Am I wrong to hate GIMP 4.8?


Results 1 to 15 of 15

Thread: Am I wrong to hate GIMP 4.8?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435

    Am I wrong to hate GIMP 4.8?

    My main gripe is that when I edit an image, the filetype always reverts to xcf, so I have to export it back to jpeg, and that's an extra step. And I can't change my filetype just by typing in the extension like I used to with Gimp 4.6, I have to use the "export" menu, and that's an extra step. And a lot of the time, I have to backtack to get back to the "file" menu, which is an extra step backwards. And I still haven't seen anything about 4.8 that I prefer.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Rochester, MN
    Posts
    3,604
    I haven't tried it yet, but if that's how it works I'm not going to be a fan either.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    New Orleans, LA USA
    Posts
    986
    That behavior is intentional...

    As with most things, this should be toggle behavior instead of a forced change.
    Last edited by trilarian; 09-05-2012 at 03:12 PM.
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

    -Mark Twain

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Rochester, MN
    Posts
    3,604
    Quote Originally Posted by trilarian View Post
    That behavior is intentional...

    As with most things, this should be toggle behavior instead of a forced change.
    Hmm, I'm actually quite okay with the logic behind having a separate export function. That's something that has bitten me a few times doing artwork for my game - I create a complex image full of layers, but have to save it as png for use in the game, then forget to save it back as xcf and lose all of the layer information. So the new functionality I approve of.

    It sounds like it might have some rough edges though, most notably that the old save behavior should still be available if I want it. If I want to get pestered by the "you're about to save in an inferior format" message that's my business, and that way there is no huge disconnect from what was happening before to what is happening now. I guess the shortcut change in the link does essentially that, but I shouldn't have to be messing with that to get the old functionality back (nor to have the mouse wheel zoom in and out of the image, but I digress ).

    Edit: I'm curious, is there a way to tell it to automatically export each time you save? That would be ideal for me - set the export filename once and then just save as normal but have it save to both files.
    Last edited by cybertron; 09-05-2012 at 04:51 PM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    Well, that's very helpful... but it's not very helpful.

    In other words, GIMP used to assume that you don't mind accidental loss of unrecoverable project data and bothered you with confirmation dialogs. It was a convoluted logic, but people got used to it.
    Really? It seems to me that gimp used to assume that if I started out editing a jpeg file, I was going to want a jpeg file at the end of it. That's not convoluted at all. And it IS convoluted logic to assume that I'd rather have my file changed to another format than to have to click though a confirmation dialogue.

    I already knew that xcf was the only format that could save all the information from all of my layers, and I made the choice that I made. I'm working on a video project where I make changes on thousands of individual frames, and If GIMP 4.8 means that for every frame I'm going to have to go through six or seven additional steps just to export my jpeg file back into a jpeg file, I'll be sticking with GIMP 4.6.

    What I'm reading here is that GIMP is aiming at professional users, so what I want may not even matter anymore.

    Everyone who posted in this thread agrees with me; the old save behavior should be an option. I don't doubt that this is the way it's going to be in the end. In the meantime, GIMP 4.6 is still awesome and available.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 09-05-2012 at 08:28 PM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    N California
    Posts
    951
    Saving to the programs native format by default makes sense to me. I wish it would have been this way since the beginning. Would have saved me hours of time. Even in the short time that's it's been out it's saved me numerous times from losing the original working copy. I never get graphics right the first time.

    It's been more difficult to get used to the single window feature. This was big change in the 4.8 release. I wanted to like it but I keep going back to docks. I'm still undecided on this feature.

    There are more serious bugs in the actual manipulation of graphics and text. Decorating and manipulating text is so bad that I keep another Linux install on my machine with Gimp 4.6 just for working with text. Bugs are filed, I await the fix.

    Some big changes were instituted in 4.8. I think it still needs some work.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    Saving to the programs native format by default makes sense to me. I wish it would have been this way since the beginning. Would have saved me hours of time. Even in the short time that's it's been out it's saved me numerous times from losing the original working copy. I never get graphics right the first time.
    What you're saying is that backing up is a good idea. There needs no ghost from the grave to tell us this, but you could always back up your image with GIMP. The question is whether the point of editing an image is to create an image, or to create a backup. I'm under the impression that the the XCF format can be viewed nowhere but in GIMP. An XFC file isn't an image file. It's a backup.

    To save a jpg, i used to close the window, get a prompt to save, and save. What drives me crazy is that the convoluted process of exporting a jpg and closing gimp involves saving the files, then clicking on "close without saving". The idea of clicking on "close without saving" while saving a file is so counter-intuitive that it's almost physically painful for me.

    What would work for me is a way to export files from one format to another in bulk.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 09-06-2012 at 05:43 AM.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Rochester, MN
    Posts
    3,604
    Quote Originally Posted by blackbelt_jones View Post
    What would work for me is a way to export files from one format to another in bulk.
    While I expected there to be an easier way, it looks like you can do that with xcf's: http://billauer.co.il/blog/2009/07/g...t-bash-script/

    If you're converting between other formats, you can use the ImageMagick convert command too, but when I tried that on an xcf I got weird results so I wouldn't trust it for that. Maybe for an xcf with only one layer though.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    There's a command line application called xcf2png, part of a package called xcftools. It hasn't been upgraded since 2009. I've been trying to complie it for slackware14, and VfectorLinux7, without success so far, but I seem to have gotten it installed through apt-get on my Kubuntu Box.

