Under the hood I actually really like GIMP. I’m also not too bothered by there being no circle tool. My problem with GIMP is that if there were a circle tool in it, its a little too difficult to find it if it does exist.
If they had some front end re-write eventually where they just moved some stuff around and better organized the front end of the application, I think a lot more people would use it. UX/UI is really important, and I’m sure the contributors of GIMP know this as they seem to have done well to try to make the interface feel straightforward by putting stuff under menu’s and whatnot, but the location of things just seems unintuitive/non-standard compared to what every other application does.
The other issue I have with GIMP is just that its development cycle takes forever compared to most every other open source application I have seen.
Not to say there is a great answer to any of this, image manipulation/animation software is not an easy thing to program by any means so I understand why it can take forever, but I just wish there was a real answer.
In the mean time, I’ve just been trying to get by with krita, though krita really seems geared toward digital painting specifically.
I love krita and it is the best digital art software i’ve used for painting and i’ve used them all proffessionally.
I had to tweak it the least out of all of them.
Not saying GIMP’s UI is great (I only use it occasionally), but efficient UI isn’t necessarily an “intuitive” UI. I.E. an intuitive UI may not be efficient for a professional that takes the time to learn it and works with the UI ~40 hours/week.
Intuitively finding basics everybody starting out needs in the ui takes a backseat to the pro who is using all the shortcuts and custom workspace layouts going to adapt to the changes anyway. Especially as basically no one uses gimp professionally all day and the people who would use it are not using gimp cause it’s not intuitive.
I can’t wait for freecad to stop being just an poweful near peer and actually become an usable near peer.
Yeah, I have much more time in FreeCAD than PhotoShop. I don’t think it’s either intuitive or efficient, lol. But, I was surprised that I was able to both create model to both 3D printing, and create paths for my plywood router. In my experience KiCAD is near peer, because Altium also sucks.
True, but I prefer intuition over efficiency when I pick something up for the first time, second time, and third time, until I eventually have a good enough understanding to begin worrying about efficiency.
There are use cases for Libre office writer, just as there are for vim, even though they are both capable of producing text documents. One is arguably more intuitive while one is arguably more efficient, but if I didn’t know anything about word processing/text editing and had to pick between the two, I would pick writer.
Same goes for anything else, and it’s also why a decent number of text editors/software support emacs/vim bindings - so that you can use the software intuitively, and then once you understand it, you can become more efficient by using modal bindings. Same goes for GIMP versus other software. The thing about other softwares in the same genre is that they can be learned relatively easily and can also be used efficiently. GIMP I find harder to learn, even if it is efficient later.
For anyone who is new who has to make a choice as well - very few people would pick vim to start out with.
Furthermore, in this instance, I do have a decent amount of photo editing experience and have used multiple softwares to do it, but even after that, the problem I have with GIMP is that a lot of this knowledge does not transfer to GIMP like it does for other software. If I learn photoshop, I can get away with using affinity, krita, corel draw, clip studio, and other software - but not nearly as easily GIMP.
I would also argue that efficiency is equally dependent upon the software as it is the task. The workflow for digital painting, animation, and photo editing are all quite different, and no one UX/UI is the most efficient at all of them. This is why most of these softwares have modular interfaces, which is good, but I simply find the modular interface of GIMP harder to use or understand versus the rest.
Yeah, for all I know, GIMP is as intuitive and efficient as Photoshop. I.e. they’re both as un-intuitive to me, and I’m not efficient in either (I probably haven’t use PS in a decade). But, I guess being intuitive is a good “hook” in regards to market share. I am a software engineer, and do prefer (neo)vim, but I guess I started out on NetBeans. I kind of see that as a level-up in regards to efficiency; not sure if that exists in other industries.
That’s a good question, I’m not too sure since I work in IT/Software as well and am currently using kakoune. I think a lot of efficiency upgrades in other industries are typically a cost gap instead of an understanding gap. For example, a carpenter could start out with a tool like a hand saw, and then later upgrade to a band saw, but they need to pay a lot more for and find space for the more efficient tool. This can kind of exist in software as well, but the funny thing is that a lot of the time these days I find the FOSS stuff better overall, which I think sets this phenomenon apart from other industries and whatnot.
Blender is so versatile, and has so many applications that you have to end up with a cluttered interface. Since the alternatives have licenses that have a steep cost, I would say that putting up with a clunky interface is well worth it.
Coming from maya where everything is on modifier key and a sub second flick of your mouse and having to use something as disgusting and alow as “hotkeys” is an adjustment.
