Slashdot Mirror
Instrumented GIMP To Identify Usability Flaws
Mike writes "New users of the GIMP often become frustrated at the application's unwieldy user interface. Now Prof. Michael Terry and a group of researchers at the University of Waterloo have created ingimp, a modified version of the GIMP that collects real-time usability data in order to help the GIMP developers find and fix its usability problems. Terry recently gave a lecture about ingimp and the data it collects. During each session, ingimp records events such as document creation, window manipulation, and tool use. A log of these events is sent to the ingimp server for analysis. The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"
I like the idea, but will the folks who use ingimp be at all representative of the user population at large? ... Especially of the user population that would complain about accessibility / usability. Is it worth it or is anyone talking about making such a thing an integral part of any project?
take it easy, but take it.
I use Gimp on a regular basis for photo editing as well as some artwork I do. Yes, it's UI is a bit clunky but it's free and works. It takes a bit to get used to but it's not that more difficult than Photoshop. Another key to remember is that it's free. That goes miles in my book.
--Cally
At the beginning it is hard - just like many programs. But my experience is, that you get used to it pretty fast.
Or they could just call it GIMPshop....
So, if I invent a version that gives data on why the name sucks (the otehr main problem with the program), will the developers pay attention to that too?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I don't remember ever having a problem figuring out GIMP. But it would drive me insane if they start changing things around on me.
I already see one potential problem with this approach, and that is that it collects usability statistics from ingimp users, not GIMP users. How would it be guaranteed that the two groups are statistically equivalent?
(No, I have not RTFA yet.)
There are far too many anomalies of usability, lack of features and intricacies required for Gimp. Today, Photoshop is the industry leader, and anyone doing serious editing is using it. To be successful, Gimp must surpass it in more than one way (the one way being free). Kind of like what Firefox did to IE. Unfortunately, Gimp is no where ready for that. And I get a feeling that it is (heading to) nowhere.
... may be even Blender. The problem is that no one wants to be in the middle. Utilities need to rise to the top, or they face the fate of XMMS. I hope there will be a replacement in GTK too, just to show Gimp how to use the toolkit :)
I have been using Gimp for a long time. When I first installed Linux it was the only program everyone used to talk about. KDE's kolourpaint was not yet there for general purpose paint-brush replacement. I have used it for years under the hood of open-source fanboyism. And I think that is the reason why it has suffered. It had no competition, and now it is just a software which you don't want to open, again.
Now, I know it is not a paint-brush replacement. But it is neither a Photoshop replacement... and the middle land is already full of other utilities. Inkscape, Krita,
PS: posted this on journal before... this is shameless re-posting.
is in getting others to use the program because of its name. Lets have a contest to rename the GIMP.
You can put lipstick on a pig but in the end, you still have a pig.
With cameras and microphones and other things:
----
"Our performance traces indicate large amounts of cussing when images are resized."
---
"Wow. During that file open, three hundred users gave the finger to the camera."
"And that one guy --"
"I don't want to talk about that guy. Wahwahwahwahwah I-can't-hear-yoooo. Don't remind me of what he did."
---
"Nine hundred instances of users hitting the computer with a hammer while cropping. At least, that what we think the accelerometers were saying."
--
"The rapid rise in temperature was probably caused by the users pouring gasoline on the system and lighting a match. We'll try to address that issue in the next release."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
IMHO, people should understand that the MDI way (that is, the "photoshop way of arranging the windows) was born under the assumption that you had only one screen to work with.
But with X-window based virtual desktops, you just dedicate one of them to the Gimp. Check it, your Gimp experience will improve a lot!
--
Text link ads, the easiest way to earn money with your web
If they want to know how GIMP is typically used, that's easy. GIMP's typical and most popular use is for people to say, "Hey, you can edit your photos under Linux with GIMP, and you don't have to use Wine and Photoshop."
But professionals using GIMP for doing real work? That's atypical. Hopefully that will change.
You know, how do you recognize a project is someone's pet project? It's an overcomplicated solution for a problem with a trivial solution.
Want to find out what makes the GIMP ui suck? Ask the damn users! They won't exactly shy away from telling you.
I'm a Photoshop user and I have GIMP installed here to use the occasional esoteric plugin functionality. Let me tell you few things you can immediately get busy fixing:
1. for some reason GIMP developers decided every single thing needs its own window and its own menu bar. It's weird as f*ck: put the entire layout in a single window with integrated panel layout (similar to how Eclipse does it, for example).
2. each plugin is its own modeless exe dialog that takes arbitrary amount to start after it was called (at which time you can modify the processed image.. sometimes, and sometimes GIMP crashes because of it): create a proper lean plugin API and modal plugin dialog.
3. the menus and options are all over the place: there seems to be no strategy at all about what goes where
4. GIMP has really bad startup time, and performance, compared to commercial graphics editors (such as Photoshop)
5. There's no way at all to organize your layers in a more complex setup: there are no layer groups, layer folder, or anything like that. It's just a big sack of flat layers, that you can select one at a time, and link them together. This is Photoshop 4 level functionality, and most graphics editors are waaaay past that by now.
6. There are no proper drawing tools in Gimp at all. For a graphics package that claims to be targeted at geeks making icons and web devs making web designs, this is ridiculous. We're forced to fake our ways with selection tools and scripts, which covers only a fraction of what we need.
7. A personal issue I have with Gimp: no proper grid. I use the grid in Photoshop all the time, set on unobtrusive "pixel" mode, and usually at 8, 16, 32 pixels with subdivisors. In Gimp, no subdivisors, no pixel mode, and for some reason the *mere fast of displaying* the grid, makes everything slow down to a crawl.
The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"
Looks to me like they're about to fall into the fallacy that caused Daimler-Chrysler to do a redesign of the Jeep line that killed their market.
The marketing department looked at what fraction of SUVs were actually used off-road. They came to the conclusion that it was small. So they redesigned their line to be more comfortable on-road at great cost to its off-road performance.
