Floating point images have been something I've been waiting for for awhile.
For a game engine I'm working on, I need floating point textures to represent emissivity (how much light an object might reflect...anything greater than 1.0 means the object is generating its own light, think a neon sign).
Without the ability to draw floating point textures, I've been limited to using regular 8-bit monochrome (which maps 0-255 to 0.0-1.0 in the engine), and having a special "multiplier" pixel in the corner of the image, used for multiplying the 0.0-1.0 value, so I can have, for example, emissivity of 3.0.
Floating point images eliminate the need for all of this :)
Could they rip off the layer effects feature from Photoshop? There is a plugin for it but it's honestly pretty useless. It takes forever to generate the effects, you can't edit them afterwards and they are on a separate layer.
What I really want to see on GIMP would be a rip-off of content aware fill. I'd really like to have a look at how it's done. Obviously I can't look at Adobe's code.
We use it at the agency I work at. The developers all use Linux (2 as 'main os', 2 via VMs on their windows 7 & os x boxes). We use GIMP to take what are finished designs produced in Photoshop CS6 & CS3 and make the assets for our sites and applications out of it from the designers exported PNGs.
One of us (the windows user) has a copy of CS6 which if needs be he can use to make any minor amends before exporting out PNGs etc. If a designer has forgotten to export out a certain layer on it's own too - that sorta thing. For everything that _we_ need to do - (eg cropping out, making sprites, minor color amends, some blending) it is absolutely perfect and just as good as Adobes offering in that regard.
I would go so far as to say the selection tools are actually _much better_ than in photoshop. I find selection transformation a lot more intuitive and easier to do in Gimp.
As an added bonus we've saved ourselves at least £3,000 at last count on license fees. I have also found as a side affect that because we can't open the PSDs there and then (usually), we're more likely to get totally complete assets from the design team that we can get to work with. Beforehand we'd just get dumped on with several PSDs as is.
We have applied a similar workflow when it comes to office documents too - making heavy use of Libreoffice for all but a few users that really do need to edit and send out docx "exactly".
Finally, for what it's worth I have never seen the big deal about it's UI either. It follows the same sort of paradigms as many graphics tools so I've never saw that as a barrier to use. I appreciate you aren't suggesting this at all, I always saw the "Gimp is for amateurs or is rubbish compared to Photoshop" argument as arrogance or snobbery. Especially in office environments - I think (some) people associate the cost of the PS license with a validation of their skill.
My guess: Casual users who don't think the interface is too hard and people liking free software. I seem to fall into both groups.
But more generally - a lot of people I know which are starting out with game programming work with The Gimp. Also pretty much anyone who wants to learn serious image manipulation, but not willing to either make illegal copies or spend hundreds of dollars on such an application (don't know, maybe that's not much money for you, but for most people it is a lot). And certainly people on Linux where PS simply isn't available.
I don't know if I am a target user, but I "photoshopped" my LinkedIn photo (removed some stuff from the background, touched up my hair, made it black and white) with it. Worked well, and a I didn't want to buy a Photoshop license to do it.
I use it all the time to create, reformat, and resize images for websites. I don't need to do that frequently or elaborately enough to require Photoshop, and Gimp does a fine job. It may be hard to use for casual users, but not for technical users. And there are lots of resources an tips online.
Is there anything else that is a) free, b) cross platform, and c) has the powerful features of GIMP? I use GIMP because of those three factors (and to be clear, I would happily purchase Photoshop, but I switch OSes all the time and want something I can use everywhere).
It's hard for me to imagine any software reaching adoption "escape velocity" with a name as noxious as The Gimp. Rather than adding more features, a more evocative name might make "GIMPing" more appealing to a larger community.
This has been brought up before -- but for different reasons. The newly renamed "Reglue" project, that installs Linux on computers for needy kids in Texas, brought this up a long time ago. That the acronym/name of the program you can use to paint on your new computer is also somewhat offensive is just unfortunate. At any rate, the program itself is useful and I've supported the project in the past financially.
