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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."
It's true that many times the developers that make the GUI decisions aren't fit to, because the average user doesn't have the same view of programs as a developer does. It's great that they're partnering with another site to promote usability (especially for the GIMP, which I find to be a bit overwhelming). I wish more programs did that.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
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?
They totally redecorated a wheel chair ramp in like 3 hours.
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?
Will they be able to take criticism on interface decisions they have taken years ago and argued for many times since then? Many open source projects have these really stupid things hanging over them because developers can't admit they have been wrong all this time. Take this one in Firefox as a prime example.
At first I thought this referred to the way that icon looks at me every couple of seconds. It still freaks me out.
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
How did they ruin GNOME? I actually like having less stuff in my way. Of course, when I fused GNOME with FVWM, I guess that put me in a very small minority, come on. Do you want to actually wade through useless options to find what you really need? Most of them AFAIK are still available through gconf as well. They just took the UI element away for the n00bsters in the crowd, which I actually like.
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.
1 - You want a GUI which looks like Photoshop? Get Gimpshop and stop whining! 2- Now, what about comparing GimpShop to Photoshop?
having to click to expose just the root menu is excessive. The root menu should always be visible, IMO.
By "root menu" do you mean the menu bar at the top of the tool window, or the context menu in the document window? If the latter, then GIMP 2.0 and later have added that menu to the top of the document window. If the former, then try the Deweirdifyer extension on Windows or virtual desktops on *n?x.
I'm getting used to it. But there are some flaws, like that you don't get a standard file selector from "Open" that lets you enter a file name: you have to use "Open Location" instead (it should be one function), and the oddity of having two "Rotates", one crippled and one not. The more useful one is buried deeper.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
People might be interested in Krita (http://www.koffice.org/krita/screenshots.php) as an alternative to GIMP. It has an interface similar to PaintShop Pro where all the interface windows are contained within one main window and it integrates well with KDE.
For those of you using OS X that have an interest in GIMP, I ran across Seashore the other day while reading Drunkenblog. It's a major improvement over GIMP for OS X. Definitely something to keep your eye on.
You're right. The interface for The GIMP is very different from any other application I've used. It's not really bad, it's just different and it takes a lot of getting used to.
I just started using The GIMP not too long ago. I don't want to spend the money to upgrade my old copy of Paint Shop Pro if there's software that's just as good for free. If it takes me a little longer to learn how to use it, that's fine. (Unlike most people, my time is worthless...) But if they could improve the interface, I can't imagine that people choosing a graphics software package wouldn't use the free one, especially for low- to intermediate-level graphics needs.
Who knows? If they improve it a great deal (and improve the text tool, my only complaint with the software right now), we could be seeing a huge GIMP / Photoshop rivalry on the horizon!
Now the "usability" people will ruin GIMP the same way they ruined GNOME.
;-).
Somehow I doubt that's possible - unless they add "Spacial layers" so that you have to edit each one in a separate window
I use Linux on my desktop at work, and have Gimp installed, and I've found it the least usable program I've ever seen. Admittedly it's rare that I need to work with images at work (I use Fireworks and PS at home) but even operations such as resizing and adding a background to an image are ridiculously long-winded. For instance, I had to Google to find out why the option to change the stacking order of layers is greyed out by default - there's no sane reason for it...
Every time I've attempted to use it I've found it so frustrating; it feels as though you're fighting the program rather than using it; that I've ended up giving up in disgust and found a spare Windows machine to do the job. I'm sure it have some great features, but it's viciously protective of them and doesn't want anyone to use them!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Make it work exactly wacktly like Photoshop or I'll...or I'll...or I'll whinge. Yeah! That's it! I'll whinge and then I'll whinge some more until..until...you've had enough! And then I'll post some flames!
If I want to edit config files by hand, I'll use command line tools. I use mutt as my primary mail client and I don't complain about having to set a lot of options in .muttrc to get things the way I want them.
The whole point of a GUI is to have a graphical interface. If I want to slip into 'point-n-drool' mode for a while, why should I have to wade through some arcane XML or registry syntax just to set some simple option that the developers don't think a "normal" user would need. How would they know? Maybe normal users don't use that particular option for no other reason than it's been hidden away.
