7 ms·

Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users

198 points by SockThief 5mo ago

lthi747 5mo ago
GIMP is the only program that I miss when switched from linux to mac. And GIMP 2.2 was just a perfect for my needs back then
- ibejoeb 5mo ago
  There's a mac build for GIMP: https://download.gimp.org/gimp/v3.2/macos/gimp-3.2.4-arm64.dmg https://download.gimp.org/gimp/v3.2/macos/gimp-3.2.4-arm64.d...
- faangguyindia 5mo ago
  Wait what? i've been using gimp on mac without issues.
- lthi747 5mo ago
  Yes there are but is just not the same, controls are quite non intuitive, I often got glitches on rendering, so overall UX for me is pretty bad
  - Mashimo 5mo ago
    > so overall UX for me is pretty bad That's just normal gimp
- lynndotpy 5mo ago
  You might be happy to learn that GIMP is a lot better on Mac with the 3.0 release than it was before. When I started using a Mac in 2022 I was a bit heartbroken at broken bits of the UI. I started using Affinity as a compromise, but its UX was just too janky and slow for me compared to GIMP. Some things are wonky though (ctrl+ keybindings instead of cmd+ keybindings) but it's much better. I use it every day now.
  - Joel_Mckay 5mo ago
    Krita is also available on MacOS, but unsure if pen pressure sensitivity works on the platform. =3 https://krita.org/en/download/ https://krita.org/en/download/
joshuaissac 5mo ago
I am glad someone is putting in this effort. Many years ago, there was another project called GIMPshop to make GIMP's interface more accessible to Photoshop users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop They taught Photoshop at school, so I found it easier to use GIMPshop than regular GIMP.
- nticompass 5mo ago
  That's actually what I thought this submission was. Didn't remember what it was called, so I didn't realize PhotoGIMP wasn't GIMPshop.
  - account42 5mo ago
    It's funny that both of these kept GIMP in the name when the name itself has spawend a different fork.
    - hiccuphippo 5mo ago
      I remember one renamed Glimpse but it seems they stopped working on it long ago: https://github.com/azubieta/Glimpse https://github.com/azubieta/Glimpse
      - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
        Yes, none of the forks have succeeded so PS interface compatibility may not be as important as is constantly mentioned.
- wilburx3 5mo ago
  Looks like the last release was from over a year ago and the issues indicated it no longer works with the latest GIMP release.
- seltzered_ 5mo ago
  There was also an effort called Glimpse around 2019 to be a UX / accessibility overhaul of GIMP along with a name change to be less offensive, see: - https://github.com/joshgiesbrecht/Glimpse https://github.com/joshgiesbrecht/Glimpse - https://web.archive.org/web/20190829115212/https://getglimpse.app/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190829115212/https://getglimps...
DeathArrow 5mo ago
People use Photoshop for sheer capability, not for the layout, naming conventions and shortcuts.
- fredley 5mo ago
  Some people do. I know my way around Photoshop very well, but do not use any advanced features. I tried using GIMP once and bounced off immediately, trying to do what I knew how to do in Photoshop was very hard, the learning curve felt very steep. These days I use Photopea which meets my needs perfectly (but is not free software).
- dotancohen 5mo ago
  Although that is true, moving to a different application with different layout, naming conventions, and shortcuts is difficult. That is the use case this project addresses.
  - lukaslalinsky 5mo ago
    The disadvantage is that then you never learn how GIMP works and will forever frustrated it's not Photoshop. Sometimes it's better to take the hard way.
    - fredley 5mo ago
      I don't want to learn how GIMP works. I want to edit photos.
      - copperx 5mo ago
        Proving we're all children in adult bodies.
    - mplanchard 5mo ago
      When I first started using emacs, I bounced off of spacemacs because it was all very unfamiliar and confusing, with a lot of its own terminology added on to emacs’. I tried again later with doom emacs and, maybe because of some familiarity gained in the spacemacs run, managed to make it stick. A year or two ago, I ditched doom and rolled my own emacs config, having gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to do so from my years with doom. Both doom and spacemacs exist to make the (relatively) strange nature of emacs more welcoming to users of other IDEs. I’m not sure I would have stuck with it without them, so I’m not sure the hard way is always better.
jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago
[flagged]
- ktallett 5mo ago
  It's an offshoot patch for the original project so the usage makes sense.
  - jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago
    At least put disclaimer and code of conduct for got sake
    - ktallett 5mo ago
      Why would there need to be a code of conduct or disclaimer when it's clearly stated it's a patch for a photo editing product called gimp?
      - hofrogs 5mo ago
        You are arguing with a bad-faith throwaway account
- ivolimmen 5mo ago
  Let's not start on GIT then...
  - jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago
    [flagged]
ho_schi 5mo ago
I see usually two options: a) Solution X does it generally better than Y and their solution is *ported*. b) Adapt to solution Y. The end. Most of the time it is b. Because Vim shall not be Emacs. Linux shall not be Windows. And macOS shall not be Windows either. Do you remember that foolish Windows-Themes on Linux? Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming. And Apple also. Custom theming is a horrible mess aside from areas where it is intentionally (e.g. Vim color schemes). But it is also possible that Gimp moves to option A. At some point and they are interested in user-interface improvements. Most people just want to use Single-Window-Mode which shall be default for many years.
- nananana9 5mo ago
  c) There's a sane, standard way of doing things that everybody is familiar with, but you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way, and if anyone has anything to say about it they're "free to fork" and you "don't owe anyone anything", but despite that, everyone should use your thing because it's free and you're the good guy, and otherwise they're supporting the empire of evil. This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp - sane UI that's way closer to Photoshop. You need to rebind 5 things and you can use it. > Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming Same deal. What do you care what I do with my computer? GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default, but very few people pick it when they have the choice. It will be dead in 10 years.
  - Antibabelic 5mo ago
    This is a lot of very confident assertions. > you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way Perhaps there's a good reason why a developer or a group of developers decide to do things a certain way. > This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp Aside from the fact that these programs are intended for pretty different things, the impression I have is that GIMP has a much larger install-base than Krita and more people are aware of it. Far from "sweeping the floor". > GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default Or perhaps some people (and enterprises) want a polished OOTB desktop experience without having to deal with KDE's bugs and Windows-like design language. There are plenty of GNOME installs on Arch Linux for example, where you can't speak of any "defaults" with regards to desktop environments.[0] [0] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun/Desktop%20Environments/current https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun/Desktop%20Environments/cur...
neuralkoi 5mo ago
GIMP gets the work done. I've never had an issue I couldn't address with its tools, but it's clear the UI was crafted by coders. I'm glad for this approach.
- reaperducer 5mo ago
  I completely agree. Every few years I give GIMP a shot, and every time I give up because it's completely inscrutable. Adobe is evil, and Pixelmator lacks features, but at least you can figure out how to use them in short order.
  - Shared404 5mo ago
    Check out Krita, it's a much easier lift for someone used to photoshop ime. At least, if you're doing digital art. Not as full featured for editing of photo's.
    - hootz 5mo ago
      Digital artists use Photoshop for painting/drawing? I thought Photoshop was made for photo composites.
      - bananamogul 5mo ago
        Photoshop is widely used for painting/drawing, yes. Hooking up a Wacom or similar tablet is very common. Granted, a lot of this has moved to iPad + apple pencil since that combo was released, but Photoshop is still heavily used. Of course, you can run Photoshop on iPad, too.
