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Usability Eye for The GIMP Guy
TuringTest writes "The GIMP has recently signed up for
evaluation by OpenUsability.org. 'Many user interface decisions are being made by developers who often have little experience in user interface design. In order to improve this, we need the help of experts. To find them, GIMP has joined
the OpenUsability project. Here's a platform where Open Source developers and usability experts get together.' They also report their first experiences with the paper prototyping of a new Import PDF dialog."
When the report comes back saying that it should have a proper window instead of floating toolbars, will they say "they weren't using it right, they are just used to Photoshop!" like they usually do?
Seriously, people have been complaining about the interface since day one, and the GIMP developers don't pay any attention. That's their prerogative of course, but if they aren't willing to listen, why are they signed up for this?
I have used GIMP many times and tried to do useful things with it. Overall the feature set is acceptable. But I will never be able to use it for actual work until they fix the big one.
PROVIDE AN OPTION FOR AN MDI GUI ALL IN ONE WINDOW.
With dockable tool palettes.
Every time I bring this up to anyone who knows gimp, they tell me to run it in its own virtual desktop. I don't use virtual desktops, and I don't want an app to have a ton of toolbars floating around anyway.
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I used to think the usability of the GIMP was bad, turns out it's just different from what i was used to. The more i used it exclusively, the more i figured out how nice it was.
Nowadays, if i go back to a windows system with photoshop or paintshop pro, it feels really cluttered and i get 'clausterphobic'.
Of course, i'm speaking as a casual user who does pretty basic operations. Maybe it's different if you work with it professionally?
Now the "usability" people will ruin GIMP the same way they ruined GNOME.
The usability of the Gimp is actually a lot better if you are using more than one monitor (which a lot of graphics artists do anyway). It's only in the far more common scenario of using a single monitor that the Gimp becomes hideously ackward.
I hate to post a "yeah, that," but as one who is increasingly becoming disenchanted with Microsoft products and wishes to move into the open-source field more, I have found interface to be a big issue for OSS, something which is one of the main contributors, I believe, to the sharp learning curve for OSS. Of course, much of that learning curve is inevitable, but a good UI will make people feel much more comfortable, and, when they get open source software, they'll stick with it.
By excellency, in OSS, the Inmates are running the Asylum. Usability is by far the biggest problem OSS software has right now. Not security, since security does not matter that much. Yeah, it does not matter. Microsoft gets away with the biggest security stunts in history of modem society, but this only because their products are a lot more USABLE by the end user. And the user will obey and put up with the mistreating, just to be able to use the darn COMPUTER.
... Learn how to develop USABLE stuff, not USEFUL stuff, since there are hundreds of applications for almost every darn task out there.
Gimp is the epitome of wrong UI in OSS, I can barely use it without online howtos, and I'm experienced. Now, imagine Av. Joe
A link to Sven Neumann's blog has more on this.
:) ), but honestly, I've not yet seen OpenUsability do anything worth bragging about. At all. Just a couple of flimsy "ooooh boy this is great KDE is JOINING FORCES with OpenUsability, which is GRATE because everyone KNOWS programmers don't no jack about usability." stories.
In fact, it's probably a lot better than any of the other comments, the dead openusability website, or whatever that site may or may not have posted about this. Simply put, it looks like the gimp is merely a project that has been registered by one of the developers to see what or if any good can from from those guys. That's all. No massive throw-in from the collective force of Gimp users and developers.
I've got a ton or respect for the dude (I've fixed far fewer bugs in GNOME bugzilla
Feel free to call me the stop-motion energy guy... I'm just skeptical.
If the openusability thing actually makes changes which are demonstrably an improvement then I have no problem with it.
However, if all that happens is that they turn the interface into a clone of PhotoShop's then the developers will be doing the Gimp (and us) a disservice. Personally, I find the "classic" Gimp UI perfectly approachable (and I actually use it on a daily basis).
