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
(dragging myself back into this thread yet again) i know GIMP isn't made by a big software company. when i referenced "these big companies" i meant Adobe and Microsoft and all the other fuckers that make alternatives necessary by being greedy bastards. i was unclear bc i was tired lmao
if GIMP were made by a big software company the problem wouldn't be bad UI so much as ever-changing UI in order to justify itself to the shareholders. i would love to see it scooch to about halfway between those two points
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 isnβt 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!
Also if you want a freeware image editor that isnβt Actual Garbage then Paint dot Net is right there.
It probably runs in WINE or Proton or whatever, I donβt know I havenβt 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
Paint.NET would not be my first free choice specifically for drawing in (that would be Krita, FireAlpaca, or MediBang Paint) but it's excellent for image editing!!
it seems to be going strong! i'm not a regular user of it but i've goofed with it just to see what its deal was and it certainly looks its age, but it's pretty versatile
Itβs got to be better than GIMP, at least. Or Iβd hope so.
GIMP does have some useful features for PNG manipulation and transparency stuff that I use a lot for iOS dev, but yikes, that UIβ¦
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
maybe there'll be more pressure towards making them better, now that more eyes are on them? Windows 8 sucking so bad is one of the primary reasons we have Proton these days, something like that could happen again
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.
it's wild, honestly, Discord moves shit around all the time whilst everyone begs them to just leave it alone, everyone begs GIMP to make changes and they're like... no! never!!!!
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
