17 ms·

GIMP development - What’s the point?

181 points by unwind 10y ago

typetypetype 10y ago
There is a great lesson in this. The temptation to upgrade, improve, add, and tweak is very strong, but putting those things through the "what's the point" test could really help focus on what's important.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
What's the point? It's a helpful question for narrowing your focus, but at the end of the day, there isn't always one, and it needn't be a lofty philosophical goal. Did the MDL team need a point to develop Zork? Did Thompson need a business reason to write UNIX? Did the AI lab ever justify extending TECO far beyond its original intent, into the first version of EMACS? Sometimes, although not all the time, "because I can" is reason enough.
- the_af 10y ago
  "Because I can" is of course a valid reason, but having a better goal is more motivating, especially if it's a team instead of a single person. I believe GIMP does have a better goal than "just because", and in my mind it is achieving it. I'm not a graphics designer and therefore I have the luxury of not being locked-in with Photoshop's advanced features; therefore all my image manipulations are done using GIMP, Krita and/or Inkscape. I congratulate all those teams on a job well done.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Oh, of course. It's just that I don't think that "what's the point?" is as significant a question as many believe it is.
hitekker 10y ago
Stories about an eloquent, suave believer enlightening a misguided, clearly-in-the-wrong naysayer may sometimes be true, but never very convincing. > In this case, I opted to give the fireworks/show. My weapons of choice this time included the unified transform tool, the handle-transform tool, and the warp transform tool Which prompts the leering, misinformed troglodyte to consider the error of his ways, to "imagine the possibilities". Ahh, man. Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in my view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e., your product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers.
- the_af 10y ago
  It's also a decent, free and Free product in its own right, even if flawed. Just being Free makes it better than Photoshop for me. Calling it the "baseline" is pretty dismissive. It's better than Photoshop in some aspects. Even if it was the baseline, here's the point of GIMP development: to make it a truly great alternative to Photoshop and similar proprietary tools. Even if you never quite achieve it, even if the target keeps moving, it's reason enough for continuing development.
  - thedudemabry 10y ago
    I didn't take "baseline" to be dismissive, but rather a description of GIMP's venn-diagram overlap with Photoshop. They both make different choices for different reasons, but ensuring that proven useful features eventually land in that overlapping region is a valuable contribution to OSS and proprietary software.
- sjellis 10y ago
  > Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in my view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e. your product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers. I think that this is one of the important things that Open Source software does, generally - it provides a steadily rising baseline of functionality that is freely available to everyone. LibreOffice is another product that's often considered not as good as the leading proprietary product, but as long as it exists and gets better with every release, it will benefit everybody, including Microsoft Office users.
  - hitekker 10y ago
    Agreed 100%. The best Open Source products motivate and inspire.
  - Nihilartikel 10y ago
    I like that perspective. They're the 'Public Option' that keeps the commercial offerings on their toes :)
finchisko 10y ago
I use GIMP exclusively. Last time it allowed me to turn SVG animation into GIF. It literally took few seconds to complete. Many people bitch about GIMP, but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new things. I've nothing against them, but one thing, most of them in my circles are using pirate copy of Photoshop instead free GIMP. Some of them arguing about RBG/CMYK missing in GIMP, but most of them does not even know that.
- pierotofy 10y ago
  You can use the separate plugin to convert RBG to CMYK in GIMP. Not as good as Photoshop obviously, but I've made print ready images with it.
  - imaginenore 10y ago
    I doubt there are many people in the world who can tell the difference between a print printed from RGB vs CMYK. Maybe a few extremely good print professionals with perfect vision and a $4000+ monitor. I've printed gallery quality prints from sRGB (online and at home), and nobody gives a crap.
    - loopbit 10y ago
      When you have to print thousands of leaflets for a client using that client's corporate colors and, after printing, it turns out that the artwork was in RGB and the colors are not exactly those the client wanted[0], yes, you notice it. And the client always gives a crap. Of course no one cares if you print something for your house or a friend and the color is slightly off. But in some industries something like that can cost you a big client and a lot of money. [0] The difference can be quite dramatic, even without a professional monitor.
      - kazinator 10y ago
        Even so, doesn't this just boil down to a few math functions applied to each pixel? Why would I need something in GIMP whose effect can only be seen on paper, except as some kind of Export ... format? Suppose I have a properly calibrated monitor, yadda yadda, I should be seeing good colors on the screen as I'm editing. When I'm done, good colors on paper can only be seen after the data passes through a professional printer provided its RGB values have been properly massaged into CMYK values. So it has nothing to do with interactive image editing. It's almost entirely "off topic" for GIMP.
hiphopyo 10y ago
I prefer Photoshop for the UI, but boy are those Elsamuko plugins something.
omouse 10y ago
There's an excellent book published by No Starch Press that's full of ways to use GIMP. It's excellent because it is as comprehensive as the older Adobe Photoshop books that people used to buy.
- clishem 10y ago
  Here's a link for convenience: https://www.nostarch.com/gimp https://www.nostarch.com/gimp
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 10y ago
