Blender is fantastic
GIMP needs a total overhaul by designers. The image processing is fine, plugin ecosystem is good too, but the interface needs to be updated to include concepts that have changed.
For example you can’t add an outline around text, it’s very much a raster editor with layers, when most workflows benefit from vector concepts.
Gimp is great for when you need photoshop, but aren’t doing it as your job, and don’t want to sail the seven seas.
Also, Fwiw when I want to outline text in gimp i select a text path, make a new layer, select from path, expand the selected area 2px, then fill (oh and move the layer behind the text layer). Unike in photoshop where theres like… one step, iirc.
Yeah I agree, I used to use it when I was a student who couldn’t afford photoshop and I was able to create some awesome graphics.
Once I got used to photoshop (I used it from CS2 to CS5) I couldn’t get back into GIMP. The hot keys and mental model were just so much better in PS and PS clones.
I’d rather use photopea a quadruple time before installing GIMP.
Hell I even use Ps CS2 at work because Adobe unlocked the activation (and Adobe removed the page from the archive. org with the unlock keys) for free.
Great enough for the few graphics I want to do and at home I use properly sailed goods.
GIMP needs a total overhaul by designers.
Isn’t that what GIMP 3.0 is going for? It’s not out yet, but it is a big overhaul.
I’m not sure, but that’s exciting if so
GIMP UI as is hasn’t changed much in 20 years.
I remember GIMPshop being a thing back in the day. It was much easier for me, but it was abandoned ages ago. PhotoGIMP is fine, but it’s missing a lot of the QoL stuff that makes Photoshop better.
And their invented forced onto you file system 🤢you can’t open a jpg, change sonething and then you jhave to dance around the export, nit save when clising etc etc. Why devs, why?
Would be super cool if they got things up just a bit.
No, regrettably there won’t be a major UI overhaul as part of GIMP 3, it’s very much under-the-hood improvements. From what I’ve seen, the maintainers are very open to a UI overhaul, but they don’t have the right contributors to do it in a significant way.
That said, functionality like text outlines aren’t really a UI/UX feature in the main.
I’m trying blender every some years, last time the UX was super crappy as usual, like it’s impossible to make a 2cm cube. Have it changed lately?
I don’t use it often so I have to go through YouTube tutorials to recall things.
You can definitely make a 2cm cube by just typing “2cm” into the dimensions.
The interface is like vim though, it’s a modal editor and learning/using the hot keys is essential.
To do the cube thing: The whole process would be something like press “c” to open the create interface, select cube, scroll down the properties on the right hand menu and input your dimensions. I think you can also access them in the top right of the viewer.
I’m probably wrong on my hot keys since I have used it in two years or so.
Thanks, now I’ll have to try it again :-D
My workflow is (I still will use 3dsmax for rigging & animation) make cubes, tubes and other simple geometry, set them at specific positions, do boolean operations.
Moving the vertices would be nice too but that would be a start.
I mean the UI of every 3d software is crap until you get used to it.
Blender relies on keyboard shortcuts, so follow some tutorials to learn what the shortcuts are. It’s not intuitive at all but it does become efficient once you learn them.
You can easily add an outline around text in gimp once you learn the process.
Give me a minutes, I’ll type it out.
Sorry, work got in the way.
To do this, select the text layer.
Right click, click Alpha to selection.
Voila, you have a text shaped selection mask.
Krita is also fantastic and better than most closed source drawing software
KiCAD is also getting almost as good as some of the closed source ECAD software and is definitely good enough for small companies not doing flex designs. It is by far the best hobbyist-targeted ECAD
Libre office is perfect now for small companies. It is only missing a couple of small office features. Maybe PowerPoint power users would have a hard time making morph animations
Bitwarden is pretty much the best-in-class password manager for companies too
OBS is the gold standard for streaming
VLC is also the gold standard for media players
Bitwarden is the only one that has SaaS backing and the rest is volunteer driven, but with different funding models.
I hope by 2030 KiCAD and FreeCAD will be much more prolific in the professional space for small companies.
I am a very irregular user, but last few times I checked there were much better options to Gimp for people like me. Photopea is where I turn to, but I think there are others. Works from the browser, functions similarly enough that you can find help and tutorials very easily, pretty light.
I’m sure it’s different for heavier users, but a lot of the really heavy users will probably prefer the paid tool anyway, as their use makes the price tag less of an issue. So the target for something like gimp might just have dwindled into something too small to get the momentum back. No?