Talk:GIMP/Archive 3

So far, there is no discussion of the inclusion of comparison to photoshop in the article
I am not going to search for a discussion of the inclusion of the section -- if that doesn't exist then I am not having an issue with more than one person here....

Your citations -- I met Dave Neary, nice guy -- he added some things to gimp-1.2.

I just found a seriously broken link to a newsgroup hosted by google -- it is a letter signed with a pgp key; they did not do this in 1996. It is such a broken internet. -- carol (talk) 18:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The section was included in the quite a few of the latest revisions of the article. Thus if you propose to delete it, you will have to argue for that point, not the other way around. I think it should stay since the comparison is often made and we have good sources for it. As I said, the comparison with PS is already made in the lead section.


 * It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone.


 * I also know that many GIMP users probably don't want that comparison, but that doesn't change the fact that it is all over the place, including things like GIMPshop which you probably have heard of. What I find hard to tolerate is that you carol mix unrelated GIMP issues with the discussion and even nonsense. -- Sverdrup (talk) 19:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

cleaned up & possible removal.
I cleaned up the comparison of photoshon, wikitablified it so it can be edited and compared more easily. Gnepets (talk) 07:05, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the should be in the article because it does happen regularly, but, as a brief mention. reasoning1: is there is already a page for comparison. reasoning2: this looks to me as it is only included for political correctness (whatever anyone adds is alright) I don't see how this is anymore than a fight flowing into a wikipedia article. photoshop does not belong here. Gnepets (talk) 07:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wilberdust

 * http://www.xach.com/gimp/one-cd/

The poem was written by Sven Riedelthe cynic


 * http://www.levien.com/gimp/call-for-submissions.html
 * http://vidar.gimp.org/gimp/index.php
 * http://www.sunnyspot.org/gimp/scripts.html
 * http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/gimp.html
 * http://www.jamesh.id.au/software/pygimp/
 * http://www.gtk.org/~otaylor/xinput/howto/basic-information.html
 * http://tml.pp.fi/gimp/
 * http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Gimp/1/slides/intro/history.html
 * http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~federico/gimp/el-the-gimp.html
 * http://www.kirchgessner.net/gimp.html
 * http://www.xach.com/gimp/gimp-tips.html

— Preceding unsigned comment added by CarolSpears (talk • contribs) 18:52, 21 March 2008‎

Comparison with MS Paint
Is this really necessary? I can swallow the Photoshop/PSP comparisons but MS Paint! Even the Photoshop comparison should be cut or farmed out into an article comparing graphics editors. It is at the end of the day not all that relevant to the GIMP.

Also, noting that MS Paint and GIMP use the same file format is a bit misleading. Isn't it enough to note that GIMP supports BMP, PNG, Jpeg and other common formats? People actually interested in such information should be able to figure out things from there.--Anss123 (talk) 20:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You speak as if you are a fan of Photoshop but not of MSPaint. It is about pixel manipulation and doesn't MSPaint come with the purchased installation of the operating system?  Economically they are much more comparable if that is true. This is an informative article or is it a sales pitch? -- carol (talk) 01:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I've never used Photoshop, but I do use GIMP/MSPaint every now and then. GIMP is not an operation system, nor is it all that comparable with the feature light MS Paint. This is an article about GIMP and should concentrate on that. Comparisons with other editors is off topic, susceptible to WP:OR and high maintenance as it needs to be checked over every time a new feature is added to the GIMP and/or other editors.


 * Keep in mind that there is already an article for comparing graphic editors. That article is where this stuff should go. --Anss123 (talk) 11:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that none of the comparison belongs here, but my attempts to remove it are always reverted. Adding the other software applications (and there are others still) was an attempt to make the inclusion of the photoshop comparison seem less bigoted and commercially inspired and to make the article more informative. Apparently, all you need is an op with blocking permission to impose the several rules about reverting things that seem to exist and those rules can be stretched to extremely fine degrees....  I would be highly in favor of the removal of all of the comparison section.  Also, my attempt to put the comparison on the Photoshop article was reverted which only made me wonder what possible reason is it here to begin with? -- carol (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Comparison with other raster graphic programs
I'm working on the comparison between GIMP and Paint. Any help with that would be appreciated. Also, it would be nice if someone with knowlege of the diferences between GIMP and Corel PaintShop Pro would write something for that, I have hardly used it.