Surely the 'point' of GIMP development is that the market leading tool (Photoshop) is closed source, not available on Linux, and relies on its dominant market share to make people pay monthly for it?
enobrev 10y ago
I appreciate GIMP for what it is, and use it on the occasion that I can't quickly do what i need with ImageMagick or pixlr. But I'd gladly pay for Photoshop and other Adobe tools if they compiled natively on linux. One problem with the characterization implied in [a,b] is that it ignores the impossibility of opening a file correctly and completely that was originally compiled in a tool that's been the industry standard for well beyond my own years (I got started on Photoshop 4 in 1996 - the first Windows release, and before then, Paint Shop Pro). Literally not a single designer I've worked with in the last 15 years as a professional has ever even considered using GIMP (most don't know it exists). So if they want to send me their "source", it's in a PSD. And said source is going to be huge with layer effects / cropping / transitions, and all sorts of advanced Photoshop-specific things applied. And I'll open that file in GIMP - I try at least once a year - and it will show maybe 5-10% of the layers and will look nothing like the original. And then I'll fire up Windows in a VM and actually get work done. As for starting my own projects in GIMP, I fall squarely into group "a", and I feel no shame for it. a) User has tried GIMP, but didn't take time to learn enough to get past things that aren't obvious. b) User has heard that GIMP is hard to use, and is not an adequate tool for professionals.
- davexunit 10y ago
  You blame GIMP for not opening PSDs correctly, but note that it's not an open format and it's not a standard. GIMP developers can do nothing but try to reverse engineer support for it.
  - enobrev 10y ago
    You're absolutely right. The bar I'm setting is probably too high, but it's not set from anything beyond my desire to get work done. Literally: "nothing personal, but I can't use this"
    - throwanem 10y ago
      That is not too high a bar to set for an application that's billed as, among other things, a tool for professionals.
newscracker 10y ago
Before reading that email, I had a different thought about the title "GIMP development, what's the point?" In a time before touchscreen mobile devices and apps came into the picture, people who were somewhat serious about image editing would use GIMP or a pirated copy of Photoshop. There were also a few other applications, free and paid, with a much more limited set of features (but have improved over time). With touchscreen devices and apps, image editing, or rather, photo editing, has become more about using different apps for different specific use cases, and using filters and other "preset" tweaks along with additional adjustments if at all necessary. This is nowhere close to the power that GIMP offers for someone who knows how to use it and what can be done with it. But it is adequate for most people and is easy to use. In this respect, the title question could become more widespread as people hear less about GIMP. After reading the mail and the comments here, another thing that occurred to me about the title is that projects like GIMP, LibreOffice, etc., (and even Linux, GNOME, KDE, etc.) show themselves as phenomenal highlights of what truly free and open source software can be and serve as a great inspiration for others to embark on such really complex and multi-decade work in other areas. A GIMP developer is contributing to much more than GIMP alone if you look at side effects. It's a world that couldn't have been imagined several decades ago. I believe the developers who have contributed to these projects and continue to do so should be extremely proud of their commitment to FLOSS and the amount of work they have put in. Yes, some FLOSS applications may have deficiencies in features, stability, performance and other areas (which many commercial applications do too). But questioning the dedication of developers or asking for the justification of efforts spent by developers who're working with the FLOSS principles is completely missing the point in the overall scheme of things, and worse, missing the benefits enjoyed by and made available to humankind as a whole.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
I haven't used a direct image editor in a very long time and I don't think I'm missing anything. Digital Fusion is free. Houdini Indie is $200. Nuke is available for linux. These are all node based work flows that don't destroy anything. You don't have to undo because you create a graph of operations without changing your source directly. They aren't useful for painting directly with a tablet, but anything else they do very well at.
- technomalogical 10y ago
  Did you mean Design Fusion, from Blackmagic?
  - CyberDildonics 10y ago
    It used to be Digital Fusion before Blackmagic bought it.
equivocates 10y ago
the point of developing gimp is to eventually change its name.
_pmf_ 10y ago
> In such cases I have to push down my annoyance with the tone Don't. This would have deserved a rude answer.
noja 10y ago
I'd like to see these features demonstrated too, without meeting a gimp developer. Maybe they could do a better job of that.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  These are brand new features of the new, unstable, development version of GIMP. There hasn't been a lot of time to make tutorials on them yet. I still found a video tutorial one warp transform tool[1], but it's in German. It looks simple enough not to even need a tutorial, though. The GIMP team could always use some help in developing tutorials. So if you want to volunteer, I'm sure your help would be appreciated. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44
imaginenore 10y ago
After all these years GIMP still sucks. They waste time on developing features of low importance, while critical ones are still not solved. Prime case: opening RAW files. The current suggested workflow is to use a 3rd party plugin UFRaw. Would you like to see the process of installing it on Windows? http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html (Ctlr+F for "MS-Windows for geeks") And then I see arrogant posts like that, claiming that GIMP is perfectly capable. It absolutely is not. GIMP will become popular when GIMP developers start thinking about the modern photographer's workflow. Till then people will keep pirating Photoshop.
- vidarh 10y ago
