The story of all idealistic open source software, same with Gimp, which is unusable for professional work. Them using the word "beautiful" to describe a well designed UI is telling and it really is an attitude problem among programmers.
100,000 hours spent on programming the underlying features, 0 hours on actually making it usable.
No, before GimpShop, I’d argue Gimp has had the worst native UI/UX I’ve used next to Blender, and I mostly do UI/UX for a living.
Bizarre keyboard shortcuts, awful ‘stay-on-top’ window behaviour when tabbing between applications. ‘Copy’ copies the inversion of the selection by default. Dragging a selection drags the rest of the image. The default behaviour of most tools is inverse to any previously established behaviour.
I’ve used Gimp thousands of times over 15-some years, in some cases for professional projects, and under the hood it is very good, but for many years it’s UI/UX made it literally the most bottom rung tool I would possibly choose to use for graphics manipulation - only when I absolutely had to. (I remember using Gimp in between the PowerPC -> Intel transition, where CS2’s performance on my Intel Mac Pro was worse than my iBook, and Gimp had a Universal Binary before Adobe did...)
I learned GIMP, through tooth and nail, and, knowing it well, I can still say through and through, especially historically, Gimp has been nothing short of a mess to use. I’m still not used to the idea that selecting and dragging something moves the rest of the image, not the selection itself.
I don’t want to learn to make an exception for Gimp as opposed to every other graphics application on the planet I’ve used since MS Paint, and I am certainly not the only individual criticizing particularly the glaring UX issues within Gimp.
Now, Blender, I’ve tried to take a dozen or so YouTube tutorials, and read dozens of articles on, and it just makes me want to hurl my MacBook Pro across the room every time. I was never able to accomplish anything serious in Blender the way I did with Gimp, which is why I put Gimp as the second worst UI/UX I’ve ever tolerated.
I tend to learn high value software. At this point, there have been so darn many UX paradigms... OK fine.
Unless there is an actual use bug, like things do not work, for high value software, it pays to just work the thing the way it works.
All improvements welcome, of course. And the interesting there is I hope they are good, not just a pretty pass, or rearrange. That takes time to remap. It is nice when it is time well spent.
I tend to give a wide berth to high value tools I get to use gratis.
Funding good UX would be a huge step, I think, I personally pay my CC subscription, because I use PS every day constantly for my work, easily make far over and above the subscription cost using the software, and it’s useable - I unfortunately literally mean that Gimp makes me actively frustrated to use.
‘Selecting selects the opposite’, is, to me, a use bug, among with many other designers and developers (a quick Google search confirms this).
I wish I had the time myself to go in and look at it, I really do. I’m sure it’s the same for a few folks. I love and support FOSS and I wish I could get behind GIMP like I can VLC.
But VLC managed to make itself a daily driver, even from this interview’s description, by being usable.
Gimp isn’t usable unless I’m going to dedicate myself to it. Functionally, there’s no reason I can’t use it and Photoshop interchangeably for the same task.
But when that same task takes me two or three times longer because I’m fighting with the UX, and design time is money, Adobe can unfortunately take my money for now.
Yeah, but you know what it does. So deal and flow? That is precisely what I do.
Most of us have seen it all done a bazillion ways. I go all the way back to floppies, TV for a monitor and separate application and data disks.
Even a lame UI is presenting me with fast, potent tools!
If there is value there, the learning follows, then stuff gets done, next. It is hard the first few times. Easier after that. Almost no worry now. "How does this one do it?" K, next, done.
Hard to complain about pretty great tools I can use, modify, etc. for a song and small investment in how the tool works.
Or don't, right?
Adobe is happy for your money, and parting with it is worth more than some time sorting GIMP out.
This isn't necessarily about Gimp, but this is a general problem with software developers creating tools for their domain.
It is easy to create a tool that is specifically tailored to your workflow, because for parts that may tough to code, you manually take care of it. It becomes harder to generalize that tool for public use. It is harder still to add good UX that lets novices pick it up and begin working.
It seems easy, because the ubiquitous tools, libraries and frameworks have years of planning and experience to learn from.
That's some baseless assertions if ever there were any. Gimp, Inkscape, VLC, Blender. All open source, all used by enthusiasts and professionals all over the world. Maybe not in the same quantity as that of their open source counterparts, but used by enough people to be counted nonetheless. When it comes to VLC, I dare say, it might even beat its commercial counterparts.
In fact I've found that a lot of the professionals that refuse to go near the OS version are a hell of a lot less skilled than those that enjoy the benefits of the GPL'd versions.
Open Source apps are very popular in enterprise and professional circles.
100,000 hours spent on programming the underlying features, 0 hours on actually making it usable.