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You’re both right. Zxzax is correct that GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop, so the tool pallet is appropriate for editing photos. The typical workflow is: (1
by mch82 5y ago
You’re both right.
Zxzax is correct that GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop, so the tool pallet is appropriate for editing photos. The typical workflow is: (1) stack layers, (2) mask layers, (4) composite. It’s rare to draw a circle on top of a photo. Usually it’s most efficient to select an area of a photo with a rectangle to isolate it on a layer, then use masking to refine the non-rectangular edge. If your goal is to draw a 2D illustration & work with gradient meshes, then Inkscape is an alternative to Illustrator. Both those programs are for illustrating in 2D and there are purpose-built features for drawing & editing shapes.
That said, GIMP does have real UX issues. For example, the controls and GUI elements don’t scale well to high resolution screens and could be much better on tablets like the Surface. They’re also missing CMYK color space support. But, I always assume they’re waiting for Adobe patents to expire to add those features.
- zxzax 5y agoThe DPI scaling issues should be mostly fixed in GIMP 3. CMYK support is not a UX issue, that is another thing that's missing on the backend. I don't think it has anything to do with patents, the problem is more because of lack of manpower.
- username90 5y agoI've used photoshop, its UX wasn't nearly as bad. Me as a user had a pretty good experience with photoshop, but a really bad experience with gimp. Hence gimp has bad UX and photoshop has ok UX, according to me and most people I've seen. People trying to convince me and the other people that our experience wasn't all that bad with Gimp is the problem here, that attitude ensures Gimp will always have bad user experience.
- zxzax 5y agoJust to clarify, GIMP definitely has issues, and I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. But they are not issues that can be solved with more UX research or what you would typically call "UX work." That's what I think the misunderstanding here is, please don't misinterpret what I'm saying. The UX issues that are there are already known, what's left is to do the (hard) work of fixing it.
- username90 5y agoI'd argue that UX requires a lot of engagement and work by software engineers. Sure it isn't work people with the title of "UX designer" or whatever would do, which is why the UX role is usually bullshit, but it is still work needed to fix the UX. And small developer led teams often refuse to bother to even consider that they have to change anything to fix these things.
- zxzax 5y agoYou are correct that it does, but not every change made by engineers is a UX change. But even if you want to think of it like that, the backend changes still need to happen first in order to get any significant UX change going. >small developer led teams often refuse to bother to even consider that they have to change anything to fix these things. The GIMP developers are aware of this pitfall and want to avoid it, there is even a FAQ entry about it: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-gimps-user-interface-why-cant-you-just-copy-adobe-photoshop https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-gimps-use...
- mch82 5y agoOut of curiosity, what task were you using gimp/photoshop for: (a) edit a photo, (b) draw an illustration, (c) draw a diagram, (d) annotate an image or map?