  What is critical to you is not to me, and vice versa. E.g. I have never in my life needed to work with RAW files. I have also never in my life needed to manipulate graphics on Windows. I understand that is frustrating, but this is one of the challenges of open source - the contributors can make choices without caring about attracting customers.
  - pwinnski 10y ago
    Which is absolutely their right--but then they don't get to post smug messages about how people are just too dumb to understand how great their project is. I see a lot of messages justifying why GIMP meets the needs of so very few, but none of that changes the fact that GIMP seems to meet the needs of very few.
- executesorder66 10y ago
  > GIMP will become popular when GIMP developers start thinking about the modern photographer's workflow. GIMP is for image editing. Not for photography. Use darktable if you want a FOSS application for a photography workflow. (it can open RAW files) Similarly Krita is for creating digital art. It's main goal is not to be an image editor.
jkot 10y ago
Gimp source code is pretty old. Adding stuff like 16/32 bit support is not easy. On other side Krita is newer, uses QT, is developing faster etc..
WhitneyLand 10y ago
Sorry to say I don't think GIMP is the best example of a great FLOSS project. Many other projects are very competitive (or better) than commercial options but GIMP is not even close. They just released support for 16bit/32bit/c color last year which is needed for so many scenarios. The unified transform tool mentioned as a highlight is really a pretty simple thing to code. They are 5-10 years behind what you get in PS for $10/month. It's a killer for any professional have tools that far behind their peers. The UX has always been poor and unnecessarily complicated. I resent the implication it's the user's fault for not taking time to learn. There are many examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still possible.
- 6DM 10y ago
  Edit: [Deleted] I'm sorry, but I don't find the tool intuitive. I ran into issues using it. I installed fresh copy and tried steps commenters suggested and it worked well. However this was not my experience a mere two days ago.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    ? I'm by no means a pro but I can crop an image using gimp in less than 2mins and that includes figuring out where the tools are (I only open it whenever I upload images I guess every third month.)
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    Don't know what you're talking about? Cropping and scaling take one click and mouse drag or menu selection respectively.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    What are the problems you encounter?
    - 6DM 10y ago
      I usually end up at the point where the image is highlighted, but I can't get it to actually crop for some reason. Knowing about the exacto knife (from another comment) made it a lot easier.
unixhero 10y ago
I am a Krita fan. It's taken the throne of all my graphics creation and modification needs. https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/
billconan 10y ago
I would like to give another try of GIMP later today. I remember the first time I tried GIMP. The user experience wasn't good. After knowing you had to double click a button to toggle it, I immediately dropped GIMP. I also had bad experience with gdk as a developer. I remember it didn't have an installer on windows, and it needed so many dependencies. Getting all the required dlls was a huge pain. Whereas Qt is always nice and easy with good documents. gdk didn't seem to have a native mac backend. It needs XQuartz, which I don't like. I don't want to install X windows on mac, doesn't make sense. The fact that gimp is under gnome worried me. Doing image processing software is difficult, but making the ui of it should be relatively easier. GIMP might be strong at processing images, but its ui was really messed up I think. But I will try again to see if there is any improvement.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
gimp has handled all my image processing needs for a two? decade(s) and done it easily, thanks.
pmoriarty 10y ago
People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work on GIMP eventually came out with a single window layout. I'm not a PS user, but I heard that around that time PS changed to a multi-window layout. Whether that's true or not, now I hear complaints from some users that GIMP is not any good because it doesn't have a multi-window layout (not realizing that changing it to multi-window layout is as simple as unchecking "Single-window mode" under the "Windows" menu). Give me a break! Some people will never be satisfied and will never appreciate the hundreds or thousands of man hours of free work that GIMP developers have poured in to this product. Could it be improved? Of course! Anything can. Should they strive to make it better? Yes. Feature requests and help are great. But indignant insults coming from people who didn't pay for the development of the product, who don't contribute any of their own time to make it better, and who clearly don't appreciate the massive achievement that GIMP is just take the cake. GIMP developers must have skins of steel to put up with this crap year in and year out.
- tomtomtom777 10y ago
  For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?
  - aikah 10y ago
    It can't. If you work in the industry you'll be expected to use a specific format (.psd). I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. All Macromedia tools have since then been flushed down the toilets by Adobe. There is something Macromedia achieve with the notion of "community" that Adobe was never able to do.
bobajeff 10y ago
Gimp is wonderful software. It's really amazing all of the work that's been done with it. I fully respect all of the work developers have put into open source art creation tools/libraries. Blender, Gimp, InkScape, Krita, G'MIC etc. are incredible pieces of software and if more people spent time to explore, celebrate and contribute to these efforts there is no way any commercial product could keep up.
nadezhda18 10y ago
I am surprised nobody talked about Text tool and action recording. I also use Photoshop CS2 (which Abobe started giving away about 3-4 years ago), and oh boy is its Text tool much more advanced. CS2 was released in 2005 and the latest version of Gimp (2.8.10) still cannot compare :( From my point of view, working with text is a pain in Gimp :( Also, action recording - I think it is a highly valuable feature for anyone who processes at least 1 photo a week. It seems now so inefficient to repeat the same 4-5 steps again and again and again.
