Gimp 2.8 frustrated me: I could no longer open a .png, edit it and easily resave it back to .png. The Gimp developers knew better and made the UI strongly favor saving as .xcf, which makes sense in some use-cases, but not mine.
I realize that this is common UX jargon, but is it literally "painful" to click "File->Export" rather than "File->Save"?
I frequently hear front-end developer peers arguing that it's "painful" to read 10 or 20 lines of XML. Back-end peers retort that it's more "painful" to look at large complex structures in JSON.
There's a hundred other cases in which this comes up. Are people really walking around in crippling pain, due to various software having trivial differences from their ideal preference?
>> I realize that this is common UX jargon, but is it literally "painful" to click "File->Export" rather than "File->Save"?
One can also make that statement to the person who decided the default save format should be different from the one the user opened. IMHO most people want to save in the format they started with and if they want to change it, something other than "save" is warranted.
This isn't just a problem with Gimp. It's a problem with Photoshop and basically every discipline where there's a bunch of file formats that have varying levels of support for features.
"Open" would then more correctly called "Import" for most file formats. If you want Open and Save to work with all file formats, you'd then need to restrict the UI to operations that work with the file format you have open. Otherwise, you lose data when saving.
>> IMHO most people want to save in the format they started with and if they want to change it, something other than "save" is warranted.
Most people when they save a file expect everything to be there when they open it later. That's only possible when you save using that applications proprietary file format.
If I open a PNG in Photoshop, crop it or resize it, it stays in PNG when I save it. This is such a common workflow that it makes me wonder if you use Photoshop.
I understand your points, but it doesn't mean that there aren't pragmatic UX choices to be made here.
This. It is far too common for applications to default to saving their own .special format, despite opening another fully supported format. Save should always default to file type opened, and .special format when a new file was created. Save As is an easy and friendly enough vector for allowing saving that opened .whatever file as a .special when specifically wanted. It really is unfriendly increased mental load to open a .whatever and have to remember or figure out you must Export to retain your file type.
> I realize that this is common UX jargon, but is it literally "painful" to click "File->Export" rather than "File->Save"?
The main problem I have with it IS the fact that you have to use the mouse. There's no keyboard shortcut (at least on Mac version of Gimp). If you open a .png file, there's no keyboard shortcut to export it (overwrite). You can invoke the "export as" dialog which requires a couple more key presses and a context switch. Once you save it via menu, then the Command+E shortcut starts working, but for the first save not. As someone who works a lot with Gimp, this is the main usability problem I have.
If I open a .png, and done things to it, and I want to save it, it's because I just want to save a .png. If I wanted to have another format I would "import" the .png, not open it.
If I want to save something else, then I'll go to the save as... And will choose what I want to save.
Having a "save as..." that just gives me the proprietary format and hanging to go to the "export as..." to have other formats is even worst.
> I realize that this is common UX jargon, but is it literally "painful" to click "File->Export" rather than "File->Save"?
I found it mildly annoying at first but then I learnt that the luckily export function has a keyboard shortcut. I can accept that I have to press ctrl+shift+e to export an image ;)
XML IS actually more painful than JSON: There's more syntax, and it looks less distinct, especially if it's not properly indented. JSON look a lot cleaner, and the extra metadata that XML provides is rarely needed for casual reading.
Possibly, the more clicking needed to achieve a task does put more strain on your hands which can cause pain. I believe this is why for example VI key bindings are designed to reduce the distance your hands must extend for most common tasks. Reading extra text, XML or JSON can also cause additional eye strain... I think that is why it's okay to describe UX in terms of less or more pain...
No it's not the same amount of clicking. From Gimp 2.7 to 2.8 something that used to be ctrl-s and close window went to ctrl-shift-e, and answering four dialog boxes before getting the image saved and the window closed. Around the time Gimp 2.8 came out, I wanted to edit and save around 50 images (in away that wasn't easy to automate). That (without the plugin that gives the old behavior) would be 200 dialog boxes to deal with that I didn't have to before.
No it wasn't literally painful. But frustrating. Nearly as frustrating as people not accepting that people legitimately use software in different ways.
> I realize that this is common UX jargon, but is it literally "painful" to click "File->Export" rather than "File->Save"?
Anecdotally, this would often just outright segfault GIMP for me. I ended up having to use a different image editing program entirely until this was fixed.
Photoshop will save in the original format unless you do something to the image that isn't supported in that format (e.g. adding vectors, layers, layer filters, etc.) Then it will switch to .psd, although you still get the option of saving in the original format with Save As. I think that is a good design.
