[HN Gopher] GIMP Turns 27 ___________________________________________________________________ GIMP Turns 27 Author : neustradamus Score : 77 points Date : 2022-11-30 21:59 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.gimp.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.gimp.org) | hirundo wrote: | Dear Gimp developers, my walls are covered in photos printed with | help from Gimp, making my home a little brighter wherever I look. | Multiply that by half a bajillion users, and those lines of code | you wrote have made a concrete difference to the world. Thank you | for your service. | zulban wrote: | GIMP is great, I use it all the time. I wish they would change | their name so it could have more mainstream acceptance. | anigbrowl wrote: | > To celebrate [...] this nice birthday illustration (fully drawn | within GIMP [...] | | There's some sort of weird inferiority complex when your graphics | software is 27 years old and you're still saying 'look we used it | for one of our website assets.' It's like telling people at the | birthday party that you dressed yourself. | | I find it equally strange that there are almost _no screenshots_ | on the website, outside of the docs and tutorial section, and | those tend to be partial screenshots for highly specific exemplar | purposes. There _are_ good screenshots in the Release Notes, but | that 's not somewhere new users are likely to head to | immediately. The landing page declares it's great for 'High | Quality Photo Manipulation, Original Artwork Creation, Graphic | Design Elements, Programming Algorithms' - but none of these | categories lead to their own pages full of compelling examples. | | I get that GIMPists are very proud of how community-driven it is, | but the quality is extremely variable to the point of weakening | the project. Having good politics/aspirations is very important, | but before you can turn people into contributors you need to turn | them into enthusiastic users. GIMP could learn a bit from the | commercial products it competes with about how to present itself | to the rest of the world. | lastdong wrote: | Gimp is great, just wished they learn more about UX with Blender | and Krita examples. | perardi wrote: | Still no adjustment layers, still no layer styles. | | It's so easy to just critique away...but really? Really? Those | are just absolutely essential image editing software features. | What have they been prioritizing ahead of that? | whywhywhywhy wrote: | At this point I don't think it's controversial to say that this | project existing has harmed creative tools on Linux. | | If another project had become the de-facto we'd have all those | basic features. | | Instead we're stuck with something that almost provides the | basics ok, because it exists people treat it like a solved | problem, and it has such a history no one's allowed to say it | just frankly isn't usable for it's one job. | Nition wrote: | In some ways the de facto standard now is | http://www.photopea.com in a browser. | kome wrote: | I am a simple person, I like GIMP; and I have no idea what "no | adjustment layers, still no layer styles" is | diag wrote: | It's about non destructive editing, a very powerful tool for | professional workflows especially for fine tuning changes and | making things repeatable. | dontbenebby wrote: | And no macOS native gui ;_; | | It's almost unusable in OSX because of that. | [deleted] | smoldesu wrote: | To each their own, but if GIMP got a "Logic Pro"-style | rewrite then I'd probably be looking for a new raster | graphics editor. | failedartifact wrote: | Its open source, so feel free to prioritise your own workload | into making this feature. | Waterluvian wrote: | I don't understand this recurring retort. | | Does it mean that to use a tool you must be capable of | building it? | | Does it mean that to share criticism you must be able to | build it? I'm thinking about applying this logic to the rest | of life and it's rather amusing to imagine the silence. Hmm, | maybe that wouldn't be so bad. | | I think one could more fairly say, "offer up money for | someone to build the features you need" but I think that's | also a very difficult proposition given the logistics of the | matter. | senko wrote: | > I don't understand this recurring retort. Does it mean | that to use a tool you must be capable of building it? | | No, it means it's not a priority for those who _are_ | building it. | failedartifact wrote: | It was a suggestion, another suggestion is to fund gimp | development. Another one is to move to a different tool. | But to question on what is talking their time for my | feature x to get complete is really not a polite way of | discord on Open Source software. | | The tool is free, so you are free to use it, and you are | free not to. That is up to you. If you want a feature, | please support the development woth either you cash or | skill. Its that simple. