Gimp on Windows does this and it drives me nuts.
Going to File->Save As... and trying to save to .jpg brings up a dialog box telling me to exit the current Save As dialog and go back to File->Export to save as .jpg. Asinine.
Going to File->Save As... and trying to save to .jpg brings up a dialog box telling me to exit the current Save As dialog and go back to File->Export to save as .jpg. Asinine.
That way it would satisfy both the elitists and the people who just want to do their jobs.
The work flow is really awkward then. You are exporting a jpg from a jpg? Oooookay....
cheers
I think they value developers and people who use their software frequently. As a developer, I love the separation of save and export. They really are separate functions, and the XCF actually saves the export location relative to the original XCF location. It makes working on large projects so much easier.
If I wanted to just do a quick edit to something, Gimp isn't the ideal tool for that job anyways. If I wanted to make it so, selecting export instead of save is really fine, especially since it gives the option in the menu to overwrite whatever JPG you just opened.
And they STILL only have 8 bits per plane (people were whining about this in the 90s ... when Bill Clinton was president), STILL can't remember sub-pixel rendering steps ... other than improved PSD importing, I don't see why.
I'm sure they've put a lot of work into this; but not in the right areas.
Their target audience should be highly technical people that need to do image work and want a tool like vim/emacs/zsh etc but for images; learning curves are ok as long as you can combine simple steps in composable tasks to do amazing things.
I say the same things about all my good tools: "I've been using it for 10+ years, I totally suck at it still, and I would never use anything else". You can say that about paintbrushes, driving, violins, maybe even photoshop or excel; but not gimp.
They were going down that road for a while in the 2.2 or so days, but then they did a 180.
I use their software very frequently, and the biggest frustration with this is that it completely screws with my muscle memory for the Gimp and every other application. I continue using 2.6 because 2.8 is just too frustrating.
When working with images so much that you no longer think about the keyboard and mouse, but you think "Save" and it just happens, a change like this is like rewiring your hand so that all the fingers' nerves are reversed, and you have to get permission from your navel before you can lift your pinky.
If I wanted to just do a quick edit to something, Gimp isn't the ideal tool for that job anyways.
Gimp has always been the ideal tool to just do a quick edit to something, because it's the tool I know. I've been using it for more than a decade. I don't need some new developers to come along and think they know better than me how I use their software. That's Apple's billion dollar job, and even they get it wrong often enough.
If I wanted to make it so, selecting export instead of save is really fine, especially since it gives the option in the menu to overwrite whatever JPG you just opened.
Clearly you're not working fast enough for your fingers to be ahead of your brain. I don't need options, I need my tools not to talk back to me.
I think this is very relevant: http://xkcd.com/1172/
Clearly you're not working fast enough for your fingers to be ahead of your brain. I don't need options, I need my tools not to talk back to me.
If you have any constructive feedback - or better yet, _code_ - make a polite post on their forum or mailing list. No one here cares about your specific workflow.
Actually, you're the only one here vehemently defending the Gimp's new behavior. The other comments seem to prefer Gimp 2.6's Save behavior. But this is getting unnecessarily petty and personal; it's obvious we disagree, and I'll just stick to 2.6 and stop recommending Gimp to people who would otherwise be happy pirating something more expensive.
Edit:
Contempt? What?
Exactly.
Don't take it upon yourself to speak for everyone.
I think people who use their software frequently would take offense to the software telling you to fuck off and go do it a different way.
The intent is obvious, both to the user and the developer. Why make people's lives more difficult for such questionable benefit? MS Paint doesn't have this problem. Photoshop doesn't have this problem. The user knows what they want to do, and they could do it before the change. Why are you getting in their way?
If you really want to destroy your layers and history (which GIMP saves into XCFs) there is a menu option for that. But you almost certainly don't want to do that.
When you save a layered file in a unlayered format photoshop just forces the "Save Aa a Copy" option to be checked and then saves a flattened version while preserving the open one, thus if you then decide to quit without saving a layered version you get a "Are you sure you wish to quit without saving document x?"
The way Photoshop handles it is far superior imho. With gimp iirc even if the file is not layered you still have to do export?
And for many edits, i simply don't want to save layers or history. there's just no point if i'm cropping, converting, re-sizing, or quickly fixing something. If i do then i'll save it as a layered file and layered is by far in the minority. I know what i'm doing i don't need the app to 2nd guess me, and it seems the new workflow is better for people who don't understand the difference between layered and un-layered files.
So what smaller, simpler program (other than Gimp 2.6) has all of Gimp's features, but is suitable for a quick edit? Say I have a .png image stored in a version control system, with no need for layers or history, and I want to do a quick perspective clone to paint over something?
I was so excited when they made it a native app, too.
If Command-E actually brought the window up in front of the rest of the windows instead of hiding it behind the main window, it might have been a different story.
Just my two cents.
For example, I open a jpg and go to save it as a PNG. I select PNG from the drop down list of available types and type the filename, but unless I also add .PNG to the filename it makes a jpg again.