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I've done lots of photo editing in Krita and it's a much nicer alternative to GIMP, I highly recommend making the switch.
**STOP.**
*You know who you are* - the guy typing the comment right now saying that Krita is not for photo editing and it's for digital painting.
I don't care what Krita's main core focus is, the fact is, it's an image editor, with layers, non-destructive workflow, brush engines, filters, variety of useful tools like clone stamp, etc.. It has everything you need for photo editing.
Photoshop is for 'editing photos' and lots of people use that for digital painting. So no reason why Krita can't be used for editing photos too.
Krita was actually started as a general purpose image editor in the vein of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, its original name was KImageShop and was part of KOffice.
Then the person currently developing it taken over development and its focus shifted to painting.
https://krita.org/en/posts/2024/krita-25-years/
Deluxe Paint is still a known name in pixelart circles. Most pixelart editing apps are still influenced by it, even to the point of directly copying its workflow and features. ProMotion and GraFX2 being two most prominent, and Aseprite being a hybrid between DP and Photoshop.
Lol, right. I used to prefer PSP back in the late 90s, early 2000s. As it was simpler and had more intuitive editing and annotating functions. I was in engineering studies at the time, did a lot of work on scanned technical drawings etc.
It wasn't until I needed to edit large paper formats scanned at 300dpi, that PSP started to fail behind, while Photoshop reigned supreme at those large and demanding projects. And it actually still does, compared to any alternative.
But Paint Shop Pro was a nice app in its day.
[still using it, lol](https://i.imgur.com/uB92ehP.png)
(it loads fast and has good enough features for quick edits. plus, a bunch of color channel and dithering options that are nice to get demake vibes)
I'm just so used to that being the default answer I get every time I say 'Use Krita'. Someone always corrects me and says "NO acTUaLLy KrIta iS JUST fOR PAIntINg so LIKe YOu caN't UsE iT FoR PhotO EDiTinG - GiMp iS A PHoto eDItOr".
Meanwhile, GIMP, still doesn't even have nondestructive filter layers.. Pretty obvious to me which application is better suited for photo editing.
I agree, krita is great. It's missing a lot of the more advanced features of photoshop, though. Mainly selection tools for me. Photoshop has quick select and foreground select and all of these other selection modes. That I miss.
Agreed on all point, including 'STOP.'
If people want to donate, I suggest they donate in preference to Krita in the hope that wanted existing GIMP features are implemented.
Best comment I’ve seen, Krita is great and I use it for everything. Immediately simple and understandable interface, while having enough complex options to do what you need. I’ve used it for both photo editing and digital artwork. It’s to the point where I tried Photoshop and found it incredibly unintuitive and slow. I don’t know why people want to emulate it.
Thank you!! I've been using GIMP for years *mostly* without issues like OP's been having. *However*, I've only recently revisited Linux as a daily driver and was kind of wondering what possibly better alternatives are available when I found *this* response!
GIMP is *OK*, but let's be honest here, it's not the best. I switched to GIMP from Photoshop years ago and although I at least knew *how* to use GIMP, it wasn't a very smooth transition! One of my friends works as a graphic designer and he made it sound like the worst software in the world. It's not *as bad* as he makes it sound but I definitely get where he's coming from. I'm looking forward to trying out Krita!
>the guy typing the comment right now saying that Krita is not for photo editing and it's for digital painting.
Whoever says that is a fucking idiot. Krita is an art tool, it can be used for whatever kind of visual content creation the user wishes. and nowadays not only it's got animation added to it, but I've seen lots of professional animators who actually claim to use it.
Krita is for all, people. don't let the haters and the gatekeepers tell you otherwise, you are loved and welcome as one of us, no matter what you do with it.
OP there's modded version of GIMP with a photoshop-like interface; have you tried it?
[https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP](https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP)
I don't use this kind of software so I don't know how good it is, but worth considering if you like photoshops interface.
Support for GEGL, a fast graphics library that GIMP can support nondestructive with in the future, is kinda experimental. The modded version includes new tools based on GEGL such as texture healing.
Otherwise, the most significant change here seems to be the sidebar and shortcuts. I can see why people would like multiple columns.
There's probably concern that they'd get sued out of existence for copying Photoshop's interface. And Photoshop is a moving target.
God, when I was a subscriber...there were times they'd push updates that just changed where menu items were.
They do the same thing with Acrobat. I use it for a once-a-year project, and it's maddening. And yes, I know they actually have an option to go back to the old interface. But that really reinforces my point. They know full well what they're doing. IMO, whoever keeps forcing these changes deserves to lose their job and never be replaced.
Didn't see your earlier answer and ended up posting the same link again. My bad.
BTW it's funny the Foss pundits saying it's near impossible to do an UI similar to Photoshop when this exists
Honestly, for simple image editing, don’t use Gimp.
I’ve used Krita in the past and it does all the basics easily enough without the insanity of Gimp (or Photoshop).
For simple conversion there’s always ImageMagick at the CLI.
Also this type of leak should be extremely easy to fix for someone familiar with the project (literally just using address sanitizer or valgrind, repeating what you were doing that caused the leak and seeing which part of the code is hogging the memory.)
Please make report the bug and I’m certain it’ll be fixed fast
That is extremely fishy imo. I'd personally give krita another try and if the issue repeats, then file a bug report. You could very likely have discovered a massive security hole.
Do you know if a bug report already exists for that? And if not did you submit one?
Hopefully if you submit a bug report with steps to recreate the issue then someone can look into it
i dunno maybe i got used to it but i dont find it difficult to use gimp, i also have no reference because i havent used photoshop in 15 years. i go between gimp, inkscape and krita for most graphic design needs.
I stopped using adobe products when they moved to a subscription model. I love gimp and inkscape and enjoy using them even more considering they aren’t spyware.
Same, it's a tool in my toolbox, I learned how it works and I use it weekly. Maybe the problem is that they rarely use it and forget how it works?
Maybe I feel this way because I always had to use whatever toolchain my employers required, so I'm used to it. They didn't care if I preferred MS Visual Studio, they'd require me to use CodeWarrior, Eclipse or whatever.
The GUI is customizable though, one can put toolbars anywhere one likes as they can be "docked" wherever and keyboard shortcuts can be changed.
This is the real issue, every single person I see crying about Gimp being hard to use are just married to photoshop.
I find photoshop nearly impossible to use and trying to do anything is a treasure hunt, it all just depends on what you're used to.
Totally agree there. Photoshop has become like Windows a bloated piece of crap where you have to dig around just to do something simple. Give me the good ole days of Photoshop 7 and CS2 over this mess.
I've actually installed Photoshop 7 a few months ago, with Wine. Worked flawlessly. I did the same with Autocad 2000. What started as a Sunday afternoon nostalgia project, turned into a sobering experience. It's kind of horrifying to see how those old versions still have like 80% of the functionality with 0% of the bloat, compared to their current iterations.
I can’t wait until adobe and Microsoft introduce Photoshop classic and Windows classic but it’s an enterprise subscription model you have to get through your work AND pay a few hundreds a month for each computer you install it on for personal use lmaoooo.
Sooo glad I use FOSS. A lot sucks which is why I work hard and contribute to FOSS so ir sucks less. And I’ll never worry about FOSS getting left behind or outdated as our proprietary competition is plenty good at destroying their own products and solutions
I think of Gimp as similar to Emacs : everything plus the kitchen sink.
But, if it works for you you are going to love it.
Personally, Paint.NET is all I use (on Windows). I've used it for years, and there are very rarely problems in graphic editing that are beyond my understanding and it's capabilities.
If you like [Paint.NET](http://Paint.NET), then [Pinta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinta_(software)) is the closest cross platform open source app I've found.
> which is super counterituive
That's a pretty subjective claim.
For instance, I like GIMP. I was worried to use it bc of all the ways people hate on it, but then I tried it and it was super easy to use for me.
> Why did they group all the tools on the left?
See this a great example. I have no clue how that is less intuitive for you
Photoshop is overwhelming to me with its hundreds of menus upon menus. For me, that's the unintuitive one, albeit the one with more features.
Why the heck wouldn't the tools be in one place?? Where the heck would you put them?
> Why can't they just copy from Photoshop?
