worked on it since 1998

Ngl gimp never took off because it's UX is terrible, plus it's far from feature complete.

It's like freecad in that regard, it exists, it's foss, but it's massively inferior to the paid options because UX is horrible and it breaks in weird ways.

Foss can be as good or better than non foss, just look at blender or Kicad, but these two aren't it.

The name doesn't help

Gimp ux was bad. It's been fine for years.

Freecad is WAY newer, and has had a fraction of the developer time spent on it.

I've spent 3 years learning freecad, and it's bad, it's entirely incapable of holding up against moderately complex projects, a simple fillet can break the whole model. It got better with 1.0 but it's still so very far from competing with fusion or inventor / catia...

As for gimp... I've really tried adding it to my workflow, but it's been a massive headache, I'd likely use photocraft over it given both options...

I tried the "good UX" one back then when people hype around the update, and it still really hard to learn if you used to photoshop layout. These day, Krita is better i think, and Inkscape for the Illustrator alternative.

And CAD is ridiculously complex. Students also practice like half a year to cope with the proprietary market leaders. I sometimes think people complain because they confuse tools made for professionals with some game on easy mode.

But yeah, FreeCAD also isn't on par with professional tools. It's surprisingly capable and has a lot of features. And they made it crash way less. 2 years ago it used to crash several times each project when adding some chamfers or some other easy stuff and I had to do lots of stuff in order or it wouldn't work. As of now I'd say it's perfectly usable for the average hobby project. Just don't expect any CAD software to be usable without any kind of background knowledge. There's other tools for that kind of 3D design.

Oh yeah Krita is FAR better than Gimp ux wise 100℅

I prefer photopea. Completely browser based and ready for anything quick. Haven't tried anything in depth with it though.

bashes gimp for its ui

uses blender as a positive example in that regard

Uh.

Blender is not that bad, not even close in fact. Have you tried learning it at all? I know I have and per hour spent it's far more empowering than other comparatively complex software.

You can't compare a 2d picture editor to a full 3d modeling suite like they're even remotely close. Blender is better.

You named it GIMP. It's a joke to YOU, too.

Hell hath no fury like a photographer told to use UX that isn't literally an 1:1 exact clone of Photoshop UX.

What babies.

A lot of free software has silly names, it's part of the 80s/90s nerdy computing culture

gimp fucking sucks though.

"Fine" meaning "it's technically possible to use it."

Adding and editing text is a nightmare. I feel like the only way you could say with a straight face is if you haven't used Photoshop since 2006. Hell, PowerPoint has a better interface in a lot of ways.

I hate dunking on them like that but let's not lie to ourselves here. GIMP is good enough but the UI was clearly made by engineers, not artists

Ironically, this attitude is a major blocker for the GIMP team when it comes to bigger UI/UX changes -- there's a vocal contingent who will react negatively to any change that requires a little adjustment to workflow or muscle memory, or even if things just look different.

Firefox's incredibly light-touch visual changes recently are a great example of this; it's not "this is demonstrably worse," it's "change makes me uncomfortable."

I do totally appreciate that changes can be genuinely problematic for a subset of users, especially the elderly, but the vitriol that gets spewed when a project overhauls a UI embarrasses me as a user.

Side note: the GIMP UI is generally pretty good these days. There's room for improvement, and it has a learning curve (as do all complex applications, to some degree) but it's shed a lot of its least intuitive aspects.

Yes, nothing says

Hell hath no fury

Like

I don't know, I just cannot get used to it and I don't like the shortcut keys.

If you give your project an edgy, borderline-offensive name, don’t be surprised if the normies steer well away from it, to the point of choosing obvious AI slop if it happens to look like a solid commercial product that was signed off by a corporate legal department.

I don't think it sucks, but people thinking it's painful to use ought to be taken as legitimate feedback instead of blind hate. It's a weird UI. I want to like it but I can barely use it even when I force myself to.

Yes, I did try it. I also know my way around other 3d software and blender's horrible ux has consistently driven me away from it.

And I know that 2d and 3d software packages are different. Duh. Doesn't mean 3d software has to be bad though.

Blender is horrendous. And that's comparing it to other 3d modelling programs. They throw like 8 different subsystems' UIs onto the screen at once. If I'm trying to model an object, I don't the damn animation timeline taking up half my screen.

It does and I’m dying on this hill with you.

Lol no.

