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The GIMP UI Redesign

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the new-coat-of-wax dept.

sekra writes "The GIMP UI Redesign Team has created a blog to collect ideas for a new design of the most popular image manipulation program. Everyone is free to submit suggestions to be published in the blog. Will a new GUI finally get more users to choose The GIMP as their program of choice?"

11 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmmm by thammoud · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the most popular image manipulation program
  2. wxWidgets! by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing beats having a program use the same widgets you have on your operating system.

    1. Re:wxWidgets! by PolyDwarf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously.. Also, if you can't do the widgets, at least have the decency to track (separately) last directory used for opening projects and saving images and use those by default in file open and save dialogs (Like most other windows programs). I imagine I'm not along, in that I keep my project files deep in one tree, while the images that are output are deep in another tree.. it's a pain in the ass to always have to go between them.

      The only reason I use gimp is because it's free, not because I like it better. I've started putting the bug in my boss's ear about photoshop, because Gimp is just getting on my nerves.

  3. How about by LM741N · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a name redesign.

  4. How about a new name? by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every time I see The Gimp, I think about Pulp Fiction. How about a cooler name? I know it sounds like form over substance, but you'd be surprised how something so simple could slow adoption.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
    1. Re:How about a new name? by owlnation · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. I think Firefox's success is at least 50% attributable to the fact that it sounds exciting.

      "Gimp" on the other hand sounds like an insult, something inferior, and It rhymes with pimp -- and not in a good way. I have no desire to ever speak that word to anyone. They will never get word of mouth marketing from me.

      This is by no means the only drawback that gimp faces, but it is a pretty major one. A great first step towards increased usage would be to change the name along with the UI redesign.

  5. stupidest key combo decision ever by Annymouse+Cowherd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about making delete be Delete instead of ctrl+K

  6. GIMP UI improvements by metamatic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I love the way the GIMP has two completely different File menus with different contents. That cracks me up every time.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  7. Re:I second that... by jguthrie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, for years I've been listening to people complain that the Free Software and Open Source communities don't ever invent anything on their own. That they simply re-implement other peoples' ideas. I think it's kind of ironic that the number one suggestion for the future of the GIMP is that it be changed such that it simply re-implements other peoples' ideas.

  8. Have you tried to *USE* Krita? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I manage a small but successful wedding photography company. We use almost exclusively open source software including DigiKam, ShowFoto and of course, the Gimp.

    I wanted people to switch to Krita for the deeper color support and integration with DigiKam and ShowFoto, but the thing is unusable! There (currently) aren't nearly as many editing tools while and the UI may look more like Photoshop, it's sure doesn't behave like it.

    After about 2 weeks of trying to use it, I had to go back to Gimp and put Krita off for futher evaluation in a year or two.

    Some things Gimp has going for it:

    1) It works pretty well (not great, not all the features that Photoshop has, but good enough for many uses)
    2) The new 2.4 version is a huge improvement in usability (All color items in their own menu? Yes!, All special effects scripts in one place? , Yes!)
    3) The extensive set of plugins http://registry.gimp.org/ which allow for added (and usually tested) functionality
    4) Enough people use it that most major bugs are squashed before a release is made

  9. Re:Most Popular?? by NMerriam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no 16 or 32 bit channel support, no adjustment layers, no colorspaces aside from RGB and greyscale, no usable colour profile support. Those four things on their own eliminate Gimp as a usable high-end photography tool. The interface is not the problem. The underlying libraries are.


    it's funny because even a year or two ago when a GIMP article would come up, people would ask why it hasn't replaced Photoshop and I'd say that the primitive (well, it would have been state of the art in 1993) color support just kills it out of the box for anyone doing anything more advanced than web graphics. Of course, everyone would reply and say I was just a luser artist who was obviously just too stupid to possibly learn anything other than the Photoshop UI and that's why I secretly hated the GIMP, and no regular user will ever need to use anything other than 8-bit untagged RGB.

    And of course now consumer-level cameras -- point and shoot $500 models -- are shooting in RAW and saving 12-bit tagged images that the GIMP has no hope of dealing with in any usable way.

    If the GIMP developers had listened to the professionals back in say, 1999, when we told them their fundamental assumptions about color were hopelessly naive, they might have been able to do something about it. As it is, I don't imagine anything short of a Mozilla-style "throw out all the code and start over" will keep the GIMP from eventually fading away as more modern open-source apps port the GIMP's features onto a better foundation.
    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.