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I've found the people who have the biggest problem with GIMP are the ones that have expectations that come from using other image editors.

spoiler 3y ago
What's wrong with learning from other software in the domain? Especially from ones that the whole industry endorses? I don't mean to be rude to the work done to make Gimp, but the harsh truth is that Gimp's UX has been a joke for over a decade
tambourine_man 3y ago
Perhaps because there’s an editor that’s been the industry standard for 30+ years.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Who cares about 30+ years at this point? It could be great back then, but right now it’s awful, especially if compared to Pixelmator Pro.
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    I like Pixelmator for multiple reasons, but it’s a toy next to Photoshop. And so is everything else. There’s simply no competition, unfortunately.
    - walteweiss 3y ago
      What do you mean? In which use case? I use Pixelmator Pro exclusively for years now, and I don’t need Photoshop, it’s just an abomination to me.
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        For professional image editing. Printing, advanced retouching, photomontage, etc. If you just need to crop, erase a pimple or a coke can on the floor, basically anything will do. Pixelmator doesn’t even support CMYK editing, it only exports in it. It’s not even in the convention for serious image workflow.
kookamamie 3y ago
> expectations that come from using other image editors Or have expectations that...make sense? The way GIMP represents layers is unintuitive, at best. There are some de-facto tools (Adobe Photoshop, etc.) that have paved the way for intuitive UX in this space - no need to re-invent the wheel in areas that are well-established by now.
- mmis1000 3y ago
  Even editor like photoimpact which appears about 20 years ago works almost the same way about the draw layer. You just draw anywhere on the whole canvas, that's it. And if you want something that has specific size and resizable and can be placed out of canvas. Use object instead. Why would gimp even resist to make draw layer that have specific size at first place?
i_am_jl 3y ago
Giving someone a nail gun makes them question why they've been banging nails into wood with their forehead for so long.
Joeboy 3y ago
Do you know people who do professional level image editing in GIMP and have never used another image editor?
brnaftr361 3y ago
Homogenizing expected behavior is a pretty good idea, it allows open source software to compete at a commodity level instead of a principle or fundamentals level - which considering the open source position would make a pretty good deal of sense as quite a lot of it is free, e.g. GIMP, Inkscape... Hypothetically if GIMP just copied the photoshop UI and expected behavior a lot of tutorials for PS translate directly making GIMP accessible, which ultimately plays to the favor of GIMP as it is more accessible in that it's open source, free, and doesn't require subscription or accounting. Also since GIMP is decentralized and volunteer-ran it'd be interesting to see exactly what Adobe would do about it, if they could even do anything. Something else that would be nice to see from the open source community would be standardization in the control schema across software. For instance I use Blender a lot, but I also use Inkscape, and jumping between the two is... Less than pleasant because there's a pretty significant amount of overlap, but none of it is able to be homogeneous as there is some hard coding that a keymap alone doesn't allow for convergence.
- pennomi 3y ago
  As a concrete example, when Blender finally made left click the default selection button (in harmony with virtually every other 3D software out there) it made the learning burden much, much easier for new users to shoulder. This, combined with many other UX improvements have made Blender possibly the most popular 3D software out there today, instead of the weird choice.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Almost every program, not just 3D. In fact 3D apps are more likely to be custom instead of standards based.
- Gormo 3y ago
  > Homogenizing expected behavior is a pretty good idea, it allows open source software to compete at a commodity level instead of a principle or fundamentals level That applies if your only goal is to create FOSS software that competes head-on with proprietary applications, so that being FOSS is the only differentiator. But obviously, this isn't always applicable as a general principle. If you want to enable new functionality and support new use cases, where there are a variety of approaches or trade-offs, and conventions aren't well-established yet, you probably shouldn't presumptively conform to an a priori monoculture. > Less than pleasant because there's a pretty significant amount of overlap, but none of it is able to be homogeneous as there is some hard coding that a keymap alone doesn't allow for convergence. This is a great counter-example, where adhering to well-established conventions for problems that are already solved is advisable. There's been a lot of divergence in UI design recently, with lots of applications moving away from decades-old standards for purely aesthetic reasons, and creating huge usability regressions in the process.
drivingmenuts 3y ago
You want me to use a Unimog to haul groceries, when a Rabbit will do just fine?
rkachowski 3y ago
people who have experience using image editors will have the biggest problems with GIMP?
- walteweiss 3y ago
  I can confirm, the first focus of Gimp must be the UX (which could be just cloned at this point), and the rest is not so bad to my liking. Right now Gimp is just unusable for anything serious.
bemusedthrow75 3y ago
From using _all_ other image editors, you mean. And that is the problem. People who have learned tools from what is now an established, multi-editor, digital medium, find they can't do what they wish to do. I suspect very few even try to make this jump anymore. GIMP still requires artists to think about and develop their workflow in the sequence that works best for GIMP. Waving them away like this is a mind trick that the GIMP community should simply ban outright; it's devastating. (Unless you mean this satirically and it's just gone over my head)
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  I learned on paint shop pro and never had substantial problems with gimp.
kstrauser 3y ago
I’ve used Photoshop for like an hour total in my life. I have no ingrained love for it whatsoever. I’ve used GIMP quite a lot over the years, and I’m used to it. Mac is blessed with several fantastic image apps. After using Pixelmator Pro for 5 minutes, I bought it. It does all the things I’ve wanted in GIMP, but I can figure out how to use it without hitting Google. For example, can a mortal draw a circle with GIMP now? Up through the last time I used it, you had to select an ellipse (and hold down ctrl or something to constrain that ellipse to a circle), then stroke it as a path. In other apps, you choose the shape tool, and plop down a circle. While it could be that there was some esoteric case where GIMP’s weird process was nifty, it was markedly worse than everything else in the 99.9% of cases where you just wanted a circle. For me, it was never that it wasn’t a Photoshop clone. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s that it was almost deliberately obtuse in ways that no alternatives were.

