I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.
Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.
The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.
No everything in Linux has to be used through the terminal, how else will I feel elite. If there has to be a gui let’s make sure it looks like it was designed in 1995, so everyone hates it and just uses the terminal instead
Yall just use Krita if you want a photoshop replacement on Linux and then stop complaining about gimp please. Krita draws circles exactly like photoshop please just use Krita and leave the gimp people alone
I use both.
Krita is for drawing. GIMP is for making memes.
Keycloak is a industry standard and is very much not vendor locked. Same with Auth0. As far as oauth goes.
Yeah I feel like “industry standard” and “vendor locked” are kinda opposites?
Not really. “Industry standard” just means it’s commonly used in the industry. “Open specification” is the opposite of “vendor locked”, e.g. OAuth for authentication.
Industry standard is generally an open standard. Proprietary is what you and meme/op are thinking.
No, sorry, you’re just wrong. An “industry standard” can be anything that’s normal in an industry, e.g. a particular tool. Photoshop for example is an industry standard, but it’s not an open standard in any way.
Downplaying the importance of UX is one of the reasons the year of the Linux desktop still has not arrived.
If by importance of UX you mean “your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I’ve learned that one already”.
In reality The Year Of The Linux might never arrive, it doesn’t have a multibillion corporation spending multi billions in order to make Linux a default software on every computer you buy. (to pedants: Android doesn’t count)No. Importance of UX simply means advance users can customize their workflow while making it easy to use for casual users.
Kinda like Krita or Blender. Both are not perfect, but the dev are working on it, together with the community.
Even GIMP dev also working on that, they have GIMP UX issue tracker here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/
“your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I’ve learned that one already”
Oftentimes established workflow is already simple. There’s no need to reinvent this from scratch. Example: Npainter and AzPainter are heavily inspired by PaintToolSAI. Inochi Creator is a clone (with unique feature) of Live2D Cubism.
Oftentimes established workflow is already simple
Not in the example we’re talking about though. Photoshop isn’t simple, nothing in it is. And for the software that is, it doesn’t mean you can’t come up with the better UX. We shouldn’t discourage people from trying to invent something better just because it isn’t what we already have.
I believe when majority of people saying “Photoshop has this, we should do this as well” are not actually saying GIMP should create a total carbon-copy.
People loves easy to use interface, not carbon copy of Photoshop, even if they don’t say that. They just don’t know how to articulate their frustration better.
When Affinity Photo emerges as actual Photoshop alternative, no one complains regarding “not being Photoshop clone” because the interface is actually easier than Photoshop, while still being advanced software.
New GIMP user complaining about interface “not being Photoshop clone” is indicator that GIMP interface is not easy to use and intuitive enough.
I think the difference is with their software you can play around the UI and figure out things by intuition and trial and error
The same thing is not enough in FOSS in many cases. Like for ex, drawing solid shapes in GIMP
For three years I worked teaching computers to adults, and for four years I was a system administrator/helpdesk for a big office.
I can absolutely assure you, from my experience, there is nothing inheritly easier or harder to figure out in close source software vs foss, in windows vs linux, in gui vs console, in Photoshop vs Gimp.
The only difference is, what did a person encountered before. The idea that you can give a person photoshop and they will draw you a sold shape, but you give the same person gimp and they will not be able to never stood up to my experience with probably thousands of people.
The year of of the Linux happened long ago. However we fail to recognize it, because wasn’t exactly what we were expecting. Most super computer is TOP500 as well as servers and majority of portable devices in the world are powered by the Linux kernel.
If the definition of Year of Linux was based on having astonishing UX then, this is probably something that will never happen.
We’re talking about home computers, regular users running their personal OS.
Valve sells all of its computers with Linux on it, no?
They don’t sell all-purpose computers, they sell gaming systems that run Linux underneath. The regular user never has to interact with the OS
They also don’t sell that many of them.
Some quick googling says that Valve has sold nearly 4 million decks, which is pretty good.
Lenovo sold ~62 million computers last year alone. And they only make up ~1/4 of global market share
I guess all valve has to do is release steam machines again and then what? Suddenly the year of the Linux desktop isn’t here?
We’re talking about regular users having Linux as their operation system, not what happens under the hood of specialised machines. Steam machine user doesn’t run Linux, they run Steam.
Ah you’re right, it just cannot happen with a steam machine.
Nonesense. There is no easier to use and more functional desktop with great user experience than Linux. Been that way a long time. People are just used to poor UX and want more of it.