Turns out that a significant fraction of their market was people who NEEDED the off-road capability - and had the resources to pay for it, reliably buying cars, year after year, through all economic cycles.
Jeep stopped being the car they needed and became another clone of the rest of the market: "Mall Terrain Vehicles" that LOOK like an off-road car but are really just a funny-looking small/high van that qualifies as a "truck" to escape the fleet mileage regulations. Their guaranteed market went elsewhere and they were in head-to-head competition with a slew of vehicles over which they had no advantage.
Similarly, Coke looked at all the people buying Pepsi, saw that they were younger and that Pepsi's main difference was that it was sweeter, and replaced Coke with New Coke, which was sweeter yet. Result: People who drank Coke because they liked a less-sweet drink switched to Pepsi.
And then there was the high-ranking officer in WW II who spent months counting all the bullet holes on the returning bombers, then did a big presentation on how those areas should have armor added. At the end of his presentation a lower-ranking officer asked "Shouldn't we, instead, add more armor to those areas that are only lightly holed? After all, this sample represents only the planes that came back."
= = =
I think the same thing could happen here: Paying attention to what people do a lot of just focuses on what you're already doing right - at the cost of ignoring the things that people do occasionally, or only some people do, but which they need to have. Further, the things they do rarely may be used rarely specifically BECAUSE they're hard to use and the interface needs improvement.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If they roll out a package for Fedora, I'll be installing this soon. I like the idea of Gimp, but I always fumble around the interface, and rarely use it when I am not in a hurry.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
That is an awful mistake for F/OSS fanboys. "Oh, it's free, so we shouldn't complain". This is like being blind to the problem. If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it? (In other words, why is Mozilla Firefox MUCH MORE popular than the GIMP? Think about it).
Sometimes we can forget that graphical applications are meant to be used by designers who use most of their time retouching photographs and stuff. Here, time is money. And if the lack of usability in the GIMP makes me spend 5 times more the time than I would with Photoshop (and i'm being considerate), it's just not worth switching. To put it another way, Photoshop's user interface _IS_ worth the price. I still can't believe the GIMP guys CANNOT make something as user friendly (or don't want to, which is worse). It shocks me and frustrates me.
A quote from a designer's blog:
Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.
See, professionals don't want just "a better pile of poo" to do their imaging work. They (and I, too) want something that IS EASY TO HANDLE. Because in graphical applications, form is function. And this is something that many programmers (at least many of those that I've discussed with) simply fail to understand.
Is GIMP still being developed? This is a serious question.
I've been a big GIMP fan for years. Years ago, I was excited about the 2.0 release of GIMP. It brought many new features and the UI got a serious revamp. But now it has been several years, and it seems that GIMP development has slowed down. They're still releasing newer versions with bug fixes, but no new features. For example: I recently bought a Wacom tablet, and while GIMP has Wacom support, I miss some of the things that Photoshop has, such as support for variable brush width based on tablet pressure. The long-awaited GEGL, which was introduced years ago and will supposedly add CMYK and 16-bit support, is still not ready, and to my knowledge is still pre-alpha. (Not that I need CMYK and 16-bit, but at least that silence all the complainers.)
A year or two ago I also read an article about someone wanting to sponsor GIMP development. But that effort went nowhere, as his request was eventually ignored.
What is going on? Is GIMP still being actively developed? Are the GIMP developers still interested in adding new features?
Yes, there seriously is. The big areas where I love Photoshop and hate Gimp revolve around layer properties, layer blending, transparent backgrounds, and grouping and copying layers.
All I want to do is open a file, rotate it to correct for poor placement in the scanner, and then fix the gamma a bit and maybe crop it... then save the results.
Not demanding, but last time I tried there was no viable help, and no hint as to how to do any of this.
As for MDI, its not a problem. I am OK with MDI, not that I specially like it, My problem is "where the *&%$ are the controls?"
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The problems with the gimp are mind numbingly easy for any semi-talented UI designer to spot and fix.
The problem is the development team: there's not enough of it, and there's no leadership strong enough within them to commit to a roadmap. If they only decided to stop coding for a while, decide what their end goals are (this is not a question users should be answering), plan the next few versions in advance and then actively look for new developers to implement whatever they decide on, things would look different.
From the presentation slides, it seems like 200 people have installed it (netting "over 100,000 commands" in the log files). Obviously more will do so in response to the Slashdot article (and appropriate web pollination)... but aren't these self-selected geeks already? How are you going to get non-geeks to install this instead of the regular GIMP (assuming you convinc them to take a look at it)?
Furthermore, how does this help determine what GIMP isn't doing properly? I mean, if you have various tools at your disposal, and GIMP sucks at doing X, then you might do half your work in GIMP and the other half in another app. So all the usability problems around X won't show up in the logs -- almost a kind of self-denial.
I use Photoshop on a nearly daily basis. Last time I tried GIMP it was not ready for professional print design, to be sure, and only probably good enough for desktop publishing or Web graphics. How about Pantone or CMYK support? Non-destructive layer effects? Variable-sized brushes? Actually useful text formatting?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Then there was the time IBM instrumented a mainframe to determine what instructions were heavily used so they could focus their optimize-the-microcode effort on them.
They found one particular instruction that accounted for some exceedingly large fraction of the execution time. So they went to work on the microcode and doubled its speed. Then they deployed the new microcode and measured the application performance, expecting to see a big improvement.
It didn't change a bit.
After a little more research they discovered they'd optimized the idle task's wait loop.
= = = =
Collecting data can be useful. But making good decisions based on it requires wisdom and insight.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
When I talk to "normal" people and mention GIMP, I'm always careful to call it the "GNU IMP graphics software". It is, otherwise, one of the most ridiculous names in modern software.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
The controls have always been in the context menu. the GIMP people really love the right mouse button. Every time you use it it's like you're flipping off your computer.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The biggest problem I have with GIMP is it's interface. It's clear the application was designed by programmers and not designers. I feel like they've tried to cram too much onto the screen and they suffer from a similar problem I was with Microsoft applications. They try to offer too many ways to do things and get too technical with details. I don't need 10 different sliders for customizing a brush. If I want a custom brush I should be able to just create the graphic as I would anything else then just drag it into a custom brush box and be done with it.
