[aarontyree]

I wonder sometimes if the reason GIMP development doesn't surpass other options is simply not having enough developers, having a user base that is more art centered than programming centered, and having a somewhat bottlenecked development culture. These could just be perceptions. I am hoping that when the transition to GEGL is fully implemented, there will be an acceleration. Its hard to use it for serious work. The stable branch is still 8bit :/

[mkohlmyr]

I don't know, as someone who moved from GIMP to Photoshop a long time ago I never saw that as being the reason it was/is(in my opinion) inferior. It has plenty of features - more than enough. What it never had was as good of a user interface and user experience. It always felt clunky and awkward by comparison.

If I were to give them one additional project member it wouldn't be a developer. It would be a product owner who uses Photoshop daily.

[exDM69]

> It would be a product owner who uses Photoshop daily.

But no-one sings praise to the Photoshop UI either, I've heard numerous complaints about it getting worse and worse all the time. It's a matter of people being used to PS and not willing to change.

There was a project earlier which had a Photoshop-clone UI for GIMP (called GimpShop or something), but it didn't magically solve all the issues. These days core GIMP has a single window interface available.

I've personally never had an issue with GIMP's UI after I grokked some of the basic concepts (e.g. "make selection and flood fill" - not "draw rectangle"). I see the lack of non-destructive editing and (historically) bad color management as a bigger issue.

I'm sure GIMP would accept UI-related contributions but the list of volunteers is short.

[mkohlmyr]

Admittedly I haven't used GIMP in a while, but the entire selection interface was awful last time I did. That's a very basic thing that was constantly annoying to me. Wether I can grok it or not really doesn't matter. Normal users don't want to have to grok things. It didn't feel intuitive, and as a result it only took a few hours of using Photoshop CS3 to never want to go back.

[exDM69]

Here's the thing: "normal users" looking for a free-of-charge alternative to commercial apps are not the typical target audience of open source productivity tools. They're primarily targetted to scratch the authors' own itch, and secondarily to benefit anyone who finds it useful in the hopes of more contributions.

Average Joes (nor non-contributing professional artists/photographers) are typically not beneficial to these projects, at worst they are a hindrance: tons of help requests (in the bug tracker), low effort bug reports, requests for Windows/OSX binaries (without offering to help in maintenance), etc. You can find some ugly examples if you look into bug trackers / mailing lists of some of these projects.

We can only hope that a benevolent philanthropist comes by and drops a few million dollars in to getting full time, paid developers into GIMP, Blender, Inkscape and all the other open source productivity tools but until that happens it's a mostly volunteer effort and the contributors can choose what to focus on.

If Photoshop suits you, great. I've managed to do all my image editing in GIMP for the past 20 years and I'm very glad the project exists.

[mkohlmyr]

I too have managed to do lots of image editing in GIMP. That doesn't mean it was a pleasant experience.

I am not trying to tell the volunteers what to work on, but if we can't give honest product feedback to FOSS projects on the basis that they are volunteer efforts, then those projects will never succeed broadly. If you don't care about succeeding broadly that's fine, but I get the impression from gimp.org that they would like to.

This disregard for "normal users" that often exists in the FOSS community is so completely and utterly self-defeating. If you want FOSS to succeed you need projects to be successful in the marketplace. You need "normal users" to reach that scale.

[exDM69]

> This disregard for "normal users" that often exists in the FOSS community is so completely and utterly self-defeating. If you want FOSS to succeed you need projects to be successful in the marketplace. You need "normal users" to reach that scale.

Yes, this is unfortunate but I don't see how it could change. I'm afraid that maintaining a scale big enough to include "normal users" and competing with commercial options would require more resources (read: money for full time development) than there are volunteers available. It's not just a matter of changing attitude.

The GIMP project has already exceeded the threshold of immortality and it's an invaluable tool, so I consider it a "success" regardless whether it's user friendly or competitive with commercial options.

[prokoudine]

> but if we can't give honest product feedback to FOSS projects on the basis that they are volunteer efforts

Why can't you give feedback to the GIMP team?

[ninjaroar]

Do product owners really work in open source projects where developers aren't getting paid?

I know personally, as an developer and an open source contributor, I'm going to work on something which either scratches my own itch or something which interests me. I certainly wouldn't be spending my own time working on the roadmap of a product owner if it doesn't fall into one of the two categories anyways.

[qume]

Couldn't agree more.

[exDM69]

The same chicken-and-egg problem plagues all the open source creativity suites and other "professional" software (GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, etc): there aren't enough artists, photographers, etc using it and contributing to it to make it competitive, and there will be no new users as long as the development (with user friendliness in mind) is stagnant.

The pool of programming-capable professional artists isn't very large in the first place and I can't blame them for focusing on their jobs and deadlines instead of developing the software they use.

That said, I have no sympathy for people who complain about the issues but do not contribute in any way. Being rude and mean to the developers doesn't help anyone, go ahead and use the commercial alternatives and shut up.

[prokoudine]

Aaron, basically you are looking at a combination of factors:

— a huge momentum that Photoshop has accumulated over the decades;

— huge R&D and marketing budget at Adobe;

— whole businesses built around educating Adobe tools (think Envato et al.).

And the list goes on.

Which is why it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to "surpass other options". But it makes a hell of a sense to create a sensible sophisticated tool for a certain user base. Which is kinda what we do with GIMP, as much as time permits.

BTW, love your photos :)

[aarontyree]

Thank you. I like most of them, most days:) That really is correct. It isn't about being better than every other option is it? Its amazing how easy it is to fall back into the global stage competition thinking. I think its just that my inner Richard Stallman still points an accusing finger at me every time I fire up Photoshop:)

[intoverflow2]

> having a user base that is more art centered than programming centered

Sorry but I think it's more likely the opposite and the user base is more developer centered than artist centered. How are devs supposed to understand how to move this app forward if no one even uses it to it's full potential.

Getting tired of technies pointing fingers at the artists when they fail to understand how to make great creative tools.