In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software.
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Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
31–40 of 86 posts
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#32[flagged]
> You live in a society, and as a result you have to do a little bit of homework on names, and what they mean, and how they are percieved by the outside world. Amem If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users Usability. Focus. Heck, even this strawberry of a low hanging fruit like the name cannot be solved by a nerd committee apparentl…
> If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users
Depending on the circle (including lots of circles of "general users") annoying people who are obsessed about whether something could offend snowflakes is seen as welcoming.
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#33What a mindset. Deep respect! "And it turns out there are a couple hundred people already who would like me to continue writing code and sharing it publicly and openly. That at least sustains me roughly on the level of unemployment benefits in European countries. And I hope that this will even slightly increase – I will not have a Silicon Valley level software developer salary, but I’ll have enough money to cover my…
Username checks out. ;)
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#34[dead]
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#35That’s a cool name..
[dead]
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#36I love gimp, it is the only “heavyweight” image editor I ever learned to use, and that choice has saved me so much money in software subscriptions! Thankyou maintainers!
I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments: >In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software. Both are absolutely true! GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton.
I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not believe how much aerospace and specialized CAD stuff still uses Motif and doesn't support scroll wheels or extra mouse buttons.
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#37I love gimp, it is the only “heavyweight” image editor I ever learned to use, and that choice has saved me so much money in software subscriptions! Thankyou maintainers!
I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments: >In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software. Both are absolutely true! GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
I think that the weakness doesn't lie within GIMP itself.
Imagine that you are a car hobbyist. You know your way around a wrench.
But then you step in to an F1 garage or even your local repair shop run by that one guy who inheritted his father's shop in the 50s and has thrown a tool away since the Reagan administration.
It's going to be possible for you to do everything that you know how to do, and even to learn some things along the way, but you're not going to be anywhere near as efficient as you were in your garage where the only tools you have are the ones you regularly use and you know the locations (perhaps roughly) of everything.
The same could be applied across any number of domains. Knowing your way around and ambulance isn't going to go as far as you might think it would in a surgical suite.
Knowing some python isn't going to get your pulls accepted in Canonical, Debian, etc.
Knowing your professors preffered citation methodology isn't going to gaurantee academically succesful searching of The Library of Congress or even the New York Public Library.
etc etc etc
GIMP represents nearly the totality of knowledge relating to image manipulation, and you can lay it out to perfectly match your personal knowledge and workflow, but it simply is not possible to have it automatically laid out to perfectly match everyone's workflow.
Could it be more intuitive? Perhaps, but moving things around now is liable to break the workflows of tens of thousands who have learned to use and love GIMP the way that it currently is.
For instance, having only ever used GIMP as my primary image manipulation tool, I can and do have some of the same complaints against [insert other software] that people routinely level against GIMP. The last time I tried to use Photoshop I spent more time in tutorials and help pages than doing actual image editting because Photoshop is as unfamiliar to me as GIMP is to a Photoshop user.
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#38[flagged]
Words have different meanings in different languages and regions, also words themselves change meaning over time. I've seen GIMP deployed in British schools with no issues. We should all start being adults and stop fussing because some pixels on our screen might spell out a word that in a certain context and certain part of the world might be seen as offensive
What is the name for this fallacy, "We should all start being adults"? Everyone who is an adult can understand that names matter, especially ones intentionally chosen to cause offense or a ruckus.
First, it doesn't matter how much you or I or the commentator above us changes to "be adults". Only the saddest and most lonesome people will be the sole decisionmaker in every context they exist in.
Sometimes, you exist in a context where you need someone elses permission to use software. This is often the case for employed people.
Second, other adults will disagree with you. It doesn't make them any less "adults".
On the other hand, someone would not be unreasonable to consider you childish if you're so stuck up on your software opinions that you'll disparage everyone around you in the defense of your obscure preferred image editing program. Could you imagine implying to a room of peers that you're the only adult?
It's wonderful for you that GIMP's name has never been a problem for you. But there are about 8 billion people who are not you, and a few dozen of them are fellow GIMP users.
I've been using GIMP for most of its existence but I've faced difficulties trying to use it in school and work. Where I live, "gimp" is a word which means either a slur for someone with a motor disability or as a form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment.
(For what it's worth, the G was added in order to reference the form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment in Pulp Fiction. The program was called 'IMP' beforehand.)
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#39Most of the comments here talk about the GIMP UX. Fair point, but misses the article entirely.
> [Øyvind] is the maintainer of GEGL and babl, the color engines of GIMP. His work was instrumental in (among many other things) the long-waited non-destructive filters implemented in GIMP 3.0
The interview is about Pippin's background (fine arts) and current (as of the time of the interview) work, and in some details about the graphics engine underneath GIMP (GEGL).
FWIW, it doesn't touch on the UI/UX side at all. So even you Photoshop lovers may find it interesting :)
Re: Interview with Øyvind Kolås, GIMP developer (2017)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments: >In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software. Both are absolutely true! GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton . I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not…
The one saving grace one might find is that a lot of people trying it already had some experience with e.g. Photoshoot and are already influenced by it. And just because Photoshop does it one way doesn't mean it's the way. But honestly, no, it's just bad bad. Thanks for all the hard work for free, but it's just really difficult to use[1]. It would've been better to do less.
[1]gave up on it 10 years ago, so don't know, maybe things changed