Fotoxx: digital image editor

Paint programs, vector editors, 3d modelers, animation editors, etc.
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wjaguar
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#31 Post by wjaguar »

ttuuxxx wrote:when it comes to plugins Gimp wins over mt paint
Agreed, naturally - but this is not "quality", this is featureset. Which is an entirely different thing.
But Photoshop CS3 kills Gimp
Agreed again - this is one reason why I became involved with mtPaint; I needed an image editor doing a better job than GIMP is capable of, and GIMP's codebase is too unwieldy for my taste.
plus everyone is entitled to their own personal opinion and that is mine.
And here, I have to disagree. No one is entitled to lying in public about other people's work.

-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

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HairyWill
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#32 Post by HairyWill »

Before this goes further.
S: (n) lying, prevarication, fabrication (the deliberate act of deviating from the truth)
I think ttuuxxx genuinely believes what he is saying so he cannot be lying. It might help if ttuuxxx explained exactly which feature of mtpaint he believes is carried out better by the gimp. This would give Dmitry an opportunity to explain the way this feature works in mtpaint.
Will
contribute: [url=http://www.puppylinux.org]community website[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6c3nm6]screenshots[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6j2gbz]puplets[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/57gykn]wiki[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/5dgr83]rss[/url]

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ttuuxxx
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#33 Post by ttuuxxx »

wjaguar wrote:
ttuuxxx wrote:when it comes to plugins Gimp wins over mt paint
Agreed, naturally - but this is not "quality", this is featureset. Which is an entirely different thing.
But Photoshop CS3 kills Gimp
Agreed again - this is one reason why I became involved with mtPaint; I needed an image editor doing a better job than GIMP is capable of, and GIMP's codebase is too unwieldy for my taste.
plus everyone is entitled to their own personal opinion and that is mine.
And here, I have to disagree. No one is entitled to lying in public about other people's work.

-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-
One thing I don't do buddy is Lie, Around Half of the .xpm format's found in ICEWM start menu buttons you can not edit with mtPaint, But with a little program on windows called "Icon Lover" You can, Basically I build my images with CS3 and save them as PSD, Since photoshop for some stupid reason doesn't support XPM either, Then I open the PSD with "Icon Lover" and save them as XPM. The reason why I don't use Linux for it? Because MtPaint,Gimp,Inkscape,Cinepaint,Xara, Can't do it. Period full stop. Also the Image quality is extremely excellent, So much better then converting from PSD-->PNG---XPM
If you are a maintainer of MtPaint why not take it out of the stone ages, Really isn't the windows 3.1 era of paint applications a thing of the past, I know Microsoft is hooked on basic looking paint packages but they did help out a little program called Paint.Net http://www.getpaint.net/screenshots.html
yes its a free paint program for windows, but it has been ported to Linux with mono, But really bit of a pain to do.
Why is it that you have a potential of pleasing the whole Linux community and don't?
Paint.Net has won tons of awards for what it does, Its like #19 out top 100 windows applications from pc world.
The Only difference between Paint.Net and Mtpaint is basically looks, and use of functionality, Why couldn't you give Mtpaint a look and feel of of a basic Photoshop or Paint.Net? Paint.net did and look how far they grew with just a few short years.
Couldn't you have a compression slidebar that gives you real-time results.? Thats one thing I don't like about Mtpaint, Its not precise, you do a few adjustments when you go to save it and have no clue what it looks like until you actually save it and reopen it.
At the end of the day you can shoot your mouth off as much as you want, But If you wake up to the fact that MtPaint Has tons of potential and could be looked upon as an up and coming Photoshop for linux alternative which is a very huge want by around 90% of ex-Windows users, Or Just another run of the mill windows 3.1 Paint program. You decide, all you would need is to
- swallow your pride
- Get a compression slide bar with realtime image preview.
- A proper Layers windows, with the possibility of changing image transparencies/fading color levels/drag and drop movement of layers with a possibility of tiny image previews or naming scheme.
- Nice color wheel that isn't hidden, That can be permanently docked on the right side with the layers menus, same size. So when you open mtpaint you see the layers and color wheel
- Nice tool bar side panel with tools that actually Look like the Adobe counterparts. (this is where gimp truly fails. People spend years on Photoshop, They teach it in schools etc, Then people come to Linux for a look and everybody says," If you looking for a Photoshop type tool use GIMP!", What a joke anybody and everybody says," what is this #$#@$", It looks nothing like Photoshop. etc and then they walk away disappointed. Unlike Mtpaint they feel at home with paint. But seriously think about it, Just a few minor changes and your program would be on every Linux pc, not just because it looks good, but because it small size, Quick Loading and people can relate to it.
Prime example a pole on LinuxQuestions.org that has a permanent sticky
" What programs would you like to see ported to Linux?"
Top of the list every time Photohop&Dreamweaver
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ux-105955/

