| Home | Press | Mailing List | Documentation | Screenshots | People | SourceForge | Downloads |
BERKELEY, California - December 5, 2002 - Film Gimp, the most popular open source tool in feature motion picture work, has released its first Macintosh version. Film Gimp is now available for Mac OS X, Linux, and SGI Irix.
Film Gimp is a frame-by-frame retouching tool used by motion picture studios as an alternative tool to Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp was used on the movies Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, and other productions. It is typically used for removing dust or making other corrections to digitized motion picture footage. It supports 16-bit color depth (48-bit rgb), necessary for working with film. Film Gimp developers, many based at Hollywood studios, work on Film Gimp cooperatively, with the program and source code provided free to the public at SourceForge.net.
"Great to see a paint package on the Mac that supports high bit depth!" says Alan Boucek, lead compositor for the movie The Matrix. "Texture painters can't paint in 16-bit in Photoshop." Photoshop offers only limited 16-bit support. That many 8-bit features are disabled inconveniences motion picture texture painters. Film Gimp, traditionally a 16-bit retouching tool, is in the process of making feature enhancements to better accommodate texture painters.
"Film studios use many operating systems, including Linux, Irix, Macintosh, and Windows," notes Film Gimp release manager Robin Rowe. "Making Film Gimp available on all those operating systems is a goal I set when I joined the Film Gimp project in June. Porting to OS X was made easier by its FreeBSD roots. OS X and FreeBSD have much in common with Linux."
"This port will most benefit small special effects houses
and studios with both Mac and Linux machines," says Mac Film
Gimp porting team lead Andy Prock. Prock, a recent Masters C.S.
graduate from Western Washington University, is accepting interviews
for computer graphics tool programming positions at west coast
motion picture studios. The Mac porting team includes Clemson
grad student Karl Rasche and Dreamworks Linux software lead Nathan
Wilson.
"All Mac users benefit," says Rasche, who did most of
the debugging on Mac Film Gimp. "People don't want to repartition
just to play with Film Gimp." Wilson adds, "Because
smaller effects houses are largely Mac based they may gain the
most." Wilson worked most on the Fink part of the port. Fink
is a popular system for installing Darwin-based programs on OS
X. While Fink is highly acclaimed and made a quick port feasible,
it is a bit of extra effort to install and use. A Mac Quartz version
of Film Gimp is being planned for Q4 2003.
* Pricing and Availability
Free at http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net, available as source tarball (gz), download version 0.10 or higher (about 3mb). Requires Fink (free, see http://fink.sourceforge.net/). Film Gimp has an active user community and mailing list.
* Further Information
Robin Rowe, Film Gimp release manager, 510-235-2397, Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com
Full rez screenshot: http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/docs/MacFilmGimp.1440x900.png
Film Gimp press clippings: http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net/press/
###
