- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- foss@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- foss@beehaw.org
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GTK 3 support just in time for GTK 4 & 5
No, no, no. It’s the end of times. I can hear the trumpets of the apocalypse.
Now Valve needs to release half life 3 and the world as we know it will truly perish.
Jokes aside. I hope this means work on a UI overhaul can seriously begin.
Valve needs to release half life 3
Jokes aside Fresh leaks suggest Half-Life 3 development may be nearing completion .
Can you get apocalypse insurance? I think I’m in the market for it.
Don’t you dare give me hope.
Edit: Holy shit. Orland actually says that exact line in the linked article. Kudos.
I want to contact them (Valve), and tell them that if they are planning of releasing a Half Life game, to name it Half Life 4. Just to troll the entire world.
Half-Life 4: The Search For The Lost 3.
Hot damn! Never thought that I’d see the day.
Off-Canvas Editing Paint tools can now automatically expand the width and height of a layer as you draw! You can select “Expand Layers” in the tool options to enable drawing past the current boundaries of layers.
More features such as guides and auto-expanding layers can be used to work in the off-canvas space!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Now do VLC 4.0 :D
To all of the authors below who have disparaging opinions on the UX/UI experience and or the download ability. It’s a volunteer project for a reason. If you have such grand ideas and abilities put your money where your fingers are and fucking sign up.
A lot of the hate GIMP gets is people coming from Photoshop expecting it to work like Photoshop. In fact that’s true for a lot of Adobe-like open source projects. That’s why “industry standards” are dangerous and really only exist to keep one company rich.
My hate comes from wanting it to work like LView Pro. There’s no Linux image manipulation program that comes close to meeting the standard they set in 2001.
So true for all FOSS projects, the more successful they become the more new users expect a customer service dept.
Money link donate now you!
God forbid people offer feedback.
Helpful Feedback is fine. As the OP said there is no need for disparaging feedback.
Declaring that the only legitimate feedback comes from people who are also capable of doing the work is not a good way to solicit constructive feedback.
No one said that though.
Right, and the initial sentence
To all of the authors below who have disparaging opinions on the UX/UI experience and or the download ability.
modifies the rest of the text
It’s a volunteer project for a reason. If you have such grand ideas and abilities put your money where your fingers are and fucking sign up.
Point being, feedback is welcome, disparaging opinions are not.
Nobody declared that “only legitimate feedback comes from people who are also capable of doing the work.”
Reading comprehension, my friend.
Hmm. So doubling down then.
Next. They should drop everything and solely focus on improving ux & ui . Every time I open gimp to try and get acclimated to it, I close it back out of frustration. Nothing is intuitive in that software. Not even the naming of the tools settings.
Don’t touch my workflow. Just because you couldn’t get acclimated to it, doesn’t mean no one did.
Reminds me of this:
Source: https://xkcd.com/1172/
There are many examples of software where the UI etc can be changed. I have never felt comfortable in GIMP’s UI, but then again I’m much more of a vector guy.
To be honest, nothing is intuitive in any complex software. Every time I open Photoshop I want to cry in pain. But it isn’t because Photoshop is bad (that I don’t know actually), but because I am not familiar with it at all
It is essential that you explain exactly what you find unintuitive, otherwise -forgive me, but- this feedback is worthless. Make a bullet list, with captures, show how you would rename or rearrange things. Do your part !
forgive me, but- this feedback is worthless
Its not useless when literally 99% of the people who tried GIMP Over the past 25+ years have had the exact same reaction, pretending its not a thing its whats useless
It is worthless, in fact. Because it’s not actionable. Read what the above user said again :
Every time I open gimp to try and get acclimated to it, I close it back out of frustration. Nothing is intuitive in that software. Not even the naming of the tools settings.
Nothing in here is specific enough to do anything about it. Imagine you’re a developer, and you read this. What do you do ?
As users, we may not be able to program stuff, but we can do so much design work. Making mockups takes some time but it’s within our reach. Let’s all contribute to the best of our ability. If all a user can say is “Nothing is intuitive”, then their feedback can only be dismissed. Because it’s not actionable.
Oh and once you done all of the writeup actually submit it to the devs so they can work with it instead of leaving it to languish on a random web forum
How many of those who have never used Photoshop would have the same reaction to Photoshop?
This is what always frustrates me when people complain about GIMP’s UI!
The common opinion is to “make it more like Photoshop”, but Photoshop is absolutely not beginner friendly - most of those people are just familiar with it already.
I remember being completely lost and constantly getting annoyed when I first started using Photoshop.
