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The GIMP UI Redesign
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?"
They could start by using a better toolkit. Not flaming, just being honest.
I thought the most popular image manipulation program was Photoshop??
My Sysadmin Blog
... record low temperatures recorded in Hell ...
They had better have a feature where the GUI looks exactly the same way it does now.
I don't want to learn a new gui.
To those who are moving in from Photoshop, and would like a similar looka and feel, provide a skin for them. For the true GIMP pros, assuming they exist - retain the existing stuff. And so on. Compared to the size and complexity of code handling images, the UI bit should be miniscule... atleast I suppose so.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Nothing beats having a program use the same widgets you have on your operating system.
a name redesign.
I'd be risking more psycho mails in my inbox if I posted under any of my usual accounts, so I'm posting this anonymous, even at the risk of it being modded down as a troll.
GIMP people, the biggest, quickest thing you can do to get good people back in the project and working well together is to finally, please, finally get rid of Carol Spears. I know 80% of you agree with me and have demonstrated in private to me or in public that you want her out, but she's pushing more and more people out with her weird shit, her stalking behaviour, her willingness to criticize anyone contributing to the project for insane reasons like stealing her boyfriend or taking her life from her, or accuzing people of having sex with conference organisers to sway them and obtain cash. Whatever, too many good contributors are sick of it. Yes, she has mental health issues, but the project has suffered too much accomodating those. There is only so much you can do for her.
Taking this public because all the private talking has failed.
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
How about making delete be Delete instead of ctrl+K
Most of the names in the Linux world put people off and prevent them from referencing them in a meaningful way. It makes it very hard to learn what something is and remember it when the fucking name is something like GIMP! Its NOT cool and NOT intuitive; I guess like the rest of Linux stuff. Not that I have any problem but why bother with a redesign when it has such a shitty name? Oh, yeah, It should work exactly like Photoshop; exactly. This would add value to those who cannot afford and subsequently pirate photoshop in that they could apply their skills to something that everyone already uses and maybe get a freakin job.
The only thing that will get more users for GIMP is strict enforcement of software licensing (specifically, that of Adobe Photoshop). Which ain't happening.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
I can't see what's wrong with basic layout of the program. OK, more customisable palettes would be good so I didn't have to keep torn-off menus lying around, but other than that I've no problem getting it to do what I want.
(1) a derrogatory term for someone that is disabled or has a medicial problem that results in physical impairment.
(2) An insult implying that someone is incompetent, stupid, etc. Can also be used to imply that the person is uncool or can't/won't do what everyone else is doing.
(3) A sex slave or submissive, usually male, as popularlized by the movie Pulp Fiction.
Look at that gimp in the wheelchair
Dude, quit being a gimp and take a hit!
Bring out the gimp!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gimp
so to the "street" (or younger population who you should be targetting) its an insult (has been my whole life and im 39), hardly surprising nobody wants to use it
I've always used the GIMP, and absolutely love the way the current interface is... Do you recon it will be possible for me to keep using the old interface? I hate the photoshop type layout because it limits the amount of space I have for the actual image.
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
Except that there are multiple menu bars, one for every window. Right now with the multiple window model I don't think there's any other good way to do it... they might have to go to a single window model to fix it.
Also I think MS had something with Office where they removed most of the menus. The GIMP team should try and slim their menus up.
This days krita is a very good (if not better, as it supports colorspaces) OSS alternative to the GIMP, without the user interface problems the GIMP has.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I was working at the cottage, which is linked to the outside world by a noisy party line, which allows me to run @ 15Kbps (ie 1/3 of normal dialup speed). The etiquette up north is that you can check your email for 10 minutes or so, and in any case even ssh over that kind of link is a bit choppy. So I booted my notebook into linux mode and coded against the centos server running lamp. I wanted to use the Gimp so I would not have to keep flipping between OSs. The Gimp turned out to be pretty good, at least for the simple stuff (text boxes layered onto web-resolution jpegs etc) that I was doing.
However, when I got home, I found that the text tool boxes in my gimp files was rendered as shapes by photoshop. I then did a test in reverse and found the same to be true: text tool boxes created in photoshop rendered as shapes when loaded in gimp.
So until that fixed, the gimp is less than useful for most commercial purposes. If you were working on something that you were 100% sure you would never have to export to psd and share with a photoshopper, then sure. But otherwise no.
Does anyone remember Krita? URL: http://www.koffice.org/krita/ It's UI is consistent and easy to use - esp. from a newbie pov. What else? a name change? No. GIMP gets advertising from the tonnes of people who TALK ABOUT GIMP and about its 'wrong name'. Tabs - maybe. Add it as an optional feature. Opening multiple instances of an image may tax your resources too much. Make it pleasant - like Visual studio is. No joke. It's intuitive, you get 1 window (add tabs if you want to), menus on top, icons, left panel dividing into sections, with a right one dealing with properties. Hey, VS.NET-UI-like GIMP may be cool. But I welcome any new UI when it comes to GIMP. It's about time. (*Expecting new KDE4 UI effects* - just a thought)
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
Perhaps then community centres and schools might stop thinking it's made by insensitive wankers.
I also have to ask, if they haven't been listening to a prolifera of feature requests/UI changes on the mailing lists why should we believe they're going to listen to them on a blog?
Yeah, considering the utter disregard for decent interface design on any level that the GIMP team has shown in the past, I'm not really holding out much hope for this one. Perhaps we'll get a new coat of paint on top of the old interface, but the whole thing will still be a horrid programmer-interface mess.
Or perhaps they will really create a competent design team and let them dictate every detail of the interface. But with the usual open source ego contests, that seems a tad unlikely.
