alc59,

You probably have DLL clashes given what you have said. The portable will not interact with the system, but Windows will still try to load DLLs from the system's directory before anything else.

Can you try to run the 64-bit and see what happens. Also, best not to mix and match.

Thanks,
Partha

I will try the 64 tomorrow
it's a mess alright..i have 2.6.11 2.7.3 and 2.7.4 on here

thanks for all your help/work
Andy

Andy,

If you have been using my 2.7.3 builds, you can uninstall and install the current version. Also, if you have plug-ins in your .gimp-2.7 directory then they can interfere. Of course, this will not affect the portable version which you are free to use without uninstalling anything.

Let me know if you have issues after you try tomorrow and we can try to fix them.

Thanks,
Partha

@Partha & Alc59

Just to stress a point i would add with huge letters a big warning:
If you already had Gimp and/or you wish to use more then 1 version of gimp on the same computer
USE ALWAYS AND ONLY THE (also)PORTABLE BUILDS

I had 10 installed on mine at one time all working. - that included Gimp-Photo, and Gimp-Shop.
Not anymore though.
Now i have only -
Gimp-1.2 - installed
Gimp-2.6.11 - installed
Gimp Portable 2.6 - portable revised (with Python, and PSPI) version
Gimp-2.7.4 - install version
Gimp Adaptable - installed

I have the Gimp-2.7.3 with the new Foreground Select tool but it needs a lot of RAM (4 gigs min) to work.

Why would you want so many Rod? I have a hard time keeping two in scripts and plug-ins?

honestly i don't like forks in project as Gimp , not at all !

May be exception for fork that may be easily merged back ...but in case are not really fork.

I like a lot Gimpainter even more if combined with GPS (Gimp Paint Studio) but i do not consider Gimpainter a fork
(as i believe its developer ).

Actually in the gimp git a lateral branch host something very similar to the RGGJAN selection tool ;
a similar but i believe more mature and stable project that from what i heard risk to be merged not before 2.10,

The same for the future replacement of Iwarp that should become a tool with a real-time preview applied to the image

I believe compiling one of those branch would be more rewarding than support a not manteined fork,
 ..and who know may even help to speed up the testing needed to merge in the standard version of gimp.

 I hope my distinction between fork and branch will not sound pedantic:
the first subtract attention,users and energy from the original project,
the second may even help to speed up the integration of new feautures developed in lateral branch...
for me is not a little difference

PC,

Are you thinking about the seamless clone branch? Rod told me about that one.

Thanks,
Partha

that is one, the branch is “soc-2011-seamless-clone2” and..did you saw the video ?



here same more detail
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proj ... yname/6001

BUT there is more ... the cage transform tool aka the new IWarp (that is more or less the equivalent of PS Liquify )



here show some problem but that should be fixed now



BUT i am not sure how much is ready for a pratical use...sure seems cool BUT all video show the effect on something or on a transparent BG or on a solid white BG as here



No video show how would work on a selected object on a normal BG ...

OOPSS no i am wrong here you may see applied on a chessboard
http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=826

and here some more info

http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=753
http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=616

BUT when i was digging information on tools still under development , maybe not yet ready for pratical use..
i was so lucky to stumble on something ready already well tested and kept in sync with last gimp from git..

YUP ...here GimPainter git ..should be build on Gimp-2.7.4
http://git.sourceforge.jp/view?p=gimp-p ... ;a=summary

Even more info and details HERE
http://libregraphicsworld.org/news.php?readmore=675

Hello there! I'm rggjan, one of the authors (obviously ) of this portable. I'm currently studying computer science at the ETH in Zurich.

After seeing that my branch created so much Buzz here (thanks to Partha), I decided to create a little FAQ here.

FAQ

• What is the RGGJAN portable?
  It is a branch of the original gimp, where the foreground extraction tool was exchanged. I always felt that this tool was next to useless in its current state in gimp (reasons see below). Therefore I looked for the best current foreground extraction algorithm (http://www.alphamatting.com/eval_25.php) and implemented that in Gimp as a semester project.
  

  ---

• Whats the difference to the old foreground extraction tool?
  The old algorithm, implemented after an older paper (http://www.siox.org/), has the main problem that it generates only a binary alpha matte. The problems with that is that you can have severe "color bleeding" of the background color into the foreground at borders. For example, fine black hair on a green background gets darkish green. Also, you don't have any transparancy or antialiasing at borders, each pixel is either foreground or background.
  
  The new algorithm, on the other hand, tries to find out the foreground AND the background color of each pixel, and with that, it can calculate a semitransparent alpha value. This also means that the background color can be removed from the final extracted pixel, what gives, in general, much better results.
  