  - olavgg 5mo ago
    Every time I give Photoshop a chance I give completely up, the thing doesn't even start on neither Fedora or Ubuntu and I have no interest in configuring Wine for this. GIMP is the least painful way to get the job done. I have been using it for over 20 years, and it has been a pain-free experience. That GIMP is bad is just as wrong as the people who say Java is bad. But you know what's even worse, people that use Illustrator to create SVG's for the web. Inkscape creates proper readable SVG's at 5KB, compared to 50MB SVG's I get from Illustrator experts.
drzaiusx11 5mo ago
How do we get this into mainline GIMP? As a GIMP user since it existed, I can say that the default interface "works" but the ux isn't great. This looks like a marked improvement and would give me something more like Inkscapes UI but for raster images instead of vector...
- broodbucket 5mo ago
  If they were going to mimic a more Photoshop-like UI by default, they would've done it. GIMPshop was around over two decades ago
  - drzaiusx11 5mo ago
    I thought they were already heading in that direction with the single window mode merging. But ok sure I guess they'll never change anything because a sister project existed 2 decades ago or whatever.
- cmyk_student 5mo ago
  Possibly as part of our in-progress extension platform. The extension infrastructure is already built (e.g. you could package the theme as .gex file and have GIMP recognize it), and we have a GSoC student working on some aspects of it (at the moment, the submission workflow for an online repo of extensions). Once it's ready, we could reach out to the developers of PhotoGIMP and see if they'd be willing to have it included as part of the initial extensions repo - then you could pull it into GIMP directly.
jrm4 5mo ago
I'll continue to say it; this software does not get taken seriously in a useful way to lots of people until it changes the silly name. And to summarize and perhaps avert other discussion; it's not so much about being "non-offensive" as it is simply about being professional.
- croes 5mo ago
  Who takes people seriously who judge something by its name instead if it’s functions?
  - voidUpdate 5mo ago
    People who work for the judgers, when the judgers pay their salary
  - jrm4 5mo ago
    The entirety of the capitalist business world, unfortunately.
    - croes 5mo ago
      Those who use Slack and Twitter and now X? If GIMP would create profit they could call it dogshit and the same people would visit the Shit-Con for business news
      - jrm4 5mo ago
        This is so painfully wrong it hurts; many a company has lived and/or died PURELY on name.
        croes 5mo ago
        Examples?
  - lynndotpy 5mo ago
    "Names don't matter" is obviously a silly stance. Pre-emptively dismissing people who disagree as "not serious" when you're taking a stance like this does not make an argument in favor of your stance. Names are something that clearly matter to people, and that impacts anyone working with people.
chiffre01 5mo ago
I've never understood GIMP's approach to copy paste either. They've made a decision that copy and paste must require as many un-intuitive steps as possible. Most graphics programs let you select a region, copy it and then move the copy around to where you want it, the end. You can usually paste into new layer if needed. But not in GIMP for some reason you have to copy something and 'anchor it' or convert it to a new layer before you ever see it. This kind of thing just makes me use other software.
- criddell 5mo ago
  That's how Procreate works as well. When you paste, it pastes into a new layer and then you can decide if you want to merge it down or not.
- mixmastamyk 5mo ago
  Not sure what you’re seeing, but if you choose the move (four arrow button) tool after pasting, it will move the selection. Then you can create a layer or merge down etc if you wish but not required.
  - Izkata 5mo ago
    Slightly beyond that, pasting creates a temporary new layer you can manipulate like normal layers before anchoring it or converting it to a normal layer. It's visible in the Layers window as a separate layer from the one you were working on.
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      Right, “floating.”
- Sophira 5mo ago
  I've memorised the keyboard shortcuts that I need in order to do this extremely common thing. 1. Select region with mouse. 2. Ctrl-C: Copy the region. 3. Ctrl-V: Paste (with the selection still active, so that it pastes in the same place). 4. Ctrl-Shift-N: Makes the resulting "temporary layer" into a permanent new layer. 5. Use the new layer. I wish I could skip step 4. It's usually not necessary, and if I need to place the temporary layer into the same layer that I was already using, I can just merge the two myself. Of course, sometimes you do need the ability to directly paste into the same thing, such as if you're editing a layer mask rather than the actual layer itself...
iLoveOncall 5mo ago
Gimp is shit. It has always been shit and likely will always be shit. The UI is made by Satan himself and it is much closer to Paint than to Photoshop in terms of feature coverage. There's absolutely no reason to use Gimp when https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ exists.
- hootz 5mo ago
  There's no reason to use GIMP when a closed-source ad ridden web app with premium AI features exists?
  - iLoveOncall 5mo ago
    Open-source is not a selling point and I'm amazed that some people still consider it as such in 2026. I have absolutely no ads on Photopea. Gimp doesn't have any AI feature, and you're free to not use any of the Photopea AI features, so not sure why it's relevant? Yes, we indeed don't need Gimp when we have a free Photoshop equivalent.
    - etdznots 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - hootz 5mo ago
      It is a selling point for me. Photopea can be closed tomorrow, and it will disappear from the face of the Earth. GIMP will never disappear, as it can be downloaded and forked, has no DRM like Photoshop, no ads, runs anywhere. And Photopea does indeed have ads, and "No Ads" is one of the "features" of the premium subscription, as you can check by going to the account page.
- RankingMember 5mo ago
  I prefer Pixlr.com myself (basically because it's Adobe Photoshop without the Adobe aspect).
leephillips 5mo ago
I probably won’t bother to try this because I think it’s unlikely that it fixes whatever is broken in Gimp that prevents me from using it. I use DWM. Gimp simply doesn’t work with that window manager. I won’t bore you with details, but other users of DWM or, possibly, similar WMs know what I mean. It’s not DWM’s fault. It works fine with programs that support X11 properly. Krita, for example, works perfectly with DWM.
vinzdg 5mo ago
[flagged]
pessimizer 5mo ago
I really hate [edit: the necessity for something like] this. I deeply disagree that Photoshop has better UI than GIMP, it's just that GIMP is no professional's daily driver, you were paid to learn Photoshop; and whenever you learned any technique, you learned it in Photoshop. Clinging to Photoshop UI (which is completely arbitrary and bizarre) just supports Photoshop - you're taking a vacation instead of making a move. That being said, the comfort that millions of people have with the Photoshop interface is in itself an institution, and has to be respected as such (imagine the collective number of man-hours put into learning it.) I don't know what the answer is. But the worst possible outcome is the Firefox outcome, where GIMP ends up chasing Photoshop rather than remaining its own thing. Just, please, try to get out of your head that GIMP's UI is bad. It's not, it's just different. Don't think of it as a knock-off Photoshop. Deal with it on its own terms. Use these Photoshop skins as a transition rather than a destination. That means I might have a problem with this approach, just because it doesn't allow for a easy switch between classic and Photoshop UI. It's actually annoying to switch back and forth. If it catches on and brings more users to GIMP, it will become the interface, and leave GIMP vulnerable to IP attacks.
- gedy 5mo ago
  It's different not in an apples to oranges way, it's like apples to dried squid. GIMP is/was very much an acquired taste and pretty tough to learn compared to modern UI standards. Photoshop is not perfect or easy, but it's "normal".
  - koiueo 5mo ago
    That's a lot of hand waving. Any specific examples?
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
- jfindley 5mo ago