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | It means check ones entitlement at the door and put up or | shut up. People writing free software without compensation | owe nothing to anyone. | [deleted] | jraph wrote: | > Does it mean that to share criticism you must be able to | build it? | | No. I've reported a lot of tickets/feature requests for a | lot of projects that seemed to be taken good. | | But criticism that seems entitled is rarely appreciated, | and surprise about some obviously, severely underfunded | project missing features is not very impressive neither. | | There is a shitload of other missing features OP could have | mentioned on this anniversary post and I guess it can feel | a bit depressing too. "27 years! Happy birthday! Still no | job though?". Eeh. | | You can express constructive criticism with some humility. | | "It's a shame nobody has been able to work on adjustment | layers and layer styles, which are important features in | such a piece of software." | | OP did not feel entitled to me, but I can understand who | their message could have been taken somewhat badly. | Waterluvian wrote: | I appreciate what you're saying. Do you mind if I dig | into something a wee bit? Because us engineering types | are often a bit communicatively tone deaf. | | What specifically in the comment suggests a sense of | entitlement? For me, I see none. I see a, "as an expert | user, it's surprising that such an important feature has | been missing forever and I would like to criticize that." | jraph wrote: | Whoops, I edited to state that OP didn't feel entitled to | me in the meantime. Sorry for this. | | It's more the "surprise about some obviously, severely | underfunded project missing features is not very | impressive" part. | | I don't work on the Gimp, I've read developers working on | it at length, I think as a developer reading this comment | I would be thinking "Well, we do what we can". Jehan, who | wrote the post, contributes on the Gimp thanks to | donation on his Ze Marmot project, his team is not paid | very well. | whywhywhywhy wrote: | This attitude is why no one seriously suggests GIMP over | Photoshop. | | Why would anyone with the talent required to do that invest | time in a project that hasn't been able to add these basic | features. | | Cloning the current GIMP feature set into a modern and | competent system is easier than trying to work with the team | that can't ship these features alone. | Gigachad wrote: | Unless you are ideologically inclined, it would be a better | use of your resources to just pay for photoshop. As much as | it angers people on this website, the subscription model | provides a constant stream of funding that has gone in to | keeping the tool the best on the market and for anyone using | it professionally, it delivers far more value than it's cost. | Ygg2 wrote: | I don't think you have to be ideologically inclined. | Photoshop is already turning on the milking machine. | | Subscription. Check. Paid add ons. Check. Paid color | palette. Check and mark. | smoldesu wrote: | "This guy couldn't find the scale tool in GIMP... charge | him $9.99 each month until he learns his lesson." | [deleted] | pengaru wrote: | > What have they been prioritizing ahead of that? | | There are very few active maintainers, what few there are have | been scratching their own itches. | Gigachad wrote: | That's evident. I've used the tool periodically and I can't | think of anything that's improved in the last 10 years. I | think it actually got worse when they made all the icons | greyscale and hid some under others. You still have 3 | different tools for moving, resizing, and rotating when every | other program has them all in one. | pengaru wrote: | It's disappointed me as well over the past 5-10 years. The | switch from save->export seemed arbitrary and pointless. | And the last time I tried putting text into an image with | their text editing tool, the widget was so buggy I gave up | - and that was in a release that shipped in debian stable | at the time. | | But it's just a bummer, not a source of anger/furor/vitriol | for the project. I don't get why so many folks are talking | shit like they didn't get their refund. | robinsonb5 wrote: | Oh that particular change drives me crazy. It's not the | switch per se, it's the lecture I receive when I slip up | and use the muscle-memory procedure of File->Save As with | a .tif extension, like I did for the first decade of | using GIMP. The software has quite clearly identified | what I'm trying to do, so refusing to comply and forcing | me to jump through an arbitrary hoop is akin to jeering | the words "You didn't say 'Simon Says'"! | | The new text widget has improved recently, and it's | certainly an improvement on the original. | | It's still a great piece of software, and I'm very | grateful that it exists, but when I use it, it's | generally a version from the 2.4 series, because it suits | my workflow better. (When there's no image open the older | versions just have a small unobtrusive toolbox window | open, which you can use as a drop target for files picked | from a file browser; the newer versions have a large | empty window which gets in the way.) | | [For those who say "fork it yourself", I have contributed | to development in the distant past - dithered gradients | were my addition, and I wrote a plugin (subsequently | adopted by someone in Japan but long-since abandoned) for | separating RGB images to CMYK layers, and saving them as | a CMYK TIFF. But despite briefly maintaining a PPA with a | patched version without the "no image open" window I | quickly decided life was too short to spend my hobby time | trying to hold back that particular tide.] | jraph wrote: | > You still have 3 different tools for moving, resizing, | and rotating | | There is one capable of doing the three now: "Unified | Transform Tool" (Shift+T) | | The grouping is welcome for me, but the grey icons are less | easy to read indeed. | NoThisIsMe wrote: | They've been working on this for like a decade, in a sense. | They're rewriting the core as a library, GEGL, which supports | non-destructive editing as well as other long-requested | features. My impression is GEGL is largely done; the remaining | work is to port GIMP to it. Realizing these gains for non- | destructive editing is planned for v3.2, which is probably | years away still. The other major initiative since forever has | been porting to GTK 3. | torginus wrote: | Sorry, come again? Porting _to_ GTK 3? GTK 4 has been out for | years. | wetpaws wrote: | Just use Krita. | the-smug-one wrote: | "Oyvind Kolas raises funds for his work on GEGL, GIMP's new | sophisticated image processing core. This work is crucial to | implement features such as non-destructive editing in GIMP, | including features known as adjustment layers and layer effects | in similar software. Oyvind is the GEGL maintainer and its | primary developer who has been working on it since mid-2000s. " | t-writescode wrote: | Congrats Gimp! I imagine your devs come over here to read | sometimes. | | You've provided a solid picture editor for in-a-pinch and free- | out-of-the-box usage; and, while I've since moved on to usually | use paid tools like ProCreate and Affinity's software, you have | facilitated by artistic work for decades! | | Thanks for your amazing work! | arunc wrote: | GIMP was the birth place of GTK, which was later renamed to GTK+ | after it was rewritten to be object oriented. GNOME desktop | environment still uses GTK+ | gryf wrote: | I congratulate them but after 27 years I'm still using and paying | for Photoshop. | Daub wrote: | I recently made the move to Affinity Photo. The latest version | gives me all I need. Muscle memory is still with Potatoshop, | but I'm slowly transferring. | gryf wrote: | I have been contemplating this move as well and nearly bought | the whole Serif package on sale but I am Adobe's bitch and | getting too old not to just pay for the problem to go away. | Cyberdog wrote: | I recently dropped the expensive-as-hell Illustrator license | for Affinity's vector drawing program, Affinity Designer, for | when I need to slop together SVGs (which isn't that often), | and I've been pretty happy with it so far. I've already got | Acorn for my bitmap needs but I will definitely consider | Photo if/when it's time to change. I would definitely suggest | people fed up with Adobe's pricing schemes and awful UIs to | give Affinity's products a look. | macrolime wrote: | They used to sell Gimp on CDs back in the days to sponsor | development. I think I still have one from the late 90s laying | around somewhere. | DIARRHEA_xd wrote: | The biggest stain on FOSS, with the worst apologists, 27 years | strong! Try drawing a circle, in the year 2022. | jraph wrote: | select with a circle shape -> draw selection. Not as | straightforward as possible, but still quite easy. | danuker wrote: | Alternatively, if you want a circle and not a disk, after | filling the circular selection, shrink it by whatever | thickness, and then delete. | | But I have felt no need for drawing circles. Those should be | done in Inkscape. I am not sure they should be in a photo | processing app. | matkoniecz wrote: | > The biggest stain on FOSS | | Pretty sure that program that is useful and usable, but not as | much as you want, does not qualify for this description. | Arainach wrote: | The GIMP