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GIMP receives a $100K donation

631 points by domedefelice 8y ago

darkwinx 8y ago
I hope that someday GIMP will have major change just like Krita & Blender. The UI of GIMP have received many complains.
- rasengan 8y ago
  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.
  - nothis 8y ago
    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 $100k into hiring a professional UI designer and intensive user testing.
    - lbriner 8y ago
      Agreed but it's harder than that. You could get a professional UI designer but their results are not objectively good or bad, they are subjective. The benefit of a larger UI-focussed organisation, e.g. Adobe or Apple, is that you have a large enough team of UI professionals so that work is peer-reviewed and controversial ideas have to be justified. I assume that the Gimp team would be too small to have that kind of group-based UI sign-off?
      - nothis 8y ago
        I'd say a professional UI designer is capable of producing objectively good results. He'd first sit experienced photographers and graphic designers in front of GIMP and identify their biggest gripes with the UI and then would develop a hierarchy of measures to fix them. And test the results. Honestly, they'd probably have to spin it off into a separate, UI-focused project that starts with minimal features and gradually adds more every time a good UI solution is found. In the order of what real-world users identify as the most needed features. In other words, I believe what GIMP needs is a partnership with an idealistic professional workplace willing to use it as an experiment and communicate their day to day issues.
    - ricardonunez 8y ago
      I agree with you until the hiring. The work that needs to be done is hard and hiring just one designer will not fix it. Maybe hiring one person to manage that part of the project. They need to pay an agency to do the work. The UX/UI needs major work and a lot of testing. That donation is good but the project will probably need more funding.
      - nothis 8y ago
        I definitely agree about the team size/cost. I have to say, it baffles me how much time programmers are willing to put into open source works but apparently it's impossible to find UI designers who are willing to do the same. I don't think it's a lack of enthusiasm, I think it's probably more of a social/clique thing and open source projects would benefit greatly from opening themselves up to contributers outside the realms of programming, signaling respect for that kind of work.
        mschaef 8y ago
        > I have to say, it baffles me how much time programmers are willing to put into open source works but apparently it's impossible to find UI designers who are willing to do the same. So you're surprised it's hard to find UI designers willing to work for free? I'd argue the surprising part is that there are programmers that ARE willing to work for free or reduced rates on open source. Both of these disciplines take time and effort to learn and then perform. The people that do them not only pay these costs, but have their own obligations to themselves and their loved ones they might need to help support. It doesn't surprise me at all that the vast majority of people with these skills choose (or are forced by circumstance) to do something else.
    - interfixus 8y ago
      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.
      - ufmace 8y ago
        I always wonder if all of these "bad UI" complaints translate to "it isn't exactly like Photoshop". I only use the basics in Gimp myself, and I know it has a few quirks that I find easy to work around. I wonder if Photoshop has a pile of quirks that its users are used to find find weird when they aren't there and a different sent of quirks are.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    This is the thing that the open source projects whose UIs I've been disappointed by always seem to tout: customization. I think it's great you can customize stuff, but I posit that the vast majority of people just want something that's ready to roll out of the gate. Something that's endlessly customizable isn't necessarily a "pro" to me; if people need to customize something a bunch to make it usable for them, you've built a framework instead of an application.
  - omegabravo 8y ago
    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.
    - kens 8y ago
      I agree with omegabravo. I expected Single Window Mode to be pointless but tried it recently, and it's so much better. No more trying to find the dialog that's under the other dialogs; everything is just there. If you're a GIMP user, give it a try.
    - MaDeuce 8y ago
      Nor did I. I've been using gimp a few times a year for 15+ years -- i.e., never enough to build much muscle memory. Your suggestions will make a huge difference for me.
- nothis 8y ago
  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).
  - rasengan 8y ago
    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.
    - RankingMember 8y ago
      GIMP still lacks non-destructive editing, does it not? That alone is a huge deficiency in comparison to Photoshop.
      - acomjean 8y ago
        Photoshop had non-destructive editing now? Its been a while ,but I thought that was lightroom that had the non-destructive editing features. Photoshop for me was about layers and masks
        tokyodude 8y ago
        Photoshop had non-destructive editing for 15-20 years. I think the issues are getting confused. Yes, Lightroom saves a separate file from your photos of the changes so in that sense it's non destructive, the original files are not changed. Photoshop is non-destructive in that you can load an image into a layer and apply tons of layers above that layer each of which edits the layers below it in some way. The pixels in the image layer are never changed so it's also "non-destructive". But saving the file does overwrite the old photoshop file with your changes, unlike lightroom.
- ape4 8y ago
  It has improved in recent years - looks more like Photoshop now.
- ginko 8y ago
  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".
  - mrspeaker 8y ago
    Blender has slowly improved over years - things got more consistent and (given the complexity of the domain) it made the standard operations more obvious. I'm excited to see the 2.8 changes, but I certainly don't mind it as it is. GIMP, however... makes me (every so slightly) annoyed every time I use it. I have to google so many task that should just be intuitive. It does the job, and I still use it as my primary editor - but it's not something I look forward to opening... but it could be! I'm hoping it'll get there eventually!
    - Meai 8y ago
