Post

listen i'm not saying GIMP is useless but i am saying it's a misrepresentation to act like it's a perfectly acceptable 100% replacement for Photoshop and that its interface isn't totally fuckin busted. like sorry but i have been on Computer since 1994 and it is among the worst UIs i have ever seen

if you've *only* ever used GIMP it's a fish not knowing it's wet sort of situation, but for anyone coming in from PS it's more akin to hitting the water at terminal velocity

every time i see people try to tell digital artists to Just Use GIMP i'm like... are you a time traveler... did you come here from 2007... can you go back and tell kid me she has ADHD

bad UI is a serious problem for a digital artist, it kills your workflow and can worsen repetitive strain issues by adding tons of extra steps/keypresses! it's not just annoying, it's an obstacle!

imo the solution to all of this is to put all these software companies in the hands of the employees who know what they're actually goddamn doing and, i dunno, exile the former execs a remote island and airdrop them poptarts once in a while

okay after hearing some SHIT in the comments have been i retract my previous stance: GIMP sucks ass. stop recommending that monstrosity lmao just stoooooop.

im coming back to further amend this opinion: there do seem to be things it *is* good at which makes it a travesty that it is... Like This. but it shouldn't be at the top of the rec lists anymore. the truth is that the best free/non-adobe tools are scattered across a lot of different software

we need better and we can do better! the time to strike is now tbh, and good UIs can come from open source projects (gnome 40+, plasma 6, godot, krita)

I agree. I use GIMP just to resize/scale pages for our webcomic and it works for that but as a long time user of it and adobe I know there are better out there and it isn’t a complete PS replacement.

I was never able to figure out how to do much with it; didn't use it often enough to possibly get over that re-learning curve, glad I don't have to use it any more!

I was with you until the poptarts. 😀

we can give them some shitty store brand ones instead

We could make them poop flavored poptarts 🤔

Also if you want a freeware image editor that isn’t Actual Garbage then Paint dot Net is right there. It probably runs in WINE or Proton or whatever, I don’t know I haven’t checked. I just buy photoshop elements once every five years and call it a day.

I do wonder how well Paint.NET holds up to dedicated digital art use. I love it, and it's 100% my go-to, but I'm also just doing doodles and bashing shitposts together, so it's not clear to me how well it stands advanced use

It doesn't run under Proton or Wine.

I honestly didn’t even know paint dot net was still around, I think the last time I used it was over 20 years ago?

it isn't made by a company and there aren't any execs, though?

no i mean Adobe and the other software companies that are actively making their products worse and pushing people toward free alternatives that kinda stink

God imagine a worker coop software company. It would probably still need a union but it would be much prefered over 90% of tech companies.

Unfrosted? 🤔

We need to send all the UI/UX guys to the FOSS developers. Even Krita has some choices I don't like.

at least krita generally, like, works on amending these issues lately. There are several free software that simply like it that way and have no plans on changing shit LOL

Or they slap together a janky UI for the first alpha release, then any requests to change/improve it over time become a drawn out mess of self-important FOSS bureaucracy because any software project with more than like 5 users is terminally afraid of committing to any change.

Definitely!

I've found Affinity Photo and Designer the closest thing UI-wise to Photoshop and Illustrator, myself.

Hell any kind of digital work. I've bounced right out of VSTs or full on DAWs that are a bitch to navigate because the purpose of these programs is to get out of my way and help me make my art

I think the problem is that people are telling *artists* to use GIMP. Love it as my photo editor, but I really don’t think I could use it for serious art unless I installed a gorillion plugins and brushes for that purpose alone.

As an aside I have ADHD and am allergic to Paint.NET and Photoshop/clones so I might just be insane. Green is my pepper, has been since I was like 10. You may genuinely be right about GIMP users just not realizing their shit is crazy

Ironically: my mom, who is a lifelong Photoshop truther is the one who recommended it to me initially. And she’s tried and failed to make the switch to GIMP several times. She keeps swapping between PS clones now afaik

GIMP is the worse. Being on Linux I have to use it sometimes, and even with the PhotoGimp overhaul it sucks so bad. On the other hand, since I mostly used Photoshop to draw, Krita is a fantastic replacement 🩵 I will never not be grateful for Krita and its community

lmaoooo

I use Photoshop 6 which, it's interface sucks, but not as much as GIMP which is entirely unusable. I've tried to figure it out and it just frustrates me every time.

Every few years I go "I should learn GIMP" and I struggle along and stop after about 6 months trying to get it to do what I want. I've used so many different photo manipulation and art softwares since the 90s and GIMP remains the least easy to navigate and operate

Me every half decade: Surely they've improved the workflo- no somehow there are even more arcane steps okay fine

Literally my experience. "Surely it can't still be awf ... oh! Oh, oh really?"

i used gimp a lot as a kid and have been using it again since my old pirated copy of photoshop stopped working, and like, for better or for worse it mostly still feels the same as when i used it in high school forever ago. it was like relearning to ride a bike but it has octagon shaped wheels

I think maybe if it’s the only GUI you’ve ever used it might be that, but it’s alien in every possible way, often simply for the sake of being alien. Like, they thought “artists are stupid, and this is what they like, and we’re engineers (smartest kind of person) so we should do the opposite”.

because I haven't used PS, but am curious, how close does the PhotoGIMP project bring it in real-life usage? (granted, if you've ever tried it yourself, which I don't know) github.com/Diolinux/Pho...

i haven't tried it personally, but just at a glance, that UI is a big improvement. i can see this improving usability, but core issues (like the poor support for text/laborious processes for things that are simpler in other software) are still going to be problems if it's just a reskin

biggest W here is taking all tool the icons that were in indecipherable squares and aligning them vertically down the side which GIMP itself should have had the good sense to do like 20 years ago

I was this fish until recently. Then I spent a little money on Affinity Photo and it was night and day. Just a world of better.

people are so smug about “just drop adobe” and that’s how you know they’re not doing real work with it, adobe is able to be so miserable to people because so much adobe software is literally irreplaceable right now

yeahhhh it's the same with the "just get linux" people 🫠 like okay i'm glad it works for you but it won't for me! what if we all fought for better standards/consumer rights!!!