What would be better is having a dialog that says "You've used some additional features that can only be saved in .psd format: Save as PNG || Save as PSD || Save as something else" with the first being the default for when you press ENTER.
Right. But the difference here is you need to answer the question which is a task. Then based on what you actually want to do, there is an extra step in opening the dialog just to choose the other format etc.. maybe you just want to save in the application default. The point of the version I posted is that each button maps to a direct intention. The message is informative, and the user does what they want. It's not the application asking or warning or assuming anything. It's not the developer imposing anything. Based on what the application can do, the user is presented with the various options that map to intentions.
Well, yes. GIMP and GNOME for the most part diverged fairly early on, save the toolkit, so the infection is less than that of the GNOME project, but it's still there.
some forget that GNOME started very far from where it is now. Look only to Sawfish for proof.
So what would you like to happen if you open a lossy format and then open as layers a .png? Do you want it to downgrade the quality or bump it up? Some people might want the former, some might want the latter. What if Gimp always has to convert the color-space? I wanted CMYK in Gimp at one point, but while there was an importer, there was no exporter. What then? Saving to .xcf was initially a pain (I complained too), but I became accustomed to the new routine, and from a categorization perspective, it makes sense. The dev is blamed either way - either by people accustomed to the old routine or by people who messed up from it and want it changed.
Some people create an image editing software that rival Photoshop which is worth a millions of dollars in their own time without expecting anything in return and they work on this for about twenty years and you are frustrated about a sensible change that can be reverted by little configuration or a little plugin?
That was initially confusing to me as well, but it isn't that bad. If you open a .png (or similar) and edit it, there's a button in the File menu (I believe shortcut ctrl-shift-e) that exports directly to the original filename.
After ctrl-shift-e I have to hit enter in response to different pop-up dialogs three times, and then still answer a fourth confirmation when I quit gimp. If I'm editing a bunch of files that's not fun. With the Saver plugin I have it set up so I just hit ctrl-s like I used to, and can exit without being bothered.
I totally see that it makes sense for some work flows, including the ones Gimp is probably most meant for. It was frustrating that for the people whose workflows were messed up, the developers were totally opposed to doing anything about it though. Kudos to the plugin author for rolling up her sleeves and providing a way out. Also kudos to the gimp developers for providing a plugin architecture that made such a customization an option.
Be aware, if you recommend GIMP to people on Macs with retina screens they are going to be very disappointed. TLDR; retina screens on Macs simply aren't supported properly (everything you do will be at a minimum of 2x scale). See https://medium.com/@kjeldahl/gimp-and-inkscape-on-retina-mac... for more details.
Still waiting. They need to prioritize 3 things IMHO, and those are 1) GEGL integration - this was claimed to be 80 percent done in 6 weeks (several years ago). Updating core code and libraries should be done quickly, not spread out over years concurrently with other development. 2) Update to GTK3. How can a flagship OSS program still be using a many-years-old GUI toolkit? And finally 3) Wayland support. This will be easier with GTK3 and is still slightly future-looking, but I'm writing this on a Wayland desktop so it won't be long before GIMP on the whole is completely built on outdated technology. I know all of these are in the works, but it seems like a nice sprint could get each one done in a month or two at this point. Yet here we are seeing another blog about anything but these...
It would probably be done in few months, if GIMP had a few full-time developers. But as it stands, with people working in their free time, don't expect miracles. If anything, I find it amazing that it's still developed at all.
The action search feature is nice. I like it that more software is getting search-across-all-menu-entries.
I'd have really liked Ubuntu's HUD menu-search to have become a standard on the Linux desktop; adding search-across-menus would become much easier for softwares, most wouldn't need any addition of code.
It's one of the better features built into OS X, ⌘⇧? will search through all menu items, combined with ability to assign a shortcut to one even if it had none originally.
Yes, as someone who doesn't use Ubuntu and complains loudly about it my biggest annoyance is I really want to use it, I just don't want to fight something as basic as alt-tab every time I use my computer.
Same goes for Mac: So much polish, so much attention to detail, so much goodwill, - all ruined by a few IMO weird choices.
I know several professional designers who only (or mostly) use free software.
Gimp inclusive.
They do this as a matter of choice.
And there are many more professional designers, who use free software for parts of their workflow.
They do it, for many different reasons, but mostly because it just happens to fit their needs.
Some of them use Gimp.
If you would have read the article linked above, you would know that it's mostly about a professional designer (Aryeom) who is using Gimp for her work on an animation film.
