24 ms·

Gimp is 25 years old today

618 points by constantinum 6y ago

Ice_cream_suit 6y ago
If Gimp development had ceased long ago, something far better would probably have been created by other developers by now. Unfortunately it now serves as a black hole for community effort.
earthboundkid 6y ago
And it doesn’t look a day over 30.
- dau 6y ago
  they should invite the Blender people over to fix the UI for them :-)
  - iamcreasy 6y ago
    I know what you meant, but the Blender UI is still at odds compared to most software out there. Here is an example. One of their UI tenet is no overlapping windows. You change focus between windows by moving your mouse over them - no clicking involved. So, if you press C when 3d viewport is on focus it triggers the circle select tool, but pressing C when the outliner is on focus creates a new collection. But this behavior is not consistent. Sometimes some keys have global binding. For example, Shift Space always runs the animation no matter which window is in focus. And there is no way to know if a key binding needs a focus on a particular window. I find this behavior very odd. Most software have either global key binding, or you explicitly change focus between windows(modes) by click on another (usually overlapping) window.
    - pfranz 6y ago
      I haven't really used Blender (but know Maya, Houdini, Nuke very well). I think "pro" software (a wiggly term) tends to require a non-standard UI (however, I do miss when Photoshop used the base OS' UI). Pro tools end up being a bit of their own window management and filesystem that overlaps with the OS. Their decisions are part of the ergonomics of being productive in the app. I remember when macOS started adding smart folders and other database features to Finder. I was hoping the base OS could do photo management and Photos/Aperture could just do the retouching. The same tooling could replace iTunes. After all, a filesystem is just a very opinionated database, right? In practice I'm not sure how well it would have played out.
      - joubert 6y ago
        Microsoft also worked on WinFS as a new file system based on relational database principles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
        pfranz 6y ago
        Yeah, it was sad to see all the Longhorn tech get scaled back or dropped.
  - fctorial 6y ago
    Blender uses a home grown ui toolkit.
    - Phlogistique 6y ago
      Technically, Gimp too[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#History
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > they should invite the Blender people over to fix the UI for them :-) Is this sarcastic? I opened blender once and had a panic attack. Gimp felt usable since the beginning.
    - dau 6y ago
      No, Blenders look&feel used to be questionable in the past but then version 2.80 happened. They have an amazing UI (backend) now and keep improving. What was my personal wow moment as a programmer, was seeing that changing the display scale slider in the app properties does actually update the whole UI tree, cascading, rearranging and collapsing things down in realtime.
      - tpmx 6y ago
        GIMP and Blender were my go-to-examples for why the Bazaar/community-style open source development process doesn't really work for UX-intensive apps. Then Blender 2.80 appeared. Perhaps its UX development process was more Cathedral-like, though?
  - archerx 6y ago
    The blind leading the blind :)
ogre_codes 6y ago
Phenomenal. One of my all time favorite pieces of Open Source Software. I used GIMP for years as my goto photo editor before migrating to the Mac.
- Lipsey 6y ago
  You can still run GIMP on Mac. I do and love it.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    You can, but there are lots of better options available.
    - Lipsey 6y ago
      Free and Open source? Please which ones do you recommend?
      - dwiash 6y ago
        Krita. I think it's way better than GIMP
        0x4a42 6y ago
        Krita is a painting app comparable to Corel Painter. You can't compare it with GIMP or Photoshop.
        AntiImperialist 6y ago
        Doesn't matter. People have work to do with tools, not list out all the features. If Krita works for the person, there's no reason to use Gimp or Photoshop.
        phkahler 6y ago
shadowprofile77 6y ago
Compared to Photoshop or Lightroom levels of quality editing, it's a bit weak and seems to modify contrast too much when loading images, but I love using it for quick edits of my own photos. Nice, light application and since it's free, hardly can expect some of the deeper quality I've gotten from paid platforms.
dwiize 6y ago
Finally time for a new name?
- amiga-workbench 6y ago
  There's already a fork for that, and it doesn't appear to have much mindshare.
- fortran77 6y ago
  Agreed. It's an unfortunate word. There are better choices that wouldn't exclude people.
  - mconigliaro 6y ago
    Look everyone, someone is offended! A first for 2020! Someone give this guy an award!
    - fortran77 6y ago
      Why does @dang and Hacker News think it's OK to mock the physically disabled?
      - gimpuser 6y ago
        You are mocking your own ability to critically think. That's all.
      - edgyquant 6y ago
        Gimp is a type of of suit commonly used in BDSM circles...
  - zingermc 6y ago
    AFAIK it has nothing to do with physical disability. The word has a lot of meanings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimp
    - 6y ago
manaskarekar 6y ago
GIMP has been one of my constantly used software for over 20 years. I recall messing with text effects and some Python-fu. Still use it to this day for all kinds of editing. And it gave us GTK! Congrats.
- mongol 6y ago
  This deserves to be higher. It spawned GTK, which spawned Gnome and so on. In this way, it is one of the most influential open source software programs around. I recall also that in it's youth, it showed what is possible, it staked out a future. There were not many as advanced GUI programs around like it then, but xv was of course the go-to program in the graphics category.
jes5199 6y ago
GIMP is such a strange tool. I actually have used it, semi-frequently - since the 90s! The overall experience of using it has only changed a little in that time. And it gets the job done. I guess that makes it successful! What else has been so stable? But of all the software I have ever used, GIMP is the most difficult to learn. I memorized a few tutorials, this must have been around Y2K, to do the a couple things. And basically I have never figured out how to do anything else in it. After twenty years. Sometime, more than a decade ago, they made the tool icons both harder to recognize visually more unpredictable in their toolbox layout, and that still slows me down, too. I just can't think of anything else I've had this kind of relationship with - other tools, I either master, or I move on from. GIMP is an odd one.
- Lipsey 6y ago
  I found it odd coming from tools like Macromedia Fireworks or Coreldraw because I was expecting to add shapes, fill and pan objects in the canvas. But as soon as I grasped the difference between vector based and raster based tools and why layers are important it became easy.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  Yeah you just described me too. I learned it as GIMPShopPro (a resin for Windows that looked liked photoshop) and when I switched to Linux in 2007ish I learned the basics of normal GIMP and have used it weekly ever since without learning anything new. Never thought about it until now.
- darig 6y ago
  I've also been using GIMP since the 90s... but I'd say the overall experience has changed drastically and done so many times. I use a lot of Plug-ins, and somewhere in the mid 2000s the communication between them stabilized and sped up dramatically to the point that I all but ditched photoshop. Then I switched to an all mac shop, but GIMP's X11 interface on a mac was terrible, so I was back on photoshop. Then, fairly recently, GIMP switched to all native windows on mac, with tons of new windowing and tiling options that feels as responsive as photoshop, so I'm back to 100% GIMP. I'm leaving out a ton of bug fixes and optimizations and new features over the years that were game changing to my processes. It's never stopped getting better. The only software I'd say has improved so much so consistently is OBS.
Lammy 6y ago
Fun fact: the name is a Pulp Fiction reference :) https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ "It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for." It's a shame how so many people these days want to change the name and destroy such an early and enduring example of gay representation in Free Software.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  Eh the gimp scene in that film isn’t a good representation.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Why not? The scene itself is pretty gruesome, sure, but as far as I can tell The Gimp is there willingly :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UyjlaBMcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UyjlaBMcY
