this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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[–] xnx@slrpnk.net 102 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

zero screenshots on the announcement page and zero screenshots on the homepage. Exactly what i expect from gimp lol

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 42 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] xnx@slrpnk.net 50 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (6 children)

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

[–] RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

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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[–] Manalith@midwest.social 2 points 16 hours ago

My college taught us GIMP for anyone in the CIS program, but not the actual graphic design track.

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[–] joshfaulkner@lemmy.world 46 points 21 hours ago
[–] Leeuk@feddit.uk 21 points 19 hours ago

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?

[–] sfu@lemm.ee 13 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

If it's non destructive now I might try to learn it.

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[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 110 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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.

[–] socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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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[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 196 points 1 day ago (61 children)

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.

[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

The photoshop page doesn't even have a download link.

0/10 would not download.

[–] AuroraB@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 hours ago

the gimp one displays normally, while the adobe one shows a blank white page.

the choice is obvious

[–] Leeuk@feddit.uk 17 points 19 hours ago

Agree, however on clicking the photoshop link was first hit with 2 popups before I could see the page.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 68 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Krita.org does a nice job of showing off their work and so does Blender

They're not flashy, but they definitely make me want to download them and check them out.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 4 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Broken@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 hours ago

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.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago

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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[–] piconaut@sh.itjust.works 41 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Dig deeper ?

Homepage text :

The Free & Open Source Image Editor
This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.

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[–] socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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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[–] Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're welcome to contribute your experties.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 41 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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?

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

What? There are hundreds of thousands of FOSS projects with great presentation. GIMP is the exception these days, not the rule.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 12 hours ago

For sure, I don't mean to blanket all FOSS projects under the same observation. But I've seen some projects where the idea is brilliant, and it fills a gap that no other software can, but they have piss-poor instructions (or none at all) and hardly describe what the project is or does. You only learn about them by chance, which is a real shame.

Here's another example: Navidrome (https://www.navidrome.org/) is an awesome, self-hosted music streaming software.

But their homepage doesn't have a screenshot, so you have no idea if the UI is just command prompt, ugly, unintuitive, or the best thing ever. Even the "learn more" page has no screenshots unless you really go digging.

Compare that to another FOSS self-hosted music streamer: https://ampache.org/

Simple website, but at least you can see exactly what to expect from the UI. Huge advantage even if they two apps do the exact same thing (both based on the Subsonic backend).

[–] sushibowl@feddit.nl 68 points 1 day ago (15 children)

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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[–] DioEgizio@lemm.ee 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 14 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

We got gimp 3 before half life 3.

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