Photoshop is getting progressively more bloated but I still find it more fluid than anything else. I'm not constantly hindered by the application.
The solution isn't to do more coding. The data they gather may result in solutions that only complicate the issue. What they should do is sit down with a small team of designers. Include people with experience in photo-editing, website layouts and interface design. Ideally, find people that have little to no experience with GIMP. Work with this team to develop an interface. And most importantly, keep things simple.
Inevitably, most applications end up being overly complex because of some overwhelming desire to cram in every last feature the developer can dream up. There also seems to be little planning. Build a set of guidelines and adhere to them. And one last thing, be sure that all essential function can be activated via the keyboard. When I'm doing time-consuming production I don't want to hunt around for small icons, or be constantly switching between the mouse and keyboard.
Now that I think about it, the icon/mascot doesn't even look like a 'gimp' to me, it looks a bit like a fox. ;)
My blog
you know what's odd? everyone always hears "gimp is hard to use" blah blah blah, but the other day i tried to use photoshop for the first time... and i couldnt figure it out. for one: how do i zoom in by more than 1x at a time? 2. where the hell is the bucket fill button? 3: how in god's name do i set the transparency of a color?
i couldnt figure it out. and i had to go back to the gimp. that's my story. hope you enjoyed it.
.....lame.....so very lame......
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I have tried many times to use it, and have yet to even manage to open a file with the gimp.
...", and doubleclick the desired file. Sounds like any other application to me.
.... 5.3 The Open command activates a dialog that lets you load an existing image from your hard-drive or an external medium. For alternative, and sometimes more convenient, ways of opening files, see the Files section."
Maybe you haven't yet managed to start your computer? Wait! -- you are posting to Slashdot.
Seriously, how hard is it to open a file in GIMP? I launch it from the application menu and it comes up with 3 windows: one titled "Layers", one titled "GIMP tip of the day", and one titled "GIMP". Just "GIMP" has menus, so I open "File", choose "Open
last time I tried there was no viable help
When, in 1995? Because my GIMP help clearly states, e.g. "The "File" Menu of the Toolbox
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
4. GIMP has really bad startup time, and performance, compared to commercial graphics editors (such as Photoshop)
Only under Win32, and mostly in the font loading spectrum. It's a hell of a lot faster in a native GNOME.
We're working to be a part of the official Debian distribution, we have a single Windows installer, and we're readying a Mac port -- we want to make it as easy as possible to download and use this distribution so it's not just "self-selecting geeks" :)
:)
But self-selection will always be a problem. If you have ideas on how to get around self-selection bias in human subjects research -- where people must volunteer to participate -- please let us know!
And just to clarify, we're not trying to find usability problems as much as we are trying to quantify behavior/activity/system setups. Other efforts are helping to identify critical usability issues (see http://gui.gimp.org/ ). Our data provide an additional perspective on GIMP usage in the wild -- data that exist nowhere else. We're also quite unique among both commercial and open source projects: No other software collects this type of usage data, makes the data collection and dissemination process as transparent as we do (especially since it is open source), and makes all the collected data available for anyone to analyze. We're building a very valuable repository not only for understanding GIMP's usage in the wild, but also for research involving data mining, intelligent user interfaces, and so on.
Michael Terry
In my first go at Gimp, prior to the 2.0 interface update, it took me quite a while to figure out how to save an image.
That the option would not only be on the image's window, but in a menu that was accessed by right-clicking on the image, simply did not occur to me.
I'd never, ever seen a program of any kind where the "save" option was not part of the same window as the main toolbar, let alone one where it was reached through a right click.
2.0 was a big help, but I still think the interface blows compared to Photoshop, and that's with having used the Gimp at least twice as much as PS.
I watched the video, and the only thing that stuck in my mind, is that I think you're not qualified to study usability if you have to Alt-Tab through a bunch of firefox instances because you haven't discovered tabs yet.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it?
There are a number of logical failures with this line of reasoning. Free has little to do with the reason "everybody" uses something. Most times, it is the product that has enough money to shout the loudest.
graphical applications are meant to be used..
Ranting about the GIMP really doesn't get your point across. For some of us the GIMP is great. For you, it sounds like you want to use Adobe products. Go for it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Clone Photoshop. It may not be the best interface, but I can assure you most people will be familiar with it.
Like Ebaums World? You'll love Shizzville
... a measure of what you are used to using? :set sarcasm
:set nosarcasm
I've been using the Gimp since around July 1996. As it was my first experience at using graphics software, I found that once shortcuts and mouse clicks were remembered, using it was no problem. The problem occurred when I was forced to use Photoshop for a job I had. I found the layout of the interface clunky and the whole single window think was crap to work with. I just wish the Photoshop developers would get their act together and set the layou more like the Gimp, and then maybe Photoshop could be the next Gimp killer.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
With the OSS version, you know exactly what data is being collected and where it is being sent. And, we make it all available for anyone to analyze, so you know who can potentially see it and make use of it. These are typically all unknowns with closed source software.
Michael Terry
Agreed, but 2.0 was released when? 2003? Can we lay discussions about flaws in 1.0 to rest, please?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Ok, some questions, then. What if an interface offered approaches more consistent than Photoshop's or GIMP's? For instance, in the main toolbox, both Photoshop and GIMP mix area selection tools (eg, rect, ellipse) with tools that actually modify the image using areas (eg, smudge, fill.) Because of this, the only way to know what a tool in the tool box will do is to become familiar with it; the location (in the toolbox) doesn't define the type of functionality. What if the area selection tools were in one toolbox, and tools that modified the image were able to be placed in another - perhaps just the ones you think you'll need today? In terms of usability, this type of approach associates physical location with function; this *should*, theoretically, enhance usability.
