On Saturday 14 April 2007 08:04, Chris Puttick wrote:

Hi

Forgive me if I have missed this information, but can someone give an estimate for the release of 2.4? We are trying to move to open source throughout the organisation, but the graphics team are solidly stuck to Adobe Photoshop and Gimp 2.4 seems the most likely candidate to replace it. Unless the list thinks that 2.4 would not be a candidate to replace Photoshop?

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Chris

Chris,

There is not nearly enough information in your post to answer that question. It depends entirely on the requirements of your graphics team. For example, if they work only with 8 bit/channel images then gimp 2.4 might be a good candidate to replace Photoshop. But if they work with 16 bit/channel images then it is not. But there are lots of other things that need to be considered and your note does not have any information on any if these variables.

I would think that the best thing to do would be to find someone on your graphics team who is open minded enough to not get hung up on the differences in the UI who will actually evaluate the available functionality and give an assessment of what things your shop requires and how close current GIMP development is to meeting your needs. However it might be difficult to find someone who will be able to look past the UI differences. If at that point you find that there are features that your graphics team uses and NEEDS that are missing from GIMP 2.3.x (and presumably 2.4 since the feature set is close to being frozen) then you could follow up with the GIMP developers to make sure those things end up in the next version. You might even consider having your organization sponsor (IE. fund) some of that work to ensure that the next release meets your needs.

Also keep in mind that there are other open source tools for doing graphics work that might also complement GIMP and provide functionality that your graphics team needs. In other words it might not be GIMP that ends up replacing Photoshop but GIMP plus some other tools and you need to consider your whole graphics work flow to be able to answer the question of how you will go about replacing Photoshop with open source software.

Also on a side note I see on your web site that there is at least one stitched mosaic of photos. If you are not already using open source tools for this work might I suggest you try Hugin, enblend and autopano-SIFT. In fact this suite of tools would have done a significantly better job then what I saw on your web site for the image next to "HERITAGE" on your Services page.

Hal

Chris Puttick
CIO
Oxford Archaeology: Exploring the Human Journey Direct: +44 (0)1865 263 818
Switchboard: +44 (0)1865 263 800
Mobile: +44 (0)7914 402 907
http://thehumanjourney.net

This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl - www.blackspider.com

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:19:06 +0200, Hal V. Engel wrote:

On Saturday 14 April 2007 08:04, Chris Puttick wrote:

Hi

Forgive me if I have missed this information, but can someone give an estimate for the release of 2.4? We are trying to move to open source throughout the organisation, but the graphics team are solidly stuck to Adobe Photoshop and Gimp 2.4 seems the most likely candidate to replace it.
Unless the list thinks that 2.4 would not be a candidate to replace Photoshop?

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Chris

Release dates don't really exist for Gimp. I asked this same question last September and got the same polite silence.

Due to the nature of Gimp development the new release happens when the work is done, rather than setting a target date and trying to get it out of the door on time. Development cycles tend to be rather long in general so you should probably follow Hal's comments and determine what you need and what can or can't be done with Gimp.

One key thing to bear in mind when doing this is that Gimp does not aim to be a free clone of Photoshop. Some things are done differently and while the basic tasks are often similar the feature sets are different and things are often done differently. There are some things you can do with PS that you can't do with Gimp and vice versa.

As he said you really need one of your graphics team to determine any important tasks that you cant manage to do with gimp and ask. It may simply be that you have not discovered how to do the task or it may add impetus to finish a feature in development.

HTH. gg

Chris,

There is not nearly enough information in your post to answer that question.
It depends entirely on the requirements of your graphics team. For example,
if they work only with 8 bit/channel images then gimp 2.4 might be a good candidate to replace Photoshop. But if they work with 16 bit/channel images
then it is not. But there are lots of other things that need to be considered and your note does not have any information on any if these variables.

