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.
And I'm glad to see such a simple approach to making it usable. Not a fork creating whole new problems to worry about, just reconfiguring the UI and now Bob's your uncle.
Now if GIMP would just stop rewriting the file on each run, making it difficult to keep in revision control....
i really don't mind the GIMP UI but then again I used it for a very long time, so perhaps that's why (same for PS, I'm a 1.0 user).
On the flip side, I'd love a darktable that is closer the lightroom's UI, for similar reasons. Somehow, i find it more difficult to get the same speed and flow with darktable.
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.
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.
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.
I actually find the opposite. I don't actually think either of us are wrong, it probably comes down to what we got started with. I love that in Gimp layers can have totally different canvas sizes, and I prefer it's foreground select tool.
But most of all, any comparison is going to be silly. Photoshop has lots of amazing features and in sure is better in a technical comparison to Gimp in many ways.
A lot of times the best tool for the job is the one that works great for you.
Is it? Why? Looking at the screenshot on this, it just seems like a few items were moved around a bit, presumably because that's where Photoshop has them.
Yeah, I was too, I'll clarify. The photoGIMP UI doesn't seem that meaningfully different than the default UI to me, to where the idea that it is then not "crafted by coders" doesn't seem to make sense to me.
This comment should just be automatically posted in every GIMP thread. Then nobody else needs to post these trite points again and again and again and again.
GIMP and its UI are the only material here, what are you talking about? These are pain points about GIMP that multiple people have brought up every time GIMP has been mentioned online for decades.
I say this as someone who has used GIMP for two decades now. It was the first real image editor I used, so the UI/UX is fine to me, but it's clearly a problem.
GIMP is steadfast about the name, but has been slowly incorporating UI/UX improvements since its existence. (Single window mode, canvas rotation, more consistent UI on Macs with 3.0, high DPI support, etc.) GIMP doesn't have raw support yet, but it does have high bitdepth support (both integer and floating point).
The whole point of GIMPShop and PhotoGIMP are to address these pain points.
Again, it's about 20 years too late, but the rename thing is absolutely correct and I continue to be gobsmacked by the amount of people here who don't get this, especially as I've seen this place slowly move from actually being about "hacking" to being about "tech and business."
While I agree, and I've been hammering this point as a GIMP user for two decades I think the "GIMP is actually a fine name" are increasingly a minority. Its name makes GIMP hostile to user adoption. Anyone who works in a primarily English-spekaing country knows what it's like to try to use GIMP at work, especially in K-12.
It's not like it was an accident, either. GIMP is a backronym because they wanted to name it after the full-body sex slave suit. They shot themselves in the face with that one.
It’s only the British (and influenced by) who have a negative view of the name. The rest of us don’t care, and wish you’d quit bringing it up.
For example there’s a juice company here in the US named ’Suja,’ and it’s obvious they have no Brazilian employees because it means dirty/obscene in Portuguese.
Simple words sometimes mean unfortunate things in other countries. Adults get over them.
This is not true, I am in America and the name has been seriously problematic.
This is not surprising, the developers were English-speaking Americans who chose a name to cause offense on purpose, in reference to the full-body sex slave suit in Pulp Fiction: https://www.xach.com/gg/1997/1/profile/1/
I don't know who you claim to represent with "the rest of us", but I can only speak for the experience in America. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with me, it's a simple fact that the name GIMP has been a barrier to its adoption.
Individual adults absolutely do, but "systems, PR, and institutions" DO NOT, and that is the important lesson that so many people here aggressively dodge.
I personally can download this software and use it on my computer.
Now, can I recommend it to my class? Through zero fault or opinion of my own, it still might be a very bad idea for me professionally.
Maybe I don't like how sensitive people are. TOO BAD, it doesn't matter in this context.
The clowns who refuse to rename GIMP keep missing a huge opportunity.
I’ve had GIMP recommended as a free photo editing tool in many classes. Just saying that’s while you may not feel comfortable with recommending it, many others do.
> Anyone who works in a primarily English-spekaing country knows what it's like to try to use GIMP at work, especially in K-12.
Over the many times this topic was brought up here, plenty of people from English-speaking countries have said that no, they’ve never had a problem with it.
Yes, some people did have a problem with it. It's a valid point to bring up. But that does not mean their experience must have been shared by literally everyone else, or even the majority of people in similar circumstances.
That's fair, it's likely not _everybody_ would have a problem. But _enough_ people would. There are contexts where I've had no problems (e.g. in an office where every cubicle had at least one Linux machine, plenty of people had already heard of GIMP).
I think if GIMP had a different name, it would have had less friction in its adoption (or a higher "R-number"), Adobe would be less extractive (for having viable FOSS to compete with), and GIMP would have had more investment (in terms of money and dev hours). I'm certainly happy GIMP isn't completely abandoned, at the very least.
But what it DOES mean is -- okay, is it really worth it to KEEP it, or might you be able to get adoption, fans, traction, possibly more developers etc. etc. if you were to change it?
What is the strong motivation behind keeping the name and was it valid?
(No. The answer is no, it was not. There's no real good reason to keep it compared to the potential upsides.)
There was a short lived project to fork and rebrand under Glimpse with improved UI, but it's been inactive for years. All the links I find are forks of forks, 404s, and parked domains.
I think you might be equivocating these on their names, but it's simply not the same. People complain about the name of GIMP because it causes them problems when trying to use it in work and school. But nobody is complaining about GIMPS name, right? It's not even software.
Eh, every term for disabled people becomes a slur. Moron->idiot->retard (the latter being so unacceptable in modern speech it is labelled by the kids as "the hard r"). But you are right, we should simply not use terms for disabled people in software names. I propose "Thirty Years and Still Cannot Draw a Circle" or the hip short name :no-entry-sign: emoji.
Tangent, but it might help you avoid an embarrassing situation later on. If someone says "They called me the hard-R", they're not talking about the R-word.
"R----d" is usually just called "the R word", while "the hard R" refers specifically to the standard version of "the N word". (As opposed to "the soft A", which is sometimes used synonymous with "dude".)
Now if GIMP would just stop rewriting the file on each run, making it difficult to keep in revision control....