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View Full Version : Gimp 2.0 Released


Suhit Gupta
03-27-2004, 06:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.dpreview.com/news/0403/04032602gimpv2.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.dpreview.com/news/0403/04032602gimpv2.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"The GIMP developers are proud to release version 2.0 of the GIMP, the leading freely distributable program for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. This release is a major event, marking the end of a three year development cycle by a group of volunteers and enthusiasts who have made this the most professional release of the GIMP ever. It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X."<br /><br />The GNU Image Manipulation Program, the GIMP, is a fantastic piece of software IMO, and perfect for photographers and web designers that are just starting out. It has a fairly sophisticated feature set that included allowing for channels, layers and masks as well as allows for color operations such as levels, curves and threshhold. And best of all, it is free. For more information, go to <a href="http://www.gimp.org">http://www.gimp.org</a>

Janak Parekh
03-27-2004, 06:04 PM
Windows support? Wow. 8O

For those of you who are curious, here's a shot of it running under Windows:

http://www.gimp.org/screenshots/windowsxp_screenshot2.png

Looks pretty slick!

--janak

entropy1980
03-27-2004, 06:04 PM
Gimp is an awesome alternative to Photoshop if you don't want to throw down the bucks, almost any of the basic things you would or could want in Photoshop are there.... highly recommend it!

James Fee
03-27-2004, 06:36 PM
Windows support? Wow. 8O
GIMP for Windows (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/index.html) has been around for years , but the problem has always been the amount of windows that get put down in the taskbar. WinXP has fixed this sort of with the grouping of windows, but its hard to use it when your whole toolbar has GIMP windows down there....

Suhit Gupta
03-27-2004, 07:02 PM
Windows support? Wow. 8O
GIMP for Windows (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/index.html) has been around for years , but the problem has always been the amount of windows that get put down in the taskbar. WinXP has fixed this sort of with the grouping of windows, but its hard to use it when your whole toolbar has GIMP windows down there....
Yeah, that is exactly what I was going to say. It is those ridiculous number of windows that always turned me away from GIMP. Although, have you noticed that Photoshop has a similar problem. PS does not open lots of Windows windows, however it does treat the toolbars as separate objects from the main editing window and I find this particularly painful when I am using a dual monitor machine and would like to move PS from one screen to the next, the toolbars get left behind and have to be moved manually too.

Suhit

Janak Parekh
03-27-2004, 09:16 PM
Windows support? Wow. 8O
GIMP for Windows (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/index.html) has been around for years , but the problem has always been the amount of windows that get put down in the taskbar.
I knew there were Windows ports, but having an officially-supported stable port is different. :)

As for the GIMP windowing policy, I believe that was a deliberate decision done by the GIMP folks years ago. It's the same on any platform the program would run. While that might make a difference, for someone who needs a free photo editor it's hard to pass up the cost even with that. ;) I wonder if anyone has made mods for it to change this behavior.

--janak

James Fee
03-28-2004, 02:29 AM
I knew there were Windows ports, but having an officially-supported stable port is different. :)
Very true....

Suhit Gupta
03-28-2004, 02:30 AM
As for the GIMP windowing policy, I believe that was a deliberate decision done by the GIMP folks years ago. It's the same on any platform the program would run. While that might make a difference, for someone who needs a free photo editor it's hard to pass up the cost even with that. ;) I wonder if anyone has made mods for it to change this behavior.
Yeah, I would definitely be interested in such a mod. However, given that it is now in version 2, and they do have a real Windows port, you would think that they would make a version for Windows that would minimize the number of windows, instead of XP's ability to group process tabs.

Suhit

Janak Parekh
03-28-2004, 02:32 AM
you would think that they would make a version for Windows that would minimize the number of windows
Actually, no. I'd assume that the Windows port is as close to the UNIX version as possible to minimize code differences. There is a Windows version of the GTK toolkit, and GIMP just uses that -- exactly the same way it does on Windows.

--janak

Suhit Gupta
03-28-2004, 02:57 AM
you would think that they would make a version for Windows that would minimize the number of windows
Actually, no. I'd assume that the Windows port is as close to the UNIX version as possible to minimize code differences. There is a Windows version of the GTK toolkit, and GIMP just uses that -- exactly the same way it does on Windows.
Yeah, but this is a usability issue. Why not "fix" a program in order to make it more convenient for a different OS? Don't you do this as a programmer?

Suhit

Janak Parekh
03-28-2004, 03:15 AM
Yeah, but this is a usability issue. Why not "fix" a program in order to make it more convenient for a different OS? Don't you do this as a programmer?
I guess it would be more accurate to characterize that GIMP has an official Windows port, not a specially-designed version. As such, you want to keep the code as portable as possible.

Besides, considering the limited development resources an open-source group has like the GIMP folks, I'm not surprised that redoing the UI wasn't #1 on the list. Even many commercial applications suffer from this problem when going cross-platform; if you've used IE for Solaris, you know what I mean. :pukeface:

--janak

Suhit Gupta
03-28-2004, 03:53 AM
Yeah, I see your point. Still annoying though and worth the rant IMHO ;-).

Suhit

stevehiner
03-29-2004, 08:32 PM
GIMP for Windows (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/index.html) has been around for years , but the problem has always been the amount of windows that get put down in the taskbar. WinXP has fixed this sort of with the grouping of windows, but its hard to use it when your whole toolbar has GIMP windows down there....

There is a mod for that. Go to the GIMP plug-in registry and click on link for 2.0 compatible plugins. There you will find the aptly named "GIMP for Windows Deweirdifyer" (I think that's right). It adds a background window to GIMP and consolidates the task bar icons so it acts like a normal MDI (Multiple Document Interface) Windows program.

You can find the registry at http://registry.gimp.org

stevehiner
03-29-2004, 09:42 PM
I thought I'd let everyone know about a bug in GIMP 2.0 and how I got around it.

On my system GIMP 2.0 crashes while loading the fonts. The error reads:
(gimp-2.0.exe:3672): GLib-CRITICAL **: file gconvert.c: line 498 (g_convert): assertion `str != NULL' failed

I opened a command prompt and started moving my font files around. I moved various fonts to the Temp folder then tried to open GIMP. Ultimately I found the font that was causing the problem - PROFONT.FON. It's a font I added recently use in Visual Studio.

Other people seem to be having the same problem but with different fonts. One suggestion I read online was to move any .TTC files in the fonts directory to another directory to try it. I don't know what TTC files are but I'd suggest you put them back if it doesn't fix the problem.

Hope this saves some of you a bit of time.