Gimp permission problems after Catalina upgrade

GIMP 2.10.14 has been released yesterday, and the releasenotes contain this paragraph (emphasis mine):

Improvements for the macOS version

Alex Samorukov introduced various improvements to the macOS build of GIMP.

First and foremost, GIMP is now compatible with macOS Catalina and doesn’t have the file permission issue that the 2.10.12 build had.

Secondly, the DMG will now open a window with an Applications shortcut that explains how to install it. He also added some fixes for command line users.

Finally, Alex built the new version with updated 3rd party components. Among other things, this means support for color profiles in HEIF/HEIC files.

Download is still in progress, but I really hope this has been fixed as announced.

Please see my comments on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250610191?page=1

The problem is that third party applications requiring access to Desktop, Downloads, and Documents are supposed to trigger a pop-up menu that asks if you want to give access to the application for the folder. It works for LibreOffice and iMovie. The menu does not appear for GIMP and that is why the directories can't be accessed.

See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/3710 and https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/7-big-security-surprises-coming-to-macos-10-15-catalina/

This is not only GIMP related. Other programs have the same problem (MAMP for instance).

It getseven weirder... if I right-click a PNG in my DOWNLOAD folder I can open it in GIMP. When I export this file and select the DOWNLOAD folder again I get a warning I don't have permissions to read it, but if I continue to save the file in that folder it will end up in there...

Here's what worked for me:

Move your file to desktop, right-click to open with gimp, do what you need to do, then go to "save as", give your file a new name and (desired) extension then "save"->export prompt->"export" ignoring the (2) "no-permission" prompts in the process by clicking "ok". The new file (and extension) will be saved on your desktop as it should.

No full disk access required.

Hope this helps.

You don't have to move it to the desktop. It doesn't matter where the file is, a lot of programs don't have permission to READ from user-folders and the /var folder for instance. They seem to be able to write without a problem, it's the reading that is causing the prompt. So that does mean that you'll have to discard the prompt every time one of these programs (Inkscape, GIMP, MAMP are a few I came across) and you'll have to open files by right clicking from the finder program. You can't read directly from the programs, so the 'open' function there doesn't work either...

seems like apple is the only one that can fix this. It's definitely a Catalina problem. We now have to either ignore prompts (which is not an option for MAMP, that just fails) or use folders that are not in our user-folder trees, which makes everything a big mess...

I suspect that both Apple and the GIMP development team have work to do. I can image that macOS 10.15.1 may be as large as the original install considering the issues with this 10.15.0. It also suggests to me that macOS Catalina could not be developed by developers that are running it, or all of the in-your-face restrictions would have delayed the product for months.

As I mentioned previously, the GIMP team will need to assess what needs to be changed for full Catalina compatibility, and that may involve changes to the code, to libraries used, and most likely an updated release of GIMP. Only the GIMP team will know the details, if they are willing to share them.

Just being a 64-bit application, is not the sole criteria for proper Catalina compatibility.

The "right-click" suggestion here was a great help in GIMP. I tried it on a .jpg file on the external volume where I store images. Opening files from that volume on GIMP gave an error message in Catalina. After modifying and exporting that file, I was able to launch GIMP, open files, and export files using the previously unavailable drive. I do not know whether this will survive sleep or a restart.

Hi. In my case I resolve the issue momentarily after moving all files to a new folder inside pictures folder. Mac OS Catalina doesn’t require permission inside picture folder to read and write files. Other way to use GIMP is using the Terminal to open Gimp instead the normal way. Only you need to Open a new window and write :

open /Applications/GIMP-2.10.app/Contents/MacOS/GIMP --args

But you need made this each time that you want to open GIMP

I did something similar in that I created a Projects directory inside my user directory. I also put the Projects directory in the sidebar for Finder to make it easier to use. Creating a new directory in the user directory seems to be best solution for the moment since it doesn't require other tricks with right clicks or copying the contents of images from one application to another. Does anybody know of any other programs that have problems with the Downloads/Documents/Desktop directories. The more data that is collected, the easier it will be to resolve the problem.

