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GIMP Turns 27

gimp.org

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Re: GIMP Turns 27

#141

Post by capitainenemo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #65

> To celebrate [...] this nice birthday illustration (fully drawn within GIMP [...] There's some sort of weird inferiority complex when your graphics software is 27 years old and you're still saying 'look we used it for one of our website assets.' It's like telling people at the birthday party that you dressed yourself. I find it equally strange that there are almost no screenshots on the website, outside of the docs…

There's some nice GIMP tutorials here with good showcasing. https://pixls.us/articles

I believe written by GIMP contributors.. including Pat David who did a ton of older and a bit less polished ones here: https://patdavid.net/getting-around-in-gimp/ (for example this good one from 2012 https://patdavid.net/2012/08/getting-around-in-gimp-heal-sel... )

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#142

Post by karaterobot »

bscphil wrote: post #109
karaterobot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if those features don't provide value. Just having a feature isn't necessarily a benefit if that feature doesn't work, or doesn't work well, or leaves the user frustrated.

A feature that doesn't work well can still provide value.

I didn't say it did.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#143

Post by mistrial9 »

bergenty wrote: post #127
mistrial9 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no - litigation from Software Patent holders has prevented progress

That’s an interesting perspective. Did GIMP get there first but just not patent the tech or it just makes it so that GIMP cannot replicate improvements?

Adobe Photoshop was originally written for the Apple Macintosh pre-OSX in the late 1980s, pre-dating GIMP massively. Large numbers of software patents soon followed. trivia- Microsoft Word was also written natively for the Mac OS -- it was many, many years before a graphical Microsoft version was available.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#144

Post by dau »

shmerl wrote: post #120

Why isn't Gimp getting more backing like Blender? Pace of development for it is quite slow which I assume is due to lack of resources?

Because it's hopelessly outdated down to the very core and that's kinda secretly the reason why throwing money or workforce on it wouldn't really get anywhere. It would need to be rewritten entirely and paying for improving something existing or financing the creation of a new "FOSS photoshop" are very different things.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#146

Post by filmgirlcw »

pessimizer wrote: post #135
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...

There's an instinct for pre-emptive attacks on minority opinions from people who have gone with the crowd and experience some cognitive dissonance over it. There are a lot of people who think that they should be using the GIMP (for whatever reason), but of course found it easier to do what everyone else was doing, and have to justify that by attacking the software and the people who use it. The reason definitely isn'…

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 spending 8 hours a day in it and getting periodic dopamine hits from puzzling out a riddle of how to do something in it that seemed like it would be simple.

--

Look, I respect and am appreciative of the work the GIMP team and community does. It's impressive and I've donated to them over the years, even though I have never enjoyed using the software. And Photoshop these days is often a mess, I'm not defending that.

But it is possible to appreciate that the GIMP exists and also be critical of its abysmal usability and the fact that it pales in comparison to not just other proprietary (but extremely affordable tools like Pixelmator, Affinity Photo, Acorn), but also other FOSS tools like Krita, Blender, and Inkscape, to say nothing of near-OSS tools like the excellent Paint.net. Some of this is down to the fact that making good software is hard, especially free software. But a lot of it comes down to a lack of solid direction and and insistence from the crowd that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop. It isn't. It never will be.

I'm glad the GIMP exists. You also couldn't pay me to use the GIMP.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#147

Post by hackyhacky »

ravenstine wrote: post #94

I get why people take issue with GIMP, but I'm glad that it exists and has existed. Back in the day I got a lot done with GIMP for both fun and school work, and it was great that it worked both on Windows and Linux. Better tools are around now, and GIMP has failed to live up to a lot of its promises, but I don't get why people need to shit all over it. No one is making you use GIMP. It's honestly amazing that people…

> GIMP has failed to live up to a lot of its promises,

Which failed promises are you referring to specifically?

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#149

Post by hackyhacky »

Cyberdog wrote: post #138
macksd wrote: 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.

She didn't say she had to, or even that she did. She's just arguing that the analogy between software piracy and auto theft is specious, and she's right.

Re: GIMP Turns 27

#150

Post by paulryanrogers »

josefx wrote: post #90
perardi wrote: post #2

Still no adjustment layers, still no layer styles. It’s so easy to just critique away…but really? Really? Those are just absolutely essential image editing software features. What have they been prioritizing ahead of that?

> What have they been prioritizing ahead of that? Gnome integration and Wayland as far as I can tell from its roadmap. So basically staying functional under the ADHD driven development model that is the Linux desktop environment. A bit hilarious that Gimp now has a hard time staying up to date with Gnomes Gtk when Gtk was originally an UI lib for Gimp.

> A bit hilarious that Gimp now has a hard time staying up to date with Gnomes Gtk when Gtk was originally an UI lib for Gimp.

Yet not terribly surprising. GIMP provided a useful alternative widget framework because it helped them push boundaries. Now that's grown into its own thing, and the parent project lags since its core focus is elsewhere.

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