Speed up GIMP operations?

lacertile · **Joined:** Dec 07, 2011 **Posts:** 102

I'm not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I'm curious: With the talk of GIMP becoming GEGL-based in future iterations, would that speed up operations (such as running a gaussian blur on a large image or rescaling multiple layers at once)? Or are those kinds of things just inherently time-consuming?

Draconian · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2012 3:27 pm **(#2)**

Mo Memory, Mo Memory, Mo Memory....if that doesn't work, buy some more memory. :hehe

lacertile · **Joined:** Dec 07, 2011 **Posts:** 102

Draconian wrote:

Mo Memory, Mo Memory, Mo Memory....if that doesn't work, buy some more memory. :hehe

LOL I'm already rocking 16GB RAM with 10GB going to GIMP's tile cache alone :geek

Maybe I'm just being picky.

ZWard117 · **Joined:** Jan 20, 2012 **Posts:** 583

Jesus man, why even ask that question than! Yours set for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time!

Erisian · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2012 4:21 pm **(#5)**

lacertile wrote:

Draconian wrote:

Mo Memory, Mo Memory, Mo Memory....if that doesn't work, buy some more memory. :hehe

LOL I'm already rocking 16GB RAM with 10GB going to GIMP's tile cache alone :geek

Maybe I'm just being picky.

...and your Gimp is too slow?!! :shock:

paynekj · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2012 4:33 pm **(#6)**

Up to now it's been looking like GEGL would slow processing down, but to judge from this post of Partha's there may be some improvements possible: http://www.gimpusers.com/forums/gimp-us ... ssage66197

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

lacertile wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I'm curious: With the talk of GIMP becoming GEGL-based in future iterations, would that speed up operations (such as running a gaussian blur on a large image or rescaling multiple layers at once)? Or are those kinds of things just inherently time-consuming?

Yes, something like a Gaussian blur is very compute-intensive. Even computing the result of two overlapping layers with partial transparency is rather CPU intensive (one multiplication/pixel/color channel). And try to use the perspective tool with preview on a 12Mpx photograph...

One point in favor of GEGL is that it makes it a lot easier to offload compute-intensive tasks from the main processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU). The latter is mostly a large set (fom 64 to over 2000 in current high end cards) of simple arithmetic processors that can work in parallel.

lacertile · **Joined:** Dec 07, 2011 **Posts:** 102

ofnuts wrote:

One point in favor of GEGL is that it makes it a lot easier to offload compute-intensive tasks from the main processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU). The latter is mostly a large set (fom 64 to over 2000 in current high end cards) of simple arithmetic processors that can work in parallel.

That is precisely what I was wondering about, if using the GPU to perform operations like that within GIMP will be even faster than it is currently.

Draconian · **Posted:** Mon May 14, 2012 4:45 pm **(#9)**

OK. Now I'm really jealous! I'm running XP with a lousy 3GB of ram which, I'm told, is all that XP can drive. I need a new puter...... :tantrum

ofnuts · **Joined:** Oct 25, 2010 **Posts:** 4812

lacertile wrote:

ofnuts wrote:

One point in favor of GEGL is that it makes it a lot easier to offload compute-intensive tasks from the main processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU). The latter is mostly a large set (fom 64 to over 2000 in current high end cards) of simple arithmetic processors that can work in parallel.

That is precisely what I was wondering about, if using the GPU to perform operations like that within GIMP will be even faster than it is currently.

Definitely. The hitch is that accessing the GPU is done through system interfaces that aren't the same in Linux/OSX/Windows so the ports are going to be more difficult.

partha · **Joined:** Mar 14, 2011 **Posts:** 998

paynekj wrote:

Up to now it's been looking like GEGL would slow processing down, but to judge from this post of Partha's there may be some improvements possible: http://www.gimpusers.com/forums/gimp-us ... ssage66197

Kevin,

I used those optimizers on my builds and now Gimp seems to be pretty "zippy" on 8G RAM (64-bit).

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16169

I have always said Parthas builds seem to be faster than the dev releases.

Even on my 1GIG RAM machine with Windows XP they are pretty quick. As long as i do not bog them down with brushes, and patterns to load.