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GIMP 2.8 released
The long-awaited release of version 2.8 of the GIMP image editor is out.
There are lots of new features, many of which were previewed in this article last November. See the release
notes for lots of details.
(Log in to post comments)
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 14:43 UTC (Mon) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] The release notes point to a change where saving are exporting are changed:A rather big conceptual change is that saving and exporting images now are clearly separated activities. Saving an image can only be done in the XCF format which is GIMP's native file format, able to save all kinds of information necessary for works in progress.I'm a touch typist, and often don't use ctrl-s in GIMP unless I'm positive I'm using XCF. This also makes conceptual sense, since an export is really what you're doing if you convert between, say, an XCF and a PDF. This is a welcome change.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 17:02 UTC (Mon) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
Has the GIMP team considered time based releases?
It is pretty unappealing to contribute when it can take years for your effort to reach the hands of users.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 17:22 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
That's a good argument in favor of time based releases that I hadn't heard of before.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 8, 2012 2:51 UTC (Tue) by joedrew (guest, #828) [Link]
That, FWIW, is why Firefox is now using time-based releases.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 8, 2012 15:20 UTC (Tue) by mikachu (guest, #5333) [Link]
But in return they stopped putting features in the hands of end users :). The second top entry from the release notes of firefox 12 for example proudly proclaims: "Page Source now has line numbers". One is not exactly left in awe.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 8, 2012 16:40 UTC (Tue) by joedrew (guest, #828) [Link]
To be fair to us (I work on Firefox), 6 weeks is not a long time to develop new features. :)
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 17:35 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
It's going to change now, but 2.8 needed to be gotten out first. Not strictly time-based releases AFAIK, but stronger use of git so that branches can be either finished or postponed, not delaying the release forever. "All major new features are now being developed in dedicated Git branches so that you could easily merge our latest upstream changes into your feature branches, and we then could easily review and merge your new features into upstream."
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 18:45 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] Now that the move to GEGL has been unexpectedly successful I hope you're thinking about a quick 2.10 release to get that improvement out to users ASAP. It seems to me that it's just too big an improvement to keep under wraps for long.
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 7, 2012 21:40 UTC (Mon) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
I'm not involved with GIMP except for doing translations, so I'm just spreading the information. From a casual view contributing to GIMP has been made much easier/modern in the recent year or so, and they've worked to document and visualize things a lot. GIMP needs contributions, it's very under-resourced for the importance it has and compared to some others (like Blender for example), and probably the reasons have been the long development history and culture from there. But now those seem resolved. GIMP has become much more "fresh", the 2.8 is finally out, GEGL has indeed gotten up to speed so hopefully new developers will join!
GIMP 2.8 released Posted May 8, 2012 9:14 UTC (Tue) by prokoudine (guest, #41788) [Link]
We are not planning time based releases. But we are now using Git branches for major new features, so that their incompleteness wouldn't block releases.
Become More Blender-Like? Posted May 7, 2012 22:03 UTC (Mon) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] I’m thinking more and more that Gimp should follow the Blender path. This “single-window mode” is very much like how Blender implements its own windowing system inside a single window provided by the underlying GUI system (which it prefers to run full-screen). Blender windows cannot overlap, they must be tiled. And you just have to mouse-over a window for it to become active (take keystrokes), no need to click. Speed of workflow is paramount. The next step, I think, is for Gimp to adopt Blender’s object→action→settings UI convention. That is, you apply an action before specifying the settings—it gets applied first with default settings, and a settings panel appears for you to change these, with the changes appearing immediately in the document view. Think getting rid of the popup dialogs that appear for filters, and having them preview “live” on the actual image.
Become More Blender-Like? Posted May 8, 2012 1:17 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
If you have a tiling window manager already, these type of programs can be extremely annoying. Of course "nobody" does so every program has to re-implement tabs and tiling.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 3:51 UTC (Tue) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
Gimp is great for expert use, but still makes some of the simple things harder than they need to be. For example, consider editing photograph which I wish to mark with a big red arrow pointing to something. At the moment, I have to draw the arrow on by hand, and it usually looks terrible. Personally, I'd love to see some hybrid of the features of Libreoffice Draw, Xfig, Gimp.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 3:59 UTC (Tue) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
It seems there is a way, using a plugin...
http://maketecheasier.com/draw-arrows-in-gimp/2010/12/25
This proves both my points:
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 10:50 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] How is "Drawing an arrow" a "basic feature"? In all the images I've manipulated in the gimp I can, off hand, only think of one where I wanted an arrow. Going to a plugin for something specific like that seems perfectly reasonable.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 16:35 UTC (Tue) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link]
For a scientist adding an arrow is a basic feature, frequently used when one publishes an image.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 16:55 UTC (Tue) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] Yes, exactly. My major use for GIMP was to annotate images to prepare figures for illustrating scientific papers (arrows, labels, brackets, cropping, compositing). However, Inkscape is now a much better tool for this purpose.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 24, 2012 17:35 UTC (Thu) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link]
Maybe some plug-ins should be prepackaged, to draw simple shapes, circles and arrows. Inkscape is great but is an overkill for a simple editing job.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 8, 2012 9:17 UTC (Tue) by prokoudine (guest, #41788) [Link]
You are not editing photographs, you are annotating them :)
Just use Shutter.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 9, 2012 0:39 UTC (Wed) by wertigon (guest, #42963) [Link]
You have simple drawing tools available to you, you just don't know it yet.
To draw a straight line, click once anywhere in the image, hold ctrl.
To draw a circle, choose the round selection tool, right-click, choose "borders" and specify the size of the border. Same thing with a rectangle and whatever else you can draw with the selection tools.
Personally, I think GIMP could use simplifications in interface for some things; for instance, there's one tool to draw with soft edges, one tool to draw with hard edges, one tool for spraying, etc - These work in a very similar fashion, so why not combine all these tools to a single one with a few extra (visible) options instead? Things like, "scatter randomly", "blur edges" etc. Same thing with selection tools - is there any difference between round and square selection apart from the shape of the selection?
The biggest problem with the GIMP UI is that most features are hidden by default. I think Mark Shuttleworth is on to something when he wants to end the right click context menus, because quite frankly, they suck.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 9, 2012 21:41 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
Thanks. I never knew that!
As for context menus, I'd refine your statement to "right click context menus suck when they are the only way to discover a feature". They're a great timesaver when they replicate common options for quick access.
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 10, 2012 4:55 UTC (Thu) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]
FTR, according to the tool tip (which I only noticed thanks to your comment) it's hold *shift* for a straight line (click, release, hold shift, move somewhere else, click again); holding *ctrl* seems to allow picking a colour out of the image you're working on (another equally useful feature that I'd not noticed before).
Thanks for the hints. I do tend to agree that most of the features being "hidden by default" is a significant issue. Certainly the ones I use most generally seem to be well nested into context menu (and generally I only found them by doing a depth-first search of the menus for a feature that "must exist").
Ewen
Simple drawing tools? Posted May 15, 2012 14:54 UTC (Tue) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]
GIMP's tip-of-the-day is pretty useful for learning things like this.
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