Hi folks,

I'm happy to announce the release of the 1.4.7.1 version of G'MIC.
I've made the following changes (compared to previous 1.4.7.0)

- Mechanism to manage named variables have been optimized a lot. This includes better memory handling and faster lookup of the variable content. Do not hesitate then to define and use variables in G'MIC codes.

- Global variables have been introduced. This allows a custom command to set a variable defined before the command has been invoked. This can be useful to define multiple return values. Global variables are defined by variable names starting by the underscore character '_'. As in :


titi : _x=1 y=1
toto : _x=0 y=0 -titi -echo $_x,$y


gmic -toto will display '1,0' since '_x' is a global variable while 'y' stays local to each custom command.

- I've improved the image selection mechanism. I've done lot of experimental works on this, for instance, to allow multiple duplicates in a single selection (as in '-blur[0,0,1]'), or to allow inverse orders (as in '-blur[1,0]'). Both ideas have been implemented, *but* finally not kept. There are several reasons not to allow this kind of 'exotic' selections). First, as it becomes more generic, I have to be extremely careful about memory management, which means most images must be copied instead of just transfered, when invoking functions. This creates a large memory overload for all operations. It isn't worth the features we gain, as you can easily apply the same command multiple times on an image (with a '-repeat'..'-done' loop), or invert the image order if required (with '-mv' or '-reverse' commands). These solutions are faster to use.

- I've updated the filters for the plug-in, by PhotoComiX and Tom Keil. As their code uses different writting conventions, I'm usually forced to make them more clear before integrating them in the default filter list. So, to make this more clean, I suggest the followings :

1. Please, starts all your GIMP specific filter name by the prefix 'gimp_', as it is done for all other filters. The commands you are introducing may be called also from the command line version of G'MIC, and they do not respect the rules for this (no default parameters for instance). We can be more tolerant for GIMP plug-in entries, but still, I suppose the more clear it is at the beginning, the better it is.

2. Please, make the first character of the argument names as a CAPITAL letters.

3. Please, add the following line at the end of the argument list. So, you can credit yourself for this filter, and tells about the last update you've made :


#@gimp : sep = separator(), note = note("Author : Tom Keil / Last update : 2010/11/24")


(there are additionnal tags in the string above, but the HTML parser of the Flickr group has removed them. Please copy/paste one of the existing ones in the latest "gmic_def.gmic" file. I personally added this
string to all existing filter in the plug-in.

Well, that's it for the moment. I'm quite happy with the changes, managing variables is easiest and fastest than ever.

Linux packages are being built, Windows version should follow today.

Happy new year 2011 !

Played with the B&W Hard Sketch filter. I need to play with the settings more but it's a very cool filter. I desaturated the image using the luminocity setting. Then did brightness-contrast to get more contrast. Set the treated, desaturated layer to Grain Merge.

That was fast! Got it! Thanks!