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I expected this to be a rant or flame, but in fact he has described wonderfully what needs to be said. Besides from all this pro features that GIMP lacks, in m

by joakin 16y ago

I expected this to be a rant or flame, but in fact he has described wonderfully what needs to be said. Besides from all this pro features that GIMP lacks, in my opinion its biggest flaw its the UI. Its poor and raw, and makes sense if you are a programmer... Mainly this is what keeps it far from the regular users I know. Hope It doesnt die, its a very good open source multiplatform editing tool...

damncabbage 16y ago
I, hand on my heart, swear that, as a programmer, I don't think GIMP's UI makes a jot of sense. A week away from GIMP to mess with Photoshop had me converted after the first couple of days, sadly. Photoshop is both a blessing and a curse for OSS. (A blessing that it's a nice shiny target. A curse in that the target is half-way to the moon.)
- masklinn 16y ago
  There are numerous closer targets to shoot for, which are not photoshop but are still pretty darn nice (Acorn or Pixelmator for instance on OSX). OSX also has SeaShore, which I believe is built upon GIMP's tech but with a Cocoa frontend. It is fairly nice.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Wondering how hard would it be to build it on top of GNUStep. Anyone cares to try it?
  - eli 16y ago
    I bought Pixelmator years ago and it's great for what it is, but it's not really in the same class as Photoshop (or really even GIMP). The UI is clean and functional, but even as an occasional user I run into missing features. Seashore looks interesting.
- wisty 16y ago
  Usability is key for a lot of users. I don't care if my photo editor is good enough for a pro. Pros use Photoshop. A good, free, lightweight editor is what most people need for removing red-eye, putting daemon horns on their third grade teacher, and cropping out their ex. An open source editor will always be able to do high-end stuff, as long as it has some decent scripting capability. The rest of us just want something simple. Take Open Office. The reason I switched was the better equation editor, and the tab-complete. I like FireFox because of the tabs and extensions. There should be more focus on a minimal but usable product, and letting the extensions make up the feature gap.
- ghaff 16y ago
  And the fact of the matter is that Photoshop has far from the world's greatest UI either (for one of the usual reasons--so much stuff has been incrementally added over time) so saying a UI is bad compared to Photoshop really is pretty damning. Contrast with Lightroom which, although I disagree with one or two of the fundamental design decisions, was coherently designed from the ground up. The situation with The GIMP is really a lot like OpenOffice on a smaller scale. Lots of people would like a free image editing program but it's a big undertaking to produce something that's competitive with the proprietary alternatives and there's no commercial organization that sees benefit in supporting such an effort.
Natsu 16y ago
I use and love it, but I sincerely wish they'd change the name and the UI. I'm a programmer, but even I didn't realize how much they were hiding in context menus at first until I had to search online to find documentation on how to do the few simple things I can do. The multi-window thing I really don't have much of a problem with, though, even if it was hard to get used to at first. I don't have much use for the higher bit depths and such, but I can see his point about quality and why others need it. Incidentally, a lot of programs have problems with gamma. I think this link has been on HN a few times: http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html
- larrik 16y ago
  The multi-window thing would be fine, but why does each window need a button on my taskbar? On both Windows or Linux, doing any serious work in GIMP destroys my taskbar's usefulness. Then, which windows are on top of other windows is never what I expect, even after years of using GIMP. In my opinion a multi-window image program is the way to go, but GIMP's implementation of it is not. (P.S. I think Apple's Interface Builder's multi-window implementation is much much worse, however.)
wazoox 16y ago
People keep talking about the GIMP UI, I find it quite good. I love the concept of "everything available from a right-click", alla Maya -- the top menu bar is a kludge that was added quite recently. The technical aspects mentioned in the article are more serious.
- joakin 16y ago
  I agree with you, I'm talking about more specific but anoying things, like for example: When using the Move tool, Instead of moving the selected layer by default, the option checked is "pick a layer automatically" which never does the job. Text editing its a pain compared to photoshop. Lots of filters dont have a real-time preview, which make applying them a futile exercise of guessing Layers have bounds that doesnt correspond with the content of the layer (maybe somebody finds this useful, I hate it) The plugins for Layer effects are all a mess and its easier to do it by hand Its impossible to select a group of layers, and I dont mean to apply some filter or edit them, I mean to organize the layers. Move up a group, etc. There is no way to create folders of layers... There is no way to hide/show a group of layers... All this kind of quirks make the program anoying to use for big projects, and I hate it because its completely capable of getting the same results (at my level) than PS, it just takes a lot of time because the UI...
  - wazoox 16y ago
    I have to admit that as I last used Photoshop around version 4, it's easier to do without these :)
sovande 16y ago
> UI... makes sense if you are a programmer... Nope, maybe if you are the programmer of Gimp
T-R 16y ago
I've been using GIMP for prototyping instead of Paint Shop Pro lately, and while it works well enough and I've gotten used to it, I have to say, there are dozens of small issues that add up to a UX disaster. The Toolbox isn't dockable, but "brushes" is both a dropdown button on the toolbox and a dockable window. "Show Grid" and "Snap to Grid" are in the View menu, while "Configure Grid" is in the Image menu. The Color Tools are in both the Tools menu and Colors menu. It just seems convoluted at first because there's so much duplication and so many areas where the wrong UI element was chosen - it's just a mess. On top of this, a lot of common tasks, like copy-paste-moveSelection, have at least one extra click compared to PS or PSP, and it all adds up to have a dramatic effect on productivity. I don't think Gimp will die, but I'm guessing that, at least for hobbyists, it'll probably be dethroned by whichever web-based solution gets to the head of the pack.
yesimahuman 16y ago
I honestly don't see what the big deal is. Comparing GIMP usability to Photoshop usability only makes sense if you have no experience with either. Many people say GIMP is difficult yet forget they had a hard time learning Photoshop to begin with. I personally find Photoshop daunting and GIMP pretty easy to use for most of what I need.
- joakin 16y ago
  I never mentioned PS in my response, for me they are different and both of them are necessary. In fact, from a year now, I always use Gimp as my image editing program after 4 years of PS, and I hope it doesnt die because it would leave me without choices... This said, we cannot ignore the flaws on the UI, not comparing them to photoshop, but on their own. User life could be eased a lot fixing lots of little quirks the UI has. Saying Gimp is pretty easy to use doesnt mean its UI could be improved a lot
- aw3c2 16y ago
  My dad is 70, likes to rant about broken/bad software and recently discovered GIMP for photo manipulation. He is very happy and has not said a single bad thing (which actually surprised me).

