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.
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I opened it, changed brush, got a segmentation fault crash lmao
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.
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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.
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.
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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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Yeah… I was expecting a much larger contrast. Give me the one that doesn’t start off with several popups.
I feel like the Adobe marketing is somewhat pointless. Anyone that has been in the target industries for any amount of time already know the deal.
GIMP is not Photoshop. They are not competitors. It's a difficult transition. I'm not sure we should even bother drawing a comparison.
I've used Photoshop since 1992. I know, I'm old. I started using GIMP about four years ago. I recently got to the point where I can function.
Money and momentum is a motherfucker. Adobe has fuck you money. GIMP has volunteers. Those that don't like their site should volunteer time or money.
Edit: fwiw I like the GIMP site better too.
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You're welcome to contribute your experties.
I wish I could, but this is a systemic problem, not a problem with one individual project.
Is the mindset that anyone looking for open source, FOSS, or Linux stuff is already tech-savvy enough to know exactly what they are looking for based solely on a text description?
What? There are hundreds of thousands of FOSS projects with great presentation. GIMP is the exception these days, not the rule.
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I think it's more so that the kind of people contributing to these projects are on balance not that interested in doing the marketing work.
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You can if you wish. You just choose not to. Like so many of us. If more did volunteer, the problem would disappear. It's that simple.
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Actually I would pick GIMP.
- Says what it is, an image editor.
- No popups and random interruptions.
- Not only AI editing examples which makes me thing the tool is AI only.
- An overview of the variety of major features it has rather than just AI editing.
- Links to helpful documentation rather than endless marketing pages that say nothing.
Really think only thing I would like to see is some screenshots and examples of using the tool, rather than just info on what it does. But the Photoshop page barely has this, just a few examples of the AI tools.
FOSS projects are often labors of love.
Nobody who isn't completely deranged loves marketing.
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dont forget how they expect you to compile it. some projects offer a nice .msi for windows, a .whatever for mac, and then linux users just get a link to their github. i mean cmon.
edit: i'm not talking specifically about gimp, my dudes.
compiling a program takes like 2 clicks dude
"They" most of the times is solo devs and you can't blame them for that. GIMP does have flatpak, appimages, etc.
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Idk if GIMP has a marketing problem but I definitely agree that FOSS projects should add screenshots and a description of what the program does to their website and repo. It really annoys me when someone links a piece of software and it just doesn't say what it does and there's no screenshots that would make it easy for me to see what it looks like and how the UI is structured. When there's no screenshots I'm rarely even interested in trying it out because, even with a description, I don't really know what it is. Like, I wouldn't be interested in a car based on only a description, I'd have to see a picture of it too.
I mean, the name is a bigger problem than anyone seems to want to admit...
Majority of area in the world does not recognize it as negative thing.
Even for English, English itself is diverse language. Singaporean English, Indian English, Asian English, definitely not negative in all of them.
Forcing one standard of language as a universal is a bad precedent for language diversity.
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I couldn't agree more and I see it everywhere as well. It's systemic.
Which would you choose based on their website?
Problem is, people on Lemmy are techies who might actually prefer the Gimp site. But any "normal" person would not.
Yeah I admit I kind of prefer the Gimp site. Are you saying Lemmy isn’t an accurate random sample of normal people in reality?
Yes, Lemmy is dominated by people with a certain propensity towards tech. You can't use Lemmy users as a gauge for what is good UX I would say.
I would have to choose GIMP (in spite of this awful name) because that page loaded without javascript and the photoshop page requires me to enable javascript.
I know I'm being a bit facetious, here, but... Adobe can afford to hire full time front end devs and designers. FOSS projects can't really compete with Adobe's investors.
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So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6
We got gimp 3 before half life 3.
I've only used GIMP a handful of times, so please forgive my ignorance -- how does 3.0 compare to Krita or IbisPaint?
GIMP is generally geared towards photo-editing, so if you have an existing image, you can use GIMP quite well to e.g. cut out parts of it or to apply effects.
It's not really geared towards digital painting or creating new images from scratch, like Krita and presumably IbisPaint are.