Naaah, it’s just companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft shitting on Linux users each time they can.
Lol
Circle select + Shift-PaintBucket
People really love making storms out of water glasses.
For anyone thinking this is the solution, it’s not. This technique produces a rasterized circle in a destructive editing workflow. What people that are complaining actually want, is a non-destructive tool, like the planned shape tool that will let everyone easily make vector shapes, like circles. It is part of the ongoing plan to add non-destructive workflows to GIMP, it’s a game changer and the gimp team is doing great progress, so kudos to them.
Not an actual shape tools, as shape created should be editable (usually as vector layer).
That method resulting an rasterized circle.
…and GIMP dev actually planning to add shape tool.
and GIMP dev actually planning to add shape tool.
Gimp’s first version released in 1998. Do you find it surprising that people aren’t impressed by plans to add basic tools after nearly 30 years when the competition has stuff like content-aware filling and automatic layer separation?
There are many valid arguments against using Adobe products, or for using open source editing software. Productivity and ease of use are not one of them.
It’s a free open source project, which means you’ve had just as long implement shapes.
Don’t like it then don’t use it, but you can hardly complain about something which is free.
Again with this tired excuse. “It’s free therefore everybody should just accept subpar software”.
You know what else is free? Gonorrhea. Doesn’t mean it’s something I should want, nor is anyone who isn’t an STI researcher barred from saying it blows.
Just to be clear, I don’t give a rat’s ass what anyone uses to do their editing. Suit yourself. Just don’t expect others to follow suit and sing the praises of a thing just because it’s FOSS.
I would agree with this, but the whining about a missing feature and how long it’s been missing helps no one.
Either implement it yourself or move along ffs.
content-aware filling
For what it’s worth, GIMP has had the resynthesizer plugin since the mid or late 2000’s, and at the time it was significantly ahead of Adobe’s Content Aware Fill.
Regarding Shape Tool: this feature is dependant on Vector Layer. The earliest attempt to implement this is back in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20061219233008/http://lunarcrisis.pooq.com/wiki/Gimp/SoC2006Log
I recommend to check the discussion for Shape tool and Better vector Tool here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/11190
If you check Gitlab repository of GIMP, they’re actually rewriting some old-codebase to be more future-proof. And that works really takes time. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/commits/master
A lot of major design software are actually doing this. For example:
- Manga Studio -> Clip Studio Paint. CSP is now “de-facto” software standard of comic industry, including webtoon. Hugely popular in Asia.
- Serif PhotoPlus -> Affinity Photo. It was regarding as the best Photoshop alternative with arguably easier interface and better performance.
You cannot just slap new feature continuously. The software will end bloated and slow like Photoshop.
All of that is irrelevant to an end user. They have the choice between tool A which is free but developing very slowly, or tool B which is paid but has all of the stuff they need.
99.99% will choose tool B and rightfully so.
Case in point: Serif isn’t currently rewriting their old stuff, they already did 10 years ago. Affinity photo/designer/etc have been out for a decade.
Basic tools? Drawing in a photo editing tool? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Use krita and draw all you want.
Gimp works great for editing images. Krita works great for drawing on them.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
Right off their front page.
Yeah illustrator is a huge stretch there, you are right.
And as a graphic designer, I am shaking my head.
That really is never the way I looked at gimp since the beginning.
With this logic, why have a rectangular selection tool, when the grid and freehand selection achieve the same result?
It’s not a standard until there’s an ISO, RFC, IEEE or IEC number to go with it.
W3C
Or ABNT or DIN or (…)
We should make just one more standards agency! To include all the standards for everything!
Krita, motherfuckers. Do you use it?
yes, actually. but i want to see gimp succeed too.
I use Krita, Aseprite, and Gimp. I must say, though, I’m loving Gimp 3. Now if we could just push past the proprietary docx plugins bullshit and make odf industry standard…
Edit: Ah, shoot. I forgot Inkscape for vector art. Shame on me… I love Inkscape.
I’ve used krita at an amateur level, pretty good would recommend
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Vendor lock-in is bad and Adobe’s business practices are bad, no matter how you cook it. There are so many viable alternatives to Adobe stuff.
Problem is, Photoshop power users don’t often want to hear about any alternatives. GIMP is just one of the most popular culprits in this regard. That’s exactly the kind of mindset that the vendor lock-in creates.
I’m kind of happy that I stuck with GIMP when I was younger. Now, I have absolutely no fear of trying out any software that comes my way. I do most of my photo work in Affinity Photo. Don’t have problems with GIMP either, use it for some other stuff.
