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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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Fuck AI
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Hell hath no fury like a photographer told to use UX that isn't literally an 1:1 exact clone of Photoshop UX.
What babies.
Ironically, this attitude is a major blocker for the GIMP team when it comes to bigger UI/UX changes -- there's a vocal contingent who will react negatively to any change that requires a little adjustment to workflow or muscle memory, or even if things just look different.
Firefox's incredibly light-touch visual changes recently are a great example of this; it's not "this is demonstrably worse," it's "change makes me uncomfortable."
I do totally appreciate that changes can be genuinely problematic for a subset of users, especially the elderly, but the vitriol that gets spewed when a project overhauls a UI embarrasses me as a user.
Side note: the GIMP UI is generally pretty good these days. There's room for improvement, and it has a learning curve (as do all complex applications, to some degree) but it's shed a lot of its least intuitive aspects.
On mobile the changes are more obnoxious. Tabs now take up a lot of screen real estate, despite chromium being an example of being functional and efficient at that for years.
Also, changing the look just to change the look is dumb. UI/UX changes should have a benefit to them. And what people frustratingly seem unable to understand is that newer doesn't always mean better.
You mean the two buttons, to show the tabs and to add a new tab?
Some people get used to how their daily tools work and look, so when the UI suddenly changes, our efficiency and comfort decreases until we tweak it to our liking and/or get used to it. The closest analogue I can think of, imagine that every few years you wake up to the furniture having been rearranged in your house.
I didn't see the point of the Firefox redesign either, and had to spend some time in userchrome.css to make it not actively repulsive :/ A few weeks later now I reached the state of "eh ok", but I still don't think it's an improvement.
If you just want the pre-Nova UI it's probably easier to about:config > browser.nova.enabled = false
Sadly those flags are only temporary measures, and tend to get removed after a few months.
maybe every few years you get a new car? it does all the same things, maybe even better things with new bells and whistles, but fuck all y'all who decided to get rid of my buttons [oldmanyellsatclouds.jif]
okay but some of google's icon changes have been really bad
I wonder if it's possible to build seperate UI that sits on top of the underlying backend and can be switched easily. So that ppl from PS can start quick.
I think a lot of people underestimate the maintenance burden of options like this. It's another trope you see often with UI changes -- "just let me switch it back."
The problem is that now, even if your UI is super nicely decoupled from your engine, everything you change under the hood is likely to need at least regression testing in two places rather than one -- that workload has doubled.
As it happens, though, with your specific example, there's someone actively maintaining a GIMP ~~fork~~ mod called PhotoGIMP to achieve this, but I notice despite recent(ish) commits, they're still a minor version and a year behind.
The whole conversation reminds me of this XKCD
you just explained fairly well to me why windows decided to lock the taskbar on the bottom for a while. or at least a reason they might.
Like with Linux distros and which DE you run?
there have been several, including one that tried to look like photoshop but then ended up being malware.
You get the same with Apple fans when Apple introduces something new. They all get really angry about it.
It's not that.
Photographers went from Photoshop to lightroom quite quickly.
And other proprietary tools as well.
On the open source front many graphics people went to Inkscape instead of gimp.
Gimp methodology and UX is not landing with the majority of people and it's not offering them enough workflow improvements to justify the learning curve.
wait until you see Lightroom vs Darktable comments :)
Amusingly, I am pretty happy with darktable. The UX is a bit kludgy, but the workflow makes a lot of sense to me. If you've used another mainstream RAW processor, like Lightroom, Capture One, or DxO PhotoLab, you'll quickly be ripping through RAW files once you figure out where the handful of things you'll frequently use are. Everything I need is supported.
I've made a few runs at GIMP over the years, but I've given up each time. It's UI is also kludgy, but the workflows do not make sense to me. They will feel very foreign to someone who cut their teeth in Photoshop like tools. There are a ton of editors that have basically the same workflow as Photoshop. Paint.net is a good example. It's nowhere near as full featured as Photoshop, but it's very easy to pick up and run with if you're familiar with Photoshop.
For decades, the only thing they needed was clean, easy Action and Macro support.
Most photographers use half a dozen pretty simple actions that they are absolutely incapable of recreating in gimp. Most photogs are technically competant in very VERY narrow fields. Most of them use paint away the ______ which just masks, sets up a specific color channel and lets you math the removal of that color with brushes.
Now, you need to add in context-aware fill, outpainting and sky replacement.
Yes, nothing says
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Yeah its called hyperbole, you should try it sometime.
Seriously though, as someone who's main creative outlet is game dev (among other forms of programming), if I can learn a new engine, including new languages and core concepts required to work with the new tools, they can learn to locate some icons and context menus that moved.
Like Jesus, what do said people do when their OS upgrades versions?
You're just dismissing the claims that the UI is bad and bolstering your ability to adapt. Why can't everyone be just like you? That's not how the world works.
If your question were real, you'd probably know that everyone complains about UI changes with updates. Usually it's a temporary annoyance forgotten a week later. Other times, such as windows 11, they switch OSes. People with UI preferences aren't broken and they don't owe you anything. Stubbornly rejecting feedback might get you upvotes itt, but it won't get you very far elsewhere.
I know everyone complains about UI. I'm telling y'all to get the fuck over it.
My point isn't you have to adapt to technology as well as someone who lives and breathes it, my point is in comparison, moving around some icons and context menus isn't that fucking big a change. Especially considering its said people who are making the tools for you.
Its a small fucking ask. Hell, If massive tech companies hadn't spent the last 15 years weaponizing the lie that computers = convinience, mixed with the computer-illiteracy of the average smart phone user, to normalize corporate malware, it probably wouldn't be so bad.
Before that, it was mostly just the older people and less saavy users who complained UI changes, and in those days GIMPs featureset was still a joke compared to PS.
I mean I can kinda get it when companies develop desktop software that looks like an iPad app for hand-holding reasons (see the bit above about weaponizing computer illiteracy), but fuck me, you should be able to re-learn professional software that your job/hobby depends on.
In your mind, this doesn't strengthen the case that you're dismissive? UI design is literally supposed to conform to the user and here you are ridiculing that extremely basic design idea and telling people intuition isn't a thing, be a fucking robot because it's not hard.
If you were correct I could reverse your mouse on both axes and you would just adapt. (You obviously fucking wouldn't and neither would 99.99999% of humans)
If the issue was about basic intuition and not changing a preference which exists because that's just how Adobe did it, you'd have a point.
These are preferences that exist because people learned a single, arbitrary way of doing things invented by Adobe, and can't be fucked to re-find the same icon.
A cursor following mouse movements makes intuitive sense, even to people who've never touched a fucking computer before. Not a professional piece of software that takes training to properly use, and years of experience to master.
Your mouse-axis example is a false equivalence and you know it.
I would say that you know your "facts" are wrong, but that would imply you've ever taken feedback from another human, which you've shown here, is far off the table.
Its not that I haven't taken feedback, its that not all feedback is valuable.
Yes, I get that not all feedback has value. I read your comments.
Man oh man, let me tell you: some people just never upgrade