Next. They should drop everything and solely focus on improving ux & ui . Every time I open gimp to try and get acclimated to it, I close it back out of frustration. Nothing is intuitive in that software. Not even the naming of the tools settings.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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i mean its pretty good if you get used to it.. i remember the shortcuts for all the major tools i use and it's very quick and easy to use for me.
This is exactly the problem they face. I use GIMP since ~15years. Any change they make will annoy me to a degree. But I also understand that getting into the UI is not that easy. They somehow have to manage these two completly opposing interests.
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I opened it, changed brush, got a segmentation fault crash lmao
It's always the user's fault. Why do think you could change the brush using an UI element!?
Isn't C just wonderful?
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Brilliant and huge congrats to the amazing people who worked on it. One silly question though, is the "new" Gimp logo supposed to look out of focus or are my eyes getting old?
zero screenshots on the announcement page and zero screenshots on the homepage. Exactly what i expect from gimp lol
The UI looks the same lol
The layers are the big thing, but its hard to show because the final result looks the same anyways
Aw man i was hoping for a big ui upgrade like when blender released version 2.8 that now even cinema4d is copying.
I fear gimp truly doesnt care about its ui/ux because technically everything you want to do is possible as long as you learn the ways ans they dont care to attract an audience thats not die hard FOSS people. For example schools havent been able to use it because theyre so deadset on their nsfw name and schools cant have kids googling gimp with the pictures that will show up
My college taught us GIMP for anyone in the CIS program, but not the actual graphic design track.
No self-respecting UI designer would ever want to work on that dinosaur of a codebase. The GIMP team is simply unable to do what Blender did, even if they made the UI their number one priority.
I mean the whole point of doing the mega rewrite to gtk3 was specifically to enable such forward looking progress.
What they did in the 3.0 release was, largely, a massive modernization of a dinosaur code base.
Now that it’s done it makes sense to do a UI overhaul. Before 3.0 it made no sense to even try, now it does.
Why not? Krita did it, they made an entirely new interface (hell they did it over 10 years ago) so why does the GIMP teams refuse to do the same?
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Not having non-destructive editing has kept me from using gimp. I tried but just couldn't use it. I'll have to try again.
If it's non destructive now I might try to learn it.
Incredible. This is one of those hard to believe moments.
It's been 21 years since the release of GIMP 2.0.
It's been more than 10 years since work on a majorly overhauled GIMP 3.0 was announced and initiated.
And it's been 7 years since the last major release (2.10).
I can't wait for the non-destructive text effects. After all these years of dealing with the fact applying drop shadows meant the text couldn't be edited, at last it's no longer an issue.
As a long time - pre version 2 - gimp user my first thought was "what, don't be ridiculous" and now I dont know what to feel. Why would you do this to me personally
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Man, after decades, why does GIMP still have a marketing problem?
Just visit https://www.gimp.org/ and compare it to https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html
Just assume both did exactly the same thing and cost the exact same amount (free or otherwise). Which would you choose based on their website?
Why does GIMP (and pretty much all FOSS) have to be so secretive about their product? Why no screenshots? Why not showcase the software on their website?
It's so damn frustrating that every FOSS app appears to be command line software, or assumed that the user knows everything about it already.
Devs, you might have a killer piece of software, but screenshots go a long way to help with gaining interest and adoption.
The photoshop page doesn't even have a download link.
0/10 would not download.
Agree, however on clicking the photoshop link was first hit with 2 popups before I could see the page.
Unless 3.0 has solved it, the gimp has a steep UI problem and a learning curve such that mass appeal on the website would be inappropriate anyway. I love it but I love it because I've been using it my whole life and know it very well. Foss in general struggles with useability due to a lot of hard to overcome problems - mainly, that by the time someone is ready to contribute to any given foss project, they're already intimately familiar with its foibles and probably have strong opinions about what UX elements are sacred cows and should not be fixed.
Well, it has solved it in large part, yes. Tablet pen buttons are correctly recognized on Windows at last, GTK3 allows panels to be dockable pretty much anywhere, the interface looks generally sleek.
Now perhaps you could specify what aspect of the UI you find problematic, otherwise it's hard to respond to such a vague statement. Imagine you're a developer, and you read a piece of feedback that says "the gimp has a steep UI problem". Where do you go from there ?
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How is Krita? I’m on a Mac and my biggest problem with Gimp and Inkscape has always been lack of MacOS integration. Mostly with the UI but even shortcuts were wrong when I tried it. And the mouse/trackpad gestures were the dealbreaker.
I use Pixelmator, which hopefully continues to be a well developed pay once app, even though Apple just bought them. That and Sketch get me all the design tools I need for 2D and web.
Have you checked out Affinity? They support Mac and iPad, and are comparable with the core Adobe suite. Its a buy once scenario (per major version release). My only problem is they don't support Linux.
Of note, they were purchased last year by Canva, but it has been stated they will keep the Affinity products separate for purchase.
It's more of a paint program, and it's great if you have a pen and tablet. I haven't tried out gimp for while, but it was more of a photoshop alternative at that time. I think Apple's version of Krita would be Procreate, but Krita is free.
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I actually like the GIMP website homepage more than the one for photoshop.
Its simple and efficient. If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
The photoshop site just looks like a random squarespace template with a bunch of stock photos.
If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
See, that's not normal, though. You shouldn't need to "dig deeper" to find out what a product is or what it does.
The well-designed homepage should simply tell you that within seconds of visiting. Any additional clicks should only be to "learn more", but not to learn about.
If this was an analogy, imagine a street lined with restaurants.
On one side you've got "Vinny's Italian Pizzeria", "Joe's Burgers and Fries", and "Mary's Bakery and Treats". Each has posters of what they sell posted on the windows, and a QR code to their online menu.
On the other you have "Sal's Food", "Frank's More Food", "Sal's". The windows are either covered in brown paper, or have stock images of "food", but nothing specific about what they actually make. To learn more, you have to go inside, ask someone for a menu, wait for that menu, then have a look. But the menu lacks photos! You either have to know what they are describing to you in the menu, or you would have to have already dined there before.
Does the latter experience sound good? Because that's how too many open-source projects present themselves, and it's to the loss of the volunteer devs and their potential user base.
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So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6