In theory, the implementation sounds simple enough... just save the original and cache the transformations, when the transformations change, rebuild the cache. If the original changes, same thing. OK, maybe I'm oversimplifying things... I'm not considering previewing, for example, but even without that, just the basic implementation would help a lot.rainwarrior wrote:FWIW non-destructive editing is on GIMP's roadmap. I'm sure it will eventually happen, but I wouldn't bet that it will happen in the next 5 years.
Like I said, if you just want to get something done and forget about it, GIMP is fine, but when you work in an advertisement agency (like I have) and you reuse previous work a lot, and there's a lot of back and forth between the designers and the clients where all kinds of little adjustments are necessary, GIMP doesn't cut it. Designers often have layers and layers of effects applied on top of each other, and any of them can change at any time, and it's not practical at all to constantly redo the whole chain of transformations every time you need to tweak a little detail in the middle.Myself I haven't used Photshop often enough to be efficient/effective with adjustment layers anyway. I've seen how they're used and why they're effective, but I can generally do what I want within GIMP anyway.
I used GIMP almost exclusively before working at that agency, but once I finally understood what the other designers were doing in Photoshop, that greatly increased my productivity. Not only you have less layers and groups to manage due to not having to make manual backups, but the software will automatically rebuild everything for you every time a parameter changes. It's a HUGE time saver. Maybe it's the kind of thing that before you use you don't see what the big deal is, because you can achieve the same results without it, but once you get used to it you just can't live without. I still use GIMP for quick edits that I'll never touch again, but if it's something for a client that will need to be tweaked and reused to hell, I wouldn't consider anything but Photoshop.How much of that tradeoff is really inherent in a feature like adjustment layers, and how much of it is just in using Photoshop daily and GIMP rarely?
Think about effects applied on text, for example... you can just edit heavily stylized text normally, and see the results instantaneously, so you can play with font sizes, character spacing, etc. and immediately see what works best with the effects. Can you imagine trying dozens of variations of text formatting and manually applying effects to transform it every time until you find the ideal combination?
That and be reliable. I'm not too picky about UI stuff either, I can adapt.Operating systems for me just need to run the software I want to run.