GIMP 2.8 (Stable) Finally Available For Download

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/gimp-28-stable-finally-available-for.html

by mnazim • 14 years ago

133 62 14 years ago

netrus• 14 years ago

I am excited about the singe window mode. The multi window mode made GIMP quite un-intuitive to me until now.

lunarscape• 14 years ago

I also dislike the multi-window mode. I've been using scripts like gimpbox.py to get single window mode up until now (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/gimpbox-gives-stable-vers...).

exDM697• 14 years ago

Nice that you like it. I, on the other hand, have always liked GIMP's multi-window interface. It works very well with multiple monitors.

But thankfully there's a choice between the two interface modes. The GIMP crew should have come up with that earlier.

But the interface change is not that significant compared to all the other new features (esp. >8bpp color).

lloeki• 14 years ago

I liked the multi-window interface, but the choice of making the palettes real windows and not floating panels always struck me as a mistake. See how Pixelmator handles that for example: it's much more natural.

Havoc• 14 years ago

>But the interface change is not that significant compared to all the other new features

It might not be the most significant feature from your PoV, but I think it'll do wonders for the adoption rate of GIMP. Its one of the major obstacles that people experience in those crucial first 60min of GIMP use.

marcusf3• 14 years ago

I first ran in to Gimp in what would have had to been the late 90's or early 00's, and ever since it's always befuddled me completely. I've always turned back to Photoshop, if slightly begrudgingly, because the productivity enhancements of a tool you really know far outweigh the price of it. These UI improvements seem to be a step in the right direction though.

I'd love to hear if anybody's done the Journey PS -> Gimp (for UI stuff, not photography), and if so how long it took and if it was worth it in the end?

exDM697• 14 years ago

I've never used photoshop, but I used Paint Shop Pro years ago. It has a similar interface to Photoshop. But for more than a decade all my (bitmap) graphics needs have been fulfilled by GIMP.

The interface may be a little weird (or it used to be), but it's really powerful when you get into it. Sure, being effective in GIMP requires you to learn a few keyboard shortcuts but what software doesn't?

I was completely blown away once when I saw a hacker/artist friend of mine do some amazing artwork with GIMP (this was circa 2001). One hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse/wacom tablet. Sure, he was a hacker, so the interface may be a little more intuitive from that background but the artwork he produced spoke for itself.

I don't listen to pro-photoshop people's arguments any more. The interface may seem weird but it gets the job done. The 8bpp color was a major stumbling block but now it's gone. As are many other sources of complaints about GIMP.

You (and everyone) should really give GIMP another go, the improvement has been HUGE in the last 10 years. This is what a lot of people don't get about open source software. It improves constantly, if you did not like it 10/5/1 years ago, the chances are it's been improved during that time. And if you feel that something needs a change, you have the option of doing it yourself or helping the community put it together by whatever means you have to contribute.

Or just shut up and pay the license for Photoshop, but please don't come bashing people who are doing hard work to make GIMP/Blender/Inkscape better.

marcusf3• 14 years ago

Not sure where I bashed the people working hard with GIMP/Blender/Inkscape. If I've offended anyone, sorry about that. I was merely trying to convey that ~13 year ago and a few times after that, I've been confused by the Gimp UI. Sorry if that didn't come through clear enough.

It's the same thing with Photoshop I guess; You invest heavily in the tool chain -- I know basically every keyboard shortcut there is by tactile memory -- and suddenly your definition of usability in image manipulation becomes 'The inverse of the squared distance to Photoshop'.

I'll download it and give Gimp another go.

Tichy3• 14 years ago

I've used both - for basic stuff, mind you. But I remember how hard it was to pick up Photoshop. My conclusion from my limited experience is therefore that it is simply what you are used to. Neither Gimp or PS are necessarily better, they are just different. If you are used to Gimp, you will swear if you have to use PS, and vice versa.

One problem for more advanced work could be that there are more tutorials for PS than for Gimp.

(I only use Gimp because I don't want to pay for PS and I tend to be on Linux at times).

Aozaki_Touko3• 14 years ago

Neither are necessarily better ? it shows how much use you have for a professional image editing package : NONE. It has been a long time since I've picked up Photoshop (as in I'm used to its interface) so I can't say whether it's really hard to "pick it up" compared to beginning with the gimp but the environment is FAR MORE productive than what the GIMP offers if you were to master the two and compare their abilities. The amount of non-destructive tools in Photoshop alone make it ten times better than the GIMP if productivity is your priority.