  The problem is not that GIMP has a different UI to photoshop. That's not a problem. Premier and Final Cut Pro have different UIs, and while there's some friendly banter about which is better most people agree that either work. The GIMP community has utterly failed to understand that the problem with their UI is not that it's different from one particular competitor, it's that it breaks all user expectations about how GUI software should behave. A simple copy/paste operation between layers requires googling before a new user is able to do it - and all to save utterly trivial amounts of RAM. That's not "just different", that's objectively terrible.
KnuthIsGod 5mo ago
Krita is so much more accessible than GIMP. Only Gimp devs would love Gimps interface. Just the existence of Gimp seems like so much effort flushed down the toilet because of someone's bad, bad taste and incredibly poor user interface design
- mghackerlady 5mo ago
  I think the biggest problem is they shoved it all into one window when it was designed to be a multi-window editor
- hootz 5mo ago
  But how good is Krita with photo manipulation and composites? I don't want to paint, I want to edit images.
  - Jach 5mo ago
    Krita is not very good for photo manipulation. Even basic stuff like rectangle select and selection manipulation is painful. But on a project I used Krita, Gimp, and Inkscape all at the same time, and it was fine. Different tools for different purposes. Though with Gimp 3 having better font/text behavior, and overall allowing to build a pipeline of effects instead of immediately applying them (aka non-destructive editing), I could probably drop Inkscape now.
mghackerlady 5mo ago
How long will this one last? Just learn the GIMP interface, it's not great but not being photoshop isn't a bug
thisislife2 5mo ago
The argument over the UI in GIMP and Photoshop is actually based on the kind of "false" premise that Photoshop has a "superior" UI. It reminds of my first experience using macOS, as a long time Windows user. The first few months on macOS was a totally frustrating and negative experience for me - "What the ...? why does the ENTER key not open files or folders? Why is it going to 'rename' mode? Why doesn't double-clicking the title bar on a window maximise the window? Why are some windows maximised and others take their own custom width? Why is the Maximise button making apps full screen!?" - and so on. The point is that I had become so familiar with the Windows UI, that every other OS UI suddenly seemed alien - "This is not how a UI should work on an OS". (This was also the reason that I hated Ubuntu's DE, as it tried to imitate the macOS UI I was then unfamiliar with). Familiarity means when you face a new UI, you have to spend effort to re-learn your way of thinking around a UI, which can be a frustrating experience (especially as you grow older). That effort / stress also unconsciously creates a negative impression in your mind about the UI. Both Apple and Microsoft know this and that is why they deliberately make their UI distinct and different from each other - whether it is Windows vs macOS or Windows Phone vs ios. Recently someone (a non-geek) asked me if they should buy a Macbook as they had an iPhone too. As they were a Windows user, I warned them that the macOS UI would be frustrating and to try macOS before committing to it. They did, and ultimately decided against it and chose to stick to Windows (buying a Surface Tablet). As a former graphic designer, and an experienced Photoshop user, I only considered GIMP as a replacement when Adobe decided to make it a subscription. And just as with Windows to macOS, re-learning to use the GIMP UI was a frustrating experience because I was always thinking of "this is how it is done in Photoshop". Once you let go of that "familiarity", and are willing to actually test if the "GIMP way" is maybe better, it becomes a less frustrating experience. (All that said, while I have got used to using the GIMP tools the GIMP way, the overall GIMP layout does have a cluttered feeling and I do recommend installing Photo GIMP - it won't really make GIMP a Photoshop clone, but it will make it more "familiar" and thus easier to "re-learn" how to use it).
- ndiddy 5mo ago
  I grew up using Paint Shop Pro, so I'm not familiar with either. I've recently had to start using both Photoshop and GIMP (Photoshop because the best tool for descreening printed documents is the Sattva Descreen Photoshop plugin, GIMP because I've largely switched to Linux). GIMP is not like most software. With Photoshop, there's tons of functionality but I can usually figure out what to do by poking around in the menus and hovering at the icons in the toolbar. With GIMP, I have to keep looking online for how to do basic things, and the program keeps behaving in unusual ways. For example, let's say I added a text block to an image. I then select the text layer, there's a box drawn around the text, and I try moving the text around with the move tool. In every other image editor I've used, this will move the text around, but in GIMP this will move the background layer around unless you specifically click on the text and not just inside the box (which can be difficult depending on the font you used). Every aspect of using GIMP works like this. Everything is implemented in a counterintuitive manner. The closest analogue I can think of is it's like figuring out how to play old versions of Dwarf Fortress from before they overhauled the UI for the Steam release.
regus 5mo ago
I tried using gimp on Mac to do some extremely basic stuff. I just wanted multiple layers to make a little mock up at work. Gimp’s mental model is unintuitive to me, I got so frustrated trying get anything done. I gave up and bought acorn for Mac to make my basic little image.
f055 5mo ago
So I guess that yesterday's questions "Where is vibecoded Photoshop?" just got answered with a vibecoded Gimp UI that looks like Photoshop ;) but seriously, nice work!
figmert 5mo ago
Pretty sure there has been various efforts to do this, but they all eventually stall due to being unable to keep up with the GIMP source. I hope this time they're taking an approach that will allow them to keep up with the maintenance.
jdlyga 5mo ago
GIMP should take a lesson from Blender. Blender used to be the most clunky, unintuitive pieces of open source software. But after a decade and a half of UI development, it's one of the smoothest interfaces you'll ever use.
- 3form 5mo ago
  Blender also had a comparatively large amount of money backing these changes, if I remember correctly, which I expect GIMP does not. I suppose a lesson in that area would be required first. However, the others like Krita might be better positioned for this.
- elevation 5mo ago
  > GIMP should take a lesson from Blender. Blender used to be the most clunky, unintuitive pieces of open source software. But after a decade and a half of UI development, it's one of the smoothest interfaces you'll ever use Agreed. I'm already willing to use GIMP in its current state. But though I've used it since I was a child, I have to re-google for things I know it can do. I had a photo of a barn. I was going to construct it in miniature, so to get scale measurements I wanted an isometric perspective from a photo that had been taken at an angle. I had done this in GIMP before so I was hesitant to start googling for answers but in 25 minutes of playing with it, no combination of inputs would do what I wanted. I had to find some youtube tutorials. Even simple tasks aren't simple. Annotating a photograph with a couple red arrows is a multi step challenge involving paths, stroking, selections, layers, and maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting. These UI concepts were impenetrable without tutorials -- I never would have figured this out on my own. GIMP has helped me but it's never been pleasant to use.
  - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
    You can draw arrows with the pencil or paintbrush.
    - argee 5mo ago
      Not if you're a professional in a big boy company, where the MacOS users can literally draw a perfect arrow in 2 seconds on any image, without installing a thing. You're just going to look completely incompetent.
rorylaitila 5mo ago
I tried GIMP out again after a decade, and I have to say I'm presently surprised with v3. I avoided it for a long time because I remember it being a super confusing interface. Every UX idiom seemed backward to me then. But today I need to do some significant compositing, repainting and correction sporadically, and I'm tired of the Adobe tax. Maybe coupled with AI research, I've been quickly able to figure out everything I need to do.
cosmic_cheese 5mo ago
Does this fix the layers palette? Last I knew, in stock GIMP the way it operates is utterly bizarre, supporting none of the multi-select interactions that have been stock in scrolling list views across platforms since the 90s.
