Buried lede here is this Handshake.org thing. Anybody have any idea about what this is?
Most importantly, where do they get $400K
GIMP receives a $100K donation
31–40 of 318 posts
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#32I hope that someday GIMP will have major change just like Krita & Blender. The UI of GIMP have received many complains.
There are actually many different ways you can customize the UI to your liking, including themes among other things. You can also run GIMP in window mode which encapsulates all sub windows into a single app window, just like the other apps you mentioned. If none of these are your cup of tea, please make a PR - It’s open source. :) That said, Krita and Blender are very very nice.
I had no idea. For those people that last successfully used gimp >5 years ago.
Windows > Single Window Mode.
Windows > New Toolbox
Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Tool Options
It is hard to convey how much more comfortable I feel with the program with these tiny settings changes. I wonder how many other people are in the same boat as I.
I spend a lot of time in a grid style interface, so it is great to see:
* View > Show Grid
* View > Snap to Grid
Click once somewhere. Hold shift to draw a point to point line. Hold shift and control to have wider snapping of angles and click again, hold control and shift to get 15 Degree increment angles.
I will use Gimp a lot more now. Previously I was trying to use Pinta, but it would crash regularly on me making it almost unusable.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#33> ... 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…
1) Hardware upgrades catapult productivity. Ever gone through the sheer hell of developing on a sluggish, over-taxed computer? For a project like this, the faster build times alone will make HW upgrades worth it. 2) This team has proven their dedication by sacrificing immense time & opportunity - some of them, for years - to work on this fantastic gift to the world. Not that it's your call, or mine - the $ was given…
> 2) This team has proven their dedication by sacrificing immense time & opportunity - some of them, for years - to work on this fantastic gift to the world.
I don't disagree with this one bit.
> Not that it's your call, or mine - the $ was given to them, not you or me - but I say let 'em spend it however they see fit.
I'm just postulating, not complaining. Surely that's acceptable.
You're also assuming that all the developers absolutely want to spend the money this way. There may well be a core contributor willing to do more, but uncomfortable with idea of suggesting they take the money, and is too scared to speak up. If there is such a person, I say "go for it".
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I'll just quote myself: > allowing contributors to focus a more significant portion of their time on GIMP I never said anything about hiring full-time engineers. Also, there are plenty of people willing to be paid a little less to work on something open-source, and something that they take great pride in. We have to be careful not to take advantage of such people, but some people are in a position where they can affo…
If I was not already busy on something else, I would have worked at 60/day, a day a week on that kind of stuff for the very reasons you describe ! (well, except I don't know anything about gimp's internals :-))
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are actually many different ways you can customize the UI to your liking, including themes among other things. You can also run GIMP in window mode which encapsulates all sub windows into a single app window, just like the other apps you mentioned. If none of these are your cup of tea, please make a PR - It’s open source. :) That said, Krita and Blender are very very nice.
I know it's well-meaning but this is not the issue. It's not about "customization" or singular problems with a simple fix. It's about having a well-ordered, uncluttered, snappy GUI that never gets in the way. As a default. Until the GIMP team realizes that this isn't a separate issue but the central purpose of an image editing program, it will never be a serious option for professional work. They should invest those…
My one or two cents: I have done professional work in GIMP, plenty of it. And certainly, this or that could be better thought through, and more smoothly laid out. But on the whole - and being accustomed over the better part of twenty years - I don't quite see the major problems everyone is on about.
The Photoshop thing, on the other hand, on the rare occasions I am forced to venture there, strikes me as a confusing mess that I'm always happy to leave behind as soon as possible. Plus of course it requires one kind or another of strange proprietary OS in order to function.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#36Earlier 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.
> the efforts are probably spent on core functionality over aesthetics.
This is the fatal error. Humans are the ones using that tool. What you call aesthetics is functionality.
We’re not talking about making it prettier we’re talking about making it more usable.
On top of that, it’s an image editing tool. It’s a tool that people use for the purpose of creating visual, often-times “aesthetic” works, and yet the UI is not important? Well then more humans making the decision to use it is not important.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#37Earlier 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).
Well, given that it is open source software, have you ever considered contributing? I'm not trying to be dick. I know that just because you can spot flaws doesn't necessarily mean you know how to improve them, nor are you obligated to just because it is open source. But I bet you could offer some valuable feedback and/or ideas.
I think the barriers are quite often that collaboration around contributions happens in developer centric platforms. Am not sure what it is for GIMP, but often it's Github or IRC or some message board, which works really well for developer contributions, but then for things like UI design, marketing proposals, social media sign off etc... it's less than ideal.
I'd like to help contribute to some projects where I can lend a (non-development) hand, but being code-based projects, they don't feel set up to accept it.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#38I hope that someday GIMP will have major change just like Krita & Blender. The UI of GIMP have received many complains.
It has improved in recent years - looks more like Photoshop now.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#39Earlier 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).
In my experience these problems typically boil down to not having a "product manager" or "product owner" who has both the skills and the authority to drive the usability side of the product.
Not to mention a team of willing designers, developers and testers to get the work done.
Re: GIMP receives a $100K donation
#40I hope that someday GIMP will have major change just like Krita & Blender. The UI of GIMP have received many complains.
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 photoshop I'd probably be a lot less productive with it. Maybe when people say "improve the UI" they just mean "Make it more like the program I'm already used to".