Hee hee hee Slashdot inspired me into find an old Ulead PhotoExpress 3.0 for windows. It's meant for newbies. Here's a snapshot: http://www.ancientnet.ic.cz/123445.jpg Notice anything cool? It's simple, there are big icons on top. The image appears in the centre. Amazing, is it not? Plus you've tab like effect (botton bar) - many pictures are opened and 'objects' (props - I still don't have props in GIMPs) can be moved around from 1 pic to another. Of course, GIMP has more features but instead of cramming them into small icons - it can have big and meaningful ones, with a slide effect on a tab bar. It's not about GIMP being uber cool and super complicated - it's about how fast you can edit a picture, apply a filter, and so on, and save the pic. There's no need for transparency for e.g. Leave transparency as a NON default feature. I do hope GIMP rocks as this old Ulead Photoexpress does. (3.0 rocks - ole' apps had the mojo, IMHO)
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
As probably one of the few people who've never used photoshop, I like the current GIMP GUI. If you do decide to overhaul the GUI, do it in a way that makes it optional. Make it skinnable anotherwords. I'm not a heavy GIMP user, but use it for band related stuff. I like the fact that it's easy to use on a dual headed system as is. I understand that the GIMP would be more accessible to a wider audience if it had the feel of Photoshop, but don't abandon the people who find the GUI useful as is.
After looking over the design submissions at gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com, I like the idea of having the toolbox attached to the image window. That at least would make it easier to see when I accidentally press a key that changes the current tool.
However, I can also see the point of a previous poster about adding as little as possible to the image window so that you can get the maximum amount of image possible on the screen. So, why not make the toolbox dockable to and undockable from the image window, just like the dialogs can be docked to and undocked from the toolbox?
I can also see how using a tabbed multi-document window can reduce clutter and make it easy to switch between multiple images. But personally I prefer having images in separate windows, particularly when I want to copy and paste selections from one image to another. So why not allow the user the choice of being able to stack certain images together in a single tabbed window or split tabs off into separate windows? (Say, that's kind of like what Firefox does with tabs.)
The one idea I don't like is that of putting all of the separate image, toolbox, and dialog windows inside a single application window. All that accomplishes is reducing the screen real estate available to the child windows.
I have no problems with the layout as it is really. I just wish that the tools/dialogues would always be on top of the image so it's easy to select what you want when the image is full size or have other windows open.
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
Call me wacky, but the UI isn't a problem. Any tool can be learned in a few days or weeks of using it.
Instead, here's my wishlist:
Being on Mac OSX, my top wish is for an updated Mac OSX build (even if it still must be under X11.app). The OSX-ready builds are far behind the main development releases, and for the glacial pace of GIMP development, that is really saying something. I bet all of the above items are ready on Linux, just not the officially recognized OSX-ready builds on macports or the website.
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I always thought the GUI was a little odd. I am not a fan of the floating toolbars, I like them docked. Even the newer Photoshops still have floating toolbars, at lease Dreamweaver got rid of them.
I just use the GimpShop version of Gimp as I am somewhat familiar with Photoshop, Gimpshop lays out the features in similar places.
This a great improvement: recieve graphical user suggetions via a blog and then compleately ignore them.
Far better than the old way: get user suggestions in plain text and then completely ignore them
I think it's obvious that the GIMP really needs more web 2.0 integration. And maybe some really annoying flashing advertisements too. (But since this is a FOSS project, just make it go to a blank page after you hit the monkey)
As a recent (read: within the last year) convert to Linux, I of course picked up gimp as one of my first package downloads--can never go wrong with having an image editor. While there are a few peculiarities, such as having multiple sets of menus or the whole multiple window thing, I've never really found anything crippling about the gimp UI. I can't help but think most people complain not so much about the fact that it's a bad UI, but more that it's just not Photoshop. Honestly, I for one like the way it uses multiple windows. It may not be apparent from a Photoshop die-hard's perspective, but in Linux it allows you to take better advantage of multiple virtual workspaces. Perhaps a mode where you can define a tool palette as "sticky" so it will follow you to whatever workspace you change to? Also, given that it's broken up into multiple windows, having multiple menus does make sense. Really, all I want to see personally are layer hierarchies. And of course some people want support for higher color depths. But as far as the UI goes I just don't buy these silly accusations of "unusable" or "nonsensical." It's just a little different, but arguably for a good reason.
I know I say this every time they have a story about GIMP, but Wilbur (the coyote) is the only icon on Slashdot that animates.
Watch, his eyes move very subtly.
Summation 2
Photoshop is what people expect and it's what most books are written for, so that's what the Gimp should aim form primarily. Only in cases where there is a really good reason to deviate from Photoshop should the Gimp deviate.
I should say that I don't have much respect for Photoshop; I don't like the UI, and I still remember it as a toy application compared to those it replaced. Nevertheless, good or bad, like Microsoft Office, it's the de-facto standard and we'll have to live with it for the time being.
Instead of opening up Photosho.. err, GIMP and cranking out a bunch of comps that are just mashups of existing UI concepts, why not talk to your users and design around their workflow and needs? Good UI is not born in a vacuum, good user experience doesn't happen without talking to users. For an app that seems to have the Rodney Dangerfield complaint, the team around it seems to do little to counter that. (You think Adobe doesn't test the hell out of its apps?)
So, I'll throw one out there, in the interest of PRACTICAL feedback:
Single window mode is a bad idea because it makes a photo retoucher's life much more difficult.
Here's an example why, an actual segment of a workflow and/or task, done in Photoshop to show the ease of this and why multi-window works well.
Grab a picture of a friend, ideally if they are drunk or have blotchy skin in the photo -- make it as unflattering as possible. Wedding pictures are ideal. Needs to be color.
Open it in Photoshop. Now, since I don't have another copy in front of me, this is the CS2 method:
Window>Arrange>Open New Window for [foo.jpg]
Window>Arrange>Tile Vertically
Now center both windows on the same area, ideally, said blotchy skin.
On ONE window, go to the layers/channels/paths palette. Switch to the Channels palette. Turn off all channels except green. Odds are, it looks pretty much like the color photo, just in B&W.
