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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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 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.

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.

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