Projects in GSoC 2023

Auto-growing layers

Mentor : Jehan

Student : Shubham Daule

Category : User Interface, Core, Painting

Status : finished

Integration status : finished

Project introduction (by the contributor):

GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP in short, is one of the most popular image editing programs that is Free and Open Source. But currently, the image layers need to be resized manually which is inefficient and degrades user experience. This can be particularly frustrating when using a brush tool. Also, beginners might find it hard to use. So this project aims to add support for Auto growing layers in GIMP and other features required for implementing it.

Mentor note: the project was implemented and thing went quite smoothly on this project. Not much to say more than "good job!

Improving the Text Tool

Mentors : Liam Quin, Jehan

Student : Idriss Fekir

Category : User Interface, Core, Text

Status : Scope broken down into smaller tasks

Integration status : finished

Project introduction (by the contributor):

GIMP is a high end photo editor, but its text tool is rudimentary. A lot could be done to improve it UI/UX-wise and feature-wise. I plan on improving opentype features, mainly support for alternate glyphs, and also some other improvments.

Mentor (Jehan's) note: the scope was a bit too large at first, but we soon re-evaluated the project into a more generic improvement on text support. In the end, even though we couldn't work on more specific OpenType features, this resulted into an invaluable project which really improved the core infrastructure for font support in GIMP. The software is better at detecting wrongly loaded or non-supported fonts (less frustration on "non-working" fonts), can now load some fonts it used not to be able to load, and in particular is able to handle different fonts named the same. When needed, we sometimes bypass some of the dependency libraries when they have known limitations in specific use cases. In other words, the core code is much more robust. XCF files are also much better at specifying used fonts in text layers for retrieval on different machines. A huge success in a different way!

Implement Initial Non-Destructive Editing Workflow in GIMP

Mentor : Jehan

Student : Nikc / Alx Sa (NikcDC)

Category : User Interface, Core, Non-Destructive Editing

Status : finished

Integration status : finished

Project introduction (by the contributor):

GIMP utilizes a Destructive Editing workflow – all changes are made directly to the image itself. A much requested feature is Non-Destructive Editing (NDE) which would allow users to make changes without overwriting the original image. This would mean they can easily revert prior edits, modify the settings of filters to see live changes, and rearrange the order that effects are applied in. GIMP’s image processing engine GEGL is fully capable of many NDE operations. However, these features are not fully exposed to users. The goal of this project would be to enable Non-Destructive Editing on individual layers and layer groups through “Layer Effects” such as drop shadows and brightness/contrast filters. A basic implementation consists of three milestones:

Research and design a NDE workflow that compliments GIMP’s current design and user base.

Implement “Layer Effects” for GIMP’s regular and text layers as well as layer groups.

Add support to the PSD plug-in to recognize and import equivalent “Layer Styles” and “Adjustment Layers” as NDE Layer Effects.

Mentor note: promising researches and demos by the contributor, though the GUI could not be finished. The UX specification also came a little later than expected. Nevertheless many discussions, preparations could happen and we expect the contributor to continue afterwards (they are known in the project now, and it's their second GSoC as contributor). Various other code could also be contributed in the side by this contributor, even when not directly related to this project.