The Gimp 2.4 was released today and it includes a number of new features, like scalable brushes, align tool, new selection tools, color Management and soft-proofing, Red Eye removal and much more. Unfortunately, there is still no 16bit per pixel support, which is useful for digital photography editing.
Gimp 2.4 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Grab a copy of the liquid rescale plugin and try it out with the new gimp. It is pretty amazing:
http://liquidrescale.wikidot.com/
Edit Distro packages:
http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=10292
Edited 2007-10-24 22:31
Thank you so very much for the tip!
Watched half the video presentation but then just had to stop and download the plugin to try it out ASAP. And yes, you are right, simply amazing!
And damn useful.
Very impressive, thanks!
Debian Sid Gimp 2.4 has Liquid Rescale included.
It´s still not photoshop!!
Ok, now talking seriously, I used gimp for almost a decade to do all kind of stuff: design, illustration, etc. I think it’s a very powerful app, however I just tested gimp 2.4 and it’s pretty little what changed in, what? 8 years? Gimp development has almost stalled, and its progress is endlessly slow.
Photoshop probably has ten times more features than The Gimp, and even when I believe a great deal of them are very redundant (can be done in many ways, almost all with the same effort, or in some way with The Gimp), I do believe that many of them ARE extremely useful, such as:
– 16 bits per channel
– CMYK colorspace
– Layer Folders, I use to have a ton of them and my Gimp is a mess.
– Realtime Layer Effects (something that could probably be done better, but still a very useful feature for designers)
– SANE Guides support. Gimp support for guides is so poor..
– Polygonal selection, I can’t understand how this isn’t supported, you need it so often. Using the path in polygon mode and converting to selection is ANNOYING. CG artists also have been using polygonal selection in PS for applying shadows to base colors since ages, this simply can’t be done in any useful way with The Gimp.
-Better deformation tools, rotate/perspective/scale is just too basic. Photoshop has grid based deformation for applying textures when doing realistic retouching and it’s extremely useful.
-An user interface that can be customized WITHOHT huge floating windows. Photoshop has always solved this so well, by having brushes at the left and brush properties on top. In the Gimp, every single screen is big. you can stack them and tab them, but they are still big, so you always have two huge windows, at the left and the right.
-Dynamic brushes are a DISASTER, I find myself having to create the dynamic brush every time i want to use it, because there is no way to just have a dynamic brush tool.
Well that’s some of my annoyances with it. It’s not things I find annoying because I am used to photoshop (I’m not, I barely use it), but things that I keep finding annoying after almost a decade of using it. At this rate it doesn’t seem it’s going to change.. so i kid of lost hope anyway.
Have a look at upcoming Krita 2.0, does most of the stuff you mention just fine, and most was done in 1.6 already.
Thats fine if you want to edit a image and pay £300-£400 for Photoshop but GIMP does what it does rather well, image manipulation.
2.4 is so much faster than 2.2 I can tell you, SMP support blows 2.2 away and that in itself is worth the wait. The GIMP comes with all most versions of Linux, can’t say that for Photoshop, they are the same right because thats what people keep saying.
2.4 _has_ some important additions, for example (finally!) you can create/modify selections like using a brush.
The problem of The Gimp is just developers, developers, developers… err there aren’t any. To be serious, you can count the main Gimp contributors using one hand.
Talk to them and they will tell you the same old story: “Yeah we always try to improve our GUI, but we don’t have time to overhaul everything at once, would you perhaps like to do it?”
To solve the problem with slow pace development, missing features, etc., The Gimp just needs to attract more developers. For example, they could try to participate with Google Summer Of Code…
Sorry, I don’t buy this. Look at Krita – much better GUI imho, there’s nothing stopping the GIMP developers from taking advantage of the various improvements that Krita offers.
Maybe the GIMP developers should stop adding features for a while, and concentrate on the GUI, since it is an incredibly sore point with GIMP users. Fix that, forgo new features, then later on, worry about new features. Then there’s gimpshop.
I think the real reasons are the same as with Blender – the main developers can’t be bothered because they like the current GUI and have the attitude that if others don’t like it, tough.
I really find it hard to swallow with some of the open source zealots – they’ll bag the shit out of KDE cos it’s ‘over complicated’ and ‘has a poor UI’, but they won’t bag the darling of the Linux world – the GIMP. Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? It’s one of the things that has really turned me off Linux – it’s full of hypocrites. At least with Microsoft and Apple, you know where you stand.
