Re: [Gimp-user] [Gimp-developer] GIMP-2.10 and GIMP2.99 are still sRGB-only image editors

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 2/4/21 11:27 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine via gimp-user-list wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 3:00 AM Elle Stone wrote:
>
> > Participating in GIMP development used to be challenging and enjoyable.
> > But over the last couple of years my interest in and patience with the
> > slow pace of progress regarding GIMP color management have dwindled to
> > the point of disappearing altogether.
>
> Two years ago we had three active developers hacking on GIMP like
> there was no tomorrow.
>
> We lost one of them entirely, it seems, and another one is mostly
> preoccupied with family business, so we are down to one active
> developer and a few new active contributors. We are also approaching
> the end of very long and tiresome work on refactoring which is not
> done yet. Also, a lot of time of that one active developer was spent
> figuring out ways to make development of GIMP sustainable (no details
> at this point in time, sorry). So yes, there are several critical
> areas where help is needed. Color management is clearly one of them.
>
> I guess if you adjust your expectations accordingly, you will see that
> there is no acting in bad faith here.

Alexandre, I'm not sure why you felt obligated to introduce the idea of 
"acting in bad faith". It has not escaped my notice that various 
developers have cut back or ceased altogether from participating in GIMP 
development. I'm not even completely unaware of some of the reasons.

Life happens, sometimes good, sometimes not good. Speaking for myself, I 
knew two years ago that I had a limited timeframe in which to hopefully 
help bring GIMP color management to the state of being reliable for 
color spaces other than sRGB. My family is dealing with some serious 
problems, has been for a long time now and will be for the foreseeable 
future.

It's good to hear that someone on the team is trying to figure out how 
to make GIMP development sustainable. Hopefully that effort includes 
figuring out how to prioritize goals based on the editing needs of 
potential and actual users.

To the members of the GIMP team who've worked with me over the years on 
various color-management/color-science topics - you know who you are, so 
I won't name any names - you went out of your way to help with my coding 
efforts and you made me feel like a part of the team - that meant a lot. 
Thank you.

Speaking of "thank you", Michael Schumacher's "Concepts: Color Science" 
tag will be a big help to whichever current or future devs turn their 
attention to making GIMP finally be fully and reliably color-managed. 
One of the first things I did when starting to work on GIMP color 
management, was to compile a list for all open and closed GIMP bug 
reports having to do with color management, then read through and 
categorize all the bugs, to get an idea of what was already done, what 
was left to do, and most importantly to figure out what concerns 
motivated the users who filed the bug reports. A "Concepts: Color 
Science" tag would have been a big help.

GIMP is important in the free-libre universe of image-editing programs. 
But without good color management GIMP is seriously flawed as a 
professional-level editing program.

Best wishes to GIMP team members past, present, and future.
Elle