Incidentally, IIRC I heard (probably on /.) that there is some sort of extension or whatever that is supposed to emulate PS's UI already in existence, but a quick google just now failed to find it...
I started out on the GIMP and now find Photoshop's interface infurating at places. There are some things the GIMP just does better, and some of the interfaces just seem to work better.
A lot of the griping probably comes from people who just are expecting Photoshop. OTOH, there are some things you can do in Photoshop that you just can't do in the GIMP, and some of the interface decisions are a result of needing to accomodate additional features.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't think gimp is very suited to picking it up just by using it (that's the problem). For instance, you want to draw a line. You look and look, and nowhere anywhere in the UI is the word "line," not on the toolbar, in the menus, anywhere. Somehow you have to know about the shift-click thing. Of course after you know the secret, it's a pretty quick and convenient way to draw a line.
I've haven't tried Photoshop, so I don't have enough data to do a valid comparison, but the "how to draw a line" question and a few other things (mostly having to do with seemingly inconsistant behavior when trying to insert text) were very frustrating to deal with.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Obviously there were differences enough respective to each program -- the tools for Illustrator are quite different from the tools for GoLive, for example. But the palettes and use of each program was exceedingly similar, after years of being just different enough to be annoying.
Still, Paint Shop Pro uses an interface very similar to Photoshop, and I'm relatively certain that it's how it holds on to its relatively small marketshare. It's an alternative that's similar enough so people can use it as either a "home alternative" or a "stepping stone" if they're already familiar with Photoshop.
While naysayers will say that just because Photoshop is popular isn't reason enough to start using a similar interface, there are a lot of things that Photoshop just does right. Putting tools that are semantically similar yet different enough that they won't be used simultaneously on different tabs of one window keeps them visible without getting in the way or "losing" them. And all the tabs can be pulled off if you need to use them a lot. All of the windows recognize one another, and if you start moving them around they'll auto-align with one another and so on. Similar tools are grouped together and are easily accessible.
It's not a perfect interface, but it's one that's easy to pick up on right away and create or edit materials. It's had a long history of user testing, and it shows. An interface should be easy to use for a beginner -- it shouldn't require its userbase to "just spend time getting used to it." Similar to how someone familiar with Office can pick up Open Office with relative ease, so should it be true of most similar applications -- good user interface design will ultimately end up with some similarities, but should be obvious and usable enough for most beginners.
All of you bashing the GIMP should try to using Photoshop which will set you back about $500.
.au) to have a program thats been laid out with some regard to years of user feedback.
If you look carefully, I think you'll find that most of the comparisons are with Photoshop; in other words, they have tried it, and apparently it is worth $500 (or $1200 here in
Obviously there are these artistic types that went through years of conditioning who claim the contrary.
Again, considering the fact that Adobe have used user feedback to refine their product, is it a question of the "artistic types" being conditioned to Photoshop, or Photoshop being conditioned to the "artistic types"? If I was designing a graphic manipulation program the first people I'd ask about UI layout is graphic artists, and I'd take their comments seriously because they set the (de-facto) standard that everyone else follows.
And bearing in mind that graphic design is a specialized discipline with a technical language of its own, how intuitive do you expect a user interface to be for "hacker types"? Do you also expect to be able to use Blender without understanding coordinate geometry? Neither GIMP or Photoshop promises a novice complete usability from the start, that's the price of a comprehensive feature set. But the fact that anyone is still prepared to pay hundreds of dollars for one, when they can both do (almost) the same job according to the specifications should be a bit of a clue stick: apparently it is possible to make a UI suck so badly you can't give it away, regardless of the underlying features.
Frankly, I recommend GIMP to everyone I know who thinks they need a pirated copy of Photoshop. I've handed out over thirty copies for various platforms on CD; the only person who persisted for any length of time was my 71 year old father, and he gave up using it when he found Graphic Converter had a clone stamp tool. Think about it: "does everything you'd need from Photoshop, its free, has no license issues", yet not a single taker, even from those who have never used Photoshop. Care to explain that?
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