Except for the vines and green pepper, the latest version of the Gimp
ships with basically the same set of brushes as version 1.0. Even the
gimp-data-extra package does not contain anything that demonstrates
the power of the pixmap brushes or pipes.
It would be good to add two or three high-quality brushes to the
default brushes shipped with version 1.2. There should be no more
than two or three new brushes (no bloatware), if possible showing
different features of the pixmap brushes/pipes: orientation, sequence,
and so on. Of course we can add even more brushes and patterns in the
corresponding gimp-data-extras package, but the default distribution
should be reasonably small.
There are many pages containing nice PSP tubes, for example:
http://bart.northnet.com.au/~robrow/tubes/downloads.htm
http://www.cablevision.qc.ca/renlev/tubes.html
But we cannot convert them to Gimp brushes without violating some
copyrights or some of the limitations that they put on redistribution.
So we should try to create our own copyright-free brushes.
By the way, I think that the current gimp-data-extras contain too many
"abstract" brushes and patterns. It would be nice to have some good
images of stones, leaves, wood, flowers, grass, sky, fur,... that are
scanned directly from Mother Nature. I have just started doing that
myself, but I would be good if several of us could do it so that we
could have a nice collection. Some of the PSP tubes are good examples
of the kind of high-quality stuff that we should distribute with
gimp-1.2 (some are bad examples too; just ignore them).
I am not sure about how to coordinate this effort and how to select
the best brushes and patterns (we need only the best stuff in the
distribution). Any suggestions? If nobody volunteers, maybe I could
collect the submissions (by e-mail?), put them on some web page and
then wait for comments, but I would only do that as a last resort
because being behind a firewall prevents me from setting up some
automated process. That's why I am asking here for ideas and
volunteers instead of posting a request directly on the gimp-users
list or in comp.graphics.apps.gimp. I would be nice to do that before
1.2 is released.
-Raphael
