[grapeskin]

The UI is absolutely horrendous and despite decades of opportunity to fix it, there’s been zero attempt.

Blender has made some big UI gains. I used it a long time ago, and the hidden menus and backwards control scheme made it unusable for anyone with basic computing knowledge (right click was select? Insanity) and doubly so for anyone with 3D knowledge. They revamped it a few years back and it’s usable now. I went from a blender hater to happily dropping paid 3D software and preaching about how good blender is.

Companies could throw money at gimp. But that doesn’t mean it’ll ever have a control scheme that’s usable to the 99.9% of people with prior digital art experience who go in expecting something similar to 99.999% of other software, only to find it’s completely backwards.

Literally just putting aside all other development plans and going all in for a year on making the UI usable would launch the project to success.

And comments like this always get a “well, it’s open source so you could fix it yourself if it’s that bad!” I could and so could others. But there’s usable software out there, and instead of dedicating loads of time to trying to fix a decades-old mess, we’d all rather just use a better product even if it costs money and get to work, or make something different from the ground up.

[tpoacher]

How much of this is just personal opinion rather than just canon?

I love the GIMP, use it all the time, find it super-intuitive, and last time I had to use Photoshop I felt like a fresh vim user who couldnt wait to figure out how to get the hell out of there.

[troad]

I'm not the original commenter, and I agree it's opinion, but it's definitely one shared by every artist and designer I've ever spoken with. The only people I know who use GIMP are engineers and devs - either folk who are die-hard OSS supporters, or people who need to do a quick image adjustment and can't be bothered Googling the ImageMagick incantation for it. Not a sign of a healthy, competitive graphics suite.

I suspect if you surveyed 1000 art professionals, you'd get very few who like or use GIMP. You're going to get a very different result with something like Blender and 3D designers though, which really should make the GIMP devs pause and think what it is that Blender does well that GIMP doesn't.

[happymellon]

It's probably personal opinion. I'm not a photo editor, I have never used Photoshop so that has not introduced bias.

But I have found Gimp to be wildly inconsistent in the UI. I never remember how to draw a circle, for example, when I just want to add something to a screenshot because you have to use the circle cut tool and then choose a different option which I never remember because it is unintuitive. Yet its easy to have a paintbrush that draws one of those texture patterns that I can't imagine anyone ever using.

As such I then don't use it.

[grapeskin]

The fact it’s been struggling to get widespread support for decades and there’s always someone complaining about the UI is a sign.

Most people don’t even think about photoshop UI. Same with Microsoft paint: users can get in and start figuring out what they want to do just by clicking around.

[kzrdude]

I've used GIMP sparingly but the tools pane/window gets lost, it's a clumsy interface. Krita is nice (except GIMP has some nice GNOME-ish human interface touches that are better.)

[prokoudine]

> The UI is absolutely horrendous and despite decades of opportunity to fix it, there’s been zero attempt.

I'm afraid you are dismissing quite a lot of work to improve the UX/UI.

Could more be done? Absolutely! Was there zero attempt? Not really, no.

[grapeskin]

Honestly, if there have been decades of efforts and it’s still this bad, that’s even less motivation to give them money.

It’s like: if you’re a large manufacturer, would you prefer investing in a city where government officials pocket the cash and roads don’t exist but with handwavy excuses that something might improve with a little more cash, or invest literally anywhere else where the roads improve every year and things are getting cleaner?

Gimp seems to be spinning its tires for infinity. I’ve tried it once a year or so for 15 years. It hasn’t changed much. It’s incredible. Almost no company is going to throw them cash and it’s obvious why.

[tredre3]

> Companies could throw money at gimp. But that doesn’t mean it’ll ever have a control scheme that’s usable to the 99.9% of people with prior digital art experience who go in expecting something similar to 99.999% of other software, only to find it’s completely backwards.

For what it's worth, GIMP does indeed have about a million dollars sitting in their donation account. So money isn't their issue, project management is.

[publicola1990]

I'd say Photoshop UI is nothing exemplary. So why should Gimp not emulating it be a complain?

Infact I find the MDI interface to be quite ergonomic.

[mort96]

Nobody complained that GIMP isn't emulating photoshop.

[unknownaccount]

I believe it is intentionally gimped because they are not allowed to make the UX too close to Photoshop(which, unfortunately happens to have the most intuitive / comfortable interface for photo editing) or else they would be sued by Adobe. Blame the horrendous interface on Adobe and their aggressive enforcement of software patents.

[omnimus]

Nonsense. You can 100% copy ux of a product. There are many mac apps that closely replicate Photoshop (affinity, pixelmator, acorn)and none of them were sued by Adobe.

Also i think Photoshop is intuitive mainly because everybody is so used to it. Gimp just has very bad ux because they cant colectivelly agree and unify the ux. If the ux was very different but very good it might be even advantage but now its lot worse PS.

[hiccuphippo]

As an occasional user of Gimp, Photoshop's ux is anything but intuitive. The same for Krita.

I guess they are only intuitive if you use a graphics tablet?

[Ygg2]

But what about other editors with similar UX? Do Krita/PaintShopPro ever got hit by spurious patent claim?