I would think that the best thing to do would be to find someone on your graphics team who is open minded enough to not get hung up on the differences
in the UI who will actually evaluate the available functionality and give an
assessment of what things your shop requires and how close current GIMP development is to meeting your needs. However it might be difficult to find
someone who will be able to look past the UI differences. If at that point
you find that there are features that your graphics team uses and NEEDS that
are missing from GIMP 2.3.x (and presumably 2.4 since the feature set is close to being frozen) then you could follow up with the GIMP developers to
make sure those things end up in the next version. You might even consider
having your organization sponsor (IE. fund) some of that work to ensure that
the next release meets your needs.

Also keep in mind that there are other open source tools for doing graphics
work that might also complement GIMP and provide functionality that your graphics team needs. In other words it might not be GIMP that ends up replacing Photoshop but GIMP plus some other tools and you need to consider
your whole graphics work flow to be able to answer the question of how you
will go about replacing Photoshop with open source software.

Also on a side note I see on your web site that there is at least one stitched
mosaic of photos. If you are not already using open source tools for this
work might I suggest you try Hugin, enblend and autopano-SIFT. In fact this
suite of tools would have done a significantly better job then what I saw on
your web site for the image next to "HERITAGE" on your Services page.

Hal

Chris Puttick
CIO
Oxford Archaeology: Exploring the Human Journey Direct: +44 (0)1865 263 818
Switchboard: +44 (0)1865 263 800
Mobile: +44 (0)7914 402 907
http://thehumanjourney.net

This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl - www.blackspider.com

That's why we need a Gimp PRO, Inkscape PRO, Scribus PRO - someone, a Firm / Govern / Foundation / Linux Distro / Billionaire ...or a mixture of them must hire core developers of all 3 projects - put them into a big WEB / DTP Core Linux project and manage development and releases.

This will bring us - a single, unified 2D HQ rendering / printing core. Same advanced vector tools and similar vector manipulation methods on all 3 applications ( which need to work as a unit ) . Same live effects for vectors and rasters >> imagine how easy you can move Objects, Layers, Groups between applications just using drag-and-drop. Finally, the same HQ quality for print, the same PDF export engine.

As separate projects - on Open Source World - this process can take long time from now. Manny years.

So, for all 3 teams we need -> 1. to accept Ideea ( to work on the same core for something PRO and new ); 2. to find or to found a crazy legal creature that can fund all development, 3. a good market policy -> Joe, if U make free plugins with our toolkit - U don't need to pay for tools - for commercial plugins U have to pay for toolkit / libraries, etc. 4. At this step - If all OK - we all are OK >> that mean : Free and PRO versions, free and paid plug-ins / add-ons, free source, a nice toolkit with the best libs for developers, time (paid time) for developers - a continuous, sane, development / future for Open Source Suite, a good way to turn to Linux a bunch of programmers, a good way to prepare the future -> giving best tools and practices for IT Universities, ...finally helping Linux to grow faster, helping world to be free.

A bit strange maybe all that I'm saying here but... so quick ( movement on this direction ), so good. From 2008 MS will leave XP. All new computers will sell Vista. Before the big moment a lot of users / enterprises will search around for solutions. THAT will be for Linux The Day. If Linux will loose momentum, ...hmm, the progress will be damaged.

but ..keeping a happy note ( as always ) for the final > let the GEGL be with us ;)

Sorin.

P.S. Sorry Engel for my response - U ask for something and I told you crazy things.

well - go on and don't give up with this crazy - because sooner or later will be real.
and you won't miss the dance.

2007/4/15, gg@catking.net :

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:19:06 +0200, Hal V. Engel wrote:

On Saturday 14 April 2007 08:04, Chris Puttick wrote:

Hi

Forgive me if I have missed this information, but can someone give an estimate for the release of 2.4? We are trying to move to open source throughout the organisation, but the graphics team are solidly stuck to Adobe Photoshop and Gimp 2.4 seems the most likely candidate to replace it.
Unless the list thinks that 2.4 would not be a candidate to replace Photoshop?

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Chris

Release dates don't really exist for Gimp. I asked this same question last September and got the same polite silence.

