On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM, meetthegimp.org wrote:

I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I can't be more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to change an image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been done.

Is this possible to implement in GIMP?

Of course. http://www.ingimp.org/

Alexandre

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM, meetthegimp.org wrote:

I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I can't be more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to change an image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been done.

Is this possible to implement in GIMP?

Of course. http://www.ingimp.org/

That, however, implies being ready to read XML files with eyes :)

Alexandre

Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM, meetthegimp.org wrote:

I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I can't be
more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to change an
image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been done.

Is this possible to implement in GIMP?

Of course. http://www.ingimp.org/

they have to skip a lot of user actions, interestingly for privacy reasons.

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture

meetthegimp.org wrote:

I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I can't be more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to change an image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been done.

Is this possible to implement in GIMP?

Hi Rolf

This sounds like "macro recording". It is possible to do of course, but there is still a quite a lot of question marks on how to do it in the best way. Getting a prototype implementation up and running that then can be discussed would be a good step forward.

/ Martin

I have asked the exactly same question month ago and Martin was kindly enough to provide some code base. Below is the archive link

http://www.mail-archive.com/gimp-developer@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/msg19123.html

Since the time frame for my project is pretty tight, so I just insert the ugly g_fprintf code into the commands of interest and dump the command log into some file for further analysis. If you just need some immediate result for prototype, this might be a ugly but simple and fast way to do :D

-Tim

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Martin Nordholts wrote:

meetthegimp.org wrote:

I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I can't be more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to change an image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been done.

Is this possible to implement in GIMP?

Hi Rolf

This sounds like "macro recording". It is possible to do of course, but there is still a quite a lot of question marks on how to do it in the best way. Getting a prototype implementation up and running that then can be discussed would be a good step forward.

/ Martin

--

My GIMP Blog: http://www.chromecode.com/
"Reducing UI clutter, docking bars removed"

On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 16:44 +0100, meetthegimp.org wrote:

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:05 PM, peter sikking wrote:
Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM, meetthegimp.org wrote: >> I just had an interesting phone conversation with someone (sorry, I
>> can't be
>> more specific) who needs to log all actions that have been used to
>> change an
>> image. One should be able to reproduce all the steps that have been
>> done.
>>
>> Is this possible to implement in GIMP? >
> Of course. http://www.ingimp.org/


they have to skip a lot of user actions, interestingly for privacy reasons.

There will be no privacy reasons and it will normally not be necessary to read the log files. They are only there for solving possible disputes about the amount of editing.

So for your so-called "superiors" to spy on the lower planes of employed graphics designers? Or am I totally misunderstanding the weird between-the-lines tone in your sentences?

regards, --mitch

On Wednesday 16 December 2009 19:16:57 meetthegimp.org wrote:

Complete misunderstanding. They want to be able to prove what has been done to the image in the processing. As in: "Is this scratch really on the object and has been revealed from the raw photo with a contrast enhancement or has it been inserted with the clone tool?". Usually these disputes don't come up and so the logs don't have to be reader friendly.

This sounds like something that the forensics people would need. Basically to prove what altering has happened to a piece of evidence in case processing is disputed. There is no out of the box functionality like this because this particular requirement is quite special in its own right, to fill this need the log must prove that a) its from the editing of a correct image b) the end result is what people have. This requires that the hashes of all images saved and loaded are recorded and all recordings have a time stamp. Currently gimp does not have such functionality because nobody has been interested in adding one. However, I believe adding such logging facility to gimp is not difficult. If the aim is simply to log, and do so with proof value then it should not take a competent coder more than a month to implement. However since this not a general interest functionality, they probably would need to pay a coder to do this.

--Alexia

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 18:16 +0100, meetthegimp.org wrote: [...]

Complete misunderstanding. They want to be able to prove what has been done to the image in the processing. As in: "Is this scratch really on the object and has been revealed from the raw photo with a contrast enhancement or has it been inserted with the clone tool?".

With more information about the problem, maybe we can see some other possible solutions... e.g. what about a comparison between the original and final image, with digital signatures as Alexia suggested...

If you didn't mind a really verbose log and you're on Linux or Solaris (say), you could use ltrace to store everything the program did, perhaps combined with a script that printed out some significant environment variables such as LD_PRELOAD and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH, to show that they had not been tampered with. Doing this may slow GIMP down too much, though.

Another possibility is to run with a screen capture program, basically recording a video of the user's actions... but you'd probably get really big files.

The best approach I can think of would involve a change to make part of the GIMP "app" scriptable, by adding an MVC-style command-handler chain, so every user action turns into an internal command that is potentially intercepted by a script; probably not a large change, and likely one that could be consistent with the GIMP "product vision".

With Libre software it's usually best to contribute changes back to the main package rather than having your own patch you have to maintain, but that means trying to make something general enough that others would want to use it, and then making use of that new feature with your own script.

I can also see you might need to have signature checking on the scripts that are loaded.

My gut feeling is yes, an up-to-speed-with-gimp programmer could do most of what's needed in a week, so allow a month, and at consulting rates that's $20K, or the cost of a few Creative Studio licenses :-)

(I'd be happy to quote a price! although I'm guessing the people who contacted you might prefer a US-based programmer, or one more familiar than I with running GIMP on Windows. Maybe meetthegimp.org has a suitable forum for people wanting to hire or to be hired?)

Liam