The latest Linux Journal sure doesn't have much good to say about GIMP (Deep Images). Talks about it being a dinosaur and being left behind by the likes of Cinepaint, Krita and Pixel. Sure hope there isn't a GIMP 2.6 but rather it moves to GIMP 3.0 based on GEGL with a UI revamp.

I kind of like the GIMP but I do agree with some of the things said about it in the article.

George Farris wrote:

The latest Linux Journal sure doesn't have much good to say about GIMP (Deep Images). Talks about it being a dinosaur and being left behind by the likes of Cinepaint, Krita and Pixel. Sure hope there isn't a GIMP 2.6 but rather it moves to GIMP 3.0 based on GEGL with a UI revamp.

I kind of like the GIMP but I do agree with some of the things said about it in the article.

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:15:51 -0700, George Farris wrote:

The latest Linux Journal sure doesn't have much good to say about GIMP (Deep Images). Talks about it being a dinosaur and being left behind by the likes of Cinepaint, Krita and Pixel. Sure hope there isn't a GIMP 2.6 but rather it moves to GIMP 3.0 based on GEGL with a UI revamp.

As an author, let me disect this a bit.

The author's points are valid with respect to color space support given the current stable GIMP release (2.2), though not completely valid with respect to the current developer release (the upcoming 2.4). But he makes a poor argument for replacing the GIMP with other tools. For example, he states how GIMP's lack of 16 bit channels is sufficient cause not to use GIMP. Period. Then goes on to say how CinePaint is a must-have tool despite a set of "inconveniences" and lack of stability. Who is he to say which is more important to the reader - 16 bit channels or stability? What good is 16 bit channels if the you can't guarantee the accuracy of saved data, program stability, or processing filters?

He also states that Krita's scripting behaves more like Adobe's Action scripts. He makes the (common and misconceived) assumption that being like Adobe is the right way and not being like Adobe is the wrong way. They are simply different. It's not his place to say what the reader should choose unless he can give a valid technical or end-user reasoning why one is better than the other. He didn't even manage to say that Action Scripts are simply more familiar to Photoshop users trying to switch, an argument that at least could be held up as a valid end-user choice.

He states that "Krita also is still in the refinement stage, and its code is not well optimized". He gives plenty of technical reasons (such as high resource usage) why you might consider *not* using Krita. But the article is about *not* using GIMP for deep images, and use the alternatives listed instead. In other words, he's not sold us on anything. It's like he's trying to tell us "it all sucks", which is a pointless article.

He also calls out Krita and CinePaint for not being able to use GIMP's filters. If GIMP is as poor as he says, why would they want to do that? Is the functionality in GIMP's filters so important that it's a "must have"? If so, wouldn't that make GIMP, despite its "inconveniences", a must have as well, most especially because the alternatives don't support those filters?

His conclusion is that both Krita and CinePaint, despite the negatives listed, are still better choices than the GIMP. But he's failed to give compelling reasons to completely drop the GIMP (or even to use the other two). In my professional opinion, it is a very poorly written article.

BTW, he gets some facts wrong (or at least dilutes them). First, the GIMP was not written specifically for processing web images. It was written *specifically* as a class project that *evolved* to support web requirements as well as print requirements. If he's in doubt to the latter, look at the cover of LJ issue 64 (which I did completely in the GIMP, and which is not even the first issue I did with the GIMP). Second, he should check with the people involved with the original FilmGIMP project to get his facts straight. I'm fairly certain the patches were not rejected because "[the developers] didn't know what to do with [them]" or that they thought that patches "didn't seem important anyway". In truth, the patches were rejected because the developers felt they implemented the right solution the wrong way. And the developers chose the right way over the quick way. Argue that as good or bad as you like. But I don't believe they dismissed "the patches out of hand." Developers: feel free to correct me on this.