hyperion2010 10y ago
I've used gimp for years and only recently did I discover that Script-Fu is actually an embedded Scheme. Happy day for automation.
- Grue3 10y ago
  Yeah, people blab about how Photoshop is better, but can it be programmed in Lisp? Yeah, didn't think so.
bitwize 10y ago
The GIMP team doesn't seem interested in working with professional designers, and professional designers are too content with Photoshop to work with the GIMP team. Just use Photoshop. Cowboy up and buy the fucking software.
bitwize 10y ago
The GIMP team doesn't seem interested in working with professional designers, and professional designers are too content with Photoshop to work with the GIMP team. Just use Photoshop. Cowboy up and buy the fucking software.
CletusTSJY 10y ago
Maybe if he could sit down with every potential user of GIMP I could sympathize. But the truth is when I sit down to do anything in GIMP, my frustration grows and grows. I've spent dozens of hours using it and it still leaves me in agony every time.
nnain 10y ago
Lot of very fancy photographers use GIMP exclusively. It's more about the workflow (and marketing). If you're used to GIMP, you won't find Photoshop all that easy and vice versa.
nevada_smith 10y ago
I was quite surprised to see such callous and scathing remarks. GIMP is inadequate for publishing and apparently lacks certain features of the wondrous marvel that is Photoshop. However, most of the functionality that was there in Photoshop 6 is implemented reasonably well in GIMP. And that, a few might disagree but still, is all that is needed for most of the work. I could see folks complaining that they couldn't trim an image even after 30 minutes, maybe they should try plugging in the mouse first. What I have successfully used GIMP at home for:- 1. Touching up photos for matrimonial sites. (For the uninitiated, this is the first part of the elaborate song-and-dance sequence enacted before getting blissfully wed to a stranger) 2. Desktop UI icons for open source projects. 3. Cleaning up documents. adding a signature etc - work that saves a round of scanning I really do appreciate the work behind GIMP.
gilrain 10y ago
To be honest, the name is really embarrassing and immature. I've always felt weird when I used it, and I don't like mentioning it in conversation as a result. Krita has momentum and many other advantages, not least of which is an appealing name.
sontek 10y ago
I LOVE GIMP! GIMP is a great competitor to photoshop. It misses a lot of the shortcuts that photoshop has introduced to make editing easier/quicker but I've always been able to do everything I needed to do even if it takes more steps. What the opensource community is missing is a sketch alternative. Application developers have moved to it for rapid design and photoshop has taken the backseat. GIMP is not comparable to sketch. Sketch has changed the way the design world thinks / works.
ravenstine 10y ago
GIMP is wonderful and I've gotten away without using Photoshop because of it for over 10 years. Sure, I'm not a graphics designer, but GIMP really isn't made for professional graphic designers. I just wish that the plugin community around GIMP didn't slow down so much, and that GEGL would eventually be 100% implemented(meaning actual CMYK, non-destructive filters, etc). I know that GEGL is kinda there, but it's not fully there still after over 6 years. What may give GIMP a huge edge over Photoshop one day is if it can be ported to the browser with Emscripten.
weerd 10y ago
A big thanks to the GIMP devs for providing us with a powerful image editor! It's one of my favorite tools on Linux. I'm currently using it for gradient generation and texture editing for a game. Obviously PS is king in this domain, but the "point" is that many people don't need the full corporate lab when the garage workshop will do.
Annatar 10y ago
Long time GIMP user here. I use GIMP because my Solaris 10 install came with it, and for no other reason (I also used it on IRIX). Some software is just so bad, that it cannot even be given away for free; GIMP is one such example, as the interface is horrible.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
"because I know such comments usually come from one of two places" I would expect such comments to usually come from c) User feels the industry uses Adobe and, even if GIMP matched up feature for feature, it's pointless to learn it. I don't like to think that way myself but I've certainly felt that way at times.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Or possibly from d) User has actually attempted to use GIMP in a professional context and found it severely lacking. But that's not something a just-so story can easily answer, so I'm not surprised to see it excluded here.
llvihearsevil 10y ago
GIMP does suffer from a Pied Piper issue. The developer shouldn't have to teach a user how to use his program.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
MicroBerto 10y ago
Not sure what he's talking about (Warp stuff) since I'm a GIMP amateur, but he should make a YouTube video of his finest 3-minute GIMP presentation then.
C-Rogers 10y ago
Hey, I'm C.Rogers, the original poster of this thankyou note that's got everyone bashing GIMP against Photoshop... which entirely misses the point of it. People seem hell-bent on comparing GIMP to Photoshop, saying they don't compare. Well, it's easy to say that isn't it? I came from 13+ years of Photoshop experience, with about 7 of those used in the professional world. I've since packed on another near decade using GIMP (at first in conjunction with Photoshop), I have since replaced Photoshop entirely in my professional work, and I use it every day. The biggest thing stopping professionals from using GIMP is the erroneous notion that it can't be used for the same professional tasks as Photoshop. I'm half tempted to start a YouTube channel called GIMP SUCKS, and fill it with screencaptures of my graphics work done entirely in GIMP. That's not just magazine adverts, that's billboards, that's convention booths, it's over 100 new products of my own design, and nearly 20,000 product photos. So please, if you have something specific to complain about, go post a bug report, or a wishlist item like a decent human being. Repeating over and over that GIMP can't replace Photoshop for professional work doesn't make it any more true. Here's some eye-candy for the nay-sayers: https://goo.gl/UwxEGp https://goo.gl/UwxEGp

