GIMP 2.9.4 Is Their First Development Release Of 2016 With Many Improvements

[uid313]

Release takes too long time. They don't seem to have enough developers to get all those features done quickly enough.
Maybe they should make a interim release meanwhile with the features that are done.

[Temar]

You have it all reversed in your head. Krita didn't do a kickstarter and then find developers. They had developers in the first place, then they did kickstarter. That's a huge difference.

If you got enough money to pay a full-time developer, I'm sure you will find one.

[eltomito]

Woohoo! I just compiled it and it works! (gegl only needed "./configure --without-libavformat" but otherwise like a charm!)

So, first impressions

1) The dark theme is so ugly! Fortunately, other themes are still there and the system one is great! Just needed to change the icon theme to inverted. It look s great now!

2) The preferences window is taller than my desktop (768px) and it refuses to let me resize it to something smaller. Sure, I can alt-drag it but still, I hate this.

3) I tried to open an .ARW image from a Sony Alpha 6000 and it didn't work (error messages). But at least Gimp tried!
--> Okay, I guess nobody says Gimp can open RAW images. They fixed the raw image loader, not the RAW image loader

4) Setting keyboard shortcuts for Decrease/Increase Brush Size doesn't work. No matter what the shortcut is. This used to work in 2.8.x!
--> Aaah! Just found the solution! It's the "Tool size" shortcut, not "Brush size". Okay!

5) The blend tool is interactive! Yes! More of that!
...
Okay, I need to work now

[Guest]

Actually, gimp releases aren't all that exciting anymore (at least for me), all the "real" improvements moved into GEGL/BABL library, gimp is working towards being little more than just GUI for these frameworks. The exciting stuff is slow migration of legacy gimp code into GEGL code and migration of cpu GEGL onto openCL enabled GEGL code.

Just yesterday I rewrote operations/common/antialias gegl code to support openCL shader and it was quite fun (albeit still not quite sure about RGB + alpha codepath validity*).
While nothing ground breaking really (simple filter), might take a look at some harder tasks in near future (if all things go well and I send RFC to ML).
One thing that still bugs me is brush performance which actually seems have gotten slower over time, albeit im unfamiliar with code that handles this stuff.

Anyways, it's not rocket science, anyone with basic programmer skills can contribute atm (https://github.com/OpenCL/GEGL-OpenCL , https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1386834576 )

[prokoudine]

If you got enough money to pay a full-time developer, I'm sure you will find one.

How much is enough? Krita Foundation doesn't pay Dmitry market-level salary yet. He could get paid more if he worked for a corporation. But he's been with the project for many years (started as a GSoC student) and is extremely loyal. Synfig team hired an external developer, but they also don't pay market-level salary. And it's always a risk.

Another question: who would be organizing the paid development effort? No one in the team has the time for that sort of job.

1) The dark theme is so ugly! Fortunately, other themes are still there and the system one is great! Just needed to change the icon theme to inverted. It look s great now!

The new themes aren't considered complete by the team.

2) The preferences window is taller than my desktop (768px) and it refuses to let me resize it to something smaller. Sure, I can alt-drag it but still, I hate this.

Duly noted, thx.

[Creak]

Release takes tool long time. They don't have enough developers to get all those features done quickly enough.
Maybe they should make a interim release meanwhile with the features that are done.

I too think that an intermediary release wouldn't hurt. From what I see in the roadmap, some features could be postponed to a 2.12 version or maybe even 3.0 (this release doesn't have to be GTK3 only).

[prokoudine]

I too think that an intermediary release wouldn't hurt. From what I see in the roadmap, some features could be postponed to a 2.12 version or maybe even 3.0 (this release doesn't have to be GTK3 only).

There will be no 2.12. Enough is enough

[Creak]

There will be no 2.12. Enough is enough

3.2 then?

[prokoudine]

3.2 then?

I'm fairly certain some features will sneak into 3.0, but at this point noone knows how many or which ones exactly.

F'r instance there are some very cool new selection features in the works that might or might not make it to 2.10 yet. If they won't, 3.0 could be the release to have them.

[Creak]

I am so waiting for that:

Layer effects: bevel/emboss, drop shadow etc., needs complete GEGL port first

Anyway, keep up the good work! Thank you for this app, I really love GIMP!