The same thing applies to layers. Photoshop's interface treats layers like they were not images, rather, as if they were only components of images. But essentially, they are images, as demonstrated by the ability to select one and edit it as if it was the image. What if a four-layer image allowed you to see, and edit, all four layers at once, just as if they were normal images, while changes to the sum of all the layers, let's call that the "master" image, are visible in yet another window? Wouldn't that be more consistent than treating a layer as if it were something other than an image? It provides direct, and simultaneous, access to everything at once (many layers begin to bring window management into the equation, but those skills are even more basic than anything inside an image editor.)
Before you answer, I would like to point out to you how many complaints that couch themselves as usability complaints refer to an application not working "like" Photoshop, and how often the phrase "industry standard" is brought up; it seems to me that when complaints of this type are voiced, they refer to learning the person has already done, and they want *compliance*, because they already have (a set of) muscle memory that they work with. They actually don't want better or easier, because better and easier is different, and different will impede their progress while they learn (if they are even willing to learn!)
I make decisions about these precise things as part of my job; I'd be very interested in specific opinions from anyone on these issues.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The print thing isn't even just a problem for professional applications. A while ago I was doing some casual poster design stuff for a group at the university. They didn't have the budget for a real plotter, so they normally print on colour 11x17, then cut the margins and put the poster together as essentially a mosaic.
The new tech guy in the office decided that the gimp was the way to go no matter what, and promptly removed photoshop from the design computer for unknown reasons. I have to admit, I love my photoshop, so this was a bit of a setback. None the less, I've used the gimp a few times before, and I don't hate the interface. It seemed to go well enough and it wasn't a real printer anyway, so RGB was fine.
However, once we got to printing time, the real disaster struck. I couldn't find a convenient way to slice the image up in the gimp. I thought maybe they had thought of this and tried to see if it would print nicely for me, but I only got one corner. At one point I did have the top row printed, but it didn't account for print margins and I ended up with white gaps. Now I could have done it by hand, but it seems that for some reason the gimp is lacking a print preview. That seems odd to me, but for the life of me I couldn't find the damn thing. Anyway, I ended up having to go get my laptop to print. That's basically the last time I'm likely ever going to use the gimp.
...no two people are not on fire.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Maybe a bigger problem will be that you can't instrument what GIMP doesn't do: CMYK, Color Management, look/work just like the industry standard..
1. When did the GIMP project's first goal become world domination?
2. Yes, GIMP does support color managment. No, not to your satisfaction. http://www.khk.net/color/color_manager.html
3. Yes, GIMP does have some CMYK features. No, not to your satisfaction
GIMP is a great tool for many. Judging by your hysterical comments, it is not a good tool for you.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I can tell them the first flaw right away: The tool windows and such get hidden behind the current image window when the focus changes. If there's an option to prevent that I haven't found it (which would be another usability issue).
Another major annoyance is that brushes can't be scaled. In Photoshop, if you need a brush size that's not in the presets you just drag the size slider, in GIMP you're fucked.
Well, at least those were present in the last version I used.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
A favorite story for stat teachers, I believe this is what you're thinking about.
First, I must say that Photoshop does have some serious advantages over GIMP, such as its extra color models, color depth, and layer grouping.
However, Photoshop's MDI system is not one of those advantages. The MDI concept (pseudo-windows inside a single main window) seems to be a way to work around the horrible window management in MS Windows. But on a unix system, MDI like that actually prevents a better window manager from doing its job.
Sure, the MDI might add magnetic window edges, tiled window layouts, and grouping multiple windows into one frame with tabs. But my regular window manager does it better, along with a whole bunch of other features the MDI system will never have. The MDI concept cripples the application by making it incompatible. For example, I can place an xterm and a web browser into a single tab group, but I can't add a MDI-enhanced color picker window to the same group because it's not a real window. Also, I can't drag a MDI widget onto a different desktop or a different screen, to get it out of the way. And if I have anything custom, like tweaks to work around disabilities, it won't work at all with a MDI system.
MDI makes the learning curve steeper too. It introduces a completely different set of triggers to invoke actions similar to what the regular window manager provides. This means users must remember two sets of commands, instead of just one.
It's fine with me if GIMP decides to implement its own miniature, specialized window manager... so long as there's an option to turn it off. But I'd much rather the effort was spent on editing features, like nondestructive filters and 16-bit color.
Pick one or the other.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Two simple words: Parent Window. Sure the toolboxes have the ability to dock to the main toolbox but if you want to see all of your image my maximizing it you have to switch between windows to get at your toolbox which becomes extremely tedious, even with shortcuts.
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
Remember before Mozilla was done, everyone used to complain about how crappy Netscape was, and how it really needed lots of work.
Then Mozilla, Galeon, Firefox, etc. came out, and everyone dropped Netscape like a hot stone.
Any work put into making Netscape better was just wasted.
GEGL is not done yet. Perhaps history will repeat itself?
I mostly agree, but I find item #1 to be misguided: " put the entire layout in a single window with integrated panel layout"
8 153&pid=19817169#19818683
If you want better window management, use a better window manager. Putting the window management features into GIMP would actually cripple the program for many of us. Photoshop's MDI is a great way to work around the limitations of the window manager in MS Windows. But it's still a kludge. A better window manager is a far better solution, and there are plenty of good solutions already available.
More details are in another comment:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24
GIMP developers just need some healthy FOSS competition. Competing with the likes of photoshop is too much right now. Another graphics package needs to be started. The competition would get these dev's in gear. I believe the only kind of competition that exists in FOSS community is withing itself, not from closed source packages. I just wish I was a mad hacker cuz then ofcourse I wouldnt have to be saying this and instead doing it! But I am just a 3d artist... :\
\
Balderdash!
Lack of user feedback is not the problem with the gimp. Users have being telling the Gimp programmers for years what's wrong with their UI.
The problem is that gimp programmers ignore all critism of their UI and likewise they will ignore this ridiculously complicated solution to gather user feedback.