You seem to have slightly different file names

What I did was cd/Applications/GIMP-2.10.app/Contents/MacOS

./gimp

BradleyRossMacBook:MacOS bradleyross$ ./gimp

2019-10-14 22:14:25.061 gimp-bin[53568:2295958] *** WARNING: Method userSpaceScaleFactor in class NSView is deprecated on 10.7 and later. It should not be used in new applications. Use convertRectToBacking: instead. 

Cannot spawn a message bus without a machine-id: Unable to load /var/lib/dbus/machine-id or /etc/machine-id: Failed to open file “/var/lib/dbus/machine-id”: No such file or directory

(gimp-bin:53568): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:14:33.443: invalid cast from 'GtkMenuBar' to 'GtkWindow'

(gimp-bin:53568): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 22:14:33.443: gtk_window_add_accel_group: assertion 'GTK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'Display' -> 'GIMP built-in sRGB'

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'GIMP built-in sRGB' -> 'Display'

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'Display' -> 'GIMP built-in sRGB'

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'GIMP built-in sRGB' -> 'Display'

2019-10-14 22:16:54.585 file-png[53606:2297671] *** WARNING: Method userSpaceScaleFactor in class NSView is deprecated on 10.7 and later. It should not be used in new applications. Use convertRectToBacking: instead. 

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'Display' -> 'GIMP built-in sRGB'

gimp_color_transform_new: using babl for 'Display' -> 'GIMP built-in sRGB'

void gimp_gegl_convert_color_profile(GeglBuffer *, const GeglRectangle *, GimpColorProfile *, GeglBuffer *, const GeglRectangle *, GimpColorProfile *, GimpColorRenderingIntent, gboolean, GimpProgress *): converting buffer took 0.0253 seconds

... ... ....

I assume that MacOS/gimp is a shim program written in Objective-C. Does this sound right? When running the application in this manner, I think that it using the file permissions for the terminal rather than the GIMP application. Does this make sense to anyone who is more familiar with the code. Perhaps the Objective-C programs in the MacOS directory need to be updated?

Maybe there is a problem with some apps that they needs gain permissions to write and read some critical folders in macOS Catalina like Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc. However, if you give total access to this apps for read and write inside your hard drive, the problem continues... But I only know one application that requested total access to my hard drive (CleanMyMac) in this case this app asked me about 2 times for permission but I don't remember exactly what kind of access this app asked.

10-15-2019

GIMP 2.8. and Catalina 10.15

I found my solution(s) until Apple and Gimp can work this out.

1 - A workaround for the meantime is by using the terminal - You need to do this everytime you want to use Gimp

$ cd /Applications/Gimp.app

$ ./Contents/MacOS/Gimp

2 - Another workaround is, I simply dragged my Gimp work folder 'MyGimpWorkFolder', located on the Desktop, to my HardDrive (Macintosh HD) under USERS - MACINTOSH HD/USERS/name_of_user/MyGimpWorkFolder

A - LAUNCH GIMP

B - In Gimp - OPEN FILE - Now, instead of opening the Desktop and getting the dreaded 'Could not read the contents of Desktop' (this is where my Gimp work folder was)  OPEN the name_of_user and folder name

C - This will now work everytime when you launch Gimp instead of using the Terminal workaround

10-15-2019

GIMP 2.8. and Catalina 10.15

I found my solution(s) until Apple and Gimp can work this out.

1 - A workaround for the meantime is by using the terminal - You need to do this everytime you want to use Gimp

$ cd /Applications/Gimp.app

$ ./Contents/MacOS/Gimp

2 - Another workaround is, I simply dragged my Gimp work folder 'MyGimpWorkFolder', located on the Desktop, to my HardDrive (Macintosh HD) under USERS - MACINTOSH HD/USERS/name_of_user/MyGimpWorkFolder

A - LAUNCH GIMP

B - In Gimp - OPEN FILE - Now, instead of opening the Desktop and getting the dreaded 'Could not read the contents of Desktop' (this is where my Gimp work folder was)  OPEN the name_of_user and folder name

C - This will now work everytime when you launch Gimp instead of using the Terminal workaround