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GIMP Dev when AI cloned Photoshop went viral
(lemmy.nz)
worked on it since 1998
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
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Ngl gimp never took off because it's UX is terrible, plus it's far from feature complete.
It's like freecad in that regard, it exists, it's foss, but it's massively inferior to the paid options because UX is horrible and it breaks in weird ways.
Foss can be as good or better than non foss, just look at blender or Kicad, but these two aren't it.
The name doesn't help
'I make all my images with the GIMP." (Cracks whip at chained up leather clad person in a leather body suit and mask) "DRAW FASTER YOU WORTHLESS POS AND MAYBE MOMMY WILL LET YOU SEE AN OUTLINE OF A TITTY LATER."
With rare exceptions, the venn diagram of FOSS software and software names with broad mass appeal is two circles, a billion light-years apart.
Same shit in every thread.
> “UX is terrible”
> look inside
> same UI as in Photoshop
Either Photoshop users lack pattern recognition, or they are all salty about having paid hundreds of dollars to Adobe.
If you're conflating UI and UX then I can't do anything for you :P
Gimp ux was bad. It's been fine for years.
Freecad is WAY newer, and has had a fraction of the developer time spent on it.
"Fine" meaning "it's technically possible to use it."
Adding and editing text is a nightmare. I feel like the only way you could say with a straight face is if you haven't used Photoshop since 2006. Hell, PowerPoint has a better interface in a lot of ways.
I hate dunking on them like that but let's not lie to ourselves here. GIMP is good enough but the UI was clearly made by engineers, not artists
"The ux is fine" doesn't mean it's feature perfect. I agree the text editor sucks, I use other tools like inkscape when I need text.
My point is that you CAN do those things but it's several extra steps. I have to look up how to do things that are straight forward in other software
I'm an engineer and I have no idea what they were going for with that UI
That's fair. I'm an engineer, too, and the UI brings me pain. Especially because my previous career had creative cloud as the daily software.
I guess I meant more the engineer mindset of "I already know how to use it so it's good enough"
It reminds me of AutoCAD, my current daily software, which feels like a thousand bandaids stacked on top of each other over the course of 25 years.
I feel obligated to say that having a bad UI doesn't mean it's bad software. I'm just tired of people pretending it's polished lol
In GIMP? You select the text tool, you click it on the canvas. It's that simple.
Ok now add a drop shadow. Curve it or add perspective.
Compare that experience to Photoshop
And CAD is ridiculously complex. Students also practice like half a year to cope with the proprietary market leaders. I sometimes think people complain because they confuse tools made for professionals with some game on easy mode.
But yeah, FreeCAD also isn't on par with professional tools. It's surprisingly capable and has a lot of features. And they made it crash way less. 2 years ago it used to crash several times each project when adding some chamfers or some other easy stuff and I had to do lots of stuff in order or it wouldn't work. As of now I'd say it's perfectly usable for the average hobby project. Just don't expect any CAD software to be usable without any kind of background knowledge. There's other tools for that kind of 3D design.
FreeCAD still fucks up with chamfers with annoying regularity unless you're really careful. That being said, it doesn't crash from it anymore.
That being said, their workflow is way better now. It used to be that you were expected to remember exact locations of vertices, so it was about 20 years of regression from where most other CAD packages were at the time. Now it's purely graphical and you can actually connect features properly
I've spent 3 years learning freecad, and it's bad, it's entirely incapable of holding up against moderately complex projects, a simple fillet can break the whole model. It got better with 1.0 but it's still so very far from competing with fusion or inventor / catia...
As for gimp... I've really tried adding it to my workflow, but it's been a massive headache, I'd likely use photocraft over it given both options...
When was the last time you tried? Free CAD evolves at breakneck speed.
1.1 still has a ways to go. I havent worked in 1.2+ all that much
dude i'm designing something right now and freecad is just what i need. Thanks!
I use FreeCAD professionally. Since their 1.0 release its honestly better software. And feature parity with Fusion 360.
The issue I have with FreeCAD is that there is a massive learning curve to it, due to the accuracy the software needs.
As updates come out the software is getting better at lowering the requirement, but honestly it’s the best CAD software I’ve been able to get my hands on.
Gino on the other hand feels like it’s designed for image manipulation than image creation. Still use it if I need to touch up a photo. But Affinity and Photoshop does a much better job
Freecad is NOT like gimp. They are not hell bent o forcing people to do things their way. They constantly evolve, and pay real attention to what the community wants. They are one of FOSS' example of how things should be. I really like it and how it's evolving.
