Layer Groups!

Posted May 7, 2012 20:52 UTC (Mon) by qubit (guest, #57802)
Parent article: Hands-on: testing the GIMP 2.8 and its new single-window interface (ars technica)

Per the roadmap, we finally have layer groups in the GIMP! This is one of the big "Photoshop-has-it" bullet points that my wacom-tablet-wielding friends would fire at me whenever the GIMP came up in conversation.

Now where's that donation page again...

Other stuff!

Posted May 7, 2012 22:46 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (5 responses)

Stuff I'm looking forward to from the release notes:
* On-Canvas Text Editing
* Cage Transform Tool
* Brush System Improvements

...and all the small improvements that come from a 4-year release cycle.

The big feature I've been waiting for is non-destructive editing, but that's probably for a later release. I can wait.

On the negative side, the notes say that tablet support (such as wacom) might be broken in 2.8. Reading the info at the end of the release notes, it looks like installing 2.8 alongside 2.6 would require more tinkering than I have time for right now.

Other stuff!

Posted May 8, 2012 6:30 UTC (Tue) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link] (4 responses)

> On the negative side, the notes say that tablet support (such as wacom) might be broken in 2.8.

I have a Wacom tablet, which I use intensively in GIMP-2.8, and have not found any issue so far; perhaps some models work, and mine is one of them, or perhaps there is some missing feature that I never tried to use.

Excellent!

Posted May 8, 2012 10:45 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (3 responses)

I did some searches now and I found people saying that pressure sensitivity is what's broken for tablets in 2.8.

Have you (or others here) encountered that problem?

(I use a Wacom Bamboo "CTH-460")

Excellent!

Posted May 8, 2012 11:02 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (1 responses)

On my OpenSUSE 12.1 installation with 2.8rc1 from home:MargueriteSu:gimp-2.7, my intuos3 works fine. On Windows, it's broken.

(I should compile gimp, of course, just to track its progress but gimp always needs a newer glib or gtk than I have, so that's why I only checked the rc.)

Excellent!

Posted May 8, 2012 14:13 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

From what I read, it seems the Windows issue is a driver problem, and the pressure sensitivity issue is a separate problem.

I also found a post saying that someone is working on packaging gimp 2.8 for Debian unstable, so I'll wait for that. I can live without pressure sensitivity anyway.

Excellent!

Posted May 9, 2012 6:07 UTC (Wed) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]

> I did some searches now and I found people saying that pressure sensitivity is what's broken for tablets in 2.8.

I own a "Wacom Pen & Touch" (medium size, don't know the exact model number) and can confirm that pressure sensitivity works flawlessly on Fedora 16.