GIMP Single-Window Mode Almost Ready, Hardware Acceleration Planned
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Of course I've been using GIMP since it was still in it's infancy and I've never used Photoshop, so I didn't have a trouble adjusting.
It's still cool that they implement the single window mode, since it's been one of the prime source of complaints from photoshoppers and people migrating from other software.
But if you can's easily grab and move the floating palettes around, using the GIMP becomes more of an exercise in window positioning than in image manipulation.
Actually, the multi-window interface is much better when you have virtual-desktops (everywhere but Windows) or multiple screens.
Pixelmator on the Mac is a multi-window application (like most Mac apps are) and I don't see anyone complaining about it.
The problems are:
1. GIMP isn't Photoshop;
2. When a window is clicked, all windows should come to the foreground (more precisely, all palettes).
For 1. there's not much that can be done. Whatever the application, if it has to do with graphics, people will complain about this (everyone will complain that it is missing a certain Photoshop feature, up to the total of Photoshop features). At the same time, they will complain about Photoshop itself, and trying to be more like Photoshop isn't going to work, uncanny valley style.
As for 2... It's a window manager problem actually. On the Mac, again, Pixelmator does this just fine and it works great.
My background: I've been using Photoshop for about fifteen years nearly everyday.
Just to be more informed, I decided to download Mac version of GIMP.
What I like: - Feels much more nimble, lightweight
- Seems like it has most of core tools I need
What prevents me from using it: - The interface seems really unfinished. I think that's what I like about Pixelmator: it's polished and looks somewhat similar to Photoshop's layout
- The shortcuts are all different. I'm not even sure I can customize the shortcuts in some of the contexts as even some of the ones in Photoshop are sort of built in. That alone would be a huge deterrent as I rarely click on any interfaces.
- Layer effects and smart objects. I know they are in the Roadmap but without them, I can't re-use elements others or I have made from Photoshop and it does effect image creation.
- Masking is a little kludgy. When I imported my PSDs with shape masking, they all disappeared. Does it support vector masking?
- Doesn't seem to support importing vectors from Illustrator as it automatically outputs some of the elements as raster elements.
- Lack of layer folders.
The whole single-window mode? I think that wouldn't nearly entice me as it's not that much of a deterrent.
It's not just multi-window mode, things like the way the windows are rendered and designed, focus issues, shortcuts, missing features and a lot of other annoyances.
The most disappointing thing is that I'm not even doing intensive graphical work, just retouching some photos, moving things around, resizing, etc.
The fact that such a common use case (almost certainly the most common use case, not to mention Gimp-related irritation, for at least the past decade) has been ignored for so long is disappointing.
I'm not one of those people, but I have a similar background, and GIMP has suited me pretty well for the photo-retouching and website-graphics work I've done.
Most common only if you are coming from a ms-windows background. Click-to-focus is only a relatively recent newcomer to the Unix/X-Windows system in the scheme of how long X-Windows has existed.
And if you ever break out of your ms-windows mindset and actually give focus follows mouse a try, focus follows mouse is actually the more powerful method.
Not this again. Focus-follows-mouse is different, not more powerful. It provides a different way of working that not everyone agrees with and not everyone wants to use.
Seriously, get over yourself.
But it is that very difference that makes it much more powerful of a UI convention.
If you had ever experienced it, you'd understand.
Which gets right to the core of GIMP's marketing problems. For years, users wanted a cheap Photoshop clone ... they got GIMP. Because it's not a near-clone of PS, it hasn't caught on as well outside a small group.
[0] http://sinewalker.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/ms-windows-focus-...
MS Windows is only focus follows mouse.
As for the visual cues, it looks a lot like OS X. Currently focused windows has a highlighted top bar and pronounced shadows and is in front of other windows. As for where the keyboard and mouse events... keyboarrd goes to focused window, mouse goes to where you click. It makes sense.
Not sure what you're talking about...? Maybe plain old click-to-raise like Mac and Windows?
If I mouse to a different window, focus does not follow (like MS). However... if I use the mousewheel, it applies to whatever window is under the mouse. As windsurfer says, this is cool because I can navigate around in one window while keeping my editor typing in another.
However, in disagreement with windsurfer's claim, my middle-click DOES change focus, as with my left- or right-click.
Anyway, I hate full-on sloppy focus, but I sure love this sloppy-mousewheel-focus.
Well, I must say that I haven't seen any other application of its size take the "NO WARRANTY" shouting of the GPL so seriously.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but focus-follows-mouse hasn't been the standard in Unix for quite some time. I don't think it's ever been the default in Gnome or KDE. Is it the default on anything that isn't antiquated and/or super-niche (like FVWM or TWM, etc.)?
