hi Jim,
I am not a code developer but a user, a researcher and, I like to think,
user experience designer.
So, please take my words with a grain of salt.
'Open source' is fundamentally different from 'for-profit'. No, really!
:) A paradigm shift on economy, politic, social and management levels.
It is sometimes hard for us to completely switch in our minds between
the two and very often the learned 'commercial' side leaks in our 'open
source' brains. I am repeatedly baffled why some open-source websites
still use marketing lingo to describe their efforts, when a simple human
language would do. But, hey, we are all learning and we will get it
right, eventually.
There might be some concepts you are familiar with. For example: market,
customer, consumer, demand, warranty, proprietary, intellectual
property, price, patent, production schedule, ... Those concepts do not
translate in the open-source. But, open source offers some other
concepts. Such as: freedom, openness, transparent, for fun, itch,
modularity, activity driven, personal contribution, collaboration, fork,
and many other concepts that matter to people.
'For-profit' paradigm is a paradigm of 'consumers'. 'Open-source' world
is a paradigm of 'doers'. Consumers demand, pay and, well ... consume.
The doers, do, contribute, create and initiate. Now, there is no market
or competition GIMP or any other open source software has to put up
against. So why cram everything inside? There are other projects that
might perform the functions you need, and more often than not, you will
find that your data is welcome in many of those.
I would argue from my experience in User interaction, that featuritis is
NOT just 'how you organize the features and plugins'. The Mix of
functions you put in any software beyond the core ones is an endless
debate. Always. 'Handy' for someone is 'full blown ridiculous' to
someone else. For excellent ideas, you don't need abundunce. In fact,
scarcity breeds mastery. There are numerous cases in music, art, design,
science, engineering... I firmly believe that. But to someone else, this
is just BS. The key-word here is 'workflow'. If a piece of software can
integrate in your preferred workflow, it will work for you. Your
'excellent' workflow in GIMP might be just a nonsensical ritual to
someone else and the other way around, and both of you will be right.
I can see that you are active with GIMP Massive package. Your experience
and insights in dealing with immense amount of plugins and addons might
be a valuable contribution to user experience. From this experience, you
might want to create an idea how to implement what you know would be a
better way, or would like to see in GIMP, or some other future graphics
project.
The same factors that contribute to acceptance of some code, will
contribute to the acceptance of your ideas. If your ideas are
articulated, presented and clear enough, and just work for other people,
(i.e. clearly indicate the 'excellence' of your approach) they will be
created/implemented/improved somehow somewhere by someone. That's how
open source works ;). Maybe I am painting an idealized picture, here?
...
darktable <http://www.darktable.org/> is an admirable open-source effort
to create a digital photography manager and RAW developer. It is a
separate piece of software that might fit your workflow. You might find
it roughly comparable (but not equivalent to!) Adobe Lightroom,
silkyPix. If you have some time, please give it a try! Darktable comes
among the top results if you google it.
Unfortunately, I was not able to see the reference on Topaz address you
provided.
cheers,
Alex
On 11-11-29 16:37 , Jim Michaels wrote:
The only reason I am making the point is because I try to suggest GIMP
to people who can't afford Photoshop or are looking for a free photo
editor.
maybe it's not the best reason in the world. I just wanted to give
people a solution they could afford. I was hoping to be able to give
them something high end, intuitive, and hopefully easy to use.
Is there some way to make textures? stitch photos taken from various
points of view? well, I can always do that with microsoft ICE or other
programs made for panos, but not everybody knows about that - people
will use what is built into the program they have (after all, that's
all that can be done, right...?). - and I know this is wrong thinking,
but when you don't implement features, the user doesn't know any
better - most of the time, but then there are the power users who want
it all and do just about everything with the program, and there are
plenty of them out there.
I don't think feature-itis is a bad thing. it's just -well, how do
you organize lots of features and plugins? when you have a large
collection of plugins from the registry installed, you get REALLY
WIDE, long menus. especially if you have photoshop filters for
pspi.exe you want to add to that collection as well.
There is some significant functionality provided by photoshop
filters. again, take a look at http://alienskin.com/eyecandy/index.aspx
these can make the difference between a toy-looking site and a
professional site with some skill. there are a lot of junk filters
out there that simply just ruin an image. I have had to wade through
them. But once in a while you find out about companies like
http://Topaz.com <http://topaz.com/>
"Please use darktable"
what darktable? it doesn't exist in 2.6.11 nor in the plugin
registry. vaporware. or someone is just being dark. :-/ I don't
even like the name.
"Gimp is just GIMP." seems so mediocre. I was hoping to spur some
Excellence. maybe someone can come up with some radical new ideas for
photo imaging and put it into GIMP. I have already heard of one
excellent idea which became a plugin.
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