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GIMP Turns 27

gimp.org

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Re: GIMP Turns 27

#261

Post by Euphorbium »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #35
iLoveOncall wrote: post #14

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.

>and it's light years ahead of Gimp. Photopea makes millions. Maybe if people donated to support Gimp's development it wouldn't be that behind.

I would donate to a fund seeking to end gimp entirely.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#262

Post by whywhywhywhy »

wankle wrote: post #78
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I don’t think it’s controversial to say that this project existing has harmed creative tools on Linux. If another project had become the de-facto we’d have all those basic features. Instead we’re stuck with something that almost provides the basics ok, because it exists people treat it like a solved problem, and it has such a history no one’s allowed to say it just frankly isn’t usable for it’s one job.

> this project existing has harmed creative tools on Linux If anything, GIMP has brought more people to Linux from the dark side.

Not anyone who needs to edit images in a professional sense. They arrive, try GIMP because they’re told it’s a Photoshop alternative then leave when they see the lack of normal features.

It’s actually even bad for students because to create with GIMP you have to do early 90s image editing workflows which are no longer used in real jobs.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#263

Post by [deleted] »

bxparks wrote: post #88
iLoveOncall wrote: post #14

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.

[deleted]

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#264

Post by troad »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #256
zulban wrote: post #55

GIMP is great, I use it all the time. I wish they would change their name so it could have more mainstream acceptance.

I have never, and do not know anybody who has, avoided good software for something as stupidly trivial as its name. If the name were one of the more hardcore expletives I'd maybe think twice. As it stands, this one is fairly vanilla as far as problematic words go, is clearly typeset as an acronym, and is principally a reference to Pulp Fiction, therefore being at least one referential layer away from the original ter…

When I’m sitting down and teaching my kid how to edit a photo or sketch a drawing, do you honestly see me sitting them down to a GIMP session?

And when I’m not around, and they want to pull up their favourite drawing program, do you see them typing “gimp” into the search bar? Which - as of Windows 11 - now helpfully loads internet results and related ads?

Or do I just start them on Krita, a much more powerful and user friendly open source program, with significantly less risk of accidentally encountering the GIMP’s namesakes? Or me getting a call from my kid’s school to ask why my kid is talking about gimps?

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#265

Post by piyush_soni »

bscphil wrote: post #115
bxparks wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just categorically disagree that you can conclude anything about GIMP on this basis. I will strongly agree with anyone who says that GIMP is missing features and that it's subpar for graphic designer work. But I've used GIMP for over 15 years now and I have the exact same experience as you when I try to do anything in Photoshop. I simply can't find my way around Photoshop's interface at all. Does that mean that Pho…

Just to give you a feedback from a new (neutral) user who had no experience of either image editing concepts and tricks; OR an image editing tool like Photoshop or GIMP. I could at least navigate my way through in Photoshop but never in GIMP in only a handful of times I have used both of these software in my life. GIMP was always the software that I wanted to love, but every time I uninstalled it after a few failed attempts.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#266

Post by whywhywhywhy »

jdhendrickson wrote: post #212
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #119

Man, who would've guessed I'd be tempted to flag a post about GIMP. The level of vitriol in these comments is truly impressive...

Yeah, it really bummed me out too. People don't remember when there was literally nothing and having this free photo editor was a life saver. They also don't know how stupidly complex that kind of software is to write. Just a lot of sneering, and not from anyone whose done anything worth a damn based on a cursory examination of their accounts. I was hoping to read a ton of posts about good memories, or thanks, to the…

I dunno, I mean look what every GIMP alternative has achieved in a fraction of the timeframe.

Starting to think this “you should be happy and eat this rotten morsel because otherwise you’d have nothing” ideology is toxic and harms actual good technology being built.

Even the Blender team managed to drop the “submit a patch” attitude and actually turn one of the most convoluted pieces of creative software ever made into the defacto for the next generation through actually listening and responding to users.

Think of the good that could have been done in the software world if a different team with an attitude of building for their users had decided to build a free image editor 27 years ago.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#267

Post by blkhawk »

For me GIMP has been infuriatingly good - by that I mean its 95% amazing and 5% complete and utter horseshit. Sadly I run into those 5% often.