    Honestly, if I can bulk export all of my hundreds of files from xcf to png or jpeg (I don't care which), saving files to xcf by default works fine for me. If I can do it without a lot of added clicking for each image, I'd love to have an XCF backup.

    But I still I have a problem with what I perceive as GIMP becoming less intuitive to court "professional" users. For ten years, I've been trying to make a contribution to the community by encouraging and helping other people to try Linux, and I'm going to have to tell them about this. I don't blame the GIMP developers for wanting to be taken seriously, but the whole community depends on this great application.

    However, as a veteran of the KDE4 wars, I'm pretty sure that this is going to work out, and I intend to spend as little time as possible in a state of enragement. All the flaming that's been going on at that GIMP link is part of the process of self-correction. Free software development works, but it doesn't always work smoothly.
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 09-06-2012 at 09:57 PM.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    If they wanted to change the “save” default, that would be inconvenient, but not maddening. But there no longer is such a thing as “saving as JPEG”. In GIMP 4.8, you can only “save” in xcf, you can only “save as” in xcf. You have to go to an entirely different menu: “export” to choose a file image.

    So when I export my file to JPEG, Gimp doesn’t consider my file saved. So when I close the window, I get a confirmation dialogue:

    “Close without saving?”

    This drives me crazy. I’m being asked if I want to close the file THAT I JUST SAVED without saving! Everything in my being makes me stop when I see that question, and rightly so.

    When I was saving my file as JPEG, I used to get a warning that I’m going to lose some data. I stopped reading those years ago. Anyone with an IQ over 75 understands that he’s going to lose data when turning two layers into one layer. I just hit “Enter” and I’m through.

    But this “close without saving” thing, applied to something that I want to save, stops me dead in my tracks. I can’t just breeze through that. It’s painfully confusing. When I’m trying to do a lot of these at one time very fast, it’s kind of tortuous.

    And what happens when I get used to it? What if I start clicking on “Close without saving” without really thinking about it?

    And the reason why they’re doing this is to avoid bothering me with confirmation dialogues?
    Last edited by blackbelt_jones; 09-06-2012 at 10:28 PM.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    Rochester, MN
    Posts
    3,604
    Quote Originally Posted by blackbelt_jones View Post
    And the reason why they’re doing this is to avoid bothering me with confirmation dialogues?
    Yeah, I think that's probably the thing that bothers me most about this change. Sure, the save warnings were annoying, but that could have easily been fixed without adding a (slightly terrifying) warning that you haven't saved your work every time you exit. That said, it shouldn't be impossible to fix the problem - just track whether the image was opened originally as a png/jpg/etc and don't display the warning if it was already saved as the original format. Maybe it already does that, but if not it should.

    Hopefully this will turn out to be just the .0 syndrome of software development and they will work out the warts in 4.8.1 or what have you.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    Four years ago, I was angry about KDE4, the changes that were being made to undermine my beloved Konqueror. I remember all the energy I devoted to complaining about that. Today, not only is KDE4 not that bad, but I still use KDE3 all the time. It's on my old thinkpad, running just fine on Slackware 13.37. It's on my live CD, KIARA. It's also officially supported by opensuse.

    So the answer is YES, I AM wrong to hate GIMP 4.8, because hating anything that you can avoid is a waste of energy, but I am right to not want to use it. There's no way on earth GIMP 4.8 is easier for me I'm sure that I'll be able to keep using GIMP 4.6 for years..If that's what I want to do. Maybe it will turn out that for my next project, GIMP 4.8 is easier.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    Also, I'm wrong to hate Gimp 4.8 because there's no such thing. I meant Gimp 2.8, duh.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    New Orleans, LA USA
    Posts
    986
    I don't hate it, but it is annoying. Especially from the stand point I'm beyond just being used to the old behavior - it is ingrained muscle memory. So what used to be a key sequence I shoot out without any thought now is an abrupt stop that forces me to think and "figure out how" every time I save & close.

    I'm not against the change if it was the new default, but you could set it to old behavior through settings. Or a 'smart' behavior that remembers input/starting extension to toggle between old and new behavior (option to force new or old would be nice). Some more logic couldn't hurt... why would opening a .jpg and removing some pixels off the bottom (crop) be grounds for converting to xcf - a format most other programs can't understand (nothing gained for portability loss). I left Windows and avoided Mac because they kept trying to tell me how to use my computer and that their way was better.

    In the end, I've found I didn't revert to an older version of gimp and I didn't get used to the new sequence either. I did start using xpaint instead when I need to make a quick change or crop.
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

    -Mark Twain

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    Binghamton NY
    Posts
    2,435
    It's just bad luck, I suppose, that I'm doing a project that involves thousands of jpg edits with very few layers. It's just a ridiculous hardship in my case, and that's why I'm back with 2.6, but my case is special. If i was doing a different kind of project, the change would be tolerable.


    But I do think it's pretty dumb. I read about this change described as "simplifying", and it seems like that appraisal comes from the point of view of the machine, and not the user.

    And this attitude that GIMP is made for professional, not casual users, seems especially dumb. I mean, professional users come from nonprofessional users, and I think their first impulse is going to be to use what they learned on..

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •