From what bilbo9955 wrote

.

he will be glad for the patch:geek

and we will too be very happy if you may share the binary

I emailed him, but he didn't answer yet.
As I interpret the GPL, I think it is allowed, as long as I publish the source code, too.
That would be, of course, the case.
Sharing the binary will not be easy... I can share the patch, because the forground extraction is a
tool, so it is contained in the source of gimp-2.8.exe.
For using the tool, you have to compile the main gimp-executable. It has exactly the same functionality
(also gui) of the tool in his fork gimp-2.7.4

I am anxious that you share that patch, so I can try it on GNU/Linux.
Thank you.

You might be using the old version unless someone has wrote a new GUI. Here is part of what I received from Jan on July 10:

"Actually, I more or less finished the core algorithm in gegl, the new library that Gimp is using now for image manipulation stuff: http://www.gegl.org/operations.html#op_ ... ing-global

However, I really don't have the time to keep working on it. What's missing is the whole GUI part. So currently you can only use it on the command line, and not in Gimp itself...

I guess you'll just have to wait until someone does the GUI in Gimp to be really able to use it..."

Yes, you are right. This is the old version. I don't know, how to use the gegl version, and I'm not able to build a GUI around it. Maybe in gimp-2.9.x (2.10), the are some gegl operations implemented as filters.
I'm still waiting for Mr. Rüegg...

Jan Rüegg allowed me to publish the patch, but it must be sure, that it is under the terms
of GNU Public License
So:

Matting
Copyright (C) 2011 Jan Rüegg <[email protected]>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

The patch will change the "foreground extraction tool" to the matting tool.
The original "siox" tool will be lost.
A recompile of gimp-2.8 will be necessary.

Thanks Onkel Hatti (And Jan Rüegg)
For what GIMP version is that patch? GIMP 2.8.2 stable version?

Edit:
Oh, sorry. I had not read above. It seems that the patch is for 2.8.3 git version, right?
But git versions have continually changes. Is it still possible to apply this patch to the current version?

I wish you can just change out the plugin with this one; I don't know how to compile GIMP. lol

Thats the problem. This is not a plugin. Its a tool.
And all tools (paintbrush, erazer, etc.) are in the
gimp executable code.
I ported it to the available code, but it should work with the
2.8.2 code, too.
But there is no way but recompiling the gimp executable.

It seems that the patch has some problems with GIMP 2.8.2:

I made some more changes and tried to improve the tool.

1. for information reasons (quality info) I added a slider, that makes the result mask opaque from 30% to 100% (default: 50%)
2. I implemented the feature, that the result can be either a new layer with the extracted object (this is default), a selection (just like the siox-tool) or both. The selection gives the possibility to create a selection mask more easyly than the default.
3. I made some of the standard parameters of the alghorithm changeable. I don't know exactly, what the parameters will change, just play around a little.
Lambda has something to do with the value of confidence, that a pixel must be in or out the selection, or maybe in between.
Radius describes the radius that colors are compared, whether they are in the selection or not.
Color distance deals with the difference of colors they must have to decide, whether they are in or out the selection.
Default value for all parameters is 10.
4. I made a patch for gimp-2.8.2 I didn't compile it, but it should work.
5. I made a patch for gimp-2.8.3 (newest git-resource from 12/11/16)

In the patch for gimp-2.8.2 i added a german translation. In the patch for gimp-2.8.3 the de.po changes too often, so two days later, the patch would not work anymore, so I put the parts of the .po files in the zip, so the de.po can be changed manually.

Juhuu.

It took just a few minutes to get the .png out of the .jpg
Foreground select - make the forground better, make the background better, press enter.
Make a selecion mask of the result and push up the mask a little.

That seems to have worked quite well.

where does the patch file go
win7 64

anywhere.
the patch must be invoked from the gimp - directory

so i can just put it in my users/plug-ins, don't see how that's going to work, but then again i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed

Oh no... It is a patch for the source code of gimp...
It changes the source and you have to recompile gimp.
The problem is, that the program isn't a plugin, but it is a tool and all the stuff concerning tools
is in the gimp-2.8.exe, so it has to be compiled.

Onkel Hatti, Thank you very much! I applied the patch to the today git version.
Well, I've tried with a picture where the foreground is very hard to extract. The result is very good. I have only changed the "Start Percentage" value. I have used a value of 20. I had to be applying corrections painting unselected areas about 5 times:

Now if I copy the original layer, invert colors on the copied layer and I work on that layer, I achieved a similar result in less time:

The result is good considering the difficult of the picture I've chosen.
Then I will experiment with the other parameters that I have no idea what they are for

I'm still hoping someone uses your updates and make a portable version of GIMP using it Onkel. I will then un-install my current RGGJAN portable (GIMP 2.7x) and replace it with yours.

Why a portable version?
Whats wrong with the normal one?

Hatti