spoiler 3y ago

What's wrong with learning from other software in the domain? Especially from ones that the whole industry endorses? I don't mean to be rude to the work done to make Gimp, but the harsh truth is that Gimp's UX has been a joke for over a decade

tambourine_man 3y ago

Perhaps because there’s an editor that’s been the industry standard for 30+ years.

walteweiss 3y ago
Who cares about 30+ years at this point? It could be great back then, but right now it’s awful, especially if compared to Pixelmator Pro.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  I like Pixelmator for multiple reasons, but it’s a toy next to Photoshop. And so is everything else. There’s simply no competition, unfortunately.
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    What do you mean? In which use case? I use Pixelmator Pro exclusively for years now, and I don’t need Photoshop, it’s just an abomination to me.
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      For professional image editing. Printing, advanced retouching, photomontage, etc. If you just need to crop, erase a pimple or a coke can on the floor, basically anything will do. Pixelmator doesn’t even support CMYK editing, it only exports in it. It’s not even in the convention for serious image workflow.

kookamamie 3y ago

> expectations that come from using other image editors Or have expectations that...make sense? The way GIMP represents layers is unintuitive, at best. There are some de-facto tools (Adobe Photoshop, etc.) that have paved the way for intuitive UX in this space - no need to re-invent the wheel in areas that are well-established by now.

mmis1000 3y ago
Even editor like photoimpact which appears about 20 years ago works almost the same way about the draw layer. You just draw anywhere on the whole canvas, that's it. And if you want something that has specific size and resizable and can be placed out of canvas. Use object instead. Why would gimp even resist to make draw layer that have specific size at first place?

i_am_jl 3y ago

Giving someone a nail gun makes them question why they've been banging nails into wood with their forehead for so long.

