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GIMP – 2016 in review

gimp.org

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Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#21

Post by qume »

mkohlmyr wrote: post #12
aarontyree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder sometimes if the reason GIMP development doesn't surpass other options is simply not having enough developers, having a user base that is more art centered than programming centered, and having a somewhat bottlenecked development culture. These could just be perceptions. I am hoping that when the transition to GEGL is fully implemented, there will be an acceleration. Its hard to use it for serious work. The…

I don't know, as someone who moved from GIMP to Photoshop a long time ago I never saw that as being the reason it was/is(in my opinion) inferior. It has plenty of features - more than enough. What it never had was as good of a user interface and user experience. It always felt clunky and awkward by comparison. If I were to give them one additional project member it wouldn't be a developer. It would be a product owner…

Couldn't agree more.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#22

Post by Freak_NL »

pawadu wrote: post #16
Freak_NL wrote: 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…

Inkscape on the other has started to show gradual decline in the UI department. For example every time you open a tool (the small dialogs on the right) all others will collapse. Since you normally jump back and forth between these tools during drawing you have to ask yourself what went on in their heads when they decided to make this change.

Have you tried using keyboard shortcuts to access the panels? I often switch between Layers, Align and Distribute, and Transform, but always use the keyboard shortcuts.

Inkscape's UI is a point deserving of attention (the GIMP has a more elegant UI), but I can't say that I've found it to be in decline (on the contrary).

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#23

Post by pawadu »

odelomez wrote: post #18

You can help the maintainer and lead developer of GIMPs, Øyvind Kolås with a donation : https://www.patreon.com/pippin

Now I finally have a legit reason to join patreon. Thank you for reminding us!

Are there any other FOSS developers on patreon?

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#25

Post by odelomez »

pawadu wrote: post #23
odelomez wrote: post #18

You can help the maintainer and lead developer of GIMPs, Øyvind Kolås with a donation : https://www.patreon.com/pippin

Now I finally have a legit reason to join patreon. Thank you for reminding us! Are there any other FOSS developers on patreon?

I don't know. Would be nice to have a "directory" of FOSS devs on patreon !

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#26

Post by coldtea »

janvdberg wrote: post #2

Great stuff. I'm looking forward to 2.10. GIMP is my tool when I want to edit photos or create Christmas cards. Even though I hear this quote ringing in my ear, and I can't seem to shake it, mainly because of who said it: "Yet I think that a few programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will always be superior to competitors like the Gimp—for some reason, I really don’t know why! I’m quite willing to pay good money for real…

>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 testing equipment and top notch relations with top designers using its products for feedback.

5) At some point GTK, the toolkit GIMP (and Gnome and tons of other stuff) is based on, had just one developer working actively on it. I know because he blogged about it, and was fed up. That's not really what you want for your core infrastructure.

6) Adobe actively maintains Windows and OS X releases. GTK has mostly given up on other platforms and had historically had lots of problems.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#27

Post by coldtea »

dsego wrote: 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 above a level of experience developers know that "rewriting" is not some magic bullet, and can in fact take you years back and kill your project.

And rewriting in a still-developing language du jour, even less so.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#28

Post by Freak_NL »

dsego wrote: 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.

> Why stick with such an old codebase?

Because it works and is a full-featured mature product. Nothing stops anyone from starting a new project based on modern insights and try to become the next GIMP, but such an endeavour does not imply that this project should simply stop its development. The GIMP is used by a lot of people in their daily work or for personal projects. It's free, it works, and most crucially, it's here today. Why abandon it?

I'm sure the GIMP developers will adopt new technologies as they come along when and where they make sense (they are migrating to GTK3, and who knows, perhaps some parts will be replaced by Rust code).

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#29

Post by Yaggo »

Yaggo wrote: post #19
babuskov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works really well, I have been using it for about 2 years. The only two minor problems I found so far: 1. when you start it up from launcher, it doesn't show up in the foreground, so you have to click the icon again 2. if you have multiple monitors and you plug out the monitor with the gimp window it sometimes crashes. It doesn't happen every time, but as I precaution I first move the Gimp window to the other moni…

Also it does not seem to support retina mode, making it practically useless for a big share of Mac users. Besides, Pixelmator has raised the bar really high.

Just out of curiosity, why downvote? I can assure you that non-retina graphics on retina display looks awful. In spreadsheet software the lack of retina support may not be a dealbreaker, but GIMP is software for creating graphics.

Re: GIMP – 2016 in review

#30

Post by dagw »

blt wrote: post #11
bananicorn wrote: post #7

Glad to hear they're planning to work on non destructive editing - that might even convince some photoshop users to make the switch. Then again, I really like gimp for the incredible variety of work it does well already, like editing animated gifs.

Count me as one Photoshop user who avoids GIMP because it lacks non-destructive editing. Photoshop had Adjustment Layers since 1996, and using them is a widely accepted best practice. It is hard to imagine a valid reason why GIMP developers have taken so long to implement them.

It is hard to imagine a valid reason why GIMP developers have taken so long to implement them.

Time.

It's not that they're unaware of the importance of non-destructive editing. But adding it to GIMP required a pretty complete overhaul of the underlying architecture, which ended up taking much more time than initially anticipated. Basically the developers had to choose between completely stopping the development of GIMP and focus all their time re-implementing and re-writing the underlying architecture, or to keep working on GIMP as it was, and to slowly changing the underlying architecture bit by bit as and when they found the time. They chose the latter option.

Non-destructive editing has been in development, on and off, for about 15 years now.

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