I followed some YouTube tutorial to rearrange all the stuff that can be to make it more like photoshop, which did make things somewhat better
Nothing is intuitive in that software.
UI/UX is a very very difficult job. I’ve only ever known a few UI/UX artists that were any good, and OMFG, are they expensive.
You can’t just drop everything and focus on something where you don’t have domain experts. Not to presume too much about you, but that would be like saying you need to drop everything you’re doing and focus on brain surgery next year. UI/UX is art. It’s a very specific type of art that, unfortunately, doesn’t come easy for people. There are companies for hire that work professionally on UX/UI, but they’re not cheap either. Anyone can spot bad UX, but knowing how to fix it in a way that works for everyone, that’s nearly a unicorn.
I’ve been using gimp since it was released for daily driver projects.
I’ve been using Photoshop for about a decade when required for gigs.
I can get around either app pretty decently at this point.
If you drop any new user into either, they’ll be absolutely lost.
If you drop a seasoned Photoshop user into GIMP, they’ll not only be lost but be unable to use their vast array of plugins and macros and aren’t quite (but non-technically are) impossible for the average user to work on.
We can’t make Gimp Photoshop-like. We can make strides to improve Gimp, but it’s beyond reach for the current team. Maybe we can start a crowdfund to get a UX company to take a stab at it, but even at that we’d need buy in from the developers and it would likely be an incredibly large rework, not unlike the current one that took quite a long time.
i mean its pretty good if you get used to it… i remember the shortcuts for all the major tools i use and it’s very quick and easy to use for me.
This is exactly the problem they face. I use GIMP since ~15years. Any change they make will annoy me to a degree. But I also understand that getting into the UI is not that easy. They somehow have to manage these two completly opposing interests.
I opened it, changed brush, got a segmentation fault crash lmao
Hey, it’s open source. Just open a C project from the 90s and fix it yourself. Ez /s
It’s always the user’s fault. Why do think you could change the brush using an UI element!?
Isn’t C just wonderful?
Brilliant and huge congrats to the amazing people who worked on it. One silly question though, is the “new” Gimp logo supposed to look out of focus or are my eyes getting old?
zero screenshots on the announcement page and zero screenshots on the homepage. Exactly what i expect from gimp lol
The UI looks the same lol
The layers are the big thing, but its hard to show because the final result looks the same anyways
Aw man i was hoping for a big ui upgrade like when blender released version 2.8 that now even cinema4d is copying.
I fear gimp truly doesnt care about its ui/ux because technically everything you want to do is possible as long as you learn the ways ans they dont care to attract an audience thats not die hard FOSS people. For example schools havent been able to use it because theyre so deadset on their nsfw name and schools cant have kids googling gimp
I fear gimp truly doesnt care about its ui/ux
Why, because its been the single most requested change by the GIMP community for 20+ years and its the one thing they refuse to address?? Dont be silly, its not like the devs are acting like the guy who makes Filezilla who has been steadfastly refusing to implement a ‘dark’ feature simply because he does think anyone wants it… oh wait
My college taught us GIMP for anyone in the CIS program, but not the actual graphic design track.
No self-respecting UI designer would ever want to work on that dinosaur of a codebase. The GIMP team is simply unable to do what Blender did, even if they made the UI their number one priority.
I mean the whole point of doing the mega rewrite to gtk3 was specifically to enable such forward looking progress.
What they did in the 3.0 release was, largely, a massive modernization of a dinosaur code base.
Now that it’s done it makes sense to do a UI overhaul. Before 3.0 it made no sense to even try, now it does.
Why not? Krita did it, they made an entirely new interface (hell they did it over 10 years ago) so why does the GIMP teams refuse to do the same?
They’re not refusing. They’re actually doing the opposite. But they needed to get their house in order first.
The 3.0 upgrade was the result of the getting their house in order and modernizing. Doing cosmetic changed before hand would have made no sense because those changes would have been thrown away when they would have to modernize things anyways.
I think I have an analogy.
Gimp was like an old American style wooden house that was flooded. After the water recedes you could try to make things look nicer by plastering and painting the walls etc. But as goes with flooded houses if you do this the mold will rot everything out.
In order to save a flooded house you need to remove all the dry wall and use fans to dry out the internals. Once things are dry then you can plaster and repaint things.
Gimp 3.0 was them ripping out dry wall and air drying the internals. Now that that is done it now makes sense to clean up the UI.
If you clean up the UI before you dry the walls out it’s just a waste of time because those improvements would need to be ripped out with the dry walls always.