If you notice any bias/non-neutrality from me more than feel free to correct it; I want you to correct it. Dsavi.x4 (talk) 10:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * GIMP and Paint?! That's almost like comparing a car to a bycycle.Darkuranium (talk) 13:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Useless comparison IMO.Like Notepad compared to Word.Don't think it's a good reason to lengthen the article further.-- maresalmaior   10:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Versions beyond 2.0?
Why does the version info stop at 2.0? GIMP is up to 2.5 unstable and 2.4 stable. Irrevenant [ talk ] 11:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It was easier to write about the versions that came before I became involved with the project and the version that was the subject of the web site that we made for it. I even attempted to write about my personal history with the project for my web site to help to extricate the information that is about the project, but that too was difficult and not pleasant to do.  The people who get together and give lectures and are considered to be 'experts' about the GNU Image Manipulation Program and such for the project now rarely mention the application on their web sites -- how to write about this with that situation?  Personally, I asked one of the developers whose life seems to have only improved from his involvement what the reason is that it has improved the lives of so many with only a few exceptions and the answer is not useful and can only be perceived as suspicious.  I have to say that at the time that I was working on the web site, it was quite easy to be able to determine the difference between my volunteer work for a GPL project and my "day job" which actually was more often in the afternoon -- I was looking forward to continuing to understand the difference between these things with the "job well done" I should have gotten from the successful project.  Be sure to ask the all of the new experts about this as well.... -- carol (talk) 21:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You know, there are many more problems as well. When I made http://mmmaybe.gimp.org, I searched through so many things which were online about the application.  Since then, a few things changed.  The first two letters that are now published on http://www.gimp.org changed.  When I was making the web site, they more clearly indicated that the app began to exist because the two students did not want to steal.  My mistake was in not downloading the archives.  The third letter that has been recently published on the web site is so bogus.  I say this honestly as the person who found a bunch of stuff that the developers had no clue about from my digging back then.  The letter is about the first two students getting Photoshop3 and copying the layers dialog from that.  Here is the fact that easily demonstrates that the letter is bogus -- the PGP Key there.  That technology might have existed then but was not used -- none of the emails or newsgroups I looked at back then used it.  It is my humble opinion (and I have enough humble to share) that the people who are doing stuff like that now -- I cannot express my opinion.  The world is not improved, the actual history that I saw might have been 'derived' as well, but it was beautiful and the one that is beginning to exist now is very very ugly. -- carol (talk) 00:28, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

HDR support
In the 2.6 release note I can read "interal processing is being done in 32bit floating point linear light RGBA". So now GIMP core has support for editing HDR, images with more than 24 bpp--Efa2 (talk) 22:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That just means certain functions can be carried out that way, it doesn't mean gimp supports "HDR" at all, please stop making things up. Non-destructive editing isn't supported either. Go away and read the release notes again, this time slowly and maybe out loud. 82.25.71.131 (talk) 16:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * There's no need to take a nasty tone just because somebody is confused. It's true that GEGL, with its 32 bit floating point code, is being used for some internal operations, but the input and output to those operations is still 8-bit integer.  There is no way to have an internal image holding anything other than 8-bit integer at the moment.  The new GEGL code is a step toward that, though. The next release should have more steps in that direction. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The nasty tone arose after several attempts to correct this misinformation got edited again and replaced with efa2's previous versions, with the comment see discussion on HDR support.82.25.71.131 (talk) 12:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I readed again, and it say "Most color operations in GIMP are now ported to the powerful graph based image processing framework GEGL". So to me mean not "certain functions" but most. For the Non-destructive editing you are right. Remember that attack directed to person are forbidden. Looie thanks for the clear explanation. Where did you get those informations?--Efa2 (talk) 17:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm a GIMP developer. Looie496 (talk) 17:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

gimphoto reference reads like an ad
It has obviously been tacked on to the end of the comparison to PhotoShop section by a keen Gimphoto person, but it's not really relevant, particularly in that section. 202.63.45.194 (talk) 12:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Still on "Comparing to PhotoShop"
I think the section should be shortened or removed. It is enough to specify that GIMP has not some features that professionists find in PhotoShop and that in specific uses of the software are needed. But one may ask why we should compare it here, when there's a page about comparison? It seems to me strange, unless someone cares too much about making people know why and when GIMP can be used instead of PhotoShop (it seems a winning strike for PhotoShop, since unknowledged common people will choose it just for the fear that those lacking features will limit their imagination while manipulating their amazing vacation pictures)

