I love GIMP and no amount of tedious naysaying will ever change my mind
I’ve been using it for decades.
If they’d make the macroing system idiot proof, maybe talk to some portrait photographers about how they use Photoshop and help them achieve their workflows, they could seriously shut down some Adobe.
I did a few tutorials years ago. I realized that the way it did things was different from Photoshop and, in some ways, better. I could appreciate some of the design choices.
The problem is that most people learn PS first and then don’t learn Gimp at all, and then when they find out Gimp doesn’t work like Photoshop, they decide that it sucks.
I used to work in schools IT and I managed to get a lot of FOSS tools into regular use amongst both staff and students; Audacity, Libre Office, Firefox, even Debian in a few IT labs… but the one that never stuck was GIMP because no teacher is going to tell their class they’ll be using GIMP today.
I know this is a tired point and will probably never be fixed, but that name causes more problems than anything else.
This is always interesting to hear because as someone who went school in a non English speaking country, GIMP was obviously never an issue. In most of the world the name isn’t an issue.
I only learned about that alternative meaning years later.
Yep, always felt the same way. Can’t be seriously suggested in a professional environment simply because of its name. Whole project been shooting itself in the foot with a machine gun since day 1.
There’s a meme floating about somewhere that goes:
Windows Tool: Producix Pro for Business 2024
MacOS Tool: Sweesh
Linux Tool: klitoris
and this kinda feels like that.
Could you eli5 why gimp doesn’t work as a name, i genuenly don’t know…
It’s a derogatory term as well as a BDSM term.
Is it derogatory?
Definitely thought it was a humiliation thing
Ahhh ok noted
Genuine question, how did you know BDSM but not gimp?
One can know about a general topic and not know the details of the topic.
monkey paw curls, we keep it gimp but pronounce it gimp
gimp
G I M P
G(ee) I (A)M P(ee)
…
proffessors could say “we’ll be using Gnu Image processing” or “Gnu Imp” if they wanted to get lame about it. The real big knoggin move is to just call it GIMP and silently dare your students to act like children
I only learned about this “negative connotation” from people yelling about how GIMP name is bad.
I work in municipal government, and I just renamed the shortcuts on my work computer to avoid having to explain it to another mayor or councilmember. I think they’re adding Photoshop to the bufget anyway next year. GIMP is good for free, but I have to admit Photoshop really is the king of photo editors.
I do really like Inkscape though.
The FOSS software I find to be the most impressive, however, is QGIS. I have ArcGIS and QGIS both installed on my machine and use them both heavily. For data processing, I usually go with QGIS, but then I make most of my deliverables in ArcGIS because it has a way better layout editor and lots of other software and angencies require me to use ESRI REST services.
But I can go with the cheapest ESRI licenses because I don’t have to pay an extra 4 grand a year for the “Erase” tool when I can punch a hole in a shapefile in QGIS for free. And I openly said as much in my last meeting with ESRI when they were trying to get me to upgrade.
The UI needs a global overhaul since the day one and still nobody talks about it
@BlackLaZoR @Vosh I think lots of people talk about it. :)
We have a dedicated UX site for people share to feedback on that very topic, which we try to implement as we can: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work/_items
The hope is that over time, designers will get more comfortable and work on larger design challenges (like how new code contributors start small and hopefully grow to develop more complex features)
https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_items
I love GIMP, regardless of UI.
GIMP is shaping up to be (and actually already is IMO) the best editor out there for nondestructive work.
I stopped using GIMP for Krita, but it looks like GIMP’s nondestructive has come a long way.
Does the UX still suck though?
When did it suck?
I’ve been using it professionally for the last 3 years or so and it’s no worse for UX than Photoshop, the ‘industry standard’.
Both GIMP and photoshop are very sophisticated and technical software (although Photoshop is becoming less so I should add).
People who want a leaner set of tools should have a look at something like Tux Paint.
Nope. You just made the mistake of learning something else first and expecting other tools to match it
This is me with all CAD software 😭
My way into CAD software was 1. Dealing with DXF editors like QCAD. 2. Trying to tackle parametric CAD, I ran Onshape’s tutorials, they have pretty good technique tutorials, like how to draft a paperclip, that are applicable to most parametric CAD packages. Then learning how FreeCAD’s spreadsheet works.
FreeCAD has a full-on spreadsheet built in, now it’s feature poor compared to Excel or LOCalc but you can store and calculate dimensions there and then use them in the main drawing. Other software has features that accomplish this but it’s not as flexible and familiar as a spreadsheet. FreeCAD has some usability issues but everything else out there is either drawbackware or subscription.