Dave
Did you talk to any main Gimp developer? Obviously not, because otherwise you would have known their attitude right instead making false assumptions and claims.
Funny how you tell they should stop adding features, while half of the world doesn’t stop to constantly demand them! (see in particular this thread)
The real reason is that every lame user complains and complains instead of solving. The real reason is, that most developers are interested in other projects, perhaps because they are more fancy or popular. Perhaps it is not regarded as cool to develop The Gimp because everybody seems to be so upset about it. But sure, everybody go and develop Firefox which is getting crappier and crappier every day while Gimp at least slowly evolves.
Perhaps you should just change your own attitude, zealotty or whatever instead of complaining about people who really do the work (and are really very friendly, too). And if you like KDE, where’s your problem with people who don’t like it?
Edited 2007-10-25 11:41
You don’t dare to suggest that they should change Blender UI so that grandmas all over the world can produce their own 3D content!
I don’t know anything about CAD so you can rest assured that you won’t see me ever complaining on a AutoCAD forum demanding Autodesk to change its UI so that I can design something on it.
All 3D programs in the world have a complex interface with a steep learning curve because these tools are very powerful and are intended to be used mainly by people that did bother to read the fine manual at least once. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if one have some artistic sensibility as well. Not everybody can work for Pixar or even capable of rendering some primitives inside a box, you know?
What pisses me me off the most is that I don’t see anyone complaining about Maya’s or Lightwave’s highly counterintuitive but efficient UIs, but somehow they feel entitled to ask Blender devs to change its UI because it is OSS, I guess.
Not to mention that there are lighter 3D packages out there that are better suited to people that have no idea what a mesh or a vertice means in 3D such as Xara3D – formerly Corel Xara – and others that probably cover their needs (such as the usual 3D metallic logo spinning in empty space to put on MySpace or their blogs) but for some unknown reason they want to go with the full blown pro app that they barely understand what it does.
Blender UI is probably the most productive interface of all times once you learn how to use it. I think that the only app that has a workflow that can possibly match and/or overcome Blender in speed is Wings3D.
Enough with this HIG stupidity! Leave it confined to GNOME, brain-dead end-users applications and the likes and leave the Pro apps alone to the professionals. The day that the Blender developers start catering to this sort of requests will be the day that I and many blenderheads that I know will stop using it!
Edited 2007-10-25 18:40
@reduz’s comment..
Features aren’t added just because you demand it..
Send in patches, brainless f–ktard…
Why does it have to beeeee photoshop?
Why can’t a product be distinguished?
Seriously, does photoshop use induce brain damage or something that prevents a user from creating graphics in any other way?
I use Paint Shop Pro X and love it to pieces, the one and single complaint I have is that it doesn’t run on Mac OS X and so I have it in a VM; but that isn’t even that much an issue with Parallels and Coherence.
Why can’t a product be distinguished?
Being different just to be different is a wrong approach to product design. You should do something differently only if it makes the user more productive or expands his options – also taking into account the learning curve, the perception of the learning curve, the established practices in the field etc.
I am not really qualified to speak on Gimp, and thus going slightly offtopic, but OOo Writer, while resembling MS Office much, is a good example of being different for difference’s sake in some aspects (for instance, paragraph selection logic, bullet/number list setup.)
It doesn’t _have_ to be photoshop, and as such it could try to distinguish itself. However the Gimp desperatly wants to be a photoshop clone, and thus being compared to photoshop. If they had tried to do something different that would be great and it would be discussed on those merits.
Look at various Windows and Mac programs for example. There are plenty of graphics and photo editing packages that aren’t trying to be photoshop clones and many of them are doing very well and get great reviews and have a loyal following. For example I much prefer Picture Window Pro (www.dl-c.com) over photoshop for all my pure photot editing needs. That’s a perfect example of an app that’s been successful, not by cloning photoshop feature by feature, but by having a different focus and doing what it does very well.
– Polygonal selection:
use the Path tool: create the path, close it pressing CTRL then press ENTER to get the selection.
This is way better than PS poligonal selection and it is modificable.