According to me we must just list the features of GIMP, and we can also say what is lacking of course (and link the comparison page, as it's done), but only considering it like a generic image manipulation program (say it in another way: we can say which features GIMP has among all the possible features such a kind of program can have)

151.32.16.173 (talk) 17:33, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Pictogram voting support.svg|18px]] Works for me. I see no point of comparing the two here.--Anss123 (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I cannot agree. PhotoShop symbolizes and dominates this category for many users. The first thing anyone who knows something about GIMP says to someone who knows nothing is "kind of like PhotoShop"! Reducing or eliminating comparison info from this article would make it less useful to the general reader. -96.237.6.207 (talk) 13:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with User:96.237.6.207. I'm a Photoshop user, using a cheap educational-license copy from the mid-1990s. I can't afford to buy a current copy, and am thinking about switching to GIMP. I came to this article specifically to see if it offered any isight on how the leading open-source image manipulation program compared to the leading commercial image maniuplation program. A comparison is useful stuff. TJRC (talk) 17:21, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Wilber merge
I think the content of the article Wilber (mascot) should be merged in here. Wilber is not a particularly notable mascot on his own, and the content that's there is most easily incorporated into this article. Powers T 18:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree.  There doesn't seem to be any notability apart from the GIMP, and not enough to it to justify a split based on size. TJRC (talk) 22:39, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I have performed the merge. Powers T 13:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

What is Wilber
Does any one know the species of Wilber the GIMP Mascot? I think it would be a good fact to include in this article and something that I am curious about. --Matthew Bauer (talk) 22:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I checked this out.... Wilber is a Gimp, as for animal species that is undefined --Gnepets (talk) 16:01, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

"THE gimp" usage
The article needs to address "The GIMP" vs. GIMP. On 4apr09 someones removed all "The GIMP" usage from the article. In the past, "The GIMP" seemed to be common. Why? Has this changed? Why? -96.237.6.207 (talk) 13:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The official site uses "GIMP"; no "the." The typical usage I've seen is to use "the" when using the expanded acronym: "the GNU Image Manipulation Program"; and to omit it when using the acronym.  The first line at http://www.gimp.org/ illustrates this very well: "GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program." TJRC (talk) 17:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

GIMP animation package
I seperated the information about the GIMP animation section into its own section. That should provide some low hanging fruit for a new contributor or someone who wants to the topic expanded. and it really should be expaned (hence it is marked expand). Gnepets (talk) 23:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Apologies
My apologies for dirtying the change log, I have been doing a lot of clean up work and restructuring of this article.

I have noticed that the article
 * was heavily geared to more advanced computer readers
 * had irrelevant information all over the place
 * had relevant information in the wrong places
 * was heavily outdated, in some areas
 * had a lot of flow problems, nested sentence and generally unimportant trivia
 * lacked formatting that would reduce a readers memory requirements
 * introduction had sentences, words and information moved in ad-hoc without consideration for the reader..

If I have done anything to annoy anyone or if you have suggestions, please tell me here. Gnepets (talk) 04:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Comparison to photoshop table removed.
This was removed because
 * there were very few sources.
 * the ciatations that did exist within the table were not useful to a comparison
 * there is already an article on the comparison of raster graphics editors
 * this was not neutral, all it did was weigh gimp against photoshop
 * no effort was made to show gimps unique features, or where gimp excels where photoshop does not.

I had spent some time earlier cleaning this up and putting it in a wikitable, but after doing so one thing became clear. This was a comparison of gimp to photoshop, it did not provide anything but degrading points to gimp so I there fore considered it non-NPOV

There were only 3-4 citations within the table, and none of which were more than citing that these features existed, nothing towards comparing features.