GIMP has the signs of what I call "Brainworms" in a project. By that I mean conceptual-ideological stubbornness for certain things that harm the Workflow of most users. A minor example of this is the save / export thing where use of the XCF format is forced for some conceptual reason that just gets in the way for me every single time I use GIMP. I used the XCF format for one thing once last year for the first time so I guess I saved saved time there once. Can't say that about any other time i used GIMP tho.

The other more major example I can give falls under the "missing non destructive editing functions" that I have seen other comments mention. As part of my image "manipulation" I need to add several simple geometric shapes of the right size to an image (I think it was 2 lines and a rectangle). This is super hard to do in GIMP because while there are ways to draw a line and to do a rectangle as soon as you let go of your mouse button those are converted to bitmap right away. So no adjusting the position angle or line width of the lines or the dimensions of the rectangle. This can be partially worked around by using layers to position the lines and redoing the lines with different widths until they match the width and angle you need. You can apply rotations but that has its own difficulties since the aliasing of the lines then isn't what it should be. The easiest Solution here is to not use GIMP.

The apparent reason why GIMP has been missing these vector functions is that it was felt that vector functions would be "drawing" on not "manipulating" an image if a comment I read by a person involved with the project is to be believed. So GIDP not GIMP if you will. A great app becomes completely unable because of a single function.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#268

Post by aspyct »

I've been a big fan of GIMP for the past 20 years or so. Sure, it has its quirks, is a little slower than I'd like, but it's still a useful, reliable software.

In fact, since they added support for 16 bit color, I can finally use it to do photo retouching. I mean, I was using it before, but it limited use-cases.

Now I'm not losing color anymore, and that's awesome!

I can see in the comments a lot of negativity towards this project, with a few valid reasons, but I think most of these people are trying to use GIMP like they would use Photoshop. But these are two different softwares with different capabilities. Stop fighting the tool and start working with it.

Thank you to all GIMP contributors. Thanks to you I can complety avoid Adobe's bullsh*t and still clean up the dust in my images :) Keep up the good work!

Oh, and if I may indulge in a request: a better foreground selection tool would be awesome. Faster, certainly, and maybe with some AI subject detection?

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#269

Post by RadiozRadioz »

troad wrote: post #264
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never, and do not know anybody who has, avoided good software for something as stupidly trivial as its name. If the name were one of the more hardcore expletives I'd maybe think twice. As it stands, this one is fairly vanilla as far as problematic words go, is clearly typeset as an acronym, and is principally a reference to Pulp Fiction, therefore being at least one referential layer away from the original ter…

When I’m sitting down and teaching my kid how to edit a photo or sketch a drawing, do you honestly see me sitting them down to a GIMP session? And when I’m not around, and they want to pull up their favourite drawing program, do you see them typing “gimp” into the search bar? Which - as of Windows 11 - now helpfully loads internet results and related ads? Or do I just start them on Krita, a much more powerful and use…

No, you probably wouldn't teach your kid to use GIMP as a first image editor, just like you wouldn't teach them LaTeX as their first way to produce documents. I agree, Krita is better for new users.

Google "gimp" for me. What are the top results? What's highlighted in the sidebar? I don't see an issue. You have to scroll down a ways before you get to Urban Dictionary, I can't imagine a kid doing that instead of clicking the first result with the cute dog picture.

The school thing is the first actual problem. But then, it's an easy thing to clarify. I'm of the opinion that it's a good thing that their first experience of that word is an image editor, it detracts from the offensive meaning. The hope being that the offensive meaning will be relegated to an obscure footnote, the primary definition of the word to them being GIMP. We shouldn't give offensive words more power, we should diminish their power by using them in non-offensive contexts. See the adaptation of the word "cunt" in Australia.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#270

Post by filmgirlcw »

jdhendrickson wrote: post #213
filmgirlcw wrote: post #146

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?

I wasn’t shitting on them. I was making fun of the poster above who used that language to dismiss anyone who doesn’t want to say glowing things about a piece of software.
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