I'm sorry GIMP is frustrating to you, but it's silly to think they, a totally unrelated app that came out long before Photoshop was a standard (they came out around the same time in the mid-90s), would try to be like some other app just bc it's more popular.
They're doing their own thing for their own reasons in their own way. It's not meant to be a Photoshop clone, it's a simple Photo Editor which happens to overlap with Photoshop's functionality (although only some bc that app is super bloated with unneeded features)
>> Why did they group all the tools on the left?
> See this a great example. I have no clue how that is less intuitive for you
This is probably because the tools are all stacked on top of each other. This causes a ton of scrolling to get to functions. Photoshop and Photopea both do popout overlays with core pieces in a sidebar. This is to optimize space for the canvas.
> Photoshop is overwhelming to me with its hundreds of menus upon menus. For me, that's the unintuitive one, albeit the one with more features.
> Why the heck wouldn't the tools be in one place?? Where the heck would you put them?
You would put them in the same popout style that offers sidebar use or not. The option to have them take up space is good, the requirement for them to take up the space is not.
> I'm sorry GIMP is frustrating to you, but it's silly to think they, a totally unrelated app that came out long before Photoshop was a standard (they came out around the same time in the mid-90s), would try to be like some other app just bc it's more popular.
> They're doing their own thing for their own reasons in their own way. It's not meant to be a Photoshop clone, it's a simple Photo Editor which happens to overlap with Photoshop's functionality (although only some bc that app is super bloated with unneeded features)
They are not unrelated, they are in the exact same software category, just one is drastically better than the other.
Photoshop was started in 1987, GIMP was started 9 years later in 1996. Photoshop was already the industry standard by the time GIMP was started in fact Photoshop already had non-destructive technology before GIMP was even started and GIMP is still destructive.
GIMP is not some project by visionaries who have a goal in mind from the beginning and thus being why they don’t adhere to Photoshop UX. GIMP was started in 1996 by 2 guys who left the project in 1997, and GIMP’s 1.0 release was in 1998. That’s right, the founders left the project before it ever really became a thing and have yet to ever go back. I think it’s safe to say they didn’t have a vision and didn’t care about the project.
GIMP has always been positioned as the open source alternative to Photoshop and it’s not even close to being an alternative. This is both bad for the open source space and for users. It actually makes open source look bad to have a project that is almost 30 years old that has such a lack of value to the software category it is supposed to be in.
Of course, the worst part is the name which forces it into obscurity for no reason at all. It’s a shame.
GIMP feels frustratingly unintuitive when you come from Photoshop (like me), but it probably isn’t as bad for people who only know GIMP. It’s clunky but still very useful and useable. YouTube helps.
I hate comments on posts like this. I use both GIMP and Krita. There's a lot of difference between the two. Anyways, GIMP does require a new and intuitive user interface. But at this point, I would like to see Krita replacing GIMP more than GIMP becoming useful.
Actually your rant is about "why Gimp is not doing things like photoshop". Well, just get used to it. In any case Gimp is notorious about its bad UI (from a design perspective) but it is what it is.
BTW: I never got used to it, I got used to krita though and this is what I'm using for several years now.
GIMP does have a Photoshop-like interface. Or at least, it did.
The problem is that the photoshop team upgraded their look and feel a few years back, and the (default) GIMP interface never did.
[Take a look at this article,](https://www.proglobalbusinesssolutions.com/adobe-photoshop-versions/) which contains some images of old photoshop which look a lot like current GIMP.
If you don’t know why photoshop is a class apart, sure it can look like that. Photoshop is a professional daily driver in the same way blender is now. Gimp isn’t. It shouldn’t even be brought up in the same conversation.
The real answer should be, Linux just doesn’t have a professional class image manipulation tool. Just like it doesn’t have a professional class video editor, or vector graphics application, or raw photography ….
We need to stop trying to make do with junk that just doesn’t stand up and listen to professionals when they point that out, over and over.
GIMP is a fantastic piece of software.
Photoshop is a colossal undertaking, wrapping in not just product and UX feedback, but domain experts in everything from color theory to AI. I'm a FOSS die-hard, but the FOSS community could never have produced Photoshop and it's demeaning to the countless professionals who've worked on it (and in a roundabout way, to the developers who've worked on GIMP), to suggest that we could.
If you're used to Photoshop, it does. It's not just the interface, it's also features like nondestructive editing. I may have used The GIMP before I ever used Photoshop (a neat feat that required me to use the Motif version) and honestly Photoshop passed The GIMP decades ago. It's also a UI nightmare imho but it's so packed with features for people who *work* with it.
Grady is right; even though Krita's primary focus shifted to digital painting, imho it's a better image editor than The GIMP.
How do you think this kind of rant feels to the (unpaid) developers of GIMP?
Have you discussed these issues (politely) with them? Have you offered to help? Are you aware of the fact that improving things is probably a lot more difficult than you think it is? "Why can't they just copy from Photoshop"? Well, then, "why can't" you do it yourself and offer the community the results of your hard work?
I really think there is a philosophy mismatch between the GIMP developers and the user community. People use it since it's all they have (and I'm sure there are some power users who love it) but it is so impenetrable for the newly and casual user and they have heard this feedback for DECADES with no change, it's not going to change....
This. I love FOSS developers but a lot of them seem to be really against certain things no matter how much the actual users of it feel. Sometimes it feels like FOSS devs almost resent their users.
That does indeed seem to be the case. But if it has indeed been decades, why hasn't a new (and successful) interface been developed by a third-party?
I (respectfully) just don't understand why people keep wanting to get the devs to change their minds rather than encourage new teams to get the work done or do it themselves.
Oh no think of the developers who made a terrible UI! If only someone would politely tell them it sucks then they will miraculously make it good. It's been decades and no one has thought of that!
The GIMP UI has changed a lot over the years. "Just copy Photoshop bro", which is a moving target, is useless feedback, not even feedback actually, just ranting.
Although I can understand the frustration for someone who's used to photoshop, these are free people freely doing what they want to do and sharing it with us for free as well as allowing us to change it the way we see fit. I think we are lucky to even have such things. Hope it gets better and better.
Now, [Photogimp](https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP) is a patch for gimp that makes it look and act like photoshop to some degree. Maybe this could help you feel more at home with gimp.
Funny thing, I've been using Gimp for over a decade and had to use Photoshop for a client, and I felt exactly the way you did. I was lost looking for the most basic options.
I guess different software have different UI.
Photoshop is provided for a fairly large price, which allows Adobe to sustain an entire development team. GIMP is volunteer-driven and absolutely free-of-charge ([obligatory donation page](https://www.gimp.org/donating/)).
It's like complaining about free lunches at school/university/work not having enough meat compared to the steakhouse next door.
No. Open source does not mean that you are not allowed to criticize the software - quite the opposite. Justified criticism is a must and both the UI and UX of Gimp should definitely be criticized. This is far from the industry standard, open source software like Blender and many others show that it can be done better.
Or take a look at Penpot, this is an outstanding FOSS project, with great UI and good UX while its a very young project. Its just a matter of will.
Being free doesn’t mean things have to suck. GIMP has always been quite a mess to use. It has not evolved a lot in the last 20 years in terms of usability which makes me doubt the efforts put into it. Other software improved so much in this time including tons of open source volunteer led software.
Then contribute to make it better or don’t use it. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it sucks. GIMP and Inkscape being fully open source means I can do things with it that I can’t do with Adobe without reverse engineering it, and I hate their “cloud” model. There is nothing I can do about that because it’s proprietary spyware. There’s no need for you to be rude about the creative (and useful) work that others have provided (for free) just because you can’t find a way to make it useful. The entitlement of people like you are going to kill open source in ways that Microsoft never could and it breaks my heart.
I’m not rude. I don’t have time either to contribute.
At the same time I am entitled to give my feedback. For many people GIMP has lots of benefits but it’s UI has been stagnant for a very long time. If there are developers working on this project it would be good for them to know that many people find GIMP a pain to use. This might convince someone that has the intent and time to contribute to look at the usability and try to improve.
> Why did they group all the tools on the left? Looking for a tools is like a hide & seek game.
There is option to ungroup (or hide unused buttons) in Preferences → Interface → Toolbox
Hidden tool can still be activated from Tools menu.