The GIMP is like Photoshop 4 or 5. One of the worst "open source alternative" to proprietary software. It's an antique piece of software that hasn't caught up with the last DECADE of innovation.

chevas• 14 years ago

I've been using GIMP for probably 6 or 7 years. The last version of Photoshop I ever opened was version 6 and I hardly remember it. I've been doing web design with it for about the same duration and it is the staple image editor tool I use. I'm the creative director for my company and GIMP has played a major role in my career.

harbud• 14 years ago

Single window, ok cool. But after ages, still no tool to draw some boxes and circles? This is proof that Gimp's goal is not designer's productivity. Pass.

illumen• 14 years ago

box: rectangle select, alt+e s s

circle: circle select, alt+e s s

I guess it's not intuitive if you haven't done a gimp 101 tutorial for 30 minutes. Here it is in pictures: https://pbs01.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/145/

exDM697• 14 years ago

Note: the first comment in the blog post you liked has the exact same complaint as in this thread. It's amazing how people start complaining before consulting the manual. As if all software in the world should be obvious by looking at icons and buttons. And yet it isn't. I am looking at you, Microsoft Ribbon.

jbester• 14 years ago

Yes, there is no separate tool specifically for drawing shapes, but, you can stroke any selection or path.

exDM697• 14 years ago

I knew someone would bring that up. Drawing boxes and circles is easy, first make selection, then fill it. That's hardly a blocker for designer productivity.

Sure there's an extra selection and a tool change but this way it's a lot more versatile than having a simple single purpose draw-me-a-box tool. Learn the keyboard shortcuts and get over it.

Need a pattern filled box? Do the selection and use pattern fill.

Need a box with a circular hole in the middle, with fill and outline stroke. Select a box, then select a circle with difference selection. Then fill with outline color, shrink selection by few pixels and fill with pattern. Or first fill with pattern fill and do an outset/inset selection.

I'm sure Photoshop has a super versatile tool for doing boxes and circles. A real swiss army knife that rounds your corners and does drop shadows. And that's fine. But it's a different design choice than GIMP did.

In my opinion, GIMP is nice because it has simple tools that are composable, repeatable and scriptable. Kinda like the unix philosophy gone GUI.

If you don't grok it, it may be difficult. If you do and don't like it, that's your choice. But don't be impolite about it then.

mambodog2• 14 years ago

Photoshop implements these features using vector masks, which mean you can scale your shapes after creating them without any resampling/pixelation. How many steps would it take to do the same in GIMP? It's not just about not grokking it, it's about having tools to get shit done.

nnq2• 14 years ago

Form a "designer productivity", nothing beats a Bitmap+Vector hybrid app like Fireworks... Even Photoshop seems like a productivity nightmare and a user hostile monster by comparison... I'd say GIMP and Photoshop are on par on this "boxes and circles drawing UX", and this speaks BADLY of both of them!

blt3• 14 years ago

I agree. Vector tools in Photoshop are horribly clunky. I had better results using Illustrator to design a web layout.

bad_user2• 14 years ago

That's the Gimp philosophy.

For instance Gimp also doesn't have "smart sharpening", a very useful filter that Photoshop users will recognize immediately.

Applying this filter in Gimp is more complicated, involving several steps (do a search on Google for tutorials), but in the process of applying such filters you'll learn a lot about image composition and about various tricks you can mix and match for other effects.

And the nice thing about it is that Gimp is so extensible that you can write a plugin for it, so you don't have to repeat those steps every time. You can do so with Python or Scheme. Heck, if you search around, somebody else probably wrote a good one.

So when using Gimp, don't expect a Photoshop clone, because it isn't.

andybak2• 14 years ago

Hey. Why doesn't someone turn that tutorial into a plugin. It's a really common workflow...

They could bundle it with Gimp and call it 'Smart Sharpen'...

Oh wait.

[seriously - if there's 20 tutorials for a something then it needs to be a built-in]

martinaglv• 14 years ago

This is extremely discouraging. For a moment I thought that I should give Gimp a try, but not being able to draw vector shapes is a deal breaker.

The PS shape tool provides the building blocks for designing interfaces. Shapes can be scaled and merged; you can edit the vector paths and use them as masks; and much more.

Interface design requires only a fraction of Photoshop's functionality, but that is what is missing from Gimp. For image editing it might be a decent choice, but not this.

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

Inkscape is excellent for drawing shapes though. You can add bitmaps and using non-destructive filters too.

