4 ms·

Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule. And why won't they change the name? It means not one, but t

Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule. And why won't they change the name? It means not one, but two derogatory things.

cookiengineer 2y ago
Note that this was the case for Blender pre-2.8, too. The issue with any software of this complexity is tech debt. If anything, GIMP should be a big warning sign about what happens if you bet on e.g. a UI framework which moves on without you. GTK's development and release schedule is pretty aggressive, especially with the even releases being stable and the odd releases being unstable (which no other library on the planet decided to do so). A lot of cross platform software decided to a refactor to QT because of that, and I'd argue that the problem lies with upstream GTK and its failed API stability promises along the way. In open source projects, you cannot afford to bet on unstable UI frameworks because you don't have enough time to spend on refactors like this. If every second subminor GTK version breaks your code, it's just not possible to keep up with that. I'm actually impressed that GIMP wasn't fully abandoned because the sheer amount of code that needed to be rewritten is massive.
- bobajeff 2y ago
  Lately, I was thinking that flatpack wouldn't be needed as much for Gnome dev if the libraries were more stable.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bonzini 2y ago
    Personally I use Flatpak for two Electron apps (VSCode and Ferdium) and one GTK+ app that was never had issues with major versions (LibreOffice). GNOME apps in my case are all installed via rpm, so my experience seems to be the opposite. GTK broke API twice in over twenty years (2->3 and 3->4), and you can parallel-install older versions. I have never heard anyone having to install specific minor releases of GTK due to breakages in the application API (theming is a different story).
    - bobajeff 2y ago
      I'm specifically talking about developing gnome apps. The developer documentation for Gnome uses Gnome Builder which installs a flatpack based SDK for you by default. Flatpack, it seems, is the golden path to create Gnome apps.
      - bonzini 2y ago
        That's just because it lets the developer control the distribution of the app without having to find packagers in at least four distros (Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch). Using Flatpak for the GNOME libraries is a design choice for Flatpak itself and applies to KDE apps as well.
- mook 2y ago
  Wasn't GTK originally the GIMP toolkit? It's kind of awkward to say you shouldn't have bet on the thing you created in-house… Of course it's gotten a life of its own since, but that wasn't a thing when GIMP picked it.
  - cookiengineer 2y ago
    GIMP got stuck in the 2.8 branch because of the GTK3 changes back then, which changed a lot in the display tree and structure of the "css graph" (not sure how to describe it properly). I think that was also when they introduced their variants of expandable boxes similar to flexbox, but maybe a dev finds this and can chime in with more details on that. I'd argue that GTK's goal of transforming into something more modern kind of lost GIMP because it was moving too fast. I'm not blaming GTK for that, I get it, and GNOME has its goals and everything. But they're changing technologies so fast that nobody can keep up with it outside their gitlab bubble. Just thinking of the Vala introduction and GIR, for example, makes me think of never wanting to bet on their ecosystem. They are kind of alienating themselves with the not-invented-here syndrom and too many experimental innovations that have similar already adopted counterparts in the language ecosystem.
    - wruza 2y ago
      I was investing big in gtk as my main ui toolkit (writing complex widgets, containers and rendering via “engine” interfaces), but all this 3+ pissed me off quickly. Gnome was, and is, how you lose everyone around except for yourself and that abstract idiot you’re developing for, which is often the same person.
