Krita, motherfuckers. Do you use it?
yes, actually. but i want to see gimp succeed as a professional tool.
I’ve used krita at an amateur level, pretty good would recommend
I use Krita, Aseprite, and Gimp. I must say, though, I’m loving Gimp 3. Now if we could just push past the proprietary docx plugins bullshit and make odf industry standard…
Edit: Ah, shoot. I forgot Inkscape for vector art. Shame on me… I love Inkscape.
I found Inkscape when I needed to make some diagrams, and even though that’s not really what it’s for, it blows dedicated diagram tools out of the water.
Inkscape is actually fun to use because it strikes a nice balance between easy and powerful.
My only problem with GIMP lately has been that by default it’s used monochrome tool icons which are really hard to tell apart. Which seems like a real form-over-function decision (likely made by the distribution though).
If I can recall the vid I watched on GIMP 3, the whole UI is now customizable with CSS. You could dive a bit into it and see if you can change out or recolor the icons (recoloring should be doable if they’re SVG, but you might need to decode base64, change the color and recode it into base64).
However, it shouldn’t be too long before custom UIs start pouring out. So if CSS isn’t your thing, keep checking back and see if someone has made something that ticks all your boxes!
I could change it in the settings. I just hadn’t used it in a long time and it took me a bit to realize that this default was why I suddenly had trouble telling the tools apart.
But if the differences are that big I’m probably still on 2. Looking forward to seeing what 3 will bring then :)
Wait wait. I just found something. Head to Edit > Preferences > Icon Theme and switch to Legacy.
And bam. Gimp 3 is out, though! Should already be updated if your system is up to date!
I haven’t used photoshop or any other “industry standard” in more than a decade.
Still, everytime I open Gimp I have to look up for the “increase/decrease brush size” shortcut, because it’s so dawn counter intuitive.
The UI was overhauled in the 3.0 update on March. The new documentation says changing brush size is fairly easy: https://testing.docs.gimp.org/3.0/tr/gimp-using-variable-size-brush.html
All brushes have a variable size that can be changed.
You can change the brush size in several ways:
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By using the default shortcut keys for changing a tool’s size:
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Decrease size by 1: [
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Increase size by 1: ]
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Decrease size by 10: {
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Increase size by 10: }
-
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By using the default mouse scrollwheel actions for changing a tool’s size:
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Decrease size by 1: Ctrl+Alt+Scrollwheel Down
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Increase size by 1: Ctrl+Alt+Scrollwheel Up
-
-
Wait they took the ellipse tool?
What?
Under the hood I actually really like GIMP. I’m also not too bothered by there being no circle tool. My problem with GIMP is that if there were a circle tool in it, its a little too difficult to find it if it does exist.
If they had some front end re-write eventually where they just moved some stuff around and better organized the front end of the application, I think a lot more people would use it. UX/UI is really important, and I’m sure the contributors of GIMP know this as they seem to have done well to try to make the interface feel straightforward by putting stuff under menu’s and whatnot, but the location of things just seems unintuitive/non-standard compared to what every other application does.
The other issue I have with GIMP is just that its development cycle takes forever compared to most every other open source application I have seen.
Not to say there is a great answer to any of this, image manipulation/animation software is not an easy thing to program by any means so I understand why it can take forever, but I just wish there was a real answer.
In the mean time, I’ve just been trying to get by with krita, though krita really seems geared toward digital painting specifically.
Hi, this complaint sounds vaguely familiar and I know it’s just indicative of that type of problem, but can you elaborate on what you mean by no circle tool?
I haven’t used GIMP in a long time but if I remember correctly there’s an ellipse tool and I think there’s a modifier that can constrain the aspect ratio so you can make circles. I might be wrong though.
I think what you are thinking of is the ellipse selection tool, and yes this exists and can be used - however I am referring to the tool class of geometric shapes which is quite common among other software. Basically it creates a vector (In most cases I think) shape with options for stroke and fill, and controls the same way that the ellipse selection tool does (constraints etc.).