But the strict one would be the real focus-follows-mouse: with that you never lose the focus unintentionally since the focus is always under the mouse cursor. With sloppy focus, a newly opened window might of might not steal the focus regardless of the mouse position, and I quite often find myself typing into the wrong window after that.
Does the current version of GIMP finally support non-destructive editing (adjustment layers)?
Is GIMP still too slow for photo retouching?
Layer effects are planned for Gimp 3.2. http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Roadmap
It will be achieved by integrating the GEGL library (http://www.gegl.org/) which enables the use of OpenCL acceleration (http://www.khronos.org/opencl/).
As for slowness, it depends on what kind of retouching you are doing. I'm retouching mobile graphics assets, which are small enough and I haven't seen any lags. I image that things are very different when working with high quality photos...
Another problem that I have is with focus - sometimes the picture window loses input focus to one of the tool windows and then the keyboard shortcuts stop working. I have to click on the window and then use the shortcut, but when clicking the current tool will execute its action (such as paint a black blob in the middle of the layer), so I have to click outside the picture area (might be hard to do) or hunt for the title bar. Furthermore, when the tool windows have focus they control some of the widgets in the tool window, popping up subwindows or changing settings by accident.
Yet another issue is text editing and selection. GIMP does not allow me to do live text-editing, instead it pops up a dialog box and I have to adjust the actual text rect in the background. Every time I click the text rect to adjust it the tool windows flicker into view for 0.5 seconds, very annoying. Selections are significantly harder to control compared to Photoshop, where you can do pretty much anything to a selection just by using the mouse and one or two keys.
General UI problems:
* dialogs that are too small
* dialogs popping up over other dialogs
* many dialogs that cover the image when shown and I have to move them out of the way
* dialogs that sometimes remember their position, sometimes show up at apparently random locations
* tool windows exiting the screen
* tool fields that just look like they were thrown together without any thought to spacing, grouping and alignment (check out the rectangle select or the almost invisible spinner arrows for the layer transparency)
* the layers tool window is especially difficult to use with a mouse (dragging & dropping, ordering, linking)
* tools that reset their settings (e.g: move tool rests to pick a layer to move instead of move active)
* general disregard for UI design that makes the UI look crowded (e.g layers tab icons)
* the design choice of clipping layers to the visible image area, forcing you to resize the canvas and the layers unnecessarily
I could go on and on and on. I can't remember using GIMP even once without being annoyed by something in the UI that breaks my work flow.
The features I miss the most are adjustments layers, layer grouping (this is so painful when working with a lot of layers).
(History aside, they're actually acting like they care about their users as of late, and good on them for it. It certainly took long enough.)
I will wait for it to become available and then write a small list with the issues and try to send it to the mailing list/bugzilla.
The problem I've had (and the most common one I've seen) is that people use gimp 15% of the time and don't learn it's flow, then get frustrated because it's not photoshop's flow.
I've done full-time in both gimp and photoshop and decided, for now, to stick with photoshop. Too many niggly UI issues (like the GP mentioned) in gimp (not that photoshop is great, but it is at least reasonably consistent). Same reason I'm on a Mac instead of Linux (after doing full-time Linux, too).
Personally, I just haven't managed to get into Pixelmator, I always try, then end up running back to GIMP, and I'm not a heavy user of the program by any means, though I did do all the FemCal art in it.
The biggest fix to GIMP right now should be to get 16-bit color depth working. 12-bit isn't a huge problem for me, but I can understand it holding people back who are doing lots of photo manipulation.
Not hiding the palettes when the last gimp window was minimized. Minimize -> d'oh! -> unminimize -> secret key shortcut[1] -> minimize again. Older versions used to hide them with any image window being minimized, so it was minimize#1 -> sigh -> minimize#2 -> unminimize#2 back then.
Placing the toolboxes at x,0 by default so they were underneath the taskbar/menubar. I keep my taskbar on top on Windows, and I'm glad I know about Alt+Space there.
Not having the image window's keyboard shortcuts work when a tool window is focused, for which I know no workaround.
Having the tool windows appear in the Alt+Tab list.
Actually, I can think of one more that was remedied with 2.0: the menu used to be hidden. You could right-click the image or hit the ">" button at the corner of the rulers, but it took me a long time to figure out how to save my first image.
[1] TAB. I think its action is finally available in the menus, and the shortcut displayed with it, in 2.7.x.