41 ms·

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.
  - pgwalsh 5mo ago
    Gimp is unintuitive for a lot of people including myself. I've tried it for years and just don't like the way it works. Forcing people to do it your way is not always the best way. This is an option, it's not forced on anyone and it's great for those that want to transition. People have requested it for years.
lukasbm 5mo ago
I'm pretty sure 95% of photoshop users only use a feature subset thats also available in GIMP (except for maybe the latest generative infill)
- w4rh4wk5 5mo ago
  I highly doubt that. Photoshop, even for 95% of users, is pretty heavy on non-destructive editing. GIMP did not have that for a very long time and is no where near feature parity today AFAIK. Don't get me wrong, Photoshop sucks hard, Adobe as a company even more, but on a technical level most Photoshop users cannot transition to GIMP. Edit: Although, I have to highlight that GIMP has made noticeable progress within the last years. I can now, finally, group two layers together and apply a drop shadow effect to the group, which correctly applies to all layers within the group. It's been quite a while...
  - jeroenhd 5mo ago
    I have talked to plenty of people for which Krita was their preferred Photoshop replacement. Photoshop does a lot of advanced editing well, but that's a feature many professionals don't really need. It's a bit like Excel: whole companies have moved from Excel to Google Docs, but many companies will never be able to use anything else because only Excel manages to render their VBA-sheet-database monstrosities correctly.
- Mashimo 5mo ago
  I don't know the current status, but at least last time I checked you could not have strokes/outline on text, and afterwards change the text :( It's such a little thing that makes gimp annoying to use. And it affects a broad audience. Wedding cards or youtube title thumbnails. Maybe it works now. I hope. Non destructive layer resize works now, right?
  - cmyk_student 5mo ago
    Non-destructive text outline has been around for a while now: https://www.gimp.org/news/2022/11/18/gimp-2-99-14-released/#text-tool-new-outline-options https://www.gimp.org/news/2022/11/18/gimp-2-99-14-released/#... Non-destructive resize works on vector layers and link layers (essentially "smart objects" in GIMP). We have the capability to do this for regular layers too - just need to connect some things and change some internal assumptions about transform filters.
notwhereyouare 5mo ago
But if you don't have the money for a photoshop license, learned photoshop, and don't want to pirate, this is a good middle ground. Photopea is also a good solution
- NetMageSCW 5mo ago
  Photoshop is available for $20 a month on the annual Photography plan.
Gualdrapo 5mo ago
Time to bring back again the (true) story of when I was working at uni and they were looking for another graphic designer to join our team. Boss told us one of the candidates refused to do the test because the computer didn't have Photoshop installed. All they needed to do with an image editor was to crop an image. I really think most people use Photoshop for the same reason they use Windows - they don't really know/they don't want to learn anything else.
- actionfromafar 5mo ago
  I maybe like this candidate - the "company" failed the test and the candidate moved on. :-)
  - mattkevan 5mo ago
    The company absolutely failed the test. If they're not using industry standard tools then it's a sign they don't take the role seriously. That would be a huge red flag to me. It's like applying to be developer and being told to use Microsoft FrontPage. It's doable, but raises serious questions about the professionalism of the organisation.
    - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
      “Industry standard tools” can be translated as I’ve been captured and/or a paid shill.
      - mattkevan 5mo ago
        That’s an insane take.
        mixmastamyk 5mo ago
        Truth is stranger than fiction, especially 2026+. Lock-in is powerful and you dove in head first.
ibejoeb 5mo ago
I don't think it's contentious to say that the user interface is a huge part of using a program.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
detritus 5mo ago
er.. no - I've been a daily user of Photoshop since '98 or so, but after getting annoyed with Adobe's subscription model a few years back I bought Affinity Photo and looked to move over entirely to that, yet I ended up back in Photoshop purely because of literal decades of muscle memory meant that every interaction that I had with Affinity's offering came with an undesirable cognitive speedbump. I'm not a fan of Gimp (haven't given it a shot in over a decade, to be fair) but if it covers the basic capabilities of PS and provides for an almost straight swap for users looking to change, then it is literally the layout and shortcuts that will be the decider for them.
- pessimizer 5mo ago
  Seems like you're actually agreeing. What you're attached to is all the work you put into learning Photoshop, not the particular UI of Photoshop. Learning GIMP is throwing hundreds or thousands of hours of work into the trash. IMO, learning GIMP is going to be a lot easier, though, because it's logically organized - it's easy to guess where things will be. That's always going to be a problem with switching from anything to anything other than a clone. I can't play superior, I'm still clinging to MATE for goodness's sake, but at least I know I'm being dumb and have plans to move.
  - detritus 5mo ago
    Define 'logically organised' in the context of 'a creative' using a piece of software? Back in the Mac vs. PC days, people would argue themselves blue in the face about which system was the 'more logical' with the non-answer essentially boiling down to the extent of one's experience and the preference of one's capacity to plumb the depths of the preferred OS. Here, we're discussing a means for people who might otherwise not have any desire to use GIMP being able to use GIMP without having to throw said thousands of hours of experience. Whether they then want to transition to a GIMP-first comprehension of the software is another matter entirely. This gets rid of the speedbump. Unfortunately, it doesnt get rid of the singularly-offputting name, but that's a matter for another thread.

