Gimp + PhF appimage, a few observations

Software PhotoFlow
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Over the past weekend, I gave @Carmelo_DrRaw’s gimp2.9.5 appimage a bit of a whirl. While I really believe this appimage holds huge potential, there are some pretty big bugs which IMO need sorting before it can be considered stable.

What I love most about this appimage, is that it’s a one-stop shop. Three apps in one package. Just the potential in this fact alone is mindblowing.

I love that I can open a Raw in Gimp, have PhF automatically launch, make some edits and pass through to Gimp, do some further work, or pass onto G’mic, and back again if required, then in Gimp save/export as I please.

So like I said, huge potential!

The following are the three main barriers to uptake from the general user, as I see it…

  • Opening a Raw…

One has to physically launch the appimage, then go file > open, and choose the Raw file. There seems to be no easier option.

If you choose the Raw you want in your file manager and drop it onto the appimage, it does actually launch Gimp 2.9, but doesn’t invoke PhotoFlow as would be expected.

The appimage isn’t on offer as a right click option under “Open With…” either.

Which leads to a slightly convoluted, longer road to get somewhere when it could be handled a lot quicker.

  • Once you’ve finished an edit, saved/export and close the appimage and then want to pick up again where you left off, upon relaunch you find Gimp doesn’t remember any of your previous work under “recent files”. Which means, unless you’ve saved as preset in PhF, you have to start the edit process all over again.

There appears to be no automatically generated .pfi file next to an edited Raw in the file manager. Should there be? Perhaps if that were to remember edits done in gimp too?

  • All three apps (Gimp, PhF and G’mic) seem to play well together with this appimage, though it would appear (at least on my PC) that the G’mic plugin doesn’t respect monitor profiles. This means that the pics that are edited in PhF and Gimp look as they are supposed to, but when passed through the G’mic plugin the preview is dull and desaturated.

I don’t think this is an issue with PhF or Gimp, but needs to be addressed before the appimage could be ready for release as stable.

I hope this helps.

2 Likes
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Hi Brian,

those are very good suggestion! In detail:

I fully a free with your, proper desktop integration is absolutely mandatory for a good user experience.

File drag&drop might be easier to introduce than the “Open with…” menu option, but I will look into both.

The .pfi file gets stored directly inside the GIMP image, as well as in the .xcf file when it is saved. Try to select a layer created with the PhF plug-in, then run “Filters → PhotoFlow…” and choose “Edit current”. The PhF edit should be restored (including all layers, layer groups, tool options, etc…).

I will post some screenshots to explain the steps if needed.

We need to address this issue with @David_Tschumperle and the GIMP developers.

A lot!!! :smiley:

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Opening from the system file manager is a matter of setting the mime type. I can figure out how to do this if you’re interested.

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@paperdigits: thanks for the offer!

There are two aspects that I need to sort out:

  • how to pass the file name to the appimage launcher. I need to test if this is actually possible or not
  • generate a desktop file with the proper mime types assignments, and install it in the right place. There the main problem is how to deal with multiple versions of the appimage. The simplest solution is to only keep the latest version…

I’ll let you know as soon as the first point is solved. Thanks!

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Ah good point on passing a file to the appimage; I had assumed it was possible.

I believe you can put a .desktop file somewhere in ~/.config that’ll add it to the context menu. I’ll try with geeqie later tonight as it uses the .desktop file convention.

Edit: looks like “open with” depends on what file manager you use… Sigh… For Nemo, you can use the desktop convention, but it goes into a dir that needs root access… I’ll keep poking at this.

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Ok, I’ve just verified: passing a file name to the appimage works perfectly. Moreover, when a RAW file is passed, PhF gets opened automatically as it should.

Now we have to figure out how to integrate this with the file managers… meanwhile, here is the appimage version that accepts input files: Dropbox - gimp-2.9.5-20160823.glibc2.15-x86_64.AppImage - Simplify your life

Thanks!

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@Carmelo_DrRaw, I have some good news of sorts…

I removed the ~/.config/GIMP-AppImage folder, set the req permissions of the updated appimage and launched, all good.

Then I right-clicked over CR2 file and added the appimage as ‘open with…’, and launched, Gimp opened and then so did PhF. All good.

But if I create a menu item for the appimage, and place the icon on the desktop, then attempt to drop the CR2 file over the icon, Gimp launches, but not PhF. So it would appear that maybe the PhF plugin doesn’t support shortcuts?

The right-click option would work a lot better if the appimage somehow appeared automatically in the selection of available apps. Being an appimage, and not a traditionally installed app, I’m not sure if this would be possible, but putting it out there anyway.

I think, most users would open a Raw file by…

  • Right clicking over the file and choosing which app from the drop-down selection
  • Drag and drop the image thumbnail over the app desktop (shortcut) icon
  • Open the app first, then navigate to the file using the apps menu
  • Set the appimage as default for opening associated file types

Usually they would opt for the quickest approach to suit their workflow. In my case it would be either (or both) of the first two in the list above. I usually leave the default for an image viewer of preference.

Whilst I’m unable to help in coding, I certainly am keen to help out with testing. If it would be any benefit to you, I’d be happy to install VirtualBox, and have a range of distros to test the appimage on?

EDIT: I should note that my main workstation is LinuxMint 17.3 Cinnamon 64-bit (based on Ubuntu 14.04).

Cheers,
Bryan

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Can you open other apps by dropping files on their desktop shortcut?

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Oh, and another improvement would be to somehow allow an updated appimage to overwrite the previous content in ~/.config/GIMP-AppImage - except for personal settings (colour management, palette & brush, tools, etc…).

The way it is, it doesn’t seem to overwrite at all when you launch a new version, meaning one has to remove the `/.config/appimage folder an start a fresh.

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Yup, works fine with geeqie.

It also works fine with the appimage, launching gimp, but not the PhF plugin when a Raw is dropped over the shortcut.

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@Carmelo_DrRaw perhaps some hints about file manager integration here: https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/issues/84

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I suspect that your desktop file still points to an older version of the appimage, which does not support file names and input parameters…

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You are so right! Sorted. Thanks!

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There is now the optional (still experimental) appimaged daemon that registers and unregisters AppImages with the system, including MIME types. If you’d like to try it out, head over to https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/releases, and if it doesn’t exactly do what you think it should do, I’d be happy to hear about it on https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/issues.

If everything goes as planned, this should give you the “open with…” option.