Re: [Gimp-developer] GIMP's future internal image data format

[Bogdan Szczurek <thebodzio gmail com>]

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> As an artist that does a lot of hand drawing i noticed the problems of
> the 8 bit limit very quickly. Just use the smudge tool and you will see
> any color, but not the intended colors (rounding errors=new colors).
> Same goes for the blur brush. Ever tried to to blur larger areas with
> it? Guess not, since it doesn't work. If the gradient is flat enough it
> won't blur anymore, since it is just one step away from actually
> switching a bit in the result. That are very common cases that really
> would profit from higher color resolutions.

Naah ;) you've misunderstood me – I wasn't defending the idea of "8bit 
as ultimate solution for all", just pointing out that example from 
linked article was a bit… flimsy ;).

> Another thing is color conversion. RGB, as displayed on screen, is not
> linear

So is human vision (with regard to lumination) – gamma is our ally.

> and therefore adding light to an image while computing Rx = Ra+Rb
> is very different from actual visual perception. The user should work
> with sRGB, while internally it should compute in linear color space for
> better results. That would be prefect for retouching of images.
>
> A side note: I currently stumbled upon myPaint.

Know it, like it :).

> A very basic and simple
> drawing program, specialized for tablets. But at the moment it has three
> advantages over Gimp, that makes me use it instead of Gimp, even so i
> still use Gimp.
>
> * The first thing is the higher color precession. It uses 16 bit
> internally which makes many things (gradients, brushes, ...) better 
to use.
> * The second thing is the brush system in it's own. It's relatively easy
> to configure new brushes and they can have many useful effects.
> * The third thing is the unlimited canvas. It will just allocate the
> areas you draw on. No fixed page limits and no hassle to resize layers.
> Just draw and the image will get as large as you want it.

Actually, I find that lack of scale – mind you: "lack of scale" not 
"limitless canvas" per se – a bit… limiting. It's harder to make e.g. 
illustration that is ot be printed on specified area. I'd love to have 
more "real-world-like" sizes (canvas, brush sizes, resolution, 
parameters). But thats me, and not the exact list for that ;), besides I 
presume somebody touched that earlier, and the authors are well aware of 
both pros and cons of it.

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My best to all!
thebodzio