Call for help: fund GIMP development and Libre animation

Photoshop, along with other Adobe software, now uses a subscription based model which users may not be able to justify, unless they're a student or professional constantly using it and recouping the cost.

Adobe also links all of your software and access to your data with a single account password which the company has proven incapable of managing securely.

So those are two good reasons to use Gimp - no recurring fees and no worries about the cloud. Although the best reason not to use Gimp, albeit an unfair one from Gimp's point of view (but still relevant,) is the degree of lock-in to proprietary Adobe formats and tools that pervades the graphics, editing and design professions.

>I have a hard time supporting an Open Source tool that never seems to meet my needs. What am I missing?

Simply having a decent, free alternative to Photoshop should be worth something.

I've met a good deal of digital artists that use GIMP exclusively - I think this is in part because Photoshop has always been out of many people's budgets and even more so since they've moved to a subscription-based service. Choices are then down to illegal copies or using open-source software, of which GIMP is generally considered the Photoshop competitor. If anything, I like the program because it brings such things to a much larger portion of the population than photoshop ever can with their price model.

It seems to have a larger learning curve and some things are add-ons, but a few things work differently or not as well. I think this is the main drawback, and probably what you are finding when you realize it doesn't seem to meet your needs. Most folks seem to get over this once the familiarity kicks in and they get the add-ons they need... well, added on. Additionally, GIMP can be used across platforms and this is really helpful to some folks. I don't know how it compares to Apple's artistic products as I've never used them.

I personally use Paint.net for light photo processing - mostly because I've used it for years. When I started, I needed a lightweight program to make simple things since I had a crappy computer. Of course, most of my needs are lightly editing photos of physical artwork and adding borders (because the borders look nice in the digital format). I keep GIMP installed on my computers, though, and my spouse uses GIMP for his digital work on his computers.

It's not my place to convince you to use GIMP. Either you do power stuff and Photoshop suits your needs better than GIMP, or you are not aware of GIMP's features (or you don't do power stuff).

However, I do want to point out that $120/year is not cheap.

For me, personally: I prefer not having to deal with WINE. GIMP is fairly powerful, even if it is a pain. It is the only alternative to Photoshop in the open source world. And 10 years ago, I would have said the only alternative, period. Many of the commercial alternatives were worse than GIMP.

There is one more aspect. Open source tools can not be taken away from you.

In my case, source transparency and fitness of open source applications to the needs of my job.

I remember that when I could switch from Windows to Ubuntu in 2009 because I ended up using exactly the same apps there (except Putty, obviously, which I swapped with Gnome Terminal). I already had an open source desktop with the exception of the OS.

I'm using GIMP because Photoshop would be an overkill for what I do. Libreoffice is more than enough. Sometimes I do something very basic with Inkscape. All my work is basically browsers (open sourced), an editor (emacs), scripting languages (all open sourced). However I must admit that I have a closed source binary blob NVIDIA driver linked to my kernel.

It’s not either or.

The point is freedom and privacy, not saving 50 bucks here and there. Which is not available to everyone anyway, think high school kids and developing countries.

And yet here many of us are, satisfied with using it daily and supporting it. You would do well not to project your experiences and use cases on everybody else.

Gimp is the only free alternative to photoshop that actually measures up feature wise. That its UI doesn't exactly mirror Adobe's isn't a negative. Many of Gimp's differences (key shortcuts to paste into a new image or drag and drop resizable select boxes, etc) are things that I never realized I wanted in an image editor until I made the switch.

I think there's been a big rewrite in development for ages and the stable releases aren't seeing a lot of the new changes.

Someone should put up a site that lists the least funded projects per capita in order: income divided by number of users/utility

It seems like cryptocurrencies could help here, if only the friction was still lowered significantly.

Liberapay is a libre alternative for Patreon (with anonymous patrons and no reward) with much lower fees for bank transfer/automatic debit [1], as it is funded via donations

[1]: https://liberapay.com/about/faq

Can the devs send IBAN/PM it to me? I hate to pay some third party %charges? I am in France itself would like to make a Bank Transfer

> "there is clearly market for something more efficient..."

https://en.liberapay.com/

What about a system that holds X amount of donations in escrow until the amount hits a certain threshold, then releases the total amount in one actual (bank/payment processor) transfer. Might mean lower fees.

Such a service could also have a "release funds now" option for emergencies where you'd accept paying hiked-up fees.

I’m not a professional and don’t want to learn Photoshop for ages. Also, oftentimes very basic ones are not sufficient, like most cheap ones from the AppStore. I haven’t found a proper substitute for this niche between super basic ones and Photoshop.

If the benchmark is Paint maybe he means that GIMP is too complex for what he needs, so the UI is inevitably too complicated.

Pinta [1] is a simpler alternative to GIMP on Ubuntu. I never used it (and where is the source code?) but it looks similar to how I remember MS Paint. GP was asking about Macs, sorry I don't know anything about them.

[1] https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/

> it's the same UI it's had for years.

There have actually been some major improvements, notably single window mode. I believe they recently fixed the thing where the Tab key (Show / Hide Docks) does something unexpected if the last thing you clicked was a toolbox icon. These days it seems like the Gimp devs are a bit more tolerant of user feedback, which is one of the reasons I'll be making a small donation.

> Just because it isn't modern and pretty

The problem is not that it isn't modern and pretty.

The problems, at least for me, are stupid blockages that Gimp tends to put in the way of getting things done, eg. the layer boundaries thing, or the fact the font box keeps the focus after you've selected a font. If you need to work efficiently these things quickly add up to major annoyance.

I personally can't use GIMP for shit, but that is because I am used to photoshop.

In any case, the value of UX isn't just about how well experienced users can use it, it's also about how well new users can learn. Blaming a tool for skewing to far towards the experienced users is a valid form of criticism. Moreover, it is easy to have the skew without noticing. After all, developers likely move in circles with many more experienced users. There is also the potential blowback from experienced users to any kind of change.

It's the same UI clusterfuck it has always been. It's never been good, and often not even passable.

I miss Macromedia Fireworks, if anybody recalls that...

Well I guess I'll be funding anyway, but I expect my argument for a deduction might be overturned, which if I could fund a feature it wouldn't be. Really all open source teams should consider this - not that people say I will fund X if you do Y but rather we intend to do A,B,C 'pay' towards the feature you want to prioritize.

Bear in mind that open-source software was much more niche just 5-10 years ago. It was considerably less common for companies to make use of FOSS, understand it and be willing to invest in it. Even the idea that it was possible to get paid for developing software that is given away to everyone for free was rather unorthodox. Best practices in financially sustaining open-source projects are still developing, and I think we will see much more of it in the future.

Makes me think the best way to do it is to have an associated non profit. Very few projects would have the draw for that though.