mattkevan 5mo ago
Photoshop's interface is getting worse [1] and everyone hates Adobe, so there's a great opportunity for a tool like GIMP to step up and become the default alternative. It's got a lot of features, it's been around for a long time and has reasonable name recognition (for better or worse). However, unless they do a Blender and make a sustained effort to improve the UI, understand what people want and how it fits into professional workflows, it's never going to happen. The attitude seems to be: If you don't like it, fuck you. I think they're genuinely happy with how things are. The inscrutable UI and off-putting name are features not bugs, keeping away the sort of people they don't want. [1] https://unsung.aresluna.org/photoshops-challenges-with-focus-pt-2/ https://unsung.aresluna.org/photoshops-challenges-with-focus...
- mixmastamyk 5mo ago
  Gimp has nothing like the interface deviations Blender did, like right click selection, etc. So there isn’t anything of that scale to fix.
- cmyk_student 5mo ago
  Far from it - we even have a dedicated design site where we ask for UX-specific bug reports and improvement requests from users: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_items https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it... We then discuss and test with the reporter and volunteer designers, and try to implement once some consensus has been reached. We welcome feedback from more users, so feel free to contribute your thoughts and design/workflow issues!
  - mattkevan 5mo ago
    Ah design by committee, that well known route to design excellence!
    - cmyk_student 5mo ago
      I believe it's a step up from "design by whichever developer implemented a particular feature", which was the norm. :) More seriously, we're trying to attract more designers and design feedback, just like we do for coding. We're also trying to document UX standards (see https://developer.gimp.org/core/ https://developer.gimp.org/core/ for early work) so there'll be a consistent experience as new developers join and features are added.
Matl 5mo ago
While all the comments about GIMP needing a total UX overhaul etc. are likely valid, it's worth noting that there's something like 2 people working on the bulk of GIMP at the moment. It's not a startup that has just raised a series A and opened a flashy San Francisco office. All that is to say that I don't think the problem is the GIMP devs not knowing what the problems are and needing them explained over and over again. The problem is a shortage of developers to address them. So if you can, contribute.
- herbst 5mo ago
  I guess i am not the only one who actually likes that Gimp is the same software I got used to many years ago just a lot better. No need to relearn anytime I have to edit something.
  - jwagenet 5mo ago
    I think there is room for both approaches. Like it or not, photoshop/adobe is the defacto standard everything else is measured from. A compatibility layer like Inkscape does for illustrator has for PS-like behavior is welcome to bring “industry” users in the fold. My primary use case for gimp is using path and selection tools for removing backgrounds and the UI and shortcuts in gimp are painful coming from a decade of adobe use.
- shevy-java 5mo ago
  > The problem is a shortage of developers to address them. > So if you can, contribute. Well, that requires knowledge of C. That already excludes like 98% of the user base or so, or perhaps 90%. Also, even aside from this, if a majority wants feature xyz but you don't like that, what can you do? It is a constant time investment to convince a majority that what they want may not be great. You make it sound as if the only bottleneck is lack of developers. I think there are many more bottlenecks than merely lack of developers.
  - Fogest 5mo ago
    Agreed, I think the bottlenecks are often the gate keepers already in the community. In fact one of the other replies to the parent indicates that mentality. Where they are happy that GIMP has remained unchanged and are happy with the UI. This is exactly the kind of sentiment that often makes progress become stagnant. The small vocal community gets used to things like poor UI, and then turns into a NIMBY about any changes that would benefit the masses (but require them learning new things). Unfortunately I think this is why most of the time you don't see progress in applications like this until there is a fork or a whole new application. Especially with AI based development now, I think the problem is often not the lacking people to make code, but lacking people that allow the code to be contributed in the first place.
otikik 5mo ago
Why is this not called Pimp?
- F3nd0 5mo ago
  Because PNNU’s Not Not Unix.
shevy-java 5mo ago
Could be useful. GIMP never had a, to me, useful interface. Back when they added "export as" in addition to "save as", I told them to please don't do this. Their response was that they want to appeal more to professional designers. I just want a simpler user interface. It is kind of strange that we, as users, depend on upstream developers dictating down UI choices onto us, even more so when things change between versions. I want to be able to choose the UI at all times on my own. Yes, I can patch the source code, but I mean something integrated into the toolkit, as-is. GTK2 had that to a limited extend, you could easily re-assign key combinations, such as in the old bluefish editor. Then GTK3 changed this. I feel that these toolkits are constantly getting worse rather than better over time. One day we need to free ourselves from upstream developers dictating whatever they like to. So, from this point of view, best of luck to the photogimp folks - not sure how well it works, but they make a point with this that I totally understand. (I also have to admit that I often just stick to the default, even though it annoys me, but keeping up with more and more microchanges on my own, also adds to my own burden and time investment. But I really wish I could stop having to accept whatever upstream dictates downstream.)
KronisLV 5mo ago
It's cool that you can customize GIMP like that! I never really had an issue with the program UI, though. Maybe because I also never went through the trouble of pirating/buying Photoshop to get used to it. Their new effects system (where they have to be applied and sit on top of the layer until then) was pretty bugged on release on Windows, though. I'm sure it's a bit like for people who are used to Blender, whereas others find their interface... unique as well.
nogbit 5mo ago
Thank you so so much! I cant stand Gimp UI, so not intuitive. And over 25 years of Photoshop use has me locked into a way that image editing should work. This is fantastic and timely.
- F3nd0 5mo ago
  After 25 years of Photoshop, is it really intuition, or is it just habit?
  - nogbit 5mo ago
    Habit, shortcut memory and more. But, it’s not 100% that, gimp over complicates itself.
jaffa2 5mo ago
Is there any long form articles on the GIMP UI? I see it time and time again people complaining about Gimps UI. Personally I've used Gimp on and off for like 25 years but i find it hella clunky and I often need to google how to do basic stuff. Also been using photoshop since v3 and I know it well enough to get by. I see some discussion on the copy paste. Funnily enough i was copy pasting stuff yesterday in Gimp and yeah there is something funky that I couldn't put my finger on. It makes the app feel really janky clicking here and ther doesn't work, renaming the pasted layer. do i click once ? double click? hit enter? I coudln't work it out as the behaviour seemed inconsistent. I also couldn't work out how to get a pasted layer to align to top left. I had to align it manually every time. sigh. anyway is ther any decent articles that discuss this anywhere that someone could link me?
pbalau 5mo ago
Gimp will never be able to pull a Blender because they are operating on hugely different conditions. Blender never had to play catch up with a proprietary file format. In Blender's world, fbx and any of the video formats are the way to interop with other studios. In the Photoshop/Gimp world, the interop format is psd. Under full control of Adobe. There is also the matter of price. Maya and 3dStudioMax are eye watering expensive, while Photoshop is dirt cheap. As a professional photographer, I can get the 300 GBP it costs me to have Lightroom and Photoshop for one year, in an afternoon.
dragochat 5mo ago
...before any of this matters though: - is non-destructive editing implemented yet in GIMP? - is stability finally improved, can I running without a never ending crashfest on both ubuntu and macos? bc tbh the UI was never the issue for GIMP, it just wasn't good enough software.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

