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As I was pondering my next recommendation to a small business the GIMP, Scribus and web tool intergration thought crept into the scenerio. Only the web creation tool for small business that was being entertained was the Nvu thing (when it gets to version 1.0 birthday).

This would be a nice combination for entry level web folks to train on.

What do folks think of adding Nvu to the story?

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I started reading the first part, and was thinking you have to figure out an interface before you standardize on one. GIMP is certainly the poster child of the need for more Open Source projects to have a reasonable user interface for reasonable people. I needed to do some transparent images, so I installed GIMP. After googling I found out how to do it. Then I wanted to modify the images, and the simplist of drawing tasks were obscure to me. I'd draw what I thought was white and it turned gray.

I don't see why a powerful tool can't cater to both novice and expert alike. This is a common problem among many open source projects. UI is difficult, configuration is difficult, etc. etc. Look at the adoption FireFox has gained with an interface that appeals to the average person.

The comment about Nvu is interesting. I'd think it would be interesting to integrate such an editor into Nvu.

The challenge for Open Source is to find people who can create reasonable interfaces and keep the interface concise and clean over the life of the project. It can easily turn into a Frankenstein like monster over time if allowed.

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Read "Grokking the GIMP", it helped me very much. On the other hand I didn't have the problem you described. What have you used before? I ask because it's next to impossible to start using any advanced image manipulation program without at least some prior experience or RTFMing. Not that switching tools is easy.

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I don't think that a power tool such as GIMP has to be complicated to use for simple functions. I should only have to RTFM for power user features not how to draw a line.



Complex operations may require complex and indepth knowledge. But simple tasks should not. Unless you want to stay limitted to a very small niche market.



I basically needed to do two things. One is make the image have a transparent background. And modify some colors. MS Paint was easy enough to draw and do the color changes. Unfortunately it has no ability to deal with transparency. So I thought of GIMP as I knew it handled transparency



It took me a bit of digging to figure out the alpha channel and all. That was expected. What wasn't expect is that when I clicked to draw and had a forground color of white that I got gray. As I mentioned, I'm sure there's some rational behind this, but it escaped me.



For my 10 minute task, I didn't want to have to read 5 hours worth of documentation just to figure out how to do that 10 minute task. That's a common problem among open source solutions. They're often powerful but have a high price to pay to use.



So I ended up using MS Paint to make the drawing mods and switching to GIMP to set transparency. It just seems silly to have to switch like that when I know GIMP surely could do the drawing that I needed. I just couldn't justify the learning time for the tiny task at hand.

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1. Make a new image with transparent background. Simple.


2. Pick paintbrush. Simple.


3. Draw with default white color. Simple.

Nothing gray here. If you have played around with the defaults it's not Gimp's fault! Is it really gray, or did the checker pattern show trough your drawing, because my first guess is that you have changed the opacity of the paintbrush, check the tool options.

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Picking the "paint brush" I get nothing drawn. Picking the "pencil" I get what I would expect, after setting the size down to a reasonable value.



Transparency is easy when starting with a new image, but converting an existing image wasn't as straight forward. I was expecting to just specify a color for the transparency. It may have been this process that caused my drawing problems.



It's definitely a powerful tool. I think it would get a wider audience if the interface had a more spartan mode.

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Funny how you say it's simple, (just like all OS project do), but don't actually PROVIDE any USEFUL information (just like all OS projects do).

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... nicely. I think it's gonna another open source success story.

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I agree that the GIMP needs a new GUI, but
why not simply have a single app with
a GUI that can be reconfigured for
different personalities? The Eclipse project
calls these "perspectives". The application would
come with several pre-configured GUI perspectives.
The user can also custom configure their own
perspective. Unfortunately, Eclipse is written
in Java, so it's dog-slow and not very portable;
otherwise, I'd suggest writing a GIMP plug-in
for Eclipse.

And please, oh please, don't let them follow
Adobe's example for user interfaces. I hate all
those floating toolbars.

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I agree.. I don't see a reason why it needs to be split. I do question some of the UI choices, but I'll agree with others 2.x series has made some nice improvements.

- Ben

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"Eclipse is written in Java, so it's dog-slow and not very portable.." I dont see why Java is not portable?

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It's a joke bashing on one of Java's tenuous claims to fame.

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I agree that there is a dedicated following of GIMP who "love/prefer" the GIMP's GUI with its floating image and tool bars all over the screen, rather than the single dedicated screen of Photoshop and its contained toolbars. However, I am one of the many who candidly dislike the GIMP's GUI, but praise everything that the GIMP stands for and am the first to admit that it is a great/brilliant piece of software. My thoughts are that in order to get more users, you simply have to offer a Photoshop-like interface. So: offer a clear cut button on the tool bar which toggles between Classic GIMP GUI and Photoshop-like GUI.....all things to all comers and people like myself would be much happier. Let's face it, Photoshop is the standard at present and that's what the majority of users are therefore happy with.......pander if you must, but at least get them to put their toes in the water..and a GUI similar to Photoshop is the way to go.

As regards splitting...go for it.

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The reason we have floating tool bars is for those lucky enough to have multiple monitors.

There should be a way to dock the toolbars somewhere, but don't take away the floaters. Pushing them to a second monitor is the by far the nicest solution for those for whom it is an option.

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...rather than the single dedicated screen of Photoshop and its contained toolbars.

Apparently you haven't used the mac version of photoshop.

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> And please, oh please, don't let them follow
Adobe's example for user interfaces. I hate all
those floating toolbars.

At least with Adobe, they're floating. In Gimp, they're hopelessly sinking.

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I thought not. Eclipse 2.o was a bit slow, but the advances made in Eclipse 3.0 is fantastic. I use it on a Pentium M 1.4 laptop and it works great.

Also, i use it on Mac OS/X and Linux without no problems at all.

I also use the Gimp and love it. Ditched Paint shop pro ages ago.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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"Eclipse is written
in Java, so it's dog-slow and not very portable;
otherwise, I'd suggest writing a GIMP plug-in
for Eclipse."

I think an Eclipse RCP/Plugin that ran GIMP would be a great idea. Especially if it was compiled with GCJ and didn't depend on local JVM. I wish I had the time and skill to work on it myself<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)
I use Gimp and Eclipse on Windows. So I can't speak for Linux use, but I find Eclipse UI (SWT) to be faster and more native feeling than GIMP (GTK) (despite recent improvements on the GIMP side)

  Making a GIMP/Eclipse RCP would not do much for Linux users, but would help make the experience better for Windows/OS X users, and *would* be portable across all those platforms.

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I dont understand why people say that inkscape has a better interface than the GIMP. Inkscape may put the most useful tools in the tool bars, but you still need to have a half a dozen little dialog windows open all over your screen for other features. The current gimp interface allows dialog windows to be snapped together and tab-stacked - it's much more space effecient and much easier to use.

