New GIMP supports ICC Profiles

[Ken Lee]

Maybe this isn't new, but it's the first time I've seen support for ICC profiles in the GIMP.

It still only supports 8-bit channels, but it's getting better !

[Ash]

any idea if the newer versions will be gimpshopped for mac? I'm sure my release is super-old now

[Ken Lee]

If you are asking about the user interface more closely matching the OS X look and feel... then yes.

[Leonard Evens]

Since I use gimp, I've been trying to learn about profiles. Any suggestionss about references? Hardware devices that will work under Linux?

[Kirk Gittings]

Question out of shear ignorance. What is GIMP exactly and why does anyone use it?

[Ken Lee]

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

It provides a rather large subset of features that are available in Photoshop, but at no cost. It also runs in Unix and Linux, in addition to Windows and OS X.

In my view, there were 2 big GIMP shortcomings that kept me sending money to Adobe: the 8-bit color channel limitation, and support for ICC profiles. Now, there appears to be one less shortcoming.

There is a 16-bit version in narrow circulation, apparently used by Hollywood animation studios, who as you can well imagine, are technically savvy. They like to link multiple inexpensive machines together, for work on their highly demanding applications.

See the GIMP here

[Darren Kruger]

Question out of shear ignorance. What is GIMP exactly and why does anyone use it?

From their FAQ:

What is this GIMP?

The "GNU Image Manipulation Program" (originally the General Image Manipulation Program) sired by Spencer Kimball & Peter Mattis.

In their own words, "GIMP is our answer to the current lack of free (or at least reasonably priced) image manipulation software for Linux and UNIX in general."

It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor. Other (proprietary) raster editors include Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop Pro and the humble Microsoft Paint. An alternative free editor is the KOffice project, Krita. Users wanting to edit photographs will certainly want a raster editor like GIMP. Graphic designers and illustrators may prefer a vector editor depending on their tastes.

Why do people use it? You can get it for free and it runs on Linux and operating systems.

-Darren

[Ken Lee]

Since I use gimp, I've been trying to learn about profiles. Any suggestions about references? Hardware devices that will work under Linux?

ICC stands for International Color Consortium. I'll bet somewhere on that site, there's a whole world of Applied Mathematics and Visual Perception, which for you will be, as they say... trivial.

Since no one else has responded, I can say that an ICC profile is basically a table of values, a matrix by which we can transpose images from one color space to another.

Instead of printing directly to the printer, we print "through" the profile. The color values pass through a transposition "filter", which places them where they need to be, to achieve the intended result. Since each paper and ink combination represents a unique color space, each can have its own ICC profile.

Finally, it seems, GIMP will allow you to print to your printer, through that ICC profile.

Here is a nice article entitled Introduction to ICC Profiles:
See http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/profiles.htm

Here's an article on the Adobe site. See http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...1382&sliceId=1

[Randy H]

Question out of shear ignorance. What is GIMP exactly and why does anyone use it?

One other reason not stated "yet" is every time Gimp, or OpenOffice or any of the other plethora of programs are updated, they don't short-stick you from behind for the "Latest and greatest wonderful new software" that is so full of bugs you crash in the first two hours. It is freeware, written by developers, for "users", not sales. Just install the newest version, and run with it.


just remembered. The Avatar under my profile was built in Gimp. About three - four years ago.

[Leonard Evens]

Ken,

Thanks for the references. I will study them as well as other things I can find. As you might have guessed, I am not quite as naive about color management as it seemed. But until gimp added suport for profiles, I din't make any serious effort to really understand them. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of bootstrapping involved in learning these things. In a sense, you can't understand them until you understand them. But mathematicians get used to that, from both ends, as learners and as teachers.

But I still would like to know which, if any, hardware profiling devices, at a reasonable cost, can be used under Linux. For example, is there is simple device for measuring values on a monitor where the values can be read directly without using proprietary software than only runs under Windows or on a Mac?

Also, does anyone know if it is possible to set reference values on a graphics card directly so that they stay the same when you change, for example, from Windows to Linux. That way i could accurately profile my monitor under Windows and use it under Linux. So far, I've had to profile separately for the two OSs, and only for the overall gamma. If I'm going to be serious about profiling, I suppose I have to profile my monitor with respect to color also.

I yearn to some extent for my old color lab, which I had equipped with a high q uality color analyzer. Of course, I didn't go one step further and make measurements on my prints, so there was lots of eye balling required. Later, much to my surprise, I found I could do better , with respect to color, digitally even without color profiling, than I could in the darkroom.. But in those days at least I had a firm understanding of just what I was doing, or at least I thought I did.