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.
- pgwalsh 5mo ago
  Gimp is unintuitive for a lot of people including myself. I've tried it for years and just don't like the way it works. Forcing people to do it your way is not always the best way. This is an option, it's not forced on anyone and it's great for those that want to transition. People have requested it for years.

lukasbm 5mo ago

I'm pretty sure 95% of photoshop users only use a feature subset thats also available in GIMP (except for maybe the latest generative infill)

w4rh4wk5 5mo ago
I highly doubt that. Photoshop, even for 95% of users, is pretty heavy on non-destructive editing. GIMP did not have that for a very long time and is no where near feature parity today AFAIK. Don't get me wrong, Photoshop sucks hard, Adobe as a company even more, but on a technical level most Photoshop users cannot transition to GIMP. Edit: Although, I have to highlight that GIMP has made noticeable progress within the last years. I can now, finally, group two layers together and apply a drop shadow effect to the group, which correctly applies to all layers within the group. It's been quite a while...
- jeroenhd 5mo ago
  I have talked to plenty of people for which Krita was their preferred Photoshop replacement. Photoshop does a lot of advanced editing well, but that's a feature many professionals don't really need. It's a bit like Excel: whole companies have moved from Excel to Google Docs, but many companies will never be able to use anything else because only Excel manages to render their VBA-sheet-database monstrosities correctly.
Mashimo 5mo ago
I don't know the current status, but at least last time I checked you could not have strokes/outline on text, and afterwards change the text :( It's such a little thing that makes gimp annoying to use. And it affects a broad audience. Wedding cards or youtube title thumbnails. Maybe it works now. I hope. Non destructive layer resize works now, right?
- cmyk_student 5mo ago
  Non-destructive text outline has been around for a while now: https://www.gimp.org/news/2022/11/18/gimp-2-99-14-released/#text-tool-new-outline-options https://www.gimp.org/news/2022/11/18/gimp-2-99-14-released/#... Non-destructive resize works on vector layers and link layers (essentially "smart objects" in GIMP). We have the capability to do this for regular layers too - just need to connect some things and change some internal assumptions about transform filters.

notwhereyouare 5mo ago

But if you don't have the money for a photoshop license, learned photoshop, and don't want to pirate, this is a good middle ground. Photopea is also a good solution

NetMageSCW 5mo ago
Photoshop is available for $20 a month on the annual Photography plan.

Gualdrapo 5mo ago

Time to bring back again the (true) story of when I was working at uni and they were looking for another graphic designer to join our team. Boss told us one of the candidates refused to do the test because the computer didn't have Photoshop installed. All they needed to do with an image editor was to crop an image. I really think most people use Photoshop for the same reason they use Windows - they don't really know/they don't want to learn anything else.

actionfromafar 5mo ago
I maybe like this candidate - the "company" failed the test and the candidate moved on. :-)
- mattkevan 5mo ago
  The company absolutely failed the test. If they're not using industry standard tools then it's a sign they don't take the role seriously. That would be a huge red flag to me. It's like applying to be developer and being told to use Microsoft FrontPage. It's doable, but raises serious questions about the professionalism of the organisation.
  - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
    “Industry standard tools” can be translated as I’ve been captured and/or a paid shill.
    - mattkevan 5mo ago
      That’s an insane take.
      - mixmastamyk 5mo ago
        Truth is stranger than fiction, especially 2026+. Lock-in is powerful and you dove in head first.

ibejoeb 5mo ago

I don't think it's contentious to say that the user interface is a huge part of using a program.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

detritus 5mo ago

er.. no - I've been a daily user of Photoshop since '98 or so, but after getting annoyed with Adobe's subscription model a few years back I bought Affinity Photo and looked to move over entirely to that, yet I ended up back in Photoshop purely because of literal decades of muscle memory meant that every interaction that I had with Affinity's offering came with an undesirable cognitive speedbump. I'm not a fan of Gimp (haven't given it a shot in over a decade, to be fair) but if it covers the basic capabilities of PS and provides for an almost straight swap for users looking to change, then it is literally the layout and shortcuts that will be the decider for them.

pessimizer 5mo ago
Seems like you're actually agreeing. What you're attached to is all the work you put into learning Photoshop, not the particular UI of Photoshop. Learning GIMP is throwing hundreds or thousands of hours of work into the trash. IMO, learning GIMP is going to be a lot easier, though, because it's logically organized - it's easy to guess where things will be. That's always going to be a problem with switching from anything to anything other than a clone. I can't play superior, I'm still clinging to MATE for goodness's sake, but at least I know I'm being dumb and have plans to move.
- detritus 5mo ago
  Define 'logically organised' in the context of 'a creative' using a piece of software? Back in the Mac vs. PC days, people would argue themselves blue in the face about which system was the 'more logical' with the non-answer essentially boiling down to the extent of one's experience and the preference of one's capacity to plumb the depths of the preferred OS. Here, we're discussing a means for people who might otherwise not have any desire to use GIMP being able to use GIMP without having to throw said thousands of hours of experience. Whether they then want to transition to a GIMP-first comprehension of the software is another matter entirely. This gets rid of the speedbump. Unfortunately, it doesnt get rid of the singularly-offputting name, but that's a matter for another thread.