      2.8 is a massive improvement imo, tooltips and nicer icons for everything.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    >It essentially felt like Emacs for 3D editing. Which is exactly the complaint :D Blender has a very efficient UI that is great for power users, but it has a much bigger learning curve than the competition with their point&click UIs. Add to that that most people are trained on Maya/3ds Max/Cinema 4d, learning Blender is a big investment with uncertain payoff. Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      > Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays. Wow, this is such a bold statement; do you have any evidence to support this? In my experience a very great majority of engineers use vim or emacs. In US, I've never been in a culture where emacs or vim is used by a minority. In my current work, which is a startup in Boston, everyone except 2 developers use emacs. I googled for evidence to support me, but I couldn't find any solid evidence neither supporting nor disputing me.
- thrillgore 8y ago
  Blender and Krita benefit from having leadership that drives the roadmap for features off real-world use cases. KDE and the Blender Foundation have generally steered these projects right, and the usability shows when compared to GIMP, where said leadership isn't as pronounced.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  Well, it's basically unusable if you have a hidpi monitor--which is more and more people every day. If you don't, it's barely usable, with very bad UX defaults.
pmiri 8y ago
Buried lede here is this Handshake.org thing. Anybody have any idea about what this is?
- xur17 8y ago
  There was a discussion about it on HN about a month ago [0] Tldr; (from handshake.org) Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol compatible with DNS where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922
- cheez 8y ago
  Most importantly, where do they get $400K
  - grsmto 8y ago
    They did an ICO. Just like every companies with written "decentralized" in the baseline.
    - cheez 8y ago
      Well, I guess in the universe of scams, this isn't the worst outcome.
      - peterwwillis 8y ago
        > The Handshake project has received 10.2MM USD from Project Sponsors. The net proceeds are pledged to be distributed to Free and Open Source Software communities (projects, non-profits, hackerspaces). Holy jumping jesus, this is the best scam I have ever SEEN! They've scammed a bunch of VCs into investing in their ICO, and they're now going to give the money to FOSS projects with no obligation! This project of course is doomed, but this is a great way to infuse cash into FOSS without having to actually ask for donations.
leni536 8y ago
I love how they fixed most (if not all) linear colorspace related issues in 2.10.
Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
> ... 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 have been best utilised as salary/salaries, allowing contributors to focus a more significant portion of their time on GIMP, and be compensated accordingly.
- ethelward 8y ago
  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?
  - Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
    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 afford to earn a little less to do something they love.
    - wiz21c 8y ago
      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 :-))
  - nothis 8y ago
    I don't know where you work but there's plenty of places in Europe where you can hire a decent engineer for $100k a year.
emilfihlman 8y ago
>We thank both Handshake.org and GNOME Foundation for the generous donation and 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, as well as sponsor the next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting. I don't like this. The money should be used for paying a developer or a couple to develop full time a central feature, like the UI, not to buy new hardware or organize hackfests.
- ethelward 8y ago
  > I don't like this. Well, it's a good thing that you are not part of the project then.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  How long do you think $100k lasts with two full-time devs exactly?
  - nothis 8y ago
    3 months of a professional UI designer could easily quadruple the usefulness of GIMP for me. The UI, in its current state (I always use this disclaimer and it never changed in like 10 years), is a horrible mess and makes GIMP unusable for most professional work. There is no trend of it getting better. They need to hire someone from the outside, accepting that kick in the butt.
    - _carl_jung 8y ago
      Overhauling the GIMP UI would take way longer than three months of a single UI designer. As an operation, we are talking UI/UX design, implementation, testing, and not to mention having to refactor existing code such that it can actually handle such a radical UI change. I'd put the (very fuzzy) estimate at something like 2 years of consistent (full time) effort from a team of, say, 5 people. That puts the cost of such a change closer to a million dollars.
      - deleted 8y ago
rqs 8y ago
Create news, hope GIMP can use that money to work out a better and intuitive design. For example, currently, many Filters don't have previews (Or the preview window is too small), which make apply them become a slow try and error game. Also, the Text in the picture can be hard to select, as sometime you mistakenly select the underlying layer instead of the text. Also again, Filters cannot be directly applied to editable text. Sure, GIMP will convert the rasterized text back to editable text, but doing so will discard all the applied Filters.
- kaffeemitsahne 8y ago
  You can always submit bugs/annoyances/requests directly to the GIMP developers: https://www.gimp.org/bugs/ https://www.gimp.org/bugs/
  - sachdevap 8y ago
    Seconded. If you are a user, consider actively filing bugs and not expect them to be fixed by the developers without following this process.
  - rqs 8y ago
    Oh, thanks for the heads up. I thought it's for bugs only.
  - 8_hours_ago 8y ago
    It looks like the GIMP developers would rather that new feature requests be made on their mailing list before making a new bug: "An enhancement request should never be filed without prior discussion on the gimp-developer mailing list[0]. This is to make sure that the enhancement requests that are filed are well-specified and aligned with the overall goals the developers have for GIMP." But please don't let that stop you! The more feedback that the developers get, the better GIMP will be for everyone. [0]: https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 8y ago
ayr-ton 8y ago
This is nice. Hope to see new functionality and better usability. :-)
- rootlocus 8y ago
