The GIMP

A few days ago I defended The GIMP in this or /prog from someone who had said it was a joke or something like that, as I had tried it just for a minute and had a look at what it could do.

Today I had to edit a couple very simple images for a "web sight": a paletized image, and a JPEG which needed to be expanded and filled with something different, and here at work I didn't have Paint Shop Pro at hand, so I had to use The GIMP.

I must say sorry Mr. Anonymous. You were right, The GIMP is indeed a joke.

Interface...total failure
Tools design...total failure
Layers design...total failure
Color conversion...total failure
Image information...total failure
Stability...total failure

Total failure :(

Stability...total failure

The rest may be true - I haven't used it for any nontrivial things and even that was taxing, although it may just be I need to spend time learning to use it, I don't know - but I think if you're running The Gimp on Windows you get what you pay for. GTK was written as an X toolkit after all. I certainly haven't had any stability issues.

(In about 5 seconds Anonymous is going to arrive and start talking about FAR manager and how much freedom sucks)

You meant this thread? http://www.world4ch.org/read/comp/1123784429/l40

If so, I feel your pain. GIMP is one of those pieces of software you really want to like. It's free, open source, light-weight compared to recent versions of PS, and it's powerful too. It's just that the interface is a complete let-down.

I'm disillusioned about that piece of software. Back when GIMP was competing with Photoshop 4.0 and 5.0 (and we all believed linux would take over the world), it looked like it was destined for great things. They promised us GIMP 2.0 would rock even harder.

Then development died. Nothing happened. And when GIMP2 finally came out? zOMG, this is the same shit, just using GTK2?!

Yeah, and every time you point out the interface stinks, the True Believers brush you off. People have been screaming about it for years, but nothing ever happens. You can do some things to improve the interface, but at the end of the day it's fundamentally flawed; there's only so much you can do.

>>2
Ha ha, that was Linux man (zOMG!!), and I had to kill it because it hanged. I was in preferences, editing image window titles (the thing with %s %whatever to show file information on it); I tried %x and it just hanged. I was trying to see if there was a way to see how frigging large the picture is, because I must be very retarded, but I couldn't find a way to make Gimp tell me what's the actual pixel size of the image I'm working with! (Oh, but I could tell how much RAM is it using, cool.)

>>3
Exactly, sorry for having said that, I thought The GIMP would be somewhat good with all the features, and you were a fanboy; turns out I was making wrong assumptions.

It's as you said, I want to like GIMP because it's free and I'm working on a Linux box and having to get a Windows box and install PSP (the other one I had was reassigned) would be a hassle, but I guess I'll have to, even for trivial things.

>>4
Ah I assumed Windows because you mentioned PSP.

I hear alot of bitching about the GIMP being largely unusable. Shouldn't we be trying to find people who know what they want it to be like and fixing the UI to their specifications?

No worries. I learned to hate it by editing faxes. It took me two minutes to do in Gimp what it'd take me ten seconds to do in Photoshop. Multiply by a few dozen pages, and the hate begins.

AIIIIII!

The job wasn't large enough to be worth learning and using scriptfu for, but since Gimp doesn't have anything like actions, I was fucked doing it all by hand. It took me two hours to do what would have taken me one minute max in any decent image editor.

I've used Gimp for quite a few other things too, yet the trend remains the same. ;_;

>>5
Tell that to the devs.

I guess it's no accident the film industry made their own fork of GIMP. The developers of the primary tree seem to have their heads stuffed up a certain hole.

>>7
That's my point entirely; if the devs aren't doing their job, why not fork it?

>>5
I have a Linux and a Windows box at work, but I had to swap the Windows box with somebody and I don't have PSP installed on it yet, that's why I mentioned it but used The GIMP.

If there's somewhere I could post my suggestions for the devs, then I'd gladly throw a few in.

This just showed up on Slashdot:
http//linux./...

Some chap has apparently redone the Gimp UI to be as close to Photoshop as possible, hopefully fixing usability problems. I'm gonna try it out.

>>10
Y helo thar, lawsuit!

>>11
If ripping off UIs could get you sued then MS wouldn't have got very far with Windows.

>>12
MS copied concepts and ideas without making a total facsimile of an existing user interface, and also have expensive lawyers of their own. A single programmer taking a free, open source paint program and making it look and act as much like the (expensive) flagship product of a major corporation as possible could very easily find himself on the receiving end of some sternly-worded cease and desist orders.

>>13
Well that's fine because if you read the article (as I just finished doing) he only rearranged the menus, he didn't copy icons or whatever.

I had a tough time using Gimp too... ON Linux. I just didn't consider it that powerful. Sure, I could draw in it, but working with layers was beyond my comprehension... it's simply not that easy to navigate.

Ive used gimp for a couple years, and I'm quite happy with it.
Once you know where everything is, you'll find you can do just about anything photoshop can.
Yes it does have some bugs, mostly stability issues on windows, but again once you know what it will do its easy enough to get around those problems.
Also Ive noticed most of the complaints about the ui come from people that are used to using photoshop, sorry for the pun but its like comparing apples to oranges, its two different programs meant to do the same job.
As far as the ease of use goes sure you can push a button in ps and have that generic effect , and gimp can do that too in certain circumstances, but I find creating those effects are far more fullfiling when I do it myself and have my own touches to them, again once you know how everything works.
Funny how photoshop is made for people who don't really know how to do graphics, or want to take the time to learn how.
Ma-by that's why it costs 600+ bucks to buy it.
Another funny thing Ive noticed is that even tho it costs soooo much so many people still have it.
So please complain some more about the pirated software you are using and the free open source program you cant figure out how to use.

>>16
A winnar is j00.

>>16 is either a complete idiot, or an great satirist.

I can't decide which.

>>18
Why? It's true that most of the "zomg GIMP interface suxx0rz!" crowd are complaining because it doesn't emulate Photoshop's broken interface.

>>18
The main point is gimp is freeware you can either fix it(open source) or don't use it, but complaining that its not as good as stolen, or over priced commercial ware is plainly hypocritical.

>>20
Ok you fail for calling it "freeware".

>>19
I came from PSP; I didn't like Photoshop's interface that much either, and I have customized PSP's quite a bit until I made it very productive. I'm not particularly attached to an interface, and I was in a very good disposition to learn a new one, but the GIMP's really sucked.

>>19
now, i had never used any graphics program besides MS paint the first time i usde gimp 2.0, i used it for about a month. then i uhh.. bought.. photoshop cs. compared to the phothshop interface gimp's is totally retarded, and theres so many features that simple do not make sense even after you've used it for a while(text tool anyone? the way zoom doesnt zoom in after you crop an image?) and in the end gimp ends up feeling like a very nice not-quite-finished college CS project compared to photoshop, its alot like 1990's shareware. this is not to say photoshops interface is exactly the best thing evar either(the fuck were they smoking when they set up some of the layer and filter stuff, and most of the setups on the default sidebars), but its a hell of a lot better than gimps.

it always pisses me off that whenever someone points out massive problems with the interface or the program itself, the developers either say "o yea we'll get to that.." or "o your just used to photoshop" and theres at least half of the people on slashdot or whereever the battle royale takes place to back them up. you know what this reminds me of? the trillian support boards :D

If someone cannot understand why I think >>16 is an idiot (or satirist) par excellence, it'd take me a long time to explain. You need a fair bit of experience with both programs, and some knowledge of the industry itself.

Suffice to say, "photoshop is made for people who don't really know how to do graphics" should tell you all you need to know about the rest of the post. It's total rubbish.