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Because there are much fewer dialogs in Inkscape than in Gimp. The majority of actions are now available directly in the main window (on canvas or in the top/bottom panels) without any dialogs. Moreover, this percentage is constantly growing. For example Inkscape CVS now allows you to create and edit gradients on canvas, which is incredibly more convenient than the old method which required opening a dialog.

Gimp, on the other hand, forces its dialogs on me like mad. For example I select the rotation tool and start to rotate selection. Suddenly a new dialog pops right on me, obscuring my work! Did I ask for it? No I did not. If ever I need to enter numeric values for the rotation angle, I'd much prefer to use a context-sensitive top panel as in Inkscape. Really, what Gimp urgently needs is a pop-up blocker as in Firefox<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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I wouldn't mind a dialog popping up, but right in my face is kind of obnoxious.

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Offtopic: how do you activate the "gradient on canvas" feature? I compiled the CVS but it seems the same.

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Amen, Photoshop's interface drives me nuts after I've used the GIMP for a while.

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I dislike how the author just implies that something is wrong with the GIMP interface but doesn't say exactly what it is. I agree that it *used* to be quite difficult and unmanageable, but with the new version 2 and especially 2.2, the GIMP is already making great strides in usability. I think it's already at the stage where it is equally usable to new users -- the only ones that are highly confused are the ones that are used to using Photoshop and demand that GIMP will look and behave exactly the same way.

The problem is that GIMP and Photoshop both are complex tools to deal with complex tasks. Neither of them are easy to use without a lot of experience and usually require a newcomer to read a lot of documentation. I do agree with much of what the author has to say though -- a more basic tool targeted at a limited use audience such as a "Web Graphic Designer" might be useful. Hopefully the GIMP codebase is modular enough to support sharing code if someone were to start that type of project -- I suspect that it already is so.

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I tell you what is wrong, since I have seen quite a few first-time GIMP users: all those multiple independent windows. The terrible thing is that when you have other apps opened and some windows maximized, it drives the user nuts to find the appropriate GIMP toolbar or window. The current work around this is to run GIMP in separate desktop, otherwise you get lost. GIMP must become a single window program a must become similar to other programs. If there must be all those floating toolbars, then use at least MDI interface within a single window.
Yes, I love GIMP too, therefore it hurts to see, what GIMP looks like now.

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What about using multiple desktops?
If you keep all your current applications in a single desktop, regardless of the app design you will reach the point when you have to dig on your task bar for windows.

 

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People can't seem to stop bitching about multiple windows. YOU CAN DOCK THEM DAMMIT! I use gimp with 3 windows open. All dialoge windows are docked in on of two windows with the image in the third. I set the toolbar windows to always be on top. Now windows get lost, no complex hard to use interface. What is the problem?!?

The ironic thing is that people always seem to follow this argument up with... "And they should try to emulate photoshop's layout." And of course what do you have with (apple's version) photoshop? Toolbars floating around all over the place. I fail to see the difference. I have fewer tool windows with Gimp than I do with Photoshop.

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The GIMP is an Open Source application that isn't trying to be merely a clone of some popular proprietary piece of software. ``It doesn't look like Photoshop! I'd switch but I'm used to Photoshop. So make the GIMP look just like Photoshop!'' I wish to hell these folks would grow up and embrace the software for what it is. And not swing brickbats for what it isn't.

If they have a good technical reason for why they don't use the GIMP, then that's fine. There are some of those (well documented elsewhere) and working on those would be a much, much better use of the developer's time and effort. If anyone feels a need to gripe about those the developers not addressing those issues, more power to yah. But these ``change the GIMP so it looks more like Photoshop'' articles are annoying and misguided.

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I have always despised photoshops layout. It's a screen space whore. When I do the small amount of image editing I do, I need another app to preview images (one thing I'd like to see in gimp is a better preview machine, something in a FULL WINDOW would be nice, instead of a file dialogue with no view options). But the gimp plays so nicely with preveiwers like gqview...

People are stupid, they want their work done for them. And they won't be happy with software until it does their work for them. You shouldn't have to fight an app, but you should have to learn it to some reasonable extent. Gimp SHOULD NOT be a HIG application; it's very specialized.
All these interface boys are overpaid, I'm sorry but it's important but that doesn't mean we have to throw away new ideas for standardization where standardization doesn't belong.

The most wildly popular platform in the world offers no standardization, and it even helps developers break rules to make their apps do obnoxious things. And here we are, trying to limit ourselves to standards. The standards are in working with things that don't quickly adjust, other programs, computers; users adjust and are often happier after they adjust.

One simple example of this that comes to mind is tabbed terminals. I find them annoying, because it's pointless. That's what gnuscreen was written for, and gnuscreen is usable with 10 shells open, but a terminal with 10 tabs is a bit hard to see what's going on. But it's easier for new users to understand terminals. It took me 5 minutes to learn to use gnuscreen at the level that you can use tabs. But this is a special case. It would be stupid to have a web browser with a keyboard switching system. Why? Because you commonly, and efficiently, use your mouse to browse the web. But you don't use your mouse in your terminal.

My $.02

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One thing that I believe is missing from your assesment: the concept of an MDI window is almost entirely foreign to the Linux/Unix desktop. It is common on Windows, but not X11 (except from some slightly obtuse apps that keep much Windows heritage), or Mac. Mac, IMHO, handles multiple windows so intelligently that you don't need the MDI concept.

And even Windows recommended user interface standards are moving away from MDI, as I recall (it's been a while since I've read such things though).

I'll grant that the multiple windows can be annoying on a small screen (1024x768 or smaller). But, handled properly, they aren't bad at all. Especially with all the docking stuff going on.

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I don't understand, why GIMP should care about first look impression. I don't want gimp to impress newbies. I just want it to be a really powerfull tool once you get into it. GIMP shouldn't try to compete Photoshop in the way it looks, it should compete in feature richness.

And what is wrong with virtual desktops? I use it all the time and cannot imagine being without it. It really slows me down when i have to use Mac, which has only one desktop<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. even with the Exposé.

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The only reason all the first time gimp users were confused is that they are used to applications that have a single window. There is simply no real reason why a single window would be any better than several windows. As a matter of fact, I hate most applications with MDI interface, (especially the ones that have all those small "windows" constrained within one large window, that's possibly the most braindead design I have ever seen). There are cases where a MDI interface of a sort makes sense, though pretty much the only one I can think of right now is a text editor with multiple buffers visible.

IMNSHO, there is nothing wrong with gimp interface, except perhaps few small details. One think I wish for is a way for a window manager to recognize different types of gimp windows. AFAIK there is no easy way to do window matching on tearoff menus etc.

About a unified user interface for gimp, inkscape and scribus, I cannot see any reason why. Of course I would be very glad to see more cooperation among the three programs, like for example respecting or even taking advantage of each others meta-data, or things like being able to cut a path from inkscape and paste it into a gimp window, but trying to make the three programs look and work the same is about as stupid as trying to design a "common user inteface" for screwdriver, hamer and pliers. They are three different tools, with different purposes, what's so strange about the idea that they must be handled differently?

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If you never used photoshop on a Mac, why do you think you can contribute anything worthwhile to this discussion? Will you now write to Adobe and tell them that "all those multiple independent windows" in the industry standard raster editing app on the industry standard platform are driving new users mad?

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The GIMP interface is significantly different to everything else, even after the 2.2 improvements. I quite like it, but I've also played with PhotoShop and a few other image editing programs and can see through frustration with their interfaces how a GIMP-newbie coming across from one of those (or coming at it cold) might struggle.

To be sure, once you've got the idea of how the tool-set and right clicking and so on all work, it's easy. In a way, it's like Blender or EMACS: different, but once you've got a feel for it, very powerful and easy.

As to forking the code, <A HREF="http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net/" title="sourceforge.net">it's already been done</a sourceforge.net>. I think a better approach would be to use the inherent modularity of function and interface to provide several different views of the program, kind of like Squeak. Then you could have an MS-Paint clone, standard GIMP, SmellsLikePhotoShop or any other interface your furry little heart desires.

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I think a better approach would be to use the inherent modularity of function and interface to provide several different views of the program, kind of like Squeak. Then you could have an MS-Paint clone, standard GIMP, SmellsLikePhotoShop or any other interface your furry little heart desires.

Thus spake Zarathustra!

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Will Zarathustra also maintain it?

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That's a good question. Notice though that Zarathustra actually does not advocate rewriting Gimp at all. He is perfectly happy with the current interface, and thinks there is no reason to do anything with it except perhaps few minor tweeks.

OTOH, there seem to be those who want to rewrite or fork Gimp and give it some sort of MDI interface. To those says Zarathustra: ok, go ahead if you want to, but please make it in such a way that there is a common back-end onto which each can slap their own subjective user interface. In theory, that shouldn't be so hard, as Gimp can currently run with no GUI at all. But I doubt Zarathustra will do anything about it, since he likes the current user interface and sees no reason to change it.

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i agree, i find the Gimp a very good photo and graphics editor, it does everything i need to do for editing photos & creation of graphics (mostly photo touch up).

i think it is just windoze users trying Linux only to find things different and are a little uncomfortable having to learn something new, things like different menus & widgets, different color icons etc...

Linux is not windoze, never has and never will be, be glad Linux is not a swiss cheeze OS like that kludge from Redmond...

 

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Today, almost everyone has a digital camera but there are still no good programs to process dozens or even hundreds of digital photos in Linux.

The most common features for digital photo processing are already in Gimp: rotate, resize, crop, adjust constrast, hue, white balance, remove red eyes...

The problem is that it takes far too much time to process dozens or even hundreds of images in Gimp.


 

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Do you expect any tool to figure out rotation, size, croping, contrast, hue, white point and red eyes automagicly?

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You could, if you wrote a bash script to do all that for you. Of course, you would need to find out what command-line programs you would need to use for that. ImageMagic may be a good starting point.

The point is, it's not functionality that is lacking, but either user's knowledge or comprehensive integration and packaging of all that functionality.

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No of course. I am talking about manual processing.

Some tools like Gthumb and Digikam could almost qualify for the jobs except that their image manipulation features are a bit too limited.

For example, in Gthumb and Digikam, it is possible to adjust the contrast and the brightness but not to manipulate the levels and curves like in the menu Layers/Colours of The Gimps.

Also, those tools are usually accessible via a menu or a sub-menu. That quickly becomes annoying when you have to do again and again.

Also, a proper Photo processing program should work in 16bit per channel and should be able to load the RAW images formats produced by the most common digital cameras.

There are a lot of commercial programs like that on Windows & Mac.

Bibble from Bibble Lab (available on Linux btw):

    http://www.dpreview.com/news/0410/04101401bibble4<nobr>.<wbr></nobr> asp

Dimage Master from Konica-Minolta:
http://konicaminolta.com/products/consumer/digita<nobr>l<wbr></nobr> _camera/dimage/dimage-master/

Rawshooter from Pixmantec:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_18/essay<nobr>.<wbr></nobr> html

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To be blunt, Gimp is an image manipulation program, not a batch photo processing tool. (That's what ImageMagick is for)

If you're wanting to work with RAW files you want Ufraw. http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/

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Batch processing of contrast, curves etc. is not usefull -- each image needs a different adjustment. Same with cropping. Maybe Gimp could benefit from a "Open next image" function? Anybody care to think that trough and submit a feature request?

We all know about the 8 bit per channel limitation. 16 bit support will be there When it's Done (tm).

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Check out digikam and you will be surprised.. in the end you just need to look around a bit and you pretty much always find a gem...

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There are plenty of powerful tools in Linux for these tasks but there isn't one great, easy to use, tool (that I've found anyway). I've been thinking of cloning Google's Picasa program to Linux for just this purpose. It'd be even better if Google could be talked into porting it themselves though.

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David's Batch Processor might come in handy. It's a Script you run which lets you assign the same changes (blur, contrast, etc. etc.) to a large set of images, all via a nice GUI.

<A HREF="http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html" title="ozemail.com.au">http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html</a ozemail.com.au>

Quoting the website:

"DBP (David's Batch Processor) is a simple batch processor for the Gimp. I got tired of people asking on Gimp newsgroups and mailing lists, "How can I resize a directory full of images", and even more tired of the standard reply, "Use ImageMagick". DBP allows users to do common processing tasks on multiple images, without leaving Gimp or having to learn a scripting language."

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Gimp interface is easy. I don't understand why it bashed all the time.
Look you need to learn how a programe works. And once you get it simply works. The only thing that should be more easy is getting all windows in front.

Gimp is a great tool. Maybe there should be some more easy interactive tools!

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GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines are also a great source of information

This comment or ones like it come up all the time in discussions of GUI's. Who say Gnome does everything right? It's incredible to me what they did with Nautilus. They turned a somewhat clunky file manager into a virtual popup hell spawning desktop virus as far as I am concerned. Is filling your desktop with thousands of little windows really the ultimate goal of GUI design. If so, Gimp is already there. And I LOVE Gimp. Full compatibility at the file level is good enough for me. If I had to run all these programs at once I would launch them all on seperate desktops anyway. The whole one window, one interface idea is weak to me to begin with.

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I think you have it right there. Who says Gnome is the be all and end all.. and who was actually complaining about Gimp. Image editing, of the bitmap or vector varieties, and DTP are, or can be complex tasks. Sometimes you just have to have a more than grandma-simple GUI.

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thousands of little windows? your files are that disorganised? that says more about you than it does about nautilus, also that you are unable to read a manual that mentions how to close the parent when you open another folder, that you don't grasp the basic concept of muscle memory or the amazingly simple folder is the window design.