For anyone who’s complaining: start submitting bugs to GIMP (the procedure is VERY EASY on gnome.bugzilla), fill in feature request (check if there aren’t already) and contribute with the GUI interface Improvement Staff: http://gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com/
😉
Useless, because the path stays there, I don’t want a path created every time i want to make a selection
You can easily delete path or make it invisible. What’s your problem?
When an image editor doesn’t support and doesn’t *plan* to support faux bold and faux italic, for me it’s unforgivable. GIMP has gotta be the only image editor I know that doesn’t have this feature. I use always use faux bold in Photoshop because 90% of fonts these days don’t have a bold or an italic version. Based on that, you can see how closed-minded the GIMP developers are. Do they use their own dog food at least? This makes me sooo mad….!
Im getting tired of people being overly critical of the gimp.
no its not photoshop, yes it is useful.
For some reason everyone just wants a free photoshop and will bitch and moan until it happens.
Im surprised that there are so few projects to fill this gap- There are a fair few OSS 3d apps around, some even have a lot of active development, but image editors must be less interesting or something.
It would be nice for some company to realize its import fot gimp to improve for the whole “linux on the desktop” thing to happen and fund a few more full time devs.
There’s an old Spanish saying that goes like this: “Quien no llora no mama“, in other words, “Who doesn’t cry doesn’t suck“. If you don’t complain about the GIMP, there will be even less development. It’s almost stalled if you see the improvements over the last few years. I’ve tested the GIMP since 2001-2002, and I’m still unable to use it for my simple tasks because some basic features are still missing and will not me implemented any time soon. Too bad.
That saying is synonymous with, “The squeaky wheel always gets the grease.”
The problem with this attitude is that you assume there are developers to carry out user requests.
From reading the gimp mailing list and SVN logs it seems like there aren’t many active devs at any one time.
So when people get complain, I think they should take this into consideration.
Its not like there are 20 active dev’s and they all get a kick out of omitting your favorite features..
Also, people seem to seriously dislike the gimp.
Im a blender user/developer and I recall even recently blender had NO undo. but its users were still really positive about blender3d, blender3d is a growing project with many users and developers… and continues to grow.
Im not sure where this negative attitude towards the gimp comes from.
Edited 2007-10-25 19:56
Also, people seem to seriously dislike the gimp.
Well, I don’t dislike GIMP. I think it’s a fine program, especially considering the price. And there aren’t many alternatives on the Linux side, so GIMP definitely does fill a large gap.
Im not sure where this negative attitude towards the gimp comes from.
I suspect it’s mostly pro-Linux people who are tired of hearing “But Linux doesn’t have Photoshop!” from Windows users. A bit of a sore spot for the Linux folks.
Edited 2007-10-25 20:37
Huh? Maybe cos every open source zealot says ‘GIMP is a Photoshop killer” or “the GIMP is as good as Photoshop”.
The truth is, it isn’t. It’s nowhere near it. One of the best things that could happen to Linux is for Adobe to release a Linux version of Photoshop – do that and I think you’d see a fair number of people moving across.
Dave
Who are these “every open source zealot”? I haven’t seen them since 2002 – right, around the time that people began massively complaining about Gimp. These days people complain about Gimp so much that developers are beginning to commit suicide.
Can you show me even ONE recent comment from an “open source zealot” that says Gimp is a Photoshop killer? I know I can show you 328957382434634 comments in which people threaten to kill Gimp developers for creating the program.
> Who are these “every open source zealot”? I haven’t seen them since 2002
They are everywhere. I meet them every day. These are people who not only know Photoshop really bad, they don’t even know what GIMP can do. They know basics of either application and think they can judge. For open source this is just as bad as trolling about missing features.
No, people want Gimp to realise its potential.
There are plenty of FOSS that does basic image manipulation, but Gimp has a far greater potential than most. It’s hardly surprising then that people get a little frustrated when, while it does some tasks as effectively as the other big guns, it fails badly on other basic jobs.
So in short: it’s not about free professional software, it’s about our community producing software to the high standards that we are capable of achieving.
People also seem to forget that this cannot be achieved without constructive criticism to aid developers with goals and direction.
Edited 2007-10-25 11:25
“Unfortunately, there is still no 16bit per pixel support, which is useful for digital photography editing.”
If I am not mistaken, the GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) that has been under development is meant to address that problem, along with others that have been requested as well:
http://developer.gimp.org/faq.html#id2477651
Assuming this is ready for GIMP 2.6, I am not sure what feature improvements would be released at the same time though.
