Hello

You perhaps remember the KIMP/KImageShop discussion that recently took place on
this mailinglist. I'm happy to announce that Michael Koch (KImage), and myself
(Matthias Elter, KHelpCenter) have started an image manipulation application
called KImageShop.

We spent the last weekend working on a basic concept/design:

Similar to KodeKnight, KImageShop will be based on KOM.
All interfaces like import/export filters will be implemented as KOM
components. The KImageShop core application will be designed to be
light-weight and fast. The core application will "only" handle the image data,
layers and basic tools, like the move tool or the selection tools. Everything
else will be implemented as KOM components and loaded as needed. There will
be well defined KOM interfaces for:

- import filters,
- export filters,
- image manipulation filters,
- and tools.

Additional tools like a gradient editor or a screen shot utility
will be implemented as KOM components, too.

KImageShop comes with it's own XML based file format.
We decided to use an XML DTD because it greatly simplifies the
implementation of import/export filters.
To be compatible with GIMP KImageShop will have import- and export-filters for
the GIMP-fileformat.

KImageShop will provide several types of color representation. This will include
RGB- and CMYK-color representation.

With the vast amount of high quality image modification plugins available
using the GIMP plugin interface we decided to implement a compatibility layer
for using GIMP plugins with KImageShop. We decided against using the GIMP plugin
interface as native plugin interface for KImageShop because we feel that a
CORBA/KOM based plugin interface is much more powerful and simplifies the
implementation of plugins.

Similar to KSpread, KImageShop will be scriptable using python.

KImageShop will make use of the advanced canvas widget based on the upcomign
KImageMagick lib we would like to develop together with Mosfet.

We already have been contacted by a few interested people but for a project of
this size additional developers are needed. If you are interested in this
project please subscribe to the KImageShop mailinglist (kimageshop@kde.org).
Send a mail with the subject line "subscribe" to kimageshop-request@kde.org.

Greetings,
Matthias