top will be very off-putting to normal users. It's even off-putting to me and I'm a huge nerd.

What I believe is also off-putting to a casual user of image editors is... layer-based workflow. Layers are great as a concept. Effect / "live" / non-destructive transformation layers are even greater still. But the Photoshop-style UI everyone copies is just plain bad. I've recently been doing lots of non-destructive layer-based editing in Affinity Photo 2, and almost from the very start, I found myself dreaming about a node-based UI, or at least a layer-centric UI.

That said, looking at the screenshot, I'd probably make the node-based editor an overlay on top of the image that you can quickly (as in sub-100ms) toggle on or off, or at least have the interface split vertically (due to the market standardizing on those ridiculous ~16:9 aspect ratios).

> I'd rather hide the non-destructive nature in a normal graphical editor UI people are used to. So people can edit away and when they're happy with a version of the file they can just flag it. And then they can jump between those flagged versions or browse the whole history with instant revision switching.

That sounds like... pain, and eliminates a lot of the value that non-destructive editing brings when it's the primary philosophy and mode of working. The approach you describe reminds me of Microsoft Word - for at least 15 years (and probably more), it came packed with structural/semantic editing features, and nobody uses them anyway, because people still find it easier to "edit away" in immediate mode, and by the time they notice the problem, it's too much work to fix it.

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#48

Post by forrestthewoods »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
Ralfp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an open-source project with 13 contributors and initial commit made two years ago you are talking about. Is it really fair to expect them to have everything from version 0.6? It's likely that they have 2137 other must-have features or blockers they have to divide their attention between.

Don't post your not ready for prime time project to the public if you're not open to public opinion. "here's my project i've been working on for 2 years, but don't tell me anything about what needs improving because i'm not done yet" it just farcical

If your biggest complaint is a relatively minor UX improvement then they're crushing it!!!

TBH, that's about the most shallow, surface level feedback that could possibly be given. This project is providing a pretty radically different paradigm for image editing. Is that a good paradigm? Is it useful? Does it allow novices and/or experts to do work faster? Are there things it can't do? What would it take to do those things? Does it need new nodes types? More options on existing nodes?

I don't know the answer. TBH it's a pretty hard sell. Either it works or it doesn't. A missing feature in the node editor is not in the Top 1000 most important things.

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#49

Post by Rodeoclash »

Looks great, I wonder if it could:

1. Output an Imagemagick script so the same effects could be applied to images say uploaded from a website.

2. This form of node based editing applied to other tools (GStreamer springs to mind which has a very node oriented workflow)

Re: Gimel Studio: Non-destructive, 2D image editor

#50

Post by dylan604 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #48
dylan604 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't post your not ready for prime time project to the public if you're not open to public opinion. "here's my project i've been working on for 2 years, but don't tell me anything about what needs improving because i'm not done yet" it just farcical

If your biggest complaint is a relatively minor UX improvement then they're crushing it!!! TBH, that's about the most shallow, surface level feedback that could possibly be given. This project is providing a pretty radically different paradigm for image editing. Is that a good paradigm? Is it useful? Does it allow novices and/or experts to do work faster? Are there things it can't do? What would it take to do those t…

If your app slows down the user by having to make repetitive tasks because your UX is lacking, then there's a whole lot of no responses to your questions. Not really sure how that's hard to comprehend. Eliminating repetitive tasks is why we invented computers. Using a computer to create a new method of repetitive tasks is not good use of those computers or the user's time.

It's like the first gens of iOS that did not allow for copy&paste. Was that a shallow bit of feedback? No, because it's some of the most basic functionality a user would expect to be there. If iOS and no copy&paste was released in the 1980s, it might have been forgiven. Since it was released in 2007 after anyone using computing had seen/used copy&paste and the competing product did have that functionality, it was a huge slight against it. Was copy&paste the core functionality? Probably not, but it was a huge hindrance.

After getting past the fact this is node based editing, it's pretty much an image editor after that. Again, if anything you try to implement is less than pre-existing software, what's the point. So, when you present an application that is supposed to be paradigm shifting, you better be backing it up. Again, don't want public comments, don't post the software to public forum created solely for public commenting.

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