Will Gimp be dead? In 5 years terms, yes. If you have online alternatives that are more capable, then why you need gimp? if you have offline workstation, then yes you may need.
Whats gimp problems? There’s lots of discussions but if the developers are ignorant, then people will leave and use Affinity, Adobe etc. Gimp developers dont have vision, motivation… You have to sell your ideas to the public, and you will get developers, money. Thats how Blender succeeded.
Gimp have serious problems and if you dont adress them, nothing will change:
name - dont be ignorant and change it. Saying its not problem is just ignoring it. Many schools will not teach gimp because of its name. Developers have said they dont care… And thats problem if you dont have childrens who can and want use it
ui and code - gimps ui is ugly and terrible to use. you can ignore it but thats a fact. i have trying to get people to use gimp and they all say same thing. If you use Adobe software and try Affinity, its a lot easier than trying gimp. Gimp tries to be different and thats problem. Listen to professionals and change it.
I have heard that gimp code is a total mess and its really hard for new developers
If you have to use text tool thats working very unintuitively and is really hard to use, you have to google to understand it, then something is seriously wrong. And if the developers say, text tool is working ok, thats how it is designed and no plan to change it… then you will not gain userbase.
gimp is missing critical features. Well known example is to draw a circle, add drop shadow, do other stuff and later try to make the circle bigger… you cant.
ui and code - gimps ui is ugly and terrible to use. you can ignore it but thats a fact.
I’m not arguing any of your points, but a pet peeve of mine is when people use the word “fact” when they’re actually expressing an opinion—possibly even a very common opinion.
I don’t have any (significant) issues with the Gimp interface.
(*) IMHO the problem is that Gimp is a “brand” and an “ecosystem”. Either you totally distance yourself from Gimp, and then have to rebuild the brand and ecosystem from the ground up (which means adapting all the scripts/plugins/resources…) or you keep ties with Gimp but then the Unspeakable Name shows up everywhere.
I have spoken with many professional designers and they all say gimp is ugly and hard to use. They dont mean it have to be copy of Photoshop. But if theres standard how things should be, then you have to follow those rules, otherwise no one will use the software. Its not always about missing features.
For example cropping, that actually dont crop, you have to set it to delete pixels? This should be other way around - default must be to crop image (delete outside marked area all pixels), if you want to save those pixels outside marked boundries, you can set it to do so (this should not be default). And theres no button to apply crop, you have to press enter (but if you want to rotate image, then there is a button). And all the floating layer stuff. If you paste something, it will create floating layer, if you paste something new, it will overwrite data on it, if you use text tool, it will paste the floating layer on background layer etc … you will lose data. You have to make floating layer to new layer, but this sis extra step and designers dont have time for it. They will run away… and havent they already? And dont mention the texttool designers must rely on
Gimp name… i dont care about it, but thousands of people will. If schools dont use gimp because of its name, then why ignoring it and not adressing it as problem to work on?
I believe gimp can be “Blender2”, but this will need time and effort. You have to make campains and say what you want and how it will be done. And people will donate and help. Gimp is dying, why donate money to it? This is bad mindset and gimp’s developers must brake it or nothing will happen and gimp will die.
We already have better online solutions… Some of them have been developed by 1-2 guy with few years. I mean why we have to wait for non destructive editing for next 10 years? Yes, gimp is free opensource software, but if it can prove its worth it, people will use it, donate and it will survive. Theres so many opensource projects that prove it.
I really doubt the name would be much of an issue if Gimp was better than PS, folk who cared about it then would probably just use its full name rather than not use it. It’s something that gets added on for some reason? Fork and change the name.
I agree there’s lots of issues worthy of a proper disccusion but this YouTuber is not doing that as we’ve listed above.
Its going to be a long time before anything in a web browser is better than a local app, especially for professionals. Color management is a real issue in web browsers and is really a non-starter.
If all you want to do is crop and a light edit, sure, you can do that on your phone as well, but that isn’t “professional” and won’t cut it for people who need to generate income.
IMO, obviously it’s not the best name and is for me initially a bit cringe-worthy when introducing the product to a newbie. First sentence is to introduce GIMP. The next fifty are kinda sheepishly “yeah, I know” and try to explain the somewhat-insider name.*
It’s never been offensive to me but I may be unaware and/or come from a more thick-skinned era (or whatever). However, the “cripple” connotation is hard to ignore (others may differ). Kinda like going to a dealership to check out the brand new shiny red 2023 Ferarri Snail …
* To fully explain why GIMP is called GIMP, one must go back to RMS, “Gnu’s not unix”, work forward from there and watch others go glassy-eyed. To be fair, GIMP is generally from the same era as lots of other “platform-tagged” software. I mean we’ve had, what… x<whatever>, g<whatever>, k<whatever>, q<whatever>, mac<whatever>, win<whatever> … did I miss anything?
Point being, at some point the software becomes a tool and no one (other than us ) really cares about its framework. And then the cute name is no longer cute.
I’d vote to change it but as pointed out elsewhere that’s a can of worms, too, so…
We were watching “Last Man Standing” reruns last night (Tim Allen show chock full of political impropriety) and the episode had Mandy’s environmental guerilla boyfriend touting his membership in “PFART”, a fictitious environmental organization. “The F is silent!”, he lamented. “Silent but deadly”, retorts Mandy’s mother…
Heck, my wife and friends were sitting around one day relating the meaning of their names. I walked by, was asked “Glenn, what does your name mean?” I had to answer, “Well, I think it’s a shallow depression…”
True, but what I meant was in my culture / vocabulary growing up, the word gimp was just a term for “damaged” or “crippled” and actually rarely heard. It had no derogatory connotations I’m aware of. I’m not saying that’s true across the board.
) really cares about its framework. And then the cute name is no longer cute.
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