181 points by unwind 10y ago

There is a great lesson in this. The temptation to upgrade, improve, add, and tweak is very strong, but putting those things through the "what's the point" test could really help focus on what's important.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

What's the point? It's a helpful question for narrowing your focus, but at the end of the day, there isn't always one, and it needn't be a lofty philosophical goal. Did the MDL team need a point to develop Zork? Did Thompson need a business reason to write UNIX? Did the AI lab ever justify extending TECO far beyond its original intent, into the first version of EMACS? Sometimes, although not all the time, "because I can" is reason enough.

the_af 10y ago
"Because I can" is of course a valid reason, but having a better goal is more motivating, especially if it's a team instead of a single person. I believe GIMP does have a better goal than "just because", and in my mind it is achieving it. I'm not a graphics designer and therefore I have the luxury of not being locked-in with Photoshop's advanced features; therefore all my image manipulations are done using GIMP, Krita and/or Inkscape. I congratulate all those teams on a job well done.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Oh, of course. It's just that I don't think that "what's the point?" is as significant a question as many believe it is.

hitekker 10y ago

Stories about an eloquent, suave believer enlightening a misguided, clearly-in-the-wrong naysayer may sometimes be true, but never very convincing. > In this case, I opted to give the fireworks/show. My weapons of choice this time included the unified transform tool, the handle-transform tool, and the warp transform tool Which prompts the leering, misinformed troglodyte to consider the error of his ways, to "imagine the possibilities". Ahh, man. Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in my view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e., your product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers.

the_af 10y ago
It's also a decent, free and Free product in its own right, even if flawed. Just being Free makes it better than Photoshop for me. Calling it the "baseline" is pretty dismissive. It's better than Photoshop in some aspects. Even if it was the baseline, here's the point of GIMP development: to make it a truly great alternative to Photoshop and similar proprietary tools. Even if you never quite achieve it, even if the target keeps moving, it's reason enough for continuing development.
- thedudemabry 10y ago
  I didn't take "baseline" to be dismissive, but rather a description of GIMP's venn-diagram overlap with Photoshop. They both make different choices for different reasons, but ensuring that proven useful features eventually land in that overlapping region is a valuable contribution to OSS and proprietary software.
sjellis 10y ago
> Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in my view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e. your product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers. I think that this is one of the important things that Open Source software does, generally - it provides a steadily rising baseline of functionality that is freely available to everyone. LibreOffice is another product that's often considered not as good as the leading proprietary product, but as long as it exists and gets better with every release, it will benefit everybody, including Microsoft Office users.
- hitekker 10y ago
  Agreed 100%. The best Open Source products motivate and inspire.
- Nihilartikel 10y ago
  I like that perspective. They're the 'Public Option' that keeps the commercial offerings on their toes :)

finchisko 10y ago

I use GIMP exclusively. Last time it allowed me to turn SVG animation into GIF. It literally took few seconds to complete. Many people bitch about GIMP, but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new things. I've nothing against them, but one thing, most of them in my circles are using pirate copy of Photoshop instead free GIMP. Some of them arguing about RBG/CMYK missing in GIMP, but most of them does not even know that.

pierotofy 10y ago
You can use the separate plugin to convert RBG to CMYK in GIMP. Not as good as Photoshop obviously, but I've made print ready images with it.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  I doubt there are many people in the world who can tell the difference between a print printed from RGB vs CMYK. Maybe a few extremely good print professionals with perfect vision and a $4000+ monitor. I've printed gallery quality prints from sRGB (online and at home), and nobody gives a crap.
  - loopbit 10y ago
    When you have to print thousands of leaflets for a client using that client's corporate colors and, after printing, it turns out that the artwork was in RGB and the colors are not exactly those the client wanted[0], yes, you notice it. And the client always gives a crap. Of course no one cares if you print something for your house or a friend and the color is slightly off. But in some industries something like that can cost you a big client and a lot of money. [0] The difference can be quite dramatic, even without a professional monitor.
    - kazinator 10y ago
      Even so, doesn't this just boil down to a few math functions applied to each pixel? Why would I need something in GIMP whose effect can only be seen on paper, except as some kind of Export ... format? Suppose I have a properly calibrated monitor, yadda yadda, I should be seeing good colors on the screen as I'm editing. When I'm done, good colors on paper can only be seen after the data passes through a professional printer provided its RGB values have been properly massaged into CMYK values. So it has nothing to do with interactive image editing. It's almost entirely "off topic" for GIMP.

hiphopyo 10y ago

I prefer Photoshop for the UI, but boy are those Elsamuko plugins something.

omouse 10y ago

There's an excellent book published by No Starch Press that's full of ways to use GIMP. It's excellent because it is as comprehensive as the older Adobe Photoshop books that people used to buy.

clishem 10y ago
Here's a link for convenience: https://www.nostarch.com/gimp https://www.nostarch.com/gimp

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 10y ago

Surely the 'point' of GIMP development is that the market leading tool (Photoshop) is closed source, not available on Linux, and relies on its dominant market share to make people pay monthly for it?