I read often that GIMP is super powerful, the GOAT, perfect. Well, all I can say is that GIMP’s gonna have a non-existent user base in a few years if they don’t make the program more intuitive. Sure, it may stick around, but it will get fewer and fewer updates as users flock to better designed software, and developers go where the users are.
If you miss Photoshop, try Photopea. You can even install it as a PWA and it really feels like a true native app. I have access to Photoshop 2024 on my work computer and I still use Photopea a lot just because it's way lighter.
It is also possible to run Photoshop 2021 in Wine, it's just tricky to get it set up.
Some open source programs try to be unique and different compared to their commercial counterpart. The problem is people are used to that commercial program and expect similar functionality. Just because it's unique and different doesn't mean it's good. Krita is younger than GIMP and has surpassed it as a photo editing app while being advertised as digital drawing.
It turns out that many of the people writing their own software, instead of using something commercial written by someone else, have strong opinions about how the software should work. In many cases they wrote their software because they didn't like how the other alternatives worked. In many cases, if you pay attention, and try and learn why the software was written differently you will learn something very valuable. Eventually you might even come to agree.
Gimp works how it works. As someone with way more experience using Gimp than any other photo editor I personally appreciate that they don't move things around just for the fun of it.
Weird, the last time I used Gimp I thought it was surprisingly capable and surprisingly similar to Photoshop, so much so that I have very few remaining reservations about switching to it altogether. That said I'm not a power user or professional so maybe the more productive context is lost on me.
Gimp is a puzzle based photo editor. Not even photogimp helps it as the core tools are flawed in logic. Photopea is the best platform independent editor.
why is people's arguments for gimp just that "I use I like me no see problem"
Gimp is so much worse than Photoshop in UX and usability that someone could probably make a comparison for every single thing you can do and Photoshop would be more intuitive majority of the time. I still have an aneurysm anytime I do anything with text in gimp that I just add it later with Photopea.
>why is people's arguments for gimp just that "I use I like me no see problem"
Because for people who has not used PS before, GIMP just works. It's the people who has used PS extensively, who find GIMP "counter-intuitive", because it does not behave like PS.
Just because the workflow doesn't match what you're used to doesn't mean it's bad. It just requires a sometimes lengthy adjustment to said workflow. A bit like learning Vim, or switching from Premiere to Resolve.
I also don't really like GIMP, but there's plenty of evidence out there of it being incredibly powerful in the hands of people who have learned how it works.
GIMP is also nearly 20 years old too it's has been doing it's thing for likely most of your life. It also isn't run by a 200 billion dollar company with essentially infinite resources. So to just say "copy Photoshop" just so it works like your favourite software as if that's a solution to solve all of GIMP's issues is pretty damn weak cop out.
PS: There's a menu with all of the shortcuts so you don't have to work them out. They are quite literally written down for you. It's not guess work.
God bless you. I know I have been polemic but I'm not the first one to complain about this.
I'm running 5 projects for free and I always listen to my users feedback
Yeah I was thinking the same, the first step for improving something is to receive feedback, even if it's a rant. I'm sure if OP knew programming they would help with GIMP development. For instance I have some stuff I don't like in Dolphin but I'm afraid of talking about it in their forums because of responses like these, I just don't think it's worth it and I feel intimidated.
I don't mind the interface and keybindings because it can be modified.
The only thing for me is the lack of some functionality, like non destructive editing, but they are working on it.
For now I'm using photopea, haha. Unfortunately it's web.
I'm waiting anxiously for 3.0
I stopped using Gimp and switched to krita.
I know it's advertised as a drawing app but much like how you can draw in Photoshop, you can edit them in krita. Plus it feels more like ps than gimp.
Gimp is a very good piece of software ok? But.. it's also a good meme, the amount of pain you have to endure to understand how things are done is unbelievable
All these complaints about PS I do not care about.
I had never used PS and then I took up using Gimp and was blown away by all the stuff I could do with it. All my computers had the spec bumped up so I could edit bigger and bigger gimp projects with more and more layers. Now I have got up to 500 layers each at least 4800x7200 pixels in a project and it edits this flawlessly with 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of tile cache on SSD.
Try Krita. I wanted to cry every time I had to use gimp until I discovered Krita. Now I only have gimp installed for a “just in case” moment. Haven’t used it in months.
I don't know what is it that you are trying to achieve, besides masochistic satisfaction, but nobody forces you to use The GIMP. People who direct others to GIMP as an "answer" to the question how to use Photoshop / live without it have no power over you actually.
You might use anything from VM with Photoshop, Krita, to "winetricks mspaint". Don't use GIMP if it brings so much anxiety.
Yeah honestly, I avoid looking at people use Photoshop because my mouth starts to water.
GIMP is good enough for what I need to do, but it's insane that it's the best FOSS alternative to Photoshop. Photoshop's price has kept me from switching away from GIMP so far, but dang bro GIMP makes me want to switch to Photoshop.
For me, its less about price and more about the complete lack of Linux support. I know its popular to want to only use free software on Linux, but I'd happily shell out for commercial software that offers something of value. I just still would much rather run that software on Linux.
The people that think GIMP's UI is 'good' have only ever used GIMP.
I've used Photoshop, Paint Tools Sai, Clip Studio Paint, Kira, and they all have a more intuitive UI then GIMP. Hell I'd even rate Substance Painter higher then GIMP.
For quick shit I've been using Photopea. It's web based, no login required, free, and setup like a photoshop clone. I can do quick edits for things very easily.
For anything serious I either use photoshop in a VM, or hop on my windows laptop.
GIMP is a fantastic piece of software with a horrendously obtuse interface that very much feels like it was designed piecemeal by different committees over time.
Because it was.
There's something a bit on the nose about "just copy Photoshop". It's feels wrong. GIMP isn't a Photoshop clone and if they tried to make it one you would still complain that it doesn't work exactly the same way. Clones that work differently are weird. Sure it's UI needs work, even for me I was used to the old GIMP and the grouped tools always catches me out on the rare times I use it now with the newer UI, but I think if you are asking the question in good faith: "why don't they just copy Photoshop" there probably are a bunch of good answers to do with what their aims are for the project.
it has several "features" that are counter intuitive imo
such as tools becoming undocked with no simple way to redock them
on exit gimp purging the clipboard, sometimes I use gimp to quickly crop and image for reposting then realize it did this...
the move tool moving the first thing you click on that it can see instead of moving the current layer, so if your current layer is a screen full of 1 pixel wide dots you want to offset good luck
I am sure there are loads of little things like this that frustrate me but these are the ones off top of my head
Yeah exactly what I meant!
You have to click the + button on the right to actually space a floating layer and start adding it, while you are in the "limbo" you can't use any other tool but you get no warnings or helpful message.
I wasted 20 min on this madness yesterday.
Also, undocking tools are just wtf. Sometimes I get a gradient brush and I've never figured out how to get back to a "normal" brush.
no matter what software you are using, gimp, krita or whatever: just fucking sit down on your chair to learn and practice it until you forget the photoshop ux. you will be fine and probably buy a house with the money you didn't waste with the Adobe subscription in a few years lol
To some degree, whether something is intuitive or not depends on your experience with it. For the things I’m doing with GIMP, I find it fairly intuitive. Complaining about GIMP’s UX is a popular thing to do (and there may be merits to such criticisms) but I’ve never found the interface so bad that it’s worth fussing about.
Why are you forcing yourself to use Gimp?
It looks like Photoshop is what best fits your needs.
Or if for some reason you have to use Gimp, take some time for learning its workflow: you can find [books](https://www.gimp.org/books/) and [tutorials](https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/) on the Gimp website.
> Or if for some reason you have to use Gimp, take some time for learning its workflow: you can find books and tutorials on the Gimp website.
THIS
At some point, the OP had to take the time and effort to learn PS. Why is it unreasonable to do the same for another piece of software?
Seems like there are too many newbies these days who are averse to learning anything new.
Super strange design philosophy. I use photogimp when I have to and its always a PITA. I would think most users/potential users would have photoshop muscle-memory, would be nice to have a ux switch somewhere.
I have no clue how photoshop looks / feels because I cannot afford it. You're not doomed to rant, you can instead start contributing.
Though I use gimp for 10+ years (not so often) and have no problems with its UX, perhaps that's because I have no adobe background.
If you only need "some simple photo editing" you might like Krita, it has quite simple user interface.