It’s not perfect as far as an analogy goes but it’s close. Gimp should have never let the house flood in the first place. (Analogy breaks down here a bit). But since they did. They needed to fix the fundamental before it would be worth fixing the UI.
This all being said they could at this point genuinely refuse to change things UI wise. I hope they choose to pull a Blender or Krita but they don’t have to.
The 3.0 upgrade was the result of the getting their house in order and modernizing
meh I believe they can walk and chew gum at the same time, I think they just wanna walk and not chew gum at all
they could have just called gims or gum
naming stuff is important
Not having non-destructive editing has kept me from using gimp. I tried but just couldn’t use it. I’ll have to try again.
If it’s non destructive now I might try to learn it.
Incredible. This is one of those hard to believe moments.
It’s been 21 years since the release of GIMP 2.0.
It’s been more than 10 years since work on a majorly overhauled GIMP 3.0 was announced and initiated.
And it’s been 7 years since the last major release (2.10).
I can’t wait for the non-destructive text effects. After all these years of dealing with the fact applying drop shadows meant the text couldn’t be edited, at last it’s no longer an issue.
Seems like a long tiem to wait for non-destructive drop shadows… most other art applications including Krita have had that for a very long time
As a long time - pre version 2 - gimp user my first thought was “what, don’t be ridiculous” and now I dont know what to feel. Why would you do this to me personally
Version numbers are basically meaningless.
Man, after decades, why does GIMP still have a marketing problem?
Just visit https://www.gimp.org/ and compare it to https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html
Just assume both did exactly the same thing and cost the exact same amount (free or otherwise). Which would you choose based on their website?
Why does GIMP (and pretty much all FOSS) have to be so secretive about their product? Why no screenshots? Why not showcase the software on their website?
It’s so damn frustrating that every FOSS app appears to be command line software, or assumed that the user knows everything about it already.
Devs, you might have a killer piece of software, but screenshots go a long way to help with gaining interest and adoption.
I don’t know man, I think the Photoshop homepage reeks of corpo crap, whereas the Gimp homepage does a good job at cleanly presenting the program in a quick way. Maybe I’m just used to FOSS, or already too allergic to corporate software, but going by the homepage design, my preference is obvious, there’s not even a contest
I think my point was missed. I wasn’t saying that GIMP should copy what Adobe does (I can’t stand Adobe and their “business model” spyware bullshit.
My point was more to show that Adobe showcases the features of the software, so a potential user knows what it does without needing to go through the trouble of downloading it. It may not be what the user wants, and that’s ok, at least they know!
But GIMP is so vague in their description and offers no insight to what the app does or looks like. There’s no need to be mysterious.
I mean, tastes are different, but I really did not like the photshop page design.
Taste aside, you can easily see what features Photoshop has, rather than guessing, right?
I should have used a FOSS example, since Adobe is just bad in general (users saying the page has pop-ups, etc.).
All I see is “Ooooh look, we use AI!” which actually repels me quite a lot. The page leaves the impression that photoshop is a toy, not a tool.
Ok, let’s get off Adobe for a second… here’s a FOSS example: https://www.rawtherapee.com/
Easy to understand exactly what it does, screenshots are excellent. Surely, you can agree that this is better than how GIMP presents itself, right?
Great updated example and I look forward to hearing the arguments against this just like Adobe.
the gimp one displays normally, while the adobe one shows a blank white page.
the choice is obvious
The photoshop page doesn’t even have a download link.
0/10 would not download.
Agree, however on clicking the photoshop link was first hit with 2 popups before I could see the page.
How is Krita? I’m on a Mac and my biggest problem with Gimp and Inkscape has always been lack of MacOS integration. Mostly with the UI but even shortcuts were wrong when I tried it. And the mouse/trackpad gestures were the dealbreaker.
I use Pixelmator, which hopefully continues to be a well developed pay once app, even though Apple just bought them. That and Sketch get me all the design tools I need for 2D and web.
How is Krita?