For more information, you can look at the GEGL homepage:
http://www.gegl.org/
Edit: corrected spelling
Edited 2007-10-24 23:31
We are given the GEGL excuse since 2002. I don’t think it will ever be ready. The problem is not the lib itself, but the fact that you have to rewrite parts of the app and ALL the plugins. That’s the kicker, not GEGL itself.
Photoshop went through the same pain too. But at some point, you have to go through it.
Edited 2007-10-24 23:32
Did not know that, but then again, I haven’t followed that debate.
Given what you just said, a question comes to mind: is the planned introduction of GEGL for 2.6 (according to their FAQ) somewhat recent or has this been something that has been pushed back over and over? If the former was the case, then maybe there could be reason for cautious optimism? I couldn’t find a roadmap anywhere so I really have no idea what it is that they plan to do (in the near or distant future).
“GEGL was originally conceived as a GIMP core replacement in 2000, but only recently (2006) has it reached a stage where the external API is starting to get locked down and its capabilities work well.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL
“In spite of these limitations, to fans of the GIMP, the appearance a working implementation of GEGL is a milestone. For seven years, users have been told GEGL was coming, but the existing GIMP core remained in place. Now there is a light at the end of that tunnel.”
http://www.linux.com/articles/57833
This appears to go back in time beyond 2002, ouch… but I am hopeful, a few brave souls have apparently brought it back from the dead. A quick look at their changelog also shows continuous activity so maybe this time around they’ll get there 🙂
FWIW:
GEGL
Features
* 8bit, 16bit integer and 32bit floating point, RGB, CIE Lab, and Y’CbCr output.
* Non destructive editing
* C, C#, Python and Ruby interfaces.
* Extendable through plug-ins.
* XML serialization format (not-finalized)
* Iterative processing.
* Efficient subregion evaluation.
* Processing and display of image buffers larger than RAM
* Internal sparse pyramidial render cache.
* Bounding box based hit detection.
* Rich core set of processing operations that internally computes with HDR capable 32bit floating point.
o PNG, JPEG, SVG, EXR, RAW and other image sources.
o Pattern renderers
o Arithmetic operations
o porter duff compositing
o SVG filter modes
o Gaussian blur.
o Unsharp mask.
o Color correction.
o Text layout using pango
This would be a huge feature set for any project, including Adobe Photoshop.
Edited 2007-10-25 02:35
Eugenia. Pay for the extra feature, which are all completely non-critical.
You know this is contributerware, so contribute instead of sitting down and complain – and doing nothing in the meanwhile.
We are given the GEGL excuse since 2002. I don’t think it will ever be ready.
Yep, the only diff is that nobody worked on it until 2006. It was all just hope and talk. Now some of them actually hack on gegl.
Just a thought, the front page currently cites 16 Bit Per Pixel support as important for digital photo editing, i think the poster might have meant 48 Bit per pixel or 16 Bit per channel.
And while these are desirable for certain photo editing applications they’re far from essential, there are loads of Photoshop users who never work at bitdepths greater than 24, and plenty of DSLR users who only ever shoot JPEG(i know they can benefit from high bit depth editing too), i’m afraid it could be construed as a little flamebait.
There are a lot of alternatives to Gimp on *nix:
16-bit per channel support exists in a Gimp clone called CinePaint.
http://www.cinepaint.org/
Krita supports 16-bit per channel, HDR, and CMYK.
http://www.koffice.org/krita/
Photoshop CS2 scores Gold status on the latest Wine.
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=2631
Pixel is a cheaper multi-platform alternative to Photoshop that runs on Linux and supports 16-bit color channels, 32-bit HDR, and CMYK.
http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/
Paint.NET 3.x is being ported to Linux with significant progress already.
http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/
Edited 2007-10-25 00:13
Thanks for this post, it’s good information for most Linux users. Especially nice is the news that CS2 seems to be much improved via the usage of WINE in the latest versions. Now, if WINE can make Capture One Pro and Canon’s DPP and EOS utility work just fine…I’d be a very happy camper!
Yes, I know I can install vmware and do it that way.
Dave
I think a bounty system would help alot items with the most bounty money would get implimented sooner. Why cant redhat canonical etc etc throw somE money at them as well this is an important piece of software that helps the whole of the community.
