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What makes your product unique or better than GIMP?

by grumpyautist 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago
Have you looked at it? For me at least, GIMP never worked really stable on my Mac.
- Black101 5y ago
  The Filter menu looks a bit funky to me (edit: in Firefox 87): https://i.imgur.com/S70o2eU.png https://i.imgur.com/S70o2eU.png ... probably one of my addons messing with it but I don't have that problem in GIMP.
  - IvanK_net 5y ago
    Your browser is probably too old, or you use some "exotic" browser extensions
    - Black101 5y ago
      Whatever the reason is, it is not working right and Gimp is, for me.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
himujjal 5y ago
better than a software that doesnt do what users want it to do? a lot of things. Why dont you go and try Photopea. It has achieved so much what Gimp couldnt. Yes, its made for business and its closed source. But considering the number of devs and the number of years spent, Photopea is an excellent replacement for photoshop. I have personally used it for most of the small image editing I needed.
nguyenkien 5y ago
You don't need to install it. It's huge plus for me
matsemann 5y ago
The UX. At least for me familiar with PS that just needs to do quick edits it's very nice.
- dmje 5y ago
  This. The toolbars / tools are basically where PhotoShops' are so you don't have to think terribly hard if you're used to them
nickjj 5y ago
IMO it's general usability. For example a very common thing you might want to do is add text (or any other layer) on top of an image and then center that text / layer either vertically or horizontally relative to the image. In Photopea you create a text layer and then drag it near the middle and it'll show you guidelines when you're close and then snap into the perfect center (either vertically, horizontally or both). It takes like 2 seconds and feels intuitive. In GIMP you have to make sure you switch to the alignment tool which is hidden by default so you need to remember to hit Q to activate it or hover over the move tool and select it but if you hit Q you better make sure you're not in any text input because it'll insert "Q" instead of switching your tool, but since you're adding text chances are you will be so you need to remember to click away. Then you need make sure you click an active area of your text layer and click the align horizontal icon, then you need to click the align vertical icon. Then if you decide you want to change your text you have to repeat this whole process again. Another example is adding a simple stroke (line) around some text or other layer effects that Photoshop has had for over 10+ years. In Photopea, you open up layer styles, pick the stroke option and can tweak the colors and thickness very quickly. After applying the style you can change and move around your text and the styles are applied to it automatically, it feels intuitive to use. In GIMP I spent an hour researching plugins to add this behavior and after picking one it technically works but the user experience is pretty hostile. It creates the stroke as a separate layer so you can't move your text and the stroke together unless you remember to link them, and if you decide to change your text content or size you have to delete the old stroke layer and make a new one. GIMP is really good in terms of what it can do but using it feels like death by a thousand paper cuts because you need to do so many steps to accomplish what feels like basic things that other editors have had for years when it comes to user friendly features. I understand creating a highly polished image editor isn't easy and honestly if I knew their code base I would open a PR for the snap to center guidelines but at this point I have to imagine if they wanted to add that feature it would have been added. From the outside it feels like it hasn't been added because they don't want that feature, but as an end user that makes me wonder why. It's such a useful thing.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  My standard example for "GIMP is unusable" is "try to draw a straight line" which I had to find a tutorial for (you need to hold some magic keys). That said, I struggled with that in Photopea too (not realizing my intended red line was there, just hidden by the blue vector indicator).
CynicusRex 5y ago
Since I come from Photoshop, GIMP always has a way of pissing me off by doing something unexpected or making something trivial needlessly complicated. While I congratulate its developers for not using ads and making it free, it remains a pain to use sometimes. I mainly use it for cropping, resizing, and image blurring, but for anything else I use Photopea. That being said, if I took the time to properly learn to utilize GIMP through tutorials, as I did with Photoshop back in the day, I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion does a 180.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
It works on any machine, including Chromebooks, without installation. I also find it more user friendly (unlike GIMP where I constantly feel like I'm fighting the bad UX instead of actually doing what I came to do), especially if you're used to Photoshop.