Everything but the ui is geat. Except for 3d cursor, fuck that stupid thing. I have a 3d cursor, it’s my cursor.
And lack of the x y z coordinate setter. Getting something to 000 is impossible and setting prescise pivots is a nightmare.
I’ve never been into vector graphics, but I had reason to use Inkscape recently, and I was actually surprised by how easy to use it was and how much the UI made sense.
I have used inkscape though it has been some time. I felt as though it was not super featureful at the time so the UI felt slightly barren compared to something like Adobe Illustrator, but I don’t recall having the same kind of trouble with it that I do with GIMP honestly.
Before they abandoned it for Gnome 3, Ubuntu’s Unity DE had the ability to search any program’s menus. Was really handy for many things, but especially Gimp.
Hi, this complaint sounds vaguely familiar and I know it’s just indicative of that type of problem, but can you elaborate on what you mean by no circle tool?
I haven’t used GIMP in a long time but if I remember correctly there’s an ellipse tool and I think there’s a modifier that can constrain the aspect ratio so you can make circles. I might be wrong though.
I think what you are thinking of is the ellipse selection tool, and yes this exists and can be used - however I am referring to the tool class of geometric shapes which is quite common among other software. Basically it creates a vector (In most cases I think) shape with options for stroke and fill, and controls the same way that the ellipse selection tool does (constraints etc.).
GIMP does not have this, instead you have to go through a decent amount of trouble to get simple geometric shapes drawn to the screen, and at that I believe they are always raster.
This makes GIMP difficult if you want to use it for some niche uses such as making a quick flow diagram, or a quick vector mask which can be changed later.
Under the hood I actually really like GIMP. I’m also not too bothered by there being no circle tool. My problem with GIMP is that if there were a circle tool in it, its a little too difficult to find it if it does exist.
If they had some front end re-write eventually where they just moved some stuff around and better organized the front end of the application, I think a lot more people would use it. UX/UI is really important, and I’m sure the contributors of GIMP know this as they seem to have done well to try to make the interface feel straightforward by putting stuff under menu’s and whatnot, but the location of things just seems unintuitive/non-standard compared to what every other application does.
The other issue I have with GIMP is just that its development cycle takes forever compared to most every other open source application I have seen.
Not to say there is a great answer to any of this, image manipulation/animation software is not an easy thing to program by any means so I understand why it can take forever, but I just wish there was a real answer.
In the mean time, I’ve just been trying to get by with krita, though krita really seems geared toward digital painting specifically.
I love krita and it is the best digital art software i’ve used for painting and i’ve used them all proffessionally. I had to tweak it the least out of all of them.
How does it compare to Procreate on iPad?
A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key
/to open a command paletteThat is interesting and I did not know that. Thanks.
That is a bandaid though, it’s an abstract way of interacting with an application and you can’t really build muscle memory around it
Not saying GIMP’s UI is great (I only use it occasionally), but efficient UI isn’t necessarily an “intuitive” UI. I.E. an intuitive UI may not be efficient for a professional that takes the time to learn it and works with the UI ~40 hours/week.
Intuitively finding basics everybody starting out needs in the ui takes a backseat to the pro who is using all the shortcuts and custom workspace layouts going to adapt to the changes anyway. Especially as basically no one uses gimp professionally all day and the people who would use it are not using gimp cause it’s not intuitive.
I can’t wait for freecad to stop being just an poweful near peer and actually become an usable near peer.
Yeah, I have much more time in FreeCAD than PhotoShop. I don’t think it’s either intuitive or efficient, lol. But, I was surprised that I was able to both create model to both 3D printing, and create paths for my plywood router. In my experience KiCAD is near peer, because Altium also sucks.
True, but I prefer intuition over efficiency when I pick something up for the first time, second time, and third time, until I eventually have a good enough understanding to begin worrying about efficiency.
There are use cases for Libre office writer, just as there are for vim, even though they are both capable of producing text documents. One is arguably more intuitive while one is arguably more efficient, but if I didn’t know anything about word processing/text editing and had to pick between the two, I would pick writer.
Same goes for anything else, and it’s also why a decent number of text editors/software support emacs/vim bindings - so that you can use the software intuitively, and then once you understand it, you can become more efficient by using modal bindings. Same goes for GIMP versus other software. The thing about other softwares in the same genre is that they can be learned relatively easily and can also be used efficiently. GIMP I find harder to learn, even if it is efficient later.
For anyone who is new who has to make a choice as well - very few people would pick vim to start out with.
