[ul1984]

i noticed Gimp2 is out as a .dmg, with drag and drop installtion.

gimp-app.sourceforge.net

anyone with some photoshop knowledge, gave this a try? if so how does it compare?

[Krypton]

Yay! I've been waiting for a non 'compile it yourself stupid' release for ages.

v1.3 was pretty fantastic compared to 1.25, and very good compared to PS Elements, although of course not quite as polished and or usuable.

[mitchell_pgh]

Amazing application for open source, but it's not even in the same ballpark as Adobe. If it does what you need it to do, then why spend $700, but if you are a "pro", you go with Photoshop.

My issues:

- The X11 component is limiting as many will not have it installed.

- I don't think it has CMYK support, so that eliminates all print work.

It also doesn't have the filters that come standard with Adobe.

Again, an amazing application... perhaps some day it will be good enough to use in a design environment full time.

[wataru]

I have it on my disk; I played around with it a bit, but a lot of the time was spent wondering "so how the hell do I do <function>?" I'm sure you'd get used to it, but the transition from PS is a bit bumpy.

It works, though, and I think I'll try to use it more. I'm certainly no pro, so maybe I it can replace PS for my uses.

[bierslayer]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:


- I don't think it has CMYK support, so that eliminates all print work.

Would you be so kind as to elaborate on this point? I'm not clear on what this means.

-Cheers

[wataru]

Originally posted by bierslayer:
Would you be so kind as to elaborate on this point? I'm not clear on what this means.

-Cheers

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but CMYK mode is where the colors in your files are saved as combinations of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK (as opposed to RGB: Red, Green, and Blue). RGB is more suited to graphics designed only to be viewed on a computer (because each pixel in your monitor has a Red, Green, and Blue component) but in printing it's much more economical(?) to use CMYK inks. So for work that is to be printed, CMYK is a necessity. I guess.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by wataru:
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but CMYK mode is where the colors in your files are saved as combinations of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK (as opposed to RGB: Red, Green, and Blue). RGB is more suited to graphics designed only to be viewed on a computer (because each pixel in your monitor has a Red, Green, and Blue component) but in printing it's much more economical(?) to use CMYK inks. So for work that is to be printed, CMYK is a necessity. I guess.

Now keep in mind that I am a slightly colorblind non-graphics guy. So I could have this messed up, but here's how I understand it.

The additive primary colors are red, blue, and green. These are the colors that are picked up by the cones in our eyes (for some of us, less strongly than they ought to ). Dyes that are red appear that way because they reflect red light and absorb the other primary colors - i.e. blue and green. Similarly, blue dyes are blue because they absorb red and green and reflect blue. And so on.

You can make other colors by combining light of the additive primary colors. For example, red light + blue light = magenta light. Red light and green light make yellow light, and finally blue light and green light make cyan light. However, for dyes it works a bit differently. With dyes, you want to use cyan, magenta, and yellow. The reason for this is because of the fact that dyes absorb light. Cyan, for example, absorbs red light and reflects both blue and green light, causing you to see cyan. Magenta absorbs green and reflects red and blue. Therefore, if you combine cyan and magenta dye, you add their absorbing qualities together and get something that absorbs both red and green. The color that's left is blue, and that gets reflected. So for dyes, cyan + magenta = blue, yellow + magenta = red, and cyan + yellow = green. For this reason, cyan, magenta, and yellow are called the subtractive primary colors, and those are the dyes you want to have in your printer - cyan, magenta, and yellow - CMY. I have no idea what the K stands for, though, but I'm sure someone will pop in here and explain it to us shortly.

[Rickster]

K is black. Printing with CMY inks alone tends to not produce good contrast and definition, so the black component is added.

[shortcipher]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
I have no idea what the K stands for, though, but I'm sure someone will pop in here and explain it to us shortly.

I believe the K stands for Key, black being the colour used in printing for the thin key lines used to register the colours together. This is necessary as each colour: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are printed in separate passes, so in order to make sure that each plate is correctly aligned a series of crosshairs are printed around the edge of the print, and then the other colours are lined up with these "key lines".

