GIMP2.0 now released

[jknights]

For those of you who are interested in new freeware GIMP2 is available.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0403/04032602gimpv2.asp

It's a look-alike to Photoshop by is a GIMP derivative that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and it is free .

[Dieselfuel]

John,

Are you using GIMP 2.0?

I looked at the "download" secion and it seemed confusing to me.

It seemed like they were "giving away" development software as opposed to user software.

It seemed to me they are trying to charge for a "user" version.

Kind of like Linux is "free", but you need to buy a program fron a company like Red HAt, unless you can "develope" your own programs using Linux.

[jknights]

No I am not using the GIMP software myself as I am lucky enough to have PS-CS.

GIMP is free and runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS.

See here for Windows version downloads
http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/stable.html

[Tom Nolle]

I downloaded GIMP 2.0 from the link referenced in the GIMP.org page and there was nothing said about any fee for the Windows load. If you upgrade from the older version, don't forget to uninstall it after the new one is in; they don't install in the same directory.

Tom

[jknights]

Tom,
Let us know how you get on and any comparisons with PS-CS.

[jtheal]

I installed Gimp yesterday into WindowsXP, and everything looked good until I tried to access the help files. Instructions were not easy to follow and were contradictory. What I saw looked good and there were many graphic artist tools that were a cut above photoshop 7. I think that is where it will get its best use, with graphic artists. I uninstalled the program as it was quite useless without the help files which I could not install.

[Tom Nolle]

GIMP help in version 2 seems a bit quirky. You have to install the help files separately, and manually. If somebody wants to know how, I'll post the procedure here. I notice that when I install them I still get an open MSDOS window popping up when I hit HELP, but if I minimize it and go on everything works. The "standard operating procedure" for GIMP is to minimize and ignore these windows, apparently!

I'll keep the Forum posted on progress with GIMP 2 and changes (if any) as the release matures. As I said, my primary interest is in programming the interface.

Tom

[jtheal]

Thanks Tom,
I wish I had known about minimizing the dos window. I closed the window instead of minimizing it, and when I tried to access help again, the dos window kept coming up. I will wait until you have more news on this quirky image editor. It seems to have tons of special effects, and I tried a few before I uninstalled it.

[Tom Nolle]

It's not like you could have known, Jim. I'd read somewhere on the GIMP pages that these windows tend to pop up, and the general instruction was to minimize them and keep on truckin' so that's what I did. I suspect that as 2.0 becomes more stable the help files will be included; they were there on previous versions, but I think that "help" is still a work in progress.

There are a lot of very sophisticated and complex tools/plugins for GIMP; for example, there's one that does refocusing of images that were out of focus. These tools are sometimes quirky and often require a lot of resources to use, but for what they do they're often the only game in town.

Tom

[Dieselfuel]

I downloaded it and tried it for a few minutes (I didn't have time to work with it then).

It reminded me of the first time I opened QImage.
I stared at it and thought: "What the F@@K is this!"


I'm sure when I have some time, I'll get used to it.

Any tips would be welcomed, of course!

[Tom Nolle]

That was my reaction too; GIMP opens like a photo editor with a bunch of toolbars and no main window to dock to! It's a heritage of the open source format that doesn't adhere to the conventions of Windows. If you open an image you get a window for that, and if you size everything and move it around where you want, you can use the preferences menu to tell the program to remember the windows positions. There's a bunch of tutorial material on the GIMP.org website, and more on the gimp user group site. If you go to sourceforge.net and search for PDFCreator you will find a program that lets you "print" web pages to a virtual printer to create a PDF, which is really handy for saving the tutorials.

The help system for GIMP 2.0 isn't installed by default, and so you'll either have to puzzle it out for yourself (not all that easy even if you're a programmer) or private email me and I'll send you the instructions I followed.

GIMP does a lot of good stuff; I'd say it's better than Photoshop Elements in features (but a long way behind in ease of use), and in some ways better than Photoshop itself. But it is quirky, so you have to fiddle a lot with it.

Tom

[proberts]

Originally posted by Dieselfuel
John,

Are you using GIMP 2.0?

I looked at the "download" secion and it seemed confusing to me.

It seemed like they were "giving away" development software as opposed to user software.

It seemed to me they are trying to charge for a "user" version.

Kind of like Linux is "free", but you need to buy a program fron a company like Red HAt, unless you can "develope" your own programs using Linux.

This isn't true at all. GIMP is GNU licensed software, which means it's free like beer and free like speech.

Linux is also released under the GNU Public License. There are *lots* of non-commercial distributions, such as Knoppix (cool run-off-the-CD and don't install on the hard drive distro,) Debian, Stormix, Slackware, Fedora (spun off from RedHat,) and a lot of others. Many commercial distributors offer free downloads of either smaller verisons (SuSE,) or full blown versions (Mandrake.) Indeed, up until they started this "Enterprise" push, every version of RedHat was freely downloadable.

http://www.linuxiso.org/

Admittedly, there are some non-Linux OSes there like FreeBSD, NetBSD, The Hurd, and Darwin but if you pull down the seperate pull-downs, you'll see about 40 Linux distros, all free for the downloading (including RedHat 9.) That's certianly not a full list, but it's not bad.

If you want to try Linux, I'd recommend Knoppix as a good "peek," though you won't be able to easily save settings and data, it doesn't have the pain of partitioning hard drives.

http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=44

Just download the appropriate language ISO, burn it to CD and boot off the CD. Last I looked, it had an older version of The GIMP on it- not sure what the upgrade plan is.

Paul

[proberts]

Originally posted by Tom Nolle
That was my reaction too; GIMP opens like a photo editor with a bunch of toolbars and no main window to dock to! It's a heritage of the open source format that doesn't adhere to the conventions of Windows. If you open an image you get a window for that, and if you size everything and move it around where you want, you can use the preferences menu to tell the program to remember the windows positions. Tom

Actually, I think the UI is an artifact of the original authors copying the Mac version of PS's interface without the single command bar (getting used to right click hell wasn't really that difficult when I used it, but it was different.)

Certainly, most open source GUI programs actually do use CUA, or CUA alike paridigms (Let's not forget that X Windows has applications wich also follow CUA guidelines, not just MS Windows.)

One of the points of open source software is that if someone doesn't like something enough, they're free to change it and contribute it back- in reality, very few people do. Adding a main window and menu bar isn't all that difficult. Making sure the other windows anchor to it, providing resizable toolbars and stuff like that is a little more challenging.

Paul

[Tom Nolle]

I haven't tried to change the actual code for GIMP; I'm still working on getting the range of writing plugins.

For myself, I've used UNIX/Linux systems in the past so I'm not all that uncomfortable with the window approach that GIMP uses, and (as I said in a prior post) it's easy enough to change the size and positioning of the windows and then tell GIMP to remember them at startup.

So far, the only thing I found in Version 2 that's quirky is the help system, which on a Windows install isn't included so you have to create it yourself. I'm not sure whether the creation process was too much for me, or whether there's a small bug in the help.exe plugin, but it pops a DOS window when you open help and if you close it the program won't function properly. You have to just minimize the thing and move on, in which case it seems to work.

Tom

[Tom Nolle]

The latest version of the Windows install of GIMP 2.0 now has the help file problem fixed. You can find it on the GIMP website (www.gimp.org).

Tom