198 points by SockThief 5mo ago

GIMP is the only program that I miss when switched from linux to mac. And GIMP 2.2 was just a perfect for my needs back then

ibejoeb 5mo ago
There's a mac build for GIMP: https://download.gimp.org/gimp/v3.2/macos/gimp-3.2.4-arm64.dmg https://download.gimp.org/gimp/v3.2/macos/gimp-3.2.4-arm64.d...
faangguyindia 5mo ago
Wait what? i've been using gimp on mac without issues.
lthi747 5mo ago
Yes there are but is just not the same, controls are quite non intuitive, I often got glitches on rendering, so overall UX for me is pretty bad
- Mashimo 5mo ago
  > so overall UX for me is pretty bad That's just normal gimp
lynndotpy 5mo ago
You might be happy to learn that GIMP is a lot better on Mac with the 3.0 release than it was before. When I started using a Mac in 2022 I was a bit heartbroken at broken bits of the UI. I started using Affinity as a compromise, but its UX was just too janky and slow for me compared to GIMP. Some things are wonky though (ctrl+ keybindings instead of cmd+ keybindings) but it's much better. I use it every day now.
- Joel_Mckay 5mo ago
  Krita is also available on MacOS, but unsure if pen pressure sensitivity works on the platform. =3 https://krita.org/en/download/ https://krita.org/en/download/

joshuaissac 5mo ago

I am glad someone is putting in this effort. Many years ago, there was another project called GIMPshop to make GIMP's interface more accessible to Photoshop users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop They taught Photoshop at school, so I found it easier to use GIMPshop than regular GIMP.

nticompass 5mo ago
That's actually what I thought this submission was. Didn't remember what it was called, so I didn't realize PhotoGIMP wasn't GIMPshop.
- account42 5mo ago
  It's funny that both of these kept GIMP in the name when the name itself has spawend a different fork.
  - hiccuphippo 5mo ago
    I remember one renamed Glimpse but it seems they stopped working on it long ago: https://github.com/azubieta/Glimpse https://github.com/azubieta/Glimpse
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      Yes, none of the forks have succeeded so PS interface compatibility may not be as important as is constantly mentioned.
wilburx3 5mo ago
Looks like the last release was from over a year ago and the issues indicated it no longer works with the latest GIMP release.
seltzered_ 5mo ago
There was also an effort called Glimpse around 2019 to be a UX / accessibility overhaul of GIMP along with a name change to be less offensive, see: - https://github.com/joshgiesbrecht/Glimpse https://github.com/joshgiesbrecht/Glimpse - https://web.archive.org/web/20190829115212/https://getglimpse.app/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190829115212/https://getglimps...

DeathArrow 5mo ago

People use Photoshop for sheer capability, not for the layout, naming conventions and shortcuts.

fredley 5mo ago
Some people do. I know my way around Photoshop very well, but do not use any advanced features. I tried using GIMP once and bounced off immediately, trying to do what I knew how to do in Photoshop was very hard, the learning curve felt very steep. These days I use Photopea which meets my needs perfectly (but is not free software).
dotancohen 5mo ago
Although that is true, moving to a different application with different layout, naming conventions, and shortcuts is difficult. That is the use case this project addresses.
- lukaslalinsky 5mo ago
  The disadvantage is that then you never learn how GIMP works and will forever frustrated it's not Photoshop. Sometimes it's better to take the hard way.
  - fredley 5mo ago
    I don't want to learn how GIMP works. I want to edit photos.
    - copperx 5mo ago
      Proving we're all children in adult bodies.
  - mplanchard 5mo ago
    When I first started using emacs, I bounced off of spacemacs because it was all very unfamiliar and confusing, with a lot of its own terminology added on to emacs’. I tried again later with doom emacs and, maybe because of some familiarity gained in the spacemacs run, managed to make it stick. A year or two ago, I ditched doom and rolled my own emacs config, having gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to do so from my years with doom. Both doom and spacemacs exist to make the (relatively) strange nature of emacs more welcoming to users of other IDEs. I’m not sure I would have stuck with it without them, so I’m not sure the hard way is always better.

jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago

[flagged]

ktallett 5mo ago
It's an offshoot patch for the original project so the usage makes sense.
- jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago
  At least put disclaimer and code of conduct for got sake
  - ktallett 5mo ago
    Why would there need to be a code of conduct or disclaimer when it's clearly stated it's a patch for a photo editing product called gimp?
    - hofrogs 5mo ago
      You are arguing with a bad-faith throwaway account
ivolimmen 5mo ago
Let's not start on GIT then...
- jfirirnfjffjjf 5mo ago
  [flagged]

ho_schi 5mo ago

I see usually two options: a) Solution X does it generally better than Y and their solution is *ported*. b) Adapt to solution Y. The end. Most of the time it is b. Because Vim shall not be Emacs. Linux shall not be Windows. And macOS shall not be Windows either. Do you remember that foolish Windows-Themes on Linux? Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming. And Apple also. Custom theming is a horrible mess aside from areas where it is intentionally (e.g. Vim color schemes). But it is also possible that Gimp moves to option A. At some point and they are interested in user-interface improvements. Most people just want to use Single-Window-Mode which shall be default for many years.

nananana9 5mo ago
c) There's a sane, standard way of doing things that everybody is familiar with, but you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way, and if anyone has anything to say about it they're "free to fork" and you "don't owe anyone anything", but despite that, everyone should use your thing because it's free and you're the good guy, and otherwise they're supporting the empire of evil. This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp - sane UI that's way closer to Photoshop. You need to rebind 5 things and you can use it. > Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming Same deal. What do you care what I do with my computer? GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default, but very few people pick it when they have the choice. It will be dead in 10 years.
- Antibabelic 5mo ago
  This is a lot of very confident assertions. > you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way Perhaps there's a good reason why a developer or a group of developers decide to do things a certain way. > This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp Aside from the fact that these programs are intended for pretty different things, the impression I have is that GIMP has a much larger install-base than Krita and more people are aware of it. Far from "sweeping the floor". > GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default Or perhaps some people (and enterprises) want a polished OOTB desktop experience without having to deal with KDE's bugs and Windows-like design language. There are plenty of GNOME installs on Arch Linux for example, where you can't speak of any "defaults" with regards to desktop environments.[0] [0] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun/Desktop%20Environments/current https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun/Desktop%20Environments/cur...

neuralkoi 5mo ago

GIMP gets the work done. I've never had an issue I couldn't address with its tools, but it's clear the UI was crafted by coders. I'm glad for this approach.

reaperducer 5mo ago
I completely agree. Every few years I give GIMP a shot, and every time I give up because it's completely inscrutable. Adobe is evil, and Pixelmator lacks features, but at least you can figure out how to use them in short order.
- Shared404 5mo ago
  Check out Krita, it's a much easier lift for someone used to photoshop ime. At least, if you're doing digital art. Not as full featured for editing of photo's.
  - hootz 5mo ago
    Digital artists use Photoshop for painting/drawing? I thought Photoshop was made for photo composites.
    - bananamogul 5mo ago
      Photoshop is widely used for painting/drawing, yes. Hooking up a Wacom or similar tablet is very common. Granted, a lot of this has moved to iPad + apple pencil since that combo was released, but Photoshop is still heavily used. Of course, you can run Photoshop on iPad, too.
- olavgg 5mo ago
  Every time I give Photoshop a chance I give completely up, the thing doesn't even start on neither Fedora or Ubuntu and I have no interest in configuring Wine for this. GIMP is the least painful way to get the job done. I have been using it for over 20 years, and it has been a pain-free experience. That GIMP is bad is just as wrong as the people who say Java is bad. But you know what's even worse, people that use Illustrator to create SVG's for the web. Inkscape creates proper readable SVG's at 5KB, compared to 50MB SVG's I get from Illustrator experts.