GIMP does not have this, instead you have to go through a decent amount of trouble to get simple geometric shapes drawn to the screen, and at that I believe they are always raster.
Take these procedures as an example for GIMP.
https://www.alphr.com/make-shapes-gimp/
This makes GIMP difficult if you want to use it for some niche uses such as making a quick flow diagram, or a quick vector mask which can be changed later.
People who complain about GIMP have never had to use Inkscape. Now THAT is one horribly unintuitive UI.
I’ve never been into vector graphics, but I had reason to use Inkscape recently, and I was actually surprised by how easy to use it was and how much the UI made sense.
I find Inkscape easier
I have used inkscape though it has been some time. I felt as though it was not super featureful at the time so the UI felt slightly barren compared to something like Adobe Illustrator, but I don’t recall having the same kind of trouble with it that I do with GIMP honestly.
A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key
/to open a command paletteThat is a bandaid though, it’s an abstract way of interacting with an application and you can’t really build muscle memory around it
That is interesting and I did not know that. Thanks.
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Not saying GIMP’s UI is great (I only use it occasionally), but efficient UI isn’t necessarily an “intuitive” UI. I.E. an intuitive UI may not be efficient for a professional that takes the time to learn it and works with the UI ~40 hours/week.
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True, but I prefer intuition over efficiency when I pick something up for the first time, second time, and third time, until I eventually have a good enough understanding to begin worrying about efficiency.
There are use cases for Libre office writer, just as there are for vim, even though they are both capable of producing text documents. One is arguably more intuitive while one is arguably more efficient, but if I didn’t know anything about word processing/text editing and had to pick between the two, I would pick writer.
Same goes for anything else, and it’s also why a decent number of text editors/software support emacs/vim bindings - so that you can use the software intuitively, and then once you understand it, you can become more efficient by using modal bindings. Same goes for GIMP versus other software. The thing about other softwares in the same genre is that they can be learned relatively easily and can also be used efficiently. GIMP I find harder to learn, even if it is efficient later.
For anyone who is new who has to make a choice as well - very few people would pick vim to start out with.
Furthermore, in this instance, I do have a decent amount of photo editing experience and have used multiple softwares to do it, but even after that, the problem I have with GIMP is that a lot of this knowledge does not transfer to GIMP like it does for other software. If I learn photoshop, I can get away with using affinity, krita, corel draw, clip studio, and other software - but not nearly as easily GIMP.
I would also argue that efficiency is equally dependent upon the software as it is the task. The workflow for digital painting, animation, and photo editing are all quite different, and no one UX/UI is the most efficient at all of them. This is why most of these softwares have modular interfaces, which is good, but I simply find the modular interface of GIMP harder to use or understand versus the rest.
Yeah, for all I know, GIMP is as intuitive and efficient as Photoshop. I.e. they’re both as un-intuitive to me, and I’m not efficient in either (I probably haven’t use PS in a decade). But, I guess being intuitive is a good “hook” in regards to market share. I am a software engineer, and do prefer (neo)vim, but I guess I started out on NetBeans. I kind of see that as a level-up in regards to efficiency; not sure if that exists in other industries.
Don’t even get us started on Blender’s UX/UI design.
Haha, yes the feeling is similar there, though I think I personally still had an easier time learning blenders current workflow.
I’m assuming my downvotes are people who have never used blender, lol
I only see one on your previous comment, but it could be because blender has recently started getting a better reputation for usability/learnability.
6 years ago I touched it and I was horrified, but I touched it a few times this year and found they had made some good improvements.
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Blender is so versatile, and has so many applications that you have to end up with a cluttered interface. Since the alternatives have licenses that have a steep cost, I would say that putting up with a clunky interface is well worth it.
BUT I CAN
That’s beautiful. Card backs?
Yeeh
Cool design.
Is it possible to learn this power??
Yeeh gimme a bit
Stick a pin in your mouse cable and whizz it round like a compass. Easy.
I was going to make a gif tutorial but I screwed up the recording and I’ve lost all motivation.
