I’ve been using GIMP since 2009, and somehow, with each update, it becomes less user-friendly. It’s like it’s trying to do way too much while missing simple features that would make photo editing easier. Examples: Why is sharpening still a mystery? Why does every tiny dialog box insist on popping out like it’s too cool for one window? Where are the basic features like HDR, portrait mode, or a magic ‘fix it’ button? Instead, it just gets more technical, and even the simple tools feel more complicated. I love GIMP, but it’s heading in the wrong direction for us mere mortals. Why?
The answer is probably fairly complicated. The first part of it is that gimp is made by technical people, so it is likely that is skews to the technical side. The rest is governed by the toolkit (gtk) and the use of xorg or wayland for the HDR stuff (xorg never supported HDR and GTK2 didn’t support wayland, thus no HDR until recently on linux).
There has never been a “magic fix it button” and there likely never will be because that is meaningless or means something different to every person.
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Different people, different opinions, I think GIMP 2.10.22 >+ is the apogee of user friendliness, efficiency, and simplicity.
GIMP UI is also totally customizable. Looking at GIMP 2.99.18 it’s quite a step back especially customizing the size of some dialogs or some tool options like the Alignment tool where we can not align anymore by pixel
@Mike_Q Hi! As one of the volunteer developers, I’d like to ask some questions to see if I can help. For Why is sharpening still a mystery, does this help? 4.8. Sharpen (Unsharp Mask) (gimp.org) There’s also a request to port the original Sharpen filter to GEGL, which will be after 3.0 due to the string freeze but may also help (sharpen filter (#4211) · Issues · GNOME / GIMP · GitLab)
For Why does every tiny dialog box insist on popping out like it’s too cool for one window, are you using Single Window Mode or Multi-Window Mode? I personally don’t find GIMP’s dialogues to be excessive, but if you can give some examples of dialogues that shouldn’t be standalone that would be helpful!
For Where are the basic features like HDR, portrait mode, or a magic ‘fix it’ button?, unfortunately everyone has a “must-have” feature, and we can only implement so many at a time. For instance, adding non-destructive filters was a commonly requested feature, but that meant I wasn’t spending time implementing more CMYK mode features (as an example). I would encourage you to post feature requests on the tracker: Issues · GNOME / GIMP · GitLab No promises on when they’d be implemented, but posting them on the tracker increases the odds of it happening. 
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I appreciate your response … I am generally very technical and perfer Linux for example over Windows hence my love for GIMP. Again to me it’s becoming too hard to use needlessly. Maybe a light version would be cool.
Thank you for your response … For me the way earilier versions of GIMP were more straight forward to use IMO. Instead to me GIMP should model itself after the easier apps to use and ditch it’s apparent focus on Adobe like functionality.
The problems is that this feedback is unactionable. Can gimp be made easier, yes of course, but its going to take a lot of very focused feedback and a willing developer to do so.
This falls into the same category as above.
Hi thanks for responding to me. I can read and figure out sharpening but what fustrates me more is why do I need to learn something like that? I don’t love befunky for example but look at their sharpen tool, it’s so easy and feature rich, they defined two types of sharpen and gave you the option to erase some of it from the current image at the same time.
I don’t think “multi window mode” is particularly helpful; the windows end up getting buried behind things etc. With that being said I can see why some people would like it, my issue is that it just rears it’s ugly head and does it out of nowhere, I move the mouse or press the “wrong” key and I’m then dealing with it popping out, and then I’m trying to deal with fixing it or switching around trying to find where it went. I have honestly dropped some curse words on many occasion over this; it’s like the default is to have this happen, it should be the other way around, you have to select multi window mode and it then breaks them out for you and nothing in between. Like toggle between the two.
Maybe I am not using the term “dialogues” correctly; I’m generally talking about the options available, a select stretch contrast it does nothing or it does something significant, I select some of the color tools and it takes a degree to figure them out or they just don’t seem to do things all that helpful, the filters seem unuseful and so forth … .it’s really hard to flesh this out over text but I can if you want me to… Another exmple there is a buch of shapes on the right side, brushes, they seem really not that important… Sorry I cant give you a great answer right now but if you want I can give more precise details … I think just if we look at the best phone app plus some of the online stuff like befunky it would be a killer product.
I haven’t used GIMP that much in recent years: I went over to the raw side and darktable. But I still use it for occasional resizing and tweaking.
I don’t see at all that it has got more complicated. My level of usage is very basic. I use curves, gradient, clone, colour temperature, sharpen, crop and probably a couple of others. Have they changed much over the years? Maybe I didn’t notice the increments, but I don’t think so. Although I use masks often in darktable (so easy! ) I have never got around to mastering masks and layers in GIMP.
Can one get much more basic in post-processing?
People love to curse the multi-window mode. I love it, as I like to open a batch of images. I also don’t like to have unnecessary windows, and use a lovely desktop system where I can simply window-blind up my unused windows. The right hand panel of GIMP spends much of its time not seen on my desktop, but when I need some undoing, it is available in an instant. (I can also have different brightness levels for the different windows). win… win… win… If you don’t like it, single-window is a choice.
So I cannot see the premise. If one has been doing the same sort of stuff over the years, GIMP has not got much more complex. If the work or demands has, that is GIMP’s fault.
Sure some stuff works better than other stuff. I regularly want to change the bightness or saturation of a colour. Sometimes that works in JPG/GIMP, sometimes it just creates horrible artifacts. It’s easy in dt/rt+raw.
In the future, with non-destructive edits being layer based, it might well become more complex. At least until we’ve learned how to handle it. I absolutely see its need. It will revolutionise GIMP. It might also completely change our workflows — but I’m sure it will be worth it.
GIMP is either our choice… or it isn’t. It is what it is.
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To me the light development tinkering with the tools and hot keys which have made things a bit more difficult to me. Many things seem to have not changed but were never easy to use easily, bunch of features are on the forefront which I can’t picture needing to use like brushes and so forth. I find trying to edit pictures overall much more work, I go to delete from a layer and it won’t let me, it constantly pops out the tools which I call multi windows mode almost all the time. and like I said things like sharpening to me work very differently than expected… I would have more specifics but honestly I have stepped away from the tool in recent years so I would really have to think about my problems… At this point it’s only used for final edits or something … It’s a good product … I think it would be off the charts in popularity if it were more user friendly …
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I understand, I could flesh out something but I felt like I would get ignored so I didn’t want to put in the cycles … Should I pitch something ?
Well that’s up to you. If you have very detailed suggestions that’ll improve the application, then sure.
But things like “sharpening is confusing” is a good place to start, it needs a lot more detail. What and how can it improve?