Due to the nature of Gimp development the new release happens when the work is done, rather than setting a target date and trying to get it out of the door on time. Development cycles tend to be rather long in general so you should probably follow Hal's comments and determine what you need and what can or can't be done with Gimp.

One key thing to bear in mind when doing this is that Gimp does not aim to be a free clone of Photoshop. Some things are done differently and while the basic tasks are often similar the feature sets are different and things are often done differently. There are some things you can do with PS that you can't do with Gimp and vice versa.

As he said you really need one of your graphics team to determine any important tasks that you cant manage to do with gimp and ask. It may simply be that you have not discovered how to do the task or it may add impetus to finish a feature in development.

HTH. gg

Chris,

There is not nearly enough information in your post to answer that question.
It depends entirely on the requirements of your graphics team. For example,
if they work only with 8 bit/channel images then gimp 2.4 might be a good candidate to replace Photoshop. But if they work with 16 bit/channel images
then it is not. But there are lots of other things that need to be considered and your note does not have any information on any if these variables.

I would think that the best thing to do would be to find someone on your graphics team who is open minded enough to not get hung up on the differences
in the UI who will actually evaluate the available functionality and give an
assessment of what things your shop requires and how close current GIMP development is to meeting your needs. However it might be difficult to find
someone who will be able to look past the UI differences. If at that point
you find that there are features that your graphics team uses and NEEDS that
are missing from GIMP 2.3.x (and presumably 2.4 since the feature set is close to being frozen) then you could follow up with the GIMP developers to
make sure those things end up in the next version. You might even consider
having your organization sponsor (IE. fund) some of that work to ensure that
the next release meets your needs.

Also keep in mind that there are other open source tools for doing graphics
work that might also complement GIMP and provide functionality that your graphics team needs. In other words it might not be GIMP that ends up replacing Photoshop but GIMP plus some other tools and you need to consider
your whole graphics work flow to be able to answer the question of how you
will go about replacing Photoshop with open source software.

Also on a side note I see on your web site that there is at least one stitched
mosaic of photos. If you are not already using open source tools for this
work might I suggest you try Hugin, enblend and autopano-SIFT. In fact this
suite of tools would have done a significantly better job then what I saw on
your web site for the image next to "HERITAGE" on your Services page.

Hal

Chris Puttick
CIO
Oxford Archaeology: Exploring the Human Journey Direct: +44 (0)1865 263 818
Switchboard: +44 (0)1865 263 800
Mobile: +44 (0)7914 402 907
http://thehumanjourney.net

This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl - www.blackspider.com _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

_______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

_______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

SorinN writes:
> That's why we need a Gimp PRO, Inkscape PRO, Scribus PRO - someone, a > Firm / Govern / Foundation / Linux Distro / Billionaire ...or a > mixture of them must hire core developers of all 3 projects - put them > into a big WEB / DTP Core Linux project and manage development and > releases.

If they saw any money making potential in it, they presumably would?

None of the commercial Linux companies which one would assume have very skilled market analysts etc that can do research to find out what is worth doing has seen much business in funding work on GIMP or Inkscape to the extent of actually hiring developers so far. The closest thing, I guess, is that f-spot is being developed by a paid employee. Plus, OpenOffice.org has lots of paid developers, and it includes some rudimentary graphic capabilities. This should tell you something. Not sure what;)

--tml

On 4/16/07, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

The closest thing, I guess, is that f-spot is being developed by a paid employee.

Well, the closest thing would be MrB directly financed by Angulo Solido for fixing bugs and improving Scribus. F-Spot is a work that Larry does in his rare spare time, mostly (feel free to prove me wrong).

Then, again, I don't understand what is meant with that 2D core.

GEGL? Inkscape might be using it anyway thanks to one of this year's SoC projects and chances are that Scribus will be using it too in a while.

Cairo? Inkscape is already moving to it, Scribus already uses it optionally and GIMP ebventually will be there.

lib2geom? Pretty much the same thing.