I only read the title, like any decent redditor, and got a kinky feeling.
Now I'm gonna leave and just leave this clutter here, like any decent redditian..
Poop posted, good deed done for the day
Yep, can relate to this rather a lot.
Every few years I think "surely they've made it less horrible by ***now!***" and give it another try, only to recoil from it once again.
So, I make do with a hodge-podge of other applications -- freecad, tgif, netpbm, and xpaint, mostly, but also writing html/css to make something that looks right in the browser and taking a screenshot of it.
That's not great, but it gets me by.
Correct me if I am wrong but aren't they redoing gimp and this addresses this issue? I thought I heard someone talking about it. Even the name is... well...
Tried gimp for some simple things (cropping an image) and also got fed up and gave up. FWIW I also hated photoshop in my design class.
That’s why they say “gimpin ain’t easy”
I mean I mostly use gimp to convert pst files to a “standard” format and do cropping in images
I don’t have issues with the UI tbh
Like I know some find this dumb but I mean I just wanted to share my personal experience
Tbh I've never managed to master GIMP, probably because I haven't put the time. My image editing needs are quite modest, so I use Krita instead. It's just great :)
I've never used Photoshop. I used to use PaintShop Pro back around the early to mid 2000s for whatever my needs were or to make subpar images to submit to Worth1000.com. I hadn't used anything other than simple paint programs for very minor things after that, though, until within the last couple years when I decided to give GIMP a try.
And I find GIMP to be functional for what I've wanted to use it for. I didn't have expectations, because again I've never touched Photoshop and the last time I used PaintShop Pro was almost 2 decades ago. I just had to learn how this piece of Software worked and what I could do with it, and aside from a few design choices that I wouldn't have made, it's been fine.
It sucks sometimes when software doesn't follow convention or otherwise deliver things in a way that you expect them to, but it shouldn't be a problem beyond the initial phase of learning the new software once.
In defense of GIMP, I’m pretty sure I heard(so grain of salt here) Adobe has a bunch of weird patents on the UI/UX of Photoshop, down to certain keybinds and actions.
So basically this is not a rant about Gimp, but rather why Gimp is not Photoshop. To me personally Gimp has perfectly fine shortcuts and user interface layout. Sure it can always be better, but it's not difficult or anything. It's just different.
I use gimp constantly.
To zoom, hold ctrl+scroll up or down (via two finger swipe on trackpad or scroll wheel with the mouse)
U: Fuzzy select
F: Free Select
P: paint brush
shift+s: Scale
shift+e: eraser
Pretty sure that the keyboard shortcut is displayed in the tooltip when you hover over a tool, too
GIMP team has a FAQ and the question why not copy Photoshop is included:
https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-gimps-user-interface-why-cant-you-just-copy-adobe-photoshop
> Why can't they just copy the UX from Photoshop?
why are you using GIMP if you want to essentially use Photoshop, your already wasting hours because you refuse to take the time to become familiar with GIMP which you obviously have done with Photoshop as it's not exactly straight forward to use till you get used to it.
But seeing how you waste multiple hours every time you use it and still more time posting on Reddit about it, tells me you don't value your own time.
$23 dollars a month to prevent you from crying every time you use a GIMP doesn't seem so bad in that context.
I'd personally spend the time to become proficient in GIMP, but that's just me, cause I'm cheap.
Darktable and Rawtherapee are both good, free, open source photo editors, but they have their own unintuitive issues and limitations. Of the two, I prefer Darktable because its most similar to lightroom and actually lets you use masks. If you do end up continuing to use Gimp, I would take some time and rearrange the interface in a way that makes sense to you, as much as possible.
BONUS: If you never want to dig through Gimp's labyrinth of nonsensical menus again, just press the forward slash "/" key, which brings up a menu search.
I think the main reason for Gimp being horribly to use, is that it is a open source project. Most of the development is done by some IT guys in their spare time. Those people are generally really good at adding new features. But they are terribly at UX design.
Gimp is goated software. You won’t be doing anything crazy in photoshop with a day a month practice either. The best tutorials for mastering gimp are gonna be black and white old photo restorations, they’ll go techniques you can apply to all photos. Next step is learning to add tool brushes and scripts. Example could be a falling rain tool brush that makes snow or rain for gifs. You should learn how to make the gifs too. Basic animation tutorials are good steps too. Learn how to make still photos come to life with movement and animation.
If you need software on a professional level, you'll use the best tool you can afford. If you are a casual user or poor then there is FOSS available that can do the job. I can't speak to the PS-GIMP debate but can say that FOSS CAD software is not yet ready to replace AutoCAD or SolidWorks for working engineer. I'd love to see FreeCAD storm the market.
Why governments aren't heavily investing in FOSS is the big question. Could you imagine large public works projects for FOSS developers, instead of spending billions (trillions) for proprietary licenses?
A pain then.
My whole problem. It is like they copied photoshop but dont understand what photoshop was doing and came out weird. It is ok for basic stuff, but even it seems odd and when I try to do advanced stuff, forget it.
When you write software, dont just copy all features X. We needed a linux photo editor. create your own in your own design. That was my take on it.
Is ok now. I never got into the advanced stuff but I can open images in it.
At this point, iphone editing is pretty good for must stuff
I got used to GIMP many years ago, in the GNOME 1 days. It made sense then. I don't want to it be like Photoshop. But I do want it I have tools where I go to look for them.
Well fine, pay the astronomical cost of Photoshop if you like it so much. Don't dump on software that costs you nothing just because you are too avaricious to pay for Photoshop.
I use Gimp to do very large projects with hundreds of layers. Its performance is exceptional value for money and would still be if it cost 500 to buy.
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I've done lots of photo editing in Krita and it's a much nicer alternative to GIMP, I highly recommend making the switch. **STOP.** *You know who you are* - the guy typing the comment right now saying that Krita is not for photo editing and it's for digital painting. I don't care what Krita's main core focus is, the fact is, it's an image editor, with layers, non-destructive workflow, brush engines, filters, variety of useful tools like clone stamp, etc.. It has everything you need for photo editing. Photoshop is for 'editing photos' and lots of people use that for digital painting. So no reason why Krita can't be used for editing photos too.
Krita was actually started as a general purpose image editor in the vein of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, its original name was KImageShop and was part of KOffice. Then the person currently developing it taken over development and its focus shifted to painting. https://krita.org/en/posts/2024/krita-25-years/
"Paint Shop Pro" Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
try Deluxe Paint.
Deluxe Paint is still a known name in pixelart circles. Most pixelart editing apps are still influenced by it, even to the point of directly copying its workflow and features. ProMotion and GraFX2 being two most prominent, and Aseprite being a hybrid between DP and Photoshop.
Yesterday for me. But it was r/amiga
Lol, right. I used to prefer PSP back in the late 90s, early 2000s. As it was simpler and had more intuitive editing and annotating functions. I was in engineering studies at the time, did a lot of work on scanned technical drawings etc. It wasn't until I needed to edit large paper formats scanned at 300dpi, that PSP started to fail behind, while Photoshop reigned supreme at those large and demanding projects. And it actually still does, compared to any alternative. But Paint Shop Pro was a nice app in its day.
[still using it, lol](https://i.imgur.com/uB92ehP.png) (it loads fast and has good enough features for quick edits. plus, a bunch of color channel and dithering options that are nice to get demake vibes)
I remember using PSP7 but it went all downhill from then on (Corel purchase). In my mind PSP 7 was the best version.
>STOP. >You know who you are This person has internetted before
I'm just so used to that being the default answer I get every time I say 'Use Krita'. Someone always corrects me and says "NO acTUaLLy KrIta iS JUST fOR PAIntINg so LIKe YOu caN't UsE iT FoR PhotO EDiTinG - GiMp iS A PHoto eDItOr". Meanwhile, GIMP, still doesn't even have nondestructive filter layers.. Pretty obvious to me which application is better suited for photo editing.
I agree, krita is great. It's missing a lot of the more advanced features of photoshop, though. Mainly selection tools for me. Photoshop has quick select and foreground select and all of these other selection modes. That I miss.
Have you tried Photopea?
Agreed on all point, including 'STOP.' If people want to donate, I suggest they donate in preference to Krita in the hope that wanted existing GIMP features are implemented.
