4 ms·

I would think Blender does a good job too, but inkscape has no paid contributors. If it had people employed to work on it, I think you would see more attention

I would think Blender does a good job too, but inkscape has no paid contributors. If it had people employed to work on it, I think you would see more attention being paid to UI. Blender is one of the most successful projects out there, and assuming other projects could just 'do what Blender does' is ignoring some of the fundamental differences between Blender and smaller projects.

Crinus 7y ago
It isn't so much the paid contributors (though they help) as it is that Blender Foundation was making commercial quality projects for years using Blender with artists and programmers at the same place so they were able to provide immediate feedback to each other. The closest other projects have to this are vague forum/bugtracker posts that more often than not give little (or misleading) idea to the programmers what is needed. Having an artist sit next to you and giving them the mouse and keyboard to show you directly in the software what they are doing, how they are doing it and what they want to do is much faster and gives you way more information and you can bounce forth and back alternative ideas, perhaps make minor quick modifications on the spot as a prototype or lead to an idea, etc. (the next best thing is you being both the artist and the programmer - which is how many of FLOSS art oriented programs are made really - but there is a great danger of you getting used to your software's drawbacks and being unwilling to address them)
- jorvi 7y ago
  Much more importantly, Blender doesn't shy away from getting inspired by their proprietary counterparts. AFAIK they're even working on a 'industry keybinds' setting which makes changing over from Maya a breeze. Programs like GIMP (or even entire OS UIs like Gnome and KDE) often shy away from 'aping' respectively Photoshop or Apple. But those proprietary vendors have spent millions of dollars on focus groups and man hours to optimize their UI and UX. Benefiting from that seems like a no-brainer, but alas.. NIH and proprietary hate reigns supreme.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    Eh, Photoshop hasn't really optimized their UI/UX, their UI goes back to the original MacPaint by Bill Atkinson (Photoshop started as a more powerful MacPaint) and has evolved over the years starting from that. It is just that it became a very common UI for similar applications and the reason to make something similar isn't because Adobe has spent millions optimizing it, but because a lot of people are already familiar with it. However the same can be said for GIMP's UI nowadays. And really personally i find Photoshop UI atrocious and if i had to chose between that and GIMP's i'd pick GIMP any time (though overall i actually prefer PSP7's UI which IMO is the best of any of those).
    - o-__-o 7y ago
      Gimp is garbage bro. A window for each tool? That your WM manages? Okay where is that tools window or layers window or what if I’m editing 20 icons and one of my icons was covered by a browser window. At least old photoshop would remember z order and bring them to the surface and keep tools on top. Gimp May have fixed this one issue but it’s an example of why paid UX design wins 99 times out of 10
      - axelf4 7y ago
        Gimp has had a single-window layout for a long time now.
        o-__-o 7y ago
        So has photoshop ;). I think you are forgetting the thread you replied to
    - WhitneyLand 7y ago
      I agree with the spirit of jorvi's comment but your specific point points are notable. Last time I checked ps still defaulted to require control-shift-something-non-standard for redo, unless you customize the key mappings. there are much more standard bindings and they even admit the only reason for this default is legacy users .

Crinus 7y ago

It isn't so much the paid contributors (though they help) as it is that Blender Foundation was making commercial quality projects for years using Blender with artists and programmers at the same place so they were able to provide immediate feedback to each other. The closest other projects have to this are vague forum/bugtracker posts that more often than not give little (or misleading) idea to the programmers what is needed. Having an artist sit next to you and giving them the mouse and keyboard to show you directly in the software what they are doing, how they are doing it and what they want to do is much faster and gives you way more information and you can bounce forth and back alternative ideas, perhaps make minor quick modifications on the spot as a prototype or lead to an idea, etc. (the next best thing is you being both the artist and the programmer - which is how many of FLOSS art oriented programs are made really - but there is a great danger of you getting used to your software's drawbacks and being unwilling to address them)

jorvi 7y ago
Much more importantly, Blender doesn't shy away from getting inspired by their proprietary counterparts. AFAIK they're even working on a 'industry keybinds' setting which makes changing over from Maya a breeze. Programs like GIMP (or even entire OS UIs like Gnome and KDE) often shy away from 'aping' respectively Photoshop or Apple. But those proprietary vendors have spent millions of dollars on focus groups and man hours to optimize their UI and UX. Benefiting from that seems like a no-brainer, but alas.. NIH and proprietary hate reigns supreme.
- Crinus 7y ago
  Eh, Photoshop hasn't really optimized their UI/UX, their UI goes back to the original MacPaint by Bill Atkinson (Photoshop started as a more powerful MacPaint) and has evolved over the years starting from that. It is just that it became a very common UI for similar applications and the reason to make something similar isn't because Adobe has spent millions optimizing it, but because a lot of people are already familiar with it. However the same can be said for GIMP's UI nowadays. And really personally i find Photoshop UI atrocious and if i had to chose between that and GIMP's i'd pick GIMP any time (though overall i actually prefer PSP7's UI which IMO is the best of any of those).
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    Gimp is garbage bro. A window for each tool? That your WM manages? Okay where is that tools window or layers window or what if I’m editing 20 icons and one of my icons was covered by a browser window. At least old photoshop would remember z order and bring them to the surface and keep tools on top. Gimp May have fixed this one issue but it’s an example of why paid UX design wins 99 times out of 10
    - axelf4 7y ago
      Gimp has had a single-window layout for a long time now.
      - o-__-o 7y ago
        So has photoshop ;). I think you are forgetting the thread you replied to
  - WhitneyLand 7y ago
    I agree with the spirit of jorvi's comment but your specific point points are notable. Last time I checked ps still defaulted to require control-shift-something-non-standard for redo, unless you customize the key mappings. there are much more standard bindings and they even admit the only reason for this default is legacy users .