  Keep hoping, because the GIMP team "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, as well as sponsor the next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting."
  - yunyu 8y ago
    Introducing usability and functionality improvements isn't mutually exclusive from doing those. At the very least, I'd expect some improvements to come out of the hackfest.
    - prokoudine 8y ago
      The last time (winter 2017) we did a hackfest outside of Libre Graphics Meeting, we introduced a bunch of improvements to layers' blending and compositing, improved color management, improved the PSD loader/exporter, improved menu structure, introduced painting on transparent layers in modes other than Normal (which is _huge_ for painters), and introduced Flatpak builds.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
"only" $100K - aren't we living in a world now where companies started in a garage make that amount of money ten times a second? I haven't heard anything from e.g. Google or Facebook's open source funding endeavours. IMO every successful company should do their part and set aside a sizeable percentage of their revenue to paying and supporting open source projects and developers. It's wrong that e.g. the developer of cURL is (was?) struggling to make ends meet, when he (and the people behind gimp, etc) develops software used billions of times a day. That should make him hundreds of thousands a year.
- gempir 8y ago
  Well in the end the world is not a fair place. Linux Torvalds isn't exactly loaded either, although he isn't poor. But In the end people are gonna abuse your products to make as much money as possible and there is no guarantee, you will ever see a penny of it if you sell it as Free Software.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    Why do you use the word "abuse" ?
  - Reedx 8y ago
    I always think of Linus in these cases too. Supposedly he's worth $150m, but even if that's accurate it would still mean he's only captured a very small % of the value he created.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      This is surprising to me. Someone as pragmatic as him, still working and taking/giving abuse at that "milemarker" of wealth? Huh.
- proginthebox 8y ago
  Just because someone can use a software does not mean they can/will pay for it. In other words, you'll can only earn money if your customers are rich.
nomadtwin 8y ago
There's Affinity Photo / Designer that is pretty similar to Photoshop (UI & functionality) and cost around $50. No subscription, no bullshit. That's (kinda) affordable, right?
- SSLy 8y ago
  Unlike GIMP it doesn't work on GNU/Linux.
- rootlocus 8y ago
  Affinity Photo / Designer are very very far from Photoshop. Affinity Photo is a replacement for Lightroom (raw photo editors), and Affinity Designer is a replacement for Adobe Illustrator (vector graphics). Although you can do vectors and photo editing in Photoshop, the main purpose of PS is raster painting, which neither Affinity Photo nor Designer are remotely good at. As such, neither of them could replace GIMP or Photoshop.
  - ino 8y ago
    Affinity Designer fits somewhere between PS and AI. I find it better than both for doing web design and game graphics.
  - yoz-y 8y ago
    Affinity Photo is very different from Lightroom and it is very good for general purpose raster editing including illustration. I've used GIMP a lot and finally switched to Affinity Photo+Designer. It is, I must admit, much better for almost everything, the only thing GIMP still handles the best is selection and cropping. Affinity Photo even supports Photoshop plugins (although I have not tried that).
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    Affinity photo is more lightroom + photoshop mix Affinity designer is illustrator first + photoshop pixel support I prefer using AffinityDesigner and AffinityPhoto, fast development, loads quicker, the export tool is way better than adobe products, just all around easier to use.
mikebelanger 8y ago
My hope: whichever direction Gimp development goes, they should try doing something similar to Blender - where they bring a bunch of developers and artists into a space. While they're in that space (for a limited amount of time) work on some big project involving Gimp. Develop Gimp to suite that project's needs.
- buovjaga 8y ago
  So far ZeMarmot is such a project in a smaller scale (1 dev + 1 artist), but extended amount of time: https://film.zemarmot.net/ https://film.zemarmot.net/
- 120photo 8y ago
  I believe this is a key reason Blender is as good as it is today; they developed a tool that addressed the needs of artist that use their software (scratching a need).
- MrEfficiency 8y ago
  Can we streamline the controls? Thats what GIMP needs. After 9 years of using GIMP I switched to photoshop because I was doing many photos and couldnt hand the inconsistency of what each button does.
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    If you'll provide more detail as to which inconsistencies you've found, I'll take the time to test and write up an actionable bug report.
    - emmelaich 8y ago
      That would actually be a valuable service. Many users don't know where or how or what to put in a bug report. If some had a site that you could just write free-form prose others more experienced could convert that to actionable bug reports.
      - 8y ago
EvangelicalPig 8y ago
Well I'm dubious about all these cryptocurrency/ICO projects (and I've been using BTC since 2011), funding open source is a good thing.
baby 8y ago
Free-to-play is huge in gaming, but in tooling it’s not. Why? A free Photoshop integrating a brush marketplace would make a shit ton of money. A free Premiere with a marketplace for effects?
- umanwizard 8y ago
  I think when you're in a serious work mood, not having fun playing a game, that sort of thing would be incredibly infuriating. Also, Photoshop is usually paid for by people's employees anyway, so the user doesn't really care about the price.
  - baby 8y ago
    > that sort of thing would be incredibly infuriating Why? You already have to pay for these things, except you need to go look for them everywhere and find out how to import them and restore them from somewhere if you change machine. A marketplace for tooling is uber-valuable, and it's also an insane opportunity for creators who want to sell on these marketplaces. The only thing I'm talking about is: 1. make the software free 2. incorporate a marketplace to find free or paid add-ons, brushes, effects, etc... 3. take a cut
    - freeone3000 8y ago
      Okay, but why (1)? Why not just (2) and (3)?
- soared 8y ago
  Your company will buy tools, it won't buy games. You'll personally buy games, most won't buy tools.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  I like this idea for GIMP. I'd definitely feel like I was getting my money's worth if I paid only small amounts per feature, instead of (as a casual user) paying hundreds on a license for everything a la Photoshop.