...it's that people used to using Photoshop on Windows have to learn a different UI to make Gimp sing and dance the way they can make Photoshop sing and dance, and after mastering one program, most people don't want to have to learn something new.
/. on a daily basis).
Back in the day, I used the freeware Paint Shop Pro (v.4, IIRC) on Win 3.1 and later Win 98. It took me a long time to learn Paint Shop Pro's UI, but I did finally learn it, and even really liked it. Eventually I upgraded to PSP 7.0 on Win2K, and had to learn the UI all over again. At first, I hated it and wanted to use the old UI I was used to, but finally, I figured it out. A little later, I switched to Linux and started using the Gimp. At first, just like I had done with both versions of PSP, I was unproductive because it was new, and I hadn't figured out how to use all the tools. A year or two later, my wife took a web design class at the local university where they used...you guessed it, Photoshop. She can't stand Paint Shop Pro or the Gimp, because she learned Photoshop, and is used to the way it works. So....when she ran into difficulty with Photoshop, guess who she always asked for help? And you know what? I had as much trouble doing anything in Photoshop as a Photoshop pro would have using the Gimp. Fast forward to the present, and while I'd rather use the Gimp simply because it's what I use most, and therefore what I am most familiar with, I *can* use any one of these three programs. I find PSP is a little easier for creating animated gif's (to be fair, I've not tried this with Photoshop). My wife has added some phenomenal effects to photos with Photoshop that I haven't been able to duplicate with the Gimp, but I find the Gimp easiest for most everything else.
Okay, that's anecdote, I'm a computer geek, and maybe I'm just weird. However, my experience at work bears out my personal observations. We're a small company, and we simply can't afford to buy Photoshop for everyone here who needs to occasionally edit or retouch an image, so we put the Gimp on our employees' computers. Guess what -- while they might need a little help getting started, everyone that has used the Gimp has learned to use it with very little fuss, and most of them who have also used Photoshop gripe about what a PITA it is compared to the Gimp...because they use the Gimp more often.
IMHO, the Gimp isn't really that hard, but it is different enough from what most graphical design people who trained on Photoshop are used to using, and that difference can be a real barrier to someone who views computers and software as merely a tool for accomplishing something else (i.e., most everyone who doesn't read
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I know: GIVE THE DAMN APPLICATION A BACKGROUND!
Would be interesting to see the output of these automated observations, though...
ilovegeorgebush
I just installed Ubuntu after using Windows for years, and I have a lot of experience with Photoshop. I've tried GIMP numerous times on Windows and I'm starting to find my way around it under GNOME. The experience is much, much better in GNOME.
I have two major problems with GIMP. One, of course, is the interface (skip this paragraph if you've read everyone else's comments). Why is the "file" menu -- or any menu other than toolbar options -- on the toolbar? There are too many windows. Windows get covered by others. Switching windows is a pain. Editing multiple images is just obnoxious. Each menu, image, submenu, and dialogue is treated as a separate window and it's horribly messy. This is a HUGE problem in Windows because there is only one desktop, and so GIMP interferes with every other program. In Ubuntu with Beryl it's not so bad because it's easier to switch desktops, so GIMP can have its own side on the cube. There's also more window control. But most computers still run Windows, and until it works better in Windows it's not going to be the next Firefox.
Second is that it crashes under Windows. It doesn't work. It's unstable. At least it was for me, on three different computers over four years, running Windows ME, XP Home, and XP Pro. Maybe it's just me, maybe it needs tweaking before it works properly, but I'm damn good at following instructions, I followed the instructions, and it didn't work. If it crashes on Windows, the 85-90% of people who use Windows probably won't adopt it.
For now, Paint.NET is a better free option for non-professional users using Windows, simply because it's more stable.
Interestingly, I was banned from the #gimp IRC channel (actually, banned from the entire GIMPnet IRC network) for reminding the GIMP people about these complaints about the name. Was I being a jerk or are the GIMP developers really elitist like people on Slashdot usually claim?
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised no one is talking about privacy, either.
But then again, we are very upfront about what data we collect and the ways your privacy could be affected. And... you can always inspect the source code if you have any privacy concerns.
Michael Terry
(Smackdowns welcome if I'm wrong about any of the following; just my personal experience.)
I've got GIMP as part of my default Ubuntu install, and it's never impressed me much. I agree with the general gist of previous comments which is that the UI doesn't need to be like Photoshop, it just needs to be decent.
The dealbreaker for me at the moment is the piss-poor Text tool. A few days ago I wanted to make some text with a border around each letter. Tried to find a border colour setting, no go. Looked up a few tutorials, and it's a frigging ten-step process using multiple layers and tools, wtf? I tried Krita, and that was even worse as far as I could tell, and I'm not sure where to go from here as far as Linux apps are concerned.
All the previous comparison comments here are in reference to Photoshop and PSP, but I recently got given a copy of Adobe Fireworks to use at work for a variety of daily tasks, (mostly straightforward stuff - cropping, resizing, adding text to diagrams, basic compositing) and I love it! Whilst everyone grimaces at the mention of its name, it does what I want easily, intuitively and well. Despite minimal graphics experience and no claim to expertise with any particular software package, I have never had to go hunting for a special tool or look up a tutorial in order to create white text with a 2px black frigging border. It doesn't seem like too much to ask, I don't see why it should be such a challenge in other apps.
You forgot the biggest part: you can always opt-out of it. You don't have to install ingimp. There's no such thing with closed source software aside from firewalling off the machine entirely. But I believe that the GPP of this is a troll ;)
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"They should start over and model it after photoshop. The could call it photoshoppe."
One man's 'off-topic' is antoher's 'insightful'.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
> What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?
;)
640x480 VESA due to lack of Free(tm) drivers.
> Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?
Neither.
Many have tried and failed.
Thank you, I'll be here all night
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I recently started using GIMP after listening to years of raptured ravings by the GIMP fantribe.