I tried the "good UX" one back then when people hype around the update, and it still really hard to learn if you used to photoshop layout. These day, Krita is better i think, and Inkscape for the Illustrator alternative.
> “if you used to photoshop layout”
> look inside
> same layout as in Photoshop, and the panels are movable
By now I'm convinced Photoshop users lack pattern recognition.
Is it? Idk, it's been ages i used it and i never went back since even though every time i need it and people always recommended me it.
It was bad when Gimp had floating windows. That was changed long ago. Since then, the layout is basically the same as in PS: tools on the left, layers on the right, the image in the middle. The biggest difference is probably that the tools panel isn't in one column by default and takes some screen space — but it can be resized, though idk about the minimum width.
Oh yeah Krita is FAR better than Gimp ux wise 100℅
Krita's brush engine is also stellar. Easily up there among the best of them.
Inkscape's UI is very unintuitive to me, as someone used to Illustrator. The necessary tools mostly exist, but not where I would look for them.
It was made by a programmer who does not understand anything about how professional imaging people use software. It would be like an artist to somehow manages to cobble together some kind of crudely functional IDE, but he's never programmed in his life and he doesn't even know what programming really is.
so like vibecoders!
Cuck coders don't need any IDEs though, they can sit with a WebUI. I think that made them insecure though so now they have resorted to flashy TUIs instead, so they can feel like 1337 pr0 h4xx0r or whatever.
It's not completely open source, but Photopea is a free web app that looks and works damn near identically to Photoshop, and it's been around for over a decade. It can open and save-as several proprietary formats. [Github]
Uh.
Blender is not that bad, not even close in fact. Have you tried learning it at all? I know I have and per hour spent it's far more empowering than other comparatively complex software.
You can't compare a 2d picture editor to a full 3d modeling suite like they're even remotely close. Blender is better.
Yes, I did try it. I also know my way around other 3d software and blender's horrible ux has consistently driven me away from it.
And I know that 2d and 3d software packages are different. Duh. Doesn't mean 3d software has to be bad though.
Blender is horrendous. And that's comparing it to other 3d modelling programs. They throw like 8 different subsystems' UIs onto the screen at once. If I'm trying to model an object, I don't the damn animation timeline taking up half my screen.
Then remove it. It's there because it is used for certain things, like physics simulation. If you need to do hair or cloth, then the timeline is used.
My issue is nothing is sectioned off. It shouldn't all be accessible at the same time. And the controls seem to also not be context based. It's been a while soni don't remember specifics but I do recall it not being intuitive to do anything
It is highly customisable though, you could make it work and look more or less any way you wish.
As a UI professional, I kind of resent the idea of something being intuitive. Nothing is truly intuitive, because what we call intuition is just pattern recognition. An interface is only intuitive because it works in a manner we expect, that's to say the interface designers have replicated known patterns. A pattern being well known doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
I stopped using Windows for a few years and now I feel like an idiot anytime I need to do something. It doesn't feel "intuitive." If someone gets their start with blender (like many do nowadays because Blender is a stellar example of FOSS done right) then other software is less likely to feel intuitive to them.
Blender is also a bit of a jack of all trades. Video editing, audio editing, storyboarding, sculpting, animation, 2D animation/illustration, texture painting, shaders. At least they ripped out the game engine some years back.
I'm not saying that it doesn't have a learning curve, certainly it does. What I am saying, is that your unwillingness to learn doesn't mean that the software is bad. It certainly is not.
Yeah, that's what intuitive means...
I'm not saying that either. It IS bad, regardless of my willingness to learn. I tried multiple times. It sucks. I'm sure it works fine. But it's clunky as shit, and difficult to navigate.
Other software does those same things with much less friction
I'd say that Photoshop UI is more streamlined than GIMPs in several ways. In how it handles selections and layers and filter application, etc. And, it's not just familiarity. GIMP is clunky.
Whereas Blender compared to Rhino, or Maya, or Sketchup, or Solidworks--there is no one way to do 3D that works better than another. Moving from one to the other, you can only take the basic concepts of a mesh between them, how they get there is all over the map.
Also a lot of people associate the word 'gimp' with something else
Isn't GIMPs UX just old photoshop ?
Blender had years before it earned the reputation as the exception
Blender is four years older than GIMP. Blender is lightyears ahead of GIMP.