10 ms·

Gimp project gets $68.34 monthly

39 points by randomzerg 6y ago

People like to shit on GIMP for not being a free Photoshop clone, meanwhile it gets $68.34 monthly donations... https://liberapay.com/GIMP/

rootlocus 6y ago
Is liberapay the only funding venue for GIMP?
- randomzerg 6y ago
  Individual devs seem to have their own patreon accounts but their income is still around few monthly Photoshop subscriptions.
josefrichter 6y ago
I am far from shitting on GIMP. But truth to be told, it's not very pleasant user experience. And I feel like there are several fairly affordable and significantly better commercial alternatives to Photoshop.
- randomzerg 6y ago
  yeah well that is basically my point. We can all keep paying Adobe or someone else or make sure GIMP has at least one person working on it full time and have legitimate chance of not needing Photoshop in the future.
  - josefrichter 6y ago
    My point was something else: happy to pay someone for commercial alternative to Photoshop, coz I'm never gonna pay one more dime to Adobe.
    - randomzerg 6y ago
      Same here. I've been using PS since version 4.0 and it has become an absolutely bloated nightmare. +the cloud, vendor lock-in, pricing and all that stuff.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >We can all keep paying Adobe or someone else or make sure GIMP has at least one person working on it full time and have legitimate chance of not needing Photoshop in the future. FOSS is a free market. The mere fact that GIMP isn't meeting users' needs is supposed to result in competing, superior forks driving it out of business, not a desire to give more money to the incumbent.
- Normille 6y ago
  There are better free alternatives too. [1] https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ and [2] https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ to name but two. The Gimp is dire software and needs taking out and shooting. It's one of those awful apps that people who know nothing about digital design always trot out whenever others bemoan the lack of Photoshop on Linux. A recommendation that does more harm than good, as anyone who's used Photoshop and gives The Gimp a spin will end up thinking "If that's the best Linux has to offer, Linux must be rubbish!"
  - _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
    I love Krita, but I use it for different things than I use GIMP for.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Krita doesn't have feature parity with GIMP.
    - Normille 6y ago
      Given how difficult and unintuitive it is to use, I don't think Gimp has feature parity with itself.
- benbristow 6y ago
  Affinity Photo. It's basically the same thing but a one-off payment of £50.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    I've been looking for this comment. Ever since they started offering the Windows version as well I've been using Affinity Photon exclusively. I'm not doing a whole lot of photo editing, but when I do, I don't want to bother with the awful user experience that GIMP provides. I'll gladly pay 50€ for a software like Affinity Photo that offers almost the same features as PS while also being able to work with a lot of Photoshop file formats
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  It's really not bad at all. I've yet to run into a task I couldn't complete with GIMP.
- increment_i 6y ago
  What else is interesting is that if you are willing to migrate to a tablet based workflow then you can get tools very, very close to par with the Adobe suite for less than $100 - and that's a one time buy, not a subscription. If you're not married to open source, of course. Spend another hundred or so on an Apple pencil and some font licenses and you are flying.
banmeagaindan2 6y ago
Can I pay for GIMP training?
Normille 6y ago
That's about $68,33 too much
- scott31 6y ago
  This is not reddit: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Normille 6y ago
    Nah. On Reddit they'd have gone for the full '$68,34 too much'. You get a more subtle class of snark on HN.
    - muzani 6y ago
      Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
owentbrown 6y ago
This is wrong. The link says $68.34 per week, not per month.
unixhero 6y ago
Yes it's what they deserve for ignoring usability forever. Krita is where it's at. I guess I should give Gimp team a shout out, bit frankly I've never used it the last 20 years.
- pxtail 6y ago
  I agree, for me it is hard to understand reasons behind it's state - level of stubbornness is almost irrational, it's like project maintainers took some kind of secret oath to never ever surrender and bow to those pesky users demands.
sloaken 6y ago
Correction: that is how much they make WEEKLY on 'librapay'. That is not the only way they take money. Not how much they get from other methods, like paypal and flattr. They also accept bitcoin, cheque via GNOME.
- twoquestions 6y ago
  One of the devs runs a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pippin https://www.patreon.com/pippin GIMP also has sponsors, though I don't know how much they contribute: https://www.gimp.org/donating/sponsors.html https://www.gimp.org/donating/sponsors.html That still isn't much at all for a program trying to compete with Photoshop though.
jrururufuf666 6y ago
is there a way to donate crypto? im in the mood
munawwar 6y ago
Don't know why people hating on GIMP.. maybe it's not exact replacement for photoshop.. but I've used it for product photo touch-up work and it gets the job done. Which is great job for free
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I agree. It's a good tool and gets the job done, and it's been a tool that I've reached for a long time. It's unfortunate that their funding situation is so dire. It's a project that could use a cash injection like Blender got. Blender went from having a terrible UI to winning awards.
  - Lievelingsduif 6y ago
    Blender already has a solid and enthousiastic user base before the 2.7 UI update. Blender was also the forerunner in having a kickstarter-like scheme to raise enough money to make it opensource. There's an interesting interview between Ton Roosendaal and Blender Guru about the history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg The Blender guys were also a lot less hostile towards people trying to make improvements to stuff like UX. One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images. https://glimpse-editor.org https://glimpse-editor.org
- non-entity 6y ago
  Tbh ever since the redid the UI, I don't really hate on it as much.
austincheney 6y ago
That’s unfortunate. Meanwhile the JavaScript framework Vue is bringing in the following and more from other location: * Patreon, 15,873 per month - https://www.patreon.com/evanyou https://www.patreon.com/evanyou I find it odd that a technology I could easily reproduce myself brings in so much money compared to a project that is so incredibly far beyond my capabilities.
tmaly 6y ago
GIMP is great for most tasks if you have used it for a while. I started on 2.6 and I use 2.10 now.