File, New, set resolution multiple of 1000, like 2000x2000
View, Show Grid
View, Snap to Grid
Image, Configure Grid, set pixels under Spacing to desired height, if aspect ratio is checked it will automatically adjust the width to match, like 50x50 for example
Zoom in towards center, click and drag vertical and horizontal ruler to the center using the location value on the bottom left
Create first transparent layer
Select brush tool, the big circle brush, and set size to 1000 and click at the center
Select eraser tool, set size to 960 and click center
New layer
Brush to 700, center
eraser to 670, center
New layer
brush to 60, between rings
eraser to 40, on new dot
New layer
Using brush at size 20px, click and shift click to create lines, draw a square and a right triangle in the top-left quadrant in the centermost circle by connecting points on the rim.
Select every layer, copy and paste
With new layers selected, select all
Transform, Rotate, ensure that the centerpoint is the actual center with the on screen reticle, and rotate the circle 90 degrees. Repeat process but rotate 180 degress.
Export image, you’re done.
This should be done in inkscape or krita.
Nah fuckem I liek GIMP
Eli5?
There is a practice where software companies will either provide their software to schools and colleges for free or will pay schools and colleges to use their software. This leads to the students using this software, learning that software’s sole paradigm, and essentially forces them to use that software going forward because of how difficult it is to shift to another software with a different paradigm. This is Vendor Lock-In. The vendor locks you into their software.
This leads to all future workers being trained in that software, so of course businesses opt to use that software instead of retraining the employee in another. This contrasts with the idea of what an ‘industry standard’ is. The name suggests that it’s used in the industry because it’s better than other software, but in reality it’s just standard because of lock-in.
This is how Windows cornered the operating system market - by partnering with vendors to ship their systems with Windows pre-installed.
Your description of vendor lock-in is obviously solvable by developers making a competing UI and workflow similar to the most popular software, and enabling new features under another menu. That said, there is obviously minimal interest in doing so.
This is UI. UI is not vendor lock-in. Lock-in costs users money to break out of, not developers.
Have you ever heard of SAP? Salesforce? UI quality and UX workflows have never been the deciding factor for choosing a piece of software in a corpo setting. It’s money and whose friend is pocketing it. That’s all that CFO make decisions on. Windows became a standard because Microsoft literally paid schools to buy computers with it, in exchange all schools had to do was let them conduct their indoctrination workshop, disguised as a “how to use a computer” course. But of course they exclusively talked about Windows.
That entire solution immediately falls apart when the paradigm is patented by the vendor, who immediately sues any competing software using UI elements even vaguely similar to theirs. This has been going on for decades, and the three things that usually happen are that the competitor either gets bought up, sued out of existence, or has to keep their UI different enough that there is little-to-no bleedover between the userbases (and usually starves to death from too little revenue).
Oh yeah, when a school receives a hundreds of computers with Windows preinstalled, they obviously consider spending hundreds of man-hours on installing a different OS, but decide against it because Windows has quantifiably superiour UI. Because that’s exactly how it works.
For decades Apple paid schools to teach on their computers. In the 80s and much of the 90s, all you’d find in computer labs was Macs.
It didn’t work because PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
How so?
Software mainly. Apple made software companies pay a license to release software on the Mac, so most companies chose to release on PC exclusively.
My kids use Chromebooks at school. What I call “Word” they call “Docs”. It’s very clear why Google gives this operating system away for free.
It’s an thing people used to say when they wanted to justify not using the software gimp
You mean a common user experience that leaves many new users frustrated.
I kept seeing recommendations of gimp as a photoshop alternative, so I installed it and… I was convinced that I must’ve downloaded the wrong thing. It didn’t even look like an image editor to me. I’m sure it’s a wonderful program, maybe the UI got better since then, but I ended up much happier just using paint.NET
Agree, Adobe products always leave me frustrated, and my experience is universal.
Yup and honestly the hostility those users get when mentioning it is the same reason Linux doesn’t get more traction in the mainstream.
When a lot of users expect software to work in a particular way and it doesn’t, you change the software - if you insult, belittle or otherwise expect the user to change their working habits then you’re going to have a bad time and be all shocked Pikachu when the user doesn’t use the software.