KDE is moving in the right direction. Keep the commonly used options in plain view, and have the not as commonly used ones be in the same place, but under the "Advanced" section. Configuration shouldn't be divided between two different tools.
You, sir, do not understand usability. Usability is *not* having 10,000 options for the user to customize and play with. Usability, in the strictest sense, is having an interface such that a user can pick it up *without* having to dig through options.
Here's something else you're missing - the type of people Gnome is targeting *DO NOT CARE* about 95%+ of the settings that would require opening GConf to change. For these users, it's far better to have a tool layout such that finding basic options does not require digging through 4 layers of option dialogues.
I'm not saying Gnome is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, simply that the majority of people on Slashdot who complain about Gnome being 'ruined' just plain do not understand how difficult seemingly simple tasks are for the average user. I mean, really, I've been using Linux since around '99, and run KDE from time to time just to see how they're progressing, and it almost always ends up with me digging through the control panel searching for things that should be rather simple to change because KDE exposes too many options for the average user.
Sure, if you're a geek and enjoy playing with all your settings, more power to you. But for people who simply want to use their computer, the KDE Control Panel is a confusing mess. So I'd really take issue with the idea that KDE is improving at an "impressive rate." If they spent more time cleaning up the Control Panel and building in HAL tools instead of adding huge oversized tooltips and calling it a usability improvement, I might be able to agree.
The changes that have been made to Gnome (for the most part) were not mistakes. It was a deliberate decision to move toward an interface that's more usable to a computer neophyte. Argue that the KDE interface is 'familiar' all you want, but the idea behind usability is that you don't *need* to be familiar with it to figure out how to do what you want.
Anyone find that the ability to manipulate text in Gimp is... lacking? I was trying to make a basic logo in Gimp a few weeks ago, an operation that would take me five minutes in Photoshop, ended up taking me almost two hours in Gimp.
It's really difficult to resize text to fit the shape you want while maintaining good quality, while I believe Photoshop does this by maintaining the font's vector information until you rasterize the layer.
Also it was very difficult adding simple effects to it, such as a outline, glow or shadow. And at the same time, having it adjust dynamically when I alter the parent layer.
I found it very frustrating, and I've been using Gimp for many months now. >.< Maybe I'm missing something and still have more to learn, but I don't think many people would disagree that some of the interface on Gimp is unintuitive.
I'm happy to hear that they're trying to improve.
- shazow
Best experience with GIMP:
Use lazy window focus and a single linux desktop (e.g. Desktop #4). Isolated on its own desktop, it has an mdi-like feel to it.
Worst GIMP:
Running under windows, you don't get lazy focus or seperate desktops, it gets messy. Hence the call for MDI-ness.
Also, file open dialogs still kinda suck, esp under windows.
GIMP's great feature set is masked to newcomers by its 'horrible' UI. But like anything else, you can get used to it if you need to. It doesn't make the whole app broken, it just makes it harder to use (still a bad thing though).
Don't like the UI? Use something else, its that simple. Articles like this show the GIMP dev's are at least aware of the UI issues and maybe are taking steps to improve it.
But don't let your initial impressions stop you from learning a great tool. GIMP's functionality is rock solid, lets just hope the UI gets there someday.
Or just stop complaining and use Photoshop. I've used both GIMP and Photoshop for professional photo work before, and either one works great (just one doesn't cost me $700).
Usability reasons are largely why my wife hates the Gimp. She makes her living on Photoshop, but I use the Gimp for all my random junk. One weekend I decided to try her out on it and her experiences were like this:
-- Dialogs were inconsistent and many times didn't properly explain their function (filters)
-- Layers are handled 'quaintly'. No layer grouping, which takes it totally out of the running for her day-to-day stuff. She will often have documents with 100+ layers, grouped and folder-ized.
Those were two of her biggest compaints, most of the others were "this feels different from Photoshop", which you can't do anything about. But the large compaints were all layer and user interface related.
She didn't care about CMYK because she wasn't doing anything destined for print, but that would have killed her too.