I really get peeved by these types of articles. GIMP is GIMP. Krita is Krita. CinePaint is CinePaint. Each is a tool. Use the right tool for the job. There are lots of hammers. Some are good for some projects. Others are good for other projects. None are good for all projects. As an author, he should know that and write accordingly. In this case, it looks like he's more interested in publicly bashing one tool (which would be an opinion piece, which this is not intended to be) instead of trying to help his readers (a reference piece or review, which this *is* intended to be).

Michael J. Hammel wrote:

In truth, the patches were rejected because the developers felt they implemented the right solution the wrong way. And the developers chose the right way over the quick way. Argue that as good or bad as you like. But I don't believe they dismissed "the patches out of hand." Developers: feel free to correct me on this.

Sounds like the article uses Cinepaint propaganda without original research.

Michael

I really get peeved by these types of articles. GIMP is GIMP. Krita is Krita. CinePaint is CinePaint. Each is a tool. Use the right tool for the job. There are lots of hammers. Some are good for some projects. Others are good for other projects. None are good for all projects. As an author, he should know that and write accordingly. In this case, it looks like he's more interested in publicly bashing one tool (which would be an opinion piece, which this is not intended to be) instead of trying to help his readers (a reference piece or review, which this *is* intended to be).

Nice retort. You should consider sending that to LJ's 'reader letters' section (which I always read as soon as my sub arrives in the mail).

I've never been able to understand all the excessive bashing that GIMP regularly gets (UI complaints, color space limitations [which has never kept me from my day to day work], etc.). I use GIMP regularly and pretty much have zero complaints. It's a great, power horse application, and has been a solidly pleasant experience to use since 2.* in my opinion. BTW, I use GIMP mostly for web graphics and some print.

Eric

Jon Cosby wrote:

How about providing a link to the article? The only mention of Gimp I see in the July issue is on processing Web images

The article in question appears to be the one that starts on page 34 of the July 2007 issue of LJ.

On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Rachael H. wrote:

Same here. I read that article and felt like they were bashing the Gimp. I did download Krista to see how it worked. I ended up uninstalling since it ran pretty slow. Seems like everything for KDE

With Krita, what's exciting is how fast it progresses. It has insanely advanced features, but is still missing the basics in many ways. And now I'm so used to Gimp that I'm not sure if it was just me, or actual, but I felt the UI was very....restrictive.

runs slow! *LOL* Anyways I'm really used to the Gimp and it's fast

The only thing I would add is the fact that the progress bars that seem to move at wildly different speeds (move quickly, pause, move quickly, pause, then suddenly the operation is done) make the speed feel...slow. showfoto under KDE has a great progress bar, and it seems to judge how long something will take very accurately. Photoshop has a good one...It makes it feel like you can gauge how long something will take...

compared to other image editing software I used. In fact I"m going to college for Media Arts & Animation and they require you to use Photoshop..I have yet to use that program and even got some other

Still think that having a shortcut layout that mimics PS would be a great feature. Just a shortcut list that's easily loadable like the Theme selector in Preferences. Would make it so easy to get a bunch of people over...but alas, talking about that got me banned from the list by the Dynamic Duo, so I'll shut up about it.

On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Eric P wrote:

I really get peeved by these types of articles. GIMP is GIMP. Krita is Krita. CinePaint is CinePaint. Each is a tool. Use the right tool for the job. There are lots of hammers. Some are good for some projects. Others are good for other projects. None are good for all projects. As an author, he should know that and write accordingly. In this case, it looks like he's more interested in publicly bashing one tool (which would be an opinion piece, which this is not intended to be) instead of trying to help his readers (a reference piece or review, which this *is* intended to be).

Nice retort. You should consider sending that to LJ's 'reader letters' section (which I always read as soon as my sub arrives in the mail).

I've never been able to understand all the excessive bashing that GIMP regularly gets (UI complaints, color space limitations [which has

I don't see much more bashing than anything else. It's the Windows Virus Syndrome: Gimp is just about the only great image editor in the Linux world with any serious usage over time, so it's going to get nailed by opinions. It also has a very different UI from most, so...

