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> Krita and Gimp's biggest issue is that most of the tools are implemented in a non intuitive way. Everything is a disorganized mess. And since PS doesn't run under linux, this gets on my nerves.

Do you mean non intuitive or just not the same as PS. 99% of complaints I see about GUIs (most commonly OSS ones, because people are less likely to criticise choices where they invested money) are that they do not function like another piece of software.

> For example in Krita you can't resize a crop rectangle with the mouse that holds its aspect ratio... WHYYY? And why does the crop tool forgets the previous size values? Little things like these show that the creators NEVER EVER use their own fucking program.

Are you sure? IIRC you just hold down the ctrl key while dragging to preserve aspect. Do I remember wrong?

I started with “serious” image editors on Paintshop Pro, not Photoshop, and have used Gimp several times as much as I’ve used Photoshop.

Gun to my head, have to do some unknown-in-advance image editing task, I get to pick the software, but can’t look anything up, I die if it takes far too long? I’d pick Photoshop. I might survive with PS. Near-certainty I’m dead with the Gimp, hell I might be dead with Gimp even if the task is incredibly simple. It’s not that it isn’t like PS, it’s that it’s UI gibberish.

Try editing 10 images in a row with Krita and you'll see the issues right away. Layer handling, selection handling and tool placement is cumbersome, to put it mildly. Maybe invite someone who has extensive experience working with photoshop and watch how often he starts to curse or ask for help and whether he uses the gun to shoot himself in the head. Then change things accordingly, if the creators don't use their own program...

I worked with Gimp ~ 1 year ago, not touching that again until I feel the need to flagellate myself.

Not saying you are necessarily wrong about Gimp possibly being able to copy some of the good ideas from Photoshop. However, you basically confirmed what the GP said. If you suggest to put your usual Photoshop user in front of Gimp, without prior experience, then they are bound to walk into unexpected design decisions. Just like a Gimp user would, trying to find things in Photoshop.

I've never used PS and still think Gimp is probably the most unintuitive UI I've ever used.

Confirming what the GP said? This is all misdirection. Bottom line the GIMP UI/UX is garbage. There are extremely few people that have used a variety of image editing tools and claim GIMP is actually better. That’s all that matters really. This isn’t some rhetorical exercise.

The previous poster was talking about Krita (and the one before that Krita and Gimp) and while I agree with some of the criticism of gimps UI, I stand by my comment a lot of that criticism is based around "it is not like program X, that I'm used to".

I mentioned it in a different post, blender is the prime exhibit for this, its UI received even more criticism than gimps. Now that it has become the (or one of the) most popular 3d modelling tool, most of these voices disappeared, because it has become the first entry point and people are not used to some other way of working anymore.

Blender and Krita fit the different-but-not-bad workflow defense, but GIMP's is outright terrible. Instead of the specific buttons, compare how many steps it takes do something in GIMP vs PS. For almost anything, it's either >2x as long, or simply can't be done.

Blender underwent a huge UI overhaul that brought it closer in line with software like Maya. They even made left-click to select the default which was a huge turn off to newcomers.

If anything Blender proves that paying close attention to UI and making it mostly align with user expectations matters.

Wat? Blenders UI was revamped. Even so, prior to the rewrite it wasn’t such a sorry mess as Gimp, it already had some professional adoption.

And my point is, regardless of those claiming gimp sucks because it’s not what they’re used to: it absolutely does not matter an iota because there is near universal acceptance that it’s terrible for anything but toy work. UI aside, internally it isn’t fantastic either, a problem that blender didn’t have.

There are extremely few people who work in image editing who didn't learn on Photoshop, and aren't required to use it on a daily basis because of industry standards (or differences in capability.)

It's like people who speak English talking about how everything in Spanish is in the wrong place. It's the cheapest way to bikeshed: make it more like the thing I know already!

I don't do graphic design any more, but I started with GIMP - when I was first able to try Photoshop (pre GIMP redesign) it was awful, nothing made sense, nothing was where it should be. In contrast, when I first used Corel Draw it seemed intuitive.

Just like using a Mac after having been a PC user; or being forced back to MS Windows after using Linux/KDE for a couple of decades.

I used to use Inkscape heavily, but having not used it for a few years, I go back and the UI has changed, similar experience; I feel lost when I should feel capable.

Photoshop was one of the first applications that I noticed using the 'give it free to college students to capture the market' technique. That works so well because it takes a couple of years for for you to adopt the software as an extension of your way of thinking - changing application means a productivity loss, and a feeling of incompetence, and no professional wants that unless they can clearly see an ultimate gain.

> Just like a Gimp user would, trying to find things in Photoshop.

I'm double commenting in this conversation but I was a GIMP user in high school and college before switching to photoshop. I specifically remember thinking how much nicer it was that everything in photoshop was where I expected it and worked how I expected.

> Maybe invite someone who has extensive experience working with photoshop and watch how often he starts to curse or ask for help and whether he uses the gun to shoot himself in the head.

The extensive experience working with photoshop is a problem in itself, not a symptom. It sets expectations, and when they are not met, frustration ensues. But the photoshop UI is not the most intuitive one, just most familiar to this kind of person. Those are two very different things.