Joeboy 3y ago

Do you know people who do professional level image editing in GIMP and have never used another image editor?

brnaftr361 3y ago

Homogenizing expected behavior is a pretty good idea, it allows open source software to compete at a commodity level instead of a principle or fundamentals level - which considering the open source position would make a pretty good deal of sense as quite a lot of it is free, e.g. GIMP, Inkscape... Hypothetically if GIMP just copied the photoshop UI and expected behavior a lot of tutorials for PS translate directly making GIMP accessible, which ultimately plays to the favor of GIMP as it is more accessible in that it's open source, free, and doesn't require subscription or accounting. Also since GIMP is decentralized and volunteer-ran it'd be interesting to see exactly what Adobe would do about it, if they could even do anything. Something else that would be nice to see from the open source community would be standardization in the control schema across software. For instance I use Blender a lot, but I also use Inkscape, and jumping between the two is... Less than pleasant because there's a pretty significant amount of overlap, but none of it is able to be homogeneous as there is some hard coding that a keymap alone doesn't allow for convergence.

pennomi 3y ago
As a concrete example, when Blender finally made left click the default selection button (in harmony with virtually every other 3D software out there) it made the learning burden much, much easier for new users to shoulder. This, combined with many other UX improvements have made Blender possibly the most popular 3D software out there today, instead of the weird choice.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Almost every program, not just 3D. In fact 3D apps are more likely to be custom instead of standards based.
Gormo 3y ago
> Homogenizing expected behavior is a pretty good idea, it allows open source software to compete at a commodity level instead of a principle or fundamentals level That applies if your only goal is to create FOSS software that competes head-on with proprietary applications, so that being FOSS is the only differentiator. But obviously, this isn't always applicable as a general principle. If you want to enable new functionality and support new use cases, where there are a variety of approaches or trade-offs, and conventions aren't well-established yet, you probably shouldn't presumptively conform to an a priori monoculture. > Less than pleasant because there's a pretty significant amount of overlap, but none of it is able to be homogeneous as there is some hard coding that a keymap alone doesn't allow for convergence. This is a great counter-example, where adhering to well-established conventions for problems that are already solved is advisable. There's been a lot of divergence in UI design recently, with lots of applications moving away from decades-old standards for purely aesthetic reasons, and creating huge usability regressions in the process.

drivingmenuts 3y ago

You want me to use a Unimog to haul groceries, when a Rabbit will do just fine?

rkachowski 3y ago

people who have experience using image editors will have the biggest problems with GIMP?

walteweiss 3y ago
I can confirm, the first focus of Gimp must be the UX (which could be just cloned at this point), and the rest is not so bad to my liking. Right now Gimp is just unusable for anything serious.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

From using _all_ other image editors, you mean. And that is the problem. People who have learned tools from what is now an established, multi-editor, digital medium, find they can't do what they wish to do. I suspect very few even try to make this jump anymore. GIMP still requires artists to think about and develop their workflow in the sequence that works best for GIMP. Waving them away like this is a mind trick that the GIMP community should simply ban outright; it's devastating. (Unless you mean this satirically and it's just gone over my head)

mixmastamyk 3y ago
I learned on paint shop pro and never had substantial problems with gimp.

kstrauser 3y ago

I’ve used Photoshop for like an hour total in my life. I have no ingrained love for it whatsoever. I’ve used GIMP quite a lot over the years, and I’m used to it. Mac is blessed with several fantastic image apps. After using Pixelmator Pro for 5 minutes, I bought it. It does all the things I’ve wanted in GIMP, but I can figure out how to use it without hitting Google. For example, can a mortal draw a circle with GIMP now? Up through the last time I used it, you had to select an ellipse (and hold down ctrl or something to constrain that ellipse to a circle), then stroke it as a path. In other apps, you choose the shape tool, and plop down a circle. While it could be that there was some esoteric case where GIMP’s weird process was nifty, it was markedly worse than everything else in the 99.9% of cases where you just wanted a circle. For me, it was never that it wasn’t a Photoshop clone. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s that it was almost deliberately obtuse in ways that no alternatives were.