I fully converted all my workflows to Krita a long time again, its amazing
I don’t know about the Mac experience specifically but Krita was incredibly intuitive as someone who hasn’t touched creative software in about 15 years. I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, doodled a little, then remembered I suck at digital drawing and closed without saving
Your first problem is you’re using a Mac. But beyond the obvious trolling, Krita excels at painting and is getting better at text as well -so far text tools have left to be desired but they’ve been working on a revamp for some years now, probably coming rather soon. What I find lacking as a daily user (I do illustration in Krita, animation in Blender) is the general image manipulation tools. Transforming, snapping, transform masks… are often either lacking in flexibility or poorly performing. I use Affinity Publisher on the side for compositing my illustrations with text for print or web, I wouldn’t be able to rely on just Krita for that. But for painting, it’s absolutely fantastic -performance wise, usability-wise, the shortcuts are so well thought out it’s a joy to use. It’s really made with painting in mind. If you like using filters, they have a good G’mic integration with hundreds of builtin filters. I can’t comment on their mac builds though, you’d have to try them yourself.
Have you checked out Affinity? They support Mac and iPad, and are comparable with the core Adobe suite. Its a buy once scenario (per major version release). My only problem is they don’t support Linux.
Of note, they were purchased last year by Canva, but it has been stated they will keep the Affinity products separate for purchase.
It’s more of a paint program, and it’s great if you have a pen and tablet. I haven’t tried out gimp for while, but it was more of a photoshop alternative at that time. I think Apple’s version of Krita would be Procreate, but Krita is free.
Yeah, I never got into illustration or 3d art/animation, but I sure as hell know what Blender is!
It’s quite the testament that the Blender name is known to the masses (hope you don’t mind me calling you the masses)
Unless 3.0 has solved it, the gimp has a steep UI problem and a learning curve such that mass appeal on the website would be inappropriate anyway. I love it but I love it because I’ve been using it my whole life and know it very well. Foss in general struggles with useability due to a lot of hard to overcome problems - mainly, that by the time someone is ready to contribute to any given foss project, they’re already intimately familiar with its foibles and probably have strong opinions about what UX elements are sacred cows and should not be fixed.
Well, it has solved it in large part, yes. Tablet pen buttons are correctly recognized on Windows at last, GTK3 allows panels to be dockable pretty much anywhere, the interface looks generally sleek.
Now perhaps you could specify what aspect of the UI you find problematic, otherwise it’s hard to respond to such a vague statement. Imagine you’re a developer, and you read a piece of feedback that says “the gimp has a steep UI problem”. Where do you go from there ?
I mean, I could make a list of things I think are problems, but I’ve been using it since a bit after 9/11 so I dont think my guesses would represent new user experiences. I am mostly going off what people tell me when they try to learn it.
otherwise it’s hard to respond to such a vague statement
I wasn’t writing advice for the devs, I was making a general statement about why foss stuff doesn’t tend to suit glitzy, highly marketable front facing stuff, using gimp as an example
I’m not involved with Gimp development, I’ve been watching it from the side, so I can’t tell if there’s an actual lack of contributions related to UX design -but so far I have only seen the public respond with the same sort of vague feedback : “the UI needs work”. Unfortunately that’s as unhelpful as it gets. Spending some time designing interface mockups, or writing up descriptions of how such and such feature should work, now that’s helpful, and is something pretty much any user can do.
I was making a general statement about why foss stuff doesn’t tend to suit glitzy, highly marketable front facing stuff, using gimp as an example
Yea, I believe that’s true. And it is always a resource problem, because with limited resources, developers focus on making the thing work first, look nice second
developers focus on making the thing work first, look nice someone else’s problem
I actually like the GIMP website homepage more than the one for photoshop.
Its simple and efficient. If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
The photoshop site just looks like a random squarespace template with a bunch of stock photos.
If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
See, that’s not normal, though. You shouldn’t need to “dig deeper” to find out what a product is or what it does.
The well-designed homepage should simply tell you that within seconds of visiting. Any additional clicks should only be to “learn more”, but not to learn about.
If this was an analogy, imagine a street lined with restaurants.
On one side you’ve got “Vinny’s Italian Pizzeria”, “Joe’s Burgers and Fries”, and “Mary’s Bakery and Treats”. Each has posters of what they sell posted on the windows, and a QR code to their online menu.
On the other you have “Sal’s Food”, “Frank’s More Food”, “Sal’s”. The windows are either covered in brown paper, or have stock images of “food”, but nothing specific about what they actually make. To learn more, you have to go inside, ask someone for a menu, wait for that menu, then have a look. But the menu lacks photos! You either have to know what they are describing to you in the menu, or you would have to have already dined there before.
Does the latter experience sound good? Because that’s how too many open-source projects present themselves, and it’s to the loss of the volunteer devs and their potential user base.
Dig deeper ?
Homepage text :
The Free & Open Source Image Editor
This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
Man, that text does the app no favours. “Image editor” could mean that it crops photos. But GIMP does a hell of a lot more. It’s been “the open-source photoshop” for decades, and they’re really selling themselves short. Screenshots would have made it so much easier to see what the software does.
