A first look at GIMP 2.0
Open source Graphics software has been kinda lame except for a couple major projects. One of these is the
GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP. It's a "Photoshop-like" program for painting, manipulating and editing images.
Version 2.0 is due next month and Brice Burgess at
NewsForge takes a sneak look at it complete with screenshots.
bq. A monumental change in GIMP 2.0 is a much-improved text tool. The new tool boasts enhanced font selection and allows for multi-line entries. All changes are immediately reflected on the canvas, making it much easier for designers to preview their text within the image context. Further, you can export text as a path in order to tweak its shape, fill style, or scale.
Other new features:
bq. The rewritten path tool is more intuitive and functional than before. You can export paths to scalable vector graphic (SVG) format, allowing you to import them into vector-based programs such as Adobe Illustrator. The Undo tool has become a favorite of mine. With it, you're now given an overview of the steps (such as selections, fills, and moves) that make up the image, along with the state and a preview of the image as a consequence of a particular step. You can navigate the steps forward and backward in order to return to any point in the editing process. This is an absolute essential for a positive imaging session. Additionally, the "Fill with FG/BG color" choice in the edit menu has a preview of the currently loaded foreground and background colors, so you don't have to look to remember what colors you're working with.
Cool stuff! Also, if you are into working with animations, check out
CinePaint. This started as a fork from GIMPs development, was initially called Film Gimp and is basically a GIMP that handles batch commands on a sequentially numbered set of files (frames in your video). It supports all of the high-resolution HDTV and Film formats.
Posted by DaveH at February 25, 2004 1:09 PM