The GIMP plugin will take advantage of the new features in the next version, but the performance can already be improved by just installing the new library version (you don't need to recompile the plugin¹).

Note for Windows users: I will pack a version with the new engine soon.

As for the previous version 0.5, the translations and help files will only work correctly in the standard version if the Windows Program Files directory name (which depends on the system language) starts with the letters "PROGRA" and the installation path is the default one. The PortableApps version is a little less problematic since it only requires that the installation path is the default one (something like L:\PortableApps\GIMPPortable, but the drive letter is not relevant).

Many thanks must go to François Collard for having compiled the plugin over and over until we managed to make it work properly.

• Added interactive mode: you can adjust the scaling size incrementally. Also, after the first computation the scaling can go in real-time!
• Scaling beyond 200% is now possible (the scaling is automatically divided in steps)
• The "scaling mode" was moved to the Output tab, and renamed; two new scaling modes were added
• Fixed non-interactive mode (previously buggy), and included three scripts to help command-line batch processing (so that you can easily automate liquid-rescaling operations on a large number of files from the command line)
• Split the auto-size button in two, one for width and the other for height

Go get it from the Download page!

• one is an updated Windows version for standard GIMP users
• another one is for PortableApps users

The main new is that the translations and help files finally work to some extent in the Windows version - but only if GIMP is installed in standard paths:

• for the standard GIMP, the path must be C:\PROGRA~1\GIMP-2.0 (i.e. the Program Files directory, which is different in each language, must begin with the letters PROGRA - e.g. in Italian it is so)
• for GIMPPortable, the path must be something like L:\PortableApps\GIMPPortable.

In both cases, the drive letter is not relevant.

Note that the help file may still not be working in some cases.

If your path is different and you really want the plugin translated, you can also create those directories by yourself, in the same drive where you installed GIMP, following the above specified paths, and put there the relevant files (the ones under the share\locale folder).

Note: if you think this is silly (as we do) and know how to address this issue please contact me!

As for the previous versions, the lqr library is already included in the package, so there's no need to download it separately for Windows users.

List of changes

• Enforced 50% rescale limit in LqR+LqR back mode to prevent crash
• Enforced 200% rescale limit in non-interactive mode also
• Fixed some problems with new masks in greyscale images
• Fixed a bug about unnecessary conversion to RGB causing an error message
• Pressing the Refresh button caused the guess direction setting to be reset
• Cleaned up some clutter from incomplete translations
• Help images were converted from png to jpg to save some space

Another important bug, producing crashes in some cases, was fixed in the new release 0.2.1 of the Liquid Rescale library, go and get it as well.

Core engine

• Faster core engine, reduced memory requirements (see the news for the library release for more details)
• Introduced rigidity masks: rigidity can now be restricted to some image areas
• Added GAP support for animations: liquid rescale your videos for fun and profit!!!1!
• Introuced left-right/top-bottom balance

Interface

• Now discard masks are ignored by default when enlarging (but there's an option to go back to the previous behaviour)
• Added “reset” and “revert to last used values” buttons for the size, and an overall “reset” button
• The dialog now comes up with the last used values for the size, too (useful when doing tests and undoing many times)
• Added info icons
• Added russian help page!

Go get it from the Download page!

Note #1: (mainly for package maintainers) since the plugin development is now rather stable, the versioning system has changed: no “revision” will be applied any more to the tar file, micro version will be incremented instead. This applies to the liblqr library as well.
Note #2: as you may read in the library release notes, the liblqr can now handle images with a deeper colour depth than 8 bits per pixel. However, GIMP still works on 8-bits-per-pixel images, so the plugin doesn't exploit this capability yet.

To install, just issue:

 yum install gimp-lqr-plugin 

The new sources release also includes an update of the German translation which fixes some misspellings, by Marco Wollkopf.

Note that Slackware 12 still uses GIMP 2.2, so you have to get GIMP 2.4 to use the plugin.

A list of new features and fixes follows:

Core engine

• Much faster core engine (released separately)
• Added “max-step” setting to overcome the 45 degrees limitation in the seams angle
• The “rigidity” setting has a finer grading and improved usefulness
• Rescaling order can be reversed

Interface

• Added more operational modes to go back to the original size automatically
• Added the “Auto size” button for quick object removal
• Layer names in combo menus are ellipsized

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug with transposed layers