And the color issues relate to it replacing PS for high-end work. I think people are saying "Aww, shucks, I wish Gimp had this so I could ditch PS" not "Darn, I can't use Gimp to edit Little Susie's pictures because it doesn't have CMYK." Most newbies open up Gimp, see three weird windows pop up with a How-To dialog and say "Yuck, what's this?". The name doesn't help either. Just basing this on countless interactions I've had with models or other photographers sitting here near my workstation, seeing me download my images and go through my workflow of digikam download -> Gqview to delete the bad ones -> Gimp to edit the good ones -> showfoto to apply different color effects (Infra, BW conversion, etc.)

In that context, it's quite easy to understand why people have strong opinions about it, especially since PS is a big chunkachange.

On Thursday 21 June 2007 21:17, Brendan wrote:

On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Eric P wrote:

I really get peeved by these types of articles. GIMP is GIMP. Krita is Krita. CinePaint is CinePaint. Each is a tool. Use the right tool for the job. There are lots of hammers. Some are good for some projects. Others are good for other projects. None are good for all projects. As an author, he should know that and write accordingly. In this case, it looks like he's more interested in publicly bashing one tool (which would be an opinion piece, which this is not intended to be) instead of trying to help his readers (a reference piece or review, which this *is* intended to be).

In the Open Source world Gimp is the best (most mature, fastest, most fully featured etc.) replacement for Photoshop. That said, for print use it needs to be able to work in the cmyk world and also be able to use icc profiles. If Krita, Scribus etc. can add these features then Gimp should be able to also.

The reason why people want to have Gimp tools transferred to Krita is that Krita can work in cmyk, and Gimp's progress in this regard seems to be asymptotic, closer and closer but it never seems to get there. Krita is however dead slow.

I use nothing but Open Source, and Gimp is one of my favorites. But my business is publishing and I need cmyk.

On Thursday 21 June 2007, Michael Schumacher wrote:

Sounds like the article uses Cinepaint propaganda without original research.

You could be right on the money.

It's typical (speaking from experience here) for magazine article authors to be under time pressure, so they don't always feel free to do as much research as they'd like (and as they should).

Which leads me to my next question/suggestion: have any of us considered putting together a magazine website? If it went well, we could get all ambitious and turn it into a paper raga as well, but the general idea would be to present a semi-official place to collect both competent critisims (like Mr Hammel's) and also an occasional article on plain old using the GIMP, plus one on artistic techniques (thinks like recoving faces from botched photos, differences from other programs, an article or two from developers on what's gunner happen to GIMP & how & why.

I think we could do a little light advertising (GIMP and graphics focus) as well, to cover hosting costs et al, but I'm happy to volunteer to put the effort in to run the site (call the post "abuse server"?) and nag people for articles etc.

The leading question, I guess, would be: does such a beastie exist already? How much duplication of effort would it involve?

The printed graphics magazines available here in Oz tend to be quite expensive, and if they have a product focus, it'll typically be PhotoShop. So you could call this filling a personal need.

I'm not in a position to run a server (net access here is dialup -- slow -- or satellite -- $$$ for data -- so what we'd need to do this voluntarily is someone with an ADSL or similar link with a few spare gigabytes and a machine which won't mind being a DNS and web server (which implies a fixed IP address).

Thankfully, this is gravy for Linux. Under Mandriva, I'd do something like "urpmi apache-mod_php apache-ssl bind" and edit up a new user with write access to a virtual hosting directory (then you could run several independent sites). Debianoid systems would be a similar command, with apt-get or the like.

Aaanyway, the point of a mailing list is to comment, so please educate me! (-: What do you think?

Cheers; Leon

Leon Brooks wrote:

On Thursday 21 June 2007, Michael Schumacher wrote:

Sounds like the article uses Cinepaint propaganda without original research.