Something new to learn for me. Didn’t know FreeCAD had that.
I’ll warn you now it can get a little tedious, because you refer to the data in a spreadsheet like referencing variables in a Python script. In most fields you can type in a dimension, you can click a formula button or hit the = key and then type in a formula. Or you can reference a cell in a spreadsheet. that might look like “=spreadsheet.A4” for the contents of cell A4.
That isn’t very readable and I don’t trust it not to break if you add rows or columns or whatever, so there’s an Alias function. You can give each individual cell a name. Which is slow and tedious. In the Addon Manager you’ll find some macros, one called EasyAlias which, select a cell, click the EasyAlias button, and the cell to the right of your selected cell gets the contents of the selected cell as an alias. In other words, if Column B is a bunch of labels and column C is the actual data, highlighting B2-B17 and clicking the EasyAlias button will automatically alias C2-C17. That feature should be built-in. There’s also a macro for clicking a dimension, clicking a sketch feature, and then semi-automatically applying a dimension. It’s slightly temperamental but it works faster than typing “Dimensions.notch_height” over and over.
There’s a name for this phenomenon: the Software Imprinting Dilemma.
This is why most tech companies (including Adobe) are so hell bent on having schools teach just their software and their way of doing things. An entire generation of clients guaranteed for life.
Personally, I struggled somewhat until I’ve found the
Search and Run a Commandaction. It’s bound to/on the keyboard by default I think. Otherwise accessible viaMenu > Help > Search and Run a Command.So if I’m clueless where a certain action is in the menu, I just press
/, then type my action as I think it could be named, then try it out. This, together with simply my memory of how to do things, covers 97% of my needs. One time out of 20 or 50 I encounter something that I don’t know, at which point I duckduckgo, and the experience can be much worse.Would you say this flow sucks? Or actually, it’s fine? It’s up to you to decide that.
Using / is awesome. Even if you know where things are in the menu it’s usually quicker to just type the first few letters and smash enter. I use it all the time.
It’s been perfectly fine for years, could certainly be made easier to visually parse but like… it does the job, it works, it’s fine.
they better add a fucking draw circle tool istg
@janus2 @Vosh You’ll be happy to know it’s in the cards. Proof of Concept now that we have vector layers: https://fosstodon.org/@CmykStudent/116455148076446506
I haven’t touched it lately since a new contributor was interested in implementing it, but one way or the other I hope to get it into 3.4.
it exists lol, just make a circle selection and then “stroke selection”
It is okay to say that GIMP can technically do this, and also that it needs a straight up circle tool. Not having a live preview of what you are doing is not good UX in this situation.
“GIMP can technically do this” should be its tagline.
That’s how I felt when I discovered non-destructive layer transformations are (technically) possible
Or, hear me out, a tool that draws a circle.
Still bothered it doesn’t have a preview tho
We <3 GIMP
I’ve been using GIMP for over a decade. It’s slowly starting to become one of the leading sources of frustration in my computing life. The more I learn about it the less it makes any sense.
Not trying to be negative here. Just saying that a modernization is much needed and I’m really excited for this.
Try FreeCAD if you really want to suffer.
FreeCAD had improved massively since the recent 1.0 release, unlike GIMP…
Use Krita instead. It has a big tiddy anime waifu right on the splash screen.
If they add the feature to set white point in the level tool I’m there. Last I checked they had some bullshit brush-off about how it wasn’t relevant because it’s designed for drawing or some bollocks.
Sorry that my sketches were on paper that wasn’t pure white, I guess?
Different project scope tho.
Krita does not support random niche format like GIMP.
Yes but the UI is 💯 easier to use.
The number 1 problem with GIMP is poor UI in my experience.
Easier interface AND anime aesthetics? Sign me up.
Are they going to upgrade the name as well?
This comes up every time GIMP is mentioned. To be honest, outside US and UK (and few others) for the rest of the world the word GIMP has no negative meaning (no meaning at all). So, yeah, maybe who cares about the name? Well, change it if it’s really a problem. But, is it really a problem?
Fair point is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) doesn’t sound as a reasonable acronym. I would maybe find a better acronym, but changing the name itself feels like changing the name of the town of Bra in Italy or the town of Fuck in Austria, or why not, even the town of Love in Sweden… Good luck if we need to only find and use names that do not offend anybody in any language of the world.
Krita, the main FOSS competitor to GIMP, feels a much worse sounding name to me. By the way, i read GIMP with a soft G (like a j) not even as English speakers do pronounce it.
outside US and UK (and few others)
If we’re considering just the US, Canada, UK, NZ and Australia, that’s at least 470 million people for whom the name is problematic. As an enthusiastic Australian user, there’s no way I would recommend a program called GIMP to my higher-ups.