Got to say I was disappointed. It's very unwieldy. Windows everywhere, missing hotkeys (annoying absent on frequently used items), no easy way to add a macro (even if you have to do the same six steps on forty photos), unclear design (a bad mental model: often you're scratching your head... so what the hell do I do now?) If anyone says "but you can do this", they miss the point. GIMP is far too hard to use. The help isn't very good: few clear examples, and the only way to find help on something is to know how to do it. Maybe there are good books out there, but the ones I've looked at haven't been up to much.
The good news is GIMP does work and it's better (and cheaper!) than many of the alternatives. The GUI definitely needs an overhaul.
The gimp team are creating a network-based data gathering system to conduct a usability study.
Hello?!
How about simply asking users to report their experiences? Or even watching people use the software?
Sure, it'll involve a bit of human to human interaction but come on - its a price worth paying!
Yes, the Gimp is already a great tool but:
1. It's nowhere near Photoshop in terms of out-of-the-box functionality
2. Please, if you insist on having a separate window for everything, write a little window z-order controller that ensures the relevant windows are visible (i.e. like photoshop does)
And you want to know what peoples' screen sizes are? Here I'll save you the effort - exactly the same size as all the customers who can happily use adobe photoshop.
I'll fire the first salvo:
They both suck.
I've used Photoshop, and the Gimp for 6+ years, and I have to say, both interfaces suck. I don't have any specifics for improvement, but I'm sure I could come up with some if I were sitting in front of either one right now. I just know both interfaces are clunky, counter intuitive, slow, require too much screen real estate, buggy, bloated, and archaic.
Granted, they each have advantages over each other: Photoshop does CMYK, some of the tools just "work" better, etc. Gimp is less bloated, offers more handy functions "out of the box", and is cross platform.
But let's zoom out and look at the larger issue, which is that, in 2007, our photo editing and graphics arts programs should be a lot farther along. I should be able to do illustator or inkscape style things directly in the gimp, and I should only need one program to do all of that with an easy menu, and easy and obvious shortcuts. As of right now, the only shortcuts I use are copy, cut, and paste, because all the other ones link to some function I rarely need. Like how about a ctrl+s that automagically makes a drop shadow of the foreground layer? Or a ctrl+o that automatically gives a font an outline? The current ways of doing this in the gimp, which I do about 100x a week, at LEAST are ludicrously slow, and require me to use wild ass script-fu, and then copy, and then undo, and then paste.
Heaven help me if I'm away from home and on some winblows machine that is loaded down with Norton. Simple tasks can take an hour!!!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Names can be changed. For example, why can't they just use Qt and make KIMP?
I thought gimp was a photo-editting prog not a drawing program. For tools I use inkscape.
... you could do a gimp-color rotation then proceed to use the vector editting tools of inkscape, add on some text boxes using scribus - all without closing the image window. Even if the apps wrote to different layers of one canvass that would be awesome IMHO.
What I'd love to see is a unified canvass that any drawing prog could use. You could then choose any tool from any package you liked
Anyone seen this idea in use anywhere?
Plus the biggie: "How many effing times is this a-hole gonna photoshop a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on it's head?"
Looking at the statistics given on ingimp's site, most of these give quantitative data - the number of times a command was used, image sizes, monitor resolutions, OS, etc. The "activity tag" data at least gives an idea of what a user is using GIMP for, but I'm not seeing it being tied to the commands used for that particular activity. I can only see this being mostly useful for determining who your users are and what they are doing, but from there these should be turned into personae that can be used for actual usability testing to help find usability flaws. Take these activities and find someone to try to do them, have them speak their thoughts out loud, and then see where the real usability flaws are.
http://informationthreshold.blogspot.com - Information Threshold
I never understood why people keep complaining about the GIMPs multiple windows. Yes, it's weird if you've only ever used Windows apps (or apps pretending to be Windows apps). But personally I *like* mutliple windows. It means I can squirrel away functionality that I don't care about and bring it back easily. I arrange my windows on the screen the way *I* want and I use the window shade functionality of my window manager extensively. I'm *happy* with mulitple windows and multiple menus.
Well... usually. You see, I had occasion to use the GIMP under Windows the other day. And I couldn't use a damn thing. #$%!ing windows poping up all over the place. Couldn't iconify and uniconfy things the way I wanted to. And to top everything off, I'm clicking to focus every bleeding window every 3 seconds. Talk about frustrating.
Sersiously. I *hate* single window apps with a passion; big bloat-creatures with functionality jumbled all over everywhere. But I can understand why some people positively can not put up with multiple windows. As a developer, I personally think the flaw lies in the window manager (or the fact that you can't choose your window manager). But as a user that needs to get things done, I understand the point.
It would be nice to be able to have 2 modes for the GIMP. One for each kind of user.
BTW, I'm thinking of moving over to a tiling window manager... I expect I'll want something even different then.
Ingimp will not change this fact. The devs simply disagree whether it counts as a 'problem'. I don't think it's any secret that the majority of the people who come to The GIMP, especially those with a Photoshop background, simply can't grok the UI. And there's no denying that The GIMP's UI deviates from almost every other application's model out there. In fact, the only similar one I can think of is xv; hardly stuff for newbies.
This study perpetuates that denial: the people who give up on GIMP do so almost immediately. It's not just a Photoshop background that ruins it for you-- it's prior experience with Windows or the MacOS. The GIMP is simply too different. What useful information are you going to gain from people who give up immediately? Or if they spend all their time looking in menus having to do with color-- how will you know that they need a specific color model without them being able to tell you?
Now it may be that for people with no prior experience with the above mentioned programs, or for those who are willing to spend the time to learn The GIMP's unique way of doing things, then maybe The GIMP really is the best way to edit images. But, as Eric Raymond has pointed out-- sometimes it's not enough to be "the best"; the cost of switching also has to outweigh the cost of learning a new way of doing things. Considering that Photoshop falls into the "extremely expensive software" category, what does this say about The GIMP when The GIMP is free of charge? If what the devs really want is for people to flock to The GIMP en masse, then they need to pull their heads out of the sand: The GIMP UI is a problem. Otherwise, we can safely put The GIMP into the category of extremely useful (and even revolutionary) but oddball software out there like Plan 9, TEX, emacs, and so on. It'll continue to be used rather successfully by a vocal minority, but it won't be the standard.