- ternaryoperator 6y ago
  From the same article you link to: "And to make the matter clear, the GIMP originally stood for General Image Manipulation Program, but has since been dubbed GNU software by Richard Stallman (with our agreement). Spencer and I decided that GNU Image Manipulation Program is a better usage of the 'G'."
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Any word yet on whether GIMP will be supported on Apple’s M1/silicon platform?
- duskwuff 6y ago
  It barely works on macOS as it stands. The Mac version on their web site hasn't been updated since 2019, it's slow, it doesn't support Retina displays (everything is pixelated, including the image you're editing and the UI), and it doesn't use any native controls (even for OS-specific functionality like file pickers).
- vmception 6y ago
  I hope the answers stays no
vaccinator 6y ago
not sure when I started using it, but I loved it ever since
kradeelav 6y ago
Well I'll be, the software that launched me into design as a career. I remember messing around on it designing (bad) gaming forum banners and trying out wacom tablet styles back in the 00's. Convoluted as hell to somebody barely out of grade school, which well prepared me for how absurd Photoshop is. ;) Kudos to the software for sticking around, and the team for enabling it.
mastazi 6y ago
While I use GIMP all the time, I'm a bit out of the loop regarding its development community. I remember CMYK support was discussed as a future goal in the community a few years ago. Is it still planned? Or it was later abandoned?
- prokoudine 6y ago
  Architecturally, CMYK can be added today. Someone would have to step up and do it.
neolog 6y ago
GIMP's name comes from Pulp Fiction. > It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#cite_note-GG1Jan1997-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#cite_note-GG1Jan1997-6
- bahmboo 6y ago
  My twitter account was suspended until I removed a post with the word gimp in it. It was not an abusive post.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    That sounds like a problem with twitter.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  The only problem with IMP would be the theoretical problem of the icon might look too much like Freebsd. Sounds like a missed opportunity.
- jansan 6y ago
  Did you know that the term for a female Gimp is "Glimpse"? :)
- gilrain 6y ago
  In retrospect it was probably a mistake to choose a name which is either a niche aspect of the BDSM lifestyle or an ableist pejorative. That it was deliberate is even more baffling.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    It's perfect. It's a funky little tool you only take out of the box when you need it for a specific purpose. You use it (with vigor and some cussing because it fights back); get your job done, and shove it back into the box of shame, until the next time you need it. You might love what it does for you but you rarely celebrate the tool itself, preferring instead to delight in the faint tinge of shame. "GIMP" is the perfect name for this software.
egonschiele 6y ago
I have never found GIMP very easy to use but I have respect for anyone that can work with the PSD file format. I wonder which spec they are using today. It seems to become really tough after the 1997 spec.
- PostThisTooFast 6y ago
  Calling Adobe's mess a "spec" really gives it too much credit. Now they've reduced themselves to "breaking" compatibility every couple of months to try to get people to maintain their software lease. Despicable trash.
mattl 6y ago
I love the GIMP. It is not a perfect piece of software but I made a movie with it and I use it every day. I’ve never had a libre alternative suggestion to replace it.
s4ik4t 6y ago
Happy Birthday Gimp!
mushbino 6y ago
Is it possible to contribute to the user experience of GIMP? I've tried GIMP a number of times over the past 20 years and it's just totally illogical, imo. It would be great to have an open source alternative to an Adobe product that was more well thought through.
- pfranz 6y ago
  What about: Glimpse https://glimpse-editor.github.io/ https://glimpse-editor.github.io/ (a GIMP reskin) or Krita https://krita.org/ https://krita.org/ ? I don't believe Photopea https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ is Open Source, but it's a free web-implementation of Photoshop. Photoshop, itself, is rather general purpose, but if you have a more specific need (like digital painting or photo management and retouching) there are other tools better than Photoshop out there.
- kody 6y ago
  As someone who has never used an Adobe product (other than read-only), you get used to it and learn to love it.
- lionkor 6y ago
  I dont know for sure, but I would expect this project to be run like vim - any drastic or useful UX changes lead to you getting told off. But I'm not sure, it could also be that in 25 years nobody ever tried to change the UI/UX.
  - berkes 6y ago
    That is snobbish, disingenuous and quite untrue. Vim community can be very friendly and open. Vim is fully scriptable and there's plugins for literally anything you can think of. Core is conservative, but changes are made, all with backwards compatibility up front. And it comes over as a snobbish, generalised 'look at those nerds, they have no idea how to build software, let alone listen to me who knows exactly how it should be done'. Who hurt you at vim, or in the opensource community that you feel you have to be so haughtily towards them?
hlava 6y ago
well, loosen up the chain a bit and take him for an ice cream
kody 6y ago
The first time I downloaded the GIMP was when I realized that MS Paint wouldn’t cut it for making convincing Runescape “fakes”. I was too chicken to pirate Photoshop but knew that I needed better tools to do what I needed. I went on to use the GIMP to make Runescape forum signatures (proud member of $clan, $skill in woodcutting, etc). That was the first time I had people PMing me, asking me to make something for them. The first time I “sold” anything. A thrill I don’t experience anymore. I went on to use the GIMP to make textures for Morrowind mods, diagrams and design mockups in college, and my wedding invitations. Today I use the GIMP to design software architecture diagrams, mockups, and my D&D battlemaps. I don’t mean to beat the dead Free Software horse, but this tool was indispensable for my creative young self. I’m gonna go give them some money now for the first time in 15 years of using the software. Thanks for sharing this.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  I miss those forum banners a lot. One of those things that you could really make your profile yours.
keyle 6y ago
I just gave it another whirl, maybe first time in 10 years. It's still as shocking, UX wise. I hate Photoshop, I use it very often. It's bloated since before CS1, it's annoying to use, it's DRM rooted with a service running 24/7 on my machine, and it's also very costly. Sadly, there is literally no option nearly as good. Adobe got me by the balls.
- egonschiele 6y ago
  If you're willing to pay for it, the Affinity line and Procreate are both strong contenders. I don't use Photoshop anymore, those tools have replaced it.
  - scarfacedeb 6y ago
    I concur, Affinity Photo is an excellent tool. I forgot about Photoshop a long time ago. I'm still waiting for their Lightroom replacement though. For some reason I just couldn't adapt to Darkroom.
lionkor 6y ago
GIMP gives me really weird vibes every time I use it - Still, I didn't expect to read > Introduced Wilber, a little cute mascot who traveled the world and, admittedly, did some kinky things. They grow up so fast! today.
sudhirkhanger 6y ago
Is there something like Google Photo's Enhance filter in GIMP? It's basically enhances the photo a bit and in most cases it looks good enough for sharing over social media. See suggested edits section - https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6128850?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en&oco=0 https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6128850?co=GENIE.Pl...
ghoomketu 6y ago
I wish there was an easier Gimp, like Paint shop pro 5 easy, because it may be the most powerful tool for image editing yet I've hard a super hard time creating a simple screenshot with a red arrow. Found some stack overflow tutorials to import some stuff that were broken for which I had to go to internet archive. Wasted few hoours, still didn't work, so started looking for alternative solutions. Finally found a tool called shuttr which has an in-built image editor which finally does the job that I want including surprisingly most of my other image editing requirements. I think my fault is when I was using Windows I used Photoshop for everything so I assumed Gimp is the linux version for Photoshop.
- ddeck 6y ago
  >I wish there was an easier Gimp, like Paint shop pro 5 easy, because it may be the most powerful tool for image editing yet I've hard a super hard time creating a simple screenshot with a red arrow. I find Pinta useful for those sorts of tasks. It's open source and supports most platforms. https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/
