cmyk_student
Joined 1 year ago
Karma
162
Submissions
77
Member since
Nov 29
Recent submissions
Comment · 1 month ago
Comment · 1 month ago
GTK handles the UI as well as UI events (click, key, scroll, drag, etc). It's very tightly integrated into GIMP itself (the 'G' in GTK use to stand for GIMP, in fact), and has been for decades. GIMP is not new software. :)
The challenge of new GTK versions is that they keep simplifying things, because it's aimed at software that's much less complex than GIMP. For instance, the tree views that GIMP relies on for so many things like layer docks are deprecated in GTK4. To deal with that, we'll have to do some redesigns of core features.
There's no intermediate layer in-between GIMP and GTK. It wouldn't be impossible to code, but with the current number of volunteer developers, it would mean further delaying features that most users care more about.
Comment · 2 months ago
Ah, gotcha - thanks for the heads-up!
We're normally more selective with screenshots in actual release notes, but since this was a (even more) informal development update post, I used what photos were available (for instance, the spectral blending video and native file chooser dialogue picture use a different theme).
Thanks again, and I'll see what we can do about both of your design feedback!
Comment · 2 months ago
It may not be quite as niche as people think: https://fosstodon.org/@[email protected]/116674728764606215
To your first point, it's difficult to know people's frame of reference online. I've listened to many complaints on forums, only to find out the person was thinking of older versions of GIMP and it no longer applied (like multi-window mode being default, outlining text being an ordeal, etc). We also see plenty of feedback like https://lemmy.world/post/50729195/25325527, so it's not always easy to figure what's universally illogical.
I'm not deflecting or saying that GIMP's UI is perfect the way it is - there's a lot of improvements I want to make to the non-destructive filter UI alone. But we can see that real people use the software for real work, so we try to keep existing users in mind when making UI improvements since it impacts them and what they do. There's been some well intentioned UI/UX requests I've implemented that ended up breaking a lot of people's workflows, and those still weigh on my soul. :)
(Obligatory plug for our UX tracker if you feel like providing specifics on UI problems you've encountered: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it...)
Comment · 2 months ago
The icon clash is unique to me - I prefer the colorful Legacy icon so I set it to that. It's not the "default" view, it's just a screenshot I grabbed from my own development build.
I appreciate the annotated screenshot! I'll compare with our default view and see what's applicable and fixable. We also have a pending merge request to do a more thorough redesign of the Text tool options if you're interested in looking at that: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/merge_requests/2374
Comment · 2 months ago
Hi! There are actually options for most of those.
1) When you apply a filter, there's a "Merge filter" checkbox. If you check it, filters will be merged down immediately like in 2.10. The setting is remembered, though currently the unique Color filters are remembered separately from the generic ones.
2) If you go to Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts and search for "Paste as Floating Selection", you can bind Ctrl + V to it so that you get the 2.10 floating selection behavior.
Comment · 2 months ago
The problem is that there's not just one "user". Tons of people have used GIMP for decades and are use to how it works - so changes to be less "user-hostile" can make it hostile to existing users.
For instance, we were repeatedly told that copy+paste creating a floating selection instead of a new layer was confusing and aggravating for users. So we changed it in 3.0 to make a new layer like other software. While we got praise from some people, we started getting new complaints that we'd broken people's workflow (see https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/1vmrza2/it_is_not_str... for a wide range of user feedback as one example)
That doesn't mean we don't try to improve things (obligatory link to our user design feedback site: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it...), but making big changes is difficult when you have an existing user base who are using your software successfully as-is.
Comment · 2 months ago
We didn't go into this in the news post since it was a quick overview, but GIMP uses GEGL for its main color and pixel engine. GEGL has a feature where you can automatically sync data between "buffers" in memory and in file - so as you're editing the image/layer/etc in GIMP, the buffers in the new format will automatically auto-save the data from the canvas.
It's still in-progress, so we'll have more technical details in the 3.3.2 release news.
Comment · 2 months ago
If you think it's UX related concern, then I'd recommend posting it on the UX tracker first. But even if it's posted in the "wrong place", it'll likely be moved to the right one after it's looked at, if that makes sense?
However, if you see an older issue that could use some UX design discussion, feel free to suggest it be moved.
Comment · 2 months ago
We added import support for most Photoshop palette formats (ACB, ACO, ASE), so you can use them in GIMP. I don't think we can directly include Pantone palettes in the install because of copyright issues, but if you already have them, they should work fine in GIMP (and if not, let us know so we can fix it!)
Comment · 2 months ago
One of our contributors does a lot of upkeep work, and he normally ports UX-related issues from the code tracker to the UX repo. Not 100% perfect, but it helps keep the focus in the right spot.
Comment · 2 months ago
We're working on an extension platform, and once that's up and running we'll probably reach out to PhotoGIMP developers (https://github.com/Diolinux/Photogimp) and see if they want to host it there.
Then people can easily download and install it directly in GIMP, hopefully making everyone happy.
Comment · 2 months ago
To be honest, I didn't think about it too hard - I just wrote "a XCF" because it doesn't start with a vowel. I don't think it's worth submitting an edit for, but you're welcome to consider it "an XCF".
Comment · 2 months ago
We didn't go into it in the news post, but one of the big benefits of this new format is that we can sync GeglBuffers (how pixel data is stored) automatically between GIMP and the new file. So you'll get fast auto-saves as you edit, which we couldn't do with OpenRaster. Also, the OpenRaster standard doesn't support all the features of GIMP/Krita (like non-destructive filters for instance).
(Also, currently our OpenRaster support is a plug-in that calls our PNG plug-in to do the rendering, so we'd have to rewrite it to be a core process if we wanted to use it as our main project file).
Comment · 2 months ago
That someone is actually the maintainer of GIMP, and the person who is currently developing the new format (unless you mean one of the commenters, not the person who made the initial post).
GIMP's maintainer has half-seriously said that he's not even thinking about another GUI library change/port until after GIMP 3.6. I think we want to get more features available for users first, so we don't fall into same trap of 2.10 -> 3.0 where we mixed doing both at once.