Re: [CinePaint] cinepaint vs Gimp

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:25:41 -0600
"Nathan Fisher" <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> That's a loaded question, but I'll try and answer truthfully. One of
> the major things, relating to painting, is the cursor. In Gimp (and in
> Photoshop for that matter) the cursor can take the shape of the brush.
> In Cinepaint you get either a small circle or large crosshairs. Control
> is an issue, not so much with dustbusting but with things like painting
> out a background or a layer mask. It's difficult when you can't see
> the edge of the brush.
> 

Please do not misinterpret the tone of the following statements.
They are only a bit of friendly advice. 

In our cushy, comfy age, where even taking a short walk across the
parking lot from our air-conditioned offices to our air-conditioned
automobiles becomes a major torment, your comments could be construed
as a legitimate complaint.

But I've never had a problem with this.  Take a few practice strokes
to accommodate your eye (and your mind) to the pattern of the brush
that overlies the cross hairs.  Very quickly, an adequate mental
image should form to guide your hand flawlessly even though the actual
pattern remains invisible.  Adjust the levels of undo to a high
value so that if you do falter, the mistakes can be immediately
erased.  Also, zoom deeply into the border region and select a smaller
brush pattern.  If one is not available from the brush dialog then
create a unique brush pattern for for your own use.

It all goes back to the analogy of the axe and the chainsaw.
A little bit of determination and creativity can go a long way
in overcoming these minor shortfalls.

For example, I've always had a problem steadily guiding the mouse
pointer while keeping one mouse button firmly depressed.  The extra
muscle tension that is involved can cause a bit of erratic movement.
But I've learned how to exploit the accessibility features of the
X Windows system to obviate this difficulty.  With X, the
Right-Shift + Numlock keys will activate this feature.  Then, pressing
"/" and then "0" on the keypad will simulate the act of continually
depressing the right button on the mouse.  After this, the mouse
can be carefully guided for painting or selecting.  Pressing "."
on the keypad will release this effect.  With a bit of practice
the technique can work almost as well as an expensive drawing
tablet.


> Interface is actually a mixed bag. I think Cinepaint has it's menus
> organized a little more logically, so it scores points there. But I
> really like the ability to dock the various dialogs wherever I want them
> in Gimp. I usually have them all on the toolbox to save screen real
> estate. Cinepaint does just what everybody hated about Gimp-1.x, though,
> and pops them up all over the screen.
> 

If you are concerned about screen real estate, get a window manager
that allows for virtual screens.  I use FVWM and my screen is set
to a 2x2 virtual desktop.  This allows me to essentially magnify
my screen space by FOUR times.  I can have different full-size images
each open in its own screen and also menus conveniently scattered
everywhere without the slightest conflict.  (Of course, the virtual
feature can be set to any value that can be accommodated by system
memory.)

With this wonderful feature, the problem of adequate screen real
estate essentially disappears.


> Then there's the issue of previews. Cinepaint gives a preview for color
> corrections and adjustments, but Gimp also gives a preview for filters
> (I dislike applying unsharp mask without a preview). About the only
> things Gimp won't preview are script-fu and python-fu. That was one of
> the major enhancements in the 2.x series. I can get there with
> Cinepaint, but I do a bit more apply/undo.
> 

To get useful unsharp previews, you may consider copying out
a portion of the image, saving that portion to a file, and
then using ImageMagick or Netpbm in conjunction with some
bash or other scripting to rapidly create a series of images
with various unsharp parameters.

It may initially be a lot of work, but once everything is set
up it would operate fairly smoothly.

It may not be as elegant, but elegance is a highly subjective
concept.

> There's also a few really useful plug-ins that Gimp has among all the
> not so useful ones. I would say that chief among them is the selective
> gaussian blur filter. I'd love to have that in Cinepaint. I'm sure
> other people would mention different ones though, because everyone has
> their favorites.
> 

Again, there are substitutes.

Again, it would not qualify as the elegance that so many people
devote their lives to seeking.

But it also represents the beauty of Open Source.

Frank Peters


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