Why because they are excellent programs. Linux alternatives listed above for the Photoshop and for Dreamweaver grrrr NVU/Compozer.
Let me guess your part of the NVU/Compozer team also?
If so install a descant Ftp Program like Fire FTP (Firefox plugin, small but works excellent:) And do something about the CSS system.
I am just personally tired of Using Adobe programs for Mac and Windows only, Because the Linux alternatives are confusing / Not as functional/ about 10yrs behind. Sure it might easy for the younger Generation to grasp the Linux alternatives but people in their30's + with families and Jobs etc don't really want to start all over again. I personally can use the Linux versions because I sat down and forced myself, Where as my wife says "No Way am I learning that, It was bad enough to learn others in school!"
Hope this helps

ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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HairyWill
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#34 Post by HairyWill »

Dmitry,
I too hold you responsible for the shortcomings of the gimp, NVU and Compozer.

ttuuxxx,
I passed on the details of the XPM problem to Dmitry the other day. He has already said that he will relax the constraints applied by the parser so that mtpaint can open the files you mention, I should have passed this back to you.
Will
contribute: [url=http://www.puppylinux.org]community website[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6c3nm6]screenshots[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6j2gbz]puplets[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/57gykn]wiki[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/5dgr83]rss[/url]

wjaguar
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#35 Post by wjaguar »

ttuuxxx wrote:Around Half of the .xpm format's found in ICEWM start menu buttons you can not edit with mtPaint, But with a little program on windows called "Icon Lover" You can,
Refusing to recognize broken XPMs written by some obscure tool, while not a good thing in principle, is a quality issue only for the freaky program which writes them that way. If the program in question is this "Icon Lover", you may thank its developers for being too clever for their own good.
To support loading a perverted variant of an image format, I first have to be aware of the perversion's existence. Which wasn't the case till the day before yesterday - and BTW, if you're that concerned about the problem, then how come that the person reporting it was *not* you?
Paint.Net has won tons of awards for what it does, Its like #19 out top 100 windows applications from pc world.
If I had Microsoft sponsoring the awards for my program, mtPaint would have been #2 Windows application, right beside MS Office. ;-)
The Only difference between Paint.Net and Mtpaint is basically looks, and use of functionality, Why couldn't you give Mtpaint a look and feel of of a basic Photoshop or Paint.Net? Paint.net did and look how far they grew with just a few short years.
I know the only thing most users understand is the looks - but I myself am not an artist, and besides, mtPaint's absolute portability comes with a price; even now, I have to work around quirks of buggy theme engines, and were I to try anything fancy, surely a dozen or two of them would fail spectacularly at displaying it.
Besides, I just plain do not like Photoshop's interface.

Still, I'm not at all averse to improving mtPaint's interface, if a suggested improvement does make sense to me. But "mtPaint must imitate Photoshop" is a suggestion which doesn't.
Couldn't you have a compression slidebar that gives you real-time results.? Thats one thing I don't like about Mtpaint, Its not precise, you do a few adjustments when you go to save it and have no clue what it looks like until you actually save it and reopen it.
Proven again - even a stupidest flame can result in something useful. ;-) Yes, JPEG compression preview (if this is what you were talking about) can be a nice feature - I added it to my to-do list.
You decide, all you would need is to
- swallow your pride
Cannot be done. Any Evil Russian Hacker (tm) has a pride far too large to be swallowable; I'm not an exception ;-)
- A proper Layers windows, with the possibility of changing image transparencies/fading color levels/drag and drop movement of layers with a possibility of tiny image previews or naming scheme.
Layer transparencies we have since version 2.00; drag and drop layer reordering would be nice, but making it work is nontrivial - GtkList widget uses it internally, for item selection; as for "fading color levels", please explain what exactly it does mean.
- Nice color wheel
Already done in 3.30 development branch - don't know how "nice" it is, but surely more Photoshop-like (and KDE-like) than GTK's builtin wheel used before.
- Nice tool bar side panel with tools that actually Look like the Adobe counterparts.
Looking like Photoshop isn't in itself a recipe for success. There are hundreds of freeware and shareware Photoshop clones on Windows, but none of them really successful. If not for Microsoft promotion, Paint.NET wouldn't have stood out from that crowd either - technically, it's somewhere below average.
Let me guess your part of the NVU/Compozer team also?
No, I barely can find enough time for mtPaint.
Hope this helps
It does, a bit.
But my point still stands - speaking of "quality" while meaning by it the degree of likeness to Photoshop is misleading at best.