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USER

INTERFACES

SHOULD

BE

INTUITIVE

FAGGOT!!

lameness filter encountered: please dont use so many caps using caps is like yelling Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 7.0)

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Open source projects can now go to <A HREF="http://openusability.org/" title="openusability.org">http://openusability.org/</a openusability.org> and submit their code for review. The people there will build the program and make usability suggestions, sometimes including patches.

It's sponsored by <A HREF="http://www.relevantive.de/" title="relevantive.de">http://www.relevantive.de/</a relevantive.de>, a German firm. They seem like very cool people. I would suggest a collaboration with some people who actually know a thing or two about usability.

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Can you yourself believe the stupidity you produced in the form of this article, or you are a hidden enemy from the commercial world?

Why the hell would one spend time and energy to modify a perfectly good interface instead of continuing to develop the functionality?!

Why the fuck do we nee TWO tools, while one programme will do?! Because a commercial (and utterly dishonest, remember their past actions) Adobe wants to GET MORE MONEY (that's the reason for their spit: anyone now has to buy the same twice, once as if for the web, second time for regular publishing)

You better sort out your priorities before sticking your nose into the GNU world, or learn that heads can serve as something more than a receptacle for some junk foods.

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Keep in mind, that if someone wants to be a USER of a particular program, they're going to learn how to use it, regardless of how it works. When I first started using the GIMP, there was a bit of a leaning curve, but I knew that I wanted to use it, so I learned it, and now it's second nature. We should be designing our UIs to please the occasional user, or non-serious user.

A perfect example is Blender. I've tried Blender a few times, and yes, it's certainly a stress raiser, but I have a friend who swears by it, because he WANTED to use it, so he learned, and now he's good at it. And it goes without saying that, comparitively speaking, the GIMP's interface is far superior to Blender's.

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Blender's interface is awsome. You can totally customize is to ANY layout you can think of. What's more, how many 3D modeling environments can you think of where the interface is drawn by OpenGL?

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"if someone wants to be a USER of a particular program, they're going to learn how to use it"

I took this as one of the main thrusts of the article. I haven't used GIMP for ages, so can't comment on hist points regarding the interface, however there is the underlying issue of mainstream use.

For specialised applications, someone may take the time to learn the ins and outs of an overcomplicated package. If a mainstream application (like a word processor, simple graphics editor) it is going to be used by the mainstream, and not just by someone who knows how to write one, it has to be something my Dad can use.

I would like as many people as possible to use the software I write. My pet project is currently a command-line utility and only distributed as source. Sure, if someone is desperate to use it they would learn to compile it and operate it. However, I fully accept that a couple of downloads a week is the most I could expect in its current state. A precompiled GUI with a (small) user guide is in the pipeline because I want to develop a useful application.

Should my Dad be grateful for any 'free' software, regardless of useability, or should he just find a torrent of the equivalent commercial package, so reinforcing the proprietry software loop?

Steve.

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Never going to happen.

There is no way the GIMP will change the user interface without a fork.

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This is lame. This seems like something written by the type of person who buys a Mac soley for the purpose of using it to decorate a room. It looks nice, that's all that matters. They never use it. It just adds to the chic look they are trying to create in their studio apartment because of the interface.

Please. Gimp is works and gets the job done with no fuss. The menus are logically laid out and it is easy to navigate. And it looks nice. So why must it and scribus and inkscape all have a similar interface? Why waste so much precious open source developement time porting them all to a common interface and code base to make the people happy who want to use linux to decorate with so that they can one-up their friend using a Mac for decoration?

This is a useless waste of time. If it works, why fix it?

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Everyone has already summed up the arguments for and against Photoshop's MDI nicely, so I'm just going to repeat an engineer's adage: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I personally very much like the new GIMP UI with the stackable docks et all<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...
I get positive responses from non-technical folks as well.

I have more problems with all the UI visionaries popping up than I have problems with all these GIMP dialogs popping up. (This is not intented to be as harsh as it sounds. It's just meant to sound clever.

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> The menus are logically laid out

This logic escapes me, sorry. Why do I have to go to the Layers menu in order to adjust HSV or levels of the photo I just scanned in?

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> The menus are logically laid out

>This logic escapes me, sorry. Why do I have to go to the Layers menu in order to adjust HSV or levels of the photo I just scanned in?

Because those are layer-wide manipulations. Levels and HSV adjustment affect the current working layer, not the whole image.

If you have never actually used layers, I can see how that could be confusing, but then I would strongly suggest that you start using layers. Even if you are only doing photo touchup, layers are very valuable; for instance, doing a manual unsharp mask using a blurred layer gives you much more control than the plugin.

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Because it applies to the current layer. It's a function of the layer. Not a file function, not an image function, not a help function... It seems strange at first but it's strictly logic.

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Some of us (as is indicated above) actually like the Gimp's interface. The Gimp was the first serious image editing program I used, back in version 1.2.x. I spent some time with it, learned it, played with it, and have loved as it's progressed (the docks in 2.x were great, and 2.2 adds some sweet features...), but through each release, the core concepts of its interface remained the same. And I find them extremely intuitive. And there's room in it to seemlessly add new features (layer effects and grouped layers, anyone? please?).

Now, you want a confusing program... I can't do much of anything in Photoshop. But that's probably because the Gimp is what I know, and actually enjoy using.

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Sorry, although I like your writing style, I can't see the point in your article other than an attempt to move GIMP developers to change the interface 90% of users are used to in favor of the 10% minority.

That's utter bullshit, honestly. Why can't you people just get used to what's given and stop whining about this and that difference. What's going to be the next step? Probably make GNOME look like Windows! Yeah! Windows all the way! Then comes why's my FreeBSD not working like my Mac? - Because it's not the same.
For some reason you don't write "Oh dear Photoshop developers, why won't you make Photoshop look and behave like GIMP?" -- I wouldn't understand that just like I don't understand your point in this article.
If you hate GIMP's multi-window interface that much, just read a little more about window managers. Although, my guess is that you are a Windows user. I admit I haven't read your article entirely, I just can't read things like that.

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The GIMP interface is easy enough to use for such a full featured application. To someone who learned Photoshop first it may be more difficult because it is different - but to people who learned on GIMP, Photoshop is awkward!

I like GIMP's focus on image manipulation, leaving the use or printing/rendering of such images to other specialized applications. It keeps GIMP responsive and doesn't require high-spec hardware to run.

Website development (using images created with GIMP) is best left to StarOffice/OpenOffice and Quanta.

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what is needed in gimp is better vector drawing tools. i love it, except that it's drawing tools suck. i want to draw more like fireworks, not photoshop. in gimp, once you get a path, you can alter it, but after you stroke it, it's fixed. why can't a click on a stroked path, and adjust the fills, strokes, etc. like fireworks. and they need to have the perl-o-tine function not need perl. i haven't gotten it working on my mac, and i know, it's for linux, but alot of us linux guys have ibooks and powerbooks.

but for gimp to do that would change the focus from image manipulation to image creation, and gicp doesn't have the same ring.