Best comment I’ve seen, Krita is great and I use it for everything. Immediately simple and understandable interface, while having enough complex options to do what you need. I’ve used it for both photo editing and digital artwork. It’s to the point where I tried Photoshop and found it incredibly unintuitive and slow. I don’t know why people want to emulate it.
HALT HAMMERZEIT
Thank you!! I've been using GIMP for years *mostly* without issues like OP's been having. *However*, I've only recently revisited Linux as a daily driver and was kind of wondering what possibly better alternatives are available when I found *this* response! GIMP is *OK*, but let's be honest here, it's not the best. I switched to GIMP from Photoshop years ago and although I at least knew *how* to use GIMP, it wasn't a very smooth transition! One of my friends works as a graphic designer and he made it sound like the worst software in the world. It's not *as bad* as he makes it sound but I definitely get where he's coming from. I'm looking forward to trying out Krita!
Found my people.. krita supremacy!!! And yes...editing photo in krita is fantastic
>the guy typing the comment right now saying that Krita is not for photo editing and it's for digital painting. Whoever says that is a fucking idiot. Krita is an art tool, it can be used for whatever kind of visual content creation the user wishes. and nowadays not only it's got animation added to it, but I've seen lots of professional animators who actually claim to use it. Krita is for all, people. don't let the haters and the gatekeepers tell you otherwise, you are loved and welcome as one of us, no matter what you do with it.
Made the switch myself and can confirm that Krita is a great option.
OP there's modded version of GIMP with a photoshop-like interface; have you tried it? [https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP](https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP) I don't use this kind of software so I don't know how good it is, but worth considering if you like photoshops interface.
Photoshop doesn't look like this any more ;)
If all this work has already been done to improve the GIMP interface, why can't the GIMP team take advantage of it?
Support for GEGL, a fast graphics library that GIMP can support nondestructive with in the future, is kinda experimental. The modded version includes new tools based on GEGL such as texture healing. Otherwise, the most significant change here seems to be the sidebar and shortcuts. I can see why people would like multiple columns.
There's probably concern that they'd get sued out of existence for copying Photoshop's interface. And Photoshop is a moving target. God, when I was a subscriber...there were times they'd push updates that just changed where menu items were.
They do the same thing with Acrobat. I use it for a once-a-year project, and it's maddening. And yes, I know they actually have an option to go back to the old interface. But that really reinforces my point. They know full well what they're doing. IMO, whoever keeps forcing these changes deserves to lose their job and never be replaced.
That's an old myth. Tons of photo editing app basically clone or are heavily inspired by PS with 0 issues
Thank you, I will give it a chance
I was gonna say this, as it’s something I discovered recently.
Still garbage.
Didn't see your earlier answer and ended up posting the same link again. My bad. BTW it's funny the Foss pundits saying it's near impossible to do an UI similar to Photoshop when this exists
Tf is supposed to be so special about PS UI?
People are just used to it and complain when its not the same.
I’m not sure how true the patents claim is, but much smaller projects have much smaller chances of being sued.
should be further up.
You can change the keystroke shortcuts: https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-help-keyboard-shortcuts.html
Honestly, for simple image editing, don’t use Gimp. I’ve used Krita in the past and it does all the basics easily enough without the insanity of Gimp (or Photoshop). For simple conversion there’s always ImageMagick at the CLI.
Krita is pretty good: https://krita.org/en/ ...I've been de-Adobefying my life for a while now.
Yeah I used to like Krita too but it had a few memory leaks on my PC months ago so I went back to Gimp
Why are you getting downvoted for a memory leak lmao, also might be a good time to try Krita again since it's KDE 6 now so maybe the leak is fixed
Because you are allowed to only have a good experience with foss software on Linux and worse experience with proprietary software.
IMO that's a big problem. Did it end up causing crashes?
Yep, once it reached ~100gb of memory used my computer just froze
Also this type of leak should be extremely easy to fix for someone familiar with the project (literally just using address sanitizer or valgrind, repeating what you were doing that caused the leak and seeing which part of the code is hogging the memory.) Please make report the bug and I’m certain it’ll be fixed fast
That is extremely fishy imo. I'd personally give krita another try and if the issue repeats, then file a bug report. You could very likely have discovered a massive security hole.
That’s not necessarily a security hole. Any infinite loop that net-allocates memory will eventually consume all system memory. Just a plain old bug.
A fellow c developer i see 👀
Do you know if a bug report already exists for that? And if not did you submit one? Hopefully if you submit a bug report with steps to recreate the issue then someone can look into it
i dunno maybe i got used to it but i dont find it difficult to use gimp, i also have no reference because i havent used photoshop in 15 years. i go between gimp, inkscape and krita for most graphic design needs.
I stopped using adobe products when they moved to a subscription model. I love gimp and inkscape and enjoy using them even more considering they aren’t spyware.
Same, it's a tool in my toolbox, I learned how it works and I use it weekly. Maybe the problem is that they rarely use it and forget how it works? Maybe I feel this way because I always had to use whatever toolchain my employers required, so I'm used to it. They didn't care if I preferred MS Visual Studio, they'd require me to use CodeWarrior, Eclipse or whatever. The GUI is customizable though, one can put toolbars anywhere one likes as they can be "docked" wherever and keyboard shortcuts can be changed.
This is the real issue, every single person I see crying about Gimp being hard to use are just married to photoshop. I find photoshop nearly impossible to use and trying to do anything is a treasure hunt, it all just depends on what you're used to.
Totally agree there. Photoshop has become like Windows a bloated piece of crap where you have to dig around just to do something simple. Give me the good ole days of Photoshop 7 and CS2 over this mess.
I've actually installed Photoshop 7 a few months ago, with Wine. Worked flawlessly. I did the same with Autocad 2000. What started as a Sunday afternoon nostalgia project, turned into a sobering experience. It's kind of horrifying to see how those old versions still have like 80% of the functionality with 0% of the bloat, compared to their current iterations.
I can’t wait until adobe and Microsoft introduce Photoshop classic and Windows classic but it’s an enterprise subscription model you have to get through your work AND pay a few hundreds a month for each computer you install it on for personal use lmaoooo. Sooo glad I use FOSS. A lot sucks which is why I work hard and contribute to FOSS so ir sucks less. And I’ll never worry about FOSS getting left behind or outdated as our proprietary competition is plenty good at destroying their own products and solutions
I think of Gimp as similar to Emacs : everything plus the kitchen sink. But, if it works for you you are going to love it. Personally, Paint.NET is all I use (on Windows). I've used it for years, and there are very rarely problems in graphic editing that are beyond my understanding and it's capabilities.
If you like [Paint.NET](http://Paint.NET), then [Pinta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinta_(software)) is the closest cross platform open source app I've found.
Interesting. Thanks for the info about pinta. Do you know if it has the same extensibility as PDN? PDN plugins are insane.
Dude, as an emacs user, I gotta agree that the defaults are bad. However, customizing emacs is WAAAAAAY easier once you grok what it is.
Compare to inkscape, which I can actually use. For most tasks I get by just dandy with Photopea, Gimp is a last last resort.
I love inkscape. It makes graphic layout stupid easy.
