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GIMP Turns 27

gimp.org

241–250 of 310 posts

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#241
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You know what? I would steal a car. If it was as easy as, like, touching the car and then 30 seconds later I own the car. And like, I would steal a car if by stealing the car, the person who owned the car they got to keep the car. And uh, I would also steal a car if no one I had ever met had ever bought a car before in their whole lives." -- Mindy Kaling

I had no idea who this person was so I searched her name. Apparently she grew up in Massachusetts, went to elite private schools, and became a Hollywood actress and writer. Somehow I have a hard time believing she had to pirate Photoshop just to barely scrape by at any point in her life.

No post body was provided.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#242
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking into it, Krita does seem very capable. I don't think we should really be mad at healthy competition existing in these spaces though, they should lead to better tools for end users.

We should drop this "healthy competition" myth. Some of this software has been around as long as I've been alive. I love Open Source but we should just accept that some of it will always be mediocre at best. And as the other commenter mentioned, there are also negative consequences to something being around (mind share, presence in distributions and online docs, etc). Nobody has time to wait 4 decades for software to…

This is one of the big problems with so much open-source/Free software: there's a lot of fragmentation, and competition between projects reduces mindshare and developer resources (which were already scarce). So as a result, these projects never become all that popular.

There's a few counter-examples of truly exemplary FOSS software that achieved a dominant position and managed to avoid too much fragmentation so that they became largely adopted: the Linux kernel, PostgreSQL, X.org, etc. But for many others, too many wars have really caused the whole Linux-on-the-desktop dream to not be achieved to the level people hoped. GIMP is one of them, but the Gnome/KDE debacle is probably the biggest.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#243
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never looked at Krita because it's always been referenced to me as a painting application primarily and not an image editing / photo manipulation tool. I understand there may be some cross over in functionality, but aren't they essentially built for different purposes?

I don't know; a lot of people say something like that but they never seem to give a concrete example of what the different things they need are. Krita has always been able to do all the photo editing I ever wanted to.

I think people just feel that the software is not for them. Krita always markets itself as a painting tool for artists, never mentioning image editing. For example, take the first paragraph that you can come across their website:

"Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.

- concept art

- texture and matte painters

- illustrations and comics"

I'm not in the business of either, so why would I get the idea of installing it?

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also an instinct for preemptively defending and discarding any piece of criticism and attacking those with criticisms (no matter what it is) of being invalid. The reason definitely isn’t because GIMP is a great piece of software with a logical UI, near a random UI filled with aging cruft, tutorials from 2004, and bizarre flows for doing simple things. Any affection for the GIMP is Stockholm Syndrome from spen…

Maybe just maybe the thread celebrating their 27th birthday isn't the time or place for shitting on them?

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Re: GIMP Turns 27

#245
post #48

GIMP is legendary. One of the first FOSS projects I ever used. I pirated Photoshop soon after trying it. Krita ( https://github.com/KDE/krita | https://krita.org/en/ ) is a more intuitive UX imo.

Krita is better in any conceivable way.

They even have a healing tool I like to use: https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/tools/smart_patch...

Nice.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#246
post #240
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Ubuntu, Mint are both European are using Gnome or at least GTK. Red Hat/Fedora uses Gnome because Gnome is basically a Red Hat product. This has nothing to do with the geography of the distro. Unfortunately, a lot more people use Gnome. Which is a shame in my opinion. But it is the way it is.

How is Ubuntu European? Mint I'll grant, though I always thought of it as a thin fork of Ubuntu. Interestingly the first version was based on Kubuntu - I wonder what motivated them to change, but the old release notes appear to have disappeared.

Canonical is a UK company.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#247
post #88

For it to have such a bad UX after 27 years is a feat in itself. I can't fathom that to this day people present it as an alternative to Photoshop where it's little more than an unusable Paint. I mean, photopea.com is free, developed by a single guy, and runs in the browser, and it's light years ahead of Gimp.

GIMP is the only software whose UI makes me feel completely stupid. Every 1-2 years, I install it, fire it up to crop an image. I stare at the screen, right click a few times, then I close the app after admitting total defeat. It's been like this for 20 years. A few years ago, I found out that Irfanview runs under Wine. It's a great feeling to understand the UI of a program.

For me, it was just that I have been using Photoshop for years, and GIMP for 3 times max. I took the time once, and clicked through all of the menus, and settings, taking at least some seconds to read what they do. I think it took around two hours. After that, working with was much smoother. And now, when I sit back to Photoshop, I appreciate the adjustment layers and text effects, but I'm similarly confused about the UI as I was back then with GIMP. It really is just a matter of familiarity.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#249

The biggest stain on FOSS, with the worst apologists, 27 years strong! Try drawing a circle, in the year 2022.

I love this example, because while I used Photoshop and then GIMP for quite some hours, I never had to draw a circle once.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#250

I've been using GIMP for over a decade for a good chunk of my image manipulation needs, from quickly cropping screenshots, creating the occasional image macro, prototyping logos before opening Inkscape and editing pictures to creating whacky abstract stuff[1]. Thank you to the creators and maintainers. [1] https://imgur.com/a/45mTATy

I love the abstract stuff gallery! How do you go about creating one of these? I can't even imagine.
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