drzaiusx11 5mo ago

How do we get this into mainline GIMP? As a GIMP user since it existed, I can say that the default interface "works" but the ux isn't great. This looks like a marked improvement and would give me something more like Inkscapes UI but for raster images instead of vector...

broodbucket 5mo ago
If they were going to mimic a more Photoshop-like UI by default, they would've done it. GIMPshop was around over two decades ago
- drzaiusx11 5mo ago
  I thought they were already heading in that direction with the single window mode merging. But ok sure I guess they'll never change anything because a sister project existed 2 decades ago or whatever.
cmyk_student 5mo ago
Possibly as part of our in-progress extension platform. The extension infrastructure is already built (e.g. you could package the theme as .gex file and have GIMP recognize it), and we have a GSoC student working on some aspects of it (at the moment, the submission workflow for an online repo of extensions). Once it's ready, we could reach out to the developers of PhotoGIMP and see if they'd be willing to have it included as part of the initial extensions repo - then you could pull it into GIMP directly.

jrm4 5mo ago

I'll continue to say it; this software does not get taken seriously in a useful way to lots of people until it changes the silly name. And to summarize and perhaps avert other discussion; it's not so much about being "non-offensive" as it is simply about being professional.

croes 5mo ago
Who takes people seriously who judge something by its name instead if it’s functions?
- voidUpdate 5mo ago
  People who work for the judgers, when the judgers pay their salary
- jrm4 5mo ago
  The entirety of the capitalist business world, unfortunately.
  - croes 5mo ago
    Those who use Slack and Twitter and now X? If GIMP would create profit they could call it dogshit and the same people would visit the Shit-Con for business news
    - jrm4 5mo ago
      This is so painfully wrong it hurts; many a company has lived and/or died PURELY on name.
      - croes 5mo ago
        Examples?
- lynndotpy 5mo ago
  "Names don't matter" is obviously a silly stance. Pre-emptively dismissing people who disagree as "not serious" when you're taking a stance like this does not make an argument in favor of your stance. Names are something that clearly matter to people, and that impacts anyone working with people.

chiffre01 5mo ago

I've never understood GIMP's approach to copy paste either. They've made a decision that copy and paste must require as many un-intuitive steps as possible. Most graphics programs let you select a region, copy it and then move the copy around to where you want it, the end. You can usually paste into new layer if needed. But not in GIMP for some reason you have to copy something and 'anchor it' or convert it to a new layer before you ever see it. This kind of thing just makes me use other software.

criddell 5mo ago
That's how Procreate works as well. When you paste, it pastes into a new layer and then you can decide if you want to merge it down or not.
mixmastamyk 5mo ago
Not sure what you’re seeing, but if you choose the move (four arrow button) tool after pasting, it will move the selection. Then you can create a layer or merge down etc if you wish but not required.
- Izkata 5mo ago
  Slightly beyond that, pasting creates a temporary new layer you can manipulate like normal layers before anchoring it or converting it to a normal layer. It's visible in the Layers window as a separate layer from the one you were working on.
  - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
    Right, “floating.”
Sophira 5mo ago
I've memorised the keyboard shortcuts that I need in order to do this extremely common thing. 1. Select region with mouse. 2. Ctrl-C: Copy the region. 3. Ctrl-V: Paste (with the selection still active, so that it pastes in the same place). 4. Ctrl-Shift-N: Makes the resulting "temporary layer" into a permanent new layer. 5. Use the new layer. I wish I could skip step 4. It's usually not necessary, and if I need to place the temporary layer into the same layer that I was already using, I can just merge the two myself. Of course, sometimes you do need the ability to directly paste into the same thing, such as if you're editing a layer mask rather than the actual layer itself...

iLoveOncall 5mo ago

Gimp is shit. It has always been shit and likely will always be shit. The UI is made by Satan himself and it is much closer to Paint than to Photoshop in terms of feature coverage. There's absolutely no reason to use Gimp when https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ exists.

hootz 5mo ago
There's no reason to use GIMP when a closed-source ad ridden web app with premium AI features exists?
- iLoveOncall 5mo ago
  Open-source is not a selling point and I'm amazed that some people still consider it as such in 2026. I have absolutely no ads on Photopea. Gimp doesn't have any AI feature, and you're free to not use any of the Photopea AI features, so not sure why it's relevant? Yes, we indeed don't need Gimp when we have a free Photoshop equivalent.
  - etdznots 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - hootz 5mo ago
    It is a selling point for me. Photopea can be closed tomorrow, and it will disappear from the face of the Earth. GIMP will never disappear, as it can be downloaded and forked, has no DRM like Photoshop, no ads, runs anywhere. And Photopea does indeed have ads, and "No Ads" is one of the "features" of the premium subscription, as you can check by going to the account page.
RankingMember 5mo ago
I prefer Pixlr.com myself (basically because it's Adobe Photoshop without the Adobe aspect).

leephillips 5mo ago

I probably won’t bother to try this because I think it’s unlikely that it fixes whatever is broken in Gimp that prevents me from using it. I use DWM. Gimp simply doesn’t work with that window manager. I won’t bore you with details, but other users of DWM or, possibly, similar WMs know what I mean. It’s not DWM’s fault. It works fine with programs that support X11 properly. Krita, for example, works perfectly with DWM.

vinzdg 5mo ago

[flagged]

pessimizer 5mo ago

I really hate [edit: the necessity for something like] this. I deeply disagree that Photoshop has better UI than GIMP, it's just that GIMP is no professional's daily driver, you were paid to learn Photoshop; and whenever you learned any technique, you learned it in Photoshop. Clinging to Photoshop UI (which is completely arbitrary and bizarre) just supports Photoshop - you're taking a vacation instead of making a move. That being said, the comfort that millions of people have with the Photoshop interface is in itself an institution, and has to be respected as such (imagine the collective number of man-hours put into learning it.) I don't know what the answer is. But the worst possible outcome is the Firefox outcome, where GIMP ends up chasing Photoshop rather than remaining its own thing. Just, please, try to get out of your head that GIMP's UI is bad. It's not, it's just different. Don't think of it as a knock-off Photoshop. Deal with it on its own terms. Use these Photoshop skins as a transition rather than a destination. That means I might have a problem with this approach, just because it doesn't allow for a easy switch between classic and Photoshop UI. It's actually annoying to switch back and forth. If it catches on and brings more users to GIMP, it will become the interface, and leave GIMP vulnerable to IP attacks.

gedy 5mo ago
It's different not in an apples to oranges way, it's like apples to dried squid. GIMP is/was very much an acquired taste and pretty tough to learn compared to modern UI standards. Photoshop is not perfect or easy, but it's "normal".
- koiueo 5mo ago
  That's a lot of hand waving. Any specific examples?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
jfindley 5mo ago
The problem is not that GIMP has a different UI to photoshop. That's not a problem. Premier and Final Cut Pro have different UIs, and while there's some friendly banter about which is better most people agree that either work. The GIMP community has utterly failed to understand that the problem with their UI is not that it's different from one particular competitor, it's that it breaks all user expectations about how GUI software should behave. A simple copy/paste operation between layers requires googling before a new user is able to do it - and all to save utterly trivial amounts of RAM. That's not "just different", that's objectively terrible.