by joakin 16y ago

damncabbage 16y ago

I, hand on my heart, swear that, as a programmer, I don't think GIMP's UI makes a jot of sense. A week away from GIMP to mess with Photoshop had me converted after the first couple of days, sadly. Photoshop is both a blessing and a curse for OSS. (A blessing that it's a nice shiny target. A curse in that the target is half-way to the moon.)

masklinn 16y ago
There are numerous closer targets to shoot for, which are not photoshop but are still pretty darn nice (Acorn or Pixelmator for instance on OSX). OSX also has SeaShore, which I believe is built upon GIMP's tech but with a Cocoa frontend. It is fairly nice.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Wondering how hard would it be to build it on top of GNUStep. Anyone cares to try it?
- eli 16y ago
  I bought Pixelmator years ago and it's great for what it is, but it's not really in the same class as Photoshop (or really even GIMP). The UI is clean and functional, but even as an occasional user I run into missing features. Seashore looks interesting.
wisty 16y ago
Usability is key for a lot of users. I don't care if my photo editor is good enough for a pro. Pros use Photoshop. A good, free, lightweight editor is what most people need for removing red-eye, putting daemon horns on their third grade teacher, and cropping out their ex. An open source editor will always be able to do high-end stuff, as long as it has some decent scripting capability. The rest of us just want something simple. Take Open Office. The reason I switched was the better equation editor, and the tab-complete. I like FireFox because of the tabs and extensions. There should be more focus on a minimal but usable product, and letting the extensions make up the feature gap.
ghaff 16y ago
And the fact of the matter is that Photoshop has far from the world's greatest UI either (for one of the usual reasons--so much stuff has been incrementally added over time) so saying a UI is bad compared to Photoshop really is pretty damning. Contrast with Lightroom which, although I disagree with one or two of the fundamental design decisions, was coherently designed from the ground up. The situation with The GIMP is really a lot like OpenOffice on a smaller scale. Lots of people would like a free image editing program but it's a big undertaking to produce something that's competitive with the proprietary alternatives and there's no commercial organization that sees benefit in supporting such an effort.

