this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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GIMP is bad. If the problem was simply that it was "different to PS" then other apps like Krita and Affinity Photo would have the same reputation.
If a user goes looking for a tool or feature and it's not in the first place they look, that's a problem of "didn't really practice that much". If experienced people need to look up how to do basic operations and their reaction is "that's fucking stupid", then the software is bad.
To then say "well why don't you help the Dev team then" is insane. I'm not spending hundreds of hours digging GIMP out of bad design decisions when I could just use better software and I haven't seen any evidence that my PR would even be accepted.
Nobody needs excuses and apologism, they need Blender for image editing and GIMP just isn't that.
I mean, I've been using GIMP as my primary photo editor for...over a decade. When I use other programs, nothing is where I expect it to be and I think "well, that's fucking stupid"
Have you thought about applying for a job at Adobe and fixing it?
Getting a job at Adobe is not helping GIMP
No, but "fix it yourself" is apparently a completely acceptable response if someone criticizes GIMP.
Anyway, I don't care how bad the tools you use are, but it's time to stop acting shocked when industry professionals have no interest in GIMP and don't take anyone who advocates it as a Photoshop alternative seriously.
Nobody is acting shocked. Least the people who learned to use GIMP.
The problem is people like you who are outraged, when asking for a free Photoshop alternative, that the next best thing is not to their likening.
And yes "consider fixing it yourself" is absolutely a valid response for GIMP issues because GIMP is made by volunteers For Photoshop it a bullshit response because it's made by a billion dollar company which charges you for the development and use.
So the people who learn GIMP are fully aware why it gets zero industry use? Thanks, that was my point.
I'm not outraged in the slightest, nor am I asking for a free Photoshop alternative. But I've seen people claiming GIMP is a viable alternative to Photoshop for 20 years and for anything past the most basic use cases, it isn't. You may as well be telling people to use Nano instead of Visual Studio and when they complain about the experience, tell them to code the features themselves.
GIMP has had literally decades of development and even with Photoshop in the worst state it's ever been in, it isn't competitive. There are clearly systemic issues with the project and I'm certain this "head in the sand" mentality is at least partly to blame.
It is the next best completely free alternative. Whether people like it or not.
How is that an argument? How do you get the idea that GIMP is basically required to be competitive, just because it's old? Completely disregarding the fact it's made by volunteers vs a billion dollar company. And also completely disregarding the fact that Photoshop is even older than GIMP. By your own logic, just going by age, how can they be competitive when they are half a decade younger than PS?
Rewriting the whole thing would sure help. But not with the "I'm not going to help, fuck off" community.
And if that was how people actually presented it, I wouldn't be objecting. Instead, people pretend it's as good as Photoshop and anyone who disagrees is blamed for not programming it themselves and attacked for suggesting that commercial tools are far better.
Looks like you're more interested in defending Linux software than actually seeing my point.
So why isn't it competitive? It's not because it's new and hasn't had time to mature. It's not because developers haven't put time into it (despite the ridiculous "fix it yourself" bullshit that people keep pushing). It's not because the problem it aimed to solve has been solved.
It's because the people involved with GIMP have the usual Linux community resentment about what "good software" actually is. It's fuck ugly, but they don't think that should matter, so it doesn't get addressed. It doesn't follow patterns that similar software follows, because they're used to it, so everyone else should be too.
It's the same pervasive "good software is good code and nothing else" mentality the plagues the OSS community.
But who cares? Use your shit software. Defend it to your dying breath. It's not going to fix systemic problems with the project nor fool anyone who actually tries it.
Because it's made by volunteers, in their free time, who either don't have the time or skill or goal to make it competitive. But I wrote that a couple of times already and you continue to ignore it. So much for 'not seeing my point'.
If someone is not able or willing to learn their way around something new, that's literally their problem. Why would it need to be similar? If you want Photoshop, well then use Photoshop. Sometimes doing something different might also end up being the better idea. Won't know until you tried.
And yes, good software is good code. That's just a fact. Because otherwise you inevitably end up stuck and need to refractor the whole thing, instead of adding new features. And then angry people start complaining how you're not competitive, and oh my.
Have a nice day.
Didn't stop Blender. Didn't stop Firefox. Didn't stop Linux itself.
I've already covered in this comment chain. Krita and Affinity Photo do things differently and nobody complains because they can see actual value in the change. Being "different" isn't the source of GIMPs reputation, being shit is.
I moved to Affinity Photo over a year ago, despite it being different. I don't even keep a token pirated version of Photoshop around for compatibility anymore.
I tried multiple times and it simply isn't. That's been their most common feedback for 20 years but people like you still refuse to acknowledge that people might have a point.
Yet somehow, no matter how good the code might be, ugly software with shit UX just never seems to gain widespread popularity. Don't worry, I'm sure it's not because "good software" is holistic, it's because the entire world is wrong about GIMP except for you.
So you open any other image editor, click the rectangle select button, draw a rectangle, then select a move button beside the rectangle select tool, then it moves the rectangle you just selected and you think "That's fucking stupid, it should've moved the entire image, not the rectangle I just selected!"
Really?
Yes, really. If my move tool is set to layer move, dont change it just because I used the select tool for something completely unrelated. That is the typical dumbed down big colorful button approach that I hate in modern corporate software.
I feel like my tools should work together instead of having their parameters set individually. If I select something, it's because I want to do stuff with it. Imagine hitting play on a video and then also having to hit play on the audio.
Look, that you're used to the garbage UI doesn't change that it's garbage and in dire need of a fundamental revamp. If almost everyone here (and everywhere else) says that it sucks or is intransparent, then YOU may be the odd one out here ;)
Imagine hating usable software you don't need a PhD for. It's kinda pathetic to make this your point of pride.
I've been using GIMP since the very dawn, I use plenty of other image editors for variety of reasons (Affinity Photo, DxO PhotoLab, ArtRage, Clip Studio), and I have no problems with the UIs in any of them.
Yet every time I use Adobe software I'm like "why is it doing this? Why is it designed this way? Who thought that was a good idea? This is stupid."