-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

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ttuuxxx
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#36 Post by ttuuxxx »

wjaguar wrote: Refusing to recognize broken XPMs written by some obscure tool, while not a good thing in principle, is a quality issue only for the freaky program which writes them that way. If the program in question is this "Icon Lover", you may thank its developers for being too clever for their own good.
To support loading a perverted variant of an image format, I first have to be aware of the perversion's existence. Which wasn't the case till the day before yesterday - and BTW, if you're that concerned about the problem, then how come that the person reporting it was *not* you?
ummmm I did state around half of the xpm used in icewm menu buttons weren't editable, I personally do not even come close to 1/2 the themes, try 1/100 lol
Its just not my xpms in icewm its 1/2 of all people building them, and I can honestly say they are not using "icon Lover" to convert formats, because it isn't a well known program.

Paint.Net has won tons of awards for what it does, Its like #19 out top 100 windows applications from pc world.
If I had Microsoft sponsoring the awards for my program, mtPaint would have been #2 Windows application, right beside MS Office. ;-)
No orginally Paint.Net was just a program 2 guys came up with, once it got some limelight Microsoft donated some funds in hopes that it might use it as the default paint program for future Windows Operating systems.
The Only difference between Paint.Net and Mtpaint is basically looks, and use of functionality, Why couldn't you give Mtpaint a look and feel of of a basic Photoshop or Paint.Net? Paint.net did and look how far they grew with just a few short years.
I know the only thing most users understand is the looks - but I myself am not an artist, and besides, mtPaint's absolute portability comes with a price; even now, I have to work around quirks of buggy theme engines, and were I to try anything fancy, surely a dozen or two of them would fail spectacularly at displaying it.
Besides, I just plain do not like Photoshop's interface.
I'm starting to think your not telling the truth, Come on Photoshop's interface is second to none, But I do have an idea how to remedy this, Why not PM me with the default icon set tar.gz and I'll build you a new set from scratch? And you can try the icons, if you like them and if not just delete the icons.

Still, I'm not at all averse to improving mtPaint's interface, if a suggested improvement does make sense to me. But "mtPaint must imitate Photoshop" is a suggestion which doesn't.
I'm not saying imitate, Just function somewhat similar, It almost does now, A few features, a small change in layout, New icons. And you'll have a winner on your hands.
Couldn't you have a compression slidebar that gives you real-time results.? Thats one thing I don't like about Mtpaint, Its not precise, you do a few adjustments when you go to save it and have no clue what it looks like until you actually save it and reopen it.
Proven again - ttuuxxx always gives something useful. ;-) Yes, JPEG compression preview (if this is what you were talking about) can be a nice feature - I added it to my to-do list.
- A proper Layers windows, with the possibility of changing image transparencies/fading color levels/drag and drop movement of layers with a possibility of tiny image previews or naming scheme.
Layer transparencies we have since version 2.00; drag and drop layer reordering would be nice, but making it work is nontrivial - GtkList widget uses it internally, for item selection; as for "fading color levels", please explain what exactly it does mean.
"fading color levels" Gradient controls, with the ability to fade the gradient on the layers.
- Nice color wheel
Already done in 3.30 development branch - don't know how "nice" it is, but surely more Photoshop-like (and KDE-like) than GTK's builtin wheel used before.
- Nice tool bar side panel with tools that actually Look like the Adobe counterparts.
Looking like Photoshop isn't in itself a recipe for success. There are hundreds of freeware and shareware Photoshop clones on Windows, but none of them really successful. If not for Microsoft promotion, Paint.NET wouldn't have stood out from that crowd either - technically, it's somewhere below average.
No I don't agree with it being below average, for the size of it compared with gimp its around 1/5 the size plus it has nice color level features.
Let me guess your part of the NVU/Compozer team also?
No, I barely can find enough time for mtPaint.
Hope this helps
It does, a bit.
But my point still stands - speaking of "quality" while meaning by it the degree of likeness to Photoshop is misleading at best.
I think the Quality would be excellent if you did add a compression preview.
also I think people would take your program more serious if it had a modern user interface (Look&Feel).
Really its a paint program where you build "Bling" but doesn't have any "Bling" itself. Strange.
Like I said I would be happy to build a set of icons for you if you sent me the originals icons used, tar.gz That way I would have the sizes, looks, formats. etc
thanks for your time ttuuxxx