yolodeveloper 8y ago
I hope they spend it on a shrink and figure a way to stop being total assholes.
ptero 8y ago
This is great, I hope Gimp puts it to good use. I would love for Gimp to focus more on artistic uses instead of only on software types (which is probably a vain hope). We would greatly benefit from a good artistic/photo image editing tool that does not belong to the Adobe's subscription license racket. Unfortunately, Gimp is not nearly in the same class as Photoshop, so most artists grumble about Adobe but still pay subscription because its UI is SO much better. Photoshop is the main reason I still run Windows at home; I would gladly donate this money to Gimp instead if it provides the same functionality: good slider and visual coordination to find the right levels and color balances, good color support (no, 8-bit color is not enough), decent printing (at least to 17"x40") and raw camera images.
- PascLeRasc 8y ago
  Krita's pretty good for an digital-pencil-based art tool and Darktable is a nice Lightroom replacement, both just need a bit of UI tuning.
  - ghostly_s 8y ago
    Darktable is not even in the same category as Lightroom. I spent months trying to figure out how to make it work for me before realizing it has zero library management functionality, which the devs seem to have missed is Lightroom's main value proposition. It is purely a non-destructive editor, and if you look up discussions on this topic on the mail lists you'll see WONTFIX responses in the vein of "just use your file manager and a tangle of custom shell scripts!"
    - girvo 8y ago
      I would absolutely love to see a FOSS alternative to Photo Mechanic. It’s a brilliant bit of software, stores info in the file itself in a neat way that syncs well across NextCloud, giving me a neat “cloud” workflow (sync folder raw after import, process, then remove sync once it’s done). It plus Darktable (or in my case, Affinity Photo) absolute rules
    - komali2 8y ago
alexandernst 8y ago
(unpopular opinion) Wht a waste of money.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  I think the main reason for downvotes on this post are because you give no support whatsoever for your statement. Your comment is so useless that I am actually considering flagging as being just a troll, something I do maybe once a year.
TekMol 8y ago
Please give us non-destructive adjustment layers! Please! Been waiting for this for years. On every new Gimp release I look through the new features and ... no. No adjustment layers. I'm confused how this is not the #1 priority. It has been what I am missing for years and years. And every time I talk to someone about Gimp vs Photoshop, they ask me 'Do you still have to cope with destructive adjustment curves and filters etc? OMG, that is archaic!'.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  The problem is also that there are new applications that started they development later than GIMP and shipped with Adjustment Layers and colorspace support in their first or second revisions. As far as I understand the core needs to be completely updated to GEGL for this to work. Let's hope this money will help them get to the goal.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    GEGL was mostly done in 2.10.
    - Doxin 8y ago
      Porting all the filters and whatnot is still going on however.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  I've used GIMP for years but I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps it's not the #1 priority because you're one of a small percentage of people who need it? While I'm not someone who needs image editing professionally or who makes amazing things with it, I did take my time to learn GIMP properly for my use-cases, and the things I find lacking do not include "non-destructive adjustment layers".
  - jasonjayr 8y ago
    It's one of those features that once you notice in Photoshop, you lament the lack in GIMP. The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just additional layers, w/o manipulating the image in the layer under them. It lets you very quickly toggle between different settings, revise settings, and even very easily only filter parts of an image. (ie, you can have a unfiltered layer above a stack of filters, and the original image)
swayvil 8y ago
As an artist who uses Gimp a lot, this pleases me very much.
awiesenhofer 8y ago
So does this mean we finally get nondestructive editing to once and forall end the photoshop comparisons?
- prokoudine 8y ago
  In v3.2, just as planned.
ISL 8y ago
If everyone complaining about GIMP in this thread (and most clearly spend a lot of time using it, myself included) donated $20 or an hour of their time to GIMP, that'd be another $2k or ~100+ hours of time donated (as of this moment) to help make it better. I have to run to work, so I just donated $20. https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/
- curuinor 8y ago
  $20/hr for knows-wtf-they're-doing programmer time?
  - ISL 8y ago
    $20/hr for doesn't-know-GIMP's-architecture-but-submits-a-possibly-useful-patch-anyway time. If $20 sounds too low, feel free to pitch in more. I'm a physics postdoc, not a software dev.
    - dboreham 8y ago
      You're about an order of magnitude off.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - ISL 8y ago
        Please communicate that to the National Science Foundation (and by extension, the electorate). We're hemorrhaging some of our best scientists for that reason. I may soon join them.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8y ago
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      - RussianCow 8y ago
herbst 8y ago
Everybody is complaining about the UI, however it is more or less the reason why i prefer Gimp to anything else. It is still a gui focused on getting things done instead of guiding you to do it. However i havent worked with Photoshop for 10+ years, so i dont actually have a direct comparison. Having worked with other Adobe products (mostly Illustrator) i am glad however.
test6554 8y ago
I used gimp the other day to resize an image with no training or experience. Thanks GIMP Team!
zmix 8y ago
Are "Meetings" and "Hackfests" productive enough to justify spending all received money on them? I have never been to such occasions, that's why I ask.
- prokoudine 8y ago
  They are. See my comment below for an example from GIMP's latest hackfest.
deftturtle 8y ago
GIMP's UI is too painful to make me use it. Please make the UI logical and respect system conventions. Standard keyboard shortcuts on my Mac do not work with GIMP. This is horrible for average users that want their software to just work.