[hadocon]

Originally posted by shortcipher:
I believe the K stands for Key, black being the colour used in printing for the thin key lines used to register the colours together. This is necessary as each colour: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black are printed in separate passes, so in order to make sure that each plate is correctly aligned a series of crosshairs are printed around the edge of the print, and then the other colours are lined up with these "key lines".

It means blacK

[Millennium]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
The X11 component is limiting as many will not have it installed.

The disk image comes with .webloc files which lead you straight to the download. From there, it's literally just a couple of mouseclicks away and you're done.
[quote]I don't think it has CMYK support, so that eliminates all print work.[/qyote]
Basic CMYK support is introduced in 2.0. It's not great yet, but the basics are in place and development on this is continuing.

It also doesn't have the filters that come standard with Adobe.

Examples? Honest curiosity here; what in particular is missing??

This is not to say that the GIMP is perfect yet, of course. It desperately needs a native Mac frontend, though as I understand it this is no longer a complete impossibility. The backend was retooled so that other frontends could be created for it, and the possibility of an OSX-native frontend has been mentioned in the past. Even the existing interface, though, is a vast improvement over the 1.x interface (though it's still stuck with the awful menu-in-a-window paradigm).

[MacGorilla]

The Gimp will never win awards for its interface. Its a nightmare. That said, once you use it and get used to the way it works, its a very powerful app.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Even the existing interface, though, is a vast improvement over the 1.x interface (though it's still stuck with the awful menu-in-a-window paradigm).

Hey, at least the menu-in-a-window paradigm is better than the functions-only-found-in-a-hierarchial-contextual-menu paradigm that it used to have... shudder...

[Krypton]

Originally posted by Rickster:
K is black. Printing with CMY inks alone tends to not produce good contrast and definition, so the black component is added.

It is my understanding that 'K' is a special ink that cannot be produced well with only C, Y and M - thus usually it is black (for print work) but it can also be orange for example (another colour that is difficult to produce with only cyan, yellow and magenta).

[wataru]

It now says Gimp.app is 2.0 final, not 2.0rc1. FYI.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Hey, at least the menu-in-a-window paradigm is better than the functions-only-found-in-a-hierarchial-contextual-menu paradigm that it used to have... shudder...

Oh, I agree completely. GIMP 1.0 may well have had the single worst interface of any program I'd ever seen. 1.2 was something of an improvement -at least they added a button- but still awful. This is leaps and bounds better, even if it's not yet as good as it could be.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Krypton:
It is my understanding that 'K' is a special ink that cannot be produced well with only C, Y and M - thus usually it is black (for print work) but it can also be orange for example (another colour that is difficult to produce with only cyan, yellow and magenta).

You should theoretically be able to get a true black with only C, M, and Y, but it's never really worked very well in practice. Even the best modern inks still yield a murky brownish color when you try. Thus, the key color is usually black, because it's so hard to produce and at the same time such a common color.

[shortcipher]

Originally posted by hadocon:
It means blacK

no it really does mean Key, coincidentally there is also a K in black, which is kind of nice as it helps you remember it, they could have used B for Black, which would have been slightly confusing for those who know RGB, but CMYK is much older than RGB (in common designer language anyway), predating computer based DTP by quite some time I would think, so I don't think that was really the reason.

[larkost]

K may have been any color at one point, but with press houses now it always (in my experience) refers to a standard black. If you want other colors then you do them as spot colors (and pay through the nose for the extra plates).

On the subject of GIMP. It is a nice start, and there is limited support for CMYK in the newest version. But it is a long way from being ready for press work. I am starting to use it for my web work (along with Sopodi), and hopefully some day we won't have to pay for Photoshop for every computer in the department.

[wataru]

Originally posted by shortcipher:
they could have used B for Black, which would have been slightly confusing for those who know RGB

K is very commonly used for black. Look at the part number of just about anything that comes in black (and other colors). B almost always means Blue.

[monkeybrain]

I don't think x11 should put people off. I just installed nicotine easily by following the instructions step by step, and have no experience of unix or anything. This has spurred me on to try openoffice as well.