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      Inkscape which in my opinion has an advanced UI like GIMP has adopted GTK3 for a while and is starting to transition to GTK4 ready.
      - cookiengineer 2y ago
        Note that inkscape has around 70-80 part time developers, and even a project this size is reluctant to keep up with GTK. My projects (written by a single part time dev) can never keep up with GTK. So I think you are actually arguing against GTK when it comes to resources necessary to use GTK, without realizing it. Inkscape is a huge development project and most open source projects are way smaller than that, maintained by less than 5 people. I'd also like to point out that GTK4 is older than 6 years by now, and the UI/input flow changes that come with it (breaking old program architectures again).
- Shog9 2y ago
  The extra irony here is that both apps built their own, entirely custom UIs rather than settle for dependencies on existing kits... The big difference with GIMP was that its toolkit was built to be separable from the rest of the app and eventually became its own project, while Blender's is just ... Blender. I suspect if you described the architecture of the two apps without naming them, most devs would predict disaster for the latter. But as you say, it has not worked out this way; indeed, GTK has repeatedly dropped or... gimped... functionality that originally existed to facilitate productive interaction with the GIMP UI (such as fast custom shortcut keys), while Blender's UI remains bespoke and quirky, but also insanely powerful.
stephen_g 2y ago
Coming from Photoshop (but now just an occasional user), I tried it when I was ditching Adobe but just found its interface extremely clunky and annoying to use. I’m on macOS so I ended up trialing and buying Pixelmator Pro. I would have looked at Affinity Photo failing that. Blender’s interface is not super intuitive but I hear once you learn it the UI is good. On the other hand, Gimp felt to me like having a lot of rough edges that would always annoy me.
- thezipcreator 2y ago
  maybe try Krita? I haven't used it much myself but apparently it's good for more than just art.
  - lofaszvanitt 2y ago
    Krita is the same mess.
    - archerx 2y ago
      I’m sorry but Krita is actually usable. I have managed to use Krita successful with many projects while with gimp every project ends in frustration and failure.
      - wruza 2y ago
        Funny, because for my simple but over-mspaint editing needs I still prefer GIMP over Krita (and I hate both, ofc). Krita screams “you are a graphics artist”, which nope I’m not. It’s the same mess to me, only starts even slower and thinks that (x, y) / (w x h) is an irrelevant detail.
      - lofaszvanitt 2y ago
        Usable, but still unintuitive.
- ngcc_hk 2y ago
  Is pixelmator just bought by Apple?
garbagewoman 2y ago
I think you answered your own question
emmanueloga_ 2y ago
This is a great question for which I don't have an answer :-) GIMP was my go-to ever since Paint Shop Pro was acquired by Corel (in 2006 sigh!). Then a few years back I switched fully to Mac and GIMP became borderline unusable, specially at high resolutions. Ever since I'm a bit lost when it comes to picking a new raster graphics editor. Maybe I should try Paint Shop Pro again! The pricing seems to be reasonable.
- theanonymousone 2y ago
  Maybe try Photopea: https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/
winrid 2y ago
Because it sucks. Have you tried to draw an arrow in it? Or add some text to an image and then move the text without figuring out you need to like double click or click hold or whatever to not move the text and instead move the background layer for some reason? Good luck.
- Gualdrapo 2y ago
