GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released • Hacker News Board

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#41

Post by billfruit » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #22

GiorgioG wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the reason they haven’t overhauled the UI is they build GIMP for themselves and their own mental model. Having used Photoshop forever, I can’t make the transition to GIMP because it feels unintuitive. Unless Linux is your desktop OS, there are plenty of other cheaper options (than Photoshop), for example Pixelmator (OS X) or Paint.NET (Windows) that feel way more familiar.

Paint.NET is by far the best the best picture editor I've seen. Not nearly as feature-reach as GIMP or Photoshop so not an option for graphics professionals but for casual usage - it's bloody amazing, extremely intuitive in particular. I use Pinta on Linux and Mac - it's not as great as the original Paint.NET but still very handy while GIMP is like vim - you have to study it before you can use it (and you are going t…

Paint.Net didn't even have customizable keyboard shortcuts last time I used it. I would consider it far behind GIMP in feature completeness.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#42

Post by Joeboy » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #35

cuu508 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, when one tries to say anything the response is "you go fix it then, asshole!" but I don't know how to develop desktop apps, so... There are other ways you can help! As someone with experience using graphics applications, you could look into making UI mockups of the changes / improvements you have in mind. Seeing the mockups might get someone interested enough to start work on user-testing, prototypin…

People already did that for years only to be completely ignored (or worse) by the GIMP developers.

I think this reputation for intransigence was probably merited by ~noughties GIMP team, but it doesn't seem to me to be deserved at present. I think the UX issues that remain are more due to lack of development resources than intransigence.

Edit: Despite my defence of the current devs, I continue to be annoyed by the GIMP cheerleaders who continue to unhelpfully blame the program's shortcomings on its users.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#43

Post by dagw » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

nkkollaw wrote: post #12

Rovanion wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because its hard. Maybe because the core developers can be counted on one hand. My knee jerk reaction to your knee jerk reaction is: If its so easy, go fix it!

It's hard to develop the effects, not move buttons around. As for the "go fix it", that's exactly the reaction I was expecting. Open source projects can't handle criticism because it's volonteers working on it, so "go fix it if you don't like it". Not very productive, uh? Personally, I use Pinta or Photoshop via Wine. Pinta is very good though.

It's hard to develop the effects, not move buttons around.

Speak for yourself. As someone who's tried to write a simple image editor on a few occasions, writing the image effect was by far the easiest (and most fun) part. Almost all the core algorithms are published and well understood and beyond that it's mostly simple linear algebra. There are also plenty of objective measures to judge how good your implementation is.

Deciding where to "move the buttons" to took up almost all of my development time, was incredibly hard, dreadfully boring and what kept killing my interest in the project.

Given the choice between spending 20 hours trying to make the sharpening filters 5% faster or 20 hours trying to make the sharpening filters more intuitive and easy to use I'd choose the former every time and, unfortunately, it seems far too many developers feel the same.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#44

Post by punkbit » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

Side note: GIMP user here that has recently moved to a new image editor called Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, that is super cheap and I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good quality Photoshop and Illustrator alternative, with new ideas and concepts; They are doing an amazing job!

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#45

Post by gilrain » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #34

Karunamon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s all well and good, but if GIMP is targeting devs first who are also artists, Linux remains an OS without an image editor targeted at artists first. IMO that’s an important hole in the software library that prevents wider adoption.

Krita ( https://krita.org ) is 12 years old, and just released version 4.0 last week. HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16647445

And if you complain that Krita lacks photo manipulation features, you're told "Of course, because Krita is only targeted at illustrators!" The open source evangelists always have a dodge.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#46

Post by mrreelmo » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

bhaavan wrote: post #3

So still no GTK3? I think when GTK4 is released in a few months, it would be a good time to move to GTK3 as they can still be outdated. I know I am being a bit bitter for an open source project with less funding, but GIMP was supposed to be a poster boy GTK application in the first place.

Looking at the roadmap (https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap) GTK3 or even 4 is planned for the 3.0 release.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#47

Post by laurent123456 » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

I've tried to use GIMP over several years but never got used to it. Things like resizing and transforming layers, applying filters, etc. are too cumbersome. Many tools also don't have a live preview, which means there's many attempts before getting the needed result.

Now I'm back to Photoshop CS3 from 11 years ago, yet many years ahead of today's GIMP. It has smart objects and filters, layer effects, live previews and the very good UI means I can get things done much faster.

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#48

Post by lovelearning » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #4

A new Dashboard dock helps with monitoring GIMP’s resource usage to keep things in check, allowing you to make more educated decisions about various configuration options. That looks so ridiculous and out-of-place in an image editing program. If it weren't for the left side, you'd think it was Visual Studio! https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/MSDNBlogsFS/p...

Since it's a removable dock, I don't see what the problem is. It's a choice every user can make. Only users interested in that information for whatever reason will add it to the dock.

Photoshop has it too (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/performance-preferen...)

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#49

Post by gilrain » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

staticelf wrote: post #10

Not really about GIMP but for people who look for an alternative to Photoshop, I can really recommend Affinity Photo. It's actually on a sale right now on Windows Store at least. Unfortunately it doesn't support Linux like GIMP does but it's a really viable alternative to Photoshop for Mac/Windows users. I used to pay for Photoshop, but it's so darn expensive and I even had to pay to get out of my subscription plan.…

Affinity is a fantastic alternative to Photoshop, GIMP, or any other raster manipulation program focused on photos. I'd like to back up this recommendation: for the (one-time) price, it's amazing. I don't miss anything from Photoshop, and the UI is incredibly effective and consistent.

I guess the people in this thread are only interested in open source alternatives, because I can't imagine anyone objecting to it on its merits!

Re: GIMP 2.10.0 Release Candidate 1 Released

#50

Post by andrewshadura » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

punkbit wrote: post #44

Side note: GIMP user here that has recently moved to a new image editor called Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, that is super cheap and I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good quality Photoshop and Illustrator alternative, with new ideas and concepts; They are doing an amazing job!

I presume it's not free software. It's a deal breaker for many, including myself.