I'm an engineer and I have no idea what they were going for with that UI

That's fair. I'm an engineer, too, and the UI brings me pain. Especially because my previous career had creative cloud as the daily software.

I guess I meant more the engineer mindset of "I already know how to use it so it's good enough"

It reminds me of AutoCAD, my current daily software, which feels like a thousand bandaids stacked on top of each other over the course of 25 years.

I feel obligated to say that having a bad UI doesn't mean it's bad software. I'm just tired of people pretending it's polished lol

Freecad is NOT like gimp. They are not hell bent o forcing people to do things their way. They constantly evolve, and pay real attention to what the community wants. They are one of FOSS' example of how things should be. I really like it and how it's evolving.

When was the last time you tried? Free CAD evolves at breakneck speed.

will react negatively to any change that requires a little adjustment to workflow or muscle memory, or even if things just look different.

I wonder if it's possible to build seperate UI that sits on top of the underlying backend and can be switched easily. So that ppl from PS can start quick.

Photopea is really good. It pretty much has all the tools i ever need as someone who had a passion for graphics design/photo editing in their youth but never went pro. It gets shit done for some simple stuff i want to slap together now and then.

But some stuff gets laggy really fast. Like worse than PS CS2 on my Pentium 4 shitbox 20 years ago. I wish we could have Photopea without browser technology in an appimage/flatpak or whatever. It would be perfect.

Isn't GIMPs UX just old photoshop ?

I think a lot of people underestimate the maintenance burden of options like this. It's another trope you see often with UI changes -- "just let me switch it back."

The problem is that now, even if your UI is super nicely decoupled from your engine, everything you change under the hood is likely to need at least regression testing in two places rather than one -- that workload has doubled.

As it happens, though, with your specific example, there's someone actively maintaining a GIMP fork mod called PhotoGIMP to achieve this, but I notice despite recent(ish) commits, they're still a minor version and a year behind.

Good riddance to you both.

Inkscape's UI is very unintuitive to me, as someone used to Illustrator. The necessary tools mostly exist, but not where I would look for them.

You get the same with Apple fans when Apple introduces something new. They all get really angry about it.

Google too 🙃

is this some kind of AI upscale of the meme? His skin has a fabric-like texture, uncanny 👀

Yeah its called hyperbole, you should try it sometime.

Seriously though, as someone who's main creative outlet is game dev (among other forms of programming), if I can learn a new engine, including new languages and core concepts required to work with the new tools, they can learn to locate some icons and context menus that moved.

Like Jesus, what do said people do when their OS upgrades versions?

GNU Image Manipulation Program

I see a lot of whining about the name. Just use the full name if you don't like the acronym.

Blender had years before it earned the reputation as the exception

Some people get used to how their daily tools work and look, so when the UI suddenly changes, our efficiency and comfort decreases until we tweak it to our liking and/or get used to it. The closest analogue I can think of, imagine that every few years you wake up to the furniture having been rearranged in your house.

I didn't see the point of the Firefox redesign either, and had to spend some time in userchrome.css to make it not actively repulsive :/ A few weeks later now I reached the state of "eh ok", but I still don't think it's an improvement.

This is the real issue, AI slop gives the prudes too much power

You're just dismissing the claims that the UI is bad and bolstering your ability to adapt. Why can't everyone be just like you? That's not how the world works.

what do said people do when their OS upgrades versions?

If your question were real, you'd probably know that everyone complains about UI changes with updates. Usually it's a temporary annoyance forgotten a week later. Other times, such as windows 11, they switch OSes. People with UI preferences aren't broken and they don't owe you anything. Stubbornly rejecting feedback might get you upvotes itt, but it won't get you very far elsewhere.

Totally agree with you. I struggle to use it because it doesn't function the way I expect it to when I am trying to edit something. Still have it installed anyways because it has decent gif support.

Also a lot of people associate the word 'gimp' with something else

HOW DO I DRAW A CIRCLE

there’s a vocal contingent who will react negatively to any change that requires a little adjustment to workflow or muscle memory, or even if things just look different.

okay but some of google's icon changes have been really bad

The closest analogue I can think of, imagine that every few years you wake up to the furniture having been rearranged in your house.

maybe every few years you get a new car? it does all the same things, maybe even better things with new bells and whistles, but fuck all y'all who decided to get rid of my buttons [oldmanyellsatclouds.jif]

you just explained fairly well to me why windows decided to lock the taskbar on the bottom for a while. or at least a reason they might.