If you use GIMP, I highly recommend chipping in on the new work on resamplers:
http://www.freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/78/add-other-sampl...
The guy working on it has already contributed lots to GEGL and ImageMagick, and the work is already going straight into GIMP (no forking).
You do want your rescaled images to look good, right?
Just a usability thing about that site. There's so much stuff at the top that when I clicked on the 'lastest news' thumbnails I thought there was some JS preventing the page from loading. Turns out that the actual content was below the fold of my (large) browser window. But it took a while to notice.
On a side note, Adobe is giving away its flagship Photoshop (actually the entire creative suite) away for free, with VALID serial numbers. However, they're giving away only the CS2 version though. EDIT: It's a semi-official free version. But it's still a great deal!
"You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!
What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don't require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available."
aka the previous stable version. 2.7 and 2.9 are dev branches, as will 2.11 be. 2.8 was only released in May last year, which is a little over halfway through the Ubuntu release cycle. It's probably safe to expect it in April's release.
[+] [-] daenz|13 years ago|reply
For a game engine I'm working on, I need floating point textures to represent emissivity (how much light an object might reflect...anything greater than 1.0 means the object is generating its own light, think a neon sign).
Without the ability to draw floating point textures, I've been limited to using regular 8-bit monochrome (which maps 0-255 to 0.0-1.0 in the engine), and having a special "multiplier" pixel in the corner of the image, used for multiplying the 0.0-1.0 value, so I can have, for example, emissivity of 3.0.
Floating point images eliminate the need for all of this :)
[+] [-] aw3c2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnosis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veeti|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergo14|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esbwhat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsahyt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaymzcampbell|13 years ago|reply
One of us (the windows user) has a copy of CS6 which if needs be he can use to make any minor amends before exporting out PNGs etc. If a designer has forgotten to export out a certain layer on it's own too - that sorta thing. For everything that _we_ need to do - (eg cropping out, making sprites, minor color amends, some blending) it is absolutely perfect and just as good as Adobes offering in that regard.
I would go so far as to say the selection tools are actually _much better_ than in photoshop. I find selection transformation a lot more intuitive and easier to do in Gimp.
As an added bonus we've saved ourselves at least £3,000 at last count on license fees. I have also found as a side affect that because we can't open the PSDs there and then (usually), we're more likely to get totally complete assets from the design team that we can get to work with. Beforehand we'd just get dumped on with several PSDs as is.
We have applied a similar workflow when it comes to office documents too - making heavy use of Libreoffice for all but a few users that really do need to edit and send out docx "exactly".
Finally, for what it's worth I have never seen the big deal about it's UI either. It follows the same sort of paradigms as many graphics tools so I've never saw that as a barrier to use. I appreciate you aren't suggesting this at all, I always saw the "Gimp is for amateurs or is rubbish compared to Photoshop" argument as arrogance or snobbery. Especially in office environments - I think (some) people associate the cost of the PS license with a validation of their skill.
[+] [-] coffeeaddicted|13 years ago|reply
But more generally - a lot of people I know which are starting out with game programming work with The Gimp. Also pretty much anyone who wants to learn serious image manipulation, but not willing to either make illegal copies or spend hundreds of dollars on such an application (don't know, maybe that's not much money for you, but for most people it is a lot). And certainly people on Linux where PS simply isn't available.
[+] [-] rplnt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mongol|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Already__Taken|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jm3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] K_REY_C|13 years ago|reply
http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2011/05/your-vote-counts.html
[+] [-] unhammer|13 years ago|reply
You do want your rescaled images to look good, right?
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] afandian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neya|13 years ago|reply
You can fetch it from here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html
[+] [-] McGlockenshire|13 years ago|reply
"You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!
What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don't require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available."
[+] [-] michaelbuddy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unhammer|13 years ago|reply
(Not in the latest long support release, but can't really expect that.)
[+] [-] hosay123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|13 years ago|reply