-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-[/quote]
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

wjaguar
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#37 Post by wjaguar »

ttuuxxx wrote:Its just not my xpms in icewm its 1/2 of all people building them, and I can honestly say they are not using "icon Lover" to convert formats, because it isn't a well known program.
Still, not one graphics program I ever encountered writes XPMs that way. Which makes me wonder how those strange XPMs came into existence.
No orginally Paint.Net was just a program 2 guys came up with, once it got some limelight Microsoft donated some funds in hopes that it might use it as the default paint program for future Windows Operating systems.
Yes, and Linux was originally created by Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. ;-)

The more believable scenario is that Paint.NET came to be as a part of MS promotional effort for C# and .NET. After all, who would have wanted to install the huge .NET runtime, if no useful apps required it?
I'm starting to think your not telling the truth, Come on Photoshop's interface is second to none,
I still vividly remember wrestling with that interface in the Photoshop 4.0 days. For me, anything up to and including writing an image editor of my own is preferable to touching that thing ever again.
So I guess this is a matter of individual preference. :-)
"fading color levels" Gradient controls, with the ability to fade the gradient on the layers.
If what you're talking about is what's called "layer masks" in Photoshop, then mtPaint has it, by other name, since version 3.00. In mtPaint, layer's alpha channel serves as layer mask - to get layer to fade into background, just switch to editing its alpha channel and draw a gradient in there.
No I don't agree with it being below average, for the size of it compared with gimp its around 1/5 the size plus it has nice color level features.
For a proper size comparison, the size of .NET runtime has to be added to Paint.NET, and the size of GTK+ runtime to GIMP.
And Paint.NET *is* below average technically, because of substandard implementation of image processing algorithms; even its "Gaussian blur" is a coarse approximation, not the real thing. And even with that, it's quite slow.
(Footnote: Paint.NET's inherent slowness is somewhat offset on multicore systems by latest .NET runtime auto-parallelizing its processing - which mtPaint, for my shame, still is unable to do; to get the same speedup for mtPaint, I'll need to make use of OpenMP extensions in GCC 4.2.)
Like I said I would be happy to build a set of icons for you if you sent me the originals icons used, tar.gz That way I would have the sizes, looks, formats. etc
Thanks, I'll take you up on your offer. The icons are the largest source of complaint about mtPaint, even if I myself am content with them as they're now.

-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

muggins
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#38 Post by muggins »

Updated to v0.41.

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#39 Post by muggins »

v0.42.
Fotox Change Log
================

2008.05.15 v.42
+ ignore redundant mouse events during image paning, avoid X11 crash
+ improve mouse interface for area selection (tune, stretch)
+ expand allowed range for image unbend axes

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#40 Post by muggins »

Upgraded to v0.44

muggins
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#41 Post by muggins »

Upgraded to v4.5. Has been renamed as Fotoxx.

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#42 Post by muggins »

Upgraded to v4.7.

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#43 Post by muggins »

Upgraded to v4.9.

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#44 Post by muggins »

Upgraded to v5.0.
What's New in This Release:

· This release of fotoxx focuses on improvements in convenience and usability.
· Scroll bars were added to more easily pan across large images.
· Zoom in/out with toolbar buttons or left/right mouse buttons (zoom to the mouse position).
· The +/- keys can also be used for zoom.
· Slide show mode was added to the menu (full screen image without menu and toolbar), and several control functions were mapped to the keyboard.
· Select Area is now a separate dialog that can be used parallel with relevant edit dialogs to edit a mouse-outlined section of the image.
· The user guide was converted from PDF to HTML.
· A few other minor bug fixes and improvements were made.