Now take the Clone tool and massage out some of the blotchiness in the green channel ("B&W") version. Ta-da, fixed in both. And you can see its effect immediately.
This is one way that your favorite babes are airbrushed to laughable non-human perfection for magazines. It's quick, it's got incredible feedback, and it's not possible in a tabbed or single window method.
Talking to your users, as opposed to a comp-off (or the cardinal sin, the designer assuming he knows everything), gives you all kinds of useful information like that.
Aimless brainstorming, bad. Brainstorming with a direction, productive.
I am not Herbert.
Are their any plans to release a simplified Windows installer that also installs required GTK runtime libraries as well? That was always a pet peeve of mine.
Is having to hit Shift-= to zoom in(+), but just - to zoom out. I know I'd be technically hitting = to zoom in, but at least it feels natural.
My biggest complaint about the difference between Gimp and Photoshop is not the UI. Photoshop kills Gimp on performance for images greater than 3k x 3k pixels. I don't know what the deal is, but Gimp crawls when trying to touch up large images. Things like the airbrush seem relatively unaffected by size in Photoshop, but not in Gimp.
And to say that Gimp's scissor tool is the same as the one in Photoshop would be a farce. I think the one in Photoshop was purchased from BYU and is under some kind of NDA between the two. Can somebody confirm this? Dr. Morse?
Improving the UI by removing features is a net loss for the application.
For a new person, not having a "desktop" background makes the floating toolbars complicated, especially if you have other applications open at the same time.
In the Linux version (don't know for Windows version), when you go to print an image, you can setup a printer, give it a name etc. But if you get rid of the printer or you just don't like the settings, you can't delete the printer from The Gimp's Print setup, and you can't change the printer settings easily.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Most of the games I've played lately let you completely reconfigure the keybindings to your liking. I don't understand why all software apps don't incorporate this. Yeah it could be confusing if you hop onto someone else's machine, but all you have to do is keep a copy of your keybind config file on a flash drive you carry around.
It's not all the user interface, some of it is just getting from what you want to accomplishing it.
Such things as making transparency layers or GIF animations, while they are all very possible are hard to figure out on your own.
It would help having a guide that takes you through those things step by step. (floating dialog that says... "in this step, you need to add a layer for each frame of animation, click on the Layer option then..." If it had those the UI would not be much of an issue. Especially if people could import/export in their own dialogs (so the community can contribute examples.)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
gtk is no walk in the park to compile, time-wise, but I guarantee you qt is a flipping nightmare to compile, such that I go out of my way to disable the qt* useflags. (Oh, yeah, and this is not a slow system, being a 2.4 GHz single core K8.)
This says qt is full of bloat relative to gtk. Why does gimp need so much cruft just to expose a window and some buttons? What gimp really needs isn't so much a UI redesign so much as native 16-bit component support (or dare we even ask for HDR?) now that everyone and his brother has RAW support on his camera.
Maybe its just full of useful classes? Assuming those classes are broken up into enough separate static and shared libraries, that does not translate into bloat for the qt programs.
Also GTK is only a graphics library. As opposed to QT, which has APIs for networking, database connections, etc. You can write conole programs in QT. Its about as easy as java or .NET, except you have to dofree whatever you new. So yes it will take longer to compile QT than GTK, but the real measure of bloat is would be if you wrote a simple text editor in QT and one in GTK, and made them both static executables, which executable would be bigger. Then you have to say which one was quicker to develop.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
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
I have been watching the development versions of Gimp for months, and I can say that there have been a ton of improvements in the UI and functionality of Gimp. For all the naysayers I recommend that they check out the release candidate of Gimp 2.4, which is included on development Ubuntu live CDs and possibly fedora. These improvements, along with the massive scripting potential, give the more-than-casual Gimp user something worthwhile to work with.
Gimp has had a horrible UI from the beginning. I trace it all back to the sucktastic GTK widget set. Everything I've seen made with GTK seems to be hideous looking and lack any sense of usability. As much as C++ sucks, at least Qt seems to have been designed rather than carelessly agglomerated.
The Mac version needs an OS X interface. The current version uses X11 and is just frighteningly unusable, having no commonality any with other Mac software. It's so bad, I'd rather pay $50 for a less capable image editor than suffer the Gimp.
ShoutingMan.com
Try this: http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/4279/cleangimpguihf1.png and see if it is of any use to you.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
This is where open source fails. A feature list is not a design. Design by committee is usually terrible. Open source programs that aren't clones of some product tend to have poor user interface design.
And no, adding the ability to have "skins" does not improve the interface.
Quit screwing with the UI and add CMYK support. I'm not talking about some half baked script- real CMYK support from the bottom-up.
word.
Since Gimp is mostly a user interface to the GTK, it makes sense that it be skinnable. That way people who want simple one button redeye reduction, trivial scaling cropping and simple borders can do that with the Gimp-easy interface, and people who want all the other stuff can use Gimp-max. In fact, why not gimp-graph, gimp-cartoon, gimp-lolcats, and vector-gimp too?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I do an awful lot of web-design work, so I've of necessity had to pick up the basics of doing graphics. As much as I love supporting OSS, Photoshop's overpriced ass still has a spot on my hard-drive, because it doesn't make me spend 20 minutes struggling with a damned unintuitive interface just to fiddle the colours on a button-graphic. There's a reason Photoshop - and indeed, pretty much no other program out there that I can think of - requires you to have multiple active windows open to do even the simplest thing - it's annoying, confusing and unintuitive. I shouldn't have to go looking in the task-bar for the blasted toolset. It should be right in front of me.
Seriously, one window people - make things like Layers and the Toolset simple toolbars within that window. Make them hideable or shrinkable or dockable or whatever - it's nice to have things not cluttering up screen real-estate when you're working on an image - but stop making things disappear whenever I change windows - it's not any more useful or powerful, and all it's really doing is pissing me off. I mean, heck, even MS Paint - a program both useless and virtually unchanged since I first used Windows (3.1) manages to get this right.