Yeah… I was expecting a much larger contrast. Give me the one that doesn’t start off with several popups.
I feel like the Adobe marketing is somewhat pointless. Anyone that has been in the target industries for any amount of time already know the deal.
GIMP is not Photoshop. They are not competitors. It’s a difficult transition. I’m not sure we should even bother drawing a comparison.
I’ve used Photoshop since 1992. I know, I’m old. I started using GIMP about four years ago. I recently got to the point where I can function.
Money and momentum is a motherfucker. Adobe has fuck you money. GIMP has volunteers. Those that don’t like their site should volunteer time or money.
Edit: fwiw I like the GIMP site better too.
I totally agree
You’re welcome to contribute your experties.
I wish I could, but this is a systemic problem, not a problem with one individual project.
Is the mindset that anyone looking for open source, FOSS, or Linux stuff is already tech-savvy enough to know exactly what they are looking for based solely on a text description?
What? There are hundreds of thousands of FOSS projects with great presentation. GIMP is the exception these days, not the rule.
For sure, I don’t mean to blanket all FOSS projects under the same observation. But I’ve seen some projects where the idea is brilliant, and it fills a gap that no other software can, but they have piss-poor instructions (or none at all) and hardly describe what the project is or does. You only learn about them by chance, which is a real shame.
Here’s another example: Navidrome (https://www.navidrome.org/) is an awesome, self-hosted music streaming software.
But their homepage doesn’t have a screenshot, so you have no idea if the UI is just command prompt, ugly, unintuitive, or the best thing ever. Even the “learn more” page has no screenshots unless you really go digging.
Compare that to another FOSS self-hosted music streamer: https://ampache.org/
Simple website, but at least you can see exactly what to expect from the UI. Huge advantage even if they two apps do the exact same thing (both based on the Subsonic backend).
I think it’s more so that the kind of people contributing to these projects are on balance not that interested in doing the marketing work.
Do the operating systems the contributors use not have a screenshot function?
I mean, seriously, simply highlighting a few features would make a massive difference.
I speak for all projects, not just GIMP.
These projects are run by volunteers, they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does. And to be honest, it kinda seems like you’re just criticizing them for no good reason. Have you personally designed and built a website that doesn’t suck?
they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does.
presses screenshot button
Ah yes, it’s a good thing that the only skill required to make a nice website is taking a screenshot
is taking a screenshot that hard?
These projects are run by volunteers, they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does.
A few screenshots would be nice. Not asking them to make a high-production video intro shot on a cruise ship with RED cameras and featuring an A-list celeb.
And to be honest, it kinda seems like you’re just criticizing them for no good reason.
On the contrary. I want to see them reach a wider audience. I want to see FOSS, Linux, and other open-source projects become more accessible and widely available. For me, the way many of these projects present themselves is like gatekeeping to keep people away.
Have you personally designed and built a website that doesn’t suck?
Yes, but I won’t doxx myself, so there’s no proof I can give you.
Regardless, as a user and someone who wants to see open-source projects succeed, my comment should only be taken as constructive criticism.
IF YOU HAVE EXPERTISE, THEN CONTRIBUTE, DAMMIT: https://developer.gimp.org/core/wgo/
They don’t need somebody to tell them their site sucks. They need somebody to HELP them make it better, to DO the work that you seem to be implying is very easy! They’re literally begging for it on their website.
On the contrary. I want to see them reach a wider audience. I want to see FOSS, Linux, and other open-source projects become more accessible and widely available
then contribute, it’s called “open source” for a reason or at least raise an issue where the maintainers can see? Not on some random link aggregation platform about an announcement?
You can if you wish. You just choose not to. Like so many of us. If more did volunteer, the problem would disappear. It’s that simple.
Basically, yes.
Actually I would pick GIMP.
- Says what it is, an image editor.
- No popups and random interruptions.
- Not only AI editing examples which makes me thing the tool is AI only.
- An overview of the variety of major features it has rather than just AI editing.
- Links to helpful documentation rather than endless marketing pages that say nothing.
Really think only thing I would like to see is some screenshots and examples of using the tool, rather than just info on what it does. But the Photoshop page barely has this, just a few examples of the AI tools.
FOSS projects are often labors of love.
Nobody who isn’t completely deranged loves marketing.
Me: Hello niece, what career will you embark on once college is over?
Niece: Marketing.
