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GIMP 3.0 is on the way

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Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#71

Post by agumonkey »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #55
joaomacp wrote: post #22

I use Gimp from time to time, and often get frustrated with its... unique UI. It's nice to see they're hearing feedback and working on it :D A tip for others that feel the same: if you've used Photoshop before and are used to its UI, try the free Photopea website. It's a Photoshop "clone" that works really well in web (I believe it's a solo dev doing it too). It's replaced Gimp for me lately.

> frustrated with its... unique UI It's a matter of habits. For me, Gimp is the primary image editing tool and all others feel alien.

That's interesting. I have used and enjoyed a ton of software in different domains (from nothingreal shake to gnu ed) and so far gimp still wins the gold medals of triggering me. A rare feat.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#72

Post by inferiorhuman »

pessimizer wrote: post #40
rkharsan64 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this change include any UX improvements? The article only mentions updated visuals and theming. From the discussions I've read, it's the UX of GIMP that holds it back.

It's just Photoshop addicts needing the UI to be identical to Photoshop because when they use GIMP their muscle memory is broken. To be fair, though, all industry professionals are forced to be Photoshop addicts. But Photoshop's UI is objectively awful; it's the 10,000 hours you spent in it that makes it seem sane. You could have learned Thai in 10,000 hours, too. The real weaknesses in GIMP have been in its lack of…

  It's just Photoshop addicts needing the UI to be identical to
  Photoshop because when they use GIMP their muscle memory is
  broken.
Nah. Sometimes I just want to edit something without having to do the export song and dance.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#73

Post by James_K »

squigz wrote: post #69
James_K wrote: post #68

I'm told it's taken them two decades to release this essential feature. What have they been doing for all this time? I think they need to talk to people who edit photos, and focus their efforts on the many low-hanging fruit which would drastically improve the UX of their app (much like Blender did). Perhaps they are doing this to a degree, I see mentions of UI changes, but I wonder why they only think of it now and i…

https://developer.gimp.org/core/submit-patch/

I fell for this before. Wasted a few weeks' free time adding thumbnails to the GTK file chooser, only to find out that the library itself has bugs which they refused to fix that make it difficult to do. Now I just have a patched version installed locally. The only way to improve these projects is to change how they're managed, which you can't do with a patch.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#74

Post by vanderZwan »

James_K wrote: post #68

I'm told it's taken them two decades to release this essential feature. What have they been doing for all this time? I think they need to talk to people who edit photos, and focus their efforts on the many low-hanging fruit which would drastically improve the UX of their app (much like Blender did). Perhaps they are doing this to a degree, I see mentions of UI changes, but I wonder why they only think of it now and i…

I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question.

"They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them.

Take Øyvind Kolås, the maintainer and lead developer of babl/GEGL, which is the technology underlying GIMP 3.0. He's barely being paid for this work. Nowadays he has a patreon, which also is directly linked from the gimp.org website, encouraging you to directly support him[0][1]. Right now those patreon donations add up to about... $1300 a month. And the number used to be much lower when I first started donating.

A lot of people here complain that we cannot directly give money to, say, the development Firefox. With GIMP you can directly support its core individual maintainer, and almost nobody does.

[0] https://www.patreon.com/c/pippin/membership

[1] https://www.gimp.org/donating/

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#75

Post by heavensteeth »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #25
albertzeyer wrote: post #2

I find it a bit weird that Gimp does not use the latest GTK (i.e. GTK4, which was considered stable since 2020), even though GTK originates in the Gimp project itself. It actually seems to be quite a bit behind: This is now the first release of Gimp which started to use GTK3, i.e. before, it even still used GTK2 (reached end-of-life in 2020)?

GTK4 removed a bunch of APIs for stupid reasons and GIMPs move to 3 started before 4 even existed. Had 4 at least tried to maintain some degree of compatibility then switching from 3 to 4 near the end would have been feasible. But that's not the case. If you aren't Gnome, GTK is not for you.