  - _Microft 6y ago
    "Pinta is a Gtk# clone of Paint.Net 3.0", [0] I knew it looked familiar. It's the toolbar icons. Paint.NET is amazing and exactly what I need most of the time. Too bad that they turned away from open source after people/sites started selling own builds [1]. Going after these people legally might have been preferable from our view but I understand that changing the license might have been both cheaper and actually more feasible. [0] https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.net#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.net#History
throwawaygimp 6y ago
Very long time Gimp user, also photoshop user here. Full credit to all the hard working developers on it over the years. You should be proud of what you created. However. Gimp was always just slightly too good, mature, stable and complete, to justify alternative projects. Gimp IMHO is the reason we don't have a layered raster (& vector) editor in 2020 which can hold a candle to Photoshop. There have been attempts, but Gimp really sucked the wind out of the motivation to do competing OSS projects - for all really good reasons mentioned above. So no criticism of the software it's self here... just sometimes something succesful can stifle competition. I'd love to see more clean sheet 'Photoshop alternatives'.
- prokoudine 6y ago
  The real reason is that making complicated software is hard, and few people have enough motivation to do that. Blaming lack of persistence on other software is a very strange take on dealing with this.
- gpvos 6y ago
  We have Krita now. I don't know much about it, but it seems to be able to do many of the same things.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Krita can do quite a few basic things, and a few advanced things that Gimp can't, but they're really not in the same league. If you're a serious photo editor, Krita is quite lacking, and will always be - they do not intend to be a photo editor.
    - archerx 6y ago
      I rather edit my photos in Krita than suffer through gimp any day.
      - BeetleB 6y ago
        For most photographers, that's the equivalent of "I'd rather have ugly photos than use Gimp." If Krita does what you need, that's fine. But for even basic "serious" photoediting, it's lacking. Krita, as they themselves point out, is a drawing program, not a photo editor.
blt 6y ago
I am glad non-destructive editing is on the roadmap. Hopefully we'll have it within the next 25 years. Photoshop had adjustment layers in 1996.
- berkes 6y ago
  Gimp has adjustment layers. I've used them often. Do I maybe misunderstand you?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Huh? Everything clearly states it doesn't, and that they are planned for version 3.2
    - berkes 6y ago
      I presumed "Adjustment layers" were these: https://imgur.com/dHtKq6Z https://imgur.com/dHtKq6Z
cs02rm0 6y ago
For me it's a case of being the worst open source image editor, except for all the others. The scripts always seem broken, the UI was a mess for a while on a Mac. The multi windowed system was great if the windowing manager expected that sort of thing and terrible otherwise. Ufraw integration seems an awful way of getting to edit raw files and I go years at a time without being able to get it working on a Mac. But it's still my first choice.
- wslack 6y ago
  Yep. It's cantankerous but gosh darn it, the field lacks something better.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Krita.
- prokoudine 6y ago
  Your experience from 10-15 years ago is kinda irrelevant today :) No multiple windows, darktable or RawTherapee rather than UFRaw etc.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Single-Window Mode only became default in 2018 with Gimp 2.10. There are plenty of people around who haven't updated Gimp in that time and have yet to find out about this wonderful feature.
    - prokoudine 6y ago
      It always puts a smile on my face when people see a feature released in 2012 (as an option) and go, like, "wow, you finally did it!" :)
- IshKebab 6y ago
  It's definitely worse than Krita.
heavyset_go 6y ago
GIMP gets what I need done and has for more than a decade. I'd love for it to get a Blender-like focus when it comes to funding and developer time.
warent 6y ago
I used Gimp every so often over the past few years and always loved it... until just about a month ago when I finally tried photoshop for the first time. I really don't like Adobe, but photoshop just blows gimp out of the water. anything you want to do in gimp, you can do in photoshop in a fraction of the time and with higher quality. It makes me feel like I've been unknowingly torturing myself for years
- distances 6y ago
  I have had to work on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. One of the GIMP strengths is that I can just install it and do the small task I need to. No hassle with compatibilities and requesting licenses and whatever. Just get it and go. I'm a developer and my editing needs are very modest. GIMP just feels like the right tool. I've heard lots of praise for Krita too though, should try that out too.
interfixus 6y ago
Always surprising to see the amount of ire that GIMP can reliably call forward in threads like this. I've used the thing privately and professionally for countless projects since 1997. Stuff for websites, photo material for several books, restauration work for museums and photo archives, colorizations, weirdo manipulations and just general fun. Have ventured into other software but always come back to GIMP, very quickly so in the case of Photoshop and its various equally useless Adobe siblings. Yes, GIMP is clunky, and the gradual unclunking mostly seems to happen in geological timeframes, and there's the CMYK problem and the occasional trick which PS does better or smoother. So what? It has gotten the job done. Every time. Thousands of times over nearly 23 years. I raise my virtual paperhat to these dogged, reliable, persistent people. A birthday present will be forthcoming.
- prokoudine 6y ago
  Thank you :)
aspyct 6y ago
Hey, happy birthday GIMP! I've been a user since, oh, 2005 I believe. I've always found the interface easy to use, and I'm really surprised to see so many people complaining about it here. GIMP has always been my go-to tool for simple tasks like cropping, resizing and compressing images. More recently, I started using it for photo post processing (see also RawTherapee), and I couldn't be happier! 25 years is a long time in software terms. Kudos for keeping the project alive and useful this long. Please, keep up the good work :) You know what? I don't think there's any other app I've been using for 15 years.
pengaru 6y ago
The only nice thing I have to say about GIMP's progress since I first started using it back in the 90s as a teen, is that the single window mode was a welcome change. Otherwise I'm generally very frustrated every time I try use it. It wasn't that way in my teens, back then I would happily spend entire evenings noodling around in it making graphics for web pages and demos/games. Nowadays just throwing text on a layer makes me want to throw my laptop. That custom widget is so useless, maybe I should try a newer version as I'm still on 2.8 here.
PostThisTooFast 6y ago
And it still sucks ass.
max_ 6y ago
I have nostalgic memories of using GIMP. It's interesting to learn that we are now age mates
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Slightly O/T but have F/OSS graphic apps gotten worse over time? Sitting in front of Inkscape on Ubuntu 20.04 and the thing crashes, wouldn't display guides, wouldn't snap, is overloaded with controls to leave a poststamp-sized canvas for your actual work on a notebook, has miniscule icons not really helpful for revealing functionality, and even lacks icons for basic actions so you're basically clicking on black borders to hope to get some actions back. Guess I have to manually calculate and edit SVGs when I just wanted to construct really simple tangents and typographic Bezier curves. Or is it Ubuntu 20.04 and gnome which just suck? It has recently improved a little bit at least, but is bordering on the unusable for me. What is the recommendation for a Linux workstation OS that is at least designed to run the precious few graphic apps we have? I used to run FreeBSD in the 2000s, so that is an option, too, in the hope that FreeBSD will priorize support for running actual X11 apps rather than grand plans for tablet UIs from early 2010s left in a state of neither here nor there.
Ice_cream_suit 6y ago
"gimp in British English NOUN slang 1. US and Canadian offensive a physically disabled person, esp one who has difficulty walking 2. a sexual fetishist who likes to be dominated and who dresses in a leather or rubber body suit with mask, zips, and chains Collins English Dictionary. " Gimp badly needs help from people with expertise in UI, UX and naming.
Ice_cream_suit 6y ago
