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GIMP was the first advanced image editor I have used. I grew quite fond of it and its tools. Nowadays I have moved away from it because it does not play well wi

by yoz-y 9y ago

GIMP was the first advanced image editor I have used. I grew quite fond of it and its tools. Nowadays I have moved away from it because it does not play well with macOS, but still return to it when I am on a Linux box. For me, GIMP has always excelled in making simple actions simple. Even today I am quite surprised that other software has not taken some of the ideas for interface that gimp has. Mainly: - The selection tool is just miles ahead any of the software I have used. It makes the crop tool obsolete and every time I have to switch modes just to resize my previous rectangular selection I long for it. - Resizing and clipping layers is dead simple. Other programs I have used have no "clip to selection" on layers and I have never understood why. - Color to transparency is a single button - Masks are actually simple to use as one can draw on them using all tools, not just some arbitrary subset It has its dose of quirks and the interface is in dire need of a rework, however I must say that despite what many people say I find GIMP quite intuitive to use. I suppose that it is a force of habit. Edit: formatting

athorax 9y ago
Out of curiosity, what issues do you see on macOS? I use it fairly rarely for minor editing, but haven't hit any real issues with it
- yoz-y 9y ago
  My main issue is actually very non-technical. After I have switched to macOS I've started to put more and more importance to the consistency of the interface. GIMP is very different as it is not rendered using native Cocoa widgets. Things like non-native open/save dialog, clipboard support and drag and drop. It also felt quite slow, compared to when I used it on Linux.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  Dialog windows will sometimes appear behind the app window or other windows, and won't come to the foreground or accept input focus until another app is focused first. This also affects other OSes on which Gimp runs.
skykooler 9y ago
Color to alpha is something that I am consistently surprised that Photoshop lacks, every time I try to use it for something.
vbezhenar 9y ago
> - Color to transparency is a single button This is huge. I've used Pixelmator because I liked its UI, but even simplest tasks like this one were unnecessary hard. I kept Gimp just for this.
cptskippy 9y ago
I've always been frustrated by the GIMP interface. I started out using Corel PhotoPaint in the 1990s and used it through version 5 which was about the time it lost parity with Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop and GIMP's interfaces have always felt clunky and non-intuitive to me. I use Photoshop occasionally at work and GIMP at home and really don't enjoy or look forward to using either. I actually try to stay in Inkscape as much as possible with everything I do these days. That being said, GIMP is capable and it's fantastic for the price. I just don't like it.
emidln 9y ago
I'm another native GIMP user. GIMP was all I had (I couldn't afford Photoshop, not that it worked in Wine around 2000) and it let me do some interesting work in high school art and photography classes. GIMP's script-fu (Guile Scheme) was some of the first code I really understood and modified. I still use GIMP to this day, largely because I've never ran into limitations that a little scheme or python didn't solve. I've never had a reason to use something else. I still install GIMP as one of the first apps on Windows or Mac OS machines I need to use for any length of time.
aorth 9y ago
I'm not a heavy GIMP user, but I've found that the macOS builds from Partha's Place work better than those from GIMP's website. They are compiled from the development source every few months. https://www.partha.com/ https://www.partha.com/
app4soft 9y ago
> - The selection tool is just miles ahead any of the software I have used. It makes the crop tool obsolete and every time I have to switch modes just to resize my previous rectangular selection I long for it. Did you ever try mtPaint[0]? It has such selection feature too > - Resizing and clipping layers is dead simple. Other programs I have used have no "clip to selection" on layers and I have never understood why. In mtPaint just select rectangle and click "Delete" button ;-) [0] https://github.com/matyler/mtPaint https://github.com/matyler/mtPaint [1] http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/handbook/en_GB/chap_04.html http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/handbook/en_GB/chap_04.html
- yoz-y 9y ago
  I haven't used that but according to the description in documentation it is not exactly the same. In gimp the selection has smart corners one can drag around, feathering and rounded corners. If I want to do something similar in Affinity Photo for example, I have to make the selection, go to quick mask mode, and then use the move tool. In Pixelmator it had similar issues. > In mtPaint just select rectangle and click "Delete" button ;-) That looks a bit unintuitive to me. I would expect that this would either fill the selection with white (or the set document background color, or with transparency).
sigsergv 9y ago
I've been using dev-builds from https://www.partha.com/ https://www.partha.com/ awhile and branch 2.9 is amazingly fast on macos. It has some minor issues but everything else is amazing.

