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It's one of those features that once you notice in Photoshop, you lament the lack in GIMP. The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just

It's one of those features that once you notice in Photoshop, you lament the lack in GIMP. The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just additional layers, w/o manipulating the image in the layer under them. It lets you very quickly toggle between different settings, revise settings, and even very easily only filter parts of an image. (ie, you can have a unfiltered layer above a stack of filters, and the original image)

lucb1e 8y ago
How is this different from duplicating the layer (Ctrl+Shift+D for quick usage) and then applying the filter? It's two more manual steps (one hotkey to duplicate, and another action later to delete the old layer) but it doesn't sound like something currently impossible in GIMP.
- dirkgently 8y ago
  Simple answer is that those bitching about lack of features want GIMP to provide exact same features as Photoshop with exact same workflow. I wonder if these same people also bitch about learning new languages or frameworks when technology moves on.
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    What I wonder is if they try to work on the features they claim to want so desperately (number one priority!) for years. But there probably isn't a lot of overlap between people who need gimp to be like professional alternatives and people who can decently code. In our IT study we had four major tracks and the people doing media design were notoriously bad at coding anything beyond HTML, and even that was considered difficult by most of them (the three other tracks were software, embedded software, and business -- the latter also infamous for the same reason).
    - dirkgently 8y ago
      That's true, but my comment was more about the HN crowd which is primarily (or exclusively) from programming background. Professionals will always go with a well-marketed and popular option and they don't care about paying 500-1000$ for an image editing program. They don't care (or know) about open source. But I expect better from HN crowd. As for GIMP and its features, well, when Photoshop firdt mentioned about the new Content Aware feature, there was a collective orgasm, but GIMP had that feature (by sheer virtue of the scriptability and flexibility which is inherent in its design) in a script format at least a year or two before that. I don't expect GIMP to win hearts of professionals and their shiny macbooks, but for a casual heavy job, GIMP is more than capable, and expect programmers to appreciate it for what the GIMP project has achieved. But all we get here is "but but Photoshop!"
  - nemo 8y ago
    If they had something similar that was a different workflow but was as powerful, flexible, and involved a few steps to do what you can do in PS in three or four steps but in the current GIMP in fifteen or more, then that'd be great. It's not that PS's workflow is inherently better, it's that I can do things in seconds that take at least a few minutes, far more work, and a lot more effort in GIMP.
- jasonjayr 8y ago
  I mean, yea, there's ways to do it with a different workflow. (And in GIMP, I've done exactly as you describe) But the mechanism + data flow in Photoshop also let you work naturally w/o those extra steps. The mental model of placing a physical filter on top of a physical image is mapped better to PS's method. Say you want to draw on a layer under the filter? In Photoshop you can just do it, and filters above the layer will be updated properly. (I imagine in PS this mechanism permits better data/memory management) By duplicating layers, I imagine GIMP has to keep extra copies of the data around that it cannot discard, because it cannot re-compute it. Mind you, I haven't used Photoshop in years and GIMP (or Krita) has proven well enough for the image work I need to do. This is just one thing that stuck with me from 15 years ago!
- nemo 8y ago
  Let's say you want to stack a contrast, a saturation, and a color temp adjustment layer (or levels/curves/or a color threshold/etc.), then want to keep tweaking them until you're happy. I do this often. Or you have them right but just want to change the mask a bit to add/subtract a bit you missed. Or change the image under those adjustments. It's trivial with adjustment layers and done in a few steps trivially. It's not if you're copying layers and tweaking away and backtracking and reverting in separate layers.

lucb1e 8y ago

How is this different from duplicating the layer (Ctrl+Shift+D for quick usage) and then applying the filter? It's two more manual steps (one hotkey to duplicate, and another action later to delete the old layer) but it doesn't sound like something currently impossible in GIMP.

dirkgently 8y ago
Simple answer is that those bitching about lack of features want GIMP to provide exact same features as Photoshop with exact same workflow. I wonder if these same people also bitch about learning new languages or frameworks when technology moves on.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  What I wonder is if they try to work on the features they claim to want so desperately (number one priority!) for years. But there probably isn't a lot of overlap between people who need gimp to be like professional alternatives and people who can decently code. In our IT study we had four major tracks and the people doing media design were notoriously bad at coding anything beyond HTML, and even that was considered difficult by most of them (the three other tracks were software, embedded software, and business -- the latter also infamous for the same reason).
  - dirkgently 8y ago
    That's true, but my comment was more about the HN crowd which is primarily (or exclusively) from programming background. Professionals will always go with a well-marketed and popular option and they don't care about paying 500-1000$ for an image editing program. They don't care (or know) about open source. But I expect better from HN crowd. As for GIMP and its features, well, when Photoshop firdt mentioned about the new Content Aware feature, there was a collective orgasm, but GIMP had that feature (by sheer virtue of the scriptability and flexibility which is inherent in its design) in a script format at least a year or two before that. I don't expect GIMP to win hearts of professionals and their shiny macbooks, but for a casual heavy job, GIMP is more than capable, and expect programmers to appreciate it for what the GIMP project has achieved. But all we get here is "but but Photoshop!"
- nemo 8y ago
  If they had something similar that was a different workflow but was as powerful, flexible, and involved a few steps to do what you can do in PS in three or four steps but in the current GIMP in fifteen or more, then that'd be great. It's not that PS's workflow is inherently better, it's that I can do things in seconds that take at least a few minutes, far more work, and a lot more effort in GIMP.
jasonjayr 8y ago
I mean, yea, there's ways to do it with a different workflow. (And in GIMP, I've done exactly as you describe) But the mechanism + data flow in Photoshop also let you work naturally w/o those extra steps. The mental model of placing a physical filter on top of a physical image is mapped better to PS's method. Say you want to draw on a layer under the filter? In Photoshop you can just do it, and filters above the layer will be updated properly. (I imagine in PS this mechanism permits better data/memory management) By duplicating layers, I imagine GIMP has to keep extra copies of the data around that it cannot discard, because it cannot re-compute it. Mind you, I haven't used Photoshop in years and GIMP (or Krita) has proven well enough for the image work I need to do. This is just one thing that stuck with me from 15 years ago!
nemo 8y ago
Let's say you want to stack a contrast, a saturation, and a color temp adjustment layer (or levels/curves/or a color threshold/etc.), then want to keep tweaking them until you're happy. I do this often. Or you have them right but just want to change the mask a bit to add/subtract a bit you missed. Or change the image under those adjustments. It's trivial with adjustment layers and done in a few steps trivially. It's not if you're copying layers and tweaking away and backtracking and reverting in separate layers.