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For those more familiar with GIMP, can you share what you love about it? I'm assuming most people think of it as a "open-source-but-less-good photoshop". Would

For those more familiar with GIMP, can you share what you love about it? I'm assuming most people think of it as a "open-source-but-less-good photoshop". Would like to hear from fans. edit: reading this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25174686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25174686 Also curious about PhotoGIMP, focused on a better UI

ducktective 5y ago
I only use its "auto white balance" feature...I don't know how to do this with imagemagick as good as GIMP.
bloolizard 5y ago
I don't have to pay $15/month.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  This was the issue for me even before the subscription model. I realized that any FOSS I learned could be taught and given to friends and family at no cost. Photoshop Elements can fill that niche too, though paying anything for software is becoming an uphill battle with some demographics.
hitekker 5y ago
I like that it inspired Krita. Those folks really seem to be listening to users; working hard to build highly demanded features without navel-gazing or bike-shedding. For those who haven't seen it before, check https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ out!
- Andrex 5y ago
  I checked it out and could not wrap my head around Krita tbh. It feels very powerful but focused on solving many different problems, of which photo-manipulation is only one of them. I need to take another look and give it another try, I don't think I'm done with Krita yet, but it's not a replacement for Gimp yet (as far as I'm concerned.) There's some beauty in having focus.
  - hallarempt 5y ago
    Photo manipulation is explicitly one of the problems we are not trying to solve with Krita.
    - Andrex 5y ago
      Then I'm not sure why the parent comment is implying otherwise.
      - hallarempt 5y ago
        Well, I cannot look in their mind, but they're not the maintainer of Krita, I am :-). Here's our current vision statement: https://krita.org/en/item/kritas-updated-vision/ https://krita.org/en/item/kritas-updated-vision/
Rd6n6 5y ago
I tried gimp, and still use it sometimes, but switched to affinity photo mostly because the smart select tool was so much better, and the Ux was a lot smoother. Faster too. They are basically the same program in a lot of ways and if I’m on Linux (I dual boot) I do use gimp sometimes still. You will spend some time on YouTube trying to figure out how to do things but there are a lot of good short videos to get you moving On a related note, I used kdenlive (video editing) the other day and it was a really good experience, smoother and faster than a paid editor I used to use
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Kdenlive reached a good enough level of maturity in features and stability. Very nice editor nowadays.
- andrepd 5y ago
  Blender is also very usable as a nonlinear video editor.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mistrial9 5y ago
a clever friend once said it this way, while I was complaining about the GIMP interface. He said "Adobe spent years refining the small details of Photoshop, and GIMP must not copy PS, so therefore all the GIMP interface parts will feel terrible, by default" of course this is humorous oversimplification, but I can't help but think of it every time I really, really need a general editor, open GIMP and immediately start cursing over ordinary thing. source: I wrote the third color paint app for the Mac II thirty years ago while a contractor at Apple Inc.
- mrj 5y ago
  There's no limit on copying from PS, but it wouldn't make sense to trash the current user base to try to acquire those used to PS. Then it would be the Gimp users who feel upset.
- RubyRidgeRandy 5y ago
  Something that others might not be aware of - Gimp could be a lot better by now, but Adobe actually has patents on features that cannot be included into Gimp, including certain UI elements. So there is a limit on what Gimp can do, not because of competency, but because of legality.
  - luegen 5y ago
    Is there by any chance a list of software patents that Adobe or other companies hold that GIMP cannot implement for this reason?
    - prokoudine 5y ago
      There is no such thing because patents have nothing to do with this.
      - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
        Agree, Rubyridge is just flat-out wrong. Check out photo pea for example, UI is remarkably similar to photoshop
chuckdotis 5y ago
I haven't used Photoshop in about decade, but there isn't many reasons why I use it over Photoshop other than it works on Linux, I don't have to pay a subscription fee, it's not as bloated and resource heavy, and it just works. In fact, I'm much more familiar with GIMP than Photoshop. I'm not a designer/illustrator by any means, but the times I've had to edit photos for whatever reason or do bulk conversion, GIMP did the job well and there's a community providing support.