enobrev 10y ago

I appreciate GIMP for what it is, and use it on the occasion that I can't quickly do what i need with ImageMagick or pixlr. But I'd gladly pay for Photoshop and other Adobe tools if they compiled natively on linux. One problem with the characterization implied in [a,b] is that it ignores the impossibility of opening a file correctly and completely that was originally compiled in a tool that's been the industry standard for well beyond my own years (I got started on Photoshop 4 in 1996 - the first Windows release, and before then, Paint Shop Pro). Literally not a single designer I've worked with in the last 15 years as a professional has ever even considered using GIMP (most don't know it exists). So if they want to send me their "source", it's in a PSD. And said source is going to be huge with layer effects / cropping / transitions, and all sorts of advanced Photoshop-specific things applied. And I'll open that file in GIMP - I try at least once a year - and it will show maybe 5-10% of the layers and will look nothing like the original. And then I'll fire up Windows in a VM and actually get work done. As for starting my own projects in GIMP, I fall squarely into group "a", and I feel no shame for it. a) User has tried GIMP, but didn't take time to learn enough to get past things that aren't obvious. b) User has heard that GIMP is hard to use, and is not an adequate tool for professionals.

davexunit 10y ago
You blame GIMP for not opening PSDs correctly, but note that it's not an open format and it's not a standard. GIMP developers can do nothing but try to reverse engineer support for it.
- enobrev 10y ago
  You're absolutely right. The bar I'm setting is probably too high, but it's not set from anything beyond my desire to get work done. Literally: "nothing personal, but I can't use this"
  - throwanem 10y ago
    That is not too high a bar to set for an application that's billed as, among other things, a tool for professionals.

newscracker 10y ago

Before reading that email, I had a different thought about the title "GIMP development, what's the point?" In a time before touchscreen mobile devices and apps came into the picture, people who were somewhat serious about image editing would use GIMP or a pirated copy of Photoshop. There were also a few other applications, free and paid, with a much more limited set of features (but have improved over time). With touchscreen devices and apps, image editing, or rather, photo editing, has become more about using different apps for different specific use cases, and using filters and other "preset" tweaks along with additional adjustments if at all necessary. This is nowhere close to the power that GIMP offers for someone who knows how to use it and what can be done with it. But it is adequate for most people and is easy to use. In this respect, the title question could become more widespread as people hear less about GIMP. After reading the mail and the comments here, another thing that occurred to me about the title is that projects like GIMP, LibreOffice, etc., (and even Linux, GNOME, KDE, etc.) show themselves as phenomenal highlights of what truly free and open source software can be and serve as a great inspiration for others to embark on such really complex and multi-decade work in other areas. A GIMP developer is contributing to much more than GIMP alone if you look at side effects. It's a world that couldn't have been imagined several decades ago. I believe the developers who have contributed to these projects and continue to do so should be extremely proud of their commitment to FLOSS and the amount of work they have put in. Yes, some FLOSS applications may have deficiencies in features, stability, performance and other areas (which many commercial applications do too). But questioning the dedication of developers or asking for the justification of efforts spent by developers who're working with the FLOSS principles is completely missing the point in the overall scheme of things, and worse, missing the benefits enjoyed by and made available to humankind as a whole.

CyberDildonics 10y ago

I haven't used a direct image editor in a very long time and I don't think I'm missing anything. Digital Fusion is free. Houdini Indie is $200. Nuke is available for linux. These are all node based work flows that don't destroy anything. You don't have to undo because you create a graph of operations without changing your source directly. They aren't useful for painting directly with a tablet, but anything else they do very well at.

technomalogical 10y ago
Did you mean Design Fusion, from Blackmagic?
- CyberDildonics 10y ago
  It used to be Digital Fusion before Blackmagic bought it.

equivocates 10y ago

the point of developing gimp is to eventually change its name.

_pmf_ 10y ago

> In such cases I have to push down my annoyance with the tone Don't. This would have deserved a rude answer.

noja 10y ago

I'd like to see these features demonstrated too, without meeting a gimp developer. Maybe they could do a better job of that.

pmoriarty 10y ago
These are brand new features of the new, unstable, development version of GIMP. There hasn't been a lot of time to make tutorials on them yet. I still found a video tutorial one warp transform tool[1], but it's in German. It looks simple enough not to even need a tutorial, though. The GIMP team could always use some help in developing tutorials. So if you want to volunteer, I'm sure your help would be appreciated. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44

imaginenore 10y ago

After all these years GIMP still sucks. They waste time on developing features of low importance, while critical ones are still not solved. Prime case: opening RAW files. The current suggested workflow is to use a 3rd party plugin UFRaw. Would you like to see the process of installing it on Windows? http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html (Ctlr+F for "MS-Windows for geeks") And then I see arrogant posts like that, claiming that GIMP is perfectly capable. It absolutely is not. GIMP will become popular when GIMP developers start thinking about the modern photographer's workflow. Till then people will keep pirating Photoshop.

vidarh 10y ago
What is critical to you is not to me, and vice versa. E.g. I have never in my life needed to work with RAW files. I have also never in my life needed to manipulate graphics on Windows. I understand that is frustrating, but this is one of the challenges of open source - the contributors can make choices without caring about attracting customers.
- pwinnski 10y ago
  Which is absolutely their right--but then they don't get to post smug messages about how people are just too dumb to understand how great their project is. I see a lot of messages justifying why GIMP meets the needs of so very few, but none of that changes the fact that GIMP seems to meet the needs of very few.
executesorder66 10y ago
> GIMP will become popular when GIMP developers start thinking about the modern photographer's workflow. GIMP is for image editing. Not for photography. Use darktable if you want a FOSS application for a photography workflow. (it can open RAW files) Similarly Krita is for creating digital art. It's main goal is not to be an image editor.

jkot 10y ago

Gimp source code is pretty old. Adding stuff like 16/32 bit support is not easy. On other side Krita is newer, uses QT, is developing faster etc..