We've already seen on GEGL's example how badly direct sponsoring may affect development. We should be careful with our wishes ;-)

Alexandre

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:30:13 +0200, SorinN wrote:

That's why we need a Gimp PRO, Inkscape PRO, Scribus PRO - someone, a Firm / Govern / Foundation / Linux Distro / Billionaire ...or a mixture of them must hire core developers of all 3 projects - put them into a big WEB / DTP Core Linux project

...finally helping Linux to grow faster, helping world to be free.

Sadly no-one gives money away for no reason. So nearly always there are strings attached, they dictate the way things move for their own ends and developers loose control of thier work.

Also developers need thier own reasons for working if it's for free. These motivations , which will obviously vary according to the individual, are likely to be very different to the kind of heirarchical, profit driven structure you are suggesting.

The best solution would seem to be pulling in more donations so that certain things can get finished. The way SOC targets specific projects to help things move along.

It's strange that gimp does not attract some more serious sponsoring in view of the maturity of the project. Maybe potencial sponsors have looked at the mailing list archives and asked themselves "do we want to work with these people"?

Maybe many who would have worked for free have also been turned away.

:?

That's why we need a Gimp PRO, Inkscape PRO, Scribus PRO - someone, a Firm / Govern / Foundation / Linux Distro / Billionaire ...or a mixture of them must hire core developers of all 3 projects - put them into a big WEB / DTP Core Linux project and manage development and releases.

If I remember correctly, there had been a "bounty" type system on things such as GEGL since forever (several years, I believe). Yet even that failed to motivate developers.

Also, if you want a program that works closely with the industry, well... there's Cinepaint.

That said, the idea of forming an alliance with other open source programs could be a nice idea. It might be a bit complicated in that there are many separate open source programs around... but having a single main website linking to each project, and vice versa, to let more people become aware of complimentary programs to Gimp, could be helpful.

Personally, it's a pity I don't know how to program yet. I guess I'll have to try to learn one day. But I've been giving a lot of thoughts to user interfaces in general these days.

One of the main things people complain about Gimp is its user interface. The way I see it, the problem is Not that it's different from Photoshop, but that Like Photoshop, it's a tool-centric interface and not a task-centric or even function-centric interface.

Let me explain: years ago I remember a relative buying Photoshop for his Mac. Back then, I looked at him weird and warned him that he would never know how to use it. That turned out true: he's attempted to figure it out, and has never touched it since. Now he uses a program that shipped along with his digital camera. It does:
- red eye removal
- cropping
- resizing
- color adjustment
- and that's about it. Everything is present as little buttons or the likes at the top.

And whenever he shows digital photos to friends, he keeps saying how great that program is.

Why? The answer is the task-centric approach. The program does one thing: help users do a quick fix of photos as easily as possible. That's it. You can't do anything professional about it, but it answers 90% of the needs of 90% of casual users in the easiest-to-use way.

Similarly, I remember seeing this drawing program online... it has: a canvas, a color selector, a few paintbrushes in one small corner. That's it.

Such task-centric interfaces are by far the most intuitive and user-friendly. But obviously, they have very limited options.

Both Gimp and Photoshop, by contrast, are tool-centric approach. Basically, it goes like this: give users a bunch of tools. Put as many options on those tools as you can think of. Let users figure out what they want to do with those tools.

Tool-centric approaches are by far the most powerful. Unfortunately... they're not very intuitive. The users see a multitude of tools and a dozen options... and don't know what to do with barely any of them. This is true of Photoshop as well. Photoshop just benefits from incredible documentation and training support. But examples such as the person I've mentioned show that no, it is Not an intuitive program either.

Here's an example of where the two approaches would diverge: suppose a person wants to paint something.
- in a task-centric interface, he'd be handed a few brushes entitled "Pencil, charcoal, watercolor."
- in Gimp, he'd be handed the brush tool, and told "There are lots of modes you can chose from: multiply, divide, grain extract, grain merge, etc, etc." At this point, the person would start looking a bit lost.

