I suspect a lot more work went into GIMP, but a) the overhead of many small contributors ate a lot of it, b) the overhead of an ancient code base, having to int

I suspect a lot more work went into GIMP, but a) the overhead of many small contributors ate a lot of it, b) the overhead of an ancient code base, having to interface with OS level GUI libraries etc. ate a lot more c) GIMP got a lot of development for features but not enough UX work. Totally agree that the ads paying the bills is what enabled Photopea to become so good in the end.