At this point I don't think GIMP will ever have a competent UI. All the people contributing to it are those who like working with GIMP and don't actually want a massive UI overhaul.

But just opening a ficking folder with lots of large image files in it alone makes GIMP nearly unusable for me. I don't love waiting 2 minutes to name and save a fucking document.

Yes. But I actually find Inkscape to be better. On vectors with especially high numbers of vertices (e.g. contour map exports from QGIS), Illustrator just gives up while Inkscape chugs right along.

I have the Adobe Suite and I still use Inkscape more often than Illustrator.

I hoped someone would correct me and tell me I am stupid and that of course GIMP has nondestructive transforms and then procede to explain how. I guess that trick doesn't always work :p

And pixel management.

But Krita somehow fulfills that, configured correctly.

There are also the high seas for those who want to sail! Old shops are very good, no ai stuff.

@LegoBrickOnFire @plateee For raster layers, yes (at the moment). You can do non-destructive transforms on vector layers and link layers (so you could add an external PNG/JPEG/SVG/etc to a composition as a layer and then non-destructively transform it).

Transforms are really a filter under the hood, so we have the infrastructure to make them all non-destructive. Just need to work on the UI elements. :)

Nowadays you can do per-layer post-processing filters without baking

If you’re a Mac user (like many designers) Pixelmator is an excellent alternative to PS, it’s lacking in some of the smart object/layer stuff I used to lean on heavily in adobe world (illustrator smart layers in ps used to be clutch in the old skewomorphic days).