I feel this. I tried using GTK4 a little while ago and almost immediately switched library when I realised it's simply incapable of doing certain things I needed, usually because either Wayland can't do it or GNOME doesn't need it.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#76

Post by DavidPeiffer »

teleforce wrote: post #59
soulofmischief wrote: post #15

I started using GIMP around 2003 as a small child, and I remember being hyped for 3.0 and non-destructive editing even back then. I'm in my thirties now. Slow and steady wins the race. Congrats to the GIMP team, can't imagine the catharsis they will experience when 3.0 officially drops.

> Congrats to the GIMP team, can't imagine the catharsis they will experience when 3.0 officially drops. Thanks for the catharsis word, I have to look it up for the meaning. 20 years or equivalent to 5 times Olympics games, is a very long time to develop and improve a software. It's now comparable to the real-time Linux kernel, another open-source software albeit it's a kernel not a user application [1]. Any other op…

Blender started ad in-house 3d modeling back in 1994, was open sourced in 2002, and continues with very active and sustainable development today. I used it most 2010-2012, and it has been incredible to see how much has happened since then.

https://www.blender.org/about/history/

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#77

Post by James_K »

vanderZwan wrote: post #74
James_K wrote: post #68

I'm told it's taken them two decades to release this essential feature. What have they been doing for all this time? I think they need to talk to people who edit photos, and focus their efforts on the many low-hanging fruit which would drastically improve the UX of their app (much like Blender did). Perhaps they are doing this to a degree, I see mentions of UI changes, but I wonder why they only think of it now and i…

I was about to leave this as a top-level comment, but it might be more appropriate as a response to your question. "They" are a handful of maintainers doing relatively thankless work. This is not a well-paid full-time job for them. Take Øyvind Kolås, the maintainer and lead developer of babl/GEGL, which is the technology underlying GIMP 3.0. He's barely being paid for this work. Nowadays he has a patreon, which also…

Would giving him more money improve the quality of his output? He also seems to not be in charge of the UI which is the major problem area. It's also worth noting that I could buy a subscription to Photoshop if we're talking about paying money to have software developed.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#78

Post by weberer »

teleforce wrote: post #59
soulofmischief wrote: post #15

I started using GIMP around 2003 as a small child, and I remember being hyped for 3.0 and non-destructive editing even back then. I'm in my thirties now. Slow and steady wins the race. Congrats to the GIMP team, can't imagine the catharsis they will experience when 3.0 officially drops.

> Congrats to the GIMP team, can't imagine the catharsis they will experience when 3.0 officially drops. Thanks for the catharsis word, I have to look it up for the meaning. 20 years or equivalent to 5 times Olympics games, is a very long time to develop and improve a software. It's now comparable to the real-time Linux kernel, another open-source software albeit it's a kernel not a user application [1]. Any other op…

>Any other open-source software that has a comparable development time that I'm not aware of?

GNOME famously had that file picker thumbnail issue open for 18 years.

https://www.omglinux.com/gnome-thumbnails-file-picker/

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#79

Post by lottin »

> this release has transitioned to using GTK's header bar component, typically used to combine an application's toolbar and title bar into one unit

This is a step backward. Access to the window manager menu becomes difficult as a result.

Re: GIMP 3.0 is on the way

#80

Post by squarefoot »

ginko wrote: post #26
lastdong wrote: post #9

Finally updated UI! I really hope it inspires more updates and brings in even more people, just like when Blender revamped their UX a few years back and saw an amazing boost in popularity.

I hope you can still configure it to have all the different toolboxes in separate windows like before. Also who thought putting stuff like "Cancel" and "OK" into the title bar was a good idea?!

> Also who thought putting stuff like "Cancel" and "OK" into the title bar was a good idea?!

That's one of the things I dislike more in GTK3. It seems dictated by the false belief that everyone is running software on a tablet screen in which windows don't need to be dragged around and open always at full screen, so the more space is used for widgets and input/output the better.

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