Re: [Gimp-developer] suggestions

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 04/04/2016 12:28 PM, Øyvind Kolås wrote:
> One of the primary reason some of us have has as motivation for
> working on GEGL and its integration in GIMP for more than a decade is
> not high bit depth support, but non-destructive editing features like
> "adjustment layers" and "smart objects".  As has been communicated
> repeatedly; GIMP-2.10 and 3.0 are planned to have feature parity with
> GIMP-2.8, and let the integration of GEGL as well as GEGL itself
> mature with that - before experimenting with more non-destructive
> features; non destructive user experiences with GEGL are - and have
> been - experimented with outside the GIMP code base.

This is a very interesting statement.

Nondestructive editing is important.

But what about the ability to edit in color spaces other than sRGB? Is 
this less or more of a priority than nondestructive editing?

Perhaps most of the people who currently use GIMP are satisfied with sRGB.

I rather suspect there's a lot of people who would love to use high bit 
depth GIMP, who absolutely have no intention of doing all their editing 
the sRGB color space.

What is a necessary feature in an image editor of course varies from 
person to person. Given a choice between PhotoShop and today's high bit 
depth GIMP, I choose GIMP, no hesitation. But that's because:

1. I get around the "sRGB only" issue by patching and building a 
modified copy of GIMP that is "Rec2020 only".

2. PhotoShop wasn't (and I'm told still isn't) really equipped to handle 
linear gamma image editing because of the quantization used for the 
Curves and Levels UI (this applies to 16-bit integer editing, I'm not 
sure what's going on with 32f editing in PhotoShop).

3. PhotoShop doesn't have GIMP's incredibly useful LCH blend modes.

4. I'm not a professional and don't have a high volume workflow. So not 
having macros and adjustment layers doesn't stand nearly as much in my 
way as it would if I had deadlines to meet.

5. Any chance that I would ever switch back to PhotoShop ended with 
Adobe's Creative Cloud:

    * I find the idea that the artist's own work should be locked into 
a proprietary file format such as PhotoShop's PSD to be extremely 
distasteful. Adobe's move to the cloud has made this issue of who 
controls access to the artist's work crucially important.

    * The Creative Cloud license agreement is onerous and one-sided 
(http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2013/20130508_1a-Adobe-legal-agreement.html). 


    * Once the artist stops paying the subscription fee, she loses 
access to the software that unlocks the proprietary PSD format that 
contains her creative work 
(https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1206477?start=0&tstart=0).

Reason number 5 above is why it seems to me that it's very important 
that GIMP be a viable alternative for would-be PhotoShop Creative Cloud 
refugees.

I understand that there are not enough GIMP developers to make changes 
in GIMP happen quickly.

I understand that it might be years before GIMP has macros and 
adjustment layers.

What I don't understand is why the ability to edit images in the RGB 
working space of the user's choice seems to be a low-priority item.

Best,
Elle