This is another case where developers decide what's cool, and of course pick features that are cool to them, not their users.
Not once in my life would I ever think I'm missing that feature in GIMP.
If you're moving from one platform to another, you want legacy files to import perfectly, especially when you don't have time to convert old Illustrator assets into svg files.
On Mac/Windows at least, Affinity Designer was the first app around $50 or under that didn't mangle any of the .ai files I threw at it.
The confrontation comes from the fact that one side insists the software is there (GIMP), whereas the other side view them as disconnected from reality since its use in industry rounds to 0%.
And I think the attitude comes in when GIMP is ignorantly held up as if it were a serious competitor. It isn't. It's something else entirely. It might be good enough for people to make memes for internet shitposting, but between the missing features and the alien UI (to the point where a massive reskin [1] was around for a while), it's never going to be used in industry.
If the GIMP devs want to continue down this path, more power to 'em, I just want the people claiming that it's a Photoshop competitor to educate themselves :)
Who here is claiming GIMP is a serious competitor to Photoshop, or even a competitor at all? Even the GIMP team doesn't (https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#are-you-trying-to-dev...).
Or that GIMP is targeting graphics professionals or graphics industry? Don't think so... "We do, however, acknowledge the fact that people will treat GIMP as Photoshop replacement no matter what we tell them, and that’s all right with us. You own this software, it’s up to you to decide how you make use of it."
It is what it is. A tool. That happens to be free and is good enough for some. As somebody above said, it's like complaining why emacs / kate / geany or whatever editor can't do something that visual studio can. If the industry wants a serious competitor to Photoshop, time for them to start building it anew or taking existing free tools nearer to that goal or funding open source devs to do it for them. Complaining and ranting against open source devs who have zero obligations to the industry is not going to achieve anything.
Further, people have tried to get usability fixes into GIMP, and been shot down, as "that's not what the project wants to do."
What is the "dodging" in limiting functional scope of a tool? Each and every software project I know of places some limits on what it will and won't implement. Even Adobe has a suite of tools where one tool like Photoshop can do things Illustrator can't and vice versa. It's not Adobe being "dodgy" about their tools, and nor are open source projects.
Nothing stops people from forking GIMP, implementing whatever fixes they want, distributing, and even selling it. Refusing pull requests is not a crime.
To put that up as the solution is to be fully divorced from reality.
Just gimme the facts, please.
Krita is targeted at artists and illustrators, just like any other specialized tool. People don't look at Vim and complain that lacks desktop publishing features, despite novelists and programmers both needing to manipulate text.
The original complaint regarded tools for artists, and that's Krita. For photographers, there's DarkTable (https://www.darktable.org/), RawTherapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com/), and many others. For my modest needs, I find DigiKam (and occasionally The GIMP) adequate, though I am envious of proprietary tools.
And thus the cyclical debate continues for another turn while a competitive raster editor remains unavailable in the open source ecosystem.
But not, and I repeat -- not when complaints are made in demanding and offensive tone, without providing useful feedback.
I think Pinta is a really good software for artists.
No, it's not :)
"At the 31st of May, 1999, the KImageShop project officially kicked off with a mail by Matthias Elter."
From the very website you linked to :)
Still, a truly amazing project.
And unless you're an artist who does that yourself, it's a bit much to ask others to meet your needs for free like that in the first place.
If non-dev artists want to see that gap close, they need to contribute, not just wait for mana from heaven.
No, that doesn't have to mean actually writing the software. But it could mean paying someone else to do the coding, even if the software is ultimately released as OSS.
It's astounding that a company that makes graphics software can't support modern hardware at all.
But I guess they are the company that can't fix the tremendous piece of shit known as flash
That's a surprise and nice to hear! I thought the support wasn't too great and it requires GTK+3.x or newer. It still uses GTK+2.x (see https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap).
GIMP's users aren't the handful of developers who develop GIMP. GIMP's users would be people that switch to Linux and are looking for an alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is for some reason referred to them as the go-to for image manipulation on Linux so they try it, and when they can't use it they either install Photoshop via Wine or go back to Windows.
I don't know why people recommend GIMP instead of Pinta or more usable software, honestly.
Try adding a text line, then editing it. See if you still want to recommend Pinta.