scoopdewoop 5y ago
I've been using GIMP since at least middle school. I learned about color, layers, opacity, paths, etc all from GIMP. It has always been free, available, and it doesn't change too fast. I have used photoshop for advanced features (CMYK halftoning), but that never comes up for me often enough to subscribe. Having learned on GIMP, its super easy to me. I have a hard time understanding what could be better just because I am so used to it.
Andrex 5y ago
After 15 years, I'm just used to it. Gimp was _usable_ before the same-window toggle (introduced about 2010?), but when they added that I stopped looking at competitors tbh. I wish certain things in Gimp weren't so kludgy (mainly basic stuff like dropdowns and dialogs), but Photoshop isn't perfect underneath its slick-looking UI either. That said, I use and kinda adore Premiere, so I'm losing the Adobe "synergy" by not using Photoshop. I still can do everything I want or need to do in Gimp, and I admittedly don't do anything advanced. Paint.NET sufficed for a little while but Gimp hits that great middle ground for me personally between too-simple and too-powerful. Gimp moves so slowly that I personally can't wait for downstream forks like PhotoGIMP to pick up updates, so I've always tried to stick to the latest official stable release. I love reading new updates hit the front of HN, usually means a meaty release. :)
- franga2000 5y ago
  > That said, I use and kinda adore Premiere, so I'm losing the Adobe "synergy" by not using Photoshop. GIMP and Krita getting better is what finally got me to dump the abusive relationship I had with Premiere Pro. Seriously, it has to be the most unpleasant software I've ever used. Like, it's good in theory, but then the most basic things just...don't work?? Dynamic link is cute in theory, but in practice there isn't much of a productivity loss with 1-click exports in both GIMP and Krita. [I cut out like 2 paragraphs of Premiere rant here, but if anyone is curious I'm happy to paste it back. I'm glad if PrPro works for you, but I personally can't stand it anymore]
  - Andrex 5y ago
    I would love to hear your problems with Premiere haha. Definitely agreed on the lack of usefulness for dynamic linking. The most I've put Premiere through its paces was a 23-minute short film. I learned a bit of After Effects for it, and that integration was nice. Not sure if Krita is aiming to replace AE as well, and I imagine that's a much tougher job than just creating a nonlinear editor. I have a lot more problems with AE than Premiere, much of it comes down to Gimp-style UI kludginess.
marcodiego 5y ago
I simply don't know or care if it is better or not than photoshop. I never used photoshop, I can't even compare. All I can say is that it has always been good enough for whatever I needed.
prox 5y ago
It’s good there is a Gimp, but it’s idiosyncratic UI is a real hindrance for me. So Affinity Photo is my go to tool these days.
pvaldes 5y ago
Everything and the pluggins (but Imagemagick is also great).
npteljes 5y ago
I use it mainly because I love FOSS. Looking at what sets it apart technologically, I really like two plugins: Liquid Rescale and Resynthesizer (Heal Selection), the very wide support of formats, including niches like the windows icon format, and the fact that I can use it everywhere legally.
torstenvl 5y ago
I like GIMP. All its features are straightforward and accessible and make sense to me. For this reason, I like it more than Affinity Photo (can't wrap my head around showing or hiding different features based on what "persona" you have active). There are rough edges. The name, for one. The save/export fiasco. One of the transform tools recently became completely broken. But anything I can imagine doing in image manipulation can usually be done in GIMP with a minimum of fuss.
- prokoudine 5y ago
  > One of the transform tools recently became completely broken. Any details much appreciated.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    Cage transform in 2.10 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5267 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5267 I made a separate install of 2.8 for an image where I really needed it. Not the most common tool and not the end of the world, but I think it qualifies as a rough edge.
Qi_ 5y ago
Command Palette is really useful. However, there are some UI quirks with text layers, selecting layers, etc that I never quite got the hang of.
yoz-y 5y ago
I find GIMPs rectangular selection tool amazing. The way it does double duty with crop tool is really well thought out. I haven’t used the software for a long time, preferring Affinity, but I’ve tried all the major image editing programs and selection in none comes near the GIMP’s UX.

