Film Gimp released for Macintosh OS X

Free open source motion picture retouching tool ported to OSX

BERKELEY, California - Film Gimp, the most popular open source toolin feature motion picture work, has released its first Macintoshversion. Film Gimp is now available for Mac OS X, Linux, and SGIIrix.

Film Gimp is a frame-by-frame retouching tool used by motion picturestudios as an alternative tool to Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp was usedon the movies Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, and otherproductions. It is typically used for removing dust or making othercorrections to digitized motion picture footage. It supports 16-bitcolor depth (48-bit rgb), necessary for working with film. Film Gimpdevelopers, many based at Hollywood studios, work on Film Gimpcooperatively, with the program and source code provided free to thepublic at SourceForge.net.

"Great to see a paint package on the Mac that supports high bitdepth!" says Alan Boucek, lead compositor for the movie TheMatrix. "Texture painters can 't paint in 16-bit in Photoshop."Photoshop offers only limited 16-bit support. That many 8-bit featuresare disabled inconveniences motion picture texture painters. Film Gimp,traditionally a 16-bit retouching tool, is in the process of makingfeature 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 Iset when I joined the Film Gimp project in June. Porting to OS X wasmade easier by its FreeBSD roots. OS X and FreeBSD have much in commonwith Linux."

"This port will most benefit small special effects houses andstudios with both Mac and Linux machines," says Mac Film Gimp portingteam lead Andy Prock. Prock, a recent Masters C.S. graduate fromWestern Washington University, is accepting interviews for computergraphics tool programming positions at West coast motion picturestudios. The Mac porting team includes Clemson grad student Karl Rascheand Dreamworks Linux software lead Nathan Wilson.

"All Mac users benefit," says Rasche, who did most of the debuggingon Mac Film Gimp. "People don't want to repartition just to play withFilm Gimp." Wilson adds, "Because smaller effects houses are largelyMac based they may gain the most." Wilson worked most on the Fink partof the port. Fink is a popular system for installing Darwin-basedprograms on OS X. While Fink is highly acclaimed and made a quick portfeasible, it is a bit of extra effort to install and use. A Mac Quartzversion of Film Gimp is being planned for Q4 2003.

* Pricing and Availability

Free at http://filmgimp.sourceforge.net, available as sourcetarball (gz), download version 0.10 or higher (about 3mb). RequiresFink (free, see http://fink.sourceforge.net/). Film Gimp has anactive user community and mailing list.