On a not too unrelated question, does anyone know how I can install themes into x11 to improve it's interface a bit?

[Scifience]

Originally posted by Rickster:
K is black. Printing with CMY inks alone tends to not produce good contrast and definition, so the black component is added.

I prefer to think of it as Kuro, the Japanese name for the color black.

[wataru]

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
I just installed nicotine

Juh? What's that?

By the way, if you want to use OpenOffice.org on OS X, I highly recommend you take a look at NeoOffice/J instead. It's OO.o in a Java wrapper so it acts more like a regular OS X app.

[JKT]

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
I don't think x11 should put people off. I just installed nicotine easily by following the instructions step by step, and have no experience of unix or anything. This has spurred me on to try openoffice as well.

On a not too unrelated question, does anyone know how I can install themes into x11 to improve it's interface a bit?

As mentioned above, if you want to try OOo, you're now better off using NeoOffice/J which runs natively in OS X, uses the OS X fonts, and printing mechanisms - it just looks like an X11 app (i.e. it's ugly).

Currently it lacks drag and drop support to OS X apps, but copy/paste works and so far I have had no problems at all with the current version 0.8.2.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
I don't think x11 should put people off. I just installed nicotine easily by following the instructions step by step, and have no experience of unix or anything. This has spurred me on to try openoffice as well.

Here's the reason x11 puts me off. You can't copy and paste between X11 apps and Carbon/Cocoa apps. That's the death knell for the thing as far as I'm concerned.

[Krypton]

Anyone know where to find the Wacom Gimp plug-in? I know one exists, but would probably assume that there's no Mac version.

[Sven G]

BTW, the GIMP site has a new Mac OS X section:

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh

[loren s]

does anyone know how to make it so you do not have to double click every single window to activate a tool ? And the filters custom boxes take a long time to load when the filter has ran all ready. But even then I have to press the filter twice to make it work.

[wataru]

Originally posted by loren s:
does anyone know how to make it so you do not have to double click every single window to activate a tool ? And the filters custom boxes take a long time to load when the filter has ran all ready. But even then I have to press the filter twice to make it work.

You aren't really double-clicking the tools; you're clicking once to bring the toolbar into focus, and then once more to activate the tool. I agree, it's annoying, but I don't know that there is any way around it.

You could always use right-click for everything

[ul1984]

Originally posted by loren s:
does anyone know how to make it so you do not have to double click every single window to activate a tool ? And the filters custom boxes take a long time to load when the filter has ran all ready. But even then I have to press the filter twice to make it work.

run this command

Code:
defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm true

and if you regret it and want to undo it

Code:
defaults delete com.apple.x11 wm_ffm

[ul1984]

The commands in my last post enabled and disabled "focus follows mouse", which solves the problem, but makes the X11 apps behave less mac like, this may be a better solution

run this command

Code:
defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_click_through true

and if you regret it and want to undo it

Code:
defaults delete com.apple.x11 wm_click_through

[loren s]

Originally posted by ul1984:
The commands in my last post enabled and disabled "focus follows mouse", which solves the problem, but makes the X11 apps behave less mac like, this may be a better solution

run this command

Code:
defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_click_through true

and if you regret it and want to undo it

Code:
defaults delete com.apple.x11 wm_click_through

Ok sweet! Now is there a command to speed up the time thjat the option windows appear ? Like if I try to save an image it takes a minute full minute for the optins window for the jpeg dialog to appear just to save the image. I have tested it on a very fast computer so it is the same on any of them... Something is just wrong there.

[ul1984]

Originally posted by loren s:
Ok sweet! Now is there a command to speed up the time thjat the option windows appear ? Like if I try to save an image it takes a minute full minute for the optins window for the jpeg dialog to appear just to save the image. I have tested it on a very fast computer so it is the same on any of them... Something is just wrong there.

same thing happens for me, no idea why

[MacGorilla]

Hmmm...I don't have any problems with that. Odder.

[monkeybrain]

Originally posted by wataru:
Juh? What's that?