39 points by randomzerg 6y ago

People like to shit on GIMP for not being a free Photoshop clone, meanwhile it gets $68.34 monthly donations... https://liberapay.com/GIMP/

rootlocus 6y ago

Is liberapay the only funding venue for GIMP?

randomzerg 6y ago
Individual devs seem to have their own patreon accounts but their income is still around few monthly Photoshop subscriptions.

josefrichter 6y ago

I am far from shitting on GIMP. But truth to be told, it's not very pleasant user experience. And I feel like there are several fairly affordable and significantly better commercial alternatives to Photoshop.

randomzerg 6y ago
yeah well that is basically my point. We can all keep paying Adobe or someone else or make sure GIMP has at least one person working on it full time and have legitimate chance of not needing Photoshop in the future.
- josefrichter 6y ago
  My point was something else: happy to pay someone for commercial alternative to Photoshop, coz I'm never gonna pay one more dime to Adobe.
  - randomzerg 6y ago
    Same here. I've been using PS since version 4.0 and it has become an absolutely bloated nightmare. +the cloud, vendor lock-in, pricing and all that stuff.
- krapp 6y ago
  >We can all keep paying Adobe or someone else or make sure GIMP has at least one person working on it full time and have legitimate chance of not needing Photoshop in the future. FOSS is a free market. The mere fact that GIMP isn't meeting users' needs is supposed to result in competing, superior forks driving it out of business, not a desire to give more money to the incumbent.
Normille 6y ago
There are better free alternatives too. [1] https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ and [2] https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ to name but two. The Gimp is dire software and needs taking out and shooting. It's one of those awful apps that people who know nothing about digital design always trot out whenever others bemoan the lack of Photoshop on Linux. A recommendation that does more harm than good, as anyone who's used Photoshop and gives The Gimp a spin will end up thinking "If that's the best Linux has to offer, Linux must be rubbish!"
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  I love Krita, but I use it for different things than I use GIMP for.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Krita doesn't have feature parity with GIMP.
  - Normille 6y ago
    Given how difficult and unintuitive it is to use, I don't think Gimp has feature parity with itself.
benbristow 6y ago
Affinity Photo. It's basically the same thing but a one-off payment of £50.
- moooo99 6y ago
  I've been looking for this comment. Ever since they started offering the Windows version as well I've been using Affinity Photon exclusively. I'm not doing a whole lot of photo editing, but when I do, I don't want to bother with the awful user experience that GIMP provides. I'll gladly pay 50€ for a software like Affinity Photo that offers almost the same features as PS while also being able to work with a lot of Photoshop file formats
heavyset_go 6y ago
It's really not bad at all. I've yet to run into a task I couldn't complete with GIMP.
increment_i 6y ago
What else is interesting is that if you are willing to migrate to a tablet based workflow then you can get tools very, very close to par with the Adobe suite for less than $100 - and that's a one time buy, not a subscription. If you're not married to open source, of course. Spend another hundred or so on an Apple pencil and some font licenses and you are flying.