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You need to use InkScape for that. Don't use vector tools in Gimp for drawing. They're primarily intended as an advanced tool for creating masks and selections with Gimp.

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Blogged about this <A HREF="http://jumpgate.homelinux.net/blog/?p=34" title="homelinux.net">back in September</a homelinux.net>. Even the simplest steps like unifying the tool icons would help.

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Actually Inkspace is a fork of Sodipodi.

I like Gimp very much but I prefer Photoshop. I believe 2.2 was a giant leap forward and we will see GIMP maturing.

Intense Tests which compare Photoshop GImp and so on on the WIN Plattform concludes that GIMP was odd and got low rating.

This is true.

Photoshop also isn't nice when you just want to do something fast and simple.

What we see now are image viewers becoming image editors, getting image filters and so on. So this bottom up line will lead to a tool that catches up.

Make GIMP more modular and we will use it.

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I am a Linux newbie and I find the GIMP interface extremely confusing. Now, readers, make up your mind: are you going to bash me for being a Linux newbie, or for not sucking up the arse of your Gimp?

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I am a Linux newbie and I find the GIMP interface extremely confusing. Now, readers, make up your mind: are you going to bash me for being a Linux newbie, or for not sucking up the arse of your Gimp?

I am not going to bash you at all.

I am going to suggest that you persist and learn the interface. It is designed very logically to be efficient and effective for the experienced user; not to be easy for the new user.

Would you rather have a program that works for you right away, and never works all that well? Or is it better to have a high learning curve, and find that after you have learned, you can do pretty much anything?

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E X A C T L Y.
No, Gimp isn't the easiest first-time interface. No, Photoshop isn't either. They're both designed to be powerful image programs, not just expensive versions of Microsoft Paint.

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Everything Linux is confusing to a Linux noob. We don't bash people who find it confusing. We bash people who want a photoshop clone. More than likely, if you've never used photoshop, you would find it's interface just as confusing at first.

What I want developers of Gimp to focus on is important things like 16 bit (or even 32 bit!) color support, native support for color spaces other than RGB, and more advanced color management workflow support.

I couldn't give a rat's a$$ about GUI visionaries. If there is a specific problem with a specific interface, file a bug and get it fixed. But overhauling the entire enterface is silly because after you make one person happy with it, another will tell you it's all wrong and should be done differently. You get stuck in an endless loop of butt kissing rather than actually improving the functionality.

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No...I will simply bash you for being both stupid and rude.

Everyone is a "newbie" at something, and at everything at one time or another. A total beginner often earns the sobriquet "clueless newbie"<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... with a great sense of recognition that we've all been there, done that.

Being rude is at least potentially curable. Being stupid, I'm afraid, is not.

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Prick.

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I am a windows newbie and I find the Photoshop interface extremely confusing, where's the sodding context menu and why do I have to move off-image to modify the color balance? Now readers make up your mind: are you going to bash me for being a windows newbie or email adobe and tell them to fix their broken GUI?

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So it makes it will take some time to learn it.

If you just want to resize and rotate your photos, there are other apps like kpaint, gpaint, gthumb or whatever the others are called, that are an easier tool for the job.

Batch photos? Definitely look up ImageMagick.

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I worked in photoshop, since version 2.5, which i think it was the 1st windows version, just like any other application, i learned how to use it, learned the principles behind image editing, and i got used to it, eventually coming to a point where things are done in an automatic fashion, without much thinking.
Some years ago, after repeated mental stress caused by a "certain OS", i decided to move to linux. Gimp was then in version 1.2, Overall, it pretty much looked the same, basically, the core funcionality was basically the same, image editing is image editing. Sure some functions are different, i've never had heard of script-fu before, but it only took me a couple of days to get used to it.
The floating toolbars? Well, it's the same with photoshop on apple macs, and i don't see anyone protesting. It's confusing to have all those floating toolbars? If i remember well, fluxbox has a toolbar grouping/nesting function (i'm sure other WM's also have this), and you do have virtual desktops, they're there for a purpose<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)
Over the time, i found out i was using photoshop less and less, and gimp more and more. I stopped using photoshop in version 7 altogether (ran ok under cxoffice, but pressure sensitive paint operations were slow), and i haven't looked back ever since.
Gimp's user interface isn't that different from photoshop, liking it or not, image editing tasks are pretty much the same, and here, we have to admit the Gimp developers did a great job in adding inovative features, script-fu, perl-fu, python-fu, are the 1st that come to my mind. You might argue that they're not for the novice, but they are powerful, and they're there for a purpose, they do save time. The plugin architecture could be better, but i guess it's ok, altough it can be a bit frustrating porting plugins from 1.x to 2.x, but even here, you just have to keep up with the times.Gimp does have a nice set of tools that do the job they're meant to.
I would rather see the gimp developers work on some core funcionality, like 16bpc and higher support (up to 32bpc float, hdr/radiance/pic/tiff), but even if they don't add the high dynamic range support, having 16bpc support would help a lot already, in avoiding "pixel stepping" and maintaining continuous histograms, but right now, you do have a gimp fork, called cinepaint, that adds 16bpc support (altough they're moving away from GTK and on to FLTK now).
Sure there are areas of improvement, but why should gimp look like X or Y application? Gimp it's Gimp, it does the job, and i don't think that a user coming from windows or apple macs would have a hard time learning Gimp. I certainly didn't, and the 2.0 and 2.2 look even better.
You do have a point on the application integration, it would be nice to see inkscape+gimp+scribus "collaborating" with each other, but you can already work with these 3 applications in a somewhat organized and consistent workflow.
People that want to learn how to use gimp, should learn how to use it, it's not that hard, and its funcionality is basically the same as photoshop, what's the difficulty of learning the buttons and tools? It's all pretty much the same.
Why should the development effort be splitted? Even for what i think is the most important feature that gimp lacks, 16bpc support, you have a fork already. Gimp is Gimp, it will never be photoshop or fireworks or whatever.
Developers should focus their attention in improving gimp's funcionality. When you wanted to use photoshop, you had to learn it, so, why should it be different for Gimp?
Just my $.02...

P.S.: this is _not_ a gimp vs photoshop or whatever flamebait

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The GIMP can be a very useful tool, but the fact is, its interface really could be better. Inkscape's interface may "still have a lot of dialogs", but remember that this project is a lot younger than the GIMP, and I believe it will be even more usable when it hits 1.0 (or the equivalent). If you think the GIMP is "just great" and usable, do me a favor. The next time you take some pictures, have them put on a photo cd, and try loading them into the GIMP. Not only will it slow down to a crawl, you will also have ~26 GIMP windows open. If I were to do the same exact thing in Photoshop, my memory usage would be a mere ~29 megabytes (I know this for a fact; I have tried it).
I am _not_ trying to bash the GIMP. I think it has the potential to be a great program, and I hope to someday see it replace Photoshop on the computers here on campus, but until its interface problems are corrected, no "user" is going to find it usable.
Making excuses for software, no matter how much you like it, will not make that software better.

