817
GIMP Dev when AI cloned Photoshop went viral
(lemmy.nz)
worked on it since 1998
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2026
817 points (98.1% liked)
Fuck AI
8533 readers
1841 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Rules:
- Relevant posts only.
- No bigotry.
- This isn't a place to talk about the cons and (supposed) pros of AI for different use cases. This is /c/fuck_ai .
- Especially no AI advocacy.
- Don't make any posts that are just AI content with no context unless the point of your post is obvious from content. (Don't just post slop advertisements or slop political cartoons. At least make your point about it clear so we know you aren't just trolling.)
- Venting is part of the purpose of this community, but don't aim frustration or accusations at other users.
- These rules are a living document that may change in the future.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
To me the funny thing about these online squabbles is the people insisting gimp is somehow good. It is not, it has never been - it is an appalling embarrassment of a tool. Sure, a programmer who doesn't really know anything about professional imaging can use it to make a couple icons, but if you want to do any form of professional work, for-fucking-get it. It's a joke and it always has been a joke.
I was a professional game developer/producer for over 20+ years and gimp has ALWAYS been the laughing stock.
Can I ask in a non argumentative way what exactly makes it's unsuitable? Is it just that the professional workflow is built around photoshop, something to do with colour, something about the files?
In most cases I don't really care about x vs y arguments I'm more interested in the fundamental reasons. I've encounted many people saying things are better because or not used in industry when the whole purpose of the product was to take over the industry via free school software etc.
Gimp 3 also came out this past year and I feel made massive improvements but I think everyone still complaining about gimp 2
I've been using GIMP to make every one of my thumbnails for the video uploads I make. The issue with GIMP is that it does some things a bit obtusely, and kind of requires you to build a database of art files. Photoshop is better for (surprise!) editing photos, where as GIMP is better at pure "Art" stuff.
GIMP also is not really geared for Tablets, which is also why most people are down on it.
Someone ping me if this gets a reply
I'm not here to squabble with you people, you all know it's a piece of dog shit. You can already see that people will not accept what I'm saying, this is not an argument by authority, but the fact of the matter is no professional artist would ever use that tool, and you know that.
I was interested in an artist's specific critiques of GIMP. I know GIMP is clunky but I'm not in the industry, so I don't know what's considered necessary or useful for artists.
If you're having a bad day, just don't comment.
I can give my very vague hazy input, as someone who used to be an artist. I used GIMP many years ago when I just started digital art, since it was a free image program (and Krita didn't exist at the time). This must have been fifteen years ago or more. I distinctly remember using GIMP to "trace" over my scanned pencil/ink physical art to make digital art, since I didn't have a drawing tablet at the time. I did a decent amount of drawings in GIMP this way, and therefore feel like I must have "got the hang of" the UI during this period of time. So GIMP was the first image manipulation program I used and I used it a lot, so therefore, I would say that means I should have built up some kind of "intuition" or memory on how to use it.
Then, I got a drawing tablet. I don't remember at the time of GIMP had pressure sensitivity or not. But I do remember that around the time I got my Wacom tablet, I figured out how to... 🏴☠️ acquire 🦜 Photoshop. I then basically abandoned GIMP for Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI to draw digital art fully rather than scanning in physical drawings.
Now, not long after, maybe a few/several months later, my mother asked me about needing an image manipulation program. I told her about GIMP, and helped install it for her. Then she eventually came by and asked me how to do some relatively simple image manipulation task — I can't remember exactly, but say something like "rotate a part of an image" — and I told her "oh no problem!" and took her laptop to show her how to do it and... I completely forgot and couldn't even figure it out. Nothing I tried to do that I felt like should have done the simple image manipulation task got me close to doing it. I think the furthest I got was making a "dancing ants" selection but couldn't do a rotate for the life of me (or whatever I had to do). And I'm sure I tried to search Google on how to do it and it didn't help. I eventually got flustered and told her that I had no idea how to do it, and I was pretty embarrassed, considering I had formerly used this program so much for my initial start into digital art.
I think about this memory whenever GIMP UI discussions come up. To me, the fact that I so quickly forgot how to do something so basic not that long after I stopped using it suggests there is something unintuitive about the way things are set up in GIMP. I will go long stints not using Photoshop since I don't really do much art anymore, and yet when I come back, I'll remember how to things, or if I do forget something, the menu l'll find it in makes sense to me. As to what and why something doesn't feel right, I unfortunately can't articulate it well, though I'm sure that's because of how long ago it's been at this point. And one issue about something being intuitive vs not is that it makes it difficult to explain why something "feels right" or doesn't.
