On Thursday 27 September 2007 08:00:45 George Farris wrote: > Though you object to selective discussion of your discorse, you have > at least twice falsely referred to gimp's lack of a tool for "non- > distructive editing". The term is a contradiction in itself. Perhaps > you can take the time to explain your meaning?
Yes I do object to selective discussion because it means no one else is able to follow the whole thread when bits get cut out so the thread gets chopped into fragmnents - each one then gets followed selectively. Readers then find they have to flip backwards and forwards to follow the discussion. As this was a diversion from an original topic in a separate thread, and because your question is such a good one, I have decided to recast my original reply as a seperate topic and provide a little more detail. This is not the first time a lack of understanding about the term "non-destructive editing" has come up and you are not the only one who has the mistaken belief that it is OK to falsely accuse others on this list of something equivalent to having >"falsely referred to gimp's lack of a tool for "non- distructive editing" when you do not even understand the term under discussion. I believe gimp is a "good enough" tool not to need inappropriate defensive reactions or ill-informed responses when its limitations are discussed. The discussion of limitations leads to enhancement and there his ample history of enhancement in Gimp's progress. Gimp is a substantial tool that, in common with all other tool sets has limitations and weaknesses. In non-destructive editing Gimp's weaknesses are substantial, however once support for 16 bit per channel AND native raw file handling has been developed the path will be open for solving the problem. Before amplifying I do not want to you to have any mistaken impressions about photoshop because one of my irritations with PS is that it does not yet fully achieve fully non-destructive editing. Its support for non-destructive editing is now quite substantial. It is getting there by a process of incremental improvement (whilst gimp cannot approach it) and each version seems to provide me with a more complete set (e.g. I have just upgraded to CS3 which, among other things, now has exposure adjustments available as a non-destructive layer whereas in CS2 exposure was not accomplished non-destructively.) By this I mean that one starts with loading the original image and that original can remain in the bottom of the stack. In the case of professional digital images that means raw files are sourced and loaded as 16bit images. Non-destructive editing can, for example, be accomplished by having each edit take place as a layer which can, at any later point, be revisited, either by by the original image manipulator or anyone further down the chain. That layer can therefore be tweaked later in the process. There are some processes in PS that cannot be accomplished non-destructively but as Gimp does not even start with the ability to load a raw image or even an image at 16 bit we cannot begin the process. With non-destructive editing every individual edit can be selectively applied to the output (to screen, printer etc). Each edit is not applied to the original which remains intact. For example it means I could apply two alternative exposure corrections. At a very much later stage, and after much subsequent editing, either I or someone on some other machine, could print 4 copies namely the original without either correction, with the first correction only, the second correction, or the sum of both corrections. Non-destructive editing also implies the ability to transfer files between people and organization in a form that they can amend the edits applied by previous manipulators. This is not a complete answer because there is more to it but I hope I have geven enough information to help explain why non-destructive editing is not a contradiction and also to ask you to withdraw your rather unkind and inappropriate accusation of falsity. Thanks _______________________________________________ Gimp-user mailing list Gimp-user@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user