The weird thing is that tool-centric interfaces can actually accomplish much of the things the task-centric interface can (and much more). Take the paintbrush tool, for example, select an appropriate brush shape, modify the transparency and spacing, even add jitter, and suddenly you have "watercolor, oil, pointillism." Not exactly on Procreate Painter level, but close enough for the user to finally go "Ooooh!"

So I personally think that the future of Gimp is actually to make the interface as configurable as possible, then make all the settings savable and sharable. Then let people perhaps other than developers make up ideal settings for each type of task, maybe include a short tutorial for each (I should mention that I really like the tutorials included in Inkscape. I'd never have figured out how to use it if not for those). The best interfaces of each category should be included in each release. Users can go find other ones though, and can experiment with the normal setting once they're used to whichever one they like to use (thus making the learning curve less steep).

So when a new user opens Gimp, he can choose the "Gimp-quick photo adjust" interface, and suddenly the interface changes to only show layers, masks, color adjustment tools, red eye removal, some commonly used filters such as Unsharp mask and blur etc. He choses the "Gimp-paint" setting and he has layers, color selectors, and a list of brushes that says "watercolor, oil" etc, but are actually just the paintbrush with specific settings. Shortcuts are also changed so that you can spend more time on the canvas and less on toolbox.

And finally, users can create their own custom settings. So companies with specific tasks can start out by creating the perfect interface (for Their task), then hand it to all the other computers to use that interface. Schools, laboratories, etc would thus find an interface tailored specifically to their needs. Tutorial writers could offer their settings for download as well. Little to no training required!

There's a lot that has already been done, really. The configurable shortcut system is in my opinion a huge step forward. More can be done though, and there are all sorts of enhancements suggestions already: having a task bar where you can drag and drop just about anything (tools, filters, colors whatever), grouped layers, grouped brushes, etc. It'd also be nice if in the future, it reaches the point where you're not limited to the current toolbox shape. When I'm (attempting) to paint, for example, all I'd want is a small brush/color/layer preview on the side and shortcuts to toggle between them, so if in the future, it reaches the point where you can configure Gimp to look completely different (think music player skins), it'd be even better. By that point, very few people would complain about "Gimp's ugly interface."

All that's in the distant future though. There are more important things to worry about in the short term, like GEGL. ;)

___

Hi,

On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 10:46 +0200, gg@catking.net wrote:

The best solution would seem to be pulling in more donations so that certain things can get finished. The way SOC targets specific projects to help things move along.

Whenever this was brought up before there didn't seem to be much interest for it. We have money that we could use to sponsor development but so far the consensus seems to be that it is not a good idea to use the money as bounties.

I am pretty sure that we could easily raise more donations but as long as we don't know what to use that money for, that doesn't seem to make much sense.

Sven

On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 08:29:52AM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

We have money that we could use to sponsor development but so far the consensus seems to be that it is not a good idea to use the money as bounties.

And yet, the Google Summer of Code was quite successful for the Gimp, wasn't it? That's essentially a bounty. As we were not included in the SoC this year perhaps we could look at doing something similar ourselves.

Just a thought,

Hi,

On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 07:46 +0100, Alex Pounds wrote:

And yet, the Google Summer of Code was quite successful for the Gimp, wasn't it?

It depends on how you look at it. Yes, we had some contributions. But only very few of this has been committed to trunk by now. And out of the two projects that were merged to trunk, only one has been developed further and can stay in for the 2.4 release. The other project has stayed unmaintained ever since the SoC ended. We will have to back it out for the 2.4 release and it is not clear if it will ever be finished so that it can be added back.

This may be our fault. But perhaps it shows the danger of bounties. The motivation ends when the bounty is paid. And it demotivates others to work on the project for free.

I think what would bring GIMP along most would be to have a small group of paid developers who can work full-time on GIMP. These people would not only implement new features but also devote much of their time helping other contributors and overseeing the bug-tracker and mailing-lists. It would also help a lot to have someone paid to work full-time on the website and the documentation.

Sven