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OK, I did you a favor. Even though I cannot see any practical situation in which I would actually want to open 26 images at once, I tried it. It did use considerably more than 29 megabytes (reported memory usage of gimp was 270mb, out of that 150 resident), and I did notice a lag, particularly switching between applications (yes, paging does take some time), I wouldn't call that "slowing down to crawl". I was still able to edit the images, start other programs, pretty much do my normal work. My computer is pretty old, Pentium II with 256MB memory, thrown away by a local community college 2 years ago for being obsolete.

Anyway, the whole experience was not surprising at all, and I really don't see your point. I asked gimp to display some 1248 MB of data, it can't surprise me that it takes some memory and takes a while to load.

I see, you are complaining because gimp actually loaded all the images you asked it to load? What in the world did you expect? I would really like to know what did photoshop do when you asked it to load all 26 files from the disk.

Maybe you could be more specific about the "corrections" to the percieved user interface "problems". Are you saying that when you ask gimp to open 26 files, it shouldn't actually open the files? Why? And what should it do instead?

I read the comments in this discussion, and I don't remember anybody making excuses for gimp. Most people were saying that they like gimp's user interface, because it is easy to use and makes them more efficient. I don't see how that's an excuse. It seems to me that plenty of users (including me) had already found gimp very usable, so your claim that "no "user" will find it usable" is also rather weird.

The way I see this whole debate is this:

On one side we have experienced gimp users, who learned how to use gimp, and found out that the creators of gimp designed the user interface in such a way that it is fast and easy to use once you have learned it, and makes editing images fast and efficient.

On the other side we have bunch of people who didn't really used gimp a whole lot, and who are complaining that it's user interface is hard and not intuitive enough (by which, I suspect, they mean that it is different from other programs they are used to. I would imagine that a person who is used to riding horses and who has never seen a car before would find the whole concept of steering wheel and gas and break pedals quite un-intuitive.)

The question is, does it mean that cars are bad and should be re-designed to be more like horses?

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I was opening these files in order to edit them for a photojournalism class I am taking. It makes it easier to open them all and close them when I am finished with them than to open them one at a time and hope that I get them all edited.

Photoshop can do this very well. GIMP is terrible at it, especially in Windows. This sucks, because I _really want_ to use GIMP.

Perhaps if this article had been posted a few years ago, I would have disagreed with the author. Certainly, GIMP has some useful features, such as the very customizable hotkeys. A few years ago, GIMP's interface wasn't all that bad in comparison to the other software that was out there.

Since then, however, usability has come a long way in the free software community. There are intuitive programs such as Muine and Tomboy that just plain work. Inkscape's UI design allows you to work on an image with the window maximized without having to worry about the toolbar being behind the window you are using.

I'm not saying the Inkscape UI is perfect, but look at how far it has come from the days when Sodipodi first came out. Sodipodi's interface was similar to the GIMP's, and Inkscapes interface is exponentially better than Sodipodi's.

My comments about GIMP's problems with loading multiple images as compared to Photoshop are not meant to be complaints, I just really can't understand why Photoshop is performing so much better than the GIMP. Am I missing something here? Is it the tile size? Does it have something to do with GTK? If anyone knows the answer to this, please let me know.

Perhaps I should rephrase what I said earlier: "Ignoring problems with software because you like it is not going to fix those problems."

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Inkscape's UI design allows you to work on an image with the window maximized without having to worry about the toolbar being behind the window you are using.

So does GIMP. File>Preferences>Window Management>Window Manager Hints>Hint for toolbox/docks. Set both to "Keep Above"

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Personally I never really liked the GIMP's user interface myself. Infact I hated that program simply because of its floating boxes. However one day I decided to start GIMP in another virtual desktop (who knew this could actually come in handy!) and sat down and really played with the program instead of crying about it's "faults." What I found out later was that It's actually a very feature filled application. And as one person here stated, it may seem a little confusing at first but so was adobe photoshop when I first started that program.

I realize its not the GIMP's floating dialogs that bother me, its just that I'm not used to seeing my desktop when Using another program. I'm conditioned to using 1 program for 1 thing and that's it just like many users out there. But it's not fair to the loyal GIMP users who are conditioned to using the GIMPs normal windowing. Once a long time ago I remember seeing a plugin for the windows version of the GIMP where a another window would pop up in the background so that the desktop could be hidden. I believe it was called the "DeWeirdiFier" or something like that.

Anyway, instead of changing the GUI completely for us 10% minority who complain, perhaps the developers can include some kind of big extra window in the back that hides the desktop (and no I don't mean like the FULLSCREEN feature where all the other dialog boxes gets hidden). i believe this way it can satisfy all users. Us Newbies can be a little more comfortable by not seeing the desktop, and loyal GIMP users can be happy by turning off this feature and seeing the desktop they are used to. Maybe this can be some type of modular plugin. Maybe even outside contributers can create this. I'm not a programmer so all I can do is come up with these crazy idea's but it would be nice if such a feature could be implemented.

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Life is not generally consistent. And neither should be our user interfaces. I like having apps that don't look the same, it adds to the joy of computing. Lets dump this commercialistic mumbo-jumbo that there are rules to GUIs. When you get down to it, designing a good GUI is an art. Its not enginneering. Commercial hubris aside.

"Mimic the safety, smoothness and consistency of the natural landscape" is sheer BS. Which natural landscape yours or mine. Most people in places like America have zero experience of the natural landscape. They spend virtually all their time in a cocoon of artificial landscapes. Even the parks and outdoor areas they experience are landscaped and designed. Besides anybody who actually examines the natural landscape will notice that it is neither safe, smooth nor consistent.

The reigning principles in nature can be said to be inconsistency, roughness and a certain stimulating sense of danger. It is this that makes nature so awesome and makes experiencing it the most powerful stimulant on earth.

Perhaps if our GUI designers would leave their airconditioned tastefully designed and furnished apartments and offices and rough it a little, they will understand what mimicing the natural landscape really means.

And our user interfaces may actually profit from it!

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Well said, well said.
On a personal experience front: I was mesmerized by Blender. It was actually fun to see something so different yet somehow familiar!!
I would place both GIMP and Blender in the "wilderness" area: they are so fun because they are wild.
Kuba

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I think some issue's of possibilities of Linux Graphic desktop must be enhanced. So programs like GIMP (and Inkscape and other apps) could be greater when the have the accessiblity of a Multiple Document Interface. This means you can have more drawings in one screen. One set of boxes, menu's and toolbars. Now the GIMP has a lot of Windows which are notified in the open windows toolbar. This makes the interface much better...

