Should the Gimp team swallow their pride?
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I like Gimp and I like how it's evolving the backend, but I've noticed something that happened this year with Blender 2.80, Maya users like it, they may not switch, but they like it and they'll at least keep an eye on it and they would especially more interested if it had really efficient macros.
Here's a video from a Maya user that actually moved to Blender, but still has his criticisms:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=ugVNYwTM_Rk
But the biggest reasons for Blender 2.8 getting big is the community and the UI being more user friendly and while a user friendly UI doesn't necessarily mean copying the look and feel of non-free software, those companies have done a lot of research and focus groups and know what their customers want and dated UIs in proprietary software are mostly a thing where their old design choices are in the cultural legacy and that's why Windows still has the bottom task bar and the start menu and even Trisquel uses that UI cue to transition Windows users to a libre OS (though, I'll say, Trisquel implements the classic Windows UI paradigm better than Windows and feels like a new nostalgic experience if that makes any sense) But I can imagine in a free market in 1995 with Windows 95 and a fictional IBM OS/3 running Gnome 3, I think users would have loved Gnome 3 the best because it's more intuitive.
But I think Photoshop makes more sense to people that never used an image editor before than gimp, but the gimp developers are too proud to admit some of their choices scare the masses away, like the developers don't care bout them and while I do have lot of gratitude in the recent developments in the gimp backend because the factory has to be built before you can sell the first can of peas, I can see where they're coming from. Users care about their interests. There are people that have gone down the path of being dependent on software centralization because they sell what they want, but those users love the idea of freedom too. Maya users hope the best for blender, Photoshop users hope the best for gimp and Unreal/Unity users hope the best for godot because they like the idea of freedom, just not the current implementation. (though the MIT license isn't copyleft, but I'd just be happy to have a game engine where the option to give your customers software freedom isn't off the table.)
Personally I think Blender is a big project because a huge number of people need it. There are tons of image editing software options - the real need for gimp is much less than for Blender. You could make gimp's user interface ten times simpler, and you still might not have a large user base because there's so much competition in that space.
Another thing about image editing, for some reason Adobe products seem to have a "I'll just pirate them" mindset and "photoshop" has a particular nice ring to it and not to say Gimp needs a name change, (I'd rather have a logo change that matches the name) but it makes sense, a "shop for photos". But with blender, for some reason, it's way easier to associate that with 3D modelling than is to associate gimp with image editing. When I think of image editing from $0 piracy to $21 per month, but when I think of Blender, I think of DSLR and smartphone filmmakers and 3D freelancers, I think of a maverick spirit with Blender.
I think swallowing pride won't hurt gimp. Sure, change the UI that Photoshop customers want and call it, something ridiculous like the PIMP: PIMP Image Manipulation Program. It's a name just as stupid sounding, it rhymes with the old name and it's a recursive acronym and Pimps are service brokers that wear a fancy suit to work and earn a decent living, there's more prestige to that occupation.
That can't hurt the project (that would be) formally known is "gimp".
It has been forked recently in order to change the name. The forked project is called "Glimpse" instead of gimp. https://github.com/glimpse-editor/Glimpse
And, in fact, the Glimpse folks claim that they are going to improve the user interface: "Aside from the rebrand that provides excellent free software with a less problematic name, we also focus on performance improvements, user interface changes and incrementally improving the user experience. In the longer term we intend to write our own GUI and plug-in framework on top of the GEGL component maintained by the same developers, but it will likely take years for those aspirations to be fully realised."
I don't know what 'GEGL' refers to, so I have to wonder if their new GUI will be any better.
I think GEGL is the new image processing backend for gimp. They replaced the old one with GEGL because GEGL is more versatile for plugins and I guess that's why gimp kinda slowed down in the past 10 years, I guess people stopped developing plugins for it because they knew it would break, so you might as well wait for GEGL before you further develop plugins and I guess people just moved on. (I think it took 10 years for Gimp to release a stable build with GEGL, so I guess you can see why after '09 mindshare of gimp tanked. though G'Mic is pretty cool, though it can be used as a stand-alone and I would say gimp is getting better grass roots adoption since late gimp 2.9 at least by Gimp's 2012 standards. I've noticed pretty decent gimp tutorial channels popping up.