  I'm chiming on this because as a former GIMP user I don't feel like it "sucks" as a whole but rather that it "sucks" at pretty "basic" stuff, which makes it seem like the whole thing is rubbish. And it sucks at basic things because its devs deliberately wanted it to be like that. Go ask them why you have to do the thing you mentioned or why it is easier to draw a circle in frigging MS Paint than with GIMP without them turning ultradefensive. Yes, it has happened to me - was heavily downvoted at r/linux some years ago (and at Lemmy like a couple weeks ago) only because I mentioned this. GIMP has serious UX flaws its devs are not humble enough to recognize that for some reason and it hurt GIMP so much for so long. It "sucks" not because lack or resourcesz lack of time to work on it or lack of manpower,as they want to frame it - but lack of humbleness from its devs. On the bright side it seems this can be the end of that stupid mentality as they are welcoming new devs and gathered a UI/UX team.
givemeethekeys 2y ago
I used Blender in the early days. It was fast, quick to use, and intuitive once you learned the controls. It made me wonder why other apps couldn't just use Blender's toolkit. I also used Gimp around that time. It was already quite old. Despite all the functionality, it felt clunky and I wondered why they couldn't use Photoshop's UX - Adobe had already spent millions figuring it out for them. My guess is that Blender is an effort by artists who created software to help them, and Gimp is an effort by software engineers who created what they feel is a "good enough" open source alternative.
- Shog9 2y ago
  I don't know which "early days" you're referring to, but I remember these complaints already in the very early '00s. ...and then I tried Photoshop for the first time. It was every bit as clunky, but made up for that by also being sloooooow (at least on whatever OS X PowerPC machines the lab had back then). Couldn't figure out why anyone used it. ...then I watched someone who actually knew how to use it use it. It was still slow, still clunky, but they made that weird UI dance. There are still plenty of apps like that. Particularly when you get into stuff like A/V where no amount of UI glitz will paper over the reality that a few poorly-chosen commands can bring the beefiest machine to its knees. You either spend the time learning how to use the software on its own terms, or suffer.
  - givemeethekeys 2y ago
    Having used Photoshop professionally in the early 00's to late 00's, I don't recall it being slow. I do remember liking Open Office and Gnome a lot - so much so that I switched to Linux on my personal computer - but Gimp was not great. I first used Blender around 2005/2006.
stackghost 2y ago
>Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule. One is part of GNU, and one isn't. Not even being flippant. Being a GNU project brings with it all kinds of political baggage that gets in the way of developing good UI/UX.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  If Blender is what good UI/UX looks like then I'm glad GNU is here to protect us. Blender has the advantage that its commercial competitors are just as bad or worse. GIMP competes with everything from MS Paint to Photoshop so the standards are different. It also helps that Photoshop's bizarre non-standard UI has been taught for decades now. Access to some tools and features is a little better than in the ooen source versions but it's still a remarkably terrible UI for a tool used so commonly.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
Just make it work like PS. Everything is different, non intuitive, a mess. And whenever you sit down and try to work with it you get nervous breakdowns because everything is all over the place. And then you give up and get back to PS. I have a feeling that this new version will have all the same issues.
pjmlp 2y ago
Blender was a commercial product, with an established user base and community that eventually went open source. That is a huge difference.

Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule. And why won't they change the name? It means not one, but two derogatory things.

cookiengineer 2y ago

Note that this was the case for Blender pre-2.8, too. The issue with any software of this complexity is tech debt. If anything, GIMP should be a big warning sign about what happens if you bet on e.g. a UI framework which moves on without you. GTK's development and release schedule is pretty aggressive, especially with the even releases being stable and the odd releases being unstable (which no other library on the planet decided to do so). A lot of cross platform software decided to a refactor to QT because of that, and I'd argue that the problem lies with upstream GTK and its failed API stability promises along the way. In open source projects, you cannot afford to bet on unstable UI frameworks because you don't have enough time to spend on refactors like this. If every second subminor GTK version breaks your code, it's just not possible to keep up with that. I'm actually impressed that GIMP wasn't fully abandoned because the sheer amount of code that needed to be rewritten is massive.

bobajeff 2y ago
Lately, I was thinking that flatpack wouldn't be needed as much for Gnome dev if the libraries were more stable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bonzini 2y ago
  Personally I use Flatpak for two Electron apps (VSCode and Ferdium) and one GTK+ app that was never had issues with major versions (LibreOffice). GNOME apps in my case are all installed via rpm, so my experience seems to be the opposite. GTK broke API twice in over twenty years (2->3 and 3->4), and you can parallel-install older versions. I have never heard anyone having to install specific minor releases of GTK due to breakages in the application API (theming is a different story).
  - bobajeff 2y ago
    I'm specifically talking about developing gnome apps. The developer documentation for Gnome uses Gnome Builder which installs a flatpack based SDK for you by default. Flatpack, it seems, is the golden path to create Gnome apps.
    - bonzini 2y ago
      That's just because it lets the developer control the distribution of the app without having to find packagers in at least four distros (Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, Arch). Using Flatpak for the GNOME libraries is a design choice for Flatpak itself and applies to KDE apps as well.
mook 2y ago
Wasn't GTK originally the GIMP toolkit? It's kind of awkward to say you shouldn't have bet on the thing you created in-house… Of course it's gotten a life of its own since, but that wasn't a thing when GIMP picked it.
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  GIMP got stuck in the 2.8 branch because of the GTK3 changes back then, which changed a lot in the display tree and structure of the "css graph" (not sure how to describe it properly). I think that was also when they introduced their variants of expandable boxes similar to flexbox, but maybe a dev finds this and can chime in with more details on that. I'd argue that GTK's goal of transforming into something more modern kind of lost GIMP because it was moving too fast. I'm not blaming GTK for that, I get it, and GNOME has its goals and everything. But they're changing technologies so fast that nobody can keep up with it outside their gitlab bubble. Just thinking of the Vala introduction and GIR, for example, makes me think of never wanting to bet on their ecosystem. They are kind of alienating themselves with the not-invented-here syndrom and too many experimental innovations that have similar already adopted counterparts in the language ecosystem.
  - wruza 2y ago
    I was investing big in gtk as my main ui toolkit (writing complex widgets, containers and rendering via “engine” interfaces), but all this 3+ pissed me off quickly. Gnome was, and is, how you lose everyone around except for yourself and that abstract idiot you’re developing for, which is often the same person.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    Inkscape which in my opinion has an advanced UI like GIMP has adopted GTK3 for a while and is starting to transition to GTK4 ready.
    - cookiengineer 2y ago
      Note that inkscape has around 70-80 part time developers, and even a project this size is reluctant to keep up with GTK. My projects (written by a single part time dev) can never keep up with GTK. So I think you are actually arguing against GTK when it comes to resources necessary to use GTK, without realizing it. Inkscape is a huge development project and most open source projects are way smaller than that, maintained by less than 5 people. I'd also like to point out that GTK4 is older than 6 years by now, and the UI/input flow changes that come with it (breaking old program architectures again).
Shog9 2y ago
The extra irony here is that both apps built their own, entirely custom UIs rather than settle for dependencies on existing kits... The big difference with GIMP was that its toolkit was built to be separable from the rest of the app and eventually became its own project, while Blender's is just ... Blender. I suspect if you described the architecture of the two apps without naming them, most devs would predict disaster for the latter. But as you say, it has not worked out this way; indeed, GTK has repeatedly dropped or... gimped... functionality that originally existed to facilitate productive interaction with the GIMP UI (such as fast custom shortcut keys), while Blender's UI remains bespoke and quirky, but also insanely powerful.

stephen_g 2y ago

Coming from Photoshop (but now just an occasional user), I tried it when I was ditching Adobe but just found its interface extremely clunky and annoying to use. I’m on macOS so I ended up trialing and buying Pixelmator Pro. I would have looked at Affinity Photo failing that. Blender’s interface is not super intuitive but I hear once you learn it the UI is good. On the other hand, Gimp felt to me like having a lot of rough edges that would always annoy me.

thezipcreator 2y ago
maybe try Krita? I haven't used it much myself but apparently it's good for more than just art.
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago
  Krita is the same mess.
  - archerx 2y ago
    I’m sorry but Krita is actually usable. I have managed to use Krita successful with many projects while with gimp every project ends in frustration and failure.
    - wruza 2y ago
      Funny, because for my simple but over-mspaint editing needs I still prefer GIMP over Krita (and I hate both, ofc). Krita screams “you are a graphics artist”, which nope I’m not. It’s the same mess to me, only starts even slower and thinks that (x, y) / (w x h) is an irrelevant detail.
    - lofaszvanitt 2y ago
      Usable, but still unintuitive.
ngcc_hk 2y ago
Is pixelmator just bought by Apple?