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ttuuxxx
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#45 Post by ttuuxxx »

muggins wrote:Upgraded to v5.0.
What's New in This Release:

· This release of fotoxx focuses on improvements in convenience and usability.
· Scroll bars were added to more easily pan across large images.
· Zoom in/out with toolbar buttons or left/right mouse buttons (zoom to the mouse position).
· The +/- keys can also be used for zoom.
· Slide show mode was added to the menu (full screen image without menu and toolbar), and several control functions were mapped to the keyboard.
· Select Area is now a separate dialog that can be used parallel with relevant edit dialogs to edit a mouse-outlined section of the image.
· The user guide was converted from PDF to HTML.
· A few other minor bug fixes and improvements were made.
Sounds like some well needed feature, excellent, I like this Image editor, works great :)
Thanks muggins
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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nutts4life
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#46 Post by nutts4life »

I thought i might add my part to this conversation as you guys seem to be really enoying yourselves!

I have to say i'm a fan of paint .net. Ironically i don't use it too much as i have fireworks and photoshop on my windoze box.

I was a big fan of fotox when it started, for two reasons. And that it's UI looks better than mtpaint. (not difficult)
And it has a nice index viewer...basics.

But my view of fotoxx is slightly different from yours. I'd like to see fotoxx come up against gthumb and f-spot NOT compete against mtpaint etc....

both gthumb and f-spot are too heavy weight, both relying on gnome libs, when their functionality is simple. There is no lightweight alternative.

fotoxx with the ability to print and to import from a camera (libphoto2) would complete what is a very good applicaiton and cover the market it was intended for.

Fottox needs to focus on photos: import, indexing and manipulation.

mtpaint needs to focus solely on advaced image manipultaion and image creation and SORT OUT ITS UI.

n4l

wjaguar
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#47 Post by wjaguar »

nutts4life wrote:mtpaint needs to focus solely on advaced image manipultaion and image creation and SORT OUT ITS UI.
Should it be printed somewhere conspicuous, in a large bold font, that mtPaint's interface has been deliberately designed the way it is? ;-)

Given the above, it should be really obvious that neither I nor Mark Tyler see anything in said UI which needs "sorting out". So if you believe otherwise, then tell us which specific feature(s) you think should have been done differently - and what you think would be a better way of doing them, and why.


-= With best regards, Dmitry Groshev, maintainer of mtPaint =-

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nutts4life
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#48 Post by nutts4life »

wjaguar,

People can argue until they are blue in the face that things were done this way for a reason. But the reason doesn't fit the requirements, so what was the reason in the first place?

but in saying that, you're right my comment ' SORT OUT THE UI' was a poor comment and unnecesseary.

The UI is perfectly usuable and in fact a joy to use, but its just the look. You can't sell a ferrari if it looks like a ford.
Specifically i would start with allowing for theming. A set of nice icons will make alot of difference.

Apologies for the brash statement.

n4l

lapis
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#49 Post by lapis »

nutts4life wrote:
A set of nice icons will make alot of difference.
l
Why? I don't like skins either. 500 different skins available for something and yet the user interface does not work in the first place.

I don't use Fotoxx because the user interface is useless to me: no keyboard navigation.

Mtpaint has keyboard navigation and hence I use it although I note that it has bugs, like Alt+s does not open the Selection menu as it is supposed to. Also, once one menu is open, another cannot be chosen without first closing it. I would fix these flaws long before worrying about silly icons.

wjaguar
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#50 Post by wjaguar »

nutts4life wrote:The UI is perfectly usuable and in fact a joy to use, but its just the look. You can't sell a ferrari if it looks like a ford.
I am more concerned with compatibility across systems, GTK+ versions and associated theme engines, than with "selling" an app which is GPLed anyway. Besides, all this craze about pretty GUIs is pretty alien to me - I genuinely don't understand the people who prefer form above function.
Specifically i would start with allowing for theming. A set of nice icons will make alot of difference.
Theming is supported by GTK+, and mtPaint interface rendered with QtCurve engine looks nice enough for my taste. And there exists a multitude of other theme engines, so anyone can find (or tweak) one to his liking.
As for icons, if someone contributes a nicer set, good; and it hadn't happened yet, so I use what I have. Like I said above, I'm not obsessed with prettying my desktop, so simplistic-looking icons are a non-issue to me.

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