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On 12/08/2019 01:35 AM, name at domain wrote:
> Gimp needs a name change, (I'd rather have a logo change that matches
> the name)
That would be offensive to disabled people.
Just going to say one thing:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy
Yeah, avoid using the word piracy, if anything call it unauthorized sharing and if that doesn't work for you, I guess copyright infringement.
But please don't call it piracy. Pirates sunk ships and killed the passengers on board.
Anyways thats my thought on that.
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On 12/09/2019 06:47 AM, name at domain wrote:
>
> But please don't call it piracy. Pirates sunk ships and killed the
> passengers on board.
They still do. I remember watching a very ironic Disney film which
warned its viewers with the typical pre-screening "piracy" bumpers and
then proceeded to show a film dramatizing all the gory details of real,
maritime piracy. Captain Phillips (2013).
--
Caleb Herbert
KE0VVT
816-892-9669
https://bluehome.net/csh
Neither GIMP, nor Blender are anywhere near the high class professional graphics software (which is proprietary, unfortunately). It is not just about the UI but as a whole - the functionality.
One example: Adjustment layers are an essential thing for non-destructive flexible image editing in Photoshop. GIMP won't have them in the next years. Photoshop has had them for *many* years.
name at domain wrote:
> Neither GIMP, nor Blender are anywhere near the high class professional
> graphics software (which is proprietary, unfortunately). It is not just
> about the UI but as a whole - the functionality.
I don't know what "high class" software means but I've seen what artists
have done with free software art programs including the GIMP and Blender
and I am impressed with the work I've seen (all cards on the table: I'm a
happy contributor). The Blender movies I've seen[1] are great and they look
better with each subsequent movie (no different than other professional
projects). I understand from recent Blender movie credits that those movies
involve work edited in more than just Blender and the GIMP (Krita and
Inkscape were used as well). I've shown some friends some Blender movies
without first telling them anything about where the movies came from and
they were impressed as well. After they saw the movies I told them about
free software and the background of the programs whose history I knew
something about.
I vaguely recall reading something (perhaps an award speech) citing someone
at Pixar who said that Blender, in particular, was impressive. Colin Levy,
who has worked on Blender movies, got hired at Pixar in 2011[2] based, in
part no doubt, on his Blender work. If you find that kind of reference to
be compelling, that might be worth something to you. I think it's great
that we have artists making great work with software that we're free to
run, inspect, share, and modify.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6B3937A5D230E335
[2] https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/inside-pixar-studios
> I don't know what "high class" software means
That's why you have no basis of comparison. I do know because I am a professional graphics artist. Just find one serious studio which uses GIMP for professional image editing. Also how many CG studios are looking for Blender artists? You see, there is a reason why big studios use Houdini and Maya. Apart from the open movie projects done with Blender you may only find here and there partial work where Blender may have been used (e.g. for modeling some objects for which honestly it doesn't matter much which software you use today). That doesn't mean Blender is worthless. It just means it has a long way to go before it becomes the main tool for CG studios.
> but I've seen what artists have done with free software art programs including the GIMP and Blender and I am impressed with the work I've seen
Criteria matter. Being impressed with something doesn't mean it is high quality or that the tools used to create it are impressive. People have created impressive (and high quality) things without any software at all. Today they can do the same with a computer - much faster and more efficiently. Professional graphics work is not simple and takes a lot of time, so choosing the tool which saves time and produces the best quality result is more important than anything else. Most of the time a single tool is not enough - you do one thing in one tool, another thing in another. I wish they were all FOSS but well... they are not. Greedy capitalists :)
name at domain wrote:
> That's why you have no basis of comparison. I do know because I am a
> professional graphics artist.
And yet not only do you not define the term, you express yourself in a way
that is easily misunderstood to be condescending. The term "high class"
software has no accepted meaning in computer software.
> Just find one serious studio which uses GIMP for professional image
> editing. Also how many CG studios are looking for Blender artists?
Again with the vaguely judgmental language that refers to nothing widely
accepted -- a "serious" studio. Apparently Blender studio is serious and
perhaps the competition you allude to simply doesn't exist (which
undermines much of your thesis about how GIMP developers need to "swallow
their pride" as this increasingly silly thread states).