An interesting note : "Spencer Kimball (original co-author of GIMP) is named for his great-grandfather, LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball."
coolhand2120 6y ago
Kid: "I want Photoshop!" Dad: "We already have a Photoshop at home!" Photoshop at home: GIMP And what a great name for this program. We're always looking to replace Photoshop with a non subscription program, and I've tried to use GIMP many times. Every time I remind myself that GIMP is a worthless heap of garbage. For a FOSS program to have such design problems for as long as it has shows that the people in charge of the project are overly opinionated about how THEY think a Photoshop clone should be. GIMP can only be a Photoshop clone. To the extent it is like Photoshop it wins. It is however nothing like Photoshop. They go far out of their way to make it not like Photoshop. Even when every other ANYTHING editing program UX uses the same behaviors, GIMP manages to invent some new totally stupid UX. And I do not use the S word there lightly. It's almost as if they had a meeting to determine what the worst UX was and picked that one. GIMP is an example of how FOSS can fail and be worse than useless to the rest of the open source community. We would likely have some sort of FOSS Photoshop clone if GIMP wasn't there. If there was a worldwide vote to end a single FOSS project, I suspect GIMP would be in the top 5 list.
- arendtio 6y ago
  Respectfully, I have to disagree. Yes, the modern Photoshop is miles away from GIMP, but there was a time when the gap wasn't so large. Given how much money was poured into the development of Photoshop, that should wonder nobody. Developing a software for 25 years is in itself an achievement. As a user I think it developed quite nicely and added cool features every now and then. Calling GIMP 'a worthless heap of garbage' is neither polite nor warranted.
- prokoudine 6y ago
  > They go far out of their way to make it not like Photoshop. That is some serious analytical thinking on your part. Congrats! :D
arendtio 6y ago
I like GIMP. Yes, the user interface has changed a lot over the years, but the underlying principles of how to compose images are still the same. I am no artist, so my requirements might be quite a bit lower than those of the typical Photoshop user, but GIMP is still my tool of choice if it comes to manipulating individual image files. For Vector Graphics I prefer Inkscape and for photos Darktable, but those are just more specialized use cases. Without Gimp my computer would be missing a crucial tool to edit images. Thank you GIMP contributors and congratulations to your 25th anniversary.
awiesenhofer 6y ago
Any Gimp article wouldnt be complete without a list of all the alternatives so here are some Image Manipulation Programs that are not Gimp but also not Photoshop: * Krita (OSS) https://krita.org https://krita.org * Pinta (OSS, Paint.NET Clone) https://www.pinta-project.com https://www.pinta-project.com * Paint.NET (Freeware) https://www.getpaint.net https://www.getpaint.net * Paintshop Pro 4.14 (Last Freeware Version) https://www.pagetutor.com/downloads/psp412.html https://www.pagetutor.com/downloads/psp412.html * Affinity Photo https://affinity.serif.com https://affinity.serif.com Also https://www.photopea.com https://www.photopea.com and https://pixlr.com https://pixlr.com in the browser
- TiredGuy 6y ago
  As an alternative to Gimp's digital painting use case, MyPaint is very much worth mentioning, with an awesome brush engine and spectral color blending: http://mypaint.org/ http://mypaint.org/
enriquto 6y ago
I love GIMP! Never used adobe stuff, so I don't really have anything to compare it to; but I cannot imagine in what sense Photoshop can be much better than that. Still, there are some improvements that I yearn for GIMP that are not likely to ever be considered. Everybody seems so intent to make a tool for dealing with photos and synthetic color images, to the detriment of other kinds of images. For example, in scientific imaging, you would need to deal with floating-point valued pixels, and an arbitrary number of channels (more than 3 or 4). If you work with images coming from microscopy or satellite images, then every pixel typically has a lot of spectral bands that cannot often be reduced naturally to RGB, but you'd still want to map them in an arbitrary way and edit them in GIMP. This is far from being possible today.
kasikp 6y ago
Do you know Photopea.com. Coded over the course of five years by ONE developer, runs in your browser, and it is basically a full-fledged Photoshop (at least for casual users, anyway). Plus it's free (ad-supported) and requires no registration.
nattaylor 6y ago
Can a MacOS packaging expert reading this thread please contribute so that v2.99/3.0 can build?
richardARPANET 6y ago
And it's still terrible to use. If you're on Linux and are looking for a good Photoshop alternative, use https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/. It absolutely blows Gimp out of the water, probably the most impressive tool within a webpage I've ever used.
- theelous3 6y ago
  I really don't understand all of the UI and workflow complaints about gimp. At this point it seems to just be something people parrot because it's the done-thing to do. What specifically would you have issue with? I use gimp and ps 2020 basically interchangeably. The only real preference I have for ps is when I want some of it's smarter and more advanced versions of gimp tooling, or if I'm bringing something in from illustator (inkscape really is horrible).
abstractbarista 6y ago
I love GIMP! Long live the GIMP!
blhack 6y ago
Love gimp, but what has come to drive me nuts about using it is that the icons are now all flat and colorless. It seriously slows down my workflow having to hover over each tool for a few seconds to find out what it actually does. And this comes from somebody who has used the software pretty consistently for 20 years (Fark.com photoshop contests from my teens, woo!). Maybe this is just a mac thing, though? Anyway: congrats on 25 years, GIMP team! Your tool is a joy, and your work is hugely appreciated by me! Great job!
- gbl08ma 6y ago
  The new default icon set drives me nuts as well. Fortunately, you can select other icon sets in the settings.
  - sfink 6y ago
    Thank you! I never thought to look for that option. I've actually reduced my gimp usage because I find myself hovering over ever tool, repeatedly, because the new icons are too cryptic and low-information. I switched back to "Legacy", though "Color" might work as well (they just don't seem as understandable at first glance, though perhaps I'm biased towards the familiar here.)
p0nce 6y ago
No big problems using GIMP here, for the last 15 years. A lot of the tools are genuinely useful.
anewguy9000 6y ago
and its still crap.
oregontechninja 6y ago
I like gimp. I've used it professionaly forever and just use photoshop tutorials to teach myself. I also use "Glimpse" now for work.
durnygbur 6y ago
Until now I have to search for tutorials and follow them for simpliest image processing tasks with Gimp, tasks which are not practical from CLI with ImageMagick. Overall a good job, I guess?
oneearedrabbit 6y ago
Please take this as an opportunity to say Thank you and support the team behind GIMP. No donation is too small: https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/ Congratulation to your 25th anniversary!
diveanon 6y ago
And it still doesn't have a single real vfx / design project to it's name. Gimp is the single real reason people switch back from linux to osx. It's a mediocre replacement for mainstream image processing tooling at best. I tried to make it work in a production setting with over a $1x10^7 in licensing in a competitor driving the transition and it just didn't happen. Stick with you existing pipeline unless you are constrainted by license costs.
rodolphoarruda 6y ago
Cool. I didn't know it was that old. Happy anniversary. I've been using it almost on a daily basis in the last 8 or 9 years.
tempertemp 6y ago
just watch this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9cFpwak9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9cFpwak9c
mackrevinack 6y ago
something I would love to see added to gimp would be a command palette. a lot of the time I know what it is that I'm looking for but it takes so much menu diving to find it. it would be so much quicker to just open up a search box and find it that way
blackrock 6y ago
I tried using GIMP to edit photos, to enhance the colors and lighting. It failed. Miserably. I gave up and bought a 1-year license to Adobe for $100 for Photoshop and Lightroom. This was one of the few times, where I just could not make it work with open source software. GIMP was just maddening to use. And while Photoshop has its own complexity, at least I was sorta able to understand it. Lightroom was an even better workflow oriented version of Photoshop, for specifically color and lighting correction. Sadly, my 1-year license expired. And I couldn’t justify buying the full version for $1000. Since I don’t think the computer I was installing it on, would even last that long.

