KDE's Painting/Image Program Now Uses OpenGL 3.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE's Painting/Image Program Now Uses OpenGL 3.0

Krita is KDE's painting and image editing program that soon will see its v2.8 release. With this next Krita release there is new usage of OpenGL 3.x within the open-source program. Under the high quality filtering mode, OpenGL 3.0 is now used for delivering a superior painting/imaging experience...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTUzMDI

[Delgarde]

Holy shit, if that's the todo list for 2.10, the next GIMP release seems like years away.

Depends on whether they're actually necessary, I guess. This work represents a port from the old frameworks to GEGL, and while that work is important in terms of new features it enables, I don't think there's any loss of existing functionality while still in progress. So they *could* release a 2.10 without every single one of the filters ported. Some are more important than others, afterall... stuff like brightness/contrast manipulation presumably rates more highly than a random maze renderer.

[dee.]

Paint.net is a really nice image editor for the people with less-than-professional needs (I.E. most computer users).

Paint.net is a piece of crap. There's no serious use case for it, if you need to do anything more complex than what is available at toy programs like mspaint, then you're much better off just using GIMP.

Also, the developer of paint.net is a microsoft fanboy who guards the source code of the program so paranoidly that it's almost impossible for anyone other than a select inner circle to create plugins for the software, as there's no decent documentation of the api or anything, and then he also places silly artificial limitations on what plugins are allowed to do, because they "don't fit his vision" or somesuch crap. It's quite ridiculous. I was using xp at the time, and I finally abandoned paint.net when the developer said that the next version would no longer support windows xp, regardless that xp still had the majority of market share on the windows side back then. Then I switched to gimp, and pretty soon after that, to linux. The culture of freedom around GIMP was so refreshing after all that garbage, that it encouraged me to seek the same freedom in my operating systems as well.

People badmouth gnome and gimp developers for not listening to the users or some crap, but those people are just spoiled, they should go take a look at the small-mindedness of developers of closed-source software to get some perspective...

/rant

Anyway, on topic, it's good to see my favorite painting program getting another update. I'll be looking forward to using it.

Also, to those badmouthing gimp here, Krita may seem like it's ahead of gimp in functionality - and on many areas, it is! But Krita isn't perfect (although it is a great program): it is also suffering from some bugs, there's slowness in other areas - like development of decent documentation, which on the other hand is excellent on the gimp side. There are also some features that are far more advanced on gimp. The point is, that these programs complement each other, they both have their strengths and weaknesses. And GIMP's development is far from static, it may seem slow at times, but GIMP has tended to have a longer release cycle because they dump a huge batch of new features in each new point release - whereas Krita's releases have been much more granular. That's also changing, supposedly - GIMP developers have planned on shortening their release cycle, but we'll have to wait and see how that pans out.

[JanC]

Holy shit, if that's the todo list for 2.10, the next GIMP release seems like years away.

Depends... I think the creation of GEGL and porting of the core of the GIMP to it was slow because it's probably hard to work on that with a lot of developers at the same time, while most of the items on that todo list can be worked on in parallel.

[Temar]

Lots of power in GEGL which requires a lot of time to get right:

http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Hacki...ilters_to_GEGL

Holy shit, if that's the todo list for 2.10, the next GIMP release seems like years away.

[boudewijnrempt]

_I_ really wish...

I really wish that GIMP would have the same pace of development as Krita...

I really wish that people would stop making this kind of comparison... GIMP is one thing, Krita is another. I think the GIMP team is doing a great job implementing their vision, and I think we're doing a great job driving Krita forward. There's the Krita Foundation that manages the Krita Development Fund, which pays a full-time developer at the moment, there's the input from KO GmbH which drives the professional uptake of Krita as well as the Sketch and Gemini projects, we've got a wonderful community of artists who use Krita and give us feedback.

It's our choice to have at least two full releases a year, and that naturally shows off our continued progress. With a stable release every four years, what's being done is invisible during that period. But that's a valid development strategy as well -- a project should choose what fits its culture best.

On the other hand, if you insist on comparing projects, it's a bit silly to claim that Krita's development speed isn't even close to GIMP's. As Ohloh shows, we're in the same ballpark figures of contributors: 73 in the past 12 months for Krita versus 66 for GIMP. It's probably a difference in development model, but we're at about 2500 commits a year, GIMP at 1000. Sure, Krita is part of the Calligra source code repository, but compared to the work done on Krita and for Krita in the shared libraries, the other parts of Calligra barely make a blip. Mypaint has 72 contributors and has about 500 commits in the last year. Pinta 38 all-time developers and 118 commits.

Sure, statistics lie. But then, well, Marc isn't factually correct either when he says "There is a helluva lot more work going into GIMP and GEGL than Krita. Compare Krita to MyPaint."

[Marc Driftmeyer]

I agree.

Why is it that a painting application is developed with such a fast pace whereas an image manipulation program, which probably has a much larger user base, can not find enough developers.

Is it the programming language / toolkit? The project management?

There is a helluva lot more work going into GIMP and GEGL than Krita. Compare Krita to MyPaint.

Gimp stable is now at 2.8.10 and when Gimp 2.10 is released the real ``advances'' people seem to think fly off the shelf with Krita will be clear having a mature and solid GEGL.

Gimp 3.0 is the complete port to GNOME 3.x.

Lots of power in GEGL which requires a lot of time to get right:

http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Hacki...ilters_to_GEGL

Tons of work with OpenCL.

[Bathroom Humor]

Try Kolourpaint; it's the best MS-Paint-alike I've found. Being Qt/KDE really makes it nicer, too.

I used to use that, actually. But it's basically like this
Kolourpaint:Pinta::MsPaint:Paint.net
I like the simplicity, but I also like having some extra goodies at my disposal. That's where Paint.net excels, that and the various add-ons that can be installed for it. Pinta has that sort of potential but needs more contributers.

[woegjiub]

This and Pinta. Paint.net is a really nice image editor for the people with less-than-professional needs (I.E. most computer users). I really hope Pinta can sort of catch up at some point.

Try Kolourpaint; it's the best MS-Paint-alike I've found. Being Qt/KDE really makes it nicer, too.

[Bathroom Humor]

I really wish that GIMP would have the same pace of development as Krita...

This and Pinta. Paint.net is a really nice image editor for the people with less-than-professional needs (I.E. most computer users). I really hope Pinta can sort of catch up at some point.