And if sticking it all in one window really is out of the question, then please, for the love of god, give me an 'Always on top' option, and when I have one Gimp window open, have them all open.
Qt takes a long time to compile, but wxWidgets is worse (and it's just an add-on to GTK+!).
It just so happens I've got to update all three right now, so I may as well time them...
I've tried that, but my resolution isn't that great, so I end up losing half of the bar, and I actually like the layers on the right side. Just putting the windows in a single container would help alot though.
Thanks though.
I can tolerate lots of bad UI decisions in the F/OSS realm knowing that they're designed by a committee of programmers, usually with no formal education in design, but GIMP takes the cake as the ugliest mainstream open source application. It's confusing, the menus look like something out of 80's and the palette management is awful.
There is a high probability that I will get attacked for this, but asking the community for input on how to redesign the interface is no different from developers just implementing it over IRC as an afterthought.
GIMP needs professionals who know a thing or two about HIG and general usability. Here's a modest proposal - instead of asking the users how to change the interface they should ask users for donations for a fund that would bring in a person who has done something like this before, preferably an ex-Apple designer who has first-hand knowledge on what it takes to make applications usable and visually appealing.
They could even compromise with an arbitrator. Have some professionals submit draft proposals, gather the comments and suggestions from the userbase and then leave it to one person who will consider both and rule accordingly. That's just common sense to me.
The biggest problem with solicitation of advice from users is that a small and vocal minority will submit their visions and this will leave a large portion of users out of the process. One has to think beyond the current user base when trying to overhaul the look and feel of the app.
xv is shareware that lets you download the source. Still, I'd bet imagemagick is fairly popular
What happened to SDI rocks, die you filthy MDI scumbags?
Sorry, but you are wrong. According to what I read on the mailing lists and what I see in the ChangeLog files, Carol does not contribute to open source. She had started a redesign of the web site several years ago, but then gave up and others had to pick up the pieces that she left behind (of course she accused the others of "destroying her work" after she quit but this is a different story). I have not seen any significant contribution from Carol in the last two or three years, or maybe even more. Her only contributions seem to be rants, complaints and other things that drive people away from GIMP. She has some nice tutorials on her private web site, but she does not include them in the GIMP web site so I do not think that she is interested in any contribution to GIMP or open source, contrary to what you wrote.
There are several other women contributing to GIMP and open source. And they are praised for their contributions. If you look in the GIMP ChangeLog, you will probably see several contributions from edhel (Karine Delvare). Several other women contribute tutorials or help users in various forums. On the other hand, many users (men or women) describe Carol as being a poisonous person. So I do not think that there is any sexism involved here.
SeaShore might be what you want: http://seashore.sourceforge.net/screenshot.php
It apparently is based on GIMP but has an OS X interface.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
I think GIMP has a lot of potential - especially given the functionality they do have. But they have in the past been so uptight about changing the UI, and the UI was the one big thing keeping me from using it. Hopefully they will come up with some more intuitive to the non-GIMP-geek, non-Developer person.
The one thing I really do hope they adopt with the MDI within an SDI (e.g. like Eclipse and and Visual Studios to name a couple examples). It just makes it so much easier to operate when the toolbars dock to the program window and you don't have to pop all over to different windows to do stuff.
So, I'll wait and see what they come up with...perhaps they'll even see this on Slashdot and incorportate Slashdot's comments (not likely...but possible...)..and then I'll check into using it again.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Why not have some easily editable script control the creation of the GUI.
Then to make it even better, allow users to easily (id est with just a couple of clicks) share their custom GUIs at www.mygimpgui.org and rate other people's submissions.
I've used some "real" PhotoShop in the past, but my main graphics tool has always been an old copy of PaintShop Pro 4.
:-), that does away with all the layer stuff (transparency can be handy though), simply allows me to manipulate photo's (touch-up work, cut-paste, cropping, rotating, that's all) and nothing else.
On my Linux/Solaris boxes I started using GIMP since it came out and still I've trouble doing with it the most basic stuff. I guess that is because it's much more oriented towards PhotoShop, with its layers, transparencies, objects, etc. and not similar to simpler programs like PsP or Paint.
And that's OK as long as the advanced features don't stand in the way of simple operation, but here it does. Let me give an example: if I need to draw a filled rectangle, I'm used to select a foreground color, select a 'rectangle' tool, drag a box and voila, I've my colored box. Not so in GIMP, maybe it's there somewhere hidden, but after years of usage I still haven't found it. The closest I've come is to select a rectangle region, than select the color, fill the region and then I've to merge that object with the background. Something like that. Which in my eyes is way too complex for the simple job that needs to be done.
So I think I prabably would like a mini-Gimp program (named "Gimpie"?
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Linux image manipulation program!!! And the acronym is still pronounceable!!! Uh... wait...
Maybe they got it from emacs!
Thats a ugly workaround, not a solution.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Try a
instead. (You might need to first.)Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Well, I get it from my distro on Linux but I do compile it for Windows. Honestly, I don't know what your problem is, because I don't have it... it's got plenty compile-flags but most are for "don't support - plugin - compile in" and don't need messing with. YMMV.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From the blog:
But eye candy is not what we need. What's wrong with the GIMP has nothing to do with the visual interface. It has to do with workflow, or rather work-barriers. Shortcut keys need to be consistent and intuitive (if alt- modifies tool A in way X, then alt- should modify tool B in way X as well). Focus needs to switch to the right window when you close another window or dialog; for each and every combination of possibly open windows and dialogs. When you're working on a project in the GIMP, the user interface is something you shouldn't have to think about; it should be something which just allows you to focus on your work, and to get that work done as swiftly as possible. Both when you're working exclusively with the mouse, or exclusively with the keyboard, or using a combination of both.
I have around 400 gigs of Photoshop files. GIMP is completely and totally worthless to me until it can open and save every single last one of them (the vast majority having been created with Photoshop 5 or 5.5), including full support for all blending modes, masks, color modes, and fonts.
