HELP!!! GIMP v. 2.8.6 wants to save my .jpg images as .xcf, but I'm not interested in playing the '20 click' game - File / Export / etc., ...

One combo click Ctrl + S works just fine.

Anyone know how to change default Save format to .jpg?

You don't, this is now the intended operation in 2.8. When you "Save" you are saving to the GIMP's format so all of your work (I.E. layers) is preserved and editable in the future. If you want to flatten that work down to a simple image, then you aren't saving it, you are exporting it.

The best option, learn to use Ctrl + E instead.

you could always downgrade to the 2.6 version
or go farther and go back to before GEGL/BABL and build the gtk2 gimp 2.2

gimp 2.4 is still the default for CentOS/RHEL 6.4

Funny, but true. I just pulled out the 2.6.12 code and rebuilt for Slackware 14.

I could no longer stand the absurd slowness of the crop and selection tools (for example), esp on >20MB images at 400% (16G/quad core Phenom that does nothing but graphics and video, and using rawtherapee for all color preprocessing).

The team did make 2.8 design/time/resource choices well in many cases, the detail that most processors today are multi-core seems to have been lost.

I'll give 2.8.8 a spin in any case.

Cheers,

i have not noticed that , and i work on some VERY BIG images
a small image ,for me is 8192x4096 pixels and medium size is 16384 x 8192 px.

i also do not use the "gimpshop" single window
and use the virtual desktops for pallets and tool options

but for HUGE images (6+ gig ) i use Nip2

Why in the world would you want to save in .jpg? Have the results to someone and they say can you tone down that red a bit or add this...Congratulations now you get to rebuild your image. Ps defaults to .psd why should GIMP be different when you're finished control shift S name it, control E name (merged)one to keep and one to mail away.

Normal for me is 4928x3264 but the panos are typically 3-6x larger.

Pulled gimp 2.8.8, brought gegl/babl up to current and got a significant performance boost, and the poor multi-core utilization comment is still valid.

Thanks for the VIPS/nip2 pointer. I'm going to try a modified workflow:

nip2(split up large image) -> gimp -> nip2(recombine).

Cheers,

I would expect normal workflow would be to save files in a non-lossy format preserving all layers, etc. And certainly save your work multiple times during your editing session(s). And then when you're all done, you might create a jpg to send to a less savvy user who wouldn't know a format from a marshmallow. All the while retaining the original image, and your non-lossy layer-preserved working copy for yourself.

The Gimp is a pretty sophisticated editor, along the same lines as Photoshop (which doesn't save to jpg as its default either). Maybe lesser newbie type photo editors could get by with saving by default to jpg, but I doubt any halfway serious photo editing person would want that. And the people who use The Gimp and/or Photoshop are at least "halfway serious" usually.

nip takes a bit of time to get used to .
It also has a built in function to split images

tile to something x something with or without an overlap

and is good for putting together panoramas
with one or two tie points
all of these mosaics were done with nip
( within a few days of the rover landing on mars )
https://plus.google.com/photos/10269...985?banner=pwa