GIMP Interface Proposals?

Anonymous Coward asks: "It would seem that naught but its developers themselves like the GIMP's UI. How would you like the GIMP to look? Reply with links to GIMPed (or Photoshopped, if you swing that way) screenshots. Individual features, the menu structure, or (preferably) default workspaces after you open up a blank new canvas." With the release of version 2.2 in the bag, 2.3 development should now be in full swing. What aspects of the interface do you think the GIMP team should make for the next release and for future relases down the line?

Comments

Proper MDI.

[Refrozen]

All I'd want is a proper MDI, all the windows in a main container, I hate having them all free, loose, and can fall behind everything else and.... ugh.

Re:Proper MDI.

[Miffe]

For X there is Xnest.
And for windows there is Windows Gimp Deweirdifyer

Re:Proper MDI.

[obi]

Ugh, no. That's one of the things on Windows I hate the most. These apps take the functionality over of the window manager, and you get several types of focus (the one in the app, the focused app, etc) - leading to confusion and clutter, and it makes it hard to use different apps together, which leads app to replicate alot of functionality in the application itself and become extremely bloated.

However, it's true that there should be some kind of "grouping", something to connect panels to their app. A good example of this is on Mac, where the secondary panels are only visible if one of the primary windows of the app is focused.

But that's a matter for the window manager - would be nice if that gets implemented in metacity or kwin or sawfish, or whatever floats your boat. But just because some functionality is missing in the WM, doesn't mean you should implement it in the wrong place - the applications.

(As a side note, I'd like to see the same for tabbed windows a la firefox - it would be nice if an app could signal the WM to make tabs for itself, or even if one could attach different applications to each other)

Photoshop

[timothv]

At best, it should look almost exactly like the Photoshop UI, with a few annoyances fixed. I don't have too many ideas but I'm sure the GIMP devs can compile Photoshop annoyances and outdo it.

Re:I'm not a GIMP developer

[dn15]

Same here. I don't see anything in particular wrong with it.

On a semi-related note, it would be nice to see the Mac OS X version make some of its windows more like palettes that don't necessarily have a focused or unfocused state. As-is, clicking on a tool's icon actually takes two clicks. The first brings the window to the front, then the second selects it. Similarly, you needs to clicks to actually use it on the document. This is not a problem in Linux since the window focus model is typically configured in a way that allows the first click to select the tool even if the window does not have focus.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since day one, GIMP users have been complaining en masse about free-floating tool windows. And since day one, we have all been told "it's a feature not a bug". So why bother with even more feedback? It will only get ignored again.

This kinda reminds me of Blender

[QuantumG]

The UI is non-intuitive, but once people use it they swear that it is better than every other 3d program available. Either Blender has the best UI in the world or it's just a tendancy of human beings to rationalise their decisions after they have invested in them significantly. Either way, Blender's complex non-intuitive UI has done a lot to build the Blender community. I believe the same is true of GIMP but to a slightly lesser extent. Why change anything?

innovation

[moosesocks]

As much as I'd like for the GIMP team to be innovative in their UI design, I believe that they will find that impossible, as the GMIP's feature-set has come to resemble that of Photoshop so closely that the two UIs will be VERY similar.

Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro have very different UIs because they are conceptually different (that's not to say that PSP is any good. I'm not a fan). The GIMP and Photoshop were both conceptually similar -- in other words, by copying features from PS, the GIMP team has forced themselves to make their UI very similar to Photoshop. In other words, copying the PS GUI exactly will create the most efficent UI for the gimp. In my mind, this is a bad thing.

But not all is lost. Here are my suggestions
1) Implement a darn menu bar and clean up the menus. The right-click system sucks.
2) Please handle pallettes like every other program does and NOT create an additional taskbar icon for every document, toolbar, and pallette.
3) Implement a Slices tool like ImageReady has
4) Rename the program. GIMP does not convey an image of a good, reliable program

Re:innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single time I hear "The GIMP", this is what comes to mind.

A terrible, terrible, terrible name for a program. Almost as bad as "OmniGraffle" (which remindes me of 'scrapple', 'scapie', and other horrible things).

Re:innovation

[nathanh]

But not all is lost. Here are my suggestions 1) Implement a darn menu bar and clean up the menus. The right-click system sucks.

Perhaps you should first use the GIMP before offering suggestions. All image windows have their own menu bar since v2.x. Right-clicking to access the menu is entirely optional.

Text

[Chapium]

I can't comment specifically on it, however the text interface and how you deal with text in gimp really needs to be worked on. Moving and manipulating text on that thing is simply confusing and frustrating

Have you actually used GIMP 2.2?

[leonbrooks]

You can tack together the free-floating tool windows and make them one if you like. Admittedly, this should be one of the first startup tips and isn't.

So yes, they did respond to that particular feedback, even if you didn't find out about it yet.

It's also relatively trivial in most WMs to make those floating windows always-on-toppish like the PS ones (only more flexible).

It could also be stated with much fairness that PhotoShop users form a disproportionate population of those complaining about same. And that if you don't like it, you're at liberty create a fork or a parallel patch set to implement the windows however you like them. Before anyone OMFGs me, compare the amount of effort involved in doing that with the amount of effort involved in creating the whole GIMP in the first place, and remember that with PS it's pretty close to impossible to do anything of this nature.

BTW, my sister-in-law uses The GIMP heavily, and swears by the floating windows and the tearoff menus.

Re:Have you actually used GIMP 2.2?