Therefore the GTK toolkit must be enhanced.

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do you mean like windows photoshop. where you have all your floating bits confined to a grey area so you cant see anything behind.

i have to say i much preffer photoshop on the mac, where you can see through to other applications. so if you for example are making a poster you can see through to the email that someone has sent you information in. or what other apps you need to use at the same time.

what does need to happen is that one one instance of gimp can run at a time, and when you open a new file it always opens in the already open gimp, rather than spawning a new one.

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gimp-remote ? That's what I use here.

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This is a troll, right?

Linux needs a M.D.I. about as much as one needs a wire in one's eye!

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Xnest? multiple desktops?

I don't see what you gain from MDI.

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I think that is is very odd that when talking about the GIMP in public forums there is this gerneral hostility toward MDI interfaces.

What makes it so strange to me is that if we were to jump over to another article extolling the virtues of the Firefox browser then we would all agree that the tabbed browsing feature is one of the most compelling reasons to use the software.

So, for those keeping score:

Web Browsing == MDI good

Image Editing == MDI bad

What a joy it would be to be able to choose "open in new tab" from the GIMP's menu. Of course, all you old-timers could select "open in new window" and for you, nothing would change.

best regards
-briber

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So, that's some speaking!

Indeed, when I'm browsing I often find myself with more than one page opened, but almost all of the time I read from just one page at a time, so having something like the bookmarks in a book is right.

When I'm editing images, it is instead very useful, sometimes, to be able to see more than one image or part of image at the same time. I feel this as far more natural, because I'm using my eyes to look around at varius places, and not to read a line of text. If I have instead opened a few images that are completely unrelated, it's perfect to hide the ones I'm not working on in a tab.

Browsing requires a few straightforward commands: "Go back" "Follow a link" "Go to a url"... most of them require a simple click somewhere. Well, image editing it's not simple point-and-click: you have many different options for many different tools, and your knowledge of the image doesn't come simply from staring at it (like reading a web-page) but also form the information contained in the dialogs etc...

OK, I think I can stop...<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:-)

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the greatest MDI bashing is of window in window style MDI, such as that used by photoshop under windows. WiW MDI is the worst possible form of it. Tabbed MDI is a much more accepted methodology, although even that is discourage by the GNOME HIG.

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Exactly! There is no one interface that is right for everything.

In fact, neither interface is good for browsing: an ideal browser would provide both SDI and tabbed MDI, in a way that's intuitive and quick. Like, say, Firefox.

Right now, I have three Firefox windows open, each with multiple tabs. I can read something off another page while writing here. Other pages that I might want to come back to later but don't need concurrently are unobtrusively hidden in tabs.

Could this be useful for GIMP? Well, most of the time, if I have two images open, it's because I need to see them side by side. But there are cases where you push one aside for a while to work on something different. Sometimes I even minimize GIMP windows, or move them to a different desktop. I can see tabs being useful in those cases.

Maybe not a major gain, but nothing to lose, and probably not that add. Presumably someone who's more interested in this feature than me will do the design, coding, and maintenance. Any volunteers?

So:

Web Browsing == MDI good
Web Browsing == MDI bad
Image Editing == MDI bad
Image Editing == MDI maybe useful

That being said, there is one interface that is wrong for everything, and that's the traditional Windows 3.x-style MDI, as still used by Photoshop on Windows.

Nothing else on Windows works this way anymore. Open three Word documents, and they all have their own frames right on the desktop.

As hard as I found it learning GIMP coming from Photoshop, I eventually got used to it. It's a bit of a learning curve, but nothing like the learning brick wall I'm still slamming into after years trying to use Photoshop on Windows.

In the old days, they were radically different, and I thought that was the problem. But since 5.0, the only real difference has been MDI vs. SDI, and I'm still just as frustrated on a regular basis.

I generally set my screen up so I can see part of the spec sheet (usually a Word doc) through a gap in the Photoshop interface, and a window (usually a text doc) for keeping random notes. When I want to add more notes, or scroll ahead in the spec, I just click on the appropriate window, and I click back on the image to get back to Photoshop. It takes almost no effort to get and keep things arranged this way.

But in Windows, no amount of effort is enough. There are no gaps in the interface; everything is obscured behind a mass of useless grey. And if I want to switch, I have to hunt around the taskbar, hovering the mouse over six different tabs to find the right one.

It's time for Adobe to follow their own example on the Mac, and everyone else'e example on Windows, and abandon MDI.

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GIMP needs a few minor things, but nothing dramatic.

1. A different default setup. A Mac Photoshop expert can get GIMP set up pretty comfortably with the customization features that already exist, but it would be much better to not have to do this. Ideally, the first time you run GIMP, you get a choice of GIMP 1.x (everything spread out all over), GIMP 2.x, modern Photoshop (docked floating palettes pushed to the edges), classic Photoshop (two massive palettes), optimized for small laptops, etc.

2. It should be easier to manage the separate windows. On linux this is not important because people have decent window managers, but on Windows people have, well, Windows.

2.5. The Mac does give you some flexibility for controlling things, but the windows still don't work quite the way you expect. Here it may be just a case of setup rather than functionality, as in 1. above; if not, it'll be fixed by 2. above; either way, there's nothing new to be done here.

3. Basic usability with 1-button mice, for when you're stuck on a PowerBook. For most apps, I can set things up so a tap on the trackpad is a right-click, a drag down the right edge is a wheel, etc., but for GIMP that's just unworkable.

Add these three and I'm convinced I could get other graphic designers to switch, or at least give it a serious try.

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Why people still don't understand the principles of free software ? If you are unhappy with something, there are plenty of ways to improve it: file a bug report/feature request, write to the developers, participate on the project's mailing lists.

Bitching about it on newsforge is one of them..

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I meant that bitching about it on newsforge is not one of them<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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I never used much Photoshop or the GIMP, since they don't fit my needs, so I would love to see Linux products that could be an alternative to Macromedia for web design. If they would make a light GIMP, easy to use, for simple web design like Fireworks it would be a great idea. Nvu is trying to make something like Dreamweaver too, and although it's still far behind it's a promising project. There are lots of users who stick to that "certain os" just because of Macromedia's Fireworks and Dreamweaver (and Flash). Why not a Linux open sourse alternative to them?

Besides, their UIs are perfect for me, much better than Adobe's UIs.

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> Gimp 2.2 is already butt-ugly slow<nobr> <wbr></nobr>..

Err what you running it on a calculator<nobr> <wbr></nobr>..?.. if things were as slow as they are in windBloZe i would start getting worried

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... know or use a decent window manager with support for rolling up windows (with mouse wheel!). Photoshop and all other MDI applications (especially Windows ones) don't support it, which makes them clumsy to use for someone used to more poweruser-friendly UIs.

