[DanielleMolloy]

PSP7 was a favorite piece of software that I had been using for years when still mainly on Windows systems. It was useful and intuitive when having to make changes to plenty of raster images, or when doing pixel graphics; creating alpha transparent sections, clean ups, and so on. I also used Paint.NET a lot for batch edits.

It still seems a bit difficult to find a replacement for these two on macOS and Linux. Intuitive interfaces focusing on primary image editing functions and stable output to various formats are probably what is missing for non-professional users like me.

GIMP seems like a great project but has a terrible overblown UI. I tried Photoshop / Illustrator for a year as you get the CS4-subscription at a low price from my university. A few features, e.g. how embedded images were handled are nice, but the software is massive and the interface is so weirdly complex that I had to search for guides for the simplest tasks (who is profiting from having to "study" CS4...?). With PSP7, which is decently powerful I went through a couple of tutorials and was set up for years. Also, I had spent half an hour to deactivate all the spyware that comes with CS4, this is a no-go.

You can read that I am just really ignorant about modern graphics editing workflows. I'm not a graphics professional, but need to make "production level" graphics every few months. I need relatively technical vector illustrations (e.g. of experiment flows, NN models) and clean figures of scientific results (raster) in a visualization-heavy field.

For vector graphics I now really like Inkscape with its SVG basis. I still go back to Dia a lot though whenever the illustration fits their limited (but sufficient) scope. Both can be used on Linux and macOS.

Still searching for a powerful but plain & simple (and stable!) raster graphics editor though. Currently Krita looks nice, but it is clearly in development stage. Would pay for either Acorn or Pixelmator if I wasn't concerned that they will also start emulating the UI of Photoshop in the future.

[com2kid]

Photoshop has a true proffesional app learning curve.

Once you learn how to do something in it, it makes sense as to why.

GIMP on the other hand, once I learned how to do something, I still hated it.

Then again GIMP makes simple things like pasting a major confusing pain.

[billfruit]

I think the oft repeated complaint about GIMP UI is largely unfounded. To someone who uses GIMP as their first image editing/creating program its multiple floating windows is a good paradigm, esp if using a large wide aspect monitor. I would feel constrained now in operating in a single window, when compared to that.

[mynewtb]

> GIMP seems like a great project but has a terrible overblown UI

Have you tried the new 2.10 and the single window mode?

[Drdrdrq]

I haven't, but I have another bone to pick with its authors. They lost credibility in my eyes with the whole Save/Export debacle. Sure, I use a plugin now that changes behaviour so I can save to PNG (who in the world uses xcf directly anyway?), but it's a pain to install everywhere, and I'm afraid it will stop working one day. I really wish they listened to their longtime users.

[DanielleMolloy]

I have not, thanks for the pointer. GIMP is still a software I would like to like; will give it a try.