GIMP development - What’s the point? • Hacker News Board

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#121

Post by colmvp » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #108

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?

And follow-up, why is it so hard (for volunteer contributors) to implement those missing features and functionality?

My hunch is that if there were more unicorns (amazing designers/illustrators who used GIMP and had the capacity to write code for it), you'd have more progress in this realm.

For example, Figma (non-open source) is doing stuff that myself as a designer, I find very subtly innovative for a browser-based graphics program. Sure, they are actual company which can devote more resources to the product, but I think it helps that some very talented designers are using it and thus, can give feedback and suggest new features with engineers to support the effort.

Similarly, I'm sure a lot of open source projects have thrived because the contributors are active users whose skillsets (coding) overlap with the project.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#122

Post by jasonkostempski » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

"because I know such comments usually come from one of two places"

I would expect such comments to usually come from c) User feels the industry uses Adobe and, even if GIMP matched up feature for feature, it's pointless to learn it. I don't like to think that way myself but I've certainly felt that way at times.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#123

Post by llvihearsevil » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

GIMP does suffer from a Pied Piper issue. The developer shouldn't have to teach a user how to use his program.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#124

Post by Annatar » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

notalaser wrote: post #66

pmoriarty wrote: post #58

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work…

> I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work on GIMP eventually came out with a single window layout. Ironically enough, Photoshop itself used to have a multiple-window layout, in its Unix versions: http://i.imgur.com/Lzlbyp9.jpg . (That's an IRIX system, see author…

I remember this. It was 1995, and I ran Photoshop 3.0 on my SGI Indigo2 R10000 at work. I remember it being fast and very slick.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#125

Post by throwanem » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

jasonkostempski wrote: post #122

"because I know such comments usually come from one of two places" I would expect such comments to usually come from c) User feels the industry uses Adobe and, even if GIMP matched up feature for feature, it's pointless to learn it. I don't like to think that way myself but I've certainly felt that way at times.

Or possibly from d) User has actually attempted to use GIMP in a professional context and found it severely lacking. But that's not something a just-so story can easily answer, so I'm not surprised to see it excluded here.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#126

Post by technomalogical » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #27

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…

Did you mean Design Fusion, from Blackmagic?

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#127

Post by pwinnski » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #61

imaginenore wrote: post #36

After all these years GIMP still sucks. They waste time on developing features of low importance, while critical ones are still not solved. Prime case: opening RAW files. The current suggested workflow is to use a 3rd party plugin UFRaw. Would you like to see the process of installing it on Windows? http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html (Ctlr+F for "MS-Windows for geeks") And then I see arrogant posts like that,…

What is critical to you is not to me, and vice versa. E.g. I have never in my life needed to work with RAW files. I have also never in my life needed to manipulate graphics on Windows. I understand that is frustrating, but this is one of the challenges of open source - the contributors can make choices without caring about attracting customers.

Which is absolutely their right--but then they don't get to post smug messages about how people are just too dumb to understand how great their project is.

I see a lot of messages justifying why GIMP meets the needs of so very few, but none of that changes the fact that GIMP seems to meet the needs of very few.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#128

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#129

Post by throwanem » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

enobrev wrote: post #28

davexunit wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You blame GIMP for not opening PSDs correctly, but note that it's not an open format and it's not a standard. GIMP developers can do nothing but try to reverse engineer support for it.

You're absolutely right. The bar I'm setting is probably too high, but it's not set from anything beyond my desire to get work done. Literally: "nothing personal, but I can't use this"

That is not too high a bar to set for an application that's billed as, among other things, a tool for professionals.

Re: GIMP development - What’s the point?

#130

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

Annatar wrote: post #119

kazinator wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used GIMP in 1996 and it was great! I got it going on a Sun Sparcstation 20 running Red Hat 2.0 Linux.

You had a SPARCStation 20 with Linux on it? Facepalm. The very first SPARCstation I bought also had Linux on it. I promptly ordered Solaris 7 from Sun for $50 (which is how much redhat CD's cost back then), played with Linux until my Solaris 7 kit arrived in the mail, completely wiped away Linux, installed Solaris 7, and never looked back. Seeing that UNIX System V Release 4.0 was such an awesome feeling. I was thril…

Solaris was definitely head and shoulders above Linux back in the early days. But, in retrospect, it might have been a very good move to use Linux and get familiar with it, and especially to contribute to its development, as Linux turned out to be the future (thought not so much on Sun hardware).