GIMP development - What’s the point?

Thanks for the link! So it's low priority for the existing devs (and I understand the reasons why... they make a lot of sense, actually!), but they are open to new devs helping with this. I assume it would be no small feat.

I appreciate GIMP for what it is, and use it on the occasion that I can't quickly do what i need with ImageMagick or pixlr. But I'd gladly pay for Photoshop and other Adobe tools if they compiled natively on linux.

One problem with the characterization implied in [a,b] is that it ignores the impossibility of opening a file correctly and completely that was originally compiled in a tool that's been the industry standard for well beyond my own years (I got started on Photoshop 4 in 1996 - the first Windows release, and before then, Paint Shop Pro).

Literally not a single designer I've worked with in the last 15 years as a professional has ever even considered using GIMP (most don't know it exists). So if they want to send me their "source", it's in a PSD. And said source is going to be huge with layer effects / cropping / transitions, and all sorts of advanced Photoshop-specific things applied.

And I'll open that file in GIMP - I try at least once a year - and it will show maybe 5-10% of the layers and will look nothing like the original. And then I'll fire up Windows in a VM and actually get work done.

As for starting my own projects in GIMP, I fall squarely into group "a", and I feel no shame for it.

    a) User has tried GIMP, but didn't take time to learn enough to get past things that aren't obvious.

    b) User has heard that GIMP is hard to use, and is not an adequate tool for professionals.

Before reading that email, I had a different thought about the title "GIMP development, what's the point?" In a time before touchscreen mobile devices and apps came into the picture, people who were somewhat serious about image editing would use GIMP or a pirated copy of Photoshop. There were also a few other applications, free and paid, with a much more limited set of features (but have improved over time).

With touchscreen devices and apps, image editing, or rather, photo editing, has become more about using different apps for different specific use cases, and using filters and other "preset" tweaks along with additional adjustments if at all necessary. This is nowhere close to the power that GIMP offers for someone who knows how to use it and what can be done with it. But it is adequate for most people and is easy to use. In this respect, the title question could become more widespread as people hear less about GIMP.

After reading the mail and the comments here, another thing that occurred to me about the title is that projects like GIMP, LibreOffice, etc., (and even Linux, GNOME, KDE, etc.) show themselves as phenomenal highlights of what truly free and open source software can be and serve as a great inspiration for others to embark on such really complex and multi-decade work in other areas. A GIMP developer is contributing to much more than GIMP alone if you look at side effects. It's a world that couldn't have been imagined several decades ago.

I believe the developers who have contributed to these projects and continue to do so should be extremely proud of their commitment to FLOSS and the amount of work they have put in. Yes, some FLOSS applications may have deficiencies in features, stability, performance and other areas (which many commercial applications do too). But questioning the dedication of developers or asking for the justification of efforts spent by developers who're working with the FLOSS principles is completely missing the point in the overall scheme of things, and worse, missing the benefits enjoyed by and made available to humankind as a whole.

I haven't used a direct image editor in a very long time and I don't think I'm missing anything.

Digital Fusion is free. Houdini Indie is $200. Nuke is available for linux. These are all node based work flows that don't destroy anything. You don't have to undo because you create a graph of operations without changing your source directly. They aren't useful for painting directly with a tablet, but anything else they do very well at.

PSD is not an open format but it is most definitely an industry standard, and being unable to support it properly makes GIMP an inferior replacement for professional graphics work because of that.