I am using 2.99.18 (non release, unstable build). Non destructive editing has landed. You can make adjustments through the usual menus and then enable/disable the adjustment under layer effects.
I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.
I use GIMP for memes and here’s my two favorite tips
Hit the forward slash key / to open a command palette and jump to any action
To remove backgrounds, use a layer mask. select around the object and paint a white/black section on the layer mask. Here comes the trick: use a Gaussian filter on the layer mask to create a transition from black to white and the crop job looks a lot less choppy.
My anti-tip
Adding text and shapes sucks and I never found a way to make it better. Export your image and finish the job in Krita, Pinta, Photopea, …
It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.
The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.
For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.
And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.
There’s also two main plus one lesser issue that are less commonly discussed:
Lack of manpower. FOSS devs often doing it as a side project on top of some other and/or a full-time job, so that even lowers one’s ability of concentrate on stuff like the UI, when you’re already working hard on fixing bugs, looking up things (which is getting harder and harder thanks to AI slop - I once managed to destroy a Linux on my Raspberry Pi while trying to adjust the path variables).
Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable parts of your application. There are many times I haven’t noticed a a very uncomfortable part of my GUI after months of use, then I had to refactor things, which obviously took time away from other things. This also affects the users already in the userbase.
Elitism is also a factor. A lot of people like the feeling of being part of a special group, and for them, the steep learning curve is a feature, not a bug. I’ve seen Blender users being angry at the devs for “spoonfeeding” the normies, and letting in all kinds of people. Also just look at OP’s image.
I always wondered if I could contribute/volunteer to a FOSS somehow with some UIX stuff, but I don’t even know where to start. Would you just draw a concept ui for the team to work out or something?
Not that I’m great at it, but man, we gotta start somewhere, right?
This is probably common. The people that work on UI often aren’t the people who do pull requests. But I think if you want to contribute it would be best to get in touch with a maintainer on the chat of the project. Projects often have a matrix/irc/discord on the git page.
Photoshop is also hard to learn. What’s your point? Just because it’s different to what you used to does not means it’s more or less difficult to learn.
It’s that phenomenon where people who endured trauma to attain something expect others to also endure the trauma.
I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.
Not vonly hard to learn, it lacks some really basic stuff like undestructive ediring (adjusment layers) and such.
I am using 2.99.18 (non release, unstable build). Non destructive editing has landed. You can make adjustments through the usual menus and then enable/disable the adjustment under layer effects.
Wow, that’s greate!
OHH it even works with text layers!!! you can finally add drop shadow to a text without discarding the text information! ;A:
The sudden South Indian accent surprised me (vonly)
I use GIMP for memes and here’s my two favorite tips
Hit the forward slash key
/to open a command palette and jump to any actionTo remove backgrounds, use a layer mask. select around the object and paint a white/black section on the layer mask. Here comes the trick: use a Gaussian filter on the layer mask to create a transition from black to white and the crop job looks a lot less choppy.
My anti-tip
fuck, i neverthought of the gaussian blur thing, i always just traced over the edge with a soft edged brush…
No, GIMP does suck.
It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.
The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.
For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.
And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.
In FOSS most people can program, but only a hand full of people can design a decent UI.
There’s also two main plus one lesser issue that are less commonly discussed:
Elitism is also a factor. A lot of people like the feeling of being part of a special group, and for them, the steep learning curve is a feature, not a bug. I’ve seen Blender users being angry at the devs for “spoonfeeding” the normies, and letting in all kinds of people. Also just look at OP’s image.
I always wondered if I could contribute/volunteer to a FOSS somehow with some UIX stuff, but I don’t even know where to start. Would you just draw a concept ui for the team to work out or something?
Not that I’m great at it, but man, we gotta start somewhere, right?
This is probably common. The people that work on UI often aren’t the people who do pull requests. But I think if you want to contribute it would be best to get in touch with a maintainer on the chat of the project. Projects often have a matrix/irc/discord on the git page.
Photoshop is also hard to learn. What’s your point? Just because it’s different to what you used to does not means it’s more or less difficult to learn.
I’m not used to photoshop so I can’t say anything about that.
I was a big fan of paint.NET but now that I stopped using Windows, it’s the only software that I really miss.
It had fewer features than GIMP, but it was so intuitive yet surprisingly powerful.
Have not found a similarly amazing alrernative, I wish Wine could make it work…
Does it run with WINE? iirc it was used a lot as an example for wine on android because it supported windows-on-arm
Removed by mod
They didn’t say GIMP itself sucks, they said leaning to use it sucks. Those are two different things.