Personally, I still believe that you're question would have deserved only a "42" type of answer.
"Professional designers" is such a vast term...
But, hey I'm so generous today :-)
P.S.: I don't want to get into a discussion on who is a professional designer and who is not, so I avoid putting links to the ones I know are using only/mostly free software...
But here are the names of the first ones that comes to mind: Cédric, Elisa, Vlada, Camille, David, ...
Well, only a shoddy craftsman blames his tools, but if you work in a design or ad agency everyone uses the Adobe monoculture because no one wants to deal with potential asset pipeline hickups when under tight deadlines. I'm sure there's freelancers who prefer gimp, but in the industry it's far from accepted, most designers will only know it exists but won't bother trying because they've been cosy with PS for over a decade.
Photoshop is getting less convenient to pirate; I'm starting to see more and more people who have grown up using gimp and have no desire to switch to Photoshop.
Long time back, I wanted to timestamp certain pictures (a couple of hundred). That is, pick up the timestamp from EXIF metadata and put the date on a corner of the photo.
I wasn't able to do it programatically using Adobe tools. FOSS on Linux did that for me.
IMO the main ideological difference is that Photoshop UI is targeting users who like to see things visually. Gimp has a more programmatic legacy.
PS allows moving around a few sliders while looking at the screen to see how things change and nail it when the results look visually good. I bet that is critical for most PS users. It is for me. I paid for an (educational) PS license just so I can edit my photos before I print them and hang them on a wall.
One example: doing levels. One slider move back and forth to see which areas are overblown in each channel. One extra keypress to switch between final result and overblown only. That, to me, is so powerful. I can decide on the fly, "well, I lost detail in yellow channel here, but extra detail there is clearly worth it".
I am sure GIMP is great in many ways, but I guess their target user group is different. Their interface just does not work well for me (and I did try), they focus at different things, etc.
I hate Adobe (both their licensing and privacy policies), but CS is just so good. It is one of the three programs for which I still have a Windows partition on my computer (I do most of my work in Linux).
I don't think you can blame it on the wrong kind of user. As a former Photoshop user, one of the most frustrating things about Gimp is the amount it forces me to use the mouse. I'm the kind of person that uses vim, and Photoshop is definitely a far better fit for the way I like to work [Edit: Unless it's got worse in the decade or so since I used it].
Gimp is just full of little annoyances that interrupt your flow and make it difficult to work efficiently.
This relearning problem goes both ways. People trained on GIMP tend to find Photoshop annoying and difficult to use - because they have to relearn. People accept spending extra time and struggling when learning a new skill; and are frustrated with tools (or really themselves) when something they think they know how to do suddenly is difficult.
I'm sure that there is a learning curve for people going from Gimp to Photoshop. In my case, going the other way, after over a decade, I still find Gimp a massive pain in the arse. It's not just that it's "not what I'm used to", it's that it's bad.
Recently I had to make some end-credit cards for a short film - ie. white writing on black backgrounds. Gimp managed to make even that painful. Things like, placing an immovable dialogue over the handles of my text box so I can't get at them. If I try to replace text, it reverts to its arbitrary choice of font / size so I have to type new text in the middle of my existing text, then delete the original. No "duplicate layer" shortcut. Just gratuious annoyances that are good for nobody, and bad for everybody.
Edit: I have a feeling you might be a Gimp dev, in which case I should be more grateful for the work you do, which I still use and benefit from even though the UI frustrates the hell out of me.
Edit2: I just found the Duplicate Layer shortcut. Not sure how I missed it before.
I get aoloe's reaction though. Whenever someone posts something cool about Gimp, invariably a bunch of “yeah it's free, but it's not Adobe Photoshop is it?” comments pop up.
Why should we care? Why not judge it on its own merits?
This reminds me of how a lot of people used to respond to the notion of using GNU/Linux distributions as free operating systems suitable for day-to-day desktop use. Sure, I get why not everyone might want to use it (nobody is asking you to), but why does every bit of positive news or cool achievement have to get accompanied by dozens of comments by authors directly comparing it to a commercially available alternative, stating that they'd use it if only it did this and if only it looked more like that?
I love how we as a global community have such a wealth of software tools available; to use for free (legally!), with a philosophy that explicitly encourages sharing and enables anyone with the know-how to contribute. Some of these tools have been with us for decades, such as Gimp, and each release brings new features and improvements. Instead of celebrating its strengths, software like Gimp gets scrutinized by holding it to an arbitrary standard it can never meet (the full feature set of Adobe Photoshop), simply because the goal posts are forever moving.
