[NeroVanbierv]

I think your last paragraph sums it up pretty nicely: users need a good UX to get to these tools.

So I would love if GIMP started shipping these awesome plugins by default to pick up the pace!

[Waterluvian]

The more I spend time as a software developer, the more strongly I believe that UX is 80% of what makes a tool good, and that a lot of programmers really just don’t get that.

[dylan604]

There are also the programmers that do get that, but just don't have the ability to change it. I'm no artist, but I can tell you when something looks bad. I'm constantly playing with CSS to learn new things to make things look better. I'm now in that category of "it looks like someone tried but just didn't achieve, but better than most" level of design.

Programmers making things for other programmers will always be forgiven as long as it works. Programmers making things for the general population will not be forgiven to the same extent if at all. As soon as someone releases something that is polished, it will be used even if it doesn't work as well.

[TheKarateKid]

Thank you!! I pay for Office 365 to use desktop Word even though I'm a very basic user of it. I'm well aware that LibreOffice exists and serves most of my needs, and that Word Online and Google Docs could serve my needs. But they're all so horribly inferior to the classic Word interface that I choose to pay for it.

And as we all know, this is why the iPhone has been so successful despite bringing Android-like features years after they were launched.

[vunderba]

IMHO Krita has really become the cross platform open source darling for graphic editors. There are some things that are unintuitive but it's leagues better than GIMP.

[porphyra]

Krita is amazing but isn't it specialized for digital painting rather than general purpose image manipulation?

[gjsman-1000]

GIMP does not fully support non-destructive editing yet.

That, by itself, would be a complete deal breaker for professional work.

There's plenty more deal breakers remaining.