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Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
221–230 of 306 posts
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#222I'm surprised there's uncertainty about how Gimp should be redesigned. Just copy Photoshop! Select tools on the left, configure the current tool at the top, global options on the right. Affinity does this and nobody complains. Thanks to MacOS help search, we even already have the command search that this video proposes. And it has interaction hints too. Gimp isn't more complex than Photoshop. We don't need it to rein…
With a few quick in-app tweaks, I'm honestly really happy with how Gimp looks and functions. But I've used it for 10+ years so I may be biased.
https://www.pugi.cafe/uploads/db4664/original/2X/3/3f7a5d40e...
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would not shock me to learn that GIMP has been a multi decade study to find out how bad a UX has to be before the FOSS community starts to care.
GIMP has one of the best user interfaces of all community driven open source software. I frankly can't think of any that are better, now that Firefox followed Chrome in hiding all its most important features.
The UI to Photoshop is horrific (and unbelievably old and crufty, though not as bad as Illustrator.) I used to be convinced that the reason people think it's reasonable is Stockholm Syndrome. Now I'm convinced it's because most Photoshop users only ever use Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign, and simply aren't familiar with other software.
It's bizarre that a search bar that unfolds a vertical menubar when highlighted but unfilled is supposed to be a great advance. It's so unimpressive that I 1) don't mind it at all, and 2) think the menu aspect is useless. It's just a menu command search bar; a good UI library could construct one automatically. Stick it in a corner, or automatically open it when people start typing with no obvious object. It's a triviality.
What bugs people about the GIMP is that it's not Photoshop. All of the GIMPs menu options are placed in eminently logical places. although it's a grammar that probably makes sense over time. Photoshop options are mostly placed randomly, and some of them turn out to be ads. That's not a huge dig at Photoshop, because it's pretty amazing that they ever fix or move anything with so much industry adoption, and adding things has to be a nightmare.
But the GIMP puts things in places because they make sense there. They don't have the base that would get enraged if they moved things. It's extremely telling that when put to specify improvements that could be made, the suggestions are either trivial, like
1) a search bar, or
2) an extra statusbar above the statusbar (in case they want instructions over their instructions), or
3) to make it single-window (because just not moving things is not enough, they have to be prevented from moving things),
or they're just:
4) "Make it more like Photoshop! When I use Photoshop I know where things are, and when I use GIMP, I don't!"
The GIMP is wonderful and its problems are technical: it has lacked some of the ability of Photoshop, but that gap slowly but surely continues to close.
edit: I can't believe I forgot the worst one: "Why when I click Save does it save my project, but when I want to export a file based on my project, I have to pick Export?"
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#224All these programs like GIMP, Blender, Dune, should split into two. There should be a library that has the functionality and data structures to manipulate data. The UI should be a separate project with different people. There could be multiple GUI's for the same project or same GUI framework for multiple projects.
There are barely a handful of people contributing to Gimp regularly, how do you want to split that into multiple teams?
It looks to me like people are regularly fantasizing the size and structure of this project.
Couldashouldawoulda do not work when there aren't enough hands. We shouls be thanksful to have those powerful programs provided to us first and foremost.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#225GIMP is still a Gtk2 program.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#226Universal search in UI is cool, and I’m all for it, but it shouldn’t be the only/primary way of accessing tools as tool discoverability is very low. The author tries to deal with this by putting the a menu next to a search bar and putting hints in the bottom menu (which I don’t think would really work here, as raster tools are less selection-specific than 3D tools). Search fixes the speed-of-access issue, but doesn’t…
My problem with GIMP is that there's too many ways to access controls and some controls only appear in certain menus. You've got the iconographic tool picker which has submenus on right-click for some tools. Then there's the classic menu ribbon at the top which has most things you expect. Then there's the right-click context menu inside the canvas that has a subset of all other menu items. And then you have inscrutab…
You are contradicting yourself. If it is your only choice, it means it is usable. Is it without fault, no. Usable yes.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#227I'm surprised there's uncertainty about how Gimp should be redesigned. Just copy Photoshop! Select tools on the left, configure the current tool at the top, global options on the right. Affinity does this and nobody complains. Thanks to MacOS help search, we even already have the command search that this video proposes. And it has interaction hints too. Gimp isn't more complex than Photoshop. We don't need it to rein…
I am surprised how most people don't understand how open source work.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Nobody is stopping you from contributing" is such a classic deflection. I don't know why people still rely on this old copy-pasta. First of all, who says I want to contribute? Maybe I'm perfectly happy using Photoshop. Is my opinion invalidated simply because I'm not a GIMP user? That's illogical. Secondly, actually, a lot of people would stop me from contributing. I just made the case that only a full rewrite would…
> who says I want to contribute? Maybe I'm perfectly happy using Photoshop My point exactly, that's why nobody "just does the work" > Do you think that the GIMP maintainers are going to be happy if I drop a full rewrite on them? I think they'd be impressed that you managed to rewrite the entire codebase that fast.
Exactly this. They just only recently found the time to migrate to GTK3.
The last thing they need is people who have no wish to use their program or contribute to yell at clouds and insult their work without moving a finger themselves.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#229It's better than what currently there is but why does open source software have to have such bad UI? what are those lock and checkboxes? a 5 year old could come up with better icons... What's up with the thick lines around UI elements? it all looks so 2008. It sometimes looks to me like absolutely 0 designers are actually involved in open source, at all
> a 5 year old could come up with better icons...
Apparently none did.
Re: Is this radical redesign of GIMP possible now?
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Krita and Gimp's biggest issue is that most of the tools are implemented in a non intuitive way. Everything is a disorganized mess. And since PS doesn't run under linux, this gets on my nerves. Do you mean non intuitive or just not the same as PS. 99% of complaints I see about GUIs (most commonly OSS ones, because people are less likely to criticise choices where they invested money) are that they do not function l…
Try editing 10 images in a row with Krita and you'll see the issues right away. Layer handling, selection handling and tool placement is cumbersome, to put it mildly. Maybe invite someone who has extensive experience working with photoshop and watch how often he starts to curse or ask for help and whether he uses the gun to shoot himself in the head. Then change things accordingly, if the creators don't use their own…
As somebody who has worked in prepress full time, almost nothing in Photoshop makes sense, I just memorized it. I can always find what I need in GIMP. Photoshop is a necessity because it does things that the GIMP can't do, not because its UI is in any way better.