5 ms·

TL;DR: A program needs either (a) features + good UX/I or (b) rock-solid stability + amazing performance characteristics to compensate for anything else lacking

by nnq 9y ago

TL;DR: A program needs either (a) features + good UX/I or (b) rock-solid stability + amazing performance characteristics to compensate for anything else lacking. Gimp has neither, it's some kind of "middle ground" thingy that annoys everyone. > give up your freedom for a few extra features Not really, I use like 10% max of Photoshop's features I guess. But those features simply feel perfectly implemented, they just f work. Heck, I even use it for vector graphics sometimes because it "just works" and feels more natural than Illustrator. And I'm not just used to PS. I actually liked Corel Photoshop more back in the day. And Inkscape has the same natural/intuitive feel to it after you use it a bit. Starts to crack once the complexity grows, but for starter it just works. Blender has a learning curve, but afterwards it also feels "natural" and "well built". Gimp is just bad at... everything: (1) performance feels horrible, like doing everything in slow mo compared to anything else (2) UI feels very inconsistent and has very weird concepts about the relationship between layers and selections and stuff like that (like "wtf is a 'floating selection' thingy doing in my layers panel? ...you get used to it, but boy it's weird), keyboard shortcuts don't work in all contexts (sometimes it feels like they randomly stop working) and (3) there's no easy way to reversibly do things like ad an adjustment/effect layer, turn effect on and of on a layer or some groups from the layers panel etc. I don't care about color space support or even mildly advanced features. And I could put up with a "weird" UI if I could find some logic or intuition for it. But at least stellar performance and stability would be requirements. If you can do things fast enough and things don't crash at 30 huge layers, even non-destructive edits cease to be a "must have" since you can just clone stuff like crazy and always have multiple "versions" of the "same" layer in the same doc. That's how lots of professional graphic designers use PS anyway. I was once handed a 20GB "trashcan psd" from a designer, and I hated every second of touching it, but it miraculously worked, relevant content was extractable, and the job got done. Honestly, its hard to say what's wrong with Gimp, because I can't figure out anything fully right about it. Even the fact that I'm comparing with Adobe Photoshop, a program itself known for horribly beginner-hostile and unintuitive (but in a weird way "learnable" and "natural") UI is a sign of how off things are.

xbkingx 9y ago
> Honestly, its hard to say what's wrong with Gimp, because I can't figure out anything fully right about it. Even the fact that I'm comparing with Adobe Photoshop, a program itself known for horribly beginner-hostile and unintuitive (but in a weird way "learnable" and "natural") UI is a sign of how off things are. Ugh, this is so true. I've never done professional graphics work, but I've used Photoshop on and off for small projects since they added color in version 2.0. I WANT to like Gimp and I give it a shot every year or so, but it never clicks. I mentally prepare myself for a different experience and try to keep an open mind, all while considering that my comfort will change with use, and I always leave disappointed and frustrated. I mean, how do they make simply selecting something difficult? Even layers were unintuitive last time I tried Gimp. I've used a lot of janky software, but Gimp is the most bewildering case. You immediately see really good ideas expressed in the UI and then you interact with it and the whole thing collapses. I thought maybe I was remembering things wrong, so I fired Gimp up for the first time in months (v2.8.22 - I keep it updated with Chocolatey). It took 2 minutes to load (no image) from an NvME drive on a quad core system with a 1080Ti. That's 1.5 minutes longer than any other program I have installed. Probably not optimized at install-time, when the user has time to burn, and instead opts for optimization at first launch, when the user actually needs to use the software. Bad start. Open image. Select part and adjust brightness. Click OK. Click and drag outside selection... and the brightness dialog pops up? But, wha... B/C is a tool. Weird but okay. Apply filter, click and drag, and B/C again? Undo, wait, no, have to cancel. Alright, let's move this selected area over... Why is the entire canvas being moved? Undo. Trying rotate... 3 icons from the move tool on the same line, but it only rotates the selection. Of course. Rotate selection and hit enter... nothing. Oh, the rotate dialog isn't in focus. No, wait. It is. Enter does nothing. Unfocused? Now Enter works. Adding a layer. First click on new layer button not detected. Second works. Select background layer and marquee a small part. Ctrl+C. Select newly made layer. Ctrl+V. Probably can't see it because it's pasted on top of the exact same part of the image. Select move tool, click and drag, no, nothing was pasted. Click and drag again to be sure and the part I rotated earlier now moves across the screen. Hide background and 'floating selection' to confirm nothing pasted. 3.5 minutes and about 15 undos/cancel button clicks to do 'all' that. I repeated the above in Paint.NET, including launching, in 15 seconds and 2 undos from one minor quirk. It's like a luxury car assembled inside out. In theory, you have a luxury car, but in practice you're sitting on cold metal with an engine block obstructing your view of the road. Sure, a bunch of mechanics could take pieces off and attach them properly, but you've been driving the car around town for 22 years and this is the best they've managed so far.
hjek 9y ago
As xbkingx is writing, it would seem like Windows version of Gimp has some serious performance issues. I'm mainly running Gimp in Debian on a laptop with 512 MB RAM, and the performance is pretty OK (as long as I don't go above 150dpi on A3 prints). Inkscape has also been crashing on me a lot in the past and was way too heavy, but since they released the 0.91 with the new Cairo-based renderer, it's been pretty fast and stable. I've personally had a harder time with Blender. I've found it particularly confusing that about half of the functionality seems to just not work when using the game engine. And when importing a video for editing, the length of the video and the audio may not match up.

