GIMP needs a total overhaul by designers. The image processing is fine, plugin ecosystem is good too, but the interface needs to be updated to include concepts that have changed.
For example you can’t add an outline around text, it’s very much a raster editor with layers, when most workflows benefit from vector concepts.
I remember GIMPshop being a thing back in the day. It was much easier for me, but it was abandoned ages ago. PhotoGIMP is fine, but it’s missing a lot of the QoL stuff that makes Photoshop better.
And that’s not to say GIMP is bad software, it’s competing with a design app that’s almost a monopoly worth billions of dollars. That’s a high bar to beat for free.
And their invented forced onto you file system 🤢you can’t open a jpg, change sonething and then you jhave to dance around the export, nit save when clising etc etc. Why devs, why?
Would be super cool if they got things up just a bit.
When you’re opening a jpeg it is transformed into a Gimp datafile so you can edit it.
“Saving” as jpeg would remove all your editing history, collapse all layers, and perform lossy compression on the resulting image.
Since losing most of the info included in your open file is not really what you want when you hit “save”, they put it behind the “Export” button.
I guess it would be more logically consistent if the workflow for editing images was to create a new Gimp project, then import a jpeg into it, the way some video editing software does it.
But that would be even less convenient.
No, regrettably there won’t be a major UI overhaul as part of GIMP 3, it’s very much under-the-hood improvements. From what I’ve seen, the maintainers are very open to a UI overhaul, but they don’t have the right contributors to do it in a significant way.
That said, functionality like text outlines aren’t really a UI/UX feature in the main.
Krita is also fantastic and better than most closed source drawing software
KiCAD is also getting almost as good as some of the closed source ECAD software and is definitely good enough for small companies not doing flex designs. It is by far the best hobbyist-targeted ECAD
Libre office is perfect now for small companies. It is only missing a couple of small office features. Maybe PowerPoint power users would have a hard time making morph animations
Bitwarden is pretty much the best-in-class password manager for companies too
OBS is the gold standard for streaming
VLC is also the gold standard for media players
Bitwarden is the only one that has SaaS backing and the rest is volunteer driven, but with different funding models.
I hope by 2030 KiCAD and FreeCAD will be much more prolific in the professional space for small companies.
Gimp is great for when you need photoshop, but aren’t doing it as your job, and don’t want to sail the seven seas.
Also, Fwiw when I want to outline text in gimp i select a text path, make a new layer, select from path, expand the selected area 2px, then fill (oh and move the layer behind the text layer). Unike in photoshop where theres like… one step, iirc.
Blender is perhaps the most impressive success story of the FOSS world. It has changed drastically the last few years and is keeping at it at breakneck pace
I mean the UI of every 3d software is crap until you get used to it.
Blender relies on keyboard shortcuts, so follow some tutorials to learn what the shortcuts are. It’s not intuitive at all but it does become efficient once you learn them.
I don’t use it often so I have to go through YouTube tutorials to recall things.
You can definitely make a 2cm cube by just typing “2cm” into the dimensions.
The interface is like vim though, it’s a modal editor and learning/using the hot keys is essential.
To do the cube thing: The whole process would be something like press “c” to open the create interface, select cube, scroll down the properties on the right hand menu and input your dimensions. I think you can also access them in the top right of the viewer.
I’m probably wrong on my hot keys since I have used it in two years or so.
My workflow is (I still will use 3dsmax for rigging & animation) make cubes, tubes and other simple geometry, set them at specific positions, do boolean operations.
Moving the vertices would be nice too but that would be a start.
What do you mean with moving vertices? Isn’t that one would do in edit mode, where you can select vertices, move them around, make new faces based on the selection, delete faces,…
Blender is fantastic
GIMP needs a total overhaul by designers. The image processing is fine, plugin ecosystem is good too, but the interface needs to be updated to include concepts that have changed.
For example you can’t add an outline around text, it’s very much a raster editor with layers, when most workflows benefit from vector concepts.
Isn’t that what GIMP 3.0 is going for? It’s not out yet, but it is a big overhaul.
I’m not sure, but that’s exciting if so
GIMP UI as is hasn’t changed much in 20 years.