.doc support. Why does GIMP's .psd support suck so much ass? The goal here shouldn't just be grabbing new users, it should be trying to sway or convert established, deeply entrenched users of other software. I can't use the GIMP not for any gui reasons (there's plenty of gui reasons, but if nobody used ugly or badly designed apps, then neither linux nor windows would have ANY marketshare) but for the simple fact that it doesn't open my damned documents. Even if I were to switch, I'd still have to keep PS around for working with my thousands of older documents.
OpenOffice has
So. Fix that. Please!
Problems with the GUI? Easy, make it web enabled, you know a little Javascript here a little javascript there... and voila your browser is your friendly graphics program.
Just don't tell this to Google!.
Yes, yes yes just kidding.
What's in a sig?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Just FYI:
wxWidgets for Mac OS X (wxMac) uses the Carbon API. (Carbon is the procedural Mac native application programming API for both Classic and OS X, Cocoa is object oriented and builds on Carbon, but is only for OS X.)
http://www.wxwidgets.org/manuals/stable/wx_wxmacport.html
### You still didn't specify your OS
Because its completly irrelevant, the problem is within the Gimp (or well, GTKs lack for MDI support), not the OS.
### Multiple windows do have uses
Yes, but they are also extremely annoying for *simple* tasks, trying to find dialog boxes that hide behind images windows simply isn't fun, a single-window mode (a real one, not Xnest hacks) would fix that instantly. This complaint has been around since as long as the Gimp, its really nothing new.
Gimp's interface is violently different from OS X applications, and so loses tremendous functionality. This is mere color coordination of buttons, but user-hostile interface design.
ShoutingMan.com
Ginp Is Not Photoshop?
Dude, I'm running gentoo on a 1.2 GHz K7, and I don't know what you're talking about. Compiling qt isn't like compiling gcc. Install it and forget it.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Maybe future GIMP can have a user selectable UI, "Classic" and "New". People having grown accustomed to a UI is usually reluctant to changes, especially if they are old. LOL ;)
But seriously, I have about as hard time adjusting to the GIMP UI as a OpenOffice.org fanboy with a Bill Gates voodoo doll has to adapting to the Office 2007 UI.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
### HIGs differ on different platforms
Yep, and when the application can't adopt, its a problem of the app.
### not gimp, which adopts the suggested SDI convention for the platform
Gimp doesn't adopt, it simply does its own thing, which seems to be CSDI, which the Gnome HID of course also does not recommend and also Gimp isn't a Gnome up to begin with, to this day it doesn't use a single gnome lib.
The GIMP gui is something you can live with. But there are some other user interface quirks that really make things hard.
The selection tool is probably the biggest problem. If I am just making a new selection or adding to an older one, the selection is made corner-to-corner. But.. If I am removing parts of the selection, it is suddenly made from center towards the sides, which makes it almost impossible being as precise as one would want to be. There might be a way to change this behaviour, but I have yet to find out what that way would be.
Another thing I hate is that to draw a circle I must far make a selection and then choose something weirdly named from the menu to have a line. Also the way straight lines are drawn could be more intuitive..
Though, also the GUI does have its flaws.. Who wants to have to bring the windows to the front by choosing them one at a time by alt-tab? Why not do it like mac does it - you just select the program and all its windows jump up. And no, the user will not want to have a dark gray background behind the windows. That gray colour blocking my desktop was something I had always hated in Windows image manipulation programs and that I was positively surprised to see missing when I switched my ubuntu to osx.
In any case, having to fight with some stupid UI issues while trying to do some simple things is a lot bigger problem than how some buttons are placed in a dialog.
Where have your banknotes been?!
I actually like the current UI as it is. Actually, even my (quite low-tech) father found it to be more intuitive and less scary than Adobe Photoshop CS2's UI when he saw them both for the first time.
The first step to being cured is being able to cut through the denial and admit that you have a problem. Hats off the the GIMP folks for taking this first, difficult step.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
oops, left out a word.
It will go open source, GPL, in two days (if as promised) and promises native gui on whatever platform you like! Ok, at least the widgets, if I got that right.
Check out http://www.openlina.org/ before you decide too much.
Still, I understand that that should have only marginally to do with the planning you now have. Whatever you do, please try to use a (an "an" for some parts of the world) "hybrid" between MacOS and Vista apps. That would make the large, global, user base easier to entice!!! While evaluating the proposals, remember that the less hassle in the transition from Windows/MacOS for the uninitiated to free operating systems the better!
-
http://krecipes.sourceforge.net/
Yes you can!
I compile QT for windows, and it typically takes a few hours. Slightly annoying, but QT is well worth it.
However, most of that time is spent compiling examples, demos, internationalization tools, qt-specific build tools, etc. If you disable the compilation of the examples and demos it takes significantly less time to compile.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I've been using GIMP as long as I've used Linux (possibly slightly longer, can't recall), about 9 years or so. Every time I've mentioned "The GIMP" [means "weird, idiotic, crippled"] to people they've said "what? what's it called?". Gimp is derogatory and offensive. It's like calling it "The Wanker" [means "one who masturbates excessively"], that sort of level. I'm not happy about mentioning it to people because of the name.
People say "did you do this in photoshop?", I say "no I used Inkscape and another program, on Linux".
How about PhotoGIM ("photo-gym" where images get a work out and come out fitter for the purpose!).
I guess I'm just another voice echoing in the wilderness.
That's very interesting. The Gimp version I got ran in X11 and looked like this:
http://screencast.com/t/PqI2XiJn0
What you show is quite decent looking. I'll have to look for that.
ShoutingMan.com
I'm a fairly serious amateur photographer, and I used The GIMP almost religiously (on Linux) for a number of years. But I finally outgrew it and switched to Photoshop (and bought a Mac on which to run it, 'cause I simply can't abide Windows). Here are some of the reasons:
Adjustment layers. The GIMP needs adjustment layers just to be taken seriously, in my opinion. I cannot overstate the power, convenience, and usefulness of adjustment layers.