Natsu 16y ago

I use and love it, but I sincerely wish they'd change the name and the UI. I'm a programmer, but even I didn't realize how much they were hiding in context menus at first until I had to search online to find documentation on how to do the few simple things I can do. The multi-window thing I really don't have much of a problem with, though, even if it was hard to get used to at first. I don't have much use for the higher bit depths and such, but I can see his point about quality and why others need it. Incidentally, a lot of programs have problems with gamma. I think this link has been on HN a few times: http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html

larrik 16y ago
The multi-window thing would be fine, but why does each window need a button on my taskbar? On both Windows or Linux, doing any serious work in GIMP destroys my taskbar's usefulness. Then, which windows are on top of other windows is never what I expect, even after years of using GIMP. In my opinion a multi-window image program is the way to go, but GIMP's implementation of it is not. (P.S. I think Apple's Interface Builder's multi-window implementation is much much worse, however.)

wazoox 16y ago

People keep talking about the GIMP UI, I find it quite good. I love the concept of "everything available from a right-click", alla Maya -- the top menu bar is a kludge that was added quite recently. The technical aspects mentioned in the article are more serious.

joakin 16y ago
I agree with you, I'm talking about more specific but anoying things, like for example: When using the Move tool, Instead of moving the selected layer by default, the option checked is "pick a layer automatically" which never does the job. Text editing its a pain compared to photoshop. Lots of filters dont have a real-time preview, which make applying them a futile exercise of guessing Layers have bounds that doesnt correspond with the content of the layer (maybe somebody finds this useful, I hate it) The plugins for Layer effects are all a mess and its easier to do it by hand Its impossible to select a group of layers, and I dont mean to apply some filter or edit them, I mean to organize the layers. Move up a group, etc. There is no way to create folders of layers... There is no way to hide/show a group of layers... All this kind of quirks make the program anoying to use for big projects, and I hate it because its completely capable of getting the same results (at my level) than PS, it just takes a lot of time because the UI...
- wazoox 16y ago
  I have to admit that as I last used Photoshop around version 4, it's easier to do without these :)

sovande 16y ago

> UI... makes sense if you are a programmer... Nope, maybe if you are the programmer of Gimp

T-R 16y ago

I've been using GIMP for prototyping instead of Paint Shop Pro lately, and while it works well enough and I've gotten used to it, I have to say, there are dozens of small issues that add up to a UX disaster. The Toolbox isn't dockable, but "brushes" is both a dropdown button on the toolbox and a dockable window. "Show Grid" and "Snap to Grid" are in the View menu, while "Configure Grid" is in the Image menu. The Color Tools are in both the Tools menu and Colors menu. It just seems convoluted at first because there's so much duplication and so many areas where the wrong UI element was chosen - it's just a mess. On top of this, a lot of common tasks, like copy-paste-moveSelection, have at least one extra click compared to PS or PSP, and it all adds up to have a dramatic effect on productivity. I don't think Gimp will die, but I'm guessing that, at least for hobbyists, it'll probably be dethroned by whichever web-based solution gets to the head of the pack.

yesimahuman 16y ago

I honestly don't see what the big deal is. Comparing GIMP usability to Photoshop usability only makes sense if you have no experience with either. Many people say GIMP is difficult yet forget they had a hard time learning Photoshop to begin with. I personally find Photoshop daunting and GIMP pretty easy to use for most of what I need.

joakin 16y ago
I never mentioned PS in my response, for me they are different and both of them are necessary. In fact, from a year now, I always use Gimp as my image editing program after 4 years of PS, and I hope it doesnt die because it would leave me without choices... This said, we cannot ignore the flaws on the UI, not comparing them to photoshop, but on their own. User life could be eased a lot fixing lots of little quirks the UI has. Saying Gimp is pretty easy to use doesnt mean its UI could be improved a lot
aw3c2 16y ago
My dad is 70, likes to rant about broken/bad software and recently discovered GIMP for photo manipulation. He is very happy and has not said a single bad thing (which actually surprised me).