631 points by domedefelice 8y ago

darkwinx 8y ago

I hope that someday GIMP will have major change just like Krita & Blender. The UI of GIMP have received many complains.

rasengan 8y ago
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.
- nothis 8y ago
  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 $100k into hiring a professional UI designer and intensive user testing.
  - lbriner 8y ago
    Agreed but it's harder than that. You could get a professional UI designer but their results are not objectively good or bad, they are subjective. The benefit of a larger UI-focussed organisation, e.g. Adobe or Apple, is that you have a large enough team of UI professionals so that work is peer-reviewed and controversial ideas have to be justified. I assume that the Gimp team would be too small to have that kind of group-based UI sign-off?
    - nothis 8y ago
      I'd say a professional UI designer is capable of producing objectively good results. He'd first sit experienced photographers and graphic designers in front of GIMP and identify their biggest gripes with the UI and then would develop a hierarchy of measures to fix them. And test the results. Honestly, they'd probably have to spin it off into a separate, UI-focused project that starts with minimal features and gradually adds more every time a good UI solution is found. In the order of what real-world users identify as the most needed features. In other words, I believe what GIMP needs is a partnership with an idealistic professional workplace willing to use it as an experiment and communicate their day to day issues.
  - ricardonunez 8y ago
    I agree with you until the hiring. The work that needs to be done is hard and hiring just one designer will not fix it. Maybe hiring one person to manage that part of the project. They need to pay an agency to do the work. The UX/UI needs major work and a lot of testing. That donation is good but the project will probably need more funding.
    - nothis 8y ago
      I definitely agree about the team size/cost. I have to say, it baffles me how much time programmers are willing to put into open source works but apparently it's impossible to find UI designers who are willing to do the same. I don't think it's a lack of enthusiasm, I think it's probably more of a social/clique thing and open source projects would benefit greatly from opening themselves up to contributers outside the realms of programming, signaling respect for that kind of work.
      - mschaef 8y ago
        > I have to say, it baffles me how much time programmers are willing to put into open source works but apparently it's impossible to find UI designers who are willing to do the same. So you're surprised it's hard to find UI designers willing to work for free? I'd argue the surprising part is that there are programmers that ARE willing to work for free or reduced rates on open source. Both of these disciplines take time and effort to learn and then perform. The people that do them not only pay these costs, but have their own obligations to themselves and their loved ones they might need to help support. It doesn't surprise me at all that the vast majority of people with these skills choose (or are forced by circumstance) to do something else.
  - interfixus 8y ago
    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.
    - ufmace 8y ago
      I always wonder if all of these "bad UI" complaints translate to "it isn't exactly like Photoshop". I only use the basics in Gimp myself, and I know it has a few quirks that I find easy to work around. I wonder if Photoshop has a pile of quirks that its users are used to find find weird when they aren't there and a different sent of quirks are.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  This is the thing that the open source projects whose UIs I've been disappointed by always seem to tout: customization. I think it's great you can customize stuff, but I posit that the vast majority of people just want something that's ready to roll out of the gate. Something that's endlessly customizable isn't necessarily a "pro" to me; if people need to customize something a bunch to make it usable for them, you've built a framework instead of an application.
- omegabravo 8y ago
  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.
  - kens 8y ago
    I agree with omegabravo. I expected Single Window Mode to be pointless but tried it recently, and it's so much better. No more trying to find the dialog that's under the other dialogs; everything is just there. If you're a GIMP user, give it a try.
  - MaDeuce 8y ago
    Nor did I. I've been using gimp a few times a year for 15+ years -- i.e., never enough to build much muscle memory. Your suggestions will make a huge difference for me.
nothis 8y ago
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).
- rasengan 8y ago
  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.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    GIMP still lacks non-destructive editing, does it not? That alone is a huge deficiency in comparison to Photoshop.
    - acomjean 8y ago
      Photoshop had non-destructive editing now? Its been a while ,but I thought that was lightroom that had the non-destructive editing features. Photoshop for me was about layers and masks
      - tokyodude 8y ago
        Photoshop had non-destructive editing for 15-20 years. I think the issues are getting confused. Yes, Lightroom saves a separate file from your photos of the changes so in that sense it's non destructive, the original files are not changed. Photoshop is non-destructive in that you can load an image into a layer and apply tons of layers above that layer each of which edits the layers below it in some way. The pixels in the image layer are never changed so it's also "non-destructive". But saving the file does overwrite the old photoshop file with your changes, unlike lightroom.
ape4 8y ago
It has improved in recent years - looks more like Photoshop now.
ginko 8y ago
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".
- mrspeaker 8y ago
  Blender has slowly improved over years - things got more consistent and (given the complexity of the domain) it made the standard operations more obvious. I'm excited to see the 2.8 changes, but I certainly don't mind it as it is. GIMP, however... makes me (every so slightly) annoyed every time I use it. I have to google so many task that should just be intuitive. It does the job, and I still use it as my primary editor - but it's not something I look forward to opening... but it could be! I'm hoping it'll get there eventually!
  - Meai 8y ago
    2.8 is a massive improvement imo, tooltips and nicer icons for everything.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  >It essentially felt like Emacs for 3D editing. Which is exactly the complaint :D Blender has a very efficient UI that is great for power users, but it has a much bigger learning curve than the competition with their point&click UIs. Add to that that most people are trained on Maya/3ds Max/Cinema 4d, learning Blender is a big investment with uncertain payoff. Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    > Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays. Wow, this is such a bold statement; do you have any evidence to support this? In my experience a very great majority of engineers use vim or emacs. In US, I've never been in a culture where emacs or vim is used by a minority. In my current work, which is a startup in Boston, everyone except 2 developers use emacs. I googled for evidence to support me, but I couldn't find any solid evidence neither supporting nor disputing me.
thrillgore 8y ago
Blender and Krita benefit from having leadership that drives the roadmap for features off real-world use cases. KDE and the Blender Foundation have generally steered these projects right, and the usability shows when compared to GIMP, where said leadership isn't as pronounced.
nkkollaw 8y ago
Well, it's basically unusable if you have a hidpi monitor--which is more and more people every day. If you don't, it's barely usable, with very bad UX defaults.