Granted, I have seen news that GIMP has recently updated its UI again, and I am curious about trying to out, especially since I heard they're requesting feedback.
Thanks for the input, I get the it doesn't do things intuitively, I've seen it happen before on other software where you just can't figure out how to make it do something. I guess it's like trying to use vi or nano
My dude, No one is trying to squabble here except you. I don't know how much less confrontational someone can be when asking a question, and yet you still came out swinging.
Edit: In this particular thread tree.
Totally convinced me!
• Evelyne Schulz: A Denmark-based digital artist and programmer who relies on GIMP as her primary tool alongside Blender for 3D/perspective bases.
• Jeremy Crotty: A digital surrealist painter who creates full digital paintings and abstract pieces directly in GIMP.
• Benedicto Cernal III: A graphic designer known for using GIMP to craft distressed, analog-style poster collages.
• Daniel Lloyd-Miller: A professional painter who uses GIMP for post-processing, color correction, and digital painting preparation.
What?!?! Mods, this guy is trying to have a real conversation, what the fuck?!?!
You're not really interested, you're just trying to call bullshit on somebody that has decades of experience. YOU go out and you find me a professional artist that will attest that they prefer gimp, and I'll walk naked down Main Street.
You're making an argument (that Gimp isn't ready for prime time), but responses like this only undermine your argument and your credibility. By my read that user was trying to respond in good faith, or at least appears that they are. By accusing bad faith and demanding they appeal to authority (your experience) you sabotage your own argument.
If as you say all professional artists hate Gimp, you could have used the same number of words to illustrate (no pun intended) one or two reasons why. And then you're boosting your argument and your own credibility by providing facts.
And below you insist 'you all know it's a piece of dog shit'... have you considered the possibility that they don't know? Maybe they aren't professional designers, maybe they are just bystanders who only use graphics programs to occasionally touch up family photos.
If a person asks you for knowledge, replying with accusation only makes you look non-credible.
I am interested, I thought you might provide a bit of insight, and I'm not arguing either way, honestly I couldn't care either way as I'm not a digital artist.
You can see that people don't really want to know, what they want to do is to continue to believe that this tool is good. A tool that they did not build, they do not use, and they cannot evaluate against the comparative pro tools.
I'm not wasting my breath on this bullshit.
I've never in my entire life of professional digital media and development known an artist who would ever use gimp. Because it is utter feces.
I really wanted to know. Oh well, bitter mockery will have to do.
Dude you could have just said user interface or something, I'm guessing you never really tried it?
No, you've not known anyone who used it mainly because industries do not spend $600 on software per seat and then later admit that It was barely better than a free tool, even if that were true.
You claim not to be trying to squabble but an objective observer would conclude that's the only thing you've done here.
Lol looks like somebody found some!
https://lemmy.world/comment/26454599
Enjoy struttin' your stuff, hope you kept up with the landscaping! XD
Haha all in good fun, I'm happy someone posted these people because I didn't know about them.
Damn dude, I think you mis-read the post. It had me interested in hearing more from you.
For the record, as someone who's online some significant image editing for scientific stuff, and was primarily using the very non-artsy program ImageJ, I'm lost everytime I try to do much of anything in gimp
If you are an indication of what an average game dev is like then maybe it is a good thing that the industry is collapsing
The funny thing is, there are always “pros” bitching about it, but never doing anything about it.
Pros would FREQUENTLY try to do something about it, create a pull request, get denied for some bullshit reason, and forget about the project entirely.
Frequently? Then you can surely link some denied PRs from before the AI slop times.
Also forks are a thing. It just needs one single person to take the staff, create a fork, merge all the rejected PRs into it, and merge from upstream every once in a while.
It's not up to a pro to fix somebody else's broken heap of shit. A professional artist is going to pick the professional tools that are made available to them Not their job to correct this piece of dog crap.
Sure. Demand free open source software without contributing anything and then talk shit about the people volunteering their time. It’s not their job either to give you what you want for free. In contrast to closed source shit you have the option to shape it to your needs. Not doing that and then behaving like they owe you anything is pretty arrogant.
I didn't think they demanded anything
No, but they're devoting time and energy to being publicly unpleasant about it, to the point of being outright obnoxious and hostile towards people who defend it.