by yoz-y 9y ago

athorax 9y ago

Out of curiosity, what issues do you see on macOS? I use it fairly rarely for minor editing, but haven't hit any real issues with it

yoz-y 9y ago
My main issue is actually very non-technical. After I have switched to macOS I've started to put more and more importance to the consistency of the interface. GIMP is very different as it is not rendered using native Cocoa widgets. Things like non-native open/save dialog, clipboard support and drag and drop. It also felt quite slow, compared to when I used it on Linux.
nitrogen 9y ago
Dialog windows will sometimes appear behind the app window or other windows, and won't come to the foreground or accept input focus until another app is focused first. This also affects other OSes on which Gimp runs.

skykooler 9y ago

Color to alpha is something that I am consistently surprised that Photoshop lacks, every time I try to use it for something.

vbezhenar 9y ago

> - Color to transparency is a single button This is huge. I've used Pixelmator because I liked its UI, but even simplest tasks like this one were unnecessary hard. I kept Gimp just for this.

cptskippy 9y ago

I've always been frustrated by the GIMP interface. I started out using Corel PhotoPaint in the 1990s and used it through version 5 which was about the time it lost parity with Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop and GIMP's interfaces have always felt clunky and non-intuitive to me. I use Photoshop occasionally at work and GIMP at home and really don't enjoy or look forward to using either. I actually try to stay in Inkscape as much as possible with everything I do these days. That being said, GIMP is capable and it's fantastic for the price. I just don't like it.

emidln 9y ago

I'm another native GIMP user. GIMP was all I had (I couldn't afford Photoshop, not that it worked in Wine around 2000) and it let me do some interesting work in high school art and photography classes. GIMP's script-fu (Guile Scheme) was some of the first code I really understood and modified. I still use GIMP to this day, largely because I've never ran into limitations that a little scheme or python didn't solve. I've never had a reason to use something else. I still install GIMP as one of the first apps on Windows or Mac OS machines I need to use for any length of time.

aorth 9y ago

I'm not a heavy GIMP user, but I've found that the macOS builds from Partha's Place work better than those from GIMP's website. They are compiled from the development source every few months. https://www.partha.com/ https://www.partha.com/

app4soft 9y ago

> - The selection tool is just miles ahead any of the software I have used. It makes the crop tool obsolete and every time I have to switch modes just to resize my previous rectangular selection I long for it. Did you ever try mtPaint[0]? It has such selection feature too > - Resizing and clipping layers is dead simple. Other programs I have used have no "clip to selection" on layers and I have never understood why. In mtPaint just select rectangle and click "Delete" button ;-) [0] https://github.com/matyler/mtPaint https://github.com/matyler/mtPaint [1] http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/handbook/en_GB/chap_04.html http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/handbook/en_GB/chap_04.html

yoz-y 9y ago
I haven't used that but according to the description in documentation it is not exactly the same. In gimp the selection has smart corners one can drag around, feathering and rounded corners. If I want to do something similar in Affinity Photo for example, I have to make the selection, go to quick mask mode, and then use the move tool. In Pixelmator it had similar issues. > In mtPaint just select rectangle and click "Delete" button ;-) That looks a bit unintuitive to me. I would expect that this would either fill the selection with white (or the set document background color, or with transparency).

sigsergv 9y ago

I've been using dev-builds from https://www.partha.com/ https://www.partha.com/ awhile and branch 2.9 is amazingly fast on macos. It has some minor issues but everything else is amazing.