Furthermore, in this instance, I do have a decent amount of photo editing experience and have used multiple softwares to do it, but even after that, the problem I have with GIMP is that a lot of this knowledge does not transfer to GIMP like it does for other software. If I learn photoshop, I can get away with using affinity, krita, corel draw, clip studio, and other software - but not nearly as easily GIMP.
I would also argue that efficiency is equally dependent upon the software as it is the task. The workflow for digital painting, animation, and photo editing are all quite different, and no one UX/UI is the most efficient at all of them. This is why most of these softwares have modular interfaces, which is good, but I simply find the modular interface of GIMP harder to use or understand versus the rest.
Yeah, for all I know, GIMP is as intuitive and efficient as Photoshop. I.e. they’re both as un-intuitive to me, and I’m not efficient in either (I probably haven’t use PS in a decade). But, I guess being intuitive is a good “hook” in regards to market share. I am a software engineer, and do prefer (neo)vim, but I guess I started out on NetBeans. I kind of see that as a level-up in regards to efficiency; not sure if that exists in other industries.
That’s a good question, I’m not too sure since I work in IT/Software as well and am currently using kakoune. I think a lot of efficiency upgrades in other industries are typically a cost gap instead of an understanding gap. For example, a carpenter could start out with a tool like a hand saw, and then later upgrade to a band saw, but they need to pay a lot more for and find space for the more efficient tool. This can kind of exist in software as well, but the funny thing is that a lot of the time these days I find the FOSS stuff better overall, which I think sets this phenomenon apart from other industries and whatnot.
Don’t even get us started on Blender’s UX/UI design.
Blender is so versatile, and has so many applications that you have to end up with a cluttered interface. Since the alternatives have licenses that have a steep cost, I would say that putting up with a clunky interface is well worth it.
Haha, yes the feeling is similar there, though I think I personally still had an easier time learning blenders current workflow.
I’m assuming my downvotes are people who have never used blender, lol
I only see one on your previous comment, but it could be because blender has recently started getting a better reputation for usability/learnability.
6 years ago I touched it and I was horrified, but I touched it a few times this year and found they had made some good improvements.
Same here, maya is no longer on linux so I can be free of terrible, stagnating autodesk.
Blender is good but few things I use constantly are just seemingly missing and community doesn’t understand the question either.
Coming from maya where everything is on modifier key and a sub second flick of your mouse and having to use something as disgusting and alow as “hotkeys” is an adjustment. Everything but the ui is geat. Except for 3d cursor, fuck that stupid thing. I have a 3d cursor, it’s my cursor.
And lack of the x y z coordinate setter. Getting something to 000 is impossible and setting prescise pivots is a nightmare.
People who complain about GIMP have never had to use Inkscape. Now THAT is one horribly unintuitive UI.
I find Inkscape easier
I’ve never been into vector graphics, but I had reason to use Inkscape recently, and I was actually surprised by how easy to use it was and how much the UI made sense.
I have used inkscape though it has been some time. I felt as though it was not super featureful at the time so the UI felt slightly barren compared to something like Adobe Illustrator, but I don’t recall having the same kind of trouble with it that I do with GIMP honestly.
I like inkscape but ive used AI minimally and found AI more unintuitive.
I guess it’s based on your previous experience
Before they abandoned it for Gnome 3, Ubuntu’s Unity DE had the ability to search any program’s menus. Was really handy for many things, but especially Gimp.
GIMP has received a lot of love as of late. It was in a semi abandoned state for a while.
GIMP has received a lot of love as of late. It was in a semi abandoned state for a while.
Hi, this complaint sounds vaguely familiar and I know it’s just indicative of that type of problem, but can you elaborate on what you mean by no circle tool?
I haven’t used GIMP in a long time but if I remember correctly there’s an ellipse tool and I think there’s a modifier that can constrain the aspect ratio so you can make circles. I might be wrong though.
I think what you are thinking of is the ellipse selection tool, and yes this exists and can be used - however I am referring to the tool class of geometric shapes which is quite common among other software. Basically it creates a vector (In most cases I think) shape with options for stroke and fill, and controls the same way that the ellipse selection tool does (constraints etc.).
GIMP does not have this, instead you have to go through a decent amount of trouble to get simple geometric shapes drawn to the screen, and at that I believe they are always raster.
Take these procedures as an example for GIMP.
https://www.alphr.com/make-shapes-gimp/
This makes GIMP difficult if you want to use it for some niche uses such as making a quick flow diagram, or a quick vector mask which can be changed later.
You can replace GIMP with Blendee or Freecad and it works just as well