The state of Linux graphic design tools in 2019 | Hacker News Reader

The state of Linux graphic design tools in 2019

opensource.com

63 pointsTomte24 comments

I use Gimp a lot but I still think Photoshop is way ahead. For example I don't know why the author thinks Gimp has tight typography controls.

I always struggle with typography in Gimp while in Photoshop it's so easy.

And I never understood why they use layer bounds in Gimp. Sometimes I think this is more a technical reason than a UX reason. It just always gets in the way.

And why should I create a layer from something I paste? I never understood why someone would need this extra step.

Gimp is great software. I am very happy it is available. But I'm not sure it you can call this A grade professional software.

I'm not too experienced with GIMP, but I noticed that all the transformation of a selection in GIMP is done with a tool. In Photoshop if I quickly want to scale, rotate, and reposition a selection then I can do that with the controls around the selection. With GIMP I have to select the scale tool, scale, then select the rotation tool, rotate, then select the move tool and move it. Have I just not found how to turn those controls on? Because it feels inconvenient.

I do love that the undo history is in a prominent position on the UI.

I think what Gimp is lacking is a monthly subscriber fee, and a lack to buy the software outright.

I found Scribus to be virtually unusable last time I tried it (early this year on Ubuntu and version 1.4.6 I think); it compared very badly to Microsoft Publisher in the pre-2000 era.

It wasn't very intuitive - as far as I remember you couldn't edit text on page, you had to go to a modal dialogue and font editing was distinctly funky. I don't think it was possibly to flow text between multiple text boxes in the layout. Stuff like that.

I often see it recommended so I guess I'm missing something - would anyone like to sing its praises to me?

I haven't found Scribus intuitive at all either, but if you have to create an image-heavy multi-page publication, I can't see any open source tools that would do nearly as well.

LibreOffice gets sluggish when you add too many images, and sometimes the images start to dance around a bit. Inkscape doesn't do multi-page. With GIMP you'll have to faff too much with image resizing and it's easy to end up with a result in sub-optimal quality (because the editing is destructive), whereas with Scribus you can leave the images in their full-quality, resize/move around and afterwards just export it in the DPI you want when done. Scribus will even warn you if one of your images is in too low resolution, when exporting, which makes it harder to accidentally all the pixels.

Scribus is incredibly light on memory (as it is easy to decrease the preview quality of images) and has good tools for alignments and guides (unlike LibreOffice, but similar to Inkscape).

Scribus may not be exactly what you need, but if you find yourself fuming at one of the other graphic design tools, it might be time to fire up a Scribus tutorial.

Scribus is just somewhat unintuitive. It can flow text between as many frames as you like.

I'm not a professional with InDesign by any means, but used it quite a bit for the school newspaper in high school circa '04 and supported other folks using it in college and pretty much everything we did with inDesign at the time is quite possible with Scribus.

It's been a few years since I really did anything with it, but the main things I remember being irritating are a UI model without dockable components and it being vastly better to input some things from the keyboard rather than trying to do them with a mouse.

This article is extremely generous towards open source, to the point of sounding disingenuous or just pure shilling

Not even a mention to Krita?

Or MyPaint.

>GIMP's interface is so thoughtfully laid out

Many good ideas have been used in the interface but it ended up being complex and inconsistent. I haven't seen anyone else praising GIMP's interface. From comments I've read not even the people actually using GIMP professionally.

Yeah, even the UX of creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions. Or entering and exiting a selection. In Photoshop, Ctrl+D simply deselects my selection. In GIMP, I have to jump through hoops. Need to select a tool to transform, Ctrl+T just doesn't do it.

In fact Ctrl+D duplicating the current buffer instead of deselecting is the worst UX I have come across.

Hmm?

> creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions

Creating an image from clipboard: Ctrl+V. Makes an image the size of the image on the clipboard. Cut to taste.

If you want to paste the image on a larger canvas, Ctrl+N, select the canvas size, fill it with color or leave transparent, Ctrl+V to paste from clipboard, move the pasted layer around.

I don't see how that would be more efficient in PS.