Hmmm… this is so lame.
You pay NOTHING for Gimp,
you pay NOTHING for your Linux distribution,
your pay nothing for your BSD-system
you pay nothing for support,
you contribute nothing back (especially the linker of this article) …
and yet you complain.
Contribute or shut up.
Contribute or shut up.
Ridiculous. If the creators of GIMP don’t want the public discussing or critiquing their software, maybe they shouldn’t release it publicly.
Of course one can discuss the software publicly. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in my post that can be understood as opposing that. Read what I’m writing.
This is not about discussing feature or lack of publicly. This is about the demands put forth by the whiners.
Demands from persons like Eugenia, reduz, Joe User and their likes are simply immoral and childish. But that’s the usual behavior from such personalities.
Have you put any thought into offering a Cocoa Fork? There are plenty of freeware apps on the OS X Platform and there isn’t a shortage of Objective-C coders who know Cocoa that might be inclined to help.
Ask people at the Cocoa-dev list for feedback.
The only post that was overly demanding has been voted ~way~ down. The others you mentioned were reasonable posts, not demanding. Since GIMP compares itself to Photoshop, directly comparing the features of the two programs is to be expected.
Since Photoshop has never been released for Linux, GIMP has become the standard “Photoshop replacement” program. Even the GIMP website compares it’s program to Photoshop. So when a standard photoshop feature is missing from GIMP, people tend to notice.
My own opinion (disclaimer: I haven’t used the newest versions of either Photoshop or GIMP), Photoshop and GIMP both have flaws, particularly with the user interface. Photoshop needs “fixing,” while GIMP would benefit from an entire redesign.
> Even the GIMP website compares it’s program to Photoshop.
You are daydreaming. It doesn’t.
> Even the GIMP website compares it’s program to Photoshop.
> You are daydreaming. It doesn’t.
Maybe you are daydreaming; it absolutely does. And according to the History section of the GIMP website, creating a Photoshop-like program was the original goal of the entire project.
“Suppose someone decided to write a graphical image manipulation program (akin to photoshop).”
Edited 2007-10-25 20:37
> Maybe you are daydreaming; it absolutely does.
Of course it doesn’t. Creating an application that is like some other one is by no means comparison to that other application. This is a huge difference. HUGE.
Do you actually know what the word “comparison” mean? Seems like you don’t. Well, FYI, comparison in this context is when you take two applications and look what one of them can do and the other can’t. Can you show me comparison betnween GIMP and Photoshop at gimp.org? Of course you can’t.
Now let me tell you why I’m taking it so seriously. Most user requests traffic contains questions “Why can’t you make GIMP look/act like Photoshop?” Main reason for that is because people think that GIMP is supposed to compete with Photoshop. They think so because people like you provide misleading information like yours “Since GIMP compares itself to Photoshop, directly comparing the features of the two programs is to be expected.”
Please read carefully what actual developer of GIMP said not so long ago:
“Personally I do believe that it would be a major fault to define GIMP as “the same kind of application as Photoshop”, because that would only push the problem to the question “What kind of application is Photoshop?”. We need to define our goals but we should by all means avoid to define our goals in terms of competitors.”
http://svenfoo.geekheim.de/index.php/2006-03-13/time-to-stick-a-for…
Do you see now why you were wrong?
Please STOP spreading FUD.
Well, let’s see.
Gosh, I can’t imagine how that could’ve been construed as opposition to “public discussion and critique.”
And complaints are contributions. It’s called feedback.
How in God’s name are you being rated up?
“Demands from persons like Eugenia, reduz, Joe User and their likes are simply immoral and childish. But that’s the usual behavior from such personalities”.
Immoral? Childish? You don’t like constructive criticism and suggestions. IIRC, I was asking for faux bold and faux italic. It is a feature that I’ve been badly missing because most of my fonts don’t have a bold and an italic version. It’s an essential feature.
Unfortunately you can’t see my post anymore. It was the third from the start. It’s been deleted by the OSN team.
No, your argument is the often used and very lame – contribute if you want it to be better and don’t put it down if it’s free.
Well, there are developers and then there are users.
And just because something is free doesn’t mean it can’t be criticized and compared to other products.
As a user I have every right to say that an app suck and tell the developer to get his sh** together.
As for Gimp.
Sure, it’s not perfect but for a free, multiplatform app it’s pretty damn good.