ducktective 5y ago

I only use its "auto white balance" feature...I don't know how to do this with imagemagick as good as GIMP.

bloolizard 5y ago

I don't have to pay $15/month.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
This was the issue for me even before the subscription model. I realized that any FOSS I learned could be taught and given to friends and family at no cost. Photoshop Elements can fill that niche too, though paying anything for software is becoming an uphill battle with some demographics.

hitekker 5y ago

I like that it inspired Krita. Those folks really seem to be listening to users; working hard to build highly demanded features without navel-gazing or bike-shedding. For those who haven't seen it before, check https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ out!

Andrex 5y ago
I checked it out and could not wrap my head around Krita tbh. It feels very powerful but focused on solving many different problems, of which photo-manipulation is only one of them. I need to take another look and give it another try, I don't think I'm done with Krita yet, but it's not a replacement for Gimp yet (as far as I'm concerned.) There's some beauty in having focus.
- hallarempt 5y ago
  Photo manipulation is explicitly one of the problems we are not trying to solve with Krita.
  - Andrex 5y ago
    Then I'm not sure why the parent comment is implying otherwise.
    - hallarempt 5y ago
      Well, I cannot look in their mind, but they're not the maintainer of Krita, I am :-). Here's our current vision statement: https://krita.org/en/item/kritas-updated-vision/ https://krita.org/en/item/kritas-updated-vision/

Rd6n6 5y ago

I tried gimp, and still use it sometimes, but switched to affinity photo mostly because the smart select tool was so much better, and the Ux was a lot smoother. Faster too. They are basically the same program in a lot of ways and if I’m on Linux (I dual boot) I do use gimp sometimes still. You will spend some time on YouTube trying to figure out how to do things but there are a lot of good short videos to get you moving On a related note, I used kdenlive (video editing) the other day and it was a really good experience, smoother and faster than a paid editor I used to use

marcodiego 5y ago
Kdenlive reached a good enough level of maturity in features and stability. Very nice editor nowadays.
andrepd 5y ago
Blender is also very usable as a nonlinear video editor.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mistrial9 5y ago

a clever friend once said it this way, while I was complaining about the GIMP interface. He said "Adobe spent years refining the small details of Photoshop, and GIMP must not copy PS, so therefore all the GIMP interface parts will feel terrible, by default" of course this is humorous oversimplification, but I can't help but think of it every time I really, really need a general editor, open GIMP and immediately start cursing over ordinary thing. source: I wrote the third color paint app for the Mac II thirty years ago while a contractor at Apple Inc.

mrj 5y ago
There's no limit on copying from PS, but it wouldn't make sense to trash the current user base to try to acquire those used to PS. Then it would be the Gimp users who feel upset.
RubyRidgeRandy 5y ago
Something that others might not be aware of - Gimp could be a lot better by now, but Adobe actually has patents on features that cannot be included into Gimp, including certain UI elements. So there is a limit on what Gimp can do, not because of competency, but because of legality.
- luegen 5y ago
  Is there by any chance a list of software patents that Adobe or other companies hold that GIMP cannot implement for this reason?
  - prokoudine 5y ago
    There is no such thing because patents have nothing to do with this.
    - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
      Agree, Rubyridge is just flat-out wrong. Check out photo pea for example, UI is remarkably similar to photoshop

chuckdotis 5y ago

I haven't used Photoshop in about decade, but there isn't many reasons why I use it over Photoshop other than it works on Linux, I don't have to pay a subscription fee, it's not as bloated and resource heavy, and it just works. In fact, I'm much more familiar with GIMP than Photoshop. I'm not a designer/illustrator by any means, but the times I've had to edit photos for whatever reason or do bulk conversion, GIMP did the job well and there's a community providing support.

scoopdewoop 5y ago

I've been using GIMP since at least middle school. I learned about color, layers, opacity, paths, etc all from GIMP. It has always been free, available, and it doesn't change too fast. I have used photoshop for advanced features (CMYK halftoning), but that never comes up for me often enough to subscribe. Having learned on GIMP, its super easy to me. I have a hard time understanding what could be better just because I am so used to it.