Edit: downvotes, huzzah ... it's what I use for website design, only really turn to Gimp for more complex bitmap changes, cutouts and photo touchup. I cant imagine trying to do web UI in Gimp alone, hence the suggestion.

bad_user2• 14 years ago

I've been a GIMP user for several years.

It's not as friendly as Photoshop, but it gets the job done and it is extremely flexible. I got so used to it that I can't switch back to Photoshop, even though I tried.

One major pain point for me though has been the 8 bits limit, which was the reason why I wanted to switch to Photoshop. I'm glad that they've worked on solving it.

This is an awesome release.

diminish• 14 years ago

the Batch filter is what we are using a lot for web site image processing.

nnq2• 14 years ago

dream: could a UI/UX genius and open-source hacker ever make an Inkscape+GIMP hybrid that will have the straight forward, intuitive and productive UI of Adobe Fireworks? (without the weird ireproductible "bugs" and "WTF?!" moments that Fw sometimes throws in face of the user, making me dread to think of the decade old can-of-worms closed-source code of this otherwise superb application)

macco• 14 years ago

Do it yourself: Use GEGL http://www.gegl.org/ as the GIMP Backend and find something for Inkscape or rip it apart.

okamiueru• 14 years ago

I decided to give gimp a real go recently. Shifting my UI production from photoshop to GIMP, and not giving in to temptation, regardless of how quickly I knew I could do a certain task in PS.

There were a few headaches. For instance the half an hour spent in frustration when trying to move a layer, only to find that the tool panel had an "Affect: " followed by a small icon for the selection. I consider this expected pains, and there certainly were a few of those in photoshop as well.

One thing that I just consider lousy implementation was when trying to create a pattern and applying it to an image. I couldn't find a way to do this besides creating the pattern as an image, and saving it to the ~/.gimp/patterns/, refreshing the pattern dialogue, and applying the pattern.

Also, the destructive workflow in applying effects is archaic... even photoshop's linear (albeit dynamic) stack of adjustment layers feels old and restrictive.

I'll keep sticking with Gimp for a while longer... it can only get better, right? Still, at the moment I'd say it is far inferior to Photoshop regarding my productivity.

exDM697• 14 years ago

> I'll keep sticking with Gimp for a while longer... it can only get better, right?

That's exactly the reason you want to stick with GIMP for a while longer. If you're willing to go the extra mile, start following GIMP development and community a little closer. Join an IRC channel or a mailing list, for example. That way, you can have a part in making it better.

pjmlp2• 14 years ago

Still no installer available for Windows. :(

ecaron• 14 years ago

There have been Windows installers for quite a while: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html You'll see the 2.6 stable is available at the top and 2.8 RC1 is at the bottom (I'm guessing 2.8.0 will be up by week's end.)

pjmlp2• 14 years ago

I know, I just thought the 2.8.0 would be made available at the same time.

haakon• 14 years ago

Those Linux users get all the breaks!

rebelde• 14 years ago

I think only GIMP would say GIMP 2.8 is here! And yet there isn't a Windows installer for it.

If I were them, I would have waited a few days and gotten the Windows installer together first.

DHowett• 14 years ago

The Windows installers are prepared by a separate team, not the GIMP developers. There's really no use in getting upset that another platform you don't care about got it before you.

m0shen• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure the Windows installers are made by another individual. Not the GIMP team.

blt3• 14 years ago

They are going to have to support "Filter Layers" (Photoshop's Adjustment Layers) before they get __any__ traction in the serious photo editing community. Non-destructive editing with masked adjustment layers is a basic best practice for photographers since the early 2000s.

zokier• 14 years ago

I believe those are on the road map. But probably will take couple of releases before getting there.

blt3• 14 years ago

I think it might be time for me to get the Gimp source and start messing around...

deutronium• 14 years ago

Is there 16 bit per channel image support?

andybak2• 14 years ago

Is there a non-Macports install guide for OS X?

reustle• 14 years ago

These types of ads make my blood boil: http://i.imgur.com/ZHzf9.png

simcop2387• 14 years ago

Wow that's a little scummy. Was it at least a copy of the gimp it linked to even if it had more ads around it?

zobzu• 14 years ago

Actual link to gimp website... http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

Today GIMP made my day because I discovered it reads xwd format so my screen capture is now as simple as I like it (xwd > ~/foo).

Thank you dev team, it's worth it really.

Cheers

philjackson• 14 years ago

As an xmonad user the single window mode is a godsend.

GIMP 2.8 (Stable) Finally Available For Download

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