Unlike the towns of Bra or Fuck in Austria, the acronym GIMP was chosen specifically because of its edgy double meaning.
That’s a US defaultism issue
It was created in the US and named in specific reference to the offensive meaning of the word, so I would say that makes it pretty relevant.
Why is a sexual term automatically offensive?
Being sexual doesn’t automatically make it offensive, it just makes it unprofessional. As software that is seeking widespread adoption, its acceptance in professional environments matters. I could make a program called Skrotum if I thought it was funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised when people are hesitant to recommend it to others because of the name I chose.
What makes it offensive is that it’s a slur for handicapped people. That’s the origin of the BDSM term and the use that was popularized by the character in Pulp Fiction that was specifically referenced by the creators of GIMP.
Because he lives in a fucked up puritan place.
Why should they change the name just for the vanity of Americans who have a dual meaning for the word, and make it difficult for the whole rest of the world to find tutorials and documentation going back decades?
It’s not just awkward for Americans, but for the entire English speaking world - at least 470 million people. How can anyone seriously recommend a business use a program called GIMP? It is a massive hurdle to adoption in the corporate world. They should change the name, or at least create a business-oriented alias.
I mean my business has no problem using it here in the motherland of the English language…?
Any time we talk to a client about it they are just happy to hear that we’re using software that doesn’t ingest their work into AI, crash in the middle of consultations, and produces working files that will be usable forever.
I do wonder how much of this is the seeming aversion to context that a subset of Americans seem to have. The meaning of words varies by context, that’s like, a normal thing in English. If I said in a meeting that I’d been “pissing about the office whilst waiting for John to be done in his other meeting”, that doesn’t mean I’d been urinating on the carpets!
Edit: another funny piss example - if I’d spent my holiday learning to jetski should I avoid telling colleagues how I’ve discovered I enjoy watersports?
A gimp is a sex thing in one context but that’s clearly not the context one would be discussing in terms of software, so why does it matter?
English is diverse language and each regional English have their own offensive world that have different meaning in different English speaking area.
Maybe you should meet more Indian English speaker and Singaporean English speaker. Heck, Australian English invent various offensive word.
Yes but we don’t use them in professional contexts.
There is no Dickheadsoft, no Drongo Ware. We haven’t call any software C.U.N.T.
GIMP means the same thing here and it’s just as unprofessional.
My point is that due to British colonialization, English is now a diverse language that have diverse new word and regional meaning.
GIMP in English Asia doesn’t have bad connotation. Not in Singaporean English, not in Indian English.
Making one standard of English is just reeks language colonialism.
No it’s just regular PR.
We avoid 4 in products due to negative connotations in Asia, even though it means nothing here.
no it isnt. we keep hearing this and no, they never have a massive upgrade. that project doesnt do massive. that’s not how it’s ever be run. its stable, predictable, sane, but ugly things we have all hated forever will never be massively revamped in a single update.
Related to that, Jacob Boerema has implemented PSD Descriptor import support. Most of our current PSD support has been based on the the public Adobe specification. This document was last updated in 2019 however, and modern PSDs use a relatively undocumented text format called Descriptors to store many features.
The battle tested strategy of only providing old standards to others, like MS does.
Don’t use PSDs? I know people will say, “it’s not as simple as that, they’re industry standard”, but if you say you’ll only accept professional work in an open format, and you’re the client, you have the control to change things.
It’s not about not using PSD.
GIMP is all about letting people to open and edit any image files. Whether it is a medical images format (DICOM), bitmap image only used on smart message, (Nokia’s Over The Air Bitmap), to open experimental niche format (Jeff’s Image Format).
Maybe that’s what it was. It doesn’t necessarily need to be that going forward, as project putlooks anf goals change with time.
Also editing is quite a lot of more work to support than mere viewing. As all tools and actions need to behave correctly - not jusbt the renderer.
And something proprietary can hadly be a “industry standard”. It can be “most common” or a “de facto standard”. But all “industry standards” are by definition open as any industry worth its weight doesn’t rely on or include a single point of failure anywhere within itself.
“It doesn’t necessarily need to be that going forward”
This part does not make any sense. Making GIMP to be able to support any image format is a good thing. Especially for future file preservation.
If it was merely industry standard, if a software already good, people will just use the default format. It already happen with various industries, like comic making in Asia using .CLIP (Clip Studio Paint) instead of .PSD
Krita for the win if you just need the drawing part. Left Gimp long time ago for Krita and never looked back.
The page 404s
What is the upgrade?