Apple is (was lol) the most valuable company on the planet because they understood that the user experience is the absolute most important thing. They are the textbook example of vendor lock in and yet people flock to them because “it just works”.
the hostility
“Hey, why this free software I tried once IS SO SHIT AND UNINTUITIVE AND EVERYONE WHO MADE IT IS PLAIN STUPID AND WRONG, NOW HELP ME IMMEDIATELY YOU FUCKING NERDS. Man, nobody fixed my problem immediately, what a hostile envoroment”.
you change the software
Oh, so that’s what big corpos were doing this whole time? Damn, what a cool environment that should be, you buy software and it behaves like you want it to be, and if it doesn’t, you complain to the corpo and it fixes it for you immediately.
Apple is (was lol) the most valuable company on the planet because they understood
that you don’t need to sell software or hardware, you need to sell brand recognition, feel of premium exclusivity, and smug satisfaction of being better than the plebs. And as long as your shit doesn’t crap out tremendous amount, you can ruse the rubes.
I think your response is unintentionally proving my point lol
Maybe, but people who demand volunteers to provide more labor than they are willing to also are the problem. You don’t seem to grasp the nature of volunteering. It isn’t meant to serve you—volunteers do what they want when they want to because you won’t do what they want. They have your same frustrations: I want it to do X! So they do it.
I’ll also say this: arguments like yours have been used for decades while Linux is getting more and more popular. Maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong.
Linux is getting more popular because corporations like valve have put the effort into refining the user experience. I’m not just talking about a pretty UI either, I’m taking things like proton that makes playing games on Linux as easy as playing on windows.
I’m not saying there aren’t people out there that demand free labour from volunteers - of course there are; I maintain and have contributed to a few open source projects myself so I know all too well what that’s like.
However, I would say those folks are a very small (albeit vocal and annoying) minority. The vast, vast majority of users simply dismiss Linux/GIMP/Whatever because it’s not suitable for them. They don’t go screaming into GitHub demanding features, they don’t post on Lemmy that the software sucks or otherwise create a fuss, they just gravitate towards the stuff that works for them (usually something proprietary) with the least friction.
And I think you missed the point of my response
Yeah you’re right, it’s the users that are at fault.
This is the hostile attitude they were talking about
They didn’t came for help with their problem or whatever, they came to argue about their favourite way to organise software development, brandishing hostility and accusations from the beginning. Different situations, really.
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Vendor lock-in is bad and Adobe’s business practices are bad, no matter how you cook it. There are so many viable alternatives to Adobe stuff.
Problem is, Photoshop power users don’t often want to hear about any alternatives. GIMP is just one of the most popular culprits in this regard. That’s exactly the kind of mindset that the vendor lock-in creates.
I’m kind of happy that I stuck with GIMP when I was younger. Now, I have absolutely no fear of trying out any software that comes my way. I do most of my photo work in Affinity Photo. Don’t have problems with GIMP either, use it for some other stuff.
The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers. Some time ago there was a huge movement for people to switch from Premiere to DaVinci Resolve because Premiere really is pretty horrible these days.
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The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers
Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe’s side.
We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the “obvious” place to switch to.
As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.
And that’s fine - the fediverse is it’s own thing and many people (myself included) don’t want “adoption at all costs” - but I think it’s worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.
I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.
What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits “real” to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.
I don’t do graphic design and only use GIMP for making memes. Could you give a few pointers, why GIMP is not usable compared to photoshop?
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Damn this might be the fakest reason I’ve ever heard to not support GIMP
I doubt that to be a serious concern for companies. Especially with how marketing regularly revolves around sexualizing their messages and how things like hostesses are a thing at many trade-fairs. The CEO of NVIDIA signed a boob ffs.
Also the only time i came across the term gimp was in Pulp Fiction. If it wasn’t for that movie i wouldn’t know that it has something to do with BDSM.
But really, what are things why GIMP is rationally not suitable for industry work? Is it a lack of certain features? Is it performance? Is it an impossible to learn UI? Because in your other reply all i read was that people who are used to PS just stick with it, because that is what they are used to. Which then brings us to exactly what the meme is criticizing.