618 points by constantinum 6y ago

If Gimp development had ceased long ago, something far better would probably have been created by other developers by now. Unfortunately it now serves as a black hole for community effort.

earthboundkid 6y ago

And it doesn’t look a day over 30.

dau 6y ago
they should invite the Blender people over to fix the UI for them :-)
- iamcreasy 6y ago
  I know what you meant, but the Blender UI is still at odds compared to most software out there. Here is an example. One of their UI tenet is no overlapping windows. You change focus between windows by moving your mouse over them - no clicking involved. So, if you press C when 3d viewport is on focus it triggers the circle select tool, but pressing C when the outliner is on focus creates a new collection. But this behavior is not consistent. Sometimes some keys have global binding. For example, Shift Space always runs the animation no matter which window is in focus. And there is no way to know if a key binding needs a focus on a particular window. I find this behavior very odd. Most software have either global key binding, or you explicitly change focus between windows(modes) by click on another (usually overlapping) window.
  - pfranz 6y ago
    I haven't really used Blender (but know Maya, Houdini, Nuke very well). I think "pro" software (a wiggly term) tends to require a non-standard UI (however, I do miss when Photoshop used the base OS' UI). Pro tools end up being a bit of their own window management and filesystem that overlaps with the OS. Their decisions are part of the ergonomics of being productive in the app. I remember when macOS started adding smart folders and other database features to Finder. I was hoping the base OS could do photo management and Photos/Aperture could just do the retouching. The same tooling could replace iTunes. After all, a filesystem is just a very opinionated database, right? In practice I'm not sure how well it would have played out.
    - joubert 6y ago
      Microsoft also worked on WinFS as a new file system based on relational database principles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
      - pfranz 6y ago
        Yeah, it was sad to see all the Longhorn tech get scaled back or dropped.
- fctorial 6y ago
  Blender uses a home grown ui toolkit.
  - Phlogistique 6y ago
    Technically, Gimp too[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#History
- enriquto 6y ago
  > they should invite the Blender people over to fix the UI for them :-) Is this sarcastic? I opened blender once and had a panic attack. Gimp felt usable since the beginning.
  - dau 6y ago
    No, Blenders look&feel used to be questionable in the past but then version 2.80 happened. They have an amazing UI (backend) now and keep improving. What was my personal wow moment as a programmer, was seeing that changing the display scale slider in the app properties does actually update the whole UI tree, cascading, rearranging and collapsing things down in realtime.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      GIMP and Blender were my go-to-examples for why the Bazaar/community-style open source development process doesn't really work for UX-intensive apps. Then Blender 2.80 appeared. Perhaps its UX development process was more Cathedral-like, though?
- archerx 6y ago
  The blind leading the blind :)

ogre_codes 6y ago

Phenomenal. One of my all time favorite pieces of Open Source Software. I used GIMP for years as my goto photo editor before migrating to the Mac.

Lipsey 6y ago
You can still run GIMP on Mac. I do and love it.
- klodolph 6y ago
  You can, but there are lots of better options available.
  - Lipsey 6y ago
    Free and Open source? Please which ones do you recommend?
    - dwiash 6y ago
      Krita. I think it's way better than GIMP
      - 0x4a42 6y ago
        Krita is a painting app comparable to Corel Painter. You can't compare it with GIMP or Photoshop.
        AntiImperialist 6y ago
        Doesn't matter. People have work to do with tools, not list out all the features. If Krita works for the person, there's no reason to use Gimp or Photoshop.
        phkahler 6y ago

shadowprofile77 6y ago

Compared to Photoshop or Lightroom levels of quality editing, it's a bit weak and seems to modify contrast too much when loading images, but I love using it for quick edits of my own photos. Nice, light application and since it's free, hardly can expect some of the deeper quality I've gotten from paid platforms.

dwiize 6y ago

Finally time for a new name?

amiga-workbench 6y ago
There's already a fork for that, and it doesn't appear to have much mindshare.
fortran77 6y ago
Agreed. It's an unfortunate word. There are better choices that wouldn't exclude people.
- mconigliaro 6y ago
  Look everyone, someone is offended! A first for 2020! Someone give this guy an award!
  - fortran77 6y ago
    Why does @dang and Hacker News think it's OK to mock the physically disabled?
    - gimpuser 6y ago
      You are mocking your own ability to critically think. That's all.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      Gimp is a type of of suit commonly used in BDSM circles...
- zingermc 6y ago
  AFAIK it has nothing to do with physical disability. The word has a lot of meanings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimp
  - 6y ago

manaskarekar 6y ago

GIMP has been one of my constantly used software for over 20 years. I recall messing with text effects and some Python-fu. Still use it to this day for all kinds of editing. And it gave us GTK! Congrats.

mongol 6y ago
This deserves to be higher. It spawned GTK, which spawned Gnome and so on. In this way, it is one of the most influential open source software programs around. I recall also that in it's youth, it showed what is possible, it staked out a future. There were not many as advanced GUI programs around like it then, but xv was of course the go-to program in the graphics category.

jes5199 6y ago

GIMP is such a strange tool. I actually have used it, semi-frequently - since the 90s! The overall experience of using it has only changed a little in that time. And it gets the job done. I guess that makes it successful! What else has been so stable? But of all the software I have ever used, GIMP is the most difficult to learn. I memorized a few tutorials, this must have been around Y2K, to do the a couple things. And basically I have never figured out how to do anything else in it. After twenty years. Sometime, more than a decade ago, they made the tool icons both harder to recognize visually more unpredictable in their toolbox layout, and that still slows me down, too. I just can't think of anything else I've had this kind of relationship with - other tools, I either master, or I move on from. GIMP is an odd one.

Lipsey 6y ago
I found it odd coming from tools like Macromedia Fireworks or Coreldraw because I was expecting to add shapes, fill and pan objects in the canvas. But as soon as I grasped the difference between vector based and raster based tools and why layers are important it became easy.
edgyquant 6y ago
Yeah you just described me too. I learned it as GIMPShopPro (a resin for Windows that looked liked photoshop) and when I switched to Linux in 2007ish I learned the basics of normal GIMP and have used it weekly ever since without learning anything new. Never thought about it until now.
darig 6y ago
I've also been using GIMP since the 90s... but I'd say the overall experience has changed drastically and done so many times. I use a lot of Plug-ins, and somewhere in the mid 2000s the communication between them stabilized and sped up dramatically to the point that I all but ditched photoshop. Then I switched to an all mac shop, but GIMP's X11 interface on a mac was terrible, so I was back on photoshop. Then, fairly recently, GIMP switched to all native windows on mac, with tons of new windowing and tiling options that feels as responsive as photoshop, so I'm back to 100% GIMP. I'm leaving out a ton of bug fixes and optimizations and new features over the years that were game changing to my processes. It's never stopped getting better. The only software I'd say has improved so much so consistently is OBS.

Lammy 6y ago

Fun fact: the name is a Pulp Fiction reference :) https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/ "It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for." It's a shame how so many people these days want to change the name and destroy such an early and enduring example of gay representation in Free Software.

edgyquant 6y ago
Eh the gimp scene in that film isn’t a good representation.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Why not? The scene itself is pretty gruesome, sure, but as far as I can tell The Gimp is there willingly :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UyjlaBMcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UyjlaBMcY
ternaryoperator 6y ago
From the same article you link to: "And to make the matter clear, the GIMP originally stood for General Image Manipulation Program, but has since been dubbed GNU software by Richard Stallman (with our agreement). Spencer and I decided that GNU Image Manipulation Program is a better usage of the 'G'."

