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Ye gods, where do I even begin with this... Vector layers was a 2006 Google Summer of Code project. It was too ambitious, it wasn't completed, whatever good bi

Ye gods, where do I even begin with this... Vector layers was a 2006 Google Summer of Code project. It was too ambitious, it wasn't completed, whatever good bits were done got merged years later so that the code wouldn't be lost completely, and there is still no user interface for any of that. But the sole reason this project was assigned was because people behind GIMP were quite open to having better drawing tools in the program. They just lacked the time and the motivation to work on that. When your program is primarily intended for image manipulation and you have a crapton of requests from users to add image manipulation tools, filters, and whatnot, how else do you prioritize your work? Especially when you program's architecture turns out to be inadequate for complex features and you have to rearchitect and repurpose 800K LOC, not to mention updating it for the next generation of the UI toolkit that is a moving target of its own? For every user complaining about not having shape tools you'll get three complaining about the UI, another two or three complaining about not having non-destructive editing, another two demanding layer styles, then an assorted group of individuals wanting CMYK image mode, LAB image mode, more use of GPU, AI features, more filters, better HiDPI support, and the list goes on. All the while you have essentially one person doing 50% of all work and a small team of people all working on small items. All the while there are free/libre applications like Inkscape that have been providing better drawing tools for years. So I'll ask again: given all that, how else do you prioritize your work?

giantrobot 4y ago
This just backs up the point the great grand parent comment made: GIMP just barely has feature parity with Photoshop 3 and even then lacks features that were in PS3. As a project GIMP is impressive and the devs do good work. Unfortunately for many end users it's useless because it lacks particular features.
- prokoudine 4y ago
  > This just backs up the point the great grand parent comment made: GIMP just barely has feature parity with Photoshop 3 and even then lacks features that were in PS3. CMYK image mode being pretty much the only missing feature from Photoshop 3.0? I think people tend to forget all the hoops they had to jump through years ago. Do you remember how you couldn't edit text layers until version 4.0 or 5.0? Or how most filters and some selection tools didn't work in 32-bit mode until fairly far in the CS release series?
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    I distinctly and fondly remember Photoshop 4 and 5 coming out and the features they added. I used Photoshop pretty heavily from 2.5 through 7. I still use my old-ass copy of 7 for Windows today because it's got features other editors lack and I am really familiar with the UI. I don't forget having to jump through hoops in Photoshop 3. But I had to jump through fewer in 4 and pretty much none in 5 and onwards. So GIMP not having CMYK, or any color space support besides RGB, is actually sort of amusing. Just through version 7 Photoshop added vector shapes, history brush, adjustment layers, and a bunch of other stuff GIMP still lacks. It's an FOSS project so it's not like I'm saying the GIMP developers are bad, they clearly are quite talented. What I'm saying is GIMP today is not as capable as Photoshop from 25 years ago. It's good enough for a lot of people but useless for others. I've been hearing your arguments about GIMP for as long as it has existed. It has a lot of capability and works for your use case so that must mean it just works for everyone. It's great that it works for some people. But you can't pretend Photoshop hasn't improved faster than GIMP. If you need anything beyond basic destructive editing GIMP is just not appropriate.
    - prokoudine 4y ago
      > It has a lot of capability and works for your use case so that must mean it just works for everyone. Must it mean that? Really? I had no idea! :) > But you can't pretend Photoshop hasn't improved faster than GIMP. That's not what I'm doing here :)
blkhawk 4y ago
Good to hear that its not pure hard-headedness that caused this. Sure, but when I look at the development of image editing tools in the 90ies then vector shapes and layer pretty much was widespread by 1998. If I were to guess then the functionality just came with support for TT Fonts and became a standard feature for image manipulation applications. Again I tried really hard to make GIMP work for me - I still found myself hunting for the right tool icon time and time again (I think something is fundamentally wrong there but I cannot with certainty say what) This might be where the UI criticism comes from. I bet you would learn the symbols in the end and . I still got so annoyed by the save function insisting to save as some weird format I didn't want to use that I had to patch that out. But then in the end what killed it for me was the vector lines thing.

giantrobot 4y ago

This just backs up the point the great grand parent comment made: GIMP just barely has feature parity with Photoshop 3 and even then lacks features that were in PS3. As a project GIMP is impressive and the devs do good work. Unfortunately for many end users it's useless because it lacks particular features.

prokoudine 4y ago
> This just backs up the point the great grand parent comment made: GIMP just barely has feature parity with Photoshop 3 and even then lacks features that were in PS3. CMYK image mode being pretty much the only missing feature from Photoshop 3.0? I think people tend to forget all the hoops they had to jump through years ago. Do you remember how you couldn't edit text layers until version 4.0 or 5.0? Or how most filters and some selection tools didn't work in 32-bit mode until fairly far in the CS release series?
- giantrobot 4y ago
  I distinctly and fondly remember Photoshop 4 and 5 coming out and the features they added. I used Photoshop pretty heavily from 2.5 through 7. I still use my old-ass copy of 7 for Windows today because it's got features other editors lack and I am really familiar with the UI. I don't forget having to jump through hoops in Photoshop 3. But I had to jump through fewer in 4 and pretty much none in 5 and onwards. So GIMP not having CMYK, or any color space support besides RGB, is actually sort of amusing. Just through version 7 Photoshop added vector shapes, history brush, adjustment layers, and a bunch of other stuff GIMP still lacks. It's an FOSS project so it's not like I'm saying the GIMP developers are bad, they clearly are quite talented. What I'm saying is GIMP today is not as capable as Photoshop from 25 years ago. It's good enough for a lot of people but useless for others. I've been hearing your arguments about GIMP for as long as it has existed. It has a lot of capability and works for your use case so that must mean it just works for everyone. It's great that it works for some people. But you can't pretend Photoshop hasn't improved faster than GIMP. If you need anything beyond basic destructive editing GIMP is just not appropriate.
  - prokoudine 4y ago
    > It has a lot of capability and works for your use case so that must mean it just works for everyone. Must it mean that? Really? I had no idea! :) > But you can't pretend Photoshop hasn't improved faster than GIMP. That's not what I'm doing here :)

blkhawk 4y ago

Good to hear that its not pure hard-headedness that caused this. Sure, but when I look at the development of image editing tools in the 90ies then vector shapes and layer pretty much was widespread by 1998. If I were to guess then the functionality just came with support for TT Fonts and became a standard feature for image manipulation applications. Again I tried really hard to make GIMP work for me - I still found myself hunting for the right tool icon time and time again (I think something is fundamentally wrong there but I cannot with certainty say what) This might be where the UI criticism comes from. I bet you would learn the symbols in the end and . I still got so annoyed by the save function insisting to save as some weird format I didn't want to use that I had to patch that out. But then in the end what killed it for me was the vector lines thing.