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Comment by roschdal | Hacker News Reader

Gimp source code: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp

I used to use GIMP as an example of OSS desktop applications having bad UX, I mean back around 2010 maybe. The UX felt plain horrible. Anything I every tried there was pain to achieve. And there was plethora of desktop applications having the same issue back then. "Geeks can't do UI".

I feel like that has changed? Even Blender felt good the last time I used it, Firefox became kinda fine, though these are probably bad examples as they are both mainstream software. But what about OSS that is used primarily by OSS enthusiasts? What about GIMP now?

This is just my personal experience, but even with the current UI, there can tend to be a learning curve with GIMP. Alot of it probably comes from figuring out where tools and functionality that are readily available upfront in other paint programs are hidden 2-3 menus deep in GIMP

A simple trick to make GIMP perfectly usable (exists since ages):

> To change GIMP to single-window mode (merging panels into one window), go to "Windows" in the top menu and select or check "Single-Window Mode"; this merges all elements like the Toolbox, Layers, and History into one unified view.

Blender feels like an outlier amongst open source software. Outside of programmers tools the great majority of open source feels mediocre. I wonder what the Blender people did differently.

unlike most FOSS, blender gets millions of dollars a year to support development

That’s what happens when you let people do other people's jobs. UI/UX design is a profession, and there is a reason for that.

Unfortunately, designers are rare among the FOSS community. You can't attract real casual or professional users if you don't recognize the value of professional UI/UX.

I've never understood the negative comments around UX for GIMP. It always feels just fine for me. Some stuff is in menus, but its a complex application with a lot of parts so I understand that

GIMP in my opinion has a very good UI when you're looking at graphics as a programmer: threshold this, clamp that, apply a kernel ("custom filter")... Everything seems to click with a mental model of someone who does graphics programming.

Whereas Photoshop and other "mainstream" software use terms and procedures non-programmers are more likely to be familiar with: heal this area with a patch, clone something with a clone stamp, scissors/lasso to cut something out (not saying GIMP doesn't have those)...

the funny thing with GIMP is: even while its a very powerful tool, it still lacks a good texting tool until today :-)

and having the source available didnt help so far either :-))

Nothing stops you from creating a PR :-)))

I would, if I would GIMP use often enough to have the motivation - I use GIMP maybe 2 - 3 times a year.

And thats the irony covered in my post: Even that the source is available didnt motivate someone enough so far to create better version of the built

Nothing stops you from commenting these useless comments.

for the downvoters:

could you please show me a good textting tool plugin for GIMP, then?

you can check their forums & other sites: the textingtools is on top of their discussion lists?

I don't see it at the top of the discussion on the forums I checked.

So can you expand why you think the text tool, is bad?

Before release 3.0: https://discuss.pixls.us/t/gimp-3-0-will-the-text-tool-be-im...

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/1fecr6u/suggestion_im...

Its just the first two results from top of Google.

Maybe the tool was improved in version 3.0, I'm running an older 2.x version. I will check it next time.

The versions were difficult in: - font size applying - random loss / reset settings - there were some issues with the preview when editting - font preview before selection etc.

Both of those are from over a year ago? For future, I wouldn't think that's "top" of any discussion.

The strange font sizes and setting reset was mostly fixed as part of the 2020 massive refactor [0]. There are still some minor inconsistencies between the two font editor panels, but they're being worked on.

Thankfully, you shouldn't have any random setting changes since about 2018 build.

[0] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/344

Honestly, I think it was just the smiley faces. I didn't downvote.

I don't understand what you mean by texting tool. Do you mean text rendering? kerning?

Can you detail what you mean by good texting tool? What features are missing?

It's just tiny. And fiddly. And it likes to go bezerk and reset your font face/size/style settings on a whim if you so much as tickle the wrong key.

It's not intuitive. It's actually possibly my most hated widget in the entire FOSS ecosystem.

For texting I recommend using a mobile phone or desktop instant messaging program. While it's not the case with all of them, graphics editing tools tend to have texting utilities as a second-class citizen at best

haha, good one :-D ;-) ;-)

FTFY: the funny thing with GIMP is: even while its a very powerful tool, it still lacks a good image editing tool until today

And geometric shapes drawing, it is probably the only software that requires using paths for basic stuff.

GIMP is an excellent example of the shortcomings of FOSS, considering that it first released in 1998 and almost 27 years later still does not have feature parity with Photoshop 6.0.

Those are not the shortcomings of FOSS. Rather, they are shortcomings of a lack of funding. The FOSS builds of VS Code, Chromium, and Android are good examples of high quality FOSS, all of which have Big Tech companies pouring money into them every year.

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