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Any word yet on whether GIMP will be supported on Apple’s M1/silicon platform?

duskwuff 6y ago
It barely works on macOS as it stands. The Mac version on their web site hasn't been updated since 2019, it's slow, it doesn't support Retina displays (everything is pixelated, including the image you're editing and the UI), and it doesn't use any native controls (even for OS-specific functionality like file pickers).
vmception 6y ago
I hope the answers stays no

vaccinator 6y ago

not sure when I started using it, but I loved it ever since

kradeelav 6y ago

Well I'll be, the software that launched me into design as a career. I remember messing around on it designing (bad) gaming forum banners and trying out wacom tablet styles back in the 00's. Convoluted as hell to somebody barely out of grade school, which well prepared me for how absurd Photoshop is. ;) Kudos to the software for sticking around, and the team for enabling it.

mastazi 6y ago

While I use GIMP all the time, I'm a bit out of the loop regarding its development community. I remember CMYK support was discussed as a future goal in the community a few years ago. Is it still planned? Or it was later abandoned?

prokoudine 6y ago
Architecturally, CMYK can be added today. Someone would have to step up and do it.

neolog 6y ago

GIMP's name comes from Pulp Fiction. > It took us a little while to come up with the name. We knew we wanted an image manipulation program like Photoshop, but the name IMP sounded wrong. We also tossed around XIMP (X Image Manipulation Program) following the rule of when in doubt prefix an X for X11 based programs. At the time, Pulp Fiction was the hot movie and a single word popped into my mind while we were tossing out name ideas. It only took a few more minutes to determine what the 'G' stood for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#cite_note-GG1Jan1997-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP#cite_note-GG1Jan1997-6

bahmboo 6y ago
My twitter account was suspended until I removed a post with the word gimp in it. It was not an abusive post.
- phkahler 6y ago
  That sounds like a problem with twitter.
michaelmrose 6y ago
The only problem with IMP would be the theoretical problem of the icon might look too much like Freebsd. Sounds like a missed opportunity.
jansan 6y ago
Did you know that the term for a female Gimp is "Glimpse"? :)
gilrain 6y ago
In retrospect it was probably a mistake to choose a name which is either a niche aspect of the BDSM lifestyle or an ableist pejorative. That it was deliberate is even more baffling.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  It's perfect. It's a funky little tool you only take out of the box when you need it for a specific purpose. You use it (with vigor and some cussing because it fights back); get your job done, and shove it back into the box of shame, until the next time you need it. You might love what it does for you but you rarely celebrate the tool itself, preferring instead to delight in the faint tinge of shame. "GIMP" is the perfect name for this software.

egonschiele 6y ago

I have never found GIMP very easy to use but I have respect for anyone that can work with the PSD file format. I wonder which spec they are using today. It seems to become really tough after the 1997 spec.

PostThisTooFast 6y ago
Calling Adobe's mess a "spec" really gives it too much credit. Now they've reduced themselves to "breaking" compatibility every couple of months to try to get people to maintain their software lease. Despicable trash.

mattl 6y ago

I love the GIMP. It is not a perfect piece of software but I made a movie with it and I use it every day. I’ve never had a libre alternative suggestion to replace it.

s4ik4t 6y ago

Happy Birthday Gimp!

mushbino 6y ago

Is it possible to contribute to the user experience of GIMP? I've tried GIMP a number of times over the past 20 years and it's just totally illogical, imo. It would be great to have an open source alternative to an Adobe product that was more well thought through.

pfranz 6y ago
What about: Glimpse https://glimpse-editor.github.io/ https://glimpse-editor.github.io/ (a GIMP reskin) or Krita https://krita.org/ https://krita.org/ ? I don't believe Photopea https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ is Open Source, but it's a free web-implementation of Photoshop. Photoshop, itself, is rather general purpose, but if you have a more specific need (like digital painting or photo management and retouching) there are other tools better than Photoshop out there.
kody 6y ago
As someone who has never used an Adobe product (other than read-only), you get used to it and learn to love it.
lionkor 6y ago
I dont know for sure, but I would expect this project to be run like vim - any drastic or useful UX changes lead to you getting told off. But I'm not sure, it could also be that in 25 years nobody ever tried to change the UI/UX.
- berkes 6y ago
  That is snobbish, disingenuous and quite untrue. Vim community can be very friendly and open. Vim is fully scriptable and there's plugins for literally anything you can think of. Core is conservative, but changes are made, all with backwards compatibility up front. And it comes over as a snobbish, generalised 'look at those nerds, they have no idea how to build software, let alone listen to me who knows exactly how it should be done'. Who hurt you at vim, or in the opensource community that you feel you have to be so haughtily towards them?

hlava 6y ago

well, loosen up the chain a bit and take him for an ice cream

kody 6y ago

The first time I downloaded the GIMP was when I realized that MS Paint wouldn’t cut it for making convincing Runescape “fakes”. I was too chicken to pirate Photoshop but knew that I needed better tools to do what I needed. I went on to use the GIMP to make Runescape forum signatures (proud member of $clan, $skill in woodcutting, etc). That was the first time I had people PMing me, asking me to make something for them. The first time I “sold” anything. A thrill I don’t experience anymore. I went on to use the GIMP to make textures for Morrowind mods, diagrams and design mockups in college, and my wedding invitations. Today I use the GIMP to design software architecture diagrams, mockups, and my D&D battlemaps. I don’t mean to beat the dead Free Software horse, but this tool was indispensable for my creative young self. I’m gonna go give them some money now for the first time in 15 years of using the software. Thanks for sharing this.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
I miss those forum banners a lot. One of those things that you could really make your profile yours.

keyle 6y ago

I just gave it another whirl, maybe first time in 10 years. It's still as shocking, UX wise. I hate Photoshop, I use it very often. It's bloated since before CS1, it's annoying to use, it's DRM rooted with a service running 24/7 on my machine, and it's also very costly. Sadly, there is literally no option nearly as good. Adobe got me by the balls.

egonschiele 6y ago
If you're willing to pay for it, the Affinity line and Procreate are both strong contenders. I don't use Photoshop anymore, those tools have replaced it.
- scarfacedeb 6y ago
  I concur, Affinity Photo is an excellent tool. I forgot about Photoshop a long time ago. I'm still waiting for their Lightroom replacement though. For some reason I just couldn't adapt to Darkroom.

lionkor 6y ago

GIMP gives me really weird vibes every time I use it - Still, I didn't expect to read > Introduced Wilber, a little cute mascot who traveled the world and, admittedly, did some kinky things. They grow up so fast! today.

sudhirkhanger 6y ago

Is there something like Google Photo's Enhance filter in GIMP? It's basically enhances the photo a bit and in most cases it looks good enough for sharing over social media. See suggested edits section - https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6128850?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en&oco=0 https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6128850?co=GENIE.Pl...

ghoomketu 6y ago

I wish there was an easier Gimp, like Paint shop pro 5 easy, because it may be the most powerful tool for image editing yet I've hard a super hard time creating a simple screenshot with a red arrow. Found some stack overflow tutorials to import some stuff that were broken for which I had to go to internet archive. Wasted few hoours, still didn't work, so started looking for alternative solutions. Finally found a tool called shuttr which has an in-built image editor which finally does the job that I want including surprisingly most of my other image editing requirements. I think my fault is when I was using Windows I used Photoshop for everything so I assumed Gimp is the linux version for Photoshop.