I think that's the main point of the article. Gimps interface is fine for me, and I find Photoshop harder to use then; while for newbies it's most likely the other way round.

Another point to consider is - Gimp 2.2 is already butt-ugly slow, so nicening up the interface with slick graphics and decorations, like Photoshop, will not make it easier to use for everybody. No way.

However, the author probably has a point with splitting up the application. Though it will hemper development considerably, there is of course need for specialized graphic editors. (Btw, I find Inkscape not an all too good counter example in this dicussion.) Gimp is nice as it is, and most of my needs are met; it's more scriptable than Photoshop (Gimp runs without a mouse, hidden on a web server - try that with PS), and is extremely useable on Linux desktops and made for power users. So this story wasn't all too informative.

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All this talk about making GIMP more Photoshop like is kind of funny to me -- I always assumed that the GIMP's interface design WAS modelled after Photoshop's -- that is, the original Photoshop, the Mac version, the one that put Photoshop on the map. I remember the first time I opened up GIMP and said "Oh shit -- this is just as confusing as using Photoshop (on a Mac)". That said, I was relieved when Photoshop came out with a Windows (TM) version that did not enable floating windows all over the place by default, and where basic functions seemed easier to find. Of course, I was never and am not now a "power user" of Photoshop or GIMP, if I was, I probably would want the additional complexity/power.

Still, it does make me laugh to hear these constant suggestions to make GIMP more "Photoshop-like" -- that is, what Photoshop looks like now!!! Of course by the time GIMP could get around to mimicing the current Photoshop look/behavior, Photoshop might have moved on! The only solution is to peer 2-3 years into the future to divine what Photoshop will look like, and then immediately begin designing GIMP to match THAT. Then, 3 years from now, nirvana will be achieved: convergence between Photoshop and GIMP!

Peter Yellman

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Is that when I try to resize images (jpg's) for the web they get this weird black banding in them.

No problems adjusting brightness/contrast, playing with hue and saturation, those all work great. But I can't seem to get rid of those black vertical bands when I try resizing an image. Have to switch back to Photoshop to do that.

I've still managed to make some pretty nice graphics in the GIMP. I wouldn't take anything I've written as a criticism. I'm totally impressed with the work they do and how fast GIMP is coming along.

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I can't seem to get rid of those black vertical bands when I try resizing an image

you have a really screwed up version of gimp. go get the latest version. (2.2.4)

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Idea is simple: you split GIMP into "engine" and front-end. Do like mozilla did and you'll be successful. You'll get nice engine with scripting support and all other goodies and as a front-end you could write your own gimpified galeon (or galeonized gimp) he-he.
Anyway, I think splitting projects like GIMP, mozilla and openoffice into "engine" part and "front-end" part is a very good idea. This way you could deliver same functionality using different visual approaches etc. You could "hide" as much as you need for "dummy user" front-end and than you have "uber-hacker" front-end. Everybody is happy and if somebody has better thoughts about how it should look - he can fix it himself.

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this is very intelligent idea. if only the developers were to consider these newsforge user suggestions<nobr> <wbr></nobr>::sigh::

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In fact, it can clean up the innards of a software project, get rid of some bit rot, and make it easier for people to work on!

Just look at what's happening to LyX.

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Why split up GIMP? Basically you said "because Adobe spit up photoshop." Adobe didn't do that to make it better. They split it up for marketing reasons. Consummers will not pay $600 for a photo editor so they made a crippled version to sell at a lower price point thereby expanding thier market while still being able to keep the high price of their flagship product. Gimp being free has no need to do this.

You claim the Gimp needs to be "fixed" but offer no examples of what is wrong with it.

Actually Gimp did already split. Have you seen "cinepaint"? it's a gimp "fork" made ore usful to those in the motion picture industry.

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[$.02] Maybe this might be better posted at the GIMP's bugzilla (maybe not), but might a good direction for the GIMP's UI development be to <A HREF="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/luxury-part-deux.html" title="catb.org">hide confusing options</a catb.org> for newbies? While maintaining them to be intuitively and easily accesible to advanced users, of course (through shortcut keys for example)... [/$.02]

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So, the writer says the GIMP's user interface is garbage, yet he is extremely vague when talking about the interface's deficiencies.

It's almost as if the writer is trying to find any reason to justify splitting the GIMP into two separate programs, even if the reason is absolutely unrelated to his premise.

If you use the GIMP, you will get used to the GIMP. End of story. I've been using it exclusively since 2.2 (which is pretty recent), and let me tell you: it is starting to rock very hard. The programmers have not been stagnant and have incorporated a slew of great enhancements.

Lastly, the GIMP should not split into two. Let it become part of the all-encompassing Master Set of the Graphical World (maybe working in tandem with Inkscape/Sodipodi et al) -- just because Adobe split up Photoshop into two apps to make more money doesn't (DUH) mean the GIMP should.

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... I always feel reminded of a "traditional" interface, when using inkscape, Photoshop, etc. The reason is simple: "tradition" means somehow the old days of computing, when we all started getting used to GUIs, many of us even with computing at all! The main thing was to lay open the features, because we had no clue on how to use an application. The more we know, the less we want the obvious to blur our work. In this spirit, Gimp feels very modern to me, because it is really up to me how much of my image area to use with additional stuff -- I raise, lower, create, destroy windows the way I need them, and they are always FOCUSED to my CURRENT TASK. I agree, that loads of dialogs popping up are annoying, but the Gimp development (as it seems to me) is actually decreasing this annoyance from version to version.

The "reduce the popups!" claim, that is often heard, is good CONSTRUCTIVE critisism, but "new graphical user interface that is compatible with current standards" really sounds liek a step backward to any slightly experienced Gimp user.

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Every little toolbar and every image and exactly everything, is in its own window. This clutters up the taskbar with a trillion buttons. Other graphics programmes I've used include Paint Shop Pro and PhotoShop, and they didn't take long to learn and understand. GIMP, on the other hand, is so counterintuitive that you need to learn it by using step-by-step tutorials as if you were either 3 years old or generally stupid. You have to use it every day just in order not to forget it. This is strange. Why not make it more intuitive instead, so that you immediately have a feel for the program even if you've never used it?

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As noted on the mailing list:

"Finally, we have an easy to follow recipe for common mortals, that simply works.

All steps for installing binaries, described at:

<A HREF="http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Installing_Scribus_on_Win32" title="scribus.net">http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/Installing_Scri<nobr>b<wbr></nobr> us_on_Win32</a scribus.net>

worked without the slightest problems<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)"

Cheers.

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I don't know about anybody else, but I really don't need another specialized program cluttering up my desktop, when gimp works fine for both. worse yet, this new specialized tool will take up developers' time, resulting in two equally crappy branches of a perfectly good app. when gegl comes along, then everybody and their cousin can make their own gui, but until then lets just have one version that works.

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