I understand the frustration, for the same reason I cannot work with Darktable. In some aspects and basic organization it is similar to Lightroom, and when I start using it as Lightroom, it leads to the same frustration. But that's not because the Darktable folks did something wrong, but because I cannot act on my habits from different software package and my expectations are not met. Someone, who doesn't have the same habits and doesn't have to unlearn won't have the same issues.

> But that's not because the Darktable folks did something wrong

As a survivor of "let's have three different ways to apply a TRC curve at the start of the processing pipeline" — hard disagree.

As somebody who has worked in prepress full time, almost nothing in Photoshop makes sense, I just memorized it. I can always find what I need in GIMP. Photoshop is a necessity because it does things that the GIMP can't do, not because its UI is in any way better.

I used GIMP for about 5 years before switching to photoshop. Even knowing GIMP inside and out, and knowing nothing about photoshop besides what I learned from GIMP, photoshop ended up being faster and more productive for me in under a week.

> For example in Krita you can't resize a crop rectangle with the mouse that holds its aspect ratio

I've never used Krita, but I was skeptical that it can't do this, so I just now installed it and gave it a try. It does have this feature! I made a crop rectangle, then right-clicked on it. A little menu popped up, titled "Crop Tool Actions". One of the things in the menu is a checkbox labeled "Lock Ratio", which was unchecked by default. I clicked the checkbox, and then I could resize the crop rectangle with the mouse without changing its aspect ratio.

Took me under a minute to figure out, having never used the software before or read any documentation. I'd say that's one sign of a decent UI.

NO RIGHT CLICKING! Nobody does a right click on a crop rectangle. Modifier key. Like you keep shift pressed and it preserves the aspect ratio. Nobody will do another click, then select a menu, then whatever. That's the issue. If you have to edit 100s of images these extra you go the menu, then the submenu, then click, then blablabla, then powpowpow, takes a lot of time. Streamline the user experience. You can only make it better if you use it daily and change the things that frustrate you. If these things doesn't frustate you, and do these over and over and over, then you are a robot and not fit for UI/UX design, so easy.

> NO RIGHT CLICKING! Nobody does a right click on a crop rectangle.

Well, previous commenter just did it. So that just mean that your peremptory decrees are just that. Peremptory and not really universal.

And this is why you will never reach a decent audience for that program

Alternatively it might be the fast that its budget is literally millions of times smaller and with a reasonable budget one would actually hire people instead of hoping random forum talk found its way to implementation via diffusion.

Photopea was developed by a single programmer, runs on the web and it’s leagues more usable than GIMP

This isn't a good indication that gimp can do as well

It actually is. In fact it mighty be the proof that throwing everything away and writing a new version from scratch might even be preferable

An analysis of a particular project includes its scope, existing code, existing developer resources, the time they have available, the things they themselves are familiar with/good at. Any analysis that involves purely looking at a competing project is probably not even wrong.

The gimp project has provided a decent and useful tool for about 28 years whereas most new projects started from scratch die shortly. A from scratch rewrite would be a massive undertaking which might exceed the available resources/skills and might simply kill a useful project rather than producing a better one.

A glib well this guy did it is not an analysis.

I have used both and don't find the difference so huge. Besides photopea doesn't have a quarter of the functionaliti as Gimp, is afaik not controlable from the cli in batch mode. The scope is completely different.

The comment you’re replying to is pretty explanatory and insightful. Do you have anything worthwhile to add here?

Modifier keys were the first thing I tried (because that's how I learned to do it in GIMP and Inkscape when I was in high school). When that didn't work, right-clicking on the crop box was the next thing I thought to try. It's a total of 2 clicks: right click to open the menu, then move the mouse down 6 entries, then left-click on the checkbox.

But also, it's my understanding that Krita is not a photo editor, but rather a digital painting program; that any ability it has to edit photos is just because digital paintings are stored in the same file formats as digital photographs. Saying that Krita is unsuited for editing hundreds of photographs is analogous to saying that Visual Studio is unsuitable for creating ASCII art. There are other tools that you're supposed to use for those tasks. For editing hundreds of photographs, I understand Adobe's Lightroom or Bridge to be the intended tools, not Photoshop, nor any tools which are highly similar to Photoshop (GIMP, Krita, or otherwise).

> It's a total of 2 clicks: right click to open the menu, then move the mouse down 6 entries, then left-click on the checkbox.

Ok “2 clicks” is a misleading summary for moving down 6 menu items, and in the end this is an eternity compared to a modifier key.

I think that’s right. Every time I go look at it I just marvel at how awful it is, like an alien designing photo editing software by looking at some screen shots and feature lists but never editing a single image.

Compare with Affinity’s software - they are more consistent than present day Adobe but copied all the good, same as Adobe did with Quantel.

> Does this man ever worked with photoshop? What is he talking about? Of course there is a menu, just like in PS.

I'm the OP and for the life of me I can't figure out what you are talking about. Seems like you are conflating GIMP and Photoshop and reading the post as if it suggested that either GIMP or Photoshop don't have a menu, which is absurd — there was no such claim.

> Another important thing is to drop the "this must look and feel different than photoshop" stance

There has never been such a stance in the first place. As far as I can recall (which is about 20 years back), the stance has always been "please explain why your proposed change is good, don't hide behind "because this is how Photoshop does it", it's lazy".