The great thing about GIMP, Blender, Krita, and the other free software art
programs is that they're free software. Perhaps you should code the
functionality you believe any of these programs lack so they may deign to
be more useful. One can't say the same about the proprietary programs.
Software freedom is a feature I value unto itself.
> The term "high class" software has no accepted meaning in computer software.
Actually it has, although it may not be an explicit definition (which you seem to expect). Every CG professional knows that M$ Paint is much lower class than Photoshop for example. If you want to be verbally precise - dig into why it is so. Simply put: features, stability, speed, ease of use. It's common sense. I am not saying Photoshop is the perfect tool. It sucks too - the memory management is a disaster. What I am saying is that there is a reason why professionals use particular tools and it is the overall workflow which the tool can support.
> Apparently Blender studio is serious and perhaps the competition you allude to simply doesn't exist
Indeed... it doesn't. Only Blender studio exists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animation_studios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Visual_effects_companies
> the vaguely judgmental language that refers to nothing widely accepted
What is widely accepted when you do some real work is to have the tool which helps you do it. When you don't do real work, you can use whatever you want and blame the world for being "vague".
> The great thing about GIMP, Blender, Krita, and the other free software art programs is that they're free software.
Nobody is saying that is not great. What I am saying is that this is not the one and only factor for professional studios to pick a particular tool.
> Software freedom is a feature I value unto itself.
"I value" is quite different from "widely accepted" and you yourself are the vaguely judgemental. The facts are above. Studios doing real work buy software which does the job. They have deadlines and production volumes. They would rarely invest into some general software project and wait for it to mature, so they can use it. Normally they develop their own in-house software for that (and don't share it with the competition, even for payment).
So, your "basis of comparison" is all about being employed?
No. Read the whole thing, not just 2-3 words for the sake of "clever" contradiction.
Oh the Gimp project has been thinking of implementing adjustment layers, non-destructive editing and proper CMYK support for years. The issues was they needed a backend overhaul first and that's really almost compete at this point, just GTK3 support (of which shouldn't be big deal compared to the GEGL port) and they can actually work on it.
I know gimp really only has 3 core devs, but even in 2.10, there's a lot of nice features like high precision editing. I can edit at 64-bit floating point precision thanks to GEGL. I would say it's not even ready to be a 1-to-1 replacement even for Photoshop 7.0, but the 2.10 release put Gimp back on people's radars.
The important keyword here is "thinking of implementing". Compared that to "already implemented many years ago".
Not many would care about 64-bit precision if the editing is not flexible enough to support a real daily workflow.
Please, be constructive. You can request specific features (not rant) on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/ or even help implementing them.
Writing that the developers should "swallow pride" is not constructive. GIMP only has ~3 significant developers. Insulting them is only a way to get even less development. If you have money, consider donating. A couple of developers try (but mostly fail) to make a living out of their work on GIMP: https://www.gimp.org/donating/#support-core-team-developers-directly
I thought I was trying to be constructive, I see blender going on people's radars because of the 3.8 update that made Maya users look into it. I'm sorry, I'm used to more exaggerated ways of expressing myself, but my sentiment was should they just give photoshop users what they want? It worked for blender.
But then again blender has more financing channels, they offer e-learning, blender cloud etc and they do have some sponsors like Unreal, that does help a lot, but I think maybe Unreal are looking for how much they spend on Maya and they think "you know, I might as well just hire fulltime devs to work on blender instead of paying for the Maya subscription".
I'm used to more exaggerated ways of expressing myself, but my sentiment was should they just give photoshop users what they want?
What is it that they want? I do not know and I doubt GIMP developers do. That is why I was suggesting you to request *specific* features.
Well, part of their mission so I heard is to try to not to mimic photoshop. But is mimicry bad? I like their intention to try to beat photoshop without copying the UI, but I think that should be let go. Mimicry isn't bad.
But as for features, everything anybody would want has pretty much been addressed in their roadmap and it's not just features, it's the package of the features.
Well, part of their mission so I heard is to try to not to mimic photoshop.
A reference? As far as I know, GIMP simply aims to be a good raster image editor for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, and scientists (people who want different features). The "mission" is not defined in function of Photoshop.
commodore256:
>> I'd rather have a logo change that matches the name
Cahler:
> That would be offensive to disabled people.
