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Gimp is 25 years old today

gimp.org

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Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#71

Post by pfranz »

iamcreasy wrote: post #54
dau wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they should invite the Blender people over to fix the UI for them :-)

I know what you meant, but the Blender UI is still at odds compared to most software out there. Here is an example. One of their UI tenet is no overlapping windows. You change focus between windows by moving your mouse over them - no clicking involved. So, if you press C when 3d viewport is on focus it triggers the circle select tool, but pressing C when the outliner is on focus creates a new collection. But this beh…

I haven't really used Blender (but know Maya, Houdini, Nuke very well). I think "pro" software (a wiggly term) tends to require a non-standard UI (however, I do miss when Photoshop used the base OS' UI). Pro tools end up being a bit of their own window management and filesystem that overlaps with the OS. Their decisions are part of the ergonomics of being productive in the app.

I remember when macOS started adding smart folders and other database features to Finder. I was hoping the base OS could do photo management and Photos/Aperture could just do the retouching. The same tooling could replace iTunes. After all, a filesystem is just a very opinionated database, right? In practice I'm not sure how well it would have played out.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#72

Post by keyle »

I just gave it another whirl, maybe first time in 10 years. It's still as shocking, UX wise.

I hate Photoshop, I use it very often. It's bloated since before CS1, it's annoying to use, it's DRM rooted with a service running 24/7 on my machine, and it's also very costly.

Sadly, there is literally no option nearly as good. Adobe got me by the balls.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#73

Post by megameter »

jes5199 wrote: post #14

GIMP is such a strange tool. I actually have used it, semi-frequently - since the 90s! The overall experience of using it has only changed a little in that time. And it gets the job done. I guess that makes it successful! What else has been so stable? But of all the software I have ever used, GIMP is the most difficult to learn. I memorized a few tutorials, this must have been around Y2K, to do the a couple things. A…

The way I would put it is: GIMP has features, not workflow.

There are a lot of things that are possible, but not by combining the basic tools and metaphors in sensible ways: each time is more like diving into the command line options of a GNU tool, finding the exact thing, and if you really, really need to automate it, it goes in a script where it can be safely forgotten.

Which is, certainly, a way of doing, but not one conducive to pleasurable use or professional scenarios where you need to have it pass through multiple hands.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#74

Post by lionkor »

GIMP gives me really weird vibes every time I use it - Still, I didn't expect to read

> Introduced Wilber, a little cute mascot who traveled the world and, admittedly, did some kinky things. They grow up so fast!

today.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#76

Post by ghoomketu »

I wish there was an easier Gimp, like Paint shop pro 5 easy, because it may be the most powerful tool for image editing yet I've hard a super hard time creating a simple screenshot with a red arrow. Found some stack overflow tutorials to import some stuff that were broken for which I had to go to internet archive.

Wasted few hoours, still didn't work, so started looking for alternative solutions. Finally found a tool called shuttr which has an in-built image editor which finally does the job that I want including surprisingly most of my other image editing requirements.

I think my fault is when I was using Windows I used Photoshop for everything so I assumed Gimp is the linux version for Photoshop.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#77

Post by throwawaygimp »

Very long time Gimp user, also photoshop user here.

Full credit to all the hard working developers on it over the years. You should be proud of what you created.

However.

Gimp was always just slightly too good, mature, stable and complete, to justify alternative projects.

Gimp IMHO is the reason we don't have a layered raster (& vector) editor in 2020 which can hold a candle to Photoshop.

There have been attempts, but Gimp really sucked the wind out of the motivation to do competing OSS projects - for all really good reasons mentioned above.

So no criticism of the software it's self here... just sometimes something succesful can stifle competition.

I'd love to see more clean sheet 'Photoshop alternatives'.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#78

Post by lionkor »

mushbino wrote: post #56

Is it possible to contribute to the user experience of GIMP? I've tried GIMP a number of times over the past 20 years and it's just totally illogical, imo. It would be great to have an open source alternative to an Adobe product that was more well thought through.

I dont know for sure, but I would expect this project to be run like vim - any drastic or useful UX changes lead to you getting told off. But I'm not sure, it could also be that in 25 years nobody ever tried to change the UI/UX.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#79

Post by nnq »

agumonkey wrote: post #53
jes5199 wrote: post #14

GIMP is such a strange tool. I actually have used it, semi-frequently - since the 90s! The overall experience of using it has only changed a little in that time. And it gets the job done. I guess that makes it successful! What else has been so stable? But of all the software I have ever used, GIMP is the most difficult to learn. I memorized a few tutorials, this must have been around Y2K, to do the a couple things. A…

It's funny because GIMP is one of the tools I hate the most. It's really hard to describe how quickly I want to say no to just about everything that it does. I'm quite open[0] but I'd rather write perl script with imagemagik than use gimp. [0] i can love both emacs and vi and even ed, I've used just about any 2d/3d program ever

The same here :) I love to work with other software considered user hostile by others, but Gimp... WTF. It's like they took the most horrible stuff from Photohop s horrible UI and mixed it with more horrible ideas... But PS manages to be horrible and still productively usable and had all the required features, like non destructive editing smart objects etc.

Something like Affinity Photo is the other end of the spectrum, with nice and intuitive UI for almost everything... Though it stills falls short of old Corel Photopaint's nice and intuitive UIs

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#80

Post by lionkor »

coliveira wrote: post #47
mastazi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not parent but probably they work in a corporate environment where you have to talk to someone about what apps you're going to have installed on your machine and get them approved. Based on my experience it's quite common at companies over a few hundreds employees. If the company is publicly traded, then you're almost guaranteed having to go through that because of regulatory concerns (I'm in Australia, it may va…

Say it is the GNU image manipulation app.

this sounds so stallman
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