by nnq 9y ago

xbkingx 9y ago

> Honestly, its hard to say what's wrong with Gimp, because I can't figure out anything fully right about it. Even the fact that I'm comparing with Adobe Photoshop, a program itself known for horribly beginner-hostile and unintuitive (but in a weird way "learnable" and "natural") UI is a sign of how off things are. Ugh, this is so true. I've never done professional graphics work, but I've used Photoshop on and off for small projects since they added color in version 2.0. I WANT to like Gimp and I give it a shot every year or so, but it never clicks. I mentally prepare myself for a different experience and try to keep an open mind, all while considering that my comfort will change with use, and I always leave disappointed and frustrated. I mean, how do they make simply selecting something difficult? Even layers were unintuitive last time I tried Gimp. I've used a lot of janky software, but Gimp is the most bewildering case. You immediately see really good ideas expressed in the UI and then you interact with it and the whole thing collapses. I thought maybe I was remembering things wrong, so I fired Gimp up for the first time in months (v2.8.22 - I keep it updated with Chocolatey). It took 2 minutes to load (no image) from an NvME drive on a quad core system with a 1080Ti. That's 1.5 minutes longer than any other program I have installed. Probably not optimized at install-time, when the user has time to burn, and instead opts for optimization at first launch, when the user actually needs to use the software. Bad start. Open image. Select part and adjust brightness. Click OK. Click and drag outside selection... and the brightness dialog pops up? But, wha... B/C is a tool. Weird but okay. Apply filter, click and drag, and B/C again? Undo, wait, no, have to cancel. Alright, let's move this selected area over... Why is the entire canvas being moved? Undo. Trying rotate... 3 icons from the move tool on the same line, but it only rotates the selection. Of course. Rotate selection and hit enter... nothing. Oh, the rotate dialog isn't in focus. No, wait. It is. Enter does nothing. Unfocused? Now Enter works. Adding a layer. First click on new layer button not detected. Second works. Select background layer and marquee a small part. Ctrl+C. Select newly made layer. Ctrl+V. Probably can't see it because it's pasted on top of the exact same part of the image. Select move tool, click and drag, no, nothing was pasted. Click and drag again to be sure and the part I rotated earlier now moves across the screen. Hide background and 'floating selection' to confirm nothing pasted. 3.5 minutes and about 15 undos/cancel button clicks to do 'all' that. I repeated the above in Paint.NET, including launching, in 15 seconds and 2 undos from one minor quirk. It's like a luxury car assembled inside out. In theory, you have a luxury car, but in practice you're sitting on cold metal with an engine block obstructing your view of the road. Sure, a bunch of mechanics could take pieces off and attach them properly, but you've been driving the car around town for 22 years and this is the best they've managed so far.

hjek 9y ago

As xbkingx is writing, it would seem like Windows version of Gimp has some serious performance issues. I'm mainly running Gimp in Debian on a laptop with 512 MB RAM, and the performance is pretty OK (as long as I don't go above 150dpi on A3 prints). Inkscape has also been crashing on me a lot in the past and was way too heavy, but since they released the 0.91 with the new Cairo-based renderer, it's been pretty fast and stable. I've personally had a harder time with Blender. I've found it particularly confusing that about half of the functionality seems to just not work when using the game engine. And when importing a video for editing, the length of the video and the audio may not match up.