GIMP masks font downloads, adds horizon fix in new build As the US partied and the UK made increasingly desperate “well, we dumped YOU” jokes, the GIMP team celebrated 4 July by emitting a fresh stable build of the arty application with a function aimed at fixing drunken photos. The latest stable release of GIMP (2.10.4) sees the introduction of the nifty Straighten button as part …
"a potential end to staring at a screen during start-up while a seemingly endless parade of fonts load."
This is great news -- this is literally the only thing about GIMP that I find truly annoying. I fixed it in my workflow -- when I know I'll be doing image editing, I just fire GIMP up well in advance and don't close it until I'm sure that I'm done for the day. But it would be nicer if I didn't have to put up with the slow loading.
It may also be worth noting that GIMP entered the 2.10 cycle only a few months ago (in April), and 2.10 represents major changes since the 2.8 cycle which should be noticeable from the get-go (I've known about it for a bit since I'd been using the 2.9 experimental cycle for a while). The continued compatibility is probably the reason this is 2.10 instead of 3.0, that's how big the change to 2.10 represents.
The biggest practical change is that the stable version finally supports > 8 bits/channel. That is what folks have been clamoring for since the advent of digital cameras (and it is one of the main reasons CinePaint had that dedicated following), yet that nugget somehow didn't make the article.
It made its first appearance some six years after Adobe’s PhotoShop and has evolved into a powerful image editor with functionality comparable to its far costlier commercial proprietary equivalent.
GIMP is free software, there is no restriction on the use or sale other than the need to make the source code and any changes available.
I'd agree with that. I've been using GIMP for over twelve years and it is very good. Krita is a more 'modern' design and is more complex and comprehensive than GIMP and is also geared more towards 'painting' though it does have all the usual image manipulation and filtering tools and then some. Also, you can make bug reports and see them get fixed within a week in the latest nightly build download pages for Linux and Windows, as I have done myself.
I have to agree. Like Blender and others, the interface can be painful to the "uninformed user". It is far from intuitive and will likely lead to repeated head scratching, unless you use it regularly.
Furthermore, the usage of the "language" Scheme for Script-Fu script plugins is a wicked choice. I'm quite sure that Scheme wasn't intended as a real programming language, but rather as a joke – very much like Brainfuck. ;-)
I think is a matter of what you're used to. I find GIMP pretty easy to use, personally, but I've been using it for a very, very long time. When I use something like Photoshop, I find it very, very frustrating.
I think the bottom line is that there's a large learning curve for using these sorts of programs, and I don't think that curve is any easier with other tools. So you tend to find the one that you've learned well to be the easy one, and all the others are hard.
I have to disagree. I have been using programs for image manipulation/painting since the beginning (early Amiga). There are certain standards, such as unambiguous symbols. Because of this, I can do "simple things" with most programs rather intuitively. GIMP breaks with many of those standards. I remember looking for the scissors for cutting my selection...
While you are right when it comes to the complicated stuff (layers, etc.), you are wrong when it comes to the basics. Most users only perform simple tasks, which can be done with many such programs. Using GIMP, I've seen them fail to a point where they gave up and installed an alternative.
I've been using GIMP recently since the 2.1.0 and its outstanding compared to what it was before with the white background and horrible "floating" toolbars.
The new version really is a revelation, and the developers should be congratulated for their efforts. The startup time had been annoying so I am glad to try out this latest improvement.
The only thing I would change is having plugins based in a simple standard python language, and better online videos on their youtube channel to teach new users. Oh I would also make the colour icons default just to make it look nice out of the box ;)
I had to pull some sources from SF yesterday and running it with noscript and looking where it picks up javascript snippets made for a very interesting reading.
They were the same I get when I raise the shields to red-alert and go to read the "Russian take" on the daily news to compare with what our propaganda machines feeds us.
It was interesting... to say the least...
I sometimes wonder if it is me or gimp that has got better !
But though it frustrated me when I first used it GIMP is now excellent ! Paired with darktable running on Ubuntu studio it is easy and fast to work with !
Its a little slower and clunkier on windows but still.pretty good
I use it with KDENLIVE for videowork - and my workflow has never been simpler or faster and the cost is zilch
Gimp gets my love!
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