pmiri 8y ago

Buried lede here is this Handshake.org thing. Anybody have any idea about what this is?

xur17 8y ago
There was a discussion about it on HN about a month ago [0] Tldr; (from handshake.org) Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol compatible with DNS where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922
cheez 8y ago
Most importantly, where do they get $400K
- grsmto 8y ago
  They did an ICO. Just like every companies with written "decentralized" in the baseline.
  - cheez 8y ago
    Well, I guess in the universe of scams, this isn't the worst outcome.
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      > The Handshake project has received 10.2MM USD from Project Sponsors. The net proceeds are pledged to be distributed to Free and Open Source Software communities (projects, non-profits, hackerspaces). Holy jumping jesus, this is the best scam I have ever SEEN! They've scammed a bunch of VCs into investing in their ICO, and they're now going to give the money to FOSS projects with no obligation! This project of course is doomed, but this is a great way to infuse cash into FOSS without having to actually ask for donations.

leni536 8y ago

I love how they fixed most (if not all) linear colorspace related issues in 2.10.

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago

> ... 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 have been best utilised as salary/salaries, allowing contributors to focus a more significant portion of their time on GIMP, and be compensated accordingly.

ethelward 8y ago
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?
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
  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 afford to earn a little less to do something they love.
  - wiz21c 8y ago
    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 :-))
- nothis 8y ago
  I don't know where you work but there's plenty of places in Europe where you can hire a decent engineer for $100k a year.

emilfihlman 8y ago

>We thank both Handshake.org and GNOME Foundation for the generous donation and 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, as well as sponsor the next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting. I don't like this. The money should be used for paying a developer or a couple to develop full time a central feature, like the UI, not to buy new hardware or organize hackfests.

ethelward 8y ago
> I don't like this. Well, it's a good thing that you are not part of the project then.
scrollaway 8y ago
How long do you think $100k lasts with two full-time devs exactly?
- nothis 8y ago
  3 months of a professional UI designer could easily quadruple the usefulness of GIMP for me. The UI, in its current state (I always use this disclaimer and it never changed in like 10 years), is a horrible mess and makes GIMP unusable for most professional work. There is no trend of it getting better. They need to hire someone from the outside, accepting that kick in the butt.
  - _carl_jung 8y ago
    Overhauling the GIMP UI would take way longer than three months of a single UI designer. As an operation, we are talking UI/UX design, implementation, testing, and not to mention having to refactor existing code such that it can actually handle such a radical UI change. I'd put the (very fuzzy) estimate at something like 2 years of consistent (full time) effort from a team of, say, 5 people. That puts the cost of such a change closer to a million dollars.
    - deleted 8y ago

rqs 8y ago

Create news, hope GIMP can use that money to work out a better and intuitive design. For example, currently, many Filters don't have previews (Or the preview window is too small), which make apply them become a slow try and error game. Also, the Text in the picture can be hard to select, as sometime you mistakenly select the underlying layer instead of the text. Also again, Filters cannot be directly applied to editable text. Sure, GIMP will convert the rasterized text back to editable text, but doing so will discard all the applied Filters.

kaffeemitsahne 8y ago
You can always submit bugs/annoyances/requests directly to the GIMP developers: https://www.gimp.org/bugs/ https://www.gimp.org/bugs/
- sachdevap 8y ago
  Seconded. If you are a user, consider actively filing bugs and not expect them to be fixed by the developers without following this process.
- rqs 8y ago
  Oh, thanks for the heads up. I thought it's for bugs only.
- 8_hours_ago 8y ago
  It looks like the GIMP developers would rather that new feature requests be made on their mailing list before making a new bug: "An enhancement request should never be filed without prior discussion on the gimp-developer mailing list[0]. This is to make sure that the enhancement requests that are filed are well-specified and aligned with the overall goals the developers have for GIMP." But please don't let that stop you! The more feedback that the developers get, the better GIMP will be for everyone. [0]: https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html https://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html
deleted 8y ago
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8y ago

ayr-ton 8y ago

This is nice. Hope to see new functionality and better usability. :-)

rootlocus 8y ago
Keep hoping, because the GIMP team "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, as well as sponsor the next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting."
- yunyu 8y ago
  Introducing usability and functionality improvements isn't mutually exclusive from doing those. At the very least, I'd expect some improvements to come out of the hackfest.
  - prokoudine 8y ago
    The last time (winter 2017) we did a hackfest outside of Libre Graphics Meeting, we introduced a bunch of improvements to layers' blending and compositing, improved color management, improved the PSD loader/exporter, improved menu structure, introduced painting on transparent layers in modes other than Normal (which is _huge_ for painters), and introduced Flatpak builds.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