I do not intend to berate anyone genuinely asking about how to migrate to free tools like Blender, Gimp, and Inkscape — questions where the comparison of features is warranted — but a lot of comments appear to dismiss tools like Gimp out of hand simply because they aren't carbon copies of the most popular proprietary alternatives.
With operating systems we've entered the next phase, where using a free software operating system isn't cause for raised eyebrows, and where people are actually asking the reverse question: why can't Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X do this thing I can do easily on GNU/Linux? Hopefully we can reach that level of acceptance with other free software as well.
Because in professional environments, there are industry standards. You can use whatever editor you like as long as it can handle text files. Same goes for graphics tool and .psd files.
This is true especially for Gimp. I imagine there are many people like me, who work on Linux and already use Gimp for their own stuff, but since Linux + Gimp is usually the toolset of a technical person, most of the time we work with graphical tools it is not our own work, but something a designer created with OSX + Photoshop.
So please, Gimp, create a way for me to fund everything related to better .psd support. On everything else, Gimp can and should find its own way. I like Gimp more anyway due to decades (wtf, I am old) of usage.
I would add that most people arguing that Photoshop is superior in these threads have never had to pay for it, either due to piracy or because of their employer.
Another thing of value for me is that open source can not die for as long as there's demand. This makes it a safer bet for long term investments. So GIMP may never be on par with Photoshop and the Linux desktop may never happen for ordinary people, but you can bet they'll still be around and probably maintained and developed in 50 years from now, because they aren't subject to the same market forces as proprietary stuff.
Hence the comparison is often unfair. For me GIMP gets the job done, for my needs it is perfectly suitable, works on all 3 major desktop operating systems, therefore it has an unbeatable price tag and license.
> why does every bit of positive news or cool achievement have to get accompanied by dozens of comments by authors directly comparing it to a commercially available alternative, stating that they'd use it if only it did this and if only it looked more like that?
In this case, it's because Gimp is frequently claimed to be a Photoshop alternative. For most Photoshop users, that isn't really true, and it's very reasonable to point out that it isn't true.
I gave up Windows over a decade ago, and I gave up doing any serious graphics work at the same time, because the best available replacement for Photoshop was Gimp. I still don't think Gimp's up to the standard of the last PS I used (7?).
I'm happy that Gimp exists and I'm excited about the GEGL stuff. I wish people would stop pretending it's an alternative to Photoshop. If you can replace your Photoshop usage with Gimp usage, Photoshop probably wasn't the right program for you in the first place.
Mostly depends in what space you work I would think. I work in print production and absolutely need robust pantone support. I could go on endlessly about how few seem to understand what pantone is and how it works but that does not change the fact it is the defacto language for communicating printed color. Last I checked there is no pantone plugin for GIMP and as pantone is proprietary that may not change.
I also deal with large format printers. These are built in the thousands or tens of thousands and don't get the software love that they would if produced on a larger scale. RIP's tend to be finicky and are designed to play nice with the adobe suite, so most stick with those tools.
It depends on the context. In my experience in advertising / agencies, graphic designers (or "creatives" as they insist on being called) are spoilt brats who found even "responsive design" too technical and "beneath" them, so much that the whole field of UX as we know it today was born to fill the gap. Expecting them to even consider using any tool other than Photoshop or Illustrator is just a waste of time. But in smaller, more "startuppy" enviroments you find some who do use Gimp. Still, the ratio in my personal experience is something like 98 - 2.
Sketch use case is different though, its more layout oriented whereas illustrator is mainly a vector editing powerhouse. Layout is a pain in illustrator because it was never meant as a layout program. I use sketch, illustrator and indesign regulary and all have their relative strenghts and weaknesses even though theres a lot of feature overlap.
While I've been a Photoshop user since v5, I haven't always had it installed. There are even times I've done professional work on Linux where Photoshop doesn't run.
Currently I have Photoshop, but make use of the Gimp as well.
When there are so many free tools like there that can do a pro job - the question isn't "Gimp or Photoshop" but "Gimp, and Photoshop?" I could replace Illustrator with Inkscape and still get my job done, but I have bought Illustrator so I get my money's worth out of it. But that doesn't mean I not longer also have Inkscape. Of course I use Inkscape where it's better than Illustrator :D
Realistic answer is not really. There are people who probably use it, but they are invisible in the whole. However, Krita got some serious attention by digital painters and is used enough to be visible as an alternative to both ps and coral paint.