The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers. Some time ago there was a huge movement for people to switch from Premiere to DaVinci Resolve because Premiere really is pretty horrible these days.
The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers
Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe’s side.
We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the “obvious” place to switch to.
As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.
And that’s fine - the fediverse is it’s own thing and many people (myself included) don’t want “adoption at all costs” - but I think it’s worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.
I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.
What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits “real” to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.
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I don’t do graphic design and only use GIMP for making memes. Could you give a few pointers, why GIMP is not usable compared to photoshop?
there was a case to be made in the past [nondestructive editing, cmyk etc], but as of 3.0(.2) the divide is steadily narrowing
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If you wanted to give counterexamples to your point, you couldn’t come up with a better one.
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So far hundreds of people are saying exactly what you do. “It’s just better, OK, shut up, I will not elaborate”.
And yeah, obviously, it’s not your job to do anything for an anonymous commenter on the internet, but you have spent the same amount of time telling us that you don’t want to provide examples, than you could just giving us two or three, and that’s not not saying something.
Damn this might be the fakest reason I’ve ever heard to not support GIMP
I doubt that to be a serious concern for companies. Especially with how marketing regularly revolves around sexualizing their messages and how things like hostesses are a thing at many trade-fairs. The CEO of NVIDIA signed a boob ffs.
Also the only time i came across the term gimp was in Pulp Fiction. If it wasn’t for that movie i wouldn’t know that it has something to do with BDSM.
But really, what are things why GIMP is rationally not suitable for industry work? Is it a lack of certain features? Is it performance? Is it an impossible to learn UI? Because in your other reply all i read was that people who are used to PS just stick with it, because that is what they are used to. Which then brings us to exactly what the meme is criticizing.
And at the monthly pricing of Adobe that switching costs only justify themselves for so long. Also a friend of mine who does photo and video stuff for weddings and events as a side-gig has been furious how having to have Win11 to use Adobe cost him 5k because his old computer was not compatible anymore.
So i am curious to understand, if there is rational reasons, why taking the shit from Adobe is worth it. Of course if certain standard workflows take 1 minute in PS and 2 minutes in GIMP that adds up over a full time job. On the other hand if professional users were to support the open source development, these issues could be addressed, creating value for everyone except Adobe.
Docker Engine, without the Docker Desktop licensing and VM overhead
Docker is a great example because podman basically is a drop in replacement.
Eli5?
There is a practice where software companies will either provide their software to schools and colleges for free or will pay schools and colleges to use their software. This leads to the students using this software, learning that software’s sole paradigm, and essentially forces them to use that software going forward because of how difficult it is to shift to another software with a different paradigm. This is Vendor Lock-In. The vendor locks you into their software.
This leads to all future workers being trained in that software, so of course businesses opt to use that software instead of retraining the employee in another. This contrasts with the idea of what an ‘industry standard’ is. The name suggests that it’s used in the industry because it’s better than other software, but in reality it’s just standard because of lock-in.
This is how Windows cornered the operating system market - by partnering with vendors to ship their systems with Windows pre-installed.
For decades Apple paid schools to teach on their computers. In the 80s and much of the 90s, all you’d find in computer labs was Macs.
It didn’t work because PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
How so?
Software mainly. Apple made software companies pay a license to release software on the Mac, so most companies chose to release on PC exclusively.
My kids use Chromebooks at school. What I call “Word” they call “Docs”. It’s very clear why Google gives this operating system away for free.
Your description of vendor lock-in is obviously solvable by developers making a competing UI and workflow similar to the most popular software, and enabling new features under another menu. That said, there is obviously minimal interest in doing so.
This is UI. UI is not vendor lock-in. Lock-in costs users money to break out of, not developers.
Oh yeah, when a school receives a hundreds of computers with Windows preinstalled, they obviously consider spending hundreds of man-hours on installing a different OS, but decide against it because Windows has quantifiably superiour UI. Because that’s exactly how it works.
Have you ever heard of SAP? Salesforce? UI quality and UX workflows have never been the deciding factor for choosing a piece of software in a corpo setting. It’s money and whose friend is pocketing it. That’s all that CFO make decisions on. Windows became a standard because Microsoft literally paid schools to buy computers with it, in exchange all schools had to do was let them conduct their indoctrination workshop, disguised as a “how to use a computer” course. But of course they exclusively talked about Windows.