Most of my personal beefs have to do with palettes that get behind other objects (like my workspace) and I have to track them down. But I'm not an artist.
Most of her compaints exist in previous versions of Photoshop too, to be fair, but if I even joked about "hey, why don't I install Photoshop 6 for you on that new machine", well, I wouldn't eat for a month.
The experience of trying to get her to use Gimp for a day scared me off of ever trying to get her using Inkscape or any of the other vector stuff, even for 5 minutes, instead of Illustrator.
Usability lab testing can only mean good things for this project, I hope a lot of good comes of it!
I like music
You sir, do not understand usability.
Usability means the program performs the tasks the users need it to in an efficient and easy to learn manner, with minimal interference. Ideally, it should perform the tasks in the manner a wide range of users want it to.
Gnome's new UI is a classic example of a bad UI: It is inefficient, does not perform the necessary tasks (look at the horrendous file dialogue - it's quite literally the worst I've ever seen), is difficult to learn since many basic options are hidden and require undocumented keyboard shortcuts, and the users are forced to do tasks in a particular, usually inefficient way.
Almost as bad, it's buggy as hell and slow. Why does opening a menu from the panel take 2 seconds on my 1.4Ghz Athlon? It should open in less than 1/4 of a second for seamless operation. It should open in milliseconds to not be an embarrassment.
All of this is made the more aggravating by the fact that in many cases, the very last point release actually worked better. Case in point: the file dialogue. All of a sudden I need to type control-L to type in a filename? And tab complete, which used to be supported, is removed? What sort of low-grade crack were the "usability experts" smoking?
I'm an artist who paint a lot in Photoshop. Some of you might have seen the Flying Spaghetti Monster vs Adam (Sistine Chapel) painting I did.
Anyways, I've been trying to give feedback to GIMP(shop) for quite a while, but I can't find any feedback emails or forums.
I failed to register at "open usability". I couldn't activate my account, because of an error or I just got my password wrong (which I wrote down clearly). I also tried to register another account, but that didn't work since my email was taken by my previous inactive account.
So my feedback will have to go here. It concerns mostly my painting technique. Maybe someone could drop this in a relevant inbox?
1: Colorpicking has to be easy. I prefer temporarely shifting to the colorpicker while holding down a key. The colorpicker should be able to handle average colors too, in case you colorpick from an area with a lot of noise.
In GIMPshop it seems I have to switch to the colorpicker tool manually, then when I colorpick a dialog comes up that I have to click down. This takes several seconds and kills workflow. Basically thing single 'feature' alone makes it practically impossible for me to paint in GIMP. I need to be able to colorpick once or twice per second. Yes I paint fast and I blend by using a 50% transparent brush and dabbing several times if I want opaque color, or I dab and colorpick if I want it more transparent. I use a wacom but have pressure sensitivity set to size so I can reach narrow places or fill large areas without having to change brush. Workflow and accesability is VERY important.
2: Brushes. It would be useful to be able to make several brushes that are just a click of a button away. When painting I generally use a few hard brushes and a few soft airbrushes, and some for multiplying on base colors onto line art. I do not want to manually set these up everytime I'm changing brush.
3: Photoshops 'Fade' is very useful. It brings up a slider which allow you to fade the last change, which can be a brushstroke, a curve/level, a hue/saturation change, or almost anything. This is very handy since it's realtime and you can fade your change until it looks balanced.
4: Photoshop's history can be useful. Some artists also make a new layer to experiment, paint a little and if they're happy they merge, otherwise they delete it. I use the history brush occasionally to erase changes I made with a soft or hard brush. This is useful if I for example painted a lot of cool armour details, but ruined the head, then I can just history erase the bad changes to the head. Theoretically this can be done with layers though, if the old layer without the changes is perserved somewhere.
5: Brushstroke quality is important. There might be an option for it but my version of GIMPshop made irregular little blotches on my lines. Giving any changes to pressure some sort of weight might prevent this, so transitions to thinner lines goes smoother somehow. Flimsy and chaotic does not look good unless you're Pollock.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
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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