This. As an artist, I found Gimp too precise in its pixel-drawing. You want a dot, you get exactly that. Krita, however, uses an algorithm that smooths its brush edges so that the result - even after holding the brush in one spot for awhile - doesn't come out pixelated.
I use Gimp for general editing, and particularly filters and such (e.g. liquid rescale (seam-carving)) - which is what it seems to be best at anyways.
unlikely, while a certainly poewrful piece of software that can do much of what photoshop can (in the 2D realm), it has no support for 3D work, real vector support, active filters (this is a huge one in traditional 2D work, esp icons/logos)
The one feature that breaks it for me for professional work is that filters happen to a layer instead of being attached to them an are able to be changed on a whim. It's impossible to do any real work if you have to render and re-render every shadow on every text and object when its size changes.
I think I could do without everything else but that.
The work you might have heard about GEGL - is all about providing foundations for such non-destructive editing. The highlighted split-view / curtain preview in the blog post is implemented using these new capabilities provided by GEGL. Adding new features that cement themselves as new things in the file format is part of GIMPs roadmap after GIMP-2.10 / 3.0. 2.10 / 3.0 are aiming to provide the same functionality that GIMP-2.6 / 2.8 provided but with GEGL as the core and thus higher bitdepth.
Is this mandatory nowadays? I mean it's nice that PS (and even Pixelmator and Affinity) have that, but I did design work many years ago and managed fine.
Sure it will be more inconvenient, but it's doable.
People did design work without any of these digital tools before.
Give people better tools and it's hard to go back. Can you imagine writing a large piece of software without autocomplete or syntax highlighting these days?
The only way I ever use GIMP is through forked builds that let you save as whatever you want without the annoying save/export distinction, so they seem to making it tougher for people who are making good forks of their bad software to do their job.
Saving and exporting are different tasks: the former saves the current work-in-progress project with no loss of data, the latter exports to a particular image format and is inherently lossy. If you combine them, you risk misleading users.
And by keeping them split, it makes some things more convenient. When I edit images, I save a .xcf and I also export a .png. Having to manually switch between these file-types and manually remember and reënter the (possibly differing) filenames when saving would be a pain. Keeping Export and Save as separate means I don't have to. It also means that Ctrl-S saves the project, rather than overwriting my last export. And as the part you linked to points out, this means you can do things like change the scale at export time.
What's the difference, and why should it matter? I just want to persist my changes to a file.
IMHO just keep things simple and use Save for saving in the same format as the original (possibly if a warning if it doesn't support some things you've done to the file), or Save As for saving in a different format.
Simply, you expect Open > Save to persist your file format. In the use case they target Save > Open persist what you were editing. Things like Live Text, Smart Objects, alpha layers (for many file formats), etc will stay around. It's a common approach I've seen in other image editors (including Photoshop), 3d tools, and I imagine text editors do this, too.
> What's the difference, and why should it matter?
See edits.
> IMHO just keep things simple and use Save for saving in the same format as the original (possibly if a warning if it doesn't support some things you've done to the file)
You'd have to warn on every single format except XCF.
> or Save As for saving in a different format.
But I don't want to change the save destination. The project and the export are separate for me.
If you just want to save a PNG or something, you have the option of using Export exclusively.
GIMP is a handy tool: I use it for a lot of my image editing needs, for when very basic tools won't do. I rarely need the power of PS, and can't afford it anyway (although I do miss that magnetic lasso: GIMP's magic scissors don't quite have a good enough algorithm). All of this talk about the future is exciting.
However, yes, GIMP is quite rarely an acceptable replacement for PS, and I find this unlikely to change any time soon.
Also, GAP is really, REALLY, REALLY awkward and unwieldy to use. I would reccomend Synfig Studio for animation instead.
GIMP's new (though not actually young) engine - GEGL, contains ffmpeg frame sources and sinks, provides a good abstraction for creating interfaces better than GAP for animation or video editing - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJJPgLGrSgc for an example of a video that has been edited and encoded using GEGL this year.
Synfig focuses on more cartoon based vector animation. What GEGL provides good foundations for doing is video editing/compositing with keyframed properties for filters.
As mentioned in the linked article of this story - having an eco system of applications using GEGL would benefit both these applications and GIMP - since they would be sharing image processing operations and plugins.
I found this fix, which made quick uses of GIMP less painful for me: http://shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/
I'm assuming the new save behavior persists in Gimp 2.9.x, but I don't know.