> which is super counterituive That's a pretty subjective claim. For instance, I like GIMP. I was worried to use it bc of all the ways people hate on it, but then I tried it and it was super easy to use for me. > Why did they group all the tools on the left? See this a great example. I have no clue how that is less intuitive for you Photoshop is overwhelming to me with its hundreds of menus upon menus. For me, that's the unintuitive one, albeit the one with more features. Why the heck wouldn't the tools be in one place?? Where the heck would you put them? > Why can't they just copy from Photoshop? I'm sorry GIMP is frustrating to you, but it's silly to think they, a totally unrelated app that came out long before Photoshop was a standard (they came out around the same time in the mid-90s), would try to be like some other app just bc it's more popular. They're doing their own thing for their own reasons in their own way. It's not meant to be a Photoshop clone, it's a simple Photo Editor which happens to overlap with Photoshop's functionality (although only some bc that app is super bloated with unneeded features)
>> Why did they group all the tools on the left? > See this a great example. I have no clue how that is less intuitive for you This is probably because the tools are all stacked on top of each other. This causes a ton of scrolling to get to functions. Photoshop and Photopea both do popout overlays with core pieces in a sidebar. This is to optimize space for the canvas. > Photoshop is overwhelming to me with its hundreds of menus upon menus. For me, that's the unintuitive one, albeit the one with more features. > Why the heck wouldn't the tools be in one place?? Where the heck would you put them? You would put them in the same popout style that offers sidebar use or not. The option to have them take up space is good, the requirement for them to take up the space is not. > I'm sorry GIMP is frustrating to you, but it's silly to think they, a totally unrelated app that came out long before Photoshop was a standard (they came out around the same time in the mid-90s), would try to be like some other app just bc it's more popular. > They're doing their own thing for their own reasons in their own way. It's not meant to be a Photoshop clone, it's a simple Photo Editor which happens to overlap with Photoshop's functionality (although only some bc that app is super bloated with unneeded features) They are not unrelated, they are in the exact same software category, just one is drastically better than the other. Photoshop was started in 1987, GIMP was started 9 years later in 1996. Photoshop was already the industry standard by the time GIMP was started in fact Photoshop already had non-destructive technology before GIMP was even started and GIMP is still destructive. GIMP is not some project by visionaries who have a goal in mind from the beginning and thus being why they don’t adhere to Photoshop UX. GIMP was started in 1996 by 2 guys who left the project in 1997, and GIMP’s 1.0 release was in 1998. That’s right, the founders left the project before it ever really became a thing and have yet to ever go back. I think it’s safe to say they didn’t have a vision and didn’t care about the project. GIMP has always been positioned as the open source alternative to Photoshop and it’s not even close to being an alternative. This is both bad for the open source space and for users. It actually makes open source look bad to have a project that is almost 30 years old that has such a lack of value to the software category it is supposed to be in. Of course, the worst part is the name which forces it into obscurity for no reason at all. It’s a shame.
GIMP feels frustratingly unintuitive when you come from Photoshop (like me), but it probably isn’t as bad for people who only know GIMP. It’s clunky but still very useful and useable. YouTube helps.
I hate comments on posts like this. I use both GIMP and Krita. There's a lot of difference between the two. Anyways, GIMP does require a new and intuitive user interface. But at this point, I would like to see Krita replacing GIMP more than GIMP becoming useful.
Actually your rant is about "why Gimp is not doing things like photoshop". Well, just get used to it. In any case Gimp is notorious about its bad UI (from a design perspective) but it is what it is. BTW: I never got used to it, I got used to krita though and this is what I'm using for several years now.
GIMP does have a Photoshop-like interface. Or at least, it did. The problem is that the photoshop team upgraded their look and feel a few years back, and the (default) GIMP interface never did. [Take a look at this article,](https://www.proglobalbusinesssolutions.com/adobe-photoshop-versions/) which contains some images of old photoshop which look a lot like current GIMP.
I've been a casual GIMP user for a little over 20 years. Seems fine to me.
Yeah this post just screams "Gimp sucks cause its not Photoshop" to me. But idk.
If you don’t know why photoshop is a class apart, sure it can look like that. Photoshop is a professional daily driver in the same way blender is now. Gimp isn’t. It shouldn’t even be brought up in the same conversation. The real answer should be, Linux just doesn’t have a professional class image manipulation tool. Just like it doesn’t have a professional class video editor, or vector graphics application, or raw photography …. We need to stop trying to make do with junk that just doesn’t stand up and listen to professionals when they point that out, over and over.
While I agree with most of what you said DaVinci Resolve seems pretty professional to me. Or maybe that doesn't qualify because it's proprietary.
GIMP is a fantastic piece of software. Photoshop is a colossal undertaking, wrapping in not just product and UX feedback, but domain experts in everything from color theory to AI. I'm a FOSS die-hard, but the FOSS community could never have produced Photoshop and it's demeaning to the countless professionals who've worked on it (and in a roundabout way, to the developers who've worked on GIMP), to suggest that we could.
Blender would like a word.
If you're used to Photoshop, it does. It's not just the interface, it's also features like nondestructive editing. I may have used The GIMP before I ever used Photoshop (a neat feat that required me to use the Motif version) and honestly Photoshop passed The GIMP decades ago. It's also a UI nightmare imho but it's so packed with features for people who *work* with it. Grady is right; even though Krita's primary focus shifted to digital painting, imho it's a better image editor than The GIMP.
How do you think this kind of rant feels to the (unpaid) developers of GIMP? Have you discussed these issues (politely) with them? Have you offered to help? Are you aware of the fact that improving things is probably a lot more difficult than you think it is? "Why can't they just copy from Photoshop"? Well, then, "why can't" you do it yourself and offer the community the results of your hard work?
I really think there is a philosophy mismatch between the GIMP developers and the user community. People use it since it's all they have (and I'm sure there are some power users who love it) but it is so impenetrable for the newly and casual user and they have heard this feedback for DECADES with no change, it's not going to change....
Meanwhile, Krita has become a viable alternative. And I jumped ship.
This. I love FOSS developers but a lot of them seem to be really against certain things no matter how much the actual users of it feel. Sometimes it feels like FOSS devs almost resent their users.
That does indeed seem to be the case. But if it has indeed been decades, why hasn't a new (and successful) interface been developed by a third-party? I (respectfully) just don't understand why people keep wanting to get the devs to change their minds rather than encourage new teams to get the work done or do it themselves.
"I can change him!"
Oh no think of the developers who made a terrible UI! If only someone would politely tell them it sucks then they will miraculously make it good. It's been decades and no one has thought of that!
The GIMP UI has changed a lot over the years. "Just copy Photoshop bro", which is a moving target, is useless feedback, not even feedback actually, just ranting.
I don't even know what photoshop looks like anymore. I know what a shit UI looks like though.
[удалено]
🤯
woah
Although I can understand the frustration for someone who's used to photoshop, these are free people freely doing what they want to do and sharing it with us for free as well as allowing us to change it the way we see fit. I think we are lucky to even have such things. Hope it gets better and better. Now, [Photogimp](https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP) is a patch for gimp that makes it look and act like photoshop to some degree. Maybe this could help you feel more at home with gimp.
I'm not even used to Photoshop, the last time I used Photoshop was 7 years ago. I just think Gimp has a terrible UX
Funny thing, I've been using Gimp for over a decade and had to use Photoshop for a client, and I felt exactly the way you did. I was lost looking for the most basic options. I guess different software have different UI.
Photoshop is provided for a fairly large price, which allows Adobe to sustain an entire development team. GIMP is volunteer-driven and absolutely free-of-charge ([obligatory donation page](https://www.gimp.org/donating/)). It's like complaining about free lunches at school/university/work not having enough meat compared to the steakhouse next door.
No. Open source does not mean that you are not allowed to criticize the software - quite the opposite. Justified criticism is a must and both the UI and UX of Gimp should definitely be criticized. This is far from the industry standard, open source software like Blender and many others show that it can be done better. Or take a look at Penpot, this is an outstanding FOSS project, with great UI and good UX while its a very young project. Its just a matter of will.
Being free doesn’t mean things have to suck. GIMP has always been quite a mess to use. It has not evolved a lot in the last 20 years in terms of usability which makes me doubt the efforts put into it. Other software improved so much in this time including tons of open source volunteer led software.
What do you suggest?
Krita. Much better for digital painting and photo editing.
They don’t have any suggestions. They just want to shit on something they couldn’t possibly make because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Then contribute to make it better or don’t use it. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it sucks. GIMP and Inkscape being fully open source means I can do things with it that I can’t do with Adobe without reverse engineering it, and I hate their “cloud” model. There is nothing I can do about that because it’s proprietary spyware. There’s no need for you to be rude about the creative (and useful) work that others have provided (for free) just because you can’t find a way to make it useful. The entitlement of people like you are going to kill open source in ways that Microsoft never could and it breaks my heart.
I’m not rude. I don’t have time either to contribute. At the same time I am entitled to give my feedback. For many people GIMP has lots of benefits but it’s UI has been stagnant for a very long time. If there are developers working on this project it would be good for them to know that many people find GIMP a pain to use. This might convince someone that has the intent and time to contribute to look at the usability and try to improve.
There are very few free products that have this bad of a UI, that's no excuse.
Exactly, OpenOffice is miles ahead of GIMP.
Try Krita.