And at the monthly pricing of Adobe that switching costs only justify themselves for so long. Also a friend of mine who does photo and video stuff for weddings and events as a side-gig has been furious how having to have Win11 to use Adobe cost him 5k because his old computer was not compatible anymore.
So i am curious to understand, if there is rational reasons, why taking the shit from Adobe is worth it. Of course if certain standard workflows take 1 minute in PS and 2 minutes in GIMP that adds up over a full time job. On the other hand if professional users were to support the open source development, these issues could be addressed, creating value for everyone except Adobe.
If you wanted to give counterexamples to your point, you couldn’t come up with a better one.
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So far hundreds of people are saying exactly what you do. “It’s just better, OK, shut up, I will not elaborate”.
And yeah, obviously, it’s not your job to do anything for an anonymous commenter on the internet, but you have spent the same amount of time telling us that you don’t want to provide examples, than you could just giving us two or three, and that’s not not saying something.
there was a case to be made in the past [nondestructive editing, cmyk etc], but as of 3.0(.2) the divide is steadily narrowing
Docker Engine, without the Docker Desktop licensing and VM overhead
Docker is a great example because podman basically is a drop in replacement.
Have you tried squares, mate?
Click brush, move mouse in a circle
Keycloak is a industry standard and is very much not vendor locked. Same with Auth0. As far as oauth goes.
Yeah I feel like “industry standard” and “vendor locked” are kinda opposites?
Not really. “Industry standard” just means it’s commonly used in the industry. “Open specification” is the opposite of “vendor locked”, e.g. OAuth for authentication.
Industry standard is generally an open standard. Proprietary is what you and meme/op are thinking.
No, sorry, you’re just wrong. An “industry standard” can be anything that’s normal in an industry, e.g. a particular tool. Photoshop for example is an industry standard, but it’s not an open standard in any way.
What it means is context driven. I didn’t see this was an “industry standard” vs an alternative/gimp.
Okay, but we’re in the context of “tools being industry standards”, as GP mentioned KeyCloak. That’s not a standard/specification, it’s a tool.
And of course Photoshop is an industry standard.
Circle select + Shift-PaintBucket
People really love making storms out of water glasses.
For anyone thinking this is the solution, it’s not. This technique produces a rasterized circle in a destructive editing workflow. What people that are complaining actually want, is a non-destructive tool, like the planned shape tool that will let everyone easily make vector shapes, like circles. It is part of the ongoing plan to add non-destructive workflows to GIMP, it’s a game changer and the gimp team is doing great progress, so kudos to them.
With this logic, why have a rectangular selection tool, when the grid and freehand selection achieve the same result?
Not an actual shape tools, as shape created should be editable (usually as vector layer).
That method resulting an rasterized circle.
…and GIMP dev actually planning to add shape tool.
and GIMP dev actually planning to add shape tool.
Gimp’s first version released in 1998. Do you find it surprising that people aren’t impressed by plans to add basic tools after nearly 30 years when the competition has stuff like content-aware filling and automatic layer separation?
There are many valid arguments against using Adobe products, or for using open source editing software. Productivity and ease of use are not one of them.
Basic tools? Drawing in a photo editing tool? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Use krita and draw all you want.
Gimp works great for editing images. Krita works great for drawing on them.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
Right off their front page.
Yeah illustrator is a huge stretch there, you are right.
And as a graphic designer, I am shaking my head.
That really is never the way I looked at gimp since the beginning.
It’s a free open source project, which means you’ve had just as long implement shapes.
Don’t like it then don’t use it, but you can hardly complain about something which is free.
Again with this tired excuse. “It’s free therefore everybody should just accept subpar software”.
You know what else is free? Gonorrhea. Doesn’t mean I should want it.
Just to be clear, I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone uses to do their editing. Suit yourself. Just don’t expect others to follow suit and sing the praises of a thing just because it’s FOSS.
I would agree with this, but the whining about a missing feature and how long it’s been missing helps no one.