[dr.badass]

It could also be stated with much fairness that PhotoShop users form a disproportionate population of those complaining about same.

Could it be that Photoshop users (current, potential, or former) are probably the biggest single group that might be drawn to GIMP? I think that if you're building a tool with an implicit goal of having all of the same capabilities of Photoshop, it might be nice if said tool would act something like it.

Re:Have you actually used GIMP 2.2?

[Sentry21]

It could also be stated with much fairness that PhotoShop users form a disproportionate population of those complaining about same. And that if you don't like it, you're at liberty create a fork or a parallel patch set to implement the windows however you like them.

So essentially, while everyone that swears by the GIMP says I can use it instead of Photoshop, the instant Photoshop users say 'well but this is a pain in the ass' you say 'too bad, fix it yourself'.

Fantastic attitude there. Open-source won't win the hearts or minds of professionals if the professionals don't like the tools and aren't provided a fix for it. If given a choice between fixing all that I've found wrong with the GIMP or sticking with Photoshop, my historical choice remails: the GIMP can take a flying leap.

You can't tell professionals to use your software and then tell them you won't fix what they don't like about it. Graphic artists (myself included) will pay $800 for a Photoshop license because Photoshop already works the way they need it to work. Why should we switch if the bugs aren't going to be fixed?

Simplify, and change the name.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing they can do is simplify, simplify, simplify. Get rid of all those confusing filters or figure out how to combine them into one.

Figure out a clean way to handle "floating layers" I never understood that. Photoshop makes the most sense.

And PLEASE change the name. GIMP is an unprofessional name.

I've got a little list!

[leonbrooks]

• Add the Free/FixedAspect/FixedSize options from the Rectangular Select tool into the Crop tool.
  
• Add a "macro recorder" to make writing Script-Fu easier
  
• Add a simple "debug mode" to trace Script-Fu execution and/or hand off to the Script-Fu Console from the invokation dialog box
  
• Add a de-red-eye tool that's a bit more intelligent, specifically
  
  • that identifies round or ovoid red-eyes rather than anything red
    
  • that uses soft edges rather than doing scalpel-like total excision
• build a Script-Fu to do this either straight from the camera or with all of the layers in a designated image.

There's lots more, that's just what's on the tip of my mind right now.

Just as it is

[metaphor]

Well I for one think The GIMP's UI is fine just how it is. Then again, I learned its UI when I was 13 or so, around the time I got addicted to sloppy/strict mouseover focus. Being able to point at a window and save its document by just striking Control-S is very efficient.

I thought GIMP was weird at first (I was a Photoshop 2.x user) but I rapidly came to appreciate its advantages. Basically, I love it because it's efficient and lightweight. If I want to do something to an image, I right-click the image. Simple, right? In Photoshop I have to hunt under some menu and I have to care about which image is in the foreground. And of course, in both, I can just use key accelerators -- in GIMP, even assign my own -- to speed things up.

You can't master GIMP in a day, and you sure as hell can't master Photoshop in a day either. Most of the complaining I hear is Photoshop users pissy about having to think a little differently to use GIMP. Maybe you should write a "tricks of the UI" tutorial for the unadventurous...?

Now if I were directing the GIMP project, I'd say:

Never adopt MDI. Well, okay, you can, just make it optional. There are a lot of Windows users who would love it, but a lot of current users who would dump GIMP in a second if it were mandatory.

Please rip off Photoshop's styles palette. It's one of the main reasons I use Photoshop primarily these days.

Please add serious ICC profile support wherever you can in the image workflow. Even if you don't support CMYK, good color support would rock, and it would make professionals take GIMP more seriously. Bonus points: add a calibrator like Adobe Gamma/Colorsync/Supercal.

Yeah... I think that's about all for now. Watch everyone disagree :)

I know it's not directly GIMP-related

[PinkX]

But a native port of GTK+ to OS X (via quartz/Aqua and not using X11) would be of great benefit.

I've been a GIMP user since its early days. I was a former Photoshop aficionado, and by far I think the GIMP's UI is easier to use and more intuitive of that of PS. The right-click menu just rocks, the floating and dockable toolbars and panels are really practical.

Almost 1 year ago I moved from Linux to OS X on the desktop. GIMP is still my favorite image manipulation software, but I would *really really* love to see it more integrated with the OS, as X11 is slow, bloated and unstable and just doesn't looks natural.

I know the GIMP developer aren't to blame for this, but a native port of GTK+ and its related tools to the OS X framework would be great, to eliminate the dependency on X11 and get a more 'at home' feeling with the app. It was already done for Windows and OS X *should* be easier AFAIK because all the underlying *NIX stuff is already there.

My Wish?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see an Visual-Studio-like interface (hear me out!) for a graphics program.

I like things to dock. It's nice to work with the document maximised and not have the palletes cover the document. It's nice to be able to customise menus and toolbars to your heart's content. It's nice to have tear-off menus for common actions, such as tearing off the menu for centring something.

It's strange how Photoshop isn't nearly as customisable as Word when it comes to interface.

Re:survival of the gimpiest

[dr.badass]

well, it is open source so everything you need is already there

If only that were true!

other designers could easily make their own front end

The trouble is that there are no designers. At best, there are programmers that know a little bit about how to make a UI not suck. This will only get you so far. The UI is typically an afterthought, and the most common suggestions for improving it is "themes" or "skins" or "window decorations" or "make it an option", none of which actually address the problem.