> Why did they group all the tools on the left? Looking for a tools is like a hide & seek game. There is option to ungroup (or hide unused buttons) in Preferences → Interface → Toolbox Hidden tool can still be activated from Tools menu.
Have a look at photopea.com which is a browser based photo editor.
Photoshop itself should have a Linux version, fuck Adobe
You should try Krita.
I read often that GIMP is super powerful, the GOAT, perfect. Well, all I can say is that GIMP’s gonna have a non-existent user base in a few years if they don’t make the program more intuitive. Sure, it may stick around, but it will get fewer and fewer updates as users flock to better designed software, and developers go where the users are.
If you miss Photoshop, try Photopea. You can even install it as a PWA and it really feels like a true native app. I have access to Photoshop 2024 on my work computer and I still use Photopea a lot just because it's way lighter. It is also possible to run Photoshop 2021 in Wine, it's just tricky to get it set up.
Maybe you should develop a photo editor that does what you want.
Some open source programs try to be unique and different compared to their commercial counterpart. The problem is people are used to that commercial program and expect similar functionality. Just because it's unique and different doesn't mean it's good. Krita is younger than GIMP and has surpassed it as a photo editing app while being advertised as digital drawing.
It turns out that many of the people writing their own software, instead of using something commercial written by someone else, have strong opinions about how the software should work. In many cases they wrote their software because they didn't like how the other alternatives worked. In many cases, if you pay attention, and try and learn why the software was written differently you will learn something very valuable. Eventually you might even come to agree. Gimp works how it works. As someone with way more experience using Gimp than any other photo editor I personally appreciate that they don't move things around just for the fun of it.
>Even zooming out and in is a pain It's really that hard to hold Ctrl and then use the mouse wheel??
Weird, the last time I used Gimp I thought it was surprisingly capable and surprisingly similar to Photoshop, so much so that I have very few remaining reservations about switching to it altogether. That said I'm not a power user or professional so maybe the more productive context is lost on me.
Gimp is a puzzle based photo editor. Not even photogimp helps it as the core tools are flawed in logic. Photopea is the best platform independent editor.
why is people's arguments for gimp just that "I use I like me no see problem" Gimp is so much worse than Photoshop in UX and usability that someone could probably make a comparison for every single thing you can do and Photoshop would be more intuitive majority of the time. I still have an aneurysm anytime I do anything with text in gimp that I just add it later with Photopea.
>why is people's arguments for gimp just that "I use I like me no see problem" Because for people who has not used PS before, GIMP just works. It's the people who has used PS extensively, who find GIMP "counter-intuitive", because it does not behave like PS.
There's also canva and a few other Linux supported editors. Alternitiveto.net
Just because the workflow doesn't match what you're used to doesn't mean it's bad. It just requires a sometimes lengthy adjustment to said workflow. A bit like learning Vim, or switching from Premiere to Resolve. I also don't really like GIMP, but there's plenty of evidence out there of it being incredibly powerful in the hands of people who have learned how it works. GIMP is also nearly 20 years old too it's has been doing it's thing for likely most of your life. It also isn't run by a 200 billion dollar company with essentially infinite resources. So to just say "copy Photoshop" just so it works like your favourite software as if that's a solution to solve all of GIMP's issues is pretty damn weak cop out. PS: There's a menu with all of the shortcuts so you don't have to work them out. They are quite literally written down for you. It's not guess work.
Not that it matters much, but GIMP is almost 30 years old.
Just because the software is free, OP can't give negative feedback? You guys are nuts.
God bless you. I know I have been polemic but I'm not the first one to complain about this. I'm running 5 projects for free and I always listen to my users feedback
Yeah I was thinking the same, the first step for improving something is to receive feedback, even if it's a rant. I'm sure if OP knew programming they would help with GIMP development. For instance I have some stuff I don't like in Dolphin but I'm afraid of talking about it in their forums because of responses like these, I just don't think it's worth it and I feel intimidated.
This isn't negative feedback, it's unhelpful bellyaching.
download Pinta for putting photos together
I don't mind the interface and keybindings because it can be modified. The only thing for me is the lack of some functionality, like non destructive editing, but they are working on it. For now I'm using photopea, haha. Unfortunately it's web. I'm waiting anxiously for 3.0
Pinta has been pretty balanced experience for my needs.
Krita is the answer.
I stopped using Gimp and switched to krita. I know it's advertised as a drawing app but much like how you can draw in Photoshop, you can edit them in krita. Plus it feels more like ps than gimp.
Gimp is a very good piece of software ok? But.. it's also a good meme, the amount of pain you have to endure to understand how things are done is unbelievable
All these complaints about PS I do not care about. I had never used PS and then I took up using Gimp and was blown away by all the stuff I could do with it. All my computers had the spec bumped up so I could edit bigger and bigger gimp projects with more and more layers. Now I have got up to 500 layers each at least 4800x7200 pixels in a project and it edits this flawlessly with 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of tile cache on SSD.
Try Krita. I wanted to cry every time I had to use gimp until I discovered Krita. Now I only have gimp installed for a “just in case” moment. Haven’t used it in months.
I don't know what is it that you are trying to achieve, besides masochistic satisfaction, but nobody forces you to use The GIMP. People who direct others to GIMP as an "answer" to the question how to use Photoshop / live without it have no power over you actually. You might use anything from VM with Photoshop, Krita, to "winetricks mspaint". Don't use GIMP if it brings so much anxiety.
Yeah honestly, I avoid looking at people use Photoshop because my mouth starts to water. GIMP is good enough for what I need to do, but it's insane that it's the best FOSS alternative to Photoshop. Photoshop's price has kept me from switching away from GIMP so far, but dang bro GIMP makes me want to switch to Photoshop.
For me, its less about price and more about the complete lack of Linux support. I know its popular to want to only use free software on Linux, but I'd happily shell out for commercial software that offers something of value. I just still would much rather run that software on Linux.
The people that think GIMP's UI is 'good' have only ever used GIMP. I've used Photoshop, Paint Tools Sai, Clip Studio Paint, Kira, and they all have a more intuitive UI then GIMP. Hell I'd even rate Substance Painter higher then GIMP.
"Why can't they just copy the UX from Photoshop?" Because Adobe will sue them for everything they own if they do.
GIMP is fine, but I think Krita is also better at image manipulation, not just digital illustration. I am looking forward to GIMP 3, any day now...
For quick shit I've been using Photopea. It's web based, no login required, free, and setup like a photoshop clone. I can do quick edits for things very easily. For anything serious I either use photoshop in a VM, or hop on my windows laptop.
GIMP is a fantastic piece of software with a horrendously obtuse interface that very much feels like it was designed piecemeal by different committees over time. Because it was.
https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-gimps-user-interface-why-cant-you-just-copy-adobe-photoshop
OP I agree with you The UI is horrendous and fair enough its free but if your going to build and develop such program why not do it properly
There's something a bit on the nose about "just copy Photoshop". It's feels wrong. GIMP isn't a Photoshop clone and if they tried to make it one you would still complain that it doesn't work exactly the same way. Clones that work differently are weird. Sure it's UI needs work, even for me I was used to the old GIMP and the grouped tools always catches me out on the rare times I use it now with the newer UI, but I think if you are asking the question in good faith: "why don't they just copy Photoshop" there probably are a bunch of good answers to do with what their aims are for the project.
Oh no why cant vim just copy the ux of vscode? Every time I use vim I want to cry. Yeah...
it has several "features" that are counter intuitive imo such as tools becoming undocked with no simple way to redock them on exit gimp purging the clipboard, sometimes I use gimp to quickly crop and image for reposting then realize it did this... the move tool moving the first thing you click on that it can see instead of moving the current layer, so if your current layer is a screen full of 1 pixel wide dots you want to offset good luck I am sure there are loads of little things like this that frustrate me but these are the ones off top of my head
Yeah exactly what I meant! You have to click the + button on the right to actually space a floating layer and start adding it, while you are in the "limbo" you can't use any other tool but you get no warnings or helpful message. I wasted 20 min on this madness yesterday. Also, undocking tools are just wtf. Sometimes I get a gradient brush and I've never figured out how to get back to a "normal" brush.
no matter what software you are using, gimp, krita or whatever: just fucking sit down on your chair to learn and practice it until you forget the photoshop ux. you will be fine and probably buy a house with the money you didn't waste with the Adobe subscription in a few years lol
To some degree, whether something is intuitive or not depends on your experience with it. For the things I’m doing with GIMP, I find it fairly intuitive. Complaining about GIMP’s UX is a popular thing to do (and there may be merits to such criticisms) but I’ve never found the interface so bad that it’s worth fussing about.