"only" $100K - aren't we living in a world now where companies started in a garage make that amount of money ten times a second? I haven't heard anything from e.g. Google or Facebook's open source funding endeavours. IMO every successful company should do their part and set aside a sizeable percentage of their revenue to paying and supporting open source projects and developers. It's wrong that e.g. the developer of cURL is (was?) struggling to make ends meet, when he (and the people behind gimp, etc) develops software used billions of times a day. That should make him hundreds of thousands a year.

gempir 8y ago
Well in the end the world is not a fair place. Linux Torvalds isn't exactly loaded either, although he isn't poor. But In the end people are gonna abuse your products to make as much money as possible and there is no guarantee, you will ever see a penny of it if you sell it as Free Software.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Why do you use the word "abuse" ?
- Reedx 8y ago
  I always think of Linus in these cases too. Supposedly he's worth $150m, but even if that's accurate it would still mean he's only captured a very small % of the value he created.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    This is surprising to me. Someone as pragmatic as him, still working and taking/giving abuse at that "milemarker" of wealth? Huh.
proginthebox 8y ago
Just because someone can use a software does not mean they can/will pay for it. In other words, you'll can only earn money if your customers are rich.

nomadtwin 8y ago

There's Affinity Photo / Designer that is pretty similar to Photoshop (UI & functionality) and cost around $50. No subscription, no bullshit. That's (kinda) affordable, right?

SSLy 8y ago
Unlike GIMP it doesn't work on GNU/Linux.
rootlocus 8y ago
Affinity Photo / Designer are very very far from Photoshop. Affinity Photo is a replacement for Lightroom (raw photo editors), and Affinity Designer is a replacement for Adobe Illustrator (vector graphics). Although you can do vectors and photo editing in Photoshop, the main purpose of PS is raster painting, which neither Affinity Photo nor Designer are remotely good at. As such, neither of them could replace GIMP or Photoshop.
- ino 8y ago
  Affinity Designer fits somewhere between PS and AI. I find it better than both for doing web design and game graphics.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  Affinity Photo is very different from Lightroom and it is very good for general purpose raster editing including illustration. I've used GIMP a lot and finally switched to Affinity Photo+Designer. It is, I must admit, much better for almost everything, the only thing GIMP still handles the best is selection and cropping. Affinity Photo even supports Photoshop plugins (although I have not tried that).
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Affinity photo is more lightroom + photoshop mix Affinity designer is illustrator first + photoshop pixel support I prefer using AffinityDesigner and AffinityPhoto, fast development, loads quicker, the export tool is way better than adobe products, just all around easier to use.

mikebelanger 8y ago

My hope: whichever direction Gimp development goes, they should try doing something similar to Blender - where they bring a bunch of developers and artists into a space. While they're in that space (for a limited amount of time) work on some big project involving Gimp. Develop Gimp to suite that project's needs.

buovjaga 8y ago
So far ZeMarmot is such a project in a smaller scale (1 dev + 1 artist), but extended amount of time: https://film.zemarmot.net/ https://film.zemarmot.net/
120photo 8y ago
I believe this is a key reason Blender is as good as it is today; they developed a tool that addressed the needs of artist that use their software (scratching a need).
MrEfficiency 8y ago
Can we streamline the controls? Thats what GIMP needs. After 9 years of using GIMP I switched to photoshop because I was doing many photos and couldnt hand the inconsistency of what each button does.
- dotancohen 8y ago
  If you'll provide more detail as to which inconsistencies you've found, I'll take the time to test and write up an actionable bug report.
  - emmelaich 8y ago
    That would actually be a valuable service. Many users don't know where or how or what to put in a bug report. If some had a site that you could just write free-form prose others more experienced could convert that to actionable bug reports.
    - 8y ago

EvangelicalPig 8y ago

Well I'm dubious about all these cryptocurrency/ICO projects (and I've been using BTC since 2011), funding open source is a good thing.

baby 8y ago

Free-to-play is huge in gaming, but in tooling it’s not. Why? A free Photoshop integrating a brush marketplace would make a shit ton of money. A free Premiere with a marketplace for effects?

umanwizard 8y ago
I think when you're in a serious work mood, not having fun playing a game, that sort of thing would be incredibly infuriating. Also, Photoshop is usually paid for by people's employees anyway, so the user doesn't really care about the price.
- baby 8y ago
  > that sort of thing would be incredibly infuriating Why? You already have to pay for these things, except you need to go look for them everywhere and find out how to import them and restore them from somewhere if you change machine. A marketplace for tooling is uber-valuable, and it's also an insane opportunity for creators who want to sell on these marketplaces. The only thing I'm talking about is: 1. make the software free 2. incorporate a marketplace to find free or paid add-ons, brushes, effects, etc... 3. take a cut
  - freeone3000 8y ago
    Okay, but why (1)? Why not just (2) and (3)?
soared 8y ago
Your company will buy tools, it won't buy games. You'll personally buy games, most won't buy tools.
lucb1e 8y ago
I like this idea for GIMP. I'd definitely feel like I was getting my money's worth if I paid only small amounts per feature, instead of (as a casual user) paying hundreds on a license for everything a la Photoshop.

yolodeveloper 8y ago

I hope they spend it on a shrink and figure a way to stop being total assholes.

ptero 8y ago

This is great, I hope Gimp puts it to good use. I would love for Gimp to focus more on artistic uses instead of only on software types (which is probably a vain hope). We would greatly benefit from a good artistic/photo image editing tool that does not belong to the Adobe's subscription license racket. Unfortunately, Gimp is not nearly in the same class as Photoshop, so most artists grumble about Adobe but still pay subscription because its UI is SO much better. Photoshop is the main reason I still run Windows at home; I would gladly donate this money to Gimp instead if it provides the same functionality: good slider and visual coordination to find the right levels and color balances, good color support (no, 8-bit color is not enough), decent printing (at least to 17"x40") and raw camera images.