16-bit color support. 8-bit just doesn't cut it.
Alternate color spaces. (And not just CYMK.) This is an absolute must if you're at all serious about printing photos.
Better B&W support. Photoshop's support for grayscale is outstanding. It has features The GIMP simply does not have, such as a more intuitive channel mixer; the Calculations feature; a new CS3 B&W adjustment layer (which effing rocks); a photo filter adjustment layer (useful for toning the final B&W); support for duotone, tritone and quadtone (albeit only in 8-bit mode), with a full suite of built-in Pantone filters.
Better RAW support. Photoshop's Camera RAW capability just gets better and better. Before I switched to Photoshop, I purchased the BibblePro tool (which runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) because of its outstanding RAW support. At that point, I still planned to stick with The GIMP, but I actually paid for a commercial tool because The GIMP's RAW support just doesn't cut it. (I still use Bibble.)
Photoshop's healing brush, CS3's quick selection tool, and a host of other tools make selections and other common manipulation tasks easier than they are in The GIMP.
Photoshop's history palette. If you've used it, you know what I mean.
Recordable actions. They work like macro recording in your favorite text editor: Turn it on, and it records what you do until you turn it off. And you can save the macros. I created a Contrast Mask macro in 10 seconds; it's now available to me whenever I need it, at the press of a button. I'm a professional programmer, so writing a GIMP plug-in isn't especially scary for me. But it still would've taken me longer to create the same kind of plug-in for The GIMP, and it would've been a lot more annoying to do. (Yeah, I know The GIMP already has a Contrast Mask plug-in. That's not my point.)
Workflow support. Photoshop works well with Bridge, which eases the workflow when you have 200 images from a shoot that you have to sift through, before deciding which one(s) to spend serious time working.
Commonality of terminology. I participate on some photo enthusiast web sites, and I frequently read tutorials on image manipulation. They are, almost without exception, Photoshop-oriented. I got tired of trying to translate Photoshop into GIMP. Even if The GIMP doesn't support all the features Photoshop does (and, frankly, I don't see how it'll catch up any time soon), the features it does support should be supported as closely as possible the way Photoshop does them. These tools are so complicated that even the pros refer to tutorials. If those tutorials and tricks could be more readily applied to The GIMP, without the necessary head-scratching translations that are often necessary, it sure would help.
HDR. I don't do HDR very often, but when I need to do it, I sure can't do it with The GIMP.
Stitching. Photoshop's stitching plug-ins are surprisingly good. Again, as with HDR, it's not a feature I use every day, but when I need it, nothing else will do.
I'm sure I could come up with others, but those are the ones that leap immediately to mind.
I like The GIMP; it's installed on every desktop I use. It's also installed on my Mac laptop. It's damned useful for plenty of image-related tasks. But it doesn't hold a candle to Photoshop, and until it supports at least a large subset of the above capabilities, it hasn't a prayer of being taken seriously by most photographers.
Gimp doesn't come with a free graphics tablet, but neither does Photoshop.
A very nice Wacom Graphire4 4x5 USB Tablet can be had for $92.83 http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Graphire4-4x5-Tablet-Silver/dp/B000BBCTHU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002-0328201-5263211?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1189909906&sr=8-2
It comes with Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 and Corel Painter Essentials 2. These two free programs are much better than Gimp. No source code, but the price is very competitive.
It's time to Pimp the Gimp!
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
that they should be out and out cloning photoshop. Lets not kid ourselves, photoshop's design is good, and gimp hasn't had much success on coming up with their own independently. Places where they've deviated from photoshop in the past have been a mistake.
You're forgetting something.
GTK stands for (drum roll) The Gimp ToolKit.
So uh, I think a switch to wxWidgets or QT is the LAST thing they're gonna do, seeing as they created it in the first place.
What's lacking is a better native-toolkit engine for Windows and OSX, one that just shunts to the local system, rather than trying to emulate the local look. (On X11, you use the GTK engine the rest of your desktop is using, i.e. clearlooks)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
apart from the alternatives.
I cant figure out freeserifsoftware.com - right next to the "Its all FREE!!!" "amazing VALUE!!!" banner there is a "buy online" banner. "Visit our AMAZING SHOP!!! Save $$$ where they try and sell you stuff that is also free? and have a ridiculously high "original price" discounted with ridiculous margins. Sorry, but the site alone hit many of my red flags.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Its OSS, you can code your own Blood Fill if its that important to you! -- All Too Common OSS Advocate
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Photoshop does the same thing.
I never understood the point of these huge, monolithic libraries. They're a bitch to maintain & if you want to use an improved aspect in PART of the library (e.g. a better database interface), you often must upgrade ALL uses of the library that you might be happy with (e.g. the GUI). In Open Sources 2.0, Chris DiBona states "when developing, I like to use large libraries only when I either don't want to deal with a technology, or I don't fully understand it and don't feel qualified to implement it." It seems that many *nix hackers feel similarly about userland tools. So why is QT so popular?
QT, and similar all encompassing libraries are popular because they provide consistency and homeogenity. I still believe in third party libraries, but only if they bring something to the table. The fact is most of us use some wrapper around expat to deal with XML, and our development platforms standard database interface. What QT gives us is a single API. We simply get everyone to compile QT, and everyone can develop QT software.
Look at .NET and Java. They have two advantages over C++. The first is garbage collection, and the second is an all encompassing API. C++ tried to address this with the STL, but the STL only deals with thing like linked lists, hashtables, etc. QT and wxWidgets deal with higher level concerns, and therefore speed up development much more.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
I really dont like how GIMP makes each toolbar a new window, it clutters up the task bar. Each toolbar should be within the program itself similar to how PhotoShop handles this. Thats one thing that has always bugged me.