Andrex 5y ago

After 15 years, I'm just used to it. Gimp was _usable_ before the same-window toggle (introduced about 2010?), but when they added that I stopped looking at competitors tbh. I wish certain things in Gimp weren't so kludgy (mainly basic stuff like dropdowns and dialogs), but Photoshop isn't perfect underneath its slick-looking UI either. That said, I use and kinda adore Premiere, so I'm losing the Adobe "synergy" by not using Photoshop. I still can do everything I want or need to do in Gimp, and I admittedly don't do anything advanced. Paint.NET sufficed for a little while but Gimp hits that great middle ground for me personally between too-simple and too-powerful. Gimp moves so slowly that I personally can't wait for downstream forks like PhotoGIMP to pick up updates, so I've always tried to stick to the latest official stable release. I love reading new updates hit the front of HN, usually means a meaty release. :)

franga2000 5y ago
> That said, I use and kinda adore Premiere, so I'm losing the Adobe "synergy" by not using Photoshop. GIMP and Krita getting better is what finally got me to dump the abusive relationship I had with Premiere Pro. Seriously, it has to be the most unpleasant software I've ever used. Like, it's good in theory, but then the most basic things just...don't work?? Dynamic link is cute in theory, but in practice there isn't much of a productivity loss with 1-click exports in both GIMP and Krita. [I cut out like 2 paragraphs of Premiere rant here, but if anyone is curious I'm happy to paste it back. I'm glad if PrPro works for you, but I personally can't stand it anymore]
- Andrex 5y ago
  I would love to hear your problems with Premiere haha. Definitely agreed on the lack of usefulness for dynamic linking. The most I've put Premiere through its paces was a 23-minute short film. I learned a bit of After Effects for it, and that integration was nice. Not sure if Krita is aiming to replace AE as well, and I imagine that's a much tougher job than just creating a nonlinear editor. I have a lot more problems with AE than Premiere, much of it comes down to Gimp-style UI kludginess.

marcodiego 5y ago

I simply don't know or care if it is better or not than photoshop. I never used photoshop, I can't even compare. All I can say is that it has always been good enough for whatever I needed.

prox 5y ago

It’s good there is a Gimp, but it’s idiosyncratic UI is a real hindrance for me. So Affinity Photo is my go to tool these days.

pvaldes 5y ago

Everything and the pluggins (but Imagemagick is also great).

npteljes 5y ago

I use it mainly because I love FOSS. Looking at what sets it apart technologically, I really like two plugins: Liquid Rescale and Resynthesizer (Heal Selection), the very wide support of formats, including niches like the windows icon format, and the fact that I can use it everywhere legally.

torstenvl 5y ago

I like GIMP. All its features are straightforward and accessible and make sense to me. For this reason, I like it more than Affinity Photo (can't wrap my head around showing or hiding different features based on what "persona" you have active). There are rough edges. The name, for one. The save/export fiasco. One of the transform tools recently became completely broken. But anything I can imagine doing in image manipulation can usually be done in GIMP with a minimum of fuss.

prokoudine 5y ago
> One of the transform tools recently became completely broken. Any details much appreciated.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  Cage transform in 2.10 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5267 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5267 I made a separate install of 2.8 for an image where I really needed it. Not the most common tool and not the end of the world, but I think it qualifies as a rough edge.

Qi_ 5y ago

Command Palette is really useful. However, there are some UI quirks with text layers, selecting layers, etc that I never quite got the hang of.

yoz-y 5y ago

I find GIMPs rectangular selection tool amazing. The way it does double duty with crop tool is really well thought out. I haven’t used the software for a long time, preferring Affinity, but I’ve tried all the major image editing programs and selection in none comes near the GIMP’s UX.