The UI isn't the main problem with GIMP. You can teach a person who is willing to learn to use a new app if they are willing to learn and the management is persistent enough.
The problem with GIMP lies however on its speed when working with a larger picture. When an extremely detailed picture is used, GIMP doesn't work as well as Photoshop in terms of speed. With the same computer and same large picture, it takes ages in GIMP to move around or do anything, whereas it is a breeze in Photoshop. Now that is a frustrating experience that would cause people to migrate back to commercial programs.
However since it's not being done, I do use Gimp. It took awhile, but I can do pretty much anything a non graphics professional user like me wants to do.. I have just been using the stock install of Gimp (Ubuntu and Xubuntu).. I mean to one day search to see what other effects and filters are out there. not that the stock set is bad, but maybe it's just fond memories of PaintShop Pro that lead me to believe I could do cooler things with their effects.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I personally love Gimp's interface. What I can't STAND is Photoshop's. Takes me forever to find the shit I want on that piece of junk.
One of my favorite Photoshop tools is the clone stamp for making things/people disappear and put the wall back in behind whatever I removed - PS: 1 button, alt-click to specify source, then click on area to duplicate it to.
I guess I'm just not into graphics enough to have any need to familiarize myself with GIMP enough, but for me with GIMP, its not just "Where is the equivalent button at" because in Photoshop I find it such a major tool, its inconceivable to not have it easily accessible. Just how the hell do I get the same effect in GIMP without going through 30 more steps? And I'm not talking about consolidating this into 3 tools I have to use in order - I mean 1 tool, basically how it is in Photoshop, so that I can use it repetitively (like once every 2 seconds repetitive to clone an entire area) - but redefining the source within a quarter inch away of where I started putting the clone in to keep it from developing jagged square tiles every 2 inches...
Usability, gui, cli, and the stand alone keyboard and mouse.
The problem with program/application usability is the inflexible default program/application interface.
I have been working on the wasted repetitive hand movement from keyboard to mouse for the last three years. I have solved this problem with an advanced integrated keyboard mouse.
I have total control of the on screen interface and can point, click, type, and scroll in any order simultaneously and instantly without taking my fingers off the home row, and have not lost any of the performance or speed of a stand alone mouse.
With an integrated keyboard mouse, the debate between the gui and cli is a non-issue to me. I can use gui or cli on the same interface equally with no performance loss.
The problem between gui and cli was the stand alone keyboard and mouse. When you integrate the keyboard and mouse, you can integrate the gui and cli with big performance gains.
I have the same performance as if I had two hands on the keyboard and a third hand on the mouse.
I dominate current gui and cli users, because I have equally access to both gui and cli.
I can work, so far, across four 19" screens at will.
I am now working on an advanced interface that is fully customizable by the user that sits on top of all applications. It integrates gui, cli, and search.
We all work differently. We each need a personal interface. That is my goal, to have a fully customizable interface that sits on top of all applications.
I hope to provide my keyboard to financial traders and the military first, because of their need for microsecond input and control.
I hope to present my research and development on advanced input, interface, and interaction technology to a HCI or ACM conference for requirements for my PhD in advanced HCI.
from the "father of the perfect keyboard"
One thing that bothers me about gimp and other graphic software is the fricken "feature bath". I've used many options/features before but forgot where it was. Perhaps have a wild-card search of options with the ability for one to put in their own supplimental keywords. Menus have outlived their usefulness for feature-rich software.
Table-ized A.I.
Now that you put it that way...
I ought to be able to close the toolbox. Sometimes I don't even need it. I do always need an image window though; keeping the gimp open without one is only useful to avoid the agonizingly slow start-up if I want to work on another project.
You do however need virtual desktops to keep your sanity. Linux obviously supports this very well.
MacOS Tiger has virtual desktops. Perhaps you'd like to use that?
Numerous add-ons for Windows are available. Wikipedia has a list of a few dozen implementations. (see the "virtual desktop" entry and stuff linked from there) It seems that people are dying for virtual desktops on Windows, but Microsoft doesn't give a shit. Have you thought about getting a Mac?
The first principle for any application that has a non-specialized user base is that it must be intuitively usuable.
From the blurb: "The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'""
This does not give any pertinent information on making obvious actions available in the UI.
The above two 'questions' are nonsensical: they refer to functional areas/modules/settings that should be choices offered by the UI.
Once that choice is made the UI should allow immediate, intuitively obvious actions for that choice.
The (to call a spade a spade) stupid UI currently offered by the GIMP made me drop it, and revert to simple easy, obvious bitmap editors.
time time everywhere and not a second to spare
Out of your list, the 8-bit channels are the only problem for me.
I hope they never add CMYK crap to the core. Native Y,Cb,Cr would be kind of useful though, to avoid round-off errors when editing JPEG images.
Gamma probably the worst problem. It might actually be what you see as antialiasing quality problems; that can be a symptom of treating non-linear data as if it were linear. Nearly all of the gimp does operations on non-linear datathat are only meaningful on linear data. The result is image degradation. Besides generally making colors wrong, image noise can stand out more and antialiased edges can become darker.
How can you not like a program named after a midget or dwarf used as a submissive for gay sex?
That's an entirely appropriate way to name a graphics program.
drop the G just call it Image Manipulation Program, or IMP for short... oh, that might just offend some of the religious fundies out there who'd think it could have a satanic connection...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Why didn't you just use the Photoshop keyboard bindings that ship with GIMP? For someone who is coming from Photoshop, that should make things a lot easier. For someone who is accustomed to the keybindings used on the GNOME desktop, it will feel akward though.
