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I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources
by shawnz 6y ago
I would say the GIMP team does understand that and they often put a high focus on UI improvements on their roadmaps. I suppose they just have limited resources to work with.
- open0 6y agoI find the UI of recent versions of GIMP to be very nice for the simple image editing / processing that I do.
- mort96 6y agoOne thing I don't understand is the move to monochrome icons. I'm really bloody good at recognizing shape+color combinations; the old icons were ugly, but I was able to find the tool I wanted in an instant. After the redesign of the icon pack, I always find myself slowly iterating through every icon in the toolbox to try to find the particular abstract monochrome shape I want. I think a redesign of the icons was necessary, because the old ones don't look amazing. But you can make tasteful icons which are also colorful and recognizable. (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
- augustk 6y agoYou can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.
- mort96 6y agoI know. You might've missed this part: > (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)
- augustk 6y agoI agree, for me it wasn't obvious that the icon theme can be changed.
- shawnz 6y agoI agree the monochrome icons have significant disadvantages. Visual Studio a few years ago made the same attempt at having monochrome icons and there was such pushback that they eventually moved to the current scheme of "monochrome with a splash of colour", which I think is way better. That said, Photoshop also uses monochrome icons and it can help in some ways to avoid distracting from the image which you are working on. I am not sure what the best compromise would be.
- mackrevinack 6y agoi think it would help if they were mostly a vertical list as well. the way they are now you are having to scan left to right but also moving downward as well. even 2 side by side like photoshop does is better since you can mostly just scan downwards
- aasasd 6y agoFranky the new icons are just not too good either. It's possible to have monochrome icons that are memorable and easily recognized—but GIMP's icons aren't that.
- benjaminjackman 6y agoI really just wish GIMP (and Audacity now that I think about it) had a command palette, where I could type in the name of anything found in the menu or assigned to a keyboard shortcut. I don’t use both of them a lot so all of my time is spent search menus for what I am trying to do.
- xahrepap 6y agoIf you press the ‘/‘ key you can search the menus. Very useful. I use it all the time now :)
- benjaminjackman 6y agoThis looks to be exactly what I was looking for thank you!
- mackrevinack 6y agooh my god that's amazing. can't believe I'm only finding out about this feature now
- chronogram 6y agoIf you’re using the applications on Linux you can use HUDs like https://github.com/hardpixel/gnome-hud https://github.com/hardpixel/gnome-hud
- aasasd 6y ago
- robenkleene 6y agoAnyone care to chime in about why Blender seems to have the resources for this kind of work but the GIMP doesn’t? I know Blender has a lot of corporate sponsorship, so I think the explanation is there’s a “commoditize your complements” effect going on. But does anyone have a more specific hypothesis? E.g., why does Blender have so many complements and the GIMP so few?
- TonyTrapp 6y agoMaybe because there are relatively fewer options for free modeling software, compared to the tons of free 2D graphics programs one can choose from? Putting money into Blender helps those companies getting rid of buggy, expensive 3D software. For 2D graphics, they already have plenty of options.
- robenkleene 6y agoCurious what other free options you mean? Krita, I’m guessing? Other options for raster graphics?
- MikeTheGreat 6y agoI was able to use Paint.Net in place of GIMP. Paint.Net is Windows-only but it handled pretty much all my raster image editing needs and unlike GIMP I can actually remember how to use it despite only using it every couple of months.
- TonyTrapp 6y agoI didn't just mean free options. There are still many other acceptably-priced and acceptably-licensed graphics programs besides PhotoShop. These may still be more acceptable than buying into the PhotoShop ecosystem. With 3D software, it's not so simple.
- SirSourdough 6y agoI’m not hugely involved in this space so this is just speculation, but my impression is that Blender is relied on by companies more than GIMP. It seems like Photoshop still dominates the space GIMP occupies. So there’s probably just a lot more money being funneled into Blender because a lot more profit depends on it.