Yes, "a name redesign" is definately needed.
I've demonstrated GIMP to several people unfamiliar with open source and the typical reaction is either laughter or lack of interest no matter how useful the software is. Like it or not marketing does play a role in product use and GIMP leaves a negative impression no matter what "dog and pony show" you provide to its usefulness.
Few people will be inclined to buy a car called "Cheap Looser GT". Few will adopt a software package called "GIMP".
to repost from earlier
Exactly. ...having discussed things on the GIMP Usability Forum, it's obvious that the GIMP developers (to misquote Kanye West) don't care about designer people.
The general attitude is "We're not going to change anything because even though the similarity of constant anecdotal 'complaints' may actually constitute user testing, we refuse to believe it until someone does systematic user testing." Of course, imgimp is the answer to their request, but automated testing does nothing. They're missing the point that assisted user testing is needed, where you give someone a mock up and ask them where they expect to find things, and how they expect to do things. What they've been getting, in droves, is people who are GIVING THEM THIS EXACT INFORMATION, in forums, in blogs, in wikis and slashdot posts. Things like "Why are script-fu and filters two different things?" and "what are Xtns?" not to mention "Why does the palette take up so much space?". Then there's the whole MDI/SDI thing. The horrible fact is that the GIMP is an MDI application. There is a shared set of tools that act on multiple document windows. Gasp. Unfortunately most X window managers have no idea what this means, and the concept of 'tool windows' is meaningless (i.e.: if I have 8 tool windows open, I have 8 task items in my task bar, and sometimes you have to click-to-focus and click-to-invoke on a non-focused window).
There are some very simple things the GIMP developers could do to fix the application:
For the love of God, do some paper testing.
Get real designers, and I don't care if they're familiar with Photoshop... hell, Adobe just redesigned the damn thing on us so it's not like we're shocked by the New. Get them and sit them down with paper mockups and ask them how to do common design tasks, common painting tasks, common editing tasks.
Admit that a lot of us have done this already ourselves. Sure a lot of it seems to you to be "oh that's just because they know photoshop", but damnit man, it's not photoshop we know, it's everything. Photoshop, MacPaint, ColorIt! (yeah, I said it), PhotoDraw, whatever. There is a common language to these tools and you keep trying to miss it just to be different.
Look again at this [lostgarden.com]... especially the part about "All that touchy-feely junk is the main reason why people are bu
Well, as I think I said, it's been about 18 months since I last used Serif, so things might have changed. What I recall is that the original download was free altough I did get emails from them about their other not-so-free products; but since those emails were going to my occasional-use-only hotmail account, I didn't find them too troubling. However, it was only slightly later that Microsoft decided to "allow" me to "fix" my computer by adding WGA--I immediately changed to Kubuntu and haven't looked at Paint.net or Serif until then.
No - that doesn't really measure anything at all. Suppose the Foo version automatically pulled in 5x the functionality, network filesystems, subpixel antialiasing, native Linux, Windows, and Mac build options. Then suppose that the Bar version gets you antialiasing and the possibility to maybe compile it on another platform as long as you haven't used and system-specific features. Would you still call the first bloated if it was bigger after static compilation, or would you say it's more featureful?
Now suppose that an updated version of Bar throws in a BitTorrent client, video transcoding, a screensaver, and dancing clowns. If it still compiles smaller than Foo's version, would you still call it less bloated?
Finally, suppose that Foo and Bar are functionally identical. Foo is written in a clear, easy-to-maintain generalized style. Bar is written in prematurely optimized spaghetti code and requires a PhD in informatics and a Turing Test-level AI to modify. Foo's editor is 10% bigger than Bar's but is more stable and more actively developed because regular humans can approach it. Would you still call it more bloated?
Size without context is nothing. It provides data but not information. Everyone hates bloat, but it's not at all obvious that size is the only way to measure it, or even a good one.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No - that doesn't really measure anything at all. Suppose the Foo version automatically pulled in 5x the functionality, network filesystems, subpixel antialiasing, native Linux, Windows, and Mac build options. Then suppose that the Bar version gets you antialiasing and the possibility to maybe compile it on another platform as long as you haven't used and system-specific features. Would you still call the first bloated if it was bigger after static compilation, or would you say it's more featureful?
Your absolutely right. However, I had to deal with a simpler definition of bloat. I think my definition was slightly more accurate than "bloat is how long it takes me to compile the gentoo package."
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Part of the pain of using GIMP is having to load every module at start time, which can take ages. Highly annoying if all I wanted to actually do was view a JPEG image because GIMP has the file association.
It would be much better if the app tested to see if the module is loaded before proceeding with its operation and loading it if it's not present. Would no doubt save some RAM too.
As far as I know, every professional image tool does that. GIMP is not a viewer, e.g. people using Photoshop CS on OS X are also using/buying Graphic Converter to view and quick fix stuff such as EXIF.Of course there could be a seperate GIMPView bundled with the distro.
Is that every time I tried it, it opened a ton of windows on the PC desktop. Instead of "windows in windows" like so many other PC programs.
When every I mentioned that I was usually attacked by scores of linux fans who were pointing out that Windows sucks and that the PC sucks and that any proper OS needs to have window managers and that it wasn't a problem with the program but that I was stupid enough to use a stupid OS and oh, did they mention that Windows sucks...
However I see in that blog there is a screenshot of application window in a host window, in what appears to be a Windows environment so perhaps someone has changed their point of view.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Fair enough. Arguing bloat with a stereotypical Gentoo ricer is like arguing toxins with a hippie. Both groups love being the ones who see How Things Really Are.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It's not supposed to be about what the app needs, but what the user needs.
That's a jesuitical argument if ever I read one. So let me try and put this in words that fit your bible: If the user needs different behavior from different apps, then the user needs the app to be able to specify which behavior it needs.
AFAIK, if by "select," you mean "select from a menu," then no.