project, while powerful, personifies all of the | worst parts of OSS culture. | | A needlessly polarizing/antagonizing name that they've | refused to change? Check. | | A user interface that no one but the developers could love or | understand? Check. | | A focus on knobs for users to tweak and being far behind the | rest of the industry in basic usability improvements such as | "auto levels" that have been table stakes for many years? | Check. | | Deflection of any criticism by saying "there's a plugin for | that", when the plugin is probably locked in a filing cabinet | in a basement closet with a sign saying "Beware of the | Leopard" and another saying "only supported up to <6 versions | ago>"? Check and check. | scohesc wrote: | It's wonderful to see a piece of OSS add yet another year onto | its life! More people should be aware of open source alternatives | to mainstream/first-party software like Photoshop! | | I'd sure like more features and a UI that looks like it wasn't | made 27 years ago though. Keeps me from using it for day to day | image editing or really anything advanced. | bergenty wrote: | Proves the value of managers breathing down everyone's necks. | It's a good tool but hasn't achieved all that much over 27 years. | mistrial9 wrote: | no - Adobe has GUI and process Software Patents by the boatload | for Photoshop. | 323 wrote: | If they would just copy Photoshop... Even the 2000 version of | Photoshop. | pulvinar wrote: | That would please me-- in Gimp I have to think carefully about | every command. It seems like every choice for a default | operation is the non-intuitive one. | [deleted] | mongol wrote: | There are some free software projects with bigger legacy then | commonly realized. Gimp for sure is one of them, KHTML another. | iLoveOncall wrote: | For it to have such a bad UX after 27 years is a feat in itself. | | I can't fathom that to this day people present it as an | alternative to Photoshop where it's little more than an unusable | Paint. | | I mean, photopea.com is free, developed by a single guy, and runs | in the browser, and it's light years ahead of Gimp. | MilStdJunkie wrote: | Running in the browser is a no-go for lots of organizations, | and Gimp runs in portable mode for those that can't install | anything on their workstation. | | Yeah, it's not amazing, but Gimp is light years from Paint. | Just removing background on stuff, crap like that, 80% of the | graphics stuff people ask me for at work. It's not PS, it's not | even Blender-levels of OSS, but it works alright. | | Now, compositing and actual challenging graphical stuff, | different story. | iLoveOncall wrote: | I said that as "it is way better despite having more limited | resources". You can even download the files of photopea.com | locally and use it offline but that wasn't my point. | forgotpwd16 wrote: | >and it's light years ahead of Gimp. | | Photopea makes millions. Maybe if people donated to support | Gimp's development it wouldn't be that behind. | iLoveOncall wrote: | Lol this is an obvious lie. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9urjmg/i_made_a_free_. | .. | bergenty wrote: | This is a stark validation of capitalism. | mistrial9 wrote: | no - litigation from Software Patent holders has prevented | progress | mixmastamyk wrote: | So many gross comments in here. What is wrong with you people? | :-P | | Gimp is fantastic image editor and the freedom and price are just | right. Been using it since the late nineties when I gave up Paint | Shop Pro (which was a better every-day image editor than even | Photoshop). I use it a few times a week to edit/convert my | photos, web images, and album covers and it works quite well. | | If you want something dedicated to your niche profession, go | ahead and rent it and file negative entitled comments to | /dev/null. | j-bos wrote: | Congrats to GIMP! As someone who could never afford photoshop, | and never learned alternative software sourcing, gimp was | wonderful for school projects and one off paying gigs. To this | day I still use gimp for personal photo projects. Hope to one day | be free to contribute. | guntherhermann wrote: | GIMP is legendary. One of the first FOSS projects I ever used. I | pirated Photoshop soon after trying it. | | Krita (https://github.com/KDE/krita | https://krita.org/en/) is a | more intuitive UX imo. | Cyberdog wrote: | > One of the first FOSS projects I ever used. I pirated | Photoshop soon after trying it. | | Oh... okay. | | Did you also steal a car right after you learned how to drive? | DoktorDelta wrote: | _You wouldn 't download a car_ | wetpaws wrote: | Krita is better in any conceivable way. | t-writescode wrote: | running "Curves" on a photo? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-30 23:00 UTC)