garbagewoman 2y ago

I think you answered your own question

emmanueloga_ 2y ago

This is a great question for which I don't have an answer :-) GIMP was my go-to ever since Paint Shop Pro was acquired by Corel (in 2006 sigh!). Then a few years back I switched fully to Mac and GIMP became borderline unusable, specially at high resolutions. Ever since I'm a bit lost when it comes to picking a new raster graphics editor. Maybe I should try Paint Shop Pro again! The pricing seems to be reasonable.

theanonymousone 2y ago
Maybe try Photopea: https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/

winrid 2y ago

Because it sucks. Have you tried to draw an arrow in it? Or add some text to an image and then move the text without figuring out you need to like double click or click hold or whatever to not move the text and instead move the background layer for some reason? Good luck.

Gualdrapo 2y ago
I'm chiming on this because as a former GIMP user I don't feel like it "sucks" as a whole but rather that it "sucks" at pretty "basic" stuff, which makes it seem like the whole thing is rubbish. And it sucks at basic things because its devs deliberately wanted it to be like that. Go ask them why you have to do the thing you mentioned or why it is easier to draw a circle in frigging MS Paint than with GIMP without them turning ultradefensive. Yes, it has happened to me - was heavily downvoted at r/linux some years ago (and at Lemmy like a couple weeks ago) only because I mentioned this. GIMP has serious UX flaws its devs are not humble enough to recognize that for some reason and it hurt GIMP so much for so long. It "sucks" not because lack or resourcesz lack of time to work on it or lack of manpower,as they want to frame it - but lack of humbleness from its devs. On the bright side it seems this can be the end of that stupid mentality as they are welcoming new devs and gathered a UI/UX team.

givemeethekeys 2y ago

I used Blender in the early days. It was fast, quick to use, and intuitive once you learned the controls. It made me wonder why other apps couldn't just use Blender's toolkit. I also used Gimp around that time. It was already quite old. Despite all the functionality, it felt clunky and I wondered why they couldn't use Photoshop's UX - Adobe had already spent millions figuring it out for them. My guess is that Blender is an effort by artists who created software to help them, and Gimp is an effort by software engineers who created what they feel is a "good enough" open source alternative.

Shog9 2y ago
I don't know which "early days" you're referring to, but I remember these complaints already in the very early '00s. ...and then I tried Photoshop for the first time. It was every bit as clunky, but made up for that by also being sloooooow (at least on whatever OS X PowerPC machines the lab had back then). Couldn't figure out why anyone used it. ...then I watched someone who actually knew how to use it use it. It was still slow, still clunky, but they made that weird UI dance. There are still plenty of apps like that. Particularly when you get into stuff like A/V where no amount of UI glitz will paper over the reality that a few poorly-chosen commands can bring the beefiest machine to its knees. You either spend the time learning how to use the software on its own terms, or suffer.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  Having used Photoshop professionally in the early 00's to late 00's, I don't recall it being slow. I do remember liking Open Office and Gnome a lot - so much so that I switched to Linux on my personal computer - but Gimp was not great. I first used Blender around 2005/2006.

stackghost 2y ago

>Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule. One is part of GNU, and one isn't. Not even being flippant. Being a GNU project brings with it all kinds of political baggage that gets in the way of developing good UI/UX.

jeroenhd 2y ago
If Blender is what good UI/UX looks like then I'm glad GNU is here to protect us. Blender has the advantage that its commercial competitors are just as bad or worse. GIMP competes with everything from MS Paint to Photoshop so the standards are different. It also helps that Photoshop's bizarre non-standard UI has been taught for decades now. Access to some tools and features is a little better than in the ooen source versions but it's still a remarkably terrible UI for a tool used so commonly.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

Just make it work like PS. Everything is different, non intuitive, a mess. And whenever you sit down and try to work with it you get nervous breakdowns because everything is all over the place. And then you give up and get back to PS. I have a feeling that this new version will have all the same issues.

pjmlp 2y ago

Blender was a commercial product, with an established user base and community that eventually went open source. That is a huge difference.