WhitneyLand 10y ago

Sorry to say I don't think GIMP is the best example of a great FLOSS project. Many other projects are very competitive (or better) than commercial options but GIMP is not even close. They just released support for 16bit/32bit/c color last year which is needed for so many scenarios. The unified transform tool mentioned as a highlight is really a pretty simple thing to code. They are 5-10 years behind what you get in PS for $10/month. It's a killer for any professional have tools that far behind their peers. The UX has always been poor and unnecessarily complicated. I resent the implication it's the user's fault for not taking time to learn. There are many examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still possible.

6DM 10y ago
Edit: [Deleted] I'm sorry, but I don't find the tool intuitive. I ran into issues using it. I installed fresh copy and tried steps commenters suggested and it worked well. However this was not my experience a mere two days ago.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  ? I'm by no means a pro but I can crop an image using gimp in less than 2mins and that includes figuring out where the tools are (I only open it whenever I upload images I guess every third month.)
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Don't know what you're talking about? Cropping and scaling take one click and mouse drag or menu selection respectively.
- kaybe 10y ago
  What are the problems you encounter?
  - 6DM 10y ago
    I usually end up at the point where the image is highlighted, but I can't get it to actually crop for some reason. Knowing about the exacto knife (from another comment) made it a lot easier.

unixhero 10y ago

I am a Krita fan. It's taken the throne of all my graphics creation and modification needs. https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/

billconan 10y ago

I would like to give another try of GIMP later today. I remember the first time I tried GIMP. The user experience wasn't good. After knowing you had to double click a button to toggle it, I immediately dropped GIMP. I also had bad experience with gdk as a developer. I remember it didn't have an installer on windows, and it needed so many dependencies. Getting all the required dlls was a huge pain. Whereas Qt is always nice and easy with good documents. gdk didn't seem to have a native mac backend. It needs XQuartz, which I don't like. I don't want to install X windows on mac, doesn't make sense. The fact that gimp is under gnome worried me. Doing image processing software is difficult, but making the ui of it should be relatively easier. GIMP might be strong at processing images, but its ui was really messed up I think. But I will try again to see if there is any improvement.

mixmastamyk 10y ago

gimp has handled all my image processing needs for a two? decade(s) and done it easily, thanks.

pmoriarty 10y ago

People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first came out. GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was. I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a single window layout. So the volunteers who work on GIMP eventually came out with a single window layout. I'm not a PS user, but I heard that around that time PS changed to a multi-window layout. Whether that's true or not, now I hear complaints from some users that GIMP is not any good because it doesn't have a multi-window layout (not realizing that changing it to multi-window layout is as simple as unchecking "Single-window mode" under the "Windows" menu). Give me a break! Some people will never be satisfied and will never appreciate the hundreds or thousands of man hours of free work that GIMP developers have poured in to this product. Could it be improved? Of course! Anything can. Should they strive to make it better? Yes. Feature requests and help are great. But indignant insults coming from people who didn't pay for the development of the product, who don't contribute any of their own time to make it better, and who clearly don't appreciate the massive achievement that GIMP is just take the cake. GIMP developers must have skins of steel to put up with this crap year in and year out.

tomtomtom777 10y ago
For professional use, how does modern GIMP compare to modern PS?
- aikah 10y ago
  It can't. If you work in the industry you'll be expected to use a specific format (.psd). I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of Photoshop in Gimp. The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor. I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. All Macromedia tools have since then been flushed down the toilets by Adobe. There is something Macromedia achieve with the notion of "community" that Adobe was never able to do.

bobajeff 10y ago

Gimp is wonderful software. It's really amazing all of the work that's been done with it. I fully respect all of the work developers have put into open source art creation tools/libraries. Blender, Gimp, InkScape, Krita, G'MIC etc. are incredible pieces of software and if more people spent time to explore, celebrate and contribute to these efforts there is no way any commercial product could keep up.

nadezhda18 10y ago

I am surprised nobody talked about Text tool and action recording. I also use Photoshop CS2 (which Abobe started giving away about 3-4 years ago), and oh boy is its Text tool much more advanced. CS2 was released in 2005 and the latest version of Gimp (2.8.10) still cannot compare :( From my point of view, working with text is a pain in Gimp :( Also, action recording - I think it is a highly valuable feature for anyone who processes at least 1 photo a week. It seems now so inefficient to repeat the same 4-5 steps again and again and again.

hyperion2010 10y ago

I've used gimp for years and only recently did I discover that Script-Fu is actually an embedded Scheme. Happy day for automation.