I remember GIMPshop being a thing back in the day. It was much easier for me, but it was abandoned ages ago. PhotoGIMP is fine, but it’s missing a lot of the QoL stuff that makes Photoshop better.
Yeah
And that’s not to say GIMP is bad software, it’s competing with a design app that’s almost a monopoly worth billions of dollars. That’s a high bar to beat for free.
And their invented forced onto you file system 🤢you can’t open a jpg, change sonething and then you jhave to dance around the export, nit save when clising etc etc. Why devs, why?
Would be super cool if they got things up just a bit.
you can’t do what ? I have trouble following you
They are complaining that Gimp only allows to save in reconstructable formats (e.g. xcf) even when you opened baked fileformats (in this case jpeg)
In Gimp you have to export to those file formats as you would lose layer and history data as they don’t support that.
When you’re opening a jpeg it is transformed into a Gimp datafile so you can edit it.
“Saving” as jpeg would remove all your editing history, collapse all layers, and perform lossy compression on the resulting image.
Since losing most of the info included in your open file is not really what you want when you hit “save”, they put it behind the “Export” button.
I guess it would be more logically consistent if the workflow for editing images was to create a new Gimp project, then import a jpeg into it, the way some video editing software does it.
But that would be even less convenient.
No, regrettably there won’t be a major UI overhaul as part of GIMP 3, it’s very much under-the-hood improvements. From what I’ve seen, the maintainers are very open to a UI overhaul, but they don’t have the right contributors to do it in a significant way.
That said, functionality like text outlines aren’t really a UI/UX feature in the main.
GIMP can’t draw 2d shapes. What’s that all about? It almost motivated my inexperienced ass to work out how to add it myself…
Krita is also fantastic and better than most closed source drawing software
KiCAD is also getting almost as good as some of the closed source ECAD software and is definitely good enough for small companies not doing flex designs. It is by far the best hobbyist-targeted ECAD
Libre office is perfect now for small companies. It is only missing a couple of small office features. Maybe PowerPoint power users would have a hard time making morph animations
Bitwarden is pretty much the best-in-class password manager for companies too
OBS is the gold standard for streaming
VLC is also the gold standard for media players
Bitwarden is the only one that has SaaS backing and the rest is volunteer driven, but with different funding models.
I hope by 2030 KiCAD and FreeCAD will be much more prolific in the professional space for small companies.
And now Bitwarden is also proprietary…
what? no…
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/04/bitwarden_gpls_password_manager/
Gimp is great for when you need photoshop, but aren’t doing it as your job, and don’t want to sail the seven seas.
Also, Fwiw when I want to outline text in gimp i select a text path, make a new layer, select from path, expand the selected area 2px, then fill (oh and move the layer behind the text layer). Unike in photoshop where theres like… one step, iirc.
I’m trying blender every some years, last time the UX was super crappy as usual, like it’s impossible to make a 2cm cube. Have it changed lately?
Blender is perhaps the most impressive success story of the FOSS world. It has changed drastically the last few years and is keeping at it at breakneck pace
I mean the UI of every 3d software is crap until you get used to it.
Blender relies on keyboard shortcuts, so follow some tutorials to learn what the shortcuts are. It’s not intuitive at all but it does become efficient once you learn them.
Cheat sheets like this are honestly hugely helpful.
OMG.
You’re the hero we need I guess 😋
Saved.
I don’t use it often so I have to go through YouTube tutorials to recall things.
You can definitely make a 2cm cube by just typing “2cm” into the dimensions.
The interface is like vim though, it’s a modal editor and learning/using the hot keys is essential.
To do the cube thing: The whole process would be something like press “c” to open the create interface, select cube, scroll down the properties on the right hand menu and input your dimensions. I think you can also access them in the top right of the viewer.
I’m probably wrong on my hot keys since I have used it in two years or so.
Shift A to create object
Thanks, now I’ll have to try it again :-D
My workflow is (I still will use 3dsmax for rigging & animation) make cubes, tubes and other simple geometry, set them at specific positions, do boolean operations.
Moving the vertices would be nice too but that would be a start.
What do you mean with moving vertices? Isn’t that one would do in edit mode, where you can select vertices, move them around, make new faces based on the selection, delete faces,…