ddeck 6y ago
>I wish there was an easier Gimp, like Paint shop pro 5 easy, because it may be the most powerful tool for image editing yet I've hard a super hard time creating a simple screenshot with a red arrow. I find Pinta useful for those sorts of tasks. It's open source and supports most platforms. https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/
- _Microft 6y ago
  "Pinta is a Gtk# clone of Paint.Net 3.0", [0] I knew it looked familiar. It's the toolbar icons. Paint.NET is amazing and exactly what I need most of the time. Too bad that they turned away from open source after people/sites started selling own builds [1]. Going after these people legally might have been preferable from our view but I understand that changing the license might have been both cheaper and actually more feasible. [0] https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.net#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.net#History

throwawaygimp 6y ago

Very long time Gimp user, also photoshop user here. Full credit to all the hard working developers on it over the years. You should be proud of what you created. However. Gimp was always just slightly too good, mature, stable and complete, to justify alternative projects. Gimp IMHO is the reason we don't have a layered raster (& vector) editor in 2020 which can hold a candle to Photoshop. There have been attempts, but Gimp really sucked the wind out of the motivation to do competing OSS projects - for all really good reasons mentioned above. So no criticism of the software it's self here... just sometimes something succesful can stifle competition. I'd love to see more clean sheet 'Photoshop alternatives'.

prokoudine 6y ago
The real reason is that making complicated software is hard, and few people have enough motivation to do that. Blaming lack of persistence on other software is a very strange take on dealing with this.
gpvos 6y ago
We have Krita now. I don't know much about it, but it seems to be able to do many of the same things.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  Krita can do quite a few basic things, and a few advanced things that Gimp can't, but they're really not in the same league. If you're a serious photo editor, Krita is quite lacking, and will always be - they do not intend to be a photo editor.
  - archerx 6y ago
    I rather edit my photos in Krita than suffer through gimp any day.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      For most photographers, that's the equivalent of "I'd rather have ugly photos than use Gimp." If Krita does what you need, that's fine. But for even basic "serious" photoediting, it's lacking. Krita, as they themselves point out, is a drawing program, not a photo editor.

blt 6y ago

I am glad non-destructive editing is on the roadmap. Hopefully we'll have it within the next 25 years. Photoshop had adjustment layers in 1996.

berkes 6y ago
Gimp has adjustment layers. I've used them often. Do I maybe misunderstand you?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Huh? Everything clearly states it doesn't, and that they are planned for version 3.2
  - berkes 6y ago
    I presumed "Adjustment layers" were these: https://imgur.com/dHtKq6Z https://imgur.com/dHtKq6Z

cs02rm0 6y ago

For me it's a case of being the worst open source image editor, except for all the others. The scripts always seem broken, the UI was a mess for a while on a Mac. The multi windowed system was great if the windowing manager expected that sort of thing and terrible otherwise. Ufraw integration seems an awful way of getting to edit raw files and I go years at a time without being able to get it working on a Mac. But it's still my first choice.

wslack 6y ago
Yep. It's cantankerous but gosh darn it, the field lacks something better.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Krita.
prokoudine 6y ago
Your experience from 10-15 years ago is kinda irrelevant today :) No multiple windows, darktable or RawTherapee rather than UFRaw etc.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  Single-Window Mode only became default in 2018 with Gimp 2.10. There are plenty of people around who haven't updated Gimp in that time and have yet to find out about this wonderful feature.
  - prokoudine 6y ago
    It always puts a smile on my face when people see a feature released in 2012 (as an option) and go, like, "wow, you finally did it!" :)
IshKebab 6y ago
It's definitely worse than Krita.

heavyset_go 6y ago

GIMP gets what I need done and has for more than a decade. I'd love for it to get a Blender-like focus when it comes to funding and developer time.

warent 6y ago

I used Gimp every so often over the past few years and always loved it... until just about a month ago when I finally tried photoshop for the first time. I really don't like Adobe, but photoshop just blows gimp out of the water. anything you want to do in gimp, you can do in photoshop in a fraction of the time and with higher quality. It makes me feel like I've been unknowingly torturing myself for years

distances 6y ago
I have had to work on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. One of the GIMP strengths is that I can just install it and do the small task I need to. No hassle with compatibilities and requesting licenses and whatever. Just get it and go. I'm a developer and my editing needs are very modest. GIMP just feels like the right tool. I've heard lots of praise for Krita too though, should try that out too.

interfixus 6y ago

Always surprising to see the amount of ire that GIMP can reliably call forward in threads like this. I've used the thing privately and professionally for countless projects since 1997. Stuff for websites, photo material for several books, restauration work for museums and photo archives, colorizations, weirdo manipulations and just general fun. Have ventured into other software but always come back to GIMP, very quickly so in the case of Photoshop and its various equally useless Adobe siblings. Yes, GIMP is clunky, and the gradual unclunking mostly seems to happen in geological timeframes, and there's the CMYK problem and the occasional trick which PS does better or smoother. So what? It has gotten the job done. Every time. Thousands of times over nearly 23 years. I raise my virtual paperhat to these dogged, reliable, persistent people. A birthday present will be forthcoming.

prokoudine 6y ago
Thank you :)

aspyct 6y ago

Hey, happy birthday GIMP! I've been a user since, oh, 2005 I believe. I've always found the interface easy to use, and I'm really surprised to see so many people complaining about it here. GIMP has always been my go-to tool for simple tasks like cropping, resizing and compressing images. More recently, I started using it for photo post processing (see also RawTherapee), and I couldn't be happier! 25 years is a long time in software terms. Kudos for keeping the project alive and useful this long. Please, keep up the good work :) You know what? I don't think there's any other app I've been using for 15 years.

pengaru 6y ago

The only nice thing I have to say about GIMP's progress since I first started using it back in the 90s as a teen, is that the single window mode was a welcome change. Otherwise I'm generally very frustrated every time I try use it. It wasn't that way in my teens, back then I would happily spend entire evenings noodling around in it making graphics for web pages and demos/games. Nowadays just throwing text on a layer makes me want to throw my laptop. That custom widget is so useless, maybe I should try a newer version as I'm still on 2.8 here.

PostThisTooFast 6y ago

And it still sucks ass.

max_ 6y ago

I have nostalgic memories of using GIMP. It's interesting to learn that we are now age mates

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Slightly O/T but have F/OSS graphic apps gotten worse over time? Sitting in front of Inkscape on Ubuntu 20.04 and the thing crashes, wouldn't display guides, wouldn't snap, is overloaded with controls to leave a poststamp-sized canvas for your actual work on a notebook, has miniscule icons not really helpful for revealing functionality, and even lacks icons for basic actions so you're basically clicking on black borders to hope to get some actions back. Guess I have to manually calculate and edit SVGs when I just wanted to construct really simple tangents and typographic Bezier curves. Or is it Ubuntu 20.04 and gnome which just suck? It has recently improved a little bit at least, but is bordering on the unusable for me. What is the recommendation for a Linux workstation OS that is at least designed to run the precious few graphic apps we have? I used to run FreeBSD in the 2000s, so that is an option, too, in the hope that FreeBSD will priorize support for running actual X11 apps rather than grand plans for tablet UIs from early 2010s left in a state of neither here nor there.

Ice_cream_suit 6y ago

"gimp in British English NOUN slang 1. US and Canadian offensive a physically disabled person, esp one who has difficulty walking 2. a sexual fetishist who likes to be dominated and who dresses in a leather or rubber body suit with mask, zips, and chains Collins English Dictionary. " Gimp badly needs help from people with expertise in UI, UX and naming.