And it covers the needs of all but a small percentage of professionals.
Sorry Dylan – whilst I agree with a lot that you say, just because it’s open source software shouldn’t mean that the users, the public, shouldn’t be allowed to criticise the software in question. Without critique, the GIMP will not improve.
Dave
> Without critique, the GIMP will not improve.
There is no point telling developers about CMYK, 16bit, LAB etc. over and over again. GIMP will _not_ improve from these repeated opinions, often expressed in an offensive way.
Adobe and others listen to their users, and that’s why their products improve, get new features, and have lots of users. The GIMP has had a long time to get these new features and improvements, and nothing has been done. How long do GIMP users have to wait, without complaining before it gets fixed?
I might sound like an ungrateful user to some, but if the GIMP (and other open source software) wants to compete against the big boys, then, well, it has to compete!
Don’t get me wrong, the GIMP isn’t bad, but it could be a lot better.
Dave
>I might sound like an ungrateful user to some, but if the GIMP (and other open source software) wants to compete against the big boys, then, well, it has to compete!
What you people fail to get is that FOSS often does not want to compete. I suspect none of you have written software and given it away. I have. First, writing something like GIMP is not trivial – it is a massive effort. It was written not to make money, but to satisfy a need the author(s) had. Same as me. I can’t speak for them, but I have a real job that takes a lot of time. I have a wife that likes to see me. I don’t have time to add features that others want just because they want them. If it is a good idea and helps me, I will add it. When I can. I wrote the app to fill a need I had and gave it away on the off chance that someone else could use it. If they can’t, no big deal. Nothing is lost. If they can, good. But I get no income from what I write and give away and have no incentive other than ego to add your features. If, however, I had a stated goal of making my particular piece of software the best in class, ie a replacement for a commercial app, and actively sought criticism, I would feel obliged to give up sleep in order to add your features.
Color management in this case is not usable at all. What you can do is edit your image in RGB space with proper colors … but there’s currently only one browser capable of handling ICC profiles embedded in images and that is Safari.
Until it supports CMYK, 16-bit RGB and/or HDR I’m sticking with Pixel – http://www.pixelimageeditor.com
2.4 brings support for gtk-alternative-button-order so I can swap button order in the dialogs. It’s not really that big a deal, except when one app has it opposite from everything else I use. So yay for Gimp implementing this, it’s no longer the odd one out.
But why on this green earth must something like that be implemented at the application level? I was going to hold up kwriteconfig –group KDE –key ButtonLayout 1 as an example of doing it DE wide, but I can’t seem to get it to work (it isn’t swapping them to Gnome order here). So still, why can’t it be done (by either side as far as I can see) at the DE level?
Hi there,
Just for your information, I am maintaining a blog on using Linux for photography.
The goal is to have place to share tricks and tips (Color Management, workflow) so we can:
1) enjoy taking picture
2) use for their best the tools available (Gimp, Krita, Cinepaint, Ufraw)
3) make the most of our favorite hobbies (IT and photo)
I hope this helps:
http://jcornuz.wordpress.com
Joel
I have had conversations with various GIMP contributors over the years, and not one of them was interested in Photoshop. they were developing a tool that they wanted to use, in pure open source form, they were scratching an itch. I think that other people want GIMP to be Photoshop, not necessarily all the GIMP developers. It’s been compared to Photoshop, but I don’t know if its ever been advertised as a Photoshop replacement.
Other than the work around hack/plugin for CMYK (http://cue.yellowmagic.info/softwares/separate.html) – If this was officially added I could eliminate all other editors from our work-flow. GIMP all the way. But the majority of my work is in print, and ends up in CMYK. One day GIMP will be added to the DTP lineup along with Scribus. That will be a day of great calibration in my office.
Unfortunately, the Gimp developers are trying to make Gimp more like Photoshop, which I’ve never used. What Linux really needs is a more
powerful version of KolourPaint (in KDE V3.57), which does most of the things that Deluxe-Paint (Amiga version) is capable of doing. It seems like every
Linux program that I’ve tried is either so complex (like Gimp) that it’s incomprehensible or so simple it might as well be a child’s toy program.
Some developer needs to sit down with a painter and see how they create a painting, then implement it in software. Photoshop, and unfortunately
Gimp, are being written for the needs of photographers, which is a completely different realm of expertise.