Tutorial: Preview: GIMP 2.8 - the new features
Motivation
A specific release date for GIMP 2.8 is still unknown, however, following deveolpers work and discussion, it seems that GIMP 2.8 will be released somewhen in 2011, maybe in Q2 or Q3. GIMP 2.8 will have kick-ass features such as a long awaited single window mode, full on-canvas text editing capabilites and layer groups!
Tutorial details
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1
Finally here: layer groups!
It’s now possible to group layers into folders in a tree-like way. You can move and show/hide all layers of a group at once so it will finally be possible to create complex layouts without getting lost. The layer sets don’t work perfectly, since layer masks don’t work yet for example. Nevertheless the basic behaviour works quite well already! -
2
New: Rotating brushes, brush aspect ratio
Finally, you can rotate brushes at your will. Very useful, especially for drawers and painters.
The aspect ratio allows you to squeeze a brush along the horizontal/vertical axis.
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3
Brush dynamics have been extended to comprise rotation, inclination (angle) and aspect ratio.
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4
New & useful: resource tagging
All kinds of GIMP resources (brushes, fonts, patterns, gradients etc) can be “tagged” now. Then you can filter resources by these tags, so you can manage huge amounts of resources quite easily.
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FINALLY: On-canvas editing: Write your text directly on the canvas (no input window needed anymore, although you can still use it if you want to do so).
Also, the possibilities for font hinting have been exteneded.
However, it’s still not possible to format certain words within a text (only the whole text block).
To edit a text block again, you first have to click on the layer in the Layers window. Then use the Text tool and click on the existing text block.
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“Path from text” has been moved to the context menu:
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7
It’s now possible to do calulcation in input fields. For instance, you can scale an image (Image / Scale image) to “2*100px+1in”. This value will be converted to the required units (here 272 px).
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8
New default gradient available: a hard gradient between foreground and background color
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Layer modes have been grouped by context for easier use. For example, all modes that darken/brighten the image are arranged together now.
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10
Completely different: Exporting to other formats like JPEG or PNG isn’t possible via File / Save anymore, but only via File / Export.
File / Save is only used to save images using the native GIMP format “.xcf” (or .xcf.gz, .xcf.bz2 for compressed files).
If you want to create a JPEG, PNG, TIFF etc. image file, you have to use File / Export. This new UI behaviour saves some time that would be wasted by dialogs (the hint that the image is reduced to one layer e.g.) otherwise.
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11
Quickly export to JPEG/PNG without specifying options every time
Above the Export menu entry, you can find a quick export function that you can use to export your current image without having to specify format-specific settings (compression and so on) every time.
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12
Image palette: export to CSS, PHP, Java, Python or plain text
You can now export color values in several formats. If you choose PHP, Python or Java, the colors are declared as variables. For CSS, unnamed classes will be created and plain text files will only contain a Hex code list.
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13
Vector layers should be integrated since 2006, but now the chances are good that they are relased with GIMP 2.8. We’ll see if it fits into the time plan.
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Customization of the Tool window is now possible via the Edit / Settings dialog. Tools can be sorted by priority or removed completely.
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Hotkeys:
New: Alt(Shift)click = Alpha from layer
New: Ctrl+Shift+E = File / Export
New: Ctrl+E: quick export
Modified: Ctrl+Shift+R = Resize canvas to window size
Modified: Ctrl+R = Resize window to canvas size -
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Other changes:
- Canvas edges are now “magnetic”
- Support for JPEG2000
- Support for 16 bit RAW import -
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The GEGL library is now resposible for layer modes and the mixing of the layers to the resulting image.
So the most important GEGL functions are integrated to GIMP now and the course for GIMP 2.10 / 3.0 is set. This will allow great new features for future versions, but not before 2010.
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18
GUI changes
- When the window is minimized, the Tools window and other aren’t shown anymore.
- The close button (X on right top) doesn’t close the whole application anymore but only the Tools window. GIMP is closed as soon as the last image window is closed or you choose File / Exit.
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