Ice_cream_suit 6y ago

An interesting note : "Spencer Kimball (original co-author of GIMP) is named for his great-grandfather, LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball."

coolhand2120 6y ago

Kid: "I want Photoshop!" Dad: "We already have a Photoshop at home!" Photoshop at home: GIMP And what a great name for this program. We're always looking to replace Photoshop with a non subscription program, and I've tried to use GIMP many times. Every time I remind myself that GIMP is a worthless heap of garbage. For a FOSS program to have such design problems for as long as it has shows that the people in charge of the project are overly opinionated about how THEY think a Photoshop clone should be. GIMP can only be a Photoshop clone. To the extent it is like Photoshop it wins. It is however nothing like Photoshop. They go far out of their way to make it not like Photoshop. Even when every other ANYTHING editing program UX uses the same behaviors, GIMP manages to invent some new totally stupid UX. And I do not use the S word there lightly. It's almost as if they had a meeting to determine what the worst UX was and picked that one. GIMP is an example of how FOSS can fail and be worse than useless to the rest of the open source community. We would likely have some sort of FOSS Photoshop clone if GIMP wasn't there. If there was a worldwide vote to end a single FOSS project, I suspect GIMP would be in the top 5 list.

arendtio 6y ago
Respectfully, I have to disagree. Yes, the modern Photoshop is miles away from GIMP, but there was a time when the gap wasn't so large. Given how much money was poured into the development of Photoshop, that should wonder nobody. Developing a software for 25 years is in itself an achievement. As a user I think it developed quite nicely and added cool features every now and then. Calling GIMP 'a worthless heap of garbage' is neither polite nor warranted.
prokoudine 6y ago
> They go far out of their way to make it not like Photoshop. That is some serious analytical thinking on your part. Congrats! :D

arendtio 6y ago

I like GIMP. Yes, the user interface has changed a lot over the years, but the underlying principles of how to compose images are still the same. I am no artist, so my requirements might be quite a bit lower than those of the typical Photoshop user, but GIMP is still my tool of choice if it comes to manipulating individual image files. For Vector Graphics I prefer Inkscape and for photos Darktable, but those are just more specialized use cases. Without Gimp my computer would be missing a crucial tool to edit images. Thank you GIMP contributors and congratulations to your 25th anniversary.

awiesenhofer 6y ago

Any Gimp article wouldnt be complete without a list of all the alternatives so here are some Image Manipulation Programs that are not Gimp but also not Photoshop: * Krita (OSS) https://krita.org https://krita.org * Pinta (OSS, Paint.NET Clone) https://www.pinta-project.com https://www.pinta-project.com * Paint.NET (Freeware) https://www.getpaint.net https://www.getpaint.net * Paintshop Pro 4.14 (Last Freeware Version) https://www.pagetutor.com/downloads/psp412.html https://www.pagetutor.com/downloads/psp412.html * Affinity Photo https://affinity.serif.com https://affinity.serif.com Also https://www.photopea.com https://www.photopea.com and https://pixlr.com https://pixlr.com in the browser

TiredGuy 6y ago
As an alternative to Gimp's digital painting use case, MyPaint is very much worth mentioning, with an awesome brush engine and spectral color blending: http://mypaint.org/ http://mypaint.org/

enriquto 6y ago

I love GIMP! Never used adobe stuff, so I don't really have anything to compare it to; but I cannot imagine in what sense Photoshop can be much better than that. Still, there are some improvements that I yearn for GIMP that are not likely to ever be considered. Everybody seems so intent to make a tool for dealing with photos and synthetic color images, to the detriment of other kinds of images. For example, in scientific imaging, you would need to deal with floating-point valued pixels, and an arbitrary number of channels (more than 3 or 4). If you work with images coming from microscopy or satellite images, then every pixel typically has a lot of spectral bands that cannot often be reduced naturally to RGB, but you'd still want to map them in an arbitrary way and edit them in GIMP. This is far from being possible today.

kasikp 6y ago

Do you know Photopea.com. Coded over the course of five years by ONE developer, runs in your browser, and it is basically a full-fledged Photoshop (at least for casual users, anyway). Plus it's free (ad-supported) and requires no registration.

nattaylor 6y ago

Can a MacOS packaging expert reading this thread please contribute so that v2.99/3.0 can build?

richardARPANET 6y ago

And it's still terrible to use. If you're on Linux and are looking for a good Photoshop alternative, use https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/. It absolutely blows Gimp out of the water, probably the most impressive tool within a webpage I've ever used.

theelous3 6y ago
I really don't understand all of the UI and workflow complaints about gimp. At this point it seems to just be something people parrot because it's the done-thing to do. What specifically would you have issue with? I use gimp and ps 2020 basically interchangeably. The only real preference I have for ps is when I want some of it's smarter and more advanced versions of gimp tooling, or if I'm bringing something in from illustator (inkscape really is horrible).

abstractbarista 6y ago

I love GIMP! Long live the GIMP!

blhack 6y ago

Love gimp, but what has come to drive me nuts about using it is that the icons are now all flat and colorless. It seriously slows down my workflow having to hover over each tool for a few seconds to find out what it actually does. And this comes from somebody who has used the software pretty consistently for 20 years (Fark.com photoshop contests from my teens, woo!). Maybe this is just a mac thing, though? Anyway: congrats on 25 years, GIMP team! Your tool is a joy, and your work is hugely appreciated by me! Great job!

gbl08ma 6y ago
The new default icon set drives me nuts as well. Fortunately, you can select other icon sets in the settings.
- sfink 6y ago
  Thank you! I never thought to look for that option. I've actually reduced my gimp usage because I find myself hovering over ever tool, repeatedly, because the new icons are too cryptic and low-information. I switched back to "Legacy", though "Color" might work as well (they just don't seem as understandable at first glance, though perhaps I'm biased towards the familiar here.)

p0nce 6y ago

No big problems using GIMP here, for the last 15 years. A lot of the tools are genuinely useful.

anewguy9000 6y ago

and its still crap.

oregontechninja 6y ago

I like gimp. I've used it professionaly forever and just use photoshop tutorials to teach myself. I also use "Glimpse" now for work.

durnygbur 6y ago

Until now I have to search for tutorials and follow them for simpliest image processing tasks with Gimp, tasks which are not practical from CLI with ImageMagick. Overall a good job, I guess?

oneearedrabbit 6y ago

Please take this as an opportunity to say Thank you and support the team behind GIMP. No donation is too small: https://www.gimp.org/donating/ https://www.gimp.org/donating/ Congratulation to your 25th anniversary!

diveanon 6y ago

And it still doesn't have a single real vfx / design project to it's name. Gimp is the single real reason people switch back from linux to osx. It's a mediocre replacement for mainstream image processing tooling at best. I tried to make it work in a production setting with over a $1x10^7 in licensing in a competitor driving the transition and it just didn't happen. Stick with you existing pipeline unless you are constrainted by license costs.

rodolphoarruda 6y ago

Cool. I didn't know it was that old. Happy anniversary. I've been using it almost on a daily basis in the last 8 or 9 years.

tempertemp 6y ago

just watch this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9cFpwak9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9cFpwak9c

mackrevinack 6y ago

something I would love to see added to gimp would be a command palette. a lot of the time I know what it is that I'm looking for but it takes so much menu diving to find it. it would be so much quicker to just open up a search box and find it that way

blackrock 6y ago

I tried using GIMP to edit photos, to enhance the colors and lighting. It failed. Miserably. I gave up and bought a 1-year license to Adobe for $100 for Photoshop and Lightroom. This was one of the few times, where I just could not make it work with open source software. GIMP was just maddening to use. And while Photoshop has its own complexity, at least I was sorta able to understand it. Lightroom was an even better workflow oriented version of Photoshop, for specifically color and lighting correction. Sadly, my 1-year license expired. And I couldn’t justify buying the full version for $1000. Since I don’t think the computer I was installing it on, would even last that long.