The transition from GIMP 2.x to GIMP 3.0 took two decades

[wruza]

Linux Desktop never needed GIMP like a regular Windows user never needed Photoshop. Photoshop is “start at work in the morning” software and GIMP is its “artist’s impression”.

What Linux Desktop needed was Jasc/Corel Paint Shop Pro and its modern reincarnation Paint.NET.

But it was never made, imo.

Most tools are either too heavy and similar to GIMP, or indistinguishable from mspaint, or simple photo filters for “editing” photos.

[thefz]

There's Pinta for that, but it needs a lot of work sadly.

[xtracto]

Similar to this, I still install irfanview via wine in my linux desktop. There's just nothing close to it. I tried some suggestions like nomacs but they are just not there.

[2Gkashmiri]

Am I the only one who feels this "article" which is most probably an llm made and could have been a tweet only ?

[wrs]

Why, because the only 3.0 features it mentions are SVG icons in the toolbar and the plugin API? No, you're not the only one.

[omoikane]

The main news is that Gimp made a release candidate for 3.0:

https://www.gimp.org/news/2024/11/06/gimp-3-0-RC1-released/

I see that a few people have submitted that link, but they don't seem to be getting much attention:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

So this article is boosting some visibility to the original news, while having little content otherwise.

[echelon]

Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule.

And why won't they change the name? It means not one, but two derogatory things.

[cookiengineer]

Note that this was the case for Blender pre-2.8, too.

The issue with any software of this complexity is tech debt. If anything, GIMP should be a big warning sign about what happens if you bet on e.g. a UI framework which moves on without you.

GTK's development and release schedule is pretty aggressive, especially with the even releases being stable and the odd releases being unstable (which no other library on the planet decided to do so). A lot of cross platform software decided to a refactor to QT because of that, and I'd argue that the problem lies with upstream GTK and its failed API stability promises along the way.

In open source projects, you cannot afford to bet on unstable UI frameworks because you don't have enough time to spend on refactors like this. If every second subminor GTK version breaks your code, it's just not possible to keep up with that.

I'm actually impressed that GIMP wasn't fully abandoned because the sheer amount of code that needed to be rewritten is massive.

[stephen_g]

Coming from Photoshop (but now just an occasional user), I tried it when I was ditching Adobe but just found its interface extremely clunky and annoying to use. I’m on macOS so I ended up trialing and buying Pixelmator Pro. I would have looked at Affinity Photo failing that.

Blender’s interface is not super intuitive but I hear once you learn it the UI is good. On the other hand, Gimp felt to me like having a lot of rough edges that would always annoy me.

[givemeethekeys]

I used Blender in the early days. It was fast, quick to use, and intuitive once you learned the controls. It made me wonder why other apps couldn't just use Blender's toolkit.

I also used Gimp around that time. It was already quite old. Despite all the functionality, it felt clunky and I wondered why they couldn't use Photoshop's UX - Adobe had already spent millions figuring it out for them.

My guess is that Blender is an effort by artists who created software to help them, and Gimp is an effort by software engineers who created what they feel is a "good enough" open source alternative.

[emmanueloga_]

This is a great question for which I don't have an answer :-)

GIMP was my go-to ever since Paint Shop Pro was acquired by Corel (in 2006 sigh!). Then a few years back I switched fully to Mac and GIMP became borderline unusable, specially at high resolutions. Ever since I'm a bit lost when it comes to picking a new raster graphics editor. Maybe I should try Paint Shop Pro again! The pricing seems to be reasonable.

[pjmlp]

Blender was a commercial product, with an established user base and community that eventually went open source.

That is a huge difference.

[stackghost]

>Why is Gimp failing to reproduce the successes seen by Blender? Blender is huge, Gimp is miniscule.

One is part of GNU, and one isn't. Not even being flippant.

Being a GNU project brings with it all kinds of political baggage that gets in the way of developing good UI/UX.

[winrid]

Because it sucks. Have you tried to draw an arrow in it? Or add some text to an image and then move the text without figuring out you need to like double click or click hold or whatever to not move the text and instead move the background layer for some reason? Good luck.

[lofaszvanitt]

Just make it work like PS. Everything is different, non intuitive, a mess. And whenever you sit down and try to work with it you get nervous breakdowns because everything is all over the place. And then you give up and get back to PS.

I have a feeling that this new version will have all the same issues.

[garbagewoman]

I think you answered your own question

[indulona]

maybe in next 10 years it will be actually usable.

[brylie]

I honestly quit recommending Gimp due to its name. Name changes are challenging of course, but not impossible. I understand the developers have a lot on their plates with the 3.0 transition and keeping up with GTK, but I really hope they can make a bit of time to prioritize a more community-friendly name for the project.

[vfgfg]

I recommend not being so bothered about trivialities like names being misinterpreted.

[ciupicri]

I'm not a native English speaker and the name Gimp says nothing to me, so honestly I couldn't care less.

[fragmede]

I call it Gim Paint when asked.