What makes your product unique or better than GIMP?

shoto_io 5y ago

Have you looked at it? For me at least, GIMP never worked really stable on my Mac.

Black101 5y ago
The Filter menu looks a bit funky to me (edit: in Firefox 87): https://i.imgur.com/S70o2eU.png https://i.imgur.com/S70o2eU.png ... probably one of my addons messing with it but I don't have that problem in GIMP.
- IvanK_net 5y ago
  Your browser is probably too old, or you use some "exotic" browser extensions
  - Black101 5y ago
    Whatever the reason is, it is not working right and Gimp is, for me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

himujjal 5y ago

better than a software that doesnt do what users want it to do? a lot of things. Why dont you go and try Photopea. It has achieved so much what Gimp couldnt. Yes, its made for business and its closed source. But considering the number of devs and the number of years spent, Photopea is an excellent replacement for photoshop. I have personally used it for most of the small image editing I needed.

nguyenkien 5y ago

You don't need to install it. It's huge plus for me

matsemann 5y ago

The UX. At least for me familiar with PS that just needs to do quick edits it's very nice.

dmje 5y ago
This. The toolbars / tools are basically where PhotoShops' are so you don't have to think terribly hard if you're used to them

nickjj 5y ago

IMO it's general usability. For example a very common thing you might want to do is add text (or any other layer) on top of an image and then center that text / layer either vertically or horizontally relative to the image. In Photopea you create a text layer and then drag it near the middle and it'll show you guidelines when you're close and then snap into the perfect center (either vertically, horizontally or both). It takes like 2 seconds and feels intuitive. In GIMP you have to make sure you switch to the alignment tool which is hidden by default so you need to remember to hit Q to activate it or hover over the move tool and select it but if you hit Q you better make sure you're not in any text input because it'll insert "Q" instead of switching your tool, but since you're adding text chances are you will be so you need to remember to click away. Then you need make sure you click an active area of your text layer and click the align horizontal icon, then you need to click the align vertical icon. Then if you decide you want to change your text you have to repeat this whole process again. Another example is adding a simple stroke (line) around some text or other layer effects that Photoshop has had for over 10+ years. In Photopea, you open up layer styles, pick the stroke option and can tweak the colors and thickness very quickly. After applying the style you can change and move around your text and the styles are applied to it automatically, it feels intuitive to use. In GIMP I spent an hour researching plugins to add this behavior and after picking one it technically works but the user experience is pretty hostile. It creates the stroke as a separate layer so you can't move your text and the stroke together unless you remember to link them, and if you decide to change your text content or size you have to delete the old stroke layer and make a new one. GIMP is really good in terms of what it can do but using it feels like death by a thousand paper cuts because you need to do so many steps to accomplish what feels like basic things that other editors have had for years when it comes to user friendly features. I understand creating a highly polished image editor isn't easy and honestly if I knew their code base I would open a PR for the snap to center guidelines but at this point I have to imagine if they wanted to add that feature it would have been added. From the outside it feels like it hasn't been added because they don't want that feature, but as an end user that makes me wonder why. It's such a useful thing.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
My standard example for "GIMP is unusable" is "try to draw a straight line" which I had to find a tutorial for (you need to hold some magic keys). That said, I struggled with that in Photopea too (not realizing my intended red line was there, just hidden by the blue vector indicator).

CynicusRex 5y ago

Since I come from Photoshop, GIMP always has a way of pissing me off by doing something unexpected or making something trivial needlessly complicated. While I congratulate its developers for not using ads and making it free, it remains a pain to use sometimes. I mainly use it for cropping, resizing, and image blurring, but for anything else I use Photopea. That being said, if I took the time to properly learn to utilize GIMP through tutorials, as I did with Photoshop back in the day, I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion does a 180.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

It works on any machine, including Chromebooks, without installation. I also find it more user friendly (unlike GIMP where I constantly feel like I'm fighting the bad UX instead of actually doing what I came to do), especially if you're used to Photoshop.