No it wouldn't. GIMP is named for the character in the Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, played by Stephen Hibbert:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/680-pulp-fiction/cast
I can't see how a logo that looked vaguely like this would offend disabled people:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53280571@N07/5654527423
I'd glad the entitled knockers who insist on misinterpreting the name have finally stopped bullying the GIMP devs and created a fork. I would have called it PIMPLE (PIMPLE Image Manipulation Program for Liberal Editors), but Glimpse is a good hack, as it contains the original name within it. G-l-IMP-se
As Zygote says,people don't choose GIMP because of missing features, not eccentric UI, so I don't think changing the UI would make GIMP any more attractive. From memory, there was fork called PhotoGIMP that tried to give the GIMP back-end a more Photoshop-a-like UI. It seems to have sunk without a trace. A quick web search turned up no sign of it, but I did find this, which I found quite amusing:
https://www.gimpshop.com/
I remember there being another fork called Cinepaint, which was optimized for use in the movie industry. It also seems to be long abandoned:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cinepaint/files/
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On 12/15/2019 11:57 AM, name at domain wrote:
> I remember there being another fork called Cinepaint, which was
> optimized for use in the movie industry. It also seems to be long
> abandoned:
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/cinepaint/files/
It was used to produce "The Hulk".
Please let me write about a bit of the usability of GIMP here.
- Cannot move the icons on the toolbox easily, or can you? Why cannot drug and drop?? I have to go to the setting tab each time, besides, please try the setting, can you set that easily as your preference even in the setting tab? I cannot. I have to do kind of the caluculations where an icon will be mapped on the toolbox. I think this is the worst usability of GIMP.
- The small up and down buttons of the % indicator on the scroll bar does not allow up and down by keeping a press of them. (only 50%, 100%, 200%...) Please consider the speed if someone intends to fix the usability.
- Sometimes when changing the size of the brush, or the pencil, etc, the tooloption suddenly disappears once and shows again on another place. (mistery, I cannot figure out why/how it happens)
- The same tooloption matter, sometimes suddenly the percentage raises to around 1000% or 2000%, mystery. I cannot figure out how it happens. (and who needs such a function)
- Same tooloption issue, the up and down buttons are too close to the return default button. (I wonder who needs such return button, I'm afraid. If it can be set as my preferable number, it would be usable though. I don't want to add add-ons)
- The color palette cannot be showed easily. (W>D>R... it is the function which is used most often)
- The area of the corners which control the window size are too small. There should be a button on the menu bar which controls the size by click and drag. (I think it can be said to all of "Windows", e.g. the window of a browser. But GIMP's one is especially small)
- Some settings are not saved. Have to set each time. (e.g. V>T) On the contrary, somehow some unwanted settings are saved. (In my case, it was grid)
- Cannot draw on certain areas often happens. Needs to close the file once. Or dragging the file window to another place. When it happens, it seems that the area where it cannot be drawn is the same. I cannot explain in language well. Please see the illustration.
- I was thinking I would be able to modify the usability of this application easily, freely. There does not seem to be much difference between of iOS.
- I prefer the color number fffff when it is on blue or green rather than on red. Smells iOS's elitism (fffff should be always on there). I think it is better not to force your preference (fffff should be always on there). It is a typical acitivty to try to rob users freedom.
- Pluma is very frequently freezing (for a 1-2 seconds) (chrome(?) was freezing on Icedove so maybe it was the cause...).
- maybe more, because I use only very basic functions. I am not sure how they can be proud of this usability. I think it is basically good but at least there are only people who criticize bad parts and praise rarely, as if those good parts are something normal, around me.
EDIT: sorry, it seems that the middle button made a copy of the writing...
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> The color palette cannot be showed easily. (W>D>R... it is the function which is used most often)
(E)dit > (K)eyboard Shortcuts > Dialogs
Of course, setting your own keyboard shortcut to access the palette won't help much if you usually have to work on various other people's systems, or if your settings always get reverted upon logout like in semi-public computer pools.
This seems like good UX feedback to send to the developers of GIMP and GLIMPSE.
They elites of iOS devs would not like his way of speaking then ignore it.
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