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GIMP receives a $100K donation

gimp.org

181–190 of 318 posts

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#181
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood that complaint with the Blender UI. If anything Blender's UI even before the whole 2.5 change was a lot more streamlined and less stupid point&click than for instance Maya. It essentially felt like Emacs for 3D editing. But maybe that's because I started out on Blender and only had a cursory look at Maya. Same with GIMP. I have years of experience working with GIMP so if you sat me in front of phot…

>It essentially felt like Emacs for 3D editing. Which is exactly the complaint :D Blender has a very efficient UI that is great for power users, but it has a much bigger learning curve than the competition with their point&click UIs. Add to that that most people are trained on Maya/3ds Max/Cinema 4d, learning Blender is a big investment with uncertain payoff. Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or…

> Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays.

Wow, this is such a bold statement; do you have any evidence to support this? In my experience a very great majority of engineers use vim or emacs. In US, I've never been in a culture where emacs or vim is used by a minority. In my current work, which is a startup in Boston, everyone except 2 developers use emacs. I googled for evidence to support me, but I couldn't find any solid evidence neither supporting nor disputing me.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#182
post #108
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah but 100000$ is a big one. You can buy a very good build machine for 10000€ esp. if you rent it and paying a few trips to a hackfest and a small venue is certainly not 90000$... So even if it's none of my business, it does raise questions. but well, Gimp as served me well, has been there so long that the only thing I can say is kudo's to the devs. they could even pay themselves a bit, that'd well be deserved.

GIMP's financials are included under the GNOME Foundation's 501c3 filings, so you can take a look if you're suspicious. GNOME in total last year only spent $110k on salaries with $300k in revenue (also they had $670k in the bank). Based on their past filings, they look pretty fiscally responsible.

Wait, why are large sums being donated if they have half a million just sitting around? It's an open source project, not a corporation that has a millions in turnover and needs half a million as buffer for a bad year.

GIMP is obviously useful so I'm glad they have money to use, but if they are already decently covered, there are a thousand other important projects which could benefit from donations. When compared to letting half a million sit in a bank somewhere, I am wondering if this was the best purpose for the money.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#183
post #42
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to support GIMP but, especially for fast, professional use, the UI makes it impossible. Their raw features are on par with anything I'd want to do in Photoshop, it's 100% a UI issue at this point. And I don't get why it's this hard for open source projects to realize that (the only notable exception I know is Firefox, which I love).

> And I don’t get why it’s this hard for open source projects to realize that I don’t know, but I’ll throw out my theory. Note I’m very much a fan of open source even though this might sound negative. I would also love to see GIMPs UI get an overhaul. In short, I think it’s harder to prioritize open source features for multiple reasons. When you don’t have paying customers, it’s very hard to prioritize the feedback y…

See https://gui.gimp.org/index.php?title=GIMP_GUI_Redesign -- Peter Sikking, a pro UX designer was involved with GIMP for quite a long time. He came up with the save/export dichotomy.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#184
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to support GIMP but, especially for fast, professional use, the UI makes it impossible. Their raw features are on par with anything I'd want to do in Photoshop, it's 100% a UI issue at this point. And I don't get why it's this hard for open source projects to realize that (the only notable exception I know is Firefox, which I love).

Sometimes when there isn’t unlimited funding and the ability to spend unlimited time, the efforts are probably spent on core functionality over aesthetics. GIMP is a highly featureful project with powerful scripting capabilities. I wouldn’t say it isn’t already on par or more powerful than Photoshop.

"Sometimes when there isn’t unlimited funding and the ability to spend unlimited time, the efforts are probably spent on core functionality over aesthetics."

In my opinion, GIMP is the evidence that these efforts are misplaced, and focus should be the UI (at least after core functionality exists). No point is a fancy pants program that nobody actually wants to use.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#185
post #176
post #136

Please give us non-destructive adjustment layers! Please! Been waiting for this for years. On every new Gimp release I look through the new features and ... no. No adjustment layers. I'm confused how this is not the #1 priority. It has been what I am missing for years and years. And every time I talk to someone about Gimp vs Photoshop, they ask me 'Do you still have to cope with destructive adjustment curves and filt…

I've used GIMP for years but I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps it's not the #1 priority because you're one of a small percentage of people who need it? While I'm not someone who needs image editing professionally or who makes amazing things with it, I did take my time to learn GIMP properly for my use-cases, and the things I find lacking do not include "non-destructive adjustment layers".

It's one of those features that once you notice in Photoshop, you lament the lack in GIMP.

The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just additional layers, w/o manipulating the image in the layer under them. It lets you very quickly toggle between different settings, revise settings, and even very easily only filter parts of an image. (ie, you can have a unfiltered layer above a stack of filters, and the original image)

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#186

> ... will use the money to do much overdue hardware upgrade for the core team members and organize the next hackfest to bring the team together $100k is a sizable donation. I would have hoped that it could do more for the project than update some hardware and organize a hackfest. That's not to say donations in general shouldn't be used for those things. I just would have assumed that a donation of this size would ha…

In Europe (and I guess, the US too), $100K is not even enough to hire an engineer at an average rate for a year. I'm not sure what you'd propose to do with it exactly?

But a developer working full-time on a single project for an entire year can make a huge difference (compared to only user contributions, or 1 person extra on a 20-person project). If there aren't a dozen other full-time developers, you're saving loads of time on meetings, product planning, and everything involved. So even if I would agree that it's not enough for a full year, it's definitely enough for most of a year, with similar results.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darktable is not even in the same category as Lightroom. I spent months trying to figure out how to make it work for me before realizing it has zero library management functionality, which the devs seem to have missed is Lightroom's main value proposition. It is purely a non-destructive editor, and if you look up discussions on this topic on the mail lists you'll see WONTFIX responses in the vein of "just use your fi…

Wait, library management is supposed to be the main value prop? I didn't get the point of libraries - I already have my images in separate folders, what does the library actually add to that dynamic? Different folder, different instance of lightroom works for me.

Being able to organize thousands of photos dynamically by tags, date, etc, is enormously productive, as opposed to only having a single, static hierarchy through which to find photos. For instance, I could quickly retrieve all scenic photos across our entire collection.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#188
post #17

Create news, hope GIMP can use that money to work out a better and intuitive design. For example, currently, many Filters don't have previews (Or the preview window is too small), which make apply them become a slow try and error game. Also, the Text in the picture can be hard to select, as sometime you mistakenly select the underlying layer instead of the text. Also again, Filters cannot be directly applied to edita…

You can always submit bugs/annoyances/requests directly to the GIMP developers: https://www.gimp.org/bugs/

It looks like the GIMP developers would rather that new feature requests be made on their mailing list before making a new bug:

"An enhancement request should never be filed without prior discussion on the gimp-developer mailing list[0]. This is to make sure that the enhancement requests that are filed are well-specified and aligned with the overall goals the developers have for GIMP."

But please don't let that stop you! The more feedback that the developers get, the better GIMP will be for everyone.

[0]: https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#189
post #97

Free-to-play is huge in gaming, but in tooling it’s not. Why? A free Photoshop integrating a brush marketplace would make a shit ton of money. A free Premiere with a marketplace for effects?

I like this idea for GIMP. I'd definitely feel like I was getting my money's worth if I paid only small amounts per feature, instead of (as a casual user) paying hundreds on a license for everything a la Photoshop.

Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation

#190

(unpopular opinion) Wht a waste of money.

I think the main reason for downvotes on this post are because you give no support whatsoever for your statement. Your comment is so useless that I am actually considering flagging as being just a troll, something I do maybe once a year.
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