banmeagaindan2 6y ago

Can I pay for GIMP training?

Normille 6y ago

That's about $68,33 too much

scott31 6y ago
This is not reddit: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Normille 6y ago
  Nah. On Reddit they'd have gone for the full '$68,34 too much'. You get a more subtle class of snark on HN.
  - muzani 6y ago
    Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

owentbrown 6y ago

This is wrong. The link says $68.34 per week, not per month.

unixhero 6y ago

Yes it's what they deserve for ignoring usability forever. Krita is where it's at. I guess I should give Gimp team a shout out, bit frankly I've never used it the last 20 years.

pxtail 6y ago
I agree, for me it is hard to understand reasons behind it's state - level of stubbornness is almost irrational, it's like project maintainers took some kind of secret oath to never ever surrender and bow to those pesky users demands.

sloaken 6y ago

Correction: that is how much they make WEEKLY on 'librapay'. That is not the only way they take money. Not how much they get from other methods, like paypal and flattr. They also accept bitcoin, cheque via GNOME.

twoquestions 6y ago
One of the devs runs a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pippin https://www.patreon.com/pippin GIMP also has sponsors, though I don't know how much they contribute: https://www.gimp.org/donating/sponsors.html https://www.gimp.org/donating/sponsors.html That still isn't much at all for a program trying to compete with Photoshop though.

jrururufuf666 6y ago

is there a way to donate crypto? im in the mood

munawwar 6y ago

Don't know why people hating on GIMP.. maybe it's not exact replacement for photoshop.. but I've used it for product photo touch-up work and it gets the job done. Which is great job for free

heavyset_go 6y ago
I agree. It's a good tool and gets the job done, and it's been a tool that I've reached for a long time. It's unfortunate that their funding situation is so dire. It's a project that could use a cash injection like Blender got. Blender went from having a terrible UI to winning awards.
- Lievelingsduif 6y ago
  Blender already has a solid and enthousiastic user base before the 2.7 UI update. Blender was also the forerunner in having a kickstarter-like scheme to raise enough money to make it opensource. There's an interesting interview between Ton Roosendaal and Blender Guru about the history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg The Blender guys were also a lot less hostile towards people trying to make improvements to stuff like UX. One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images. https://glimpse-editor.org https://glimpse-editor.org
non-entity 6y ago
Tbh ever since the redid the UI, I don't really hate on it as much.

austincheney 6y ago

That’s unfortunate. Meanwhile the JavaScript framework Vue is bringing in the following and more from other location: * Patreon, 15,873 per month - https://www.patreon.com/evanyou https://www.patreon.com/evanyou I find it odd that a technology I could easily reproduce myself brings in so much money compared to a project that is so incredibly far beyond my capabilities.

tmaly 6y ago

GIMP is great for most tasks if you have used it for a while. I started on 2.6 and I use 2.10 now.