Either implement it yourself or move along ffs.
Who is whining though?
This is another one of those echo chamber memes complaining about “those people” where “those people” don’t really exist in reality.
Remember that one posted in this very community a week or so ago complaining about “Microsoft evangelists” as if that’s even a thing? I do.
Regarding Shape Tool: this feature is dependant on Vector Layer. The earliest attempt to implement this is back in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20061219233008/http://lunarcrisis.pooq.com/wiki/Gimp/SoC2006Log
I recommend to check the discussion for Shape tool and Better vector Tool here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/11190
If you check Gitlab repository of GIMP, they’re actually rewriting some old-codebase to be more future-proof. And that works really takes time. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/commits/master
A lot of major design software are actually doing this. For example:
- Manga Studio -> Clip Studio Paint. CSP is now “de-facto” software standard of comic industry, including webtoon. Hugely popular in Asia.
- Serif PhotoPlus -> Affinity Photo. It was regarding as the best Photoshop alternative with arguably easier interface and better performance.
You cannot just slap new feature continuously. The software will end bloated and slow like Photoshop.
All of that is irrelevant to an end user. They have the choice between tool A which is free but developing very slowly, or tool B which is paid but has all of the stuff they need.
99.99% will choose tool B and rightfully so.
Case in point: Serif isn’t currently rewriting their old stuff, they already did 10 years ago. Affinity photo/designer/etc have been out for a decade.
My point is that if you want a future-proof software, you need a solid code base. Affinity already fix that. Clip Studio Paint done that. GIMP dev is currently working on it.
content-aware filling
For what it’s worth, GIMP has had the resynthesizer plugin since the mid or late 2000’s, and at the time it was significantly ahead of Adobe’s Content Aware Fill.
Industry standard or monopoly.
It’s not a standard until there’s an ISO, RFC, IEEE or IEC number to go with it.
It feels like your making a semantic argument to downplay how tight grip these softwares have on their respective industry markets.
If you are only ever considered for a job if you have Photoshop experience, and that is the normal treatment across the majority of the industry, that’s a standard that the industry is now holding you to - an industry standard if you will. It does not need to be backed by a governing body for it to still count.
My current understanding is that you will not get a job at a major CGI company by knowing Blender (though the film ‘Flow’ shows that might change going forward). You have to know softwares like Houdini, 3ds Max, Maya, etc…, if you want to be treated seriously.
W3C
Or ABNT or DIN or (…)
We should make just one more standards agency! To include all the standards for everything!
We have ISO standards. Fuck every single company that ignores those (Microsoft, Apple, …).
And fuck ISO for charging so much for access to them.
As an engineer: 1000% agree.
Seriously, why do I have to pay a value somewhere close to £1000 for a set of FUCKING PDFs?!?
This is ridiculous. Make money from audits, certifications, training, and conferences. You can still make absolute stacks from those. Why the fuck do I or my company need to shell out thousands just so we know what to certify against to be able to sell stuff?!
It’s a fucking racquet and they know it. But it’s either one of 3 options:
-
Find someone who’s willing to send you the PDF or log in credentials for a library service that has access to these standards.
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Take the risk downloading PDFs from dodgy sites you found on the 5th page of duckduckgo.
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Bend over and spread open your wallet. Because good luck getting anything delivered to a customer without it.
Why is there not a Libgen or sci hub for these?
There should be a libgen, sci-hub, internet archive, and a massive torrent of ISO standards. Standards aren’t great if they are gate kept by money. Now someone will reinvent it without a profit motive, and there’s 2 standards.
Around here most companies just have subscriptions or get to them through university libraries. It is still annoying, i aggree. Ot is funnier once you realize that they completly rely on free work as well.
That said, standards are imo one of the greatest t achievements of humanity. And if you’ll ever be involved on that process, you’ll quickly see why this whole thing is expensive.
If you don’t want to pay that much, don’t curse at ISO, put pressure on your government to provide ot for free. Imo well invested tax money.
My personal main problem is that companies sometimes infiltrate the process.
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This applies across the industry
MySQL, VMware…
