On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Claus Cyrny wrote:

Hi all,

after this has first been announced, I think, in 2002 (!), I wonder why 16-bit/channel has still not been implemented.

Because noone did it. Noone did it, because it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, because GIMP is huge and GEGL, the new engine, is unfinished.

Two years ago (or something like this) I read that 16-bit would be available in 2.6,

It wasn't going to. You were misinformed.

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

Claus - they're all waiting for you to offer to help code it.

It's open source. If there's a feature you'd really like to see, contribute code or hire someone who can help. It's as simple as that.

Donncha

On 05/07/10 11:23, Claus Cyrny wrote:

Hi all,

after this has first been announced, I think, in 2002 (!), I wonder why 16-bit/channel has still not been implemented.

On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Claus Cyrny wrote:

Ubuntu) have much better anti-aliasing. I really enjoy working with the Gimp (currently 2.6.8), but especially 16-bit is really long overdue.

It's overdue, but that won't make it happen any sooner. Let's just wait it out. Meanwhile, Krita and Cinepaint support 16bit/channel (iirc), so it's not like it's absolutely impossible. I've heard ufraw will also use 16bit/ch images. It is said to be a bit picky (TIFFs in ufraw's preferred format, please), but it can get the job done. For now, you'll just have to either switch or combine tools.

On 07/05/2010 12:23 PM, Claus Cyrny wrote:

Hi all,

after this has first been announced, I think, in 2002 (!), I wonder why 16-bit/channel has still not been implemented. Two years ago (or something like this) I read that 16-bit would be available in 2.6, but now someone stated that it would probably take a few more years (!). IMHO, 16-bit should be right on top of the list of priorities, now that GEGL has been implemented--at least it's definitely more important than, say yet another new icon set for Gimp. And anti-aliasing could also be improved. Programs such as Krita (I'm using Ubuntu) have much better anti-aliasing. I really enjoy working with the Gimp (currently 2.6.8), but especially 16-bit is really long overdue.

We know it's long overdue and we know it sucks that we don't have higher bit depths yet. If we would have done higher bit depths before the 2.6 and 2.8 UI changes however, we would have received a lot of criticism for a useless UI instead.

As soon as 2.8 is out, we are ready to introduce support for higher bit depths. GIMP 2.8 is currently scheduled for arrival late 2010. Maybe there will be a GIMP 2.9 development snapshot with support for higher bit depths half a year or so after that.

The best way you can help with getting high bit depths support in GIMP is help us get 2.8 out, which basically boils down to helping us fix remaining bugs on the 2.8 milestone:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=GIMP&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&target_milestone=2.8

Regards, Martin