You could be right on the money.

It's typical (speaking from experience here) for magazine article authors to be under time pressure, so they don't always feel free to do as much research as they'd like (and as they should).

Which leads me to my next question/suggestion: have any of us considered putting together a magazine website? If it went well, we could get all ambitious and turn it into a paper raga as well, but the general idea would be to present a semi-official place to collect both competent critisims (like Mr Hammel's) and also an occasional article on plain old using the GIMP, plus one on artistic techniques (thinks like recoving faces from botched photos, differences from other programs, an article or two from developers on what's gunner happen to GIMP & how & why.

I think we could do a little light advertising (GIMP and graphics focus) as well, to cover hosting costs et al, but I'm happy to volunteer to put the effort in to run the site (call the post "abuse server"?) and nag people for articles etc.

The leading question, I guess, would be: does such a beastie exist already? How much duplication of effort would it involve?

The printed graphics magazines available here in Oz tend to be quite expensive, and if they have a product focus, it'll typically be PhotoShop. So you could call this filling a personal need.

I'm not in a position to run a server (net access here is dialup -- slow -- or satellite -- $$$ for data -- so what we'd need to do this voluntarily is someone with an ADSL or similar link with a few spare gigabytes and a machine which won't mind being a DNS and web server (which implies a fixed IP address).

I don't think the costs on the electronic side would be that bad. Currently I use namecheap for my domains and hostgator for hosting, neither of which runs that bad (three domains at approximately $8.88/year and $10/month for the hosting.). And I am nowhere near my limit for storage.
The hardest part of any sort of periodical publication is keeping that constant energy going. We all have our lives outside of this forum, and in many cases that life has to come first. Somebody is going to have to maintain the role of editor and chief nagger in terms of getting content in on time (I've played that role and it is not fun). One last question for you all: if you do put-together an online magazine, who will you be writing to and for? It's easy for the people here to put questions to themselves and answer them, but I'm thinking that's not the audience you're aiming for (otherwise, why would you even need to expand beyond this).

On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 21:17 -0400, Brendan wrote:

... The name doesn't help
either. Just basing this on countless interactions I've had with models or other photographers sitting here near my workstation, seeing me download my images and go through my workflow of digikam download -> Gqview to delete the bad ones -> Gimp to edit the good ones -> showfoto to apply different color effects (Infra, BW conversion, etc.)

I have to agree with Brendan on this one. While I realize that the name holds a lot of weight and recognition within the open source community, it is actually real a barrier to gaining acceptance in the larger CG community. I've tried to introduce several web designers and photographers to this eminently useful program, and every single one of them has been taken aback by the name. When I go on to explain the meaning of the acronym the usual response is something along the lines of "Oh... they really should come up with something better..."

In fact, though I now use the Gimp on nearly a daily basis, I distinctly remember that when I first heard of and started using it (back before the .com bubble went pop) that the name was at best unsuitable for marketing purposes in my soon-to-be Internet media empire. Had I not been on an pro-Linux / anti-Microsoft warpath at the time, I may well have shelled out the cash for Photoshop.

I've basically been desensitized to the offensiveness of the word in the English context, but most non-Gimp users have not. And as Brendan points out, clients are *not* impressed by something with an offensive name. There's a similar phenomenon in the audio production business where "everyone" (see: narrow minded producers) knows about ProTools, and not using it can actually eliminate some customers.

Just to clarify, I don't really care about the name, but many of my clients have.

~B

On Wednesday 20 June 2007 20:48, Kevin Cozens wrote:

Jon Cosby wrote:

How about providing a link to the article? The only mention of Gimp I see in the July issue is on processing Web images

The article in question appears to be the one that starts on page 34 of the July 2007 issue of LJ.

I take it you mean the American version of Linux Journal? (There is another, and much better, IMHO, Linux Journal published in Europe. )