No, I mean "select in any way, through any preference, in any window manager, anywhere." Not through writing a program in Scheme or other configuration language, or by editing a text file, but by doing something that the target market for the program (artists) would be expected to do when you're trying to convince them that they should be able to switch from Photoshop on Windows or Mac to Gimp on free UNIX.
And note that I am not saying that's the desirable situation. I'm saying that's the absolute most yak shaving I can imagine people being willing to put up with.
X supplies "mechanism, not policy."
I know. I thought that was a pretty cool idea too, 20 years ago, when I first ran into it. The flipside is that it means that the application and the window manager DO provide policy, for the parts of the interface that they're responsible for. So the fact that X doesn't is irrelevant, and that argument is a complete red herring. We're not arguing about whether X provides policy, we're arguing about whether the application or the window manager should be doing so in this case.
If the protocol doesn't allow the application to specify the policy the window manager should be implementing, then that's a flaw that needs to be addressed.
A user ought to be able to maintain a single set of configurations applicable to all applications (employing specific rules if neccessary), without worrying about certain apps not listening.
And if the user needs the application to request specific behavior (such as not having a title bar) then it can request it. The window manager may or may not grant that request, but IT CAN REQUEST IT. In this case the user needs the application be able to request whether a set of windows are to be treated as a unit for layering, because that's how the equivalent applications on Windows and Mac OS behave. If it can't do that, then the user has to go through a bunch of yak shaving... and they won't DO that. They'll stick to Photoshop on their Wintel boxes and Macs.
You are, in the name of the user, demanding the users that this whole argument is about NOT get what they need.
That is awesome, but I've been using the GIMP for 3 years and didn't know. Furthermore, the defaults should just be right from the get go. Not having delete delete stuff is retarded. Seriously, wtf?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
No individual is more valuable than the community.
"Follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind.
Rather, IMO, if the user needs different behavior from different apps, then the user needs to specify to the window manager which behavior it needs. Having the app do it is backwards.
Honestly, I don't understand what people's hangup about editing config files is. Text files are far more flexible than menus, and often easier to understand. Most users are smarter than we give them credit for, and smarter than they give themselves credit for. After the initial shock, most of them would actually become far more proficient if they just had to use text files for a while and stopped letting the system dumb everything down for them.
In such a case, the user should request it himself, without having to go through the app. To have the app request it leads to conflicts, and is more complicated for the user to maintain.
Where's the harm in that, anyhow? If someone if more comfortable with a Mac than a more flexible form of Unix, then I wouldn't want them to switch. There is no one-size-fits-all OS. There shouldn't be, either. I try to steer people away from Microsoft, because I think there are significant technical reasons for doing so, but I have advised beginning-to-intermediate computer users to buy a Mac before, because that's what MacOS is good at: coddling newbies. Once such a system is more restricting than you want, you can move on to something more challenging, like BSD or Linux. I don't see a problem with Unix (other than MacOS) being considered a system for advanced users, at least as far as the home desktop is concerned.
Rather, IMO, if the user needs different behavior from different apps, then the user needs to specify to the window manager which behavior it needs. Having the app do it is backwards.
Why? The user is not a computer expert. The user is a graphic artist.
Honestly, I don't understand what people's hangup about editing config files is.
I've been a command line guy for 30 years, so don't expect me to explain it. It doesn't matter what the hangup is, because whatever you or I think it's a good idea or not is irrelevant... it's a real hangup, and it has to be accommodated for free UNIX to succeed on the desktop.
In such a case, the user should request it [an unmanaged window] himself, without having to go through the app.
And yet in X11 THE APPLICATION REQUESTS IT, NOT THE USER. Look up overrideRedirect.
Where's the harm in that, anyhow?
Finding a couple years from now that the open source app you're looking at on freshmeat only runs on Windows.
If the user isn't willing to develop the level of competence that Unix requires, then the user should probably not be using Unix. I'm not sure if I want Unix to be a success on the desktop if it means we have to dumb the system down.
I didn't say the application can't request it (I also wasn't speaking specifically of unmanaged windows, but focus/layering behavior in general), I said that the ideal is for the user to be able to set behavior for individual app in the WM configurations that the app's requests won't override. Ideally, the app shouldn't care what how its window behaves or what it looks like.
Given that the applications we're talking about were around before the current commercial fad surrounding Linux, I seriously doubt that will happen. Besides, given how sick I am of seeing software that only runs on Linux, and either not natively or not at all on BSD (which is inexcusable - if you're going to write Unix code, make it proper, portable Unix code, without tying it to a particular kernel), it will be nothing new. OSS isn't going to kill Windows. If Windows dies it will be because of its own problems, and it will be to MacOS, not anything else.
If the user isn't willing to develop the level of competence that Unix requires, then the user should probably not be using Unix. I'm not sure if I want Unix to be a success on the desktop if it means we have to dumb the system down.
The first major UNIX installation outside Bell Labs was as a user-friendlier system for secretaries in a legal office. UNIX is not inherently user hostile.
Now, X11 is user hostile, but X11 is not UNIX. The X Window System is a cross platform system, originally developed on VMS and UNIX concurrently, and it has very little in common with any *real* UNIX API... it was designed as a testbed for GUI design, and the "no policy" principles came from that. Those principles are not actually all that useful, even for experts, other than people doing research into user interface design.
And the second biggest desktop right now is UNIX. Mac OS X. That's UNIX, it's not dumbed down, and it's real friendly. Mostly because the user interface on top of it isn't designed for GUI researchers, it's designed for end users.
Well, free UNIX seems to be stuck with X11. But it doesn't have to be stuck with X11's flaws. Given a standard window manager that provides the hooks needed by real applications and non-technical users, it'd have a chance.
WITHOUT being "dumbed down".
Besides, given how sick I am of seeing software that only runs on Linux, and either not natively or not at all on BSD
Personally, I'm sick of software that requires X11, even if you only want to install the command line version, so the irony is thick enough to slice.