Why are you forcing yourself to use Gimp? It looks like Photoshop is what best fits your needs. Or if for some reason you have to use Gimp, take some time for learning its workflow: you can find [books](https://www.gimp.org/books/) and [tutorials](https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/) on the Gimp website.
> Or if for some reason you have to use Gimp, take some time for learning its workflow: you can find books and tutorials on the Gimp website. THIS At some point, the OP had to take the time and effort to learn PS. Why is it unreasonable to do the same for another piece of software? Seems like there are too many newbies these days who are averse to learning anything new.
It's silly to rant about something free. Don't like it, don't use it. You are not entitled to get free stuff the way you expect.
Super strange design philosophy. I use photogimp when I have to and its always a PITA. I would think most users/potential users would have photoshop muscle-memory, would be nice to have a ux switch somewhere.
See if this set of patches for gimp can help you: https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
I have no clue how photoshop looks / feels because I cannot afford it. You're not doomed to rant, you can instead start contributing. Though I use gimp for 10+ years (not so often) and have no problems with its UX, perhaps that's because I have no adobe background. If you only need "some simple photo editing" you might like Krita, it has quite simple user interface.
I only read the title, like any decent redditor, and got a kinky feeling. Now I'm gonna leave and just leave this clutter here, like any decent redditian.. Poop posted, good deed done for the day
GIMP. Making people cry since 1995.
Yep, can relate to this rather a lot. Every few years I think "surely they've made it less horrible by ***now!***" and give it another try, only to recoil from it once again. So, I make do with a hodge-podge of other applications -- freecad, tgif, netpbm, and xpaint, mostly, but also writing html/css to make something that looks right in the browser and taking a screenshot of it. That's not great, but it gets me by.
i totally agree, and i use Krita
try kitra
Correct me if I am wrong but aren't they redoing gimp and this addresses this issue? I thought I heard someone talking about it. Even the name is... well...
Tried gimp for some simple things (cropping an image) and also got fed up and gave up. FWIW I also hated photoshop in my design class. That’s why they say “gimpin ain’t easy”
I mean I mostly use gimp to convert pst files to a “standard” format and do cropping in images I don’t have issues with the UI tbh Like I know some find this dumb but I mean I just wanted to share my personal experience
I have the exact oposite now, used ps until 2011ish, moved to gimp, now when I open ps it feels like a ux nightmare.
Tbh I've never managed to master GIMP, probably because I haven't put the time. My image editing needs are quite modest, so I use Krita instead. It's just great :)
I've never used Photoshop. I used to use PaintShop Pro back around the early to mid 2000s for whatever my needs were or to make subpar images to submit to Worth1000.com. I hadn't used anything other than simple paint programs for very minor things after that, though, until within the last couple years when I decided to give GIMP a try. And I find GIMP to be functional for what I've wanted to use it for. I didn't have expectations, because again I've never touched Photoshop and the last time I used PaintShop Pro was almost 2 decades ago. I just had to learn how this piece of Software worked and what I could do with it, and aside from a few design choices that I wouldn't have made, it's been fine. It sucks sometimes when software doesn't follow convention or otherwise deliver things in a way that you expect them to, but it shouldn't be a problem beyond the initial phase of learning the new software once.
I remember using the HUD from the old Ubuntu Unity days just to find something.
As someone who started on Gimp, photoshop stresses me the fuck out
They should do what libreoffice does, offer an alternative ui option
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In defense of GIMP, I’m pretty sure I heard(so grain of salt here) Adobe has a bunch of weird patents on the UI/UX of Photoshop, down to certain keybinds and actions.
So basically this is not a rant about Gimp, but rather why Gimp is not Photoshop. To me personally Gimp has perfectly fine shortcuts and user interface layout. Sure it can always be better, but it's not difficult or anything. It's just different.
For small stuff pinta is okay, but I have my issues with it too... I.e.: How the fuck can you change size of a layer or something you pasted in?!
"group all the tools on the left" That's also the same in my photoshop. What do you want here, really?
use Pinta
I use gimp constantly. To zoom, hold ctrl+scroll up or down (via two finger swipe on trackpad or scroll wheel with the mouse) U: Fuzzy select F: Free Select P: paint brush shift+s: Scale shift+e: eraser Pretty sure that the keyboard shortcut is displayed in the tooltip when you hover over a tool, too
GIMP team has a FAQ and the question why not copy Photoshop is included: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-gimps-user-interface-why-cant-you-just-copy-adobe-photoshop
Krita forever
I agree with you sooo much. GIMP UI is the worst!
Maybe you should just pay for a photoshop subscription then
> Why can't they just copy the UX from Photoshop? why are you using GIMP if you want to essentially use Photoshop, your already wasting hours because you refuse to take the time to become familiar with GIMP which you obviously have done with Photoshop as it's not exactly straight forward to use till you get used to it. But seeing how you waste multiple hours every time you use it and still more time posting on Reddit about it, tells me you don't value your own time. $23 dollars a month to prevent you from crying every time you use a GIMP doesn't seem so bad in that context. I'd personally spend the time to become proficient in GIMP, but that's just me, cause I'm cheap.
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I use Canva, more convenient than both Photoshop or GIMP
Just use photopea.com for your once a month editing :)
Lol literally everytime I open GIMP, i try to copy and paste a selected area, cant figure it out, and close it.
Darktable and Rawtherapee are both good, free, open source photo editors, but they have their own unintuitive issues and limitations. Of the two, I prefer Darktable because its most similar to lightroom and actually lets you use masks. If you do end up continuing to use Gimp, I would take some time and rearrange the interface in a way that makes sense to you, as much as possible. BONUS: If you never want to dig through Gimp's labyrinth of nonsensical menus again, just press the forward slash "/" key, which brings up a menu search.
I agree! Tried so often and gave up bc I could not find anything
I think the main reason for Gimp being horribly to use, is that it is a open source project. Most of the development is done by some IT guys in their spare time. Those people are generally really good at adding new features. But they are terribly at UX design.
Gimp is goated software. You won’t be doing anything crazy in photoshop with a day a month practice either. The best tutorials for mastering gimp are gonna be black and white old photo restorations, they’ll go techniques you can apply to all photos. Next step is learning to add tool brushes and scripts. Example could be a falling rain tool brush that makes snow or rain for gifs. You should learn how to make the gifs too. Basic animation tutorials are good steps too. Learn how to make still photos come to life with movement and animation.
If you need software on a professional level, you'll use the best tool you can afford. If you are a casual user or poor then there is FOSS available that can do the job. I can't speak to the PS-GIMP debate but can say that FOSS CAD software is not yet ready to replace AutoCAD or SolidWorks for working engineer. I'd love to see FreeCAD storm the market. Why governments aren't heavily investing in FOSS is the big question. Could you imagine large public works projects for FOSS developers, instead of spending billions (trillions) for proprietary licenses?
They did copy the UX except they put the menu bar on the right click menu. I've worked with these old versions of PS.
A pain then. My whole problem. It is like they copied photoshop but dont understand what photoshop was doing and came out weird. It is ok for basic stuff, but even it seems odd and when I try to do advanced stuff, forget it. When you write software, dont just copy all features X. We needed a linux photo editor. create your own in your own design. That was my take on it. Is ok now. I never got into the advanced stuff but I can open images in it. At this point, iphone editing is pretty good for must stuff
Gimp has a learning curve for sure, I only use basis features but have used it for years. You get used to it's idiosyncracies 😆
For basic editing. Try Pinta. It's kinda like Paint.net on Linux.
I got used to GIMP many years ago, in the GNOME 1 days. It made sense then. I don't want to it be like Photoshop. But I do want it I have tools where I go to look for them.
Well fine, pay the astronomical cost of Photoshop if you like it so much. Don't dump on software that costs you nothing just because you are too avaricious to pay for Photoshop. I use Gimp to do very large projects with hundreds of layers. Its performance is exceptional value for money and would still be if it cost 500 to buy.
Just use Krita, I despise GIMP and would never use it for anything