Nicotine is a soulseek client that works rather well.

Thanks for the tip on neooffice, I'll give it a look.

Do you think they'll ever implement copy/paste properly?

[wataru]

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
Nicotine is a soulseek client that works rather well.

Thanks for the tip on neooffice, I'll give it a look.

Do you think they'll ever implement copy/paste properly?

What's wrong with copy/paste now?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by wataru:
What's wrong with copy/paste now?

You can't copy and paste in and out of GIMP to Cocoa or Carbon apps such as GraphicConverter, etc. X11 seems to have its own, separate pasteboard.

[Cadaver]

Downloaded Gimp2, played with it for a bit, then deleted it.
However, if I was using a Linux machine, I'd definitely keep it - or at least until someone convinces Adobe to bring Photoshop to Linux.

[wataru]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
You can't copy and paste in and out of GIMP to Cocoa or Carbon apps such as GraphicConverter, etc. X11 seems to have its own, separate pasteboard.

Haha, oops. I thought you were talking about NeoOffice/J. I've been following its development for a while, and its copy and paste support is now very good.

[MacGorilla]

You can cut and paste between X11 apps and Cocoa. In an X11 app, just go to edit-->copy then in Cocoa use apple-v to paste (The edit/paste menu doesn't always work). I haven't had any problems.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
You can cut and paste between X11 apps and Cocoa. In an X11 app, just go to edit-->copy then in Cocoa use apple-v to paste (The edit/paste menu doesn't always work). I haven't had any problems.

Doesn't work when I try to copy/paste into or out of the GIMP.

[Apfhex]

Am I the only one having problems with this? I downloaded the Gimp.app package, but when it opens in X11 it presents me with a configuration dialogue of some sort, but I can't see any of what's contained in the window, so I have no idea what I'd be doing if I just clicked the OK button (which is also blank) until it did whatever it want's to do

[slow moe]

It's been removed from Apple's OS X Downloads section.

[krove]

Why RGB versus CMYK? I'm surprised no one answered this one more completely.

RGB is for monitors. The visible spectrum of colors can be represented by the combination of transmittances of red, green, and blue. Transmission (or emission in the case of some monitor types) occurs when the white back light of an LCD passes through a color filter to give some red, green or blue value. Any combination of three different wavelengths can accomplish this, but these three are closest to the maximum absorption of the three color cone pigments in our eyes, I believe.

CMYK, on the other hand, is for print. The visible spectrum of colors can also be represented and interpretted by our eyes through the combination of three dyes that reflect specific colors. (That is, they absorb one part of the visible spectrum and reflect the rest.) Black is just added to give a true black on top of the mixing of cyan, magenta and yellow.

To summarize: These two different color mixing schemes are required because the types of media (screen and print) each relies on either transmission of light or reflection of light.

[bierslayer]

Thanks krove! That was a very helpful explanation.

Cheers!

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Downloaded Gimp2, played with it for a bit, then deleted it.
However, if I was using a Linux machine, I'd definitely keep it - or at least until someone convinces Adobe to bring Photoshop to Linux.

Adobe did offer a Linux version of Photoshop, some years ago. They don't anymore -I think PS4 was the last version they ported- but it existed.

[Fothb]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Adobe did offer a Linux version of Photoshop, some years ago. They don't anymore -I think PS4 was the last version they ported- but it existed.

Do you have any links regarding this Photoshop port? As someone whose being using Linux since "some years ago", I don't ever remember seeing this and I'd be thrilled to find it were true. The only applications I remember Adobe porting were Acrobat Reader and Framemaker, and the Framemaker project was scrapped. If they actually did plan and succeed at a Photoshop port, I'd be blown away. Plenty of people have gotten Photoshop to work under WINE but that's just with the Windows version of the software and not a port. If you can find any more info on this, let me know so I can try to obtain a copy and play around with it.

[Krypton]

Anyone know of a mirror for 2.0 final?

[sushiism]

photoshop was more of a unix port, could get it on SGI machines and yep was around version 3/4

[MacGorilla]

I have it and its OK. Nothing to write home about.