KnuthIsGod 5mo ago

Krita is so much more accessible than GIMP. Only Gimp devs would love Gimps interface. Just the existence of Gimp seems like so much effort flushed down the toilet because of someone's bad, bad taste and incredibly poor user interface design

mghackerlady 5mo ago
I think the biggest problem is they shoved it all into one window when it was designed to be a multi-window editor
hootz 5mo ago
But how good is Krita with photo manipulation and composites? I don't want to paint, I want to edit images.
- Jach 5mo ago
  Krita is not very good for photo manipulation. Even basic stuff like rectangle select and selection manipulation is painful. But on a project I used Krita, Gimp, and Inkscape all at the same time, and it was fine. Different tools for different purposes. Though with Gimp 3 having better font/text behavior, and overall allowing to build a pipeline of effects instead of immediately applying them (aka non-destructive editing), I could probably drop Inkscape now.

mghackerlady 5mo ago

How long will this one last? Just learn the GIMP interface, it's not great but not being photoshop isn't a bug

thisislife2 5mo ago

The argument over the UI in GIMP and Photoshop is actually based on the kind of "false" premise that Photoshop has a "superior" UI. It reminds of my first experience using macOS, as a long time Windows user. The first few months on macOS was a totally frustrating and negative experience for me - "What the ...? why does the ENTER key not open files or folders? Why is it going to 'rename' mode? Why doesn't double-clicking the title bar on a window maximise the window? Why are some windows maximised and others take their own custom width? Why is the Maximise button making apps full screen!?" - and so on. The point is that I had become so familiar with the Windows UI, that every other OS UI suddenly seemed alien - "This is not how a UI should work on an OS". (This was also the reason that I hated Ubuntu's DE, as it tried to imitate the macOS UI I was then unfamiliar with). Familiarity means when you face a new UI, you have to spend effort to re-learn your way of thinking around a UI, which can be a frustrating experience (especially as you grow older). That effort / stress also unconsciously creates a negative impression in your mind about the UI. Both Apple and Microsoft know this and that is why they deliberately make their UI distinct and different from each other - whether it is Windows vs macOS or Windows Phone vs ios. Recently someone (a non-geek) asked me if they should buy a Macbook as they had an iPhone too. As they were a Windows user, I warned them that the macOS UI would be frustrating and to try macOS before committing to it. They did, and ultimately decided against it and chose to stick to Windows (buying a Surface Tablet). As a former graphic designer, and an experienced Photoshop user, I only considered GIMP as a replacement when Adobe decided to make it a subscription. And just as with Windows to macOS, re-learning to use the GIMP UI was a frustrating experience because I was always thinking of "this is how it is done in Photoshop". Once you let go of that "familiarity", and are willing to actually test if the "GIMP way" is maybe better, it becomes a less frustrating experience. (All that said, while I have got used to using the GIMP tools the GIMP way, the overall GIMP layout does have a cluttered feeling and I do recommend installing Photo GIMP - it won't really make GIMP a Photoshop clone, but it will make it more "familiar" and thus easier to "re-learn" how to use it).

ndiddy 5mo ago
I grew up using Paint Shop Pro, so I'm not familiar with either. I've recently had to start using both Photoshop and GIMP (Photoshop because the best tool for descreening printed documents is the Sattva Descreen Photoshop plugin, GIMP because I've largely switched to Linux). GIMP is not like most software. With Photoshop, there's tons of functionality but I can usually figure out what to do by poking around in the menus and hovering at the icons in the toolbar. With GIMP, I have to keep looking online for how to do basic things, and the program keeps behaving in unusual ways. For example, let's say I added a text block to an image. I then select the text layer, there's a box drawn around the text, and I try moving the text around with the move tool. In every other image editor I've used, this will move the text around, but in GIMP this will move the background layer around unless you specifically click on the text and not just inside the box (which can be difficult depending on the font you used). Every aspect of using GIMP works like this. Everything is implemented in a counterintuitive manner. The closest analogue I can think of is it's like figuring out how to play old versions of Dwarf Fortress from before they overhauled the UI for the Steam release.

regus 5mo ago

I tried using gimp on Mac to do some extremely basic stuff. I just wanted multiple layers to make a little mock up at work. Gimp’s mental model is unintuitive to me, I got so frustrated trying get anything done. I gave up and bought acorn for Mac to make my basic little image.

f055 5mo ago

So I guess that yesterday's questions "Where is vibecoded Photoshop?" just got answered with a vibecoded Gimp UI that looks like Photoshop ;) but seriously, nice work!

figmert 5mo ago

Pretty sure there has been various efforts to do this, but they all eventually stall due to being unable to keep up with the GIMP source. I hope this time they're taking an approach that will allow them to keep up with the maintenance.

jdlyga 5mo ago

GIMP should take a lesson from Blender. Blender used to be the most clunky, unintuitive pieces of open source software. But after a decade and a half of UI development, it's one of the smoothest interfaces you'll ever use.

3form 5mo ago
Blender also had a comparatively large amount of money backing these changes, if I remember correctly, which I expect GIMP does not. I suppose a lesson in that area would be required first. However, the others like Krita might be better positioned for this.
elevation 5mo ago
> GIMP should take a lesson from Blender. Blender used to be the most clunky, unintuitive pieces of open source software. But after a decade and a half of UI development, it's one of the smoothest interfaces you'll ever use Agreed. I'm already willing to use GIMP in its current state. But though I've used it since I was a child, I have to re-google for things I know it can do. I had a photo of a barn. I was going to construct it in miniature, so to get scale measurements I wanted an isometric perspective from a photo that had been taken at an angle. I had done this in GIMP before so I was hesitant to start googling for answers but in 25 minutes of playing with it, no combination of inputs would do what I wanted. I had to find some youtube tutorials. Even simple tasks aren't simple. Annotating a photograph with a couple red arrows is a multi step challenge involving paths, stroking, selections, layers, and maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting. These UI concepts were impenetrable without tutorials -- I never would have figured this out on my own. GIMP has helped me but it's never been pleasant to use.
- mixmastamyk 5mo ago
  You can draw arrows with the pencil or paintbrush.
  - argee 5mo ago
    Not if you're a professional in a big boy company, where the MacOS users can literally draw a perfect arrow in 2 seconds on any image, without installing a thing. You're just going to look completely incompetent.

rorylaitila 5mo ago

I tried GIMP out again after a decade, and I have to say I'm presently surprised with v3. I avoided it for a long time because I remember it being a super confusing interface. Every UX idiom seemed backward to me then. But today I need to do some significant compositing, repainting and correction sporadically, and I'm tired of the Adobe tax. Maybe coupled with AI research, I've been quickly able to figure out everything I need to do.

