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Gimp is 25 years old today

gimp.org

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Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#231

Post by kazinator »

ehsankia wrote: post #125
megameter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, the way I would put it is that GIMP is the perfect example of why companies hire UX designers. GIMP is textbook example of how software can technically have all the same features, but be insanely hard to use and utterly confusing to anyone without a guide. Compare it to Photoshop which does more or less the same things but anyone can naturally pick up and use.

> Compare it to Photoshop which does more or less the same things but anyone can naturally pick up and use.

Trolling is not appropriate in HN.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#233

Post by gilrain »

will4274 wrote: post #227
user-the-name wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also something you call disabled people when you want to be really insulting. It doesn't matter one bit that you didn't mean it to mean that, that meaning still exists, and it's still what people see when they see the name. It is an absolutely awful name.

> It is also something you call disabled people when you want to be really insulting Is it? I know some folks will point to a dictionary, but we live in a post truth world. It's odd to me that I've seemingly encountered every other usage of gimp, either personally or in media, but never an offensive usage. A horse with a gimp leg in the wheel of time, gimp the string at summer camp arts and crafts, a gimp suit in the…

Yes. In person, referring to someone with a limp. They were implying that said person would be unable to attend a hike (they were wrong).

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#234

Post by colejohnson66 »

kazinator wrote: post #231
ehsankia wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the way I would put it is that GIMP is the perfect example of why companies hire UX designers. GIMP is textbook example of how software can technically have all the same features, but be insanely hard to use and utterly confusing to anyone without a guide. Compare it to Photoshop which does more or less the same things but anyone can naturally pick up and use.

> Compare it to Photoshop which does more or less the same things but anyone can naturally pick up and use. Trolling is not appropriate in HN.

How is that trolling?

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#235

Post by mattkevan »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #172
dalbasal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> GIMP is the perfect example of why companies hire UX designers. Whole I agree that this is UX design, but I suspect that UX can be (and often is) a product of the type of organisation producing it moreso than the "UX designer hired to do UX." UX for something like Gimp is very hard. The metaphors have to encompass a ton of stuff and the UX needs A web app created by a bank, electric company or somesuch will tend t…

Calibre may not be pretty but for a CRUD app it is usable. People who have complaints about Calibre generally have issues with its chrome and dated layout but nobody dislikes it because it is hard to use. A default GTK style UI always looks terrible on Windows and Mac, both of which have much higher requirements for user interface defaults. This is especially so with Amazon and iBooks setting differing expectations f…

While I like and appreciate Calibre, its a fantastically useful piece of software and I use it all the time, its UI veers closer to outsider art than what could be considered best-practice interface design.

GIMP, however, is more like when an ecosystem is cut off for millions of years and there’s no natural predators so things evolve in strange and highly localised ways.

GIMP is the duck-billed platypus of software.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#236

Post by BeetleB »

archerx wrote: post #230
BeetleB wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krita can do quite a few basic things, and a few advanced things that Gimp can't, but they're really not in the same league. If you're a serious photo editor, Krita is quite lacking, and will always be - they do not intend to be a photo editor.

I rather edit my photos in Krita than suffer through gimp any day.

For most photographers, that's the equivalent of "I'd rather have ugly photos than use Gimp."

If Krita does what you need, that's fine. But for even basic "serious" photoediting, it's lacking. Krita, as they themselves point out, is a drawing program, not a photo editor.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#237

Post by taharvey »

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…

Interesting milestone, worth reflecting on the broader failures of OSS.

Open source user-facing software like Gimp, Openoffice & inkscape were supposed to be the wave of the future that would eclipse their commercial counterparts over the next decade.

But OSS developers turned out to be daft to UI/UX concerns and lacked user-centric empathy to make software that would ever really matter in the marketplace.

Meanwhile the OSS marketplace that did takeoff in stunning ways were developer frameworks, libraries and building blocks (ie. everything on Github). Which developers then used to build the far more insidious world of SaaS. Where couldn't even own the software at any price, and more dastardly... you can't own your data.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#238

Post by jobigoud »

shawnz wrote: post #212
gorgoiler wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I feel stupid now. I guess I would have expected this to be called “save”?

"Save" and "Export" used to be under the same function many versions ago. I am guessing they changed it to avoid data loss. Consider if someone "saved" into a format that does not actually support all the features of Gimp, like PNG. They might be surprised when they open their file and things like layers are missing.

Paint.NET solved this by prompting the user when this particular kind of destructive save happen: This format requires all layers to be merged, are you sure you want to merge all layers? yes/cancel.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#239

Post by kazinator »

chmod775 wrote: post #161
pja wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. I think you’re expected to float the selection into a new layer and then move the layer, but this is such a common operation for people to want that it ought to be directly available from the Move tool.

This is how I've been doing it since forever and and at the very least didn't have to Google it. I did not know another way existed... which also just illustrates the point.

Your comment seems disingenuous, because the predominant user interface paradigm in all sorts of programs (file managers, vector editors, text editors, ...) on all sorts of platforms is that when you select something, you can click and drag that selected thing.

This is a thing that is different in GIMP: that the selection specifies an area of the image which is affected by operations, rather than an object to manipulate.

"I did not know another way existed" seems outlandish. I mean, launch any paint program developed for any platform in the last 40 years; chances are you can select a rectangle and just drag it.

There is a rhyme and reason to the way GIMP does it, and you can learn it quickly, but it's going to cause complaints.

It could be that 99% of the anti-GIMP ranting is caused by this one issue.

Re: Gimp is 25 years old today

#240

Post by sfink »

gbl08ma wrote: post #189
blhack wrote: post #188

Love gimp, but what has come to drive me nuts about using it is that the icons are now all flat and colorless. It seriously slows down my workflow having to hover over each tool for a few seconds to find out what it actually does. And this comes from somebody who has used the software pretty consistently for 20 years (Fark.com photoshop contests from my teens, woo!). Maybe this is just a mac thing, though? Anyway: co…

The new default icon set drives me nuts as well. Fortunately, you can select other icon sets in the settings.

Thank you! I never thought to look for that option.

I've actually reduced my gimp usage because I find myself hovering over ever tool, repeatedly, because the new icons are too cryptic and low-information. I switched back to "Legacy", though "Color" might work as well (they just don't seem as understandable at first glance, though perhaps I'm biased towards the familiar here.)

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