In Photoshop, doing Ctrl+N while you have an image in your clipboard sets your initial buffer dimensions to the dimensions of the image in the clipboard. I just tried the Ctrl+V straight before creating an initial buffer and worked like you described. I'll use this shortcut for sure, just a matter of breaking the Ctrl+N habit there.

However my point stands about transpose and deselect being much more cumbersome than they need to be. Ideally ENTER should finalize the transpose/resize. Ctrl+D is also quite sensible to deselect. But neither work as expected on GIMP.

I guess GIMP to a certain extent could use alternative modes for its key bindings, akin to what many IDEs offer.

When you first start IntelliJ, it will ask you which set of shortcuts you are more used to. You can pick between OSX Default, Emacs, Windows Default, Linux Default, Visual Studio etc.

It would be great if I could pick between at least "GIMP-native" and "Photoshop-expat".

Otherwise, GIMP is more than capable to do what I am doing in Photoshop. Which is pretty basic stuff. Basically the Paint.NET subset of features are what majority uses it for anyway.

I use Pecil(https://pencil.evolus.vn/) to create ui/ux feature mock-ups and app wireframe, it might not be powerful as SketchApp but it gets the job done. Some FOSS linux design tools are simple and easy but can be worse or a problem for larger teams because someone needs to manage who can access the designs and how to deal with collaboration. I believe this is what SAAS design tools are solving, they focus to ease the collaboration, access management and to version control process of designing.

Tbh, I struggle on using GIMP, Photoshop is easy to use.

Does draw.io count ?

Tha Author (Jason Brock) probably never tried using Inkscape for anything else other that "test" it for his article. Buggy software that it's even worse that CorelDraw for Windows.

Btw, I'm using CorelDraw since 1994 (Corel 3). Even now (Corel 2019) it crashes when you try to Import some EPS files or just randomly crashes...

My 2cents: If you want to start as a Graphic Designer, Adobe is the only way to go. Windows or Mac, doesn't matter. Start with a PC with any crappy Monitor (they are all crappy) and then when you have the money, buy a Macbook Pro or an iMac.

Finally, the state of Linux graphic design tools, it's exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. They just don't work properly for professional work and there is a perfectly good reason NOBODY is using them and will probably never will in the future.

cheers .-

I've used Inkscape professionally, and found it helpful.

How did you find it inadequate and what bugs got in your way?

For me, no GPU acceleration. This makes it extremely laggy and choppy (e.g., line tearing when scrolling... but not like brief; the tear is persistent until you move the screen and it re-renders that bit of the canvas). And it's at the utopian extreme end of their roadmap last I checked.

I haven't seen this bug occurring for a looong time. Is it still reproducible? (If so, sad.)

This guy could not locate a prototyping tool for app design for Linux?

He has never heard of Figma?

It is hard for me to take this article seriously if someone writing a review of available graphic design software is not aware of the existence of Figma.

From the end of the article:

> # But what about (cough) running Adobe on Wine? (cough)

> Yeah, I'm sure you can do it. But this isn't about breaking end user license agreements. I'm not about that life. This is about the efficacy of real, open source, design software running available on open source platforms, right now.

The point is open source. Figma is not open source and their "free" version allows for only 3 products? Please don't suggest trashy SaaS apps in the future.

Being closed-source and having a limited free tier does not justify insults ("trashy"). You could have made your point politely, for the person you answer to and the software itself.

> Being closed-source and having a limited free tier does not justify insults ("trashy").

Not per se but given which domain the article is hosted I think the response makes sense.

Given the person I replied to just comes in "insulting" (by your standards) the OP's article all for not having included their favorite insert-random-webapp-of-the-day, making sure to repeat the apps name so we all see it oud and clear, his comment reads to me more like someone being paid to post about it -_- And secondly, considering again that the app he is pushing so hard completely contradicts the spirit of the original article, I think my rhetoric is just fine, I'm sure they will get over any tender sensibilities. Perhaps if they had suggested another app, such as Krita, which aligns more with the article, sure, but not when he comes in telling off OP for not posting hot garbage SaaS apps as a response to an article on open source like they didn't even bother reading it.

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