I absolutely love the idea of having a simple image editor for users who don't need most GIMP features. Pinta devs got quite a few things right, but it needs SO much more work...
FWIW, I have missed better tools for performance tweaking in competing (Adobe) products, so while I don't know if the one in GIMP would be useful, I can see why one would want something like it even as an end user.
Log files aren't user-facing. A performance meter in an image editing program is completely useless to 99% of its users.
The more commonly used features are, the more prominent they should be in the UI.
If not, the "Compose" or "Send" button in email clients should be as big as "view connection details" (to give you an example).
That's how you reduce clutter. GIMP does that horribly, so they should probably _remove_ something, not add.
Come on, get a grip on yourself.
So, as a user I have to identify bottlenecks, now..? That would be my first question.
Since you're implying that by not thinking the performance indicator is an important feature for the average user I want GIMP to be slower, yes--actually I would definitely opt for a slower, usable program than a fast unusable one, and I never thought speed was a problem of GIMP.
Right now I'm running Wine to be able to edit this PSD file without going crazy trying to use GIMP's interface, so obviously speed is not what I care about. I'm sure I'm not the only one, since other problems and not speed seem to be stopping people from using GIMP as their image editor.
Please do pay attention. The release notes specifically describe who did that and for what purpose, and what's in it for end-users. It's all there for you to read. Just please pay attention.
> and I never thought speed was a problem of GIMP
Which suggests that you never used such a basic feature as Gaussian blur in both Photoshop and GIMP.
GIMP _is_ slower than it should be. It actually _is_ a problem for people with modern DSLRs. We want to fix that problem.
Are you sure that performance is a problem for most users? I have talked to people about GIMP before, and it came out 0 times, while usability was the problem that forced most people to install Photoshop or go back to Windows.
In the past 3 days, I've opened pretty big illustrations (about 20,000px* 8000px) on a i35 thinker (mobile phone processor), and I had absolutely no problem opening them, scrolling around, etc.
Doing basic operations like moving, cropping, and resizing layers was so cumbersome that after 3 days I gave up and installed Photoshop 7.
You don't like my tone, and I don't like your inability to process basic information written in clear English in the first two paragraphs of an article that you are discussing, followed by making ridiculous offensive statements. Are we even?
> Are you sure that performance is a problem for most users?
The majority of people who work on large images and use filters do have issue with performance of GIMP. Helping them is a priority to us.
> Doing basic operations like moving, cropping, and resizing layers was so cumbersome that after 3 days I gave up and installed Photoshop 7.
I'm still waiting for those "4 times fewer steps" in Pinta.
If you're part of the project, your attitude is exactly what I'm talking about, so thanks for reinforcing my convictions.
If you're not, since I'm unable to process basic information I wouldn't want to waste your time.
Let's call it a day.
That's funny. They can't be inaccurate, because I'm talking about my personal experience using the software.
As for offending, I never even talked about anyone--just the project, and you are the one who's offended me personally by saying that I should get a grip of myself, I don't understand basic concepts in English, etc. etc.--which let me tell you doesn't look that good for GIMP as a project.
This is how many open source projects handle criticism. I've seen this before, and I'm not surprised. Like I said, thanks for reinforcing the conviction I have that many projects stay in their silos and don't listen to users--to say it nicely--because they don't owe them anything (which of course it's true, but still).
Regular users have no idea how to or have the willingness to get in touch with you, they'll just uninstall and move on. When someone in the middle like me does offer criticism, he doesn't understand basic concepts explained clearly to him--like you said--so obviously there's no solution.
> That said, my way of handling them is most likely far from being humble.
I guess we agree on this one (yay!)
No, this is how some projects handle bullshit.
Criticism is fine and even useful.
Lemme explain the difference, because you are still not taking a grip on yourself.
When you think developers introduced a regression and refuse to fix it, and you can use arguments other than 'because I said so' to prove your point — this is criticism.
When you completely disregard all explanations why a certain feature was added, when you completely dismiss people pointing out that no, in fact other software has the same feature, and people do use it, then continue arguing ad nauseam — this is bullshit.
Got it? Good.
Now, you can be constructive and pay attention, and then we can have a conversation, or you can continue dismissing facts and go on living in an echo chamber. Your choice.
You both prove my point further and give me something to link to for whenever the attitude of GIMP devs towards users will come up.