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I know many people have strong feelings about GIMP, and I just have to say that I love it. I use it for basic photo editing stuff—I’m not an artist—and it has a
by orev 4y ago
I know many people have strong feelings about GIMP, and I just have to say that I love it. I use it for basic photo editing stuff—I’m not an artist—and it has always done what I needed it to do.
I gave up on comparing it to Photoshop over a decade ago, and by simply accepting it as its own thing (learning how it works and not grumbling about how this/that isn’t how Photoshop does it), it’s really not that difficult to learn. Just like vi (or photoshop) it’s a powerful tool and you need to spend some time to gain competence with it.
- jseliger 4y agoThis is a decades-old comment, but many would like for its name to be changed.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoI didn’t even know that Gimp had a slang definition until this thread. Do you genuinely think this change would help the project? I don’t see how it does anything other than confuse potential users and cause a lot of discussion about something that doesn’t actually improve the functionality itself.
- mch82 4y agoI’m certain renaming GIMP would make a tremendous difference. The name is perceived as offensive & that makes it impossible for people to take seriously, especially in a corporate setting. Edit: As someone who has tried to get people using it because it’s such great software.
- rhaway84773 4y agoI’m also unlikely to recommend it to kids, for example, because googling its name can be risky.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago[dead]
- hulitu 4y agoROTFL. Never heard about this in 20 years. Doing an extended search shows that "gimp" is a kind of latex costume. There are worse things for kids than a latex costume. For example violence.
- adament 4y agoWhen I was a kid and trying to learn LaTeX this happened to me all the time on the library computers. I do not think I have a point, you just made me remember some fun and dreadful moments.
- werid 4y agogimp is not a latex costume google: define gimp > / (ɡɪmp) / noun. US and Canadian offensive, slang a physically disabled person, esp one who is lame. slang a sexual fetishist who likes to be dominated and who dresses in a leather or rubber body suit with mask, zips, and chains. (probably from urban dictionary) see also a real dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gimp https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gimp
- Teever 4y agoSomeone could easily fork it and change nothing but the branding if the name was such a problem. I'm pretty sure that the biggest threat to the adoption of GIMP isn't the name GIMP, it's Adobe doing regular Adobe things.
- antiatheist 4y agohttps://github.com/glimpse-editor/Glimpse https://github.com/glimpse-editor/Glimpse
- chidg 4y agoYep, same experience here. The name is a big problem.
- tastysandwich 4y agoI used it in my high-school multimedia class instead of Photoshop and my (female) teacher never bat an eyelid. I can't imagine many workplaces that would be more prudish than a Catholic school? The biggest obstacle I find is that people are used to Photoshop, and some tools are quite tricky to use (the alignment tool).
- hulitu 4y agoThey should rename it for americans. For the rest of the world it can stay the same.
- letrowekwel 4y agoMaybe in America. I can assure elsewhere nobody has any idea of the offensive meaning.
- crtasm 4y agoWe know what a gimp is, the film Pulp Fiction and the internet exist here :-)
- Gigachad 4y agoI remember I worked in a content creation related company and the director saying “there’s a reason they call it GIMP” I’m not sure a name change would do that much. The tool itself is behind photoshop from 2010 and the gap is growing.
- extr0pian 4y agoI could see it's name as an impedance toward adoption in a corporate environment. The name "GIMP" certainly doesn't inspire confidence in someone who's never heard of it before. GLIMPSE, a fork of GIMP, certainly has a better name.
- password11 4y agoI don't think funny names hinder tool adoption. Photoshop is the standard because it's a better tool than Gimp, although it's non-free. Companies adopted Git. They'll adopt Gimp if it's better than Photoshop.
- rogerclark 4y agoFWIW, "git" doesn't have an insulting meaning to most people in the US. "Git" can mean "go" in some US dialects. I would guess that the average person here has no idea that "git" has any kind of negative connotation. On the other hand, in the US, "gimp" is always either an insult, a derogatory verb, or the open source project.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Gigachad 4y agoGit is pretty universally known as referring to an ignorant and unpleasant person.
- hulitu 4y agoThis is the perfect description for the git command.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- midoridensha 4y ago
- FooBarWidget 4y agoThere is a fork with a rename. Cinepaint. But I don't see it being more popular. Looks like people don't care about the name that much after all.
- dagw 4y agoCinepaint was never general fork of Gimp and was never meant as a competitor or alternative. It was a fork focusing on solving some very domain specific problems that Gimp wasn't focusing on. Most of those features have since been folded back into Gimp.
- xvilka 4y agoThere was a fork called Glimpse - it failed hard. Just name is not enough for a project to prosper - surprisingly, you need also actual developers to code.
- tpoacher 4y agoJust call it GNU IMP. Or by its full name.
- echelon 4y agoGimp is in a tough spot, and it's easy to understand - it's an open source project that has bounced around for decades without strong leadership or corporate investment to pull it forward (cf. Blender). In that time they haven't built non-destructive layers, they haven't improved the UI, and they've kept that stupid kink/ableist name. Image editors in the near future will be 100% AI-first. Gimp is not going to make it.
- themodelplumber 4y agoGIMP can be used for what it is, as op is getting at. There's no need to "make it" to anything. (BTW I used to teach Photoshop at the college level...AI editors and illustrators are Clip Art 2.0, and already have the same smell to them)
- hulitu 4y ago> Image editors in the near future will be 100% AI-first. Gimp is not going to make it. 30 years ago AI was also a big hype. As you can see, after 30 years AI is again the big hype. I presume that in 30 years (if we live that long) we will see again such statements that AI will solve everything.
- WolfOliver 4y agoYes, as stated here: https://linkedrecords.com/which-jobs-are-being-replaced-by-ai-and-is-software-engineering-affected-3133bb27fe79 https://linkedrecords.com/which-jobs-are-being-replaced-by-a...
- happymellon 4y ago3D TVs will be making a comeback first! Or maybe VR?
- echelon 4y agoI don't get why HN feels this way about AI. We're clearly onto something. Scratching the surface. The present day research hasn't even been productized - there's so much the current level of AI can and will improve. And yet research marches forward at blinding pace.