  More details here:
  Attachment:
  FinalReport.pdf [2.13 MiB]
  Downloaded 903 times
  
  
  

  ---

• In what state is it?
  As mentioned, it was realised as a semester project at ETH on e relatively tight time schedule. That means, it is currently more like a proof-of-concept than a real alpha or beta version. This is mainly because the user interface is in a very early stage, and it is not very well tested. It surely contains quite a few bugs.
  

  ---

• Do you have some examples of the result?
  You can find some pictures in the attached report. There's also a video on youtube:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkQ1r5g49d4
  

  ---

• How can I try it out?
  Partha was kind enough to create windows binaries for it on http://partha.com/. However, you can also find the source code here, where you can build it yourself on any platform:
  https://github.com/rggjan/Gimp-Matting
  (be sure to check out the "new_layer" branch...)
  
  What you can see in the video above is the version that is on github and in parthas branch, so you should be able to make the exact same thing work.
  

  ---

• What are the hardware requirements?
  In the video, I work on my (not too new) laptop, with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. I use a 64-bit linux and have 2 GB of RAM. The extraction of the example image takes about 10 seconds.
  
  When I remember correctly, the algorithm should not use more RAM for bigger pictures, however it will take more time. Also, the time used for the calculation increases very fast when you have many unknown pixels, so try to mark as much as possible as foreground or background!
  

  ---

• How does it work?
  You can see here a live demonstration of it:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkQ1r5g49d4
  
  Generally, you must mark as much as possible foreground and background with the respective color, then it will calculate the color and alpha value for all the unknown pixels. However, this takes very long if there are many unknown pixels, and is also not very accurate. Therefore you can set in the gui that it only starts the real algorithm after you marked a certain amount of pixels (like 70%). Once that happened, it will calculate the unknown pixels and show the result in the same preview colors. Upon pressing enter, a new layer gets created with the extracted image. It contains the calculated foreground colors and the alpha values.
  

  ---

• Will it be merged into mainline gimp?
  I contacted the authors of gimp about that. The main problem is that this was our first real gimp project, and we used the old foreground extraction tool as guide. However, this used depreciated functions (more specifically, we have all only 8-bit colors and we do not use gegl).
  To get it included into upstream gimp, all of this would have to adapted first.
  

  ---

• Is it still under active development?
  Currently, not really. Right now, I'm updating it to the newest available gimp version. Beyond that, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to work on it myself. I would love to do it, and then also see it in the "real" gimp, but I can make no promises.
  
  However, if anyone is interested in working on it, I'll be glad to explain what we did and how we did it, so that someone else can also work on the project.

So long, thanks for your interest in our branch. If you have more questions, just write in the forum or contact me: rggjan@gmail.com

Wow! Straight from you to us. to Gimp Chat rggjan and thank you for your very detailed explanations.

Double wow. I would love to have this tool for extracting background from hair, it does an amazing job.
Welcome to the forum rggjan and thank you for the great and detailed explanation above.

Well, give it a shot. Since it's a portable, it should not interact with your system. Do remember that there are bugs and also it may not work in some complex situations. One obvious way to tell that it didn't work is if you don't see the extraction tool spin button, something went wrong.

Thanks,
Partha

@ rggjan

glad to see you here,and to see that your was not intended to be a fork but a contribution to gimp.
I hope you didn't find my words rude but i was talking in general, and about fork

well i see from the FAQ that we agree also on some point , as the tool be a proof of concept ,fascinating but not yet ready for pratical use , and on the problems about future development and merging in the main gimp branch.

But i really hope that problems may be solved in a close future because have a similar tool integrated in gimp ( even if in a beta stage ) will be simply great !!

so i wish the best success and i hope that all this buzz will help you to find contributors for the Gegl-gimp porting

Welcome to the forum RGGJAN!
Thanks for posting all that information for the Foreground Tool also.

I didn't get any errors at all but the foreground removal tool doesn't seem to be doing its job. I went back and watched the tutorial 3 times and I am pretty sure I did it exactly the same way. It removed the background, at least most of it but left the white all around the hair. drats, I was counting on this tool.

I didn't get errors either Molly it just never selected anything.
Did you actually see it make a selection for you? (marching ants)
Also try moving the slider to about 27.

Hi Molly

I just tried it with your image, and it worked quite well:
This was my selection:

The selection after the algorithm ran:

The final image:


Maybe you selected some wrong foreground/background pixels. It is important that no foreground pixels are marked as background, and no background pixels are marked as foreground, otherwise it will not work at all.

In your image I see a cut of the neck, so you have probably marked all the pixels at the lower end of the neck as background...

Wow, that is perfect, I will try it again until I get it...I will screen shot your selections to see what I am not doing. thank you. RGGJAN

Edit: I finally got it. I just love this new foreground tool.