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.
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Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2005-11-12
Thats fine if you want to edit a image and pay Ģ300-Ģ400 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.
Member since:2006-01-16
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...
Member since:2006-12-16
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
Member since:2005-11-10
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.
Member since:2005-10-18
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.)
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:2007-10-25
- 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/
;)
Member since:2006-02-25
Member since:
2006-02-25
Itīs 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.