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Sometimes it feels like people want to keep GIMP unintuitive so as to keep their little club as exclusive as possible. How else would they be able to look down

by emmet 3y ago

Sometimes it feels like people want to keep GIMP unintuitive so as to keep their little club as exclusive as possible. How else would they be able to look down on people and say "well you're just not clever enough to understand it". I'm very happy to see blender fix itself and become so popular as a result. Tons of cool stuff coming out of that community these days.

rightbyte 3y ago
I don't see how catering to the latest UI fads would improve anything. Like, it has to be way better to justify learning a new UI. I might be an outlier but I more or less can't relearn a new UI after it got into muscle memory. It is stuck for ever.
- jdiff 3y ago
  It's not about fads. Good UI is evergreen, even if it looks a little dated. GIMP UI is everbrown. You could dress it up in the latest colors and styles and it'll still be awful to use because the foundation is warped and misshapen.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Honest question. Am I missing something? Is it that bad? I make drawings for posters sometimes with the aim to "look pro" for a local party. I am quite bad at it, but it looks ok. Like, do high level users have different needs? I just fired GIMP up to see if I am missing something and I don't really see what.
    - jdiff 3y ago
      It's less that high level users have specific needs and more that the workflow doesn't exist for high level users to worl efficiently. You see this a lot when you listen to what people actually do with GIMP. They either only use it for small, quick jobs or they'll start with GIMP and migrate to another software when it grows complex. That said, GIMP is lacking in two particular feature areas, its selection tools and its completely non-existent nondestructive editing tools. The transform tools are also a lot less wieldy, and GIMP's text tools, on top of being unwieldy again, have rendering glitches in their antialiasing code that gives everything a green tint on my machines. There's many pain points like that where things are lacking, more difficult to use, or subtly broken. Fine if you don't dive deep, but increasingly frustrating if you do.
      - prokoudine 3y ago
        > GIMP is lacking in ... its selection tools Could you please elaborate? Is this about fast selection of complex and semi-transparent objects (e.g. hair)? > have rendering glitches in their antialiasing code that gives everything a green tint on my machines This is a Cairo issue though. See here and further: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8455#note_1521906 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8455#note_15219...
        jdiff 3y ago
        Yes, hair specifically is understandable but other complex objects are just more finicky to select in GIMP, and using those selection tools has a higher friction. I often find myself fiddling with tool settings in GIMP, and those tool options panels are painful to adjust. Regarding rendering, wherever the issue is in the stack, it's been over a decade and it's killing GIMP's usability for an extremely basic task, regardless of whose fault it is.
        prokoudine 3y ago
        The Paint Select tool in 2.99 was one of the attempts to make selecting objects simple. Unfortunately, it's unfinished and the original developer is no longer active.
blooalien 3y ago
Blender's always been great. Just different. However, it's only been getting better over time, and that thrills me to death, because they didn't kill the things that made it great in the process of improving it. They just made various things better, and added new stuff that made the whole thing overall better.

by emmet 3y ago

rightbyte 3y ago

I don't see how catering to the latest UI fads would improve anything. Like, it has to be way better to justify learning a new UI. I might be an outlier but I more or less can't relearn a new UI after it got into muscle memory. It is stuck for ever.

jdiff 3y ago
It's not about fads. Good UI is evergreen, even if it looks a little dated. GIMP UI is everbrown. You could dress it up in the latest colors and styles and it'll still be awful to use because the foundation is warped and misshapen.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Honest question. Am I missing something? Is it that bad? I make drawings for posters sometimes with the aim to "look pro" for a local party. I am quite bad at it, but it looks ok. Like, do high level users have different needs? I just fired GIMP up to see if I am missing something and I don't really see what.
  - jdiff 3y ago
    It's less that high level users have specific needs and more that the workflow doesn't exist for high level users to worl efficiently. You see this a lot when you listen to what people actually do with GIMP. They either only use it for small, quick jobs or they'll start with GIMP and migrate to another software when it grows complex. That said, GIMP is lacking in two particular feature areas, its selection tools and its completely non-existent nondestructive editing tools. The transform tools are also a lot less wieldy, and GIMP's text tools, on top of being unwieldy again, have rendering glitches in their antialiasing code that gives everything a green tint on my machines. There's many pain points like that where things are lacking, more difficult to use, or subtly broken. Fine if you don't dive deep, but increasingly frustrating if you do.
    - prokoudine 3y ago
      > GIMP is lacking in ... its selection tools Could you please elaborate? Is this about fast selection of complex and semi-transparent objects (e.g. hair)? > have rendering glitches in their antialiasing code that gives everything a green tint on my machines This is a Cairo issue though. See here and further: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8455#note_1521906 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/8455#note_15219...
      - jdiff 3y ago
        Yes, hair specifically is understandable but other complex objects are just more finicky to select in GIMP, and using those selection tools has a higher friction. I often find myself fiddling with tool settings in GIMP, and those tool options panels are painful to adjust. Regarding rendering, wherever the issue is in the stack, it's been over a decade and it's killing GIMP's usability for an extremely basic task, regardless of whose fault it is.
        prokoudine 3y ago
        The Paint Select tool in 2.99 was one of the attempts to make selecting objects simple. Unfortunately, it's unfinished and the original developer is no longer active.

blooalien 3y ago

Blender's always been great. Just different. However, it's only been getting better over time, and that thrills me to death, because they didn't kill the things that made it great in the process of improving it. They just made various things better, and added new stuff that made the whole thing overall better.