cosmic_cheese 5mo ago

Does this fix the layers palette? Last I knew, in stock GIMP the way it operates is utterly bizarre, supporting none of the multi-select interactions that have been stock in scrolling list views across platforms since the 90s.

mattkevan 5mo ago

Photoshop's interface is getting worse [1] and everyone hates Adobe, so there's a great opportunity for a tool like GIMP to step up and become the default alternative. It's got a lot of features, it's been around for a long time and has reasonable name recognition (for better or worse). However, unless they do a Blender and make a sustained effort to improve the UI, understand what people want and how it fits into professional workflows, it's never going to happen. The attitude seems to be: If you don't like it, fuck you. I think they're genuinely happy with how things are. The inscrutable UI and off-putting name are features not bugs, keeping away the sort of people they don't want. [1] https://unsung.aresluna.org/photoshops-challenges-with-focus-pt-2/ https://unsung.aresluna.org/photoshops-challenges-with-focus...

mixmastamyk 5mo ago
Gimp has nothing like the interface deviations Blender did, like right click selection, etc. So there isn’t anything of that scale to fix.
cmyk_student 5mo ago
Far from it - we even have a dedicated design site where we ask for UX-specific bug reports and improvement requests from users: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_items https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it... We then discuss and test with the reporter and volunteer designers, and try to implement once some consensus has been reached. We welcome feedback from more users, so feel free to contribute your thoughts and design/workflow issues!
- mattkevan 5mo ago
  Ah design by committee, that well known route to design excellence!
  - cmyk_student 5mo ago
    I believe it's a step up from "design by whichever developer implemented a particular feature", which was the norm. :) More seriously, we're trying to attract more designers and design feedback, just like we do for coding. We're also trying to document UX standards (see https://developer.gimp.org/core/ https://developer.gimp.org/core/ for early work) so there'll be a consistent experience as new developers join and features are added.

Matl 5mo ago

While all the comments about GIMP needing a total UX overhaul etc. are likely valid, it's worth noting that there's something like 2 people working on the bulk of GIMP at the moment. It's not a startup that has just raised a series A and opened a flashy San Francisco office. All that is to say that I don't think the problem is the GIMP devs not knowing what the problems are and needing them explained over and over again. The problem is a shortage of developers to address them. So if you can, contribute.

herbst 5mo ago
I guess i am not the only one who actually likes that Gimp is the same software I got used to many years ago just a lot better. No need to relearn anytime I have to edit something.
- jwagenet 5mo ago
  I think there is room for both approaches. Like it or not, photoshop/adobe is the defacto standard everything else is measured from. A compatibility layer like Inkscape does for illustrator has for PS-like behavior is welcome to bring “industry” users in the fold. My primary use case for gimp is using path and selection tools for removing backgrounds and the UI and shortcuts in gimp are painful coming from a decade of adobe use.
shevy-java 5mo ago
> The problem is a shortage of developers to address them. > So if you can, contribute. Well, that requires knowledge of C. That already excludes like 98% of the user base or so, or perhaps 90%. Also, even aside from this, if a majority wants feature xyz but you don't like that, what can you do? It is a constant time investment to convince a majority that what they want may not be great. You make it sound as if the only bottleneck is lack of developers. I think there are many more bottlenecks than merely lack of developers.
- Fogest 5mo ago
  Agreed, I think the bottlenecks are often the gate keepers already in the community. In fact one of the other replies to the parent indicates that mentality. Where they are happy that GIMP has remained unchanged and are happy with the UI. This is exactly the kind of sentiment that often makes progress become stagnant. The small vocal community gets used to things like poor UI, and then turns into a NIMBY about any changes that would benefit the masses (but require them learning new things). Unfortunately I think this is why most of the time you don't see progress in applications like this until there is a fork or a whole new application. Especially with AI based development now, I think the problem is often not the lacking people to make code, but lacking people that allow the code to be contributed in the first place.

otikik 5mo ago

Why is this not called Pimp?

F3nd0 5mo ago
Because PNNU’s Not Not Unix.

shevy-java 5mo ago

Could be useful. GIMP never had a, to me, useful interface. Back when they added "export as" in addition to "save as", I told them to please don't do this. Their response was that they want to appeal more to professional designers. I just want a simpler user interface. It is kind of strange that we, as users, depend on upstream developers dictating down UI choices onto us, even more so when things change between versions. I want to be able to choose the UI at all times on my own. Yes, I can patch the source code, but I mean something integrated into the toolkit, as-is. GTK2 had that to a limited extend, you could easily re-assign key combinations, such as in the old bluefish editor. Then GTK3 changed this. I feel that these toolkits are constantly getting worse rather than better over time. One day we need to free ourselves from upstream developers dictating whatever they like to. So, from this point of view, best of luck to the photogimp folks - not sure how well it works, but they make a point with this that I totally understand. (I also have to admit that I often just stick to the default, even though it annoys me, but keeping up with more and more microchanges on my own, also adds to my own burden and time investment. But I really wish I could stop having to accept whatever upstream dictates downstream.)

KronisLV 5mo ago

It's cool that you can customize GIMP like that! I never really had an issue with the program UI, though. Maybe because I also never went through the trouble of pirating/buying Photoshop to get used to it. Their new effects system (where they have to be applied and sit on top of the layer until then) was pretty bugged on release on Windows, though. I'm sure it's a bit like for people who are used to Blender, whereas others find their interface... unique as well.

nogbit 5mo ago

Thank you so so much! I cant stand Gimp UI, so not intuitive. And over 25 years of Photoshop use has me locked into a way that image editing should work. This is fantastic and timely.

F3nd0 5mo ago
After 25 years of Photoshop, is it really intuition, or is it just habit?
- nogbit 5mo ago
  Habit, shortcut memory and more. But, it’s not 100% that, gimp over complicates itself.

jaffa2 5mo ago

Is there any long form articles on the GIMP UI? I see it time and time again people complaining about Gimps UI. Personally I've used Gimp on and off for like 25 years but i find it hella clunky and I often need to google how to do basic stuff. Also been using photoshop since v3 and I know it well enough to get by. I see some discussion on the copy paste. Funnily enough i was copy pasting stuff yesterday in Gimp and yeah there is something funky that I couldn't put my finger on. It makes the app feel really janky clicking here and ther doesn't work, renaming the pasted layer. do i click once ? double click? hit enter? I coudln't work it out as the behaviour seemed inconsistent. I also couldn't work out how to get a pasted layer to align to top left. I had to align it manually every time. sigh. anyway is ther any decent articles that discuss this anywhere that someone could link me?

pbalau 5mo ago

Gimp will never be able to pull a Blender because they are operating on hugely different conditions. Blender never had to play catch up with a proprietary file format. In Blender's world, fbx and any of the video formats are the way to interop with other studios. In the Photoshop/Gimp world, the interop format is psd. Under full control of Adobe. There is also the matter of price. Maya and 3dStudioMax are eye watering expensive, while Photoshop is dirt cheap. As a professional photographer, I can get the 300 GBP it costs me to have Lightroom and Photoshop for one year, in an afternoon.

dragochat 5mo ago

...before any of this matters though: - is non-destructive editing implemented yet in GIMP? - is stability finally improved, can I running without a never ending crashfest on both ubuntu and macos? bc tbh the UI was never the issue for GIMP, it just wasn't good enough software.

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