I have left the initial information as a controversy section as was probably more appropriate to being with. Gnepets (talk) 09:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Separation of section History
I moved it into it's own wikipage in order to reduce the amount of information on this page, it would of happened soon enough in the future anyhow I believe. --Gnepets (talk) 09:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

spacing/image placement
Hi all,

can someone please readjust the format so that there is not so much negative spacing around the top part of the article caused by the inserted images? of is the format okay for everyone else apart from me, because on my browser it looks terrible.--Read-write-services (talk) 01:21, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Is this what you were going for? TJRC (talk) 01:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * well it looks terrible on mine now, but I believe it will be fine, once the introduction is expanded again and more can be pulled in from the history at a later date, and the white space problem will fade --Gnepets (talk) 07:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * by the way, Read-write-service the article looks much better now. I cleaned it up for bad style and a build-up of content that was mangled enough to be hard to edit, but I don't have the greatest writing style, glad to see someone fix that up good work and I noticed you canonised the style of the article, great work. --Gnepets (talk) 07:15, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, yes there does seem to be some really good editing now, however I am wondering whatever happened to the introduction that stated that GIMP was image manipulation AND photographic image manipulation software? Many of us GIMP users use it for graphic design and image creation instead of photographic image manipulation. The article starts off NOW with some allusion to the "GIMP useability team", talking about the "vision" it has??? I think that although this may be interesting to some, it really has zilch to do with explaning exactly what GIMP does and what it is used for. In other words the intro is drifiting away from encyclopedic to almost "Advertising" in its wording. Just my personal opinion, however I think the old introductiion was more explanatory and informative rather than "visionary". Cheers--Read-write-services (talk) 02:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You are most definitely right, and this was my change. I got motivated to edit the article because there was a lot out-dated and apologetic non-sense in the article, I think I let my annoyances get the better of me while editing that. I agree the article should be grounded in what GIMP is, glad you caught me up on that and fixed it.  --Gnepets (talk) 07:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Rating
In general, I think this article is very well written, and look forward to it being a good article. It does not seem biased in any way, and is broad in its coverage. The only two things that need to be improved are the formatting and the length of the background info such as history. Some parts of the article could well be in prose rather than as a list. The history section could be enlarged (I'll see if I can find any info). With these two improvements, this article could most likely qualify for GA status. :)  -  down  load  ׀  sign!  16:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * that is great to hear, thanks for checking --60.241.85.126 (talk) 03:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Just an update on this, I have asked this article be reviewed for GA status, so to list how I have addressed these concerns.


 * History is three times the length it was previously, while it still could be expanded there is a seperate article for release history.


 * I have re-cast the lists as prose lists rather than as just prose, list items helps break up what would otherwise be a unwieldy mass that would be difficult to find information in.


 * The article is now close to twice as long as it was previously was (looking at history), hopefully it also reduced the technical level and increased the prose quality :S


 * Gnepets (talk) 15:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I am a bit confused. The article is already a GA in the Wikiproject Graphic Design. How can it be a GA candidate at the same time? I thought the good article status is not on a per wikiproject basis but general. bamse (talk) 11:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The article is not listed on WP:GA. I have changed the Wikiproject Graphic Design status to B and am reviewing this GA nomination. Materialscientist (talk) 11:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Performing merge
I placed the original discussion here, there was a link so people could pipe up if they felt the need.


 * Oh I completed the merge a whil ago, see rev log for details --Gnepets (talk) 05:13, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Saving RAW files
The article says, "GIMP can import Adobe PDF documents and the raw image formats used by many digital cameras, but cannot save to these formats." Does this mean that it can only edit RAW and can't save a RAW file at all, or that it saves it as JPEG? --The High Fin Sperm Whale (talk) 03:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It means that it cannot save to these formats, but can't load them. GIMP has very little use for saving to RAW formats because they are not standardised.  Lets hope in the future camera manufacturers take up adobes digital negative format (DNG).  GIMPs xcf format is not standardised, but is historically the only format that will save all of GIMPs document information to file.  lets hope OpenRaster can be that format in the future :). --Gnepets (talk) 23:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Can it save NEF (Nikon's RAW) files? --The High Fin Sperm Whale (Talk ·Contribs) 22:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I doubt it. I really am just relaying a naive interpretation from conversations on #gimp and the gimp mailing list.  As I understand it, formats such as DNG or TiFF are far better for this purpose because little/no information loss and the files are very portable between platforms.  Adobe designed the digital negative (DNG) format so that camera manufacturers will stop using formats designed per camera/company. --Gnepets (talk) 10:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

future of the article
for when I am motivated to work more on this article, plans:

The article needs to be restructured to allow to talk more in depth information about GIMP such as the social mechanisms that help GIMP expand to be more than just an application (like registry.gimp.org and wiki.gimp.org), and there are several things from the GA review that would improve the scope of the article as well. The article needs some restructuring to allow the depth (quality as opposed to quantitiy) of information to increase, as such a lot of the "obvious" beginner level stuff needs to be spun off or deleted. I am in favour of spinning off and summarising because the information is sourced and would still feel useful to someone less knowlegable.
 * list sections: very good for breaking up information, but they exist because there is too much information in two sections:
 * the variants section is interesting for the sake of tracking the history of GIMP forks etc., but this is so much not GIMP that maybe an extra page describing things derived from or made for GIMP and just summarise it in the article (think GTK+, the procedural database, different programs, gimp extensions. There is a massive amount of information here that could be considered interesting but off topic in the main article)
 * the features section has been described in the recent past as one of the only ways to make a comparison with photoshop at a glance, but it is full of information that is at a image editing application level, as opposed to what makes GIMP different from generic image application x. (spin off and summarise, and expand more on what makes gimp unique)

please tell me how you feel about these ideas --60.241.85.126 (talk) 13:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

"in RGB space"
Just noting the reason for a manual undo in more detail than should be in the change log.

The definition "in RGB space" is not useful, even though accurate. GIMP will always be an editor in the RGB(a) colour space. When GEGL integration is achieved GIMP will still be an RGB editor, while operations may be performed in other colour spaces the image is always edited in RGB (your monitor only does RGB).

if you were to talk about a native CYMK mode (which will eventually be part of GIMP), you are still viewing things in RGB, things are just made to look like they would if they were printed. No matter what colour space which will be used for creative purposes, you are always working with an RGB image.

the semantic difference between how GIMP works with colour now and works with colour in the future is on the basis of internal manipulations being non-destructive or indeed far less destructive than working with 8bit per channel images as is done now. --Gnepets (talk) 21:52, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

is this an article or an ad?
I see a huge feature list in the middle of this article, and the whole thing reads like propaganda. Frankly, if this were and article about a commercial package I'd take pruning shears to it. Why should free software deserve indulgent over-length? Edmundronald (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As long as it's accurate, there's no problem. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:49, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a massive problem with it, a while ago I was cleaning up the article and aggregating feature information into a feature section. Two sections up I have noted why I think this is a huge problem.  But to rehash: 1) Much of the information is generic to an image manipulation program 2) the feature list is huge, it is hard to find relevant information. 3) It is hard (impossible :)) to distinguish features that just exist and those that are implemented very well, or quite unique. Gnepets (talk) 05:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * "Why should free software deserve indulgent over-length?" I do not know that this is a good question, we need to ask "What information is of encyclopaedic value?". Previously I spun off the history section into a seperate article because it was ridiculous to keep it in the main article, is that a good solution here?  If so we could summarise it in a few paragraphs of distinct and useful features and then have a main article link (there are not a lot of external comparisons showing which features of GIMP are really well designed, or the feature depth of gimp when compared to non-adobe image editors). Gnepets (talk) 05:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

American English
As this edit notes, some British English usage has at times crept into the article. As early as the first edit to this article in January 2002, American English has been used. Under WP:ENGVAR, we should consistently use American English. I've added the template American English to the top of the page to note this for future editors. TJRC (talk) 23:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for making that check, it seems the changes earlier are correct. I will undo the revert I did earlier, I did not check the talk page. Gnepets (talk) 05:01, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Relevance of Wilber the Mascot
Just explaining an undo for removal of Wilber Links. Wilber and GIMP are tied into eachother, but Wilber is also seen as representing GIMP in other free software, such as Super Tux Karts and a free software equivalent of Adobe light room which its name does not come to mind now. While in the article relevance is not shown, it could be expanded as opposed to removing links. I doubt Wilber will ever get his own article, but his section could definitely be expanded quite a bit if anyone is interested.

If you still think the links should be removed, could you explain why in detail here, thanks. --Gnepets (talk) 09:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)