[HN Gopher] GIMP Turns 27
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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?
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(page generated 2022-11-30 23:00 UTC)