PascLeRasc 8y ago
Krita's pretty good for an digital-pencil-based art tool and Darktable is a nice Lightroom replacement, both just need a bit of UI tuning.
- ghostly_s 8y ago
  Darktable is not even in the same category as Lightroom. I spent months trying to figure out how to make it work for me before realizing it has zero library management functionality, which the devs seem to have missed is Lightroom's main value proposition. It is purely a non-destructive editor, and if you look up discussions on this topic on the mail lists you'll see WONTFIX responses in the vein of "just use your file manager and a tangle of custom shell scripts!"
  - girvo 8y ago
    I would absolutely love to see a FOSS alternative to Photo Mechanic. It’s a brilliant bit of software, stores info in the file itself in a neat way that syncs well across NextCloud, giving me a neat “cloud” workflow (sync folder raw after import, process, then remove sync once it’s done). It plus Darktable (or in my case, Affinity Photo) absolute rules
  - komali2 8y ago

alexandernst 8y ago

(unpopular opinion) Wht a waste of money.

lucb1e 8y ago
I think the main reason for downvotes on this post are because you give no support whatsoever for your statement. Your comment is so useless that I am actually considering flagging as being just a troll, something I do maybe once a year.

TekMol 8y ago

Please give us non-destructive adjustment layers! Please! Been waiting for this for years. On every new Gimp release I look through the new features and ... no. No adjustment layers. I'm confused how this is not the #1 priority. It has been what I am missing for years and years. And every time I talk to someone about Gimp vs Photoshop, they ask me 'Do you still have to cope with destructive adjustment curves and filters etc? OMG, that is archaic!'.

yoz-y 8y ago
The problem is also that there are new applications that started they development later than GIMP and shipped with Adjustment Layers and colorspace support in their first or second revisions. As far as I understand the core needs to be completely updated to GEGL for this to work. Let's hope this money will help them get to the goal.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  GEGL was mostly done in 2.10.
  - Doxin 8y ago
    Porting all the filters and whatnot is still going on however.
lucb1e 8y ago
I've used GIMP for years but I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps it's not the #1 priority because you're one of a small percentage of people who need it? While I'm not someone who needs image editing professionally or who makes amazing things with it, I did take my time to learn GIMP properly for my use-cases, and the things I find lacking do not include "non-destructive adjustment layers".
- jasonjayr 8y ago
  It's one of those features that once you notice in Photoshop, you lament the lack in GIMP. The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just additional layers, w/o manipulating the image in the layer under them. It lets you very quickly toggle between different settings, revise settings, and even very easily only filter parts of an image. (ie, you can have a unfiltered layer above a stack of filters, and the original image)

swayvil 8y ago

As an artist who uses Gimp a lot, this pleases me very much.

awiesenhofer 8y ago

So does this mean we finally get nondestructive editing to once and forall end the photoshop comparisons?

prokoudine 8y ago
In v3.2, just as planned.

ISL 8y ago

If everyone complaining about GIMP in this thread (and most clearly spend a lot of time using it, myself included) donated $20 or an hour of their time to GIMP, that'd be another $2k or ~100+ hours of time donated (as of this moment) to help make it better. I have to run to work, so I just donated $20. https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/

curuinor 8y ago
$20/hr for knows-wtf-they're-doing programmer time?
- ISL 8y ago
  $20/hr for doesn't-know-GIMP's-architecture-but-submits-a-possibly-useful-patch-anyway time. If $20 sounds too low, feel free to pitch in more. I'm a physics postdoc, not a software dev.
  - dboreham 8y ago
    You're about an order of magnitude off.
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - ISL 8y ago
      Please communicate that to the National Science Foundation (and by extension, the electorate). We're hemorrhaging some of our best scientists for that reason. I may soon join them.
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - RussianCow 8y ago

herbst 8y ago

Everybody is complaining about the UI, however it is more or less the reason why i prefer Gimp to anything else. It is still a gui focused on getting things done instead of guiding you to do it. However i havent worked with Photoshop for 10+ years, so i dont actually have a direct comparison. Having worked with other Adobe products (mostly Illustrator) i am glad however.

test6554 8y ago

I used gimp the other day to resize an image with no training or experience. Thanks GIMP Team!

zmix 8y ago

Are "Meetings" and "Hackfests" productive enough to justify spending all received money on them? I have never been to such occasions, that's why I ask.

prokoudine 8y ago
They are. See my comment below for an example from GIMP's latest hackfest.

deftturtle 8y ago

GIMP's UI is too painful to make me use it. Please make the UI logical and respect system conventions. Standard keyboard shortcuts on my Mac do not work with GIMP. This is horrible for average users that want their software to just work.