That entire solution immediately falls apart when the paradigm is patented by the vendor, who immediately sues any competing software using UI elements even vaguely similar to theirs. This has been going on for decades, and the three things that usually happen are that the competitor either gets bought up, sued out of existence, or has to keep their UI different enough that there is little-to-no bleedover between the userbases (and usually starves to death from too little revenue).
It’s an thing people used to say when they wanted to justify not using the software gimp
You mean a common user experience that leaves many new users frustrated.
I kept seeing recommendations of gimp as a photoshop alternative, so I installed it and… I was convinced that I must’ve downloaded the wrong thing. It didn’t even look like an image editor to me. I’m sure it’s a wonderful program, maybe the UI got better since then, but I ended up much happier just using paint.NET
Agree, Adobe products always leave me frustrated, and my experience is universal.
Yup and honestly the hostility those users get when mentioning it is the same reason Linux doesn’t get more traction in the mainstream.
When a lot of users expect software to work in a particular way and it doesn’t, you change the software - if you insult, belittle or otherwise expect the user to change their working habits then you’re going to have a bad time and be all shocked Pikachu when the user doesn’t use the software.
Apple is (was lol) the most valuable company on the planet because they understood that the user experience is the absolute most important thing. They are the textbook example of vendor lock in and yet people flock to them because “it just works”.
the hostility
“Hey, why this free software I tried once IS SO SHIT AND UNINTUITIVE AND EVERYONE WHO MADE IT IS PLAIN STUPID AND WRONG, NOW HELP ME IMMEDIATELY YOU FUCKING NERDS. Man, nobody fixed my problem immediately, what a hostile envoroment”.
you change the software
Oh, so that’s what big corpos were doing this whole time? Damn, what a cool environment that should be, you buy software and it behaves like you want it to be, and if it doesn’t, you complain to the corpo and it fixes it for you immediately.
Apple is (was lol) the most valuable company on the planet because they understood
that you don’t need to sell software or hardware, you need to sell brand recognition, feel of premium exclusivity, and smug satisfaction of being better than the plebs. And as long as your shit doesn’t crap out tremendous amount, you can ruse the rubes.
This is the hostile attitude they were talking about
They didn’t came for help with their problem or whatever, they came to argue about their favourite way to organise software development, brandishing hostility and accusations from the beginning. Different situations, really.
I think your response is unintentionally proving my point lol
Maybe, but people who demand volunteers to provide more labor than they are willing to also are the problem. You don’t seem to grasp the nature of volunteering. It isn’t meant to serve you—volunteers do what they want when they want to because you won’t do what they want. They have your same frustrations: I want it to do X! So they do it.
I’ll also say this: arguments like yours have been used for decades while Linux is getting more and more popular. Maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong.
Linux is getting more popular because corporations like valve have put the effort into refining the user experience. I’m not just talking about a pretty UI either, I’m taking things like proton that makes playing games on Linux as easy as playing on windows.
I’m not saying there aren’t people out there that demand free labour from volunteers - of course there are; I maintain and have contributed to a few open source projects myself so I know all too well what that’s like.
However, I would say those folks are a very small (albeit vocal and annoying) minority. The vast, vast majority of users simply dismiss Linux/GIMP/Whatever because it’s not suitable for them. They don’t go screaming into GitHub demanding features, they don’t post on Lemmy that the software sucks or otherwise create a fuss, they just gravitate towards the stuff that works for them (usually something proprietary) with the least friction.
And I think you missed the point of my response
Yeah you’re right, it’s the users that are at fault.
photoshop has got problems, but gimp and krita have the sort of problems that i never had using PS. like, completely missing functions and tools that are standard in PS. maybe there’s an extension, maybe there isn’t, and troubleshooting is time and energy spent when i have little to spare on making art or whatever
Tried Serif Affinity? Photoshop is great mate but it’s not worth that cash.
Does it work in Linux?
I’m not paying for it, my boss is
Your boss is also paying for time spent troubleshooting, which is why industry standards are a thing. People can help each other out, common issues only have to be solved once and the general pool of issues is smaller.
I work with 12 artists who all use maya. There’s enough troubleshooting to do on just that. Having some of them use blender, others modo, etc would be a nightmare.
I can guarantee you not one person in our company is concerned with Adobe’s stock price, yet everyone is on Creative Cloud. Industry standards are the logical result of groups of people trying to get shit done, not some clandestine conspiracy to increase Adobe’s profits.
Have you tried squares, mate?
