Gimp 2.7 Beta Improves Text Editing, Streamlines Saving
Windows/Linux: Look ahead to what’s being baked into open-source image editor GIMP’s 2.7 with an early beta release.
The developers tell you right in the installation process that it’s “unstable,” and even make you promise with a checkbox not to bug them if things go wrong. Still, if you’re eager to see smoother, intuitive text editing, a streamlined saving and exporting process (no more warnings about “flattened” JPEGs!), and other improvements and small features, you can grab a Windows installer from FileHippo or grab source code for Linux building at GIMP’s FTP servers. [via Download Squad]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
These are great, but if they want to really impress me they need to do some serious UI overhauling. It's for that reason alone that I stick with my ancient PSP8.
Glory be! PSP8 still rocks my socks off.
@CnEY: they don't want someone to bug them if something doesn't work, as its probably a feature they've disabled for the time being or something, the message displayed in the article is extremely generalized. the warning text has been in every beta since 2.3
I actually still use GIMP 2.4 because I find some of the UI changes they made in 2.6 to be patently ridiculous. i.e. taking the menu off of the toolbar (and filling it with a space-wasting banner instead, as if that's somehow better), then mandating that a blank image window be open if no actual image is being edited... I also kind of liked the resize handles on selections/crop regions/etc. better in 2.4. So unless they're going to promise to revisit some of the UI design aspects of the GIMP, preferably with someone who doesn't completely fail at UI design, I'm still sticking with 2.4.
Also, I find it somewhat curious that they don't want people to bug them with bug reports. Isn't that kind of the point of OSS and betas / RCs / development releases in general?
Meanwhile, granted there were maybe too many dialogs before exporting an image, but I somehow never found them too terribly annoying, since most were easily dismissable with another Enter keypress. Not to mention that sometimes I found them warranted (particularly for GIFs and PNGs).
CnEY
I downloaded it and got my first error message within 10 seconds of using it. The app crashed every time I tried to use the text tool. I've gone back to 2.6.7 for now.
I use GIMP on a regular basis. I'll have to give this beta a try. I could really use easier text editing.