Grue3 10y ago
Yeah, people blab about how Photoshop is better, but can it be programmed in Lisp? Yeah, didn't think so.

bitwize 10y ago

The GIMP team doesn't seem interested in working with professional designers, and professional designers are too content with Photoshop to work with the GIMP team. Just use Photoshop. Cowboy up and buy the fucking software.

bitwize 10y ago

CletusTSJY 10y ago

Maybe if he could sit down with every potential user of GIMP I could sympathize. But the truth is when I sit down to do anything in GIMP, my frustration grows and grows. I've spent dozens of hours using it and it still leaves me in agony every time.

nnain 10y ago

Lot of very fancy photographers use GIMP exclusively. It's more about the workflow (and marketing). If you're used to GIMP, you won't find Photoshop all that easy and vice versa.

nevada_smith 10y ago

I was quite surprised to see such callous and scathing remarks. GIMP is inadequate for publishing and apparently lacks certain features of the wondrous marvel that is Photoshop. However, most of the functionality that was there in Photoshop 6 is implemented reasonably well in GIMP. And that, a few might disagree but still, is all that is needed for most of the work. I could see folks complaining that they couldn't trim an image even after 30 minutes, maybe they should try plugging in the mouse first. What I have successfully used GIMP at home for:- 1. Touching up photos for matrimonial sites. (For the uninitiated, this is the first part of the elaborate song-and-dance sequence enacted before getting blissfully wed to a stranger) 2. Desktop UI icons for open source projects. 3. Cleaning up documents. adding a signature etc - work that saves a round of scanning I really do appreciate the work behind GIMP.

gilrain 10y ago

To be honest, the name is really embarrassing and immature. I've always felt weird when I used it, and I don't like mentioning it in conversation as a result. Krita has momentum and many other advantages, not least of which is an appealing name.

sontek 10y ago

I LOVE GIMP! GIMP is a great competitor to photoshop. It misses a lot of the shortcuts that photoshop has introduced to make editing easier/quicker but I've always been able to do everything I needed to do even if it takes more steps. What the opensource community is missing is a sketch alternative. Application developers have moved to it for rapid design and photoshop has taken the backseat. GIMP is not comparable to sketch. Sketch has changed the way the design world thinks / works.

ravenstine 10y ago

GIMP is wonderful and I've gotten away without using Photoshop because of it for over 10 years. Sure, I'm not a graphics designer, but GIMP really isn't made for professional graphic designers. I just wish that the plugin community around GIMP didn't slow down so much, and that GEGL would eventually be 100% implemented(meaning actual CMYK, non-destructive filters, etc). I know that GEGL is kinda there, but it's not fully there still after over 6 years. What may give GIMP a huge edge over Photoshop one day is if it can be ported to the browser with Emscripten.

weerd 10y ago

A big thanks to the GIMP devs for providing us with a powerful image editor! It's one of my favorite tools on Linux. I'm currently using it for gradient generation and texture editing for a game. Obviously PS is king in this domain, but the "point" is that many people don't need the full corporate lab when the garage workshop will do.

Annatar 10y ago

Long time GIMP user here. I use GIMP because my Solaris 10 install came with it, and for no other reason (I also used it on IRIX). Some software is just so bad, that it cannot even be given away for free; GIMP is one such example, as the interface is horrible.

jasonkostempski 10y ago

"because I know such comments usually come from one of two places" I would expect such comments to usually come from c) User feels the industry uses Adobe and, even if GIMP matched up feature for feature, it's pointless to learn it. I don't like to think that way myself but I've certainly felt that way at times.

throwanem 10y ago
Or possibly from d) User has actually attempted to use GIMP in a professional context and found it severely lacking. But that's not something a just-so story can easily answer, so I'm not surprised to see it excluded here.

llvihearsevil 10y ago

GIMP does suffer from a Pied Piper issue. The developer shouldn't have to teach a user how to use his program.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

MicroBerto 10y ago

Not sure what he's talking about (Warp stuff) since I'm a GIMP amateur, but he should make a YouTube video of his finest 3-minute GIMP presentation then.

C-Rogers 10y ago

Hey, I'm C.Rogers, the original poster of this thankyou note that's got everyone bashing GIMP against Photoshop... which entirely misses the point of it. People seem hell-bent on comparing GIMP to Photoshop, saying they don't compare. Well, it's easy to say that isn't it? I came from 13+ years of Photoshop experience, with about 7 of those used in the professional world. I've since packed on another near decade using GIMP (at first in conjunction with Photoshop), I have since replaced Photoshop entirely in my professional work, and I use it every day. The biggest thing stopping professionals from using GIMP is the erroneous notion that it can't be used for the same professional tasks as Photoshop. I'm half tempted to start a YouTube channel called GIMP SUCKS, and fill it with screencaptures of my graphics work done entirely in GIMP. That's not just magazine adverts, that's billboards, that's convention booths, it's over 100 new products of my own design, and nearly 20,000 product photos. So please, if you have something specific to complain about, go post a bug report, or a wishlist item like a decent human being. Repeating over and over that GIMP can't replace Photoshop for professional work doesn't make it any more true. Here's some eye-candy for the nay-sayers: https://goo.gl/UwxEGp https://goo.gl/UwxEGp