GIMP should allow you to:
* Undock the "toolbox" from the main application window (file/acquire/prefs menu area, essentially)
* Minimize the main application window to a system tray icon on Windows
* Allow it to run "widgetless" like a daemon on unix (where opening up an additional image is as easy as running gimp "filename" from a terminal or launched as a result of a GUI file action)
* Duplicate the file/etc menus in the right click menu for said system tray icon on Windows
I think something like that would make a lot of people happy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Since version 2.0 they try to push you in the direction of drawing a circle with the path tool (or converting a circular selection to one) and then stroking it with a brush.
Everyone using the GIMP without a tablet should be shown selections, paths, and manipulating them in tutorials, because that's what you're going to spend a lot of time doing if you can't freehand.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If you don't like it, change it...use the deweirdifyer. Or xnest on Linux. Problem solved. I went more in-depth in my comment below.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
Sounds like GIMP lacks good print preview or print tiling mechanisms. Tiling is when the program prints out the image across multiple pages, with overlap on each page, so that you can cut out and assemble the pages into one larger printed image. I'm betting it lacks slicing, too, which is something Photoshop/ImageReady excel at -- taking a large image and blocking off areas to be saved as different image files, each with its own file name and type (GIF, JPG, PNG) and compression settings. This is invaluable for web design. (If GIMP does this, that's cool.)
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
It works exactly like that in GIMP. There's a dedicated tool for it, called the "Clone tool", and you will find it located in the toolbox. The tool works exactly like you described your workflow in Photoshop. No 30 steps, no need to use several tools.
GIMP has fundamental usability issues which have festered for years. I've had the odd rant about GIMP going back years and most of the issues are still there. They really should stop feature development and make the next major release all about cleaning up the existing functionality. Despite the atrocious UI, the GIMP is an amazingly powerful tool. It's just frustrating to use, and IMHO the effort and time currently required to use it is probably DOUBLE what it could be if it were cleaned up.
And common sense says:
1) use an MDI interface.
2) group similar functions together.
3) use better and more informative icons.
4) follow the new/open/close/save/cut/copy/paste paradigm that everyone else uses.
5) use the right click as a contextual menu.
etc
No need to instrument the program, just go ahead and do it as a regular application.
Open any book about usability. On the first pages you'd come across the axiom to avoid creating a menu structure which is more than two levels deep. Gimp's menu structure on the other hand is deeply nested. There are so many basic usability problems which could be easily corrected without using any special software.
I'm using it under Windows because the programs that the finished output gets thrown into are usually Windows-only. More screens and different window managers require extra software for something that other apps do out of the box.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
With Irfanview it's something like select images and do operation on the images. With an off-the-shelf Gimp it's not possible.
see: Bug 173066 - Feature Request: Batch-Processor
..at least for those of us using Windows XP or (shudder) Vista:
Paint.NET is getting better and better (and has an active user community creating plugins, etc). I tried it about 2 years ago and wasn't all that impressed, but as of my latest inspection, it's pretty useful software. Just make sure to check out the forums for effects and tutorials.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Alright, I was going to list the tools on the tool pallet, but about a third of the way through listing the tools on the default pallet, I found the "Clone tool" in the "Dialogs" > "Tools" dialog box, and that clicking on it selected the appropriate tool that happened to already be on the pallet - but it sure wasn't labeled "Clone tool" - instead it was "Paint using patterns or Image Regions". If I could at least have "Paint using patterns or Image Regions (Clone)". Why is the dialog box for customizing the tool pallet label it as clone and not the pallet itself? Its a consistency issue that might be minor to some, but it sure confused the hell out of me for quite a while...
My least favorite thing about the GIMP is that Ctrl+K is delete, not Delete.
I've always just called it GIM (pronounced Jim) Paint.
A month ago, for the first time in years, I needed to work on an image. LastFM wanted a picture of me, but complained because it was not square enough. Well excuse me for being an elongated person.
So I open the Gimp 2.2, load the picture and look into adding a white sidebar with my name on it. Let's walk the menus. Image - Canvas size looks good. I widen the Width, but the Height grows with it. After some headscratching, I figure out that the pretzel icon next to the box is a lock. A mouse hover tool tip might be good here. But cool, now it's 600x600.
Hey, why is it checkered gray? Let's fill that with white. Select the bucket icon in the toolbox and swap the foreground color from black to white. The tooltips are great here! Click on the checkered gray area to color it in. Nothing happens! Now what?
Maybe it's one of those layer thingies the pros mumble about. Menu troll time!
That was funny! Layer - Transparency - Add Alpha channel didn't seem to do nothing, but went gray afterwards. Let's try color to alpha next. All right, the dialog has a white box, so maybe it'll turn this alpha layer white? Oh no, now the whole picture's checkered! Undo undo undo.
Image - Fit canvas to layers resizes to the size of the original picture. Aha, I need another layer to cover the checkered area!
Layer - New layer seems to do the trick, as the broken line is now around the whole canvas. So now the fill tool should work, right? Aaaah, now the whole canvas is white! Where's my photo? Try some layer menu things, but I seem to have to white layers here. Undo.
I choose Select rectangular region tool from toolbox and mark the checkered area. Now the bucket fills just that part! All right! We are making (slow!) progress.
Now let's write into it.
I choose the Text tool, click where I want to write, oops, must move mouse onto the text dialog, or the writing will be interpreted as a tool switch, oh and switch foreground color to black, yes.
I write my first name and last name into different boxes to arrange them nicely.
Can't move them around apparently. Can't click on the text to edit it. I'll just erase them and rewrite. Oops, the Eraser does not do ANYTHING AT ALL. Undo and rewrite then.
Okay, I can figure out most things here. It could be more obvious, but it works. Except for the Eraser, which does not erase anything. I remember using Paintshop Pro seven years ago. That was easy and fun. You just tried everything in the menus to learn more. With the Gimp, I feel I need a book or help dokument to explain layers or something to me *first*, before I can do anything painlessly.
But I don't need image tools more than once a year, so I'll just have to suffer through this learning curve every time I touch it.