Me: [audibly] Ah, I see. [inaudibly] Where did our family go wrong???
Idk if GIMP has a marketing problem but I definitely agree that FOSS projects should add screenshots and a description of what the program does to their website and repo. It really annoys me when someone links a piece of software and it just doesn’t say what it does and there’s no screenshots that would make it easy for me to see what it looks like and how the UI is structured. When there’s no screenshots I’m rarely even interested in trying it out because, even with a description, I don’t really know what it is. Like, I wouldn’t be interested in a car based on only a description, I’d have to see a picture of it too.
This is a frequent source of frustration for me, too. Can’t even tell if it’s cli or gui a lot of the time, based on the documentation. If I could just see what it looks like, I’d have a good idea right away of whether it might meet my needs.
I mean, the name is a bigger problem than anyone seems to want to admit…
I mean, the name is a bigger problem than anyone seems to want to admit
Which is why I use Krita and recommend it to other people… telling them to use GIMP would get too many laughs and weird looks
Majority of area in the world does not recognize it as negative thing.
Even for English, English itself is diverse language. Singaporean English, Indian English, Asian English, definitely not negative in all of them.
Forcing one standard of language as a universal is a bad precedent for language diversity.
I would have to choose GIMP (in spite of this awful name) because that page loaded without javascript and the photoshop page requires me to enable javascript.
I know I’m being a bit facetious, here, but… Adobe can afford to hire full time front end devs and designers. FOSS projects can’t really compete with Adobe’s investors.
LOL. Brother, I get what you’re saying, but I think you missed the point. If Random User X is just looking for an image editor, and they are presented with a few options they know nothing about. Do you think they’re going to even bother with the one image editor that doesn’t have any screenshots?
Just another comparison, a little more relevant: https://www.rawtherapee.com/
You know EXACTLY what it is and what it does within about 2 seconds. That would be more than enough information for someone to at least make the effort to download the software.
You’re right. I wasn’t familiar with rawtherapee but just seeing that home page immediately clued me into the fact that it was some kind of image program. Didn’t even need to read a single word.
Come to think of it, there have been a number of times where I’ve wondered about what a foss project does/looks like and I think a single screenshot would’ve just been a big help in understanding how it behaves.
Come to think of it, there have been a number of times where I’ve wondered about what a foss project does/looks like and I think a single screenshot would’ve just been a big help in understanding how it behaves.
Yes!! I’m glad I was able to illustrate my point better.
If I recommend some software to someone, most normies I know would directly go on to youtube and check some guy using and reviewing a software. The “official website” wouldn’t even cross their mind.
In this day and age if a random user really wants something, they have a miriad of options to see what they’re about to use. Forums, Youtube, blog posts and so on.
If a user doesn’t even bother a bare , they’re better off not downloading random executables from the internet.
The website isn’t end all, be all of how users find a software demos. You seem to think a single website is enough for users to make their choices these days. It isn’t the 90s.
An informed user goes through that much effort. Most users are not informed and will do a quick search, download something that looks remotely what they think they need, and they’re done.
This is why it’s frustrating that some really good open-source software end up being lost in a sea of other stuff that was easier for someone to download, without doing a ton of research.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a website, but a website should be “home base” for a software, company, etc. If not the official website, then the developer has less control over the presentation of their product, which would suck.
App stores are successful for a reason: they offer a quick, accessible means to find 1000s of apps or desktop software. And if an app has a poor description or piss poor screenshots, they are skipped very quickly.
The same applies to the UX and UI of an app or website. A poor experience can cause someone to uninstall it (or exit the page), even if it offers them the features they want/need.
I couldn’t agree more and I see it everywhere as well. It’s systemic.
Which would you choose based on their website?
Problem is, people on Lemmy are techies who might actually prefer the Gimp site. But any “normal” person would not.
Yeah I admit I kind of prefer the Gimp site. Are you saying Lemmy isn’t an accurate random sample of normal people in reality?
Yes, Lemmy is dominated by people with a certain propensity towards tech. You can’t use Lemmy users as a gauge for what is good UX I would say.
Gimp doesn’t have a marketing problem. Its well known its just that not many people like it. It is not a nice program to use. I think gimp3 fixes a lot of the janky ui but I’ll have to try it out again
Yeah, every time I have ever tried Gimp, attempting to do anything felt like someone had purposefully been contrarian and made every operation work in the hardest and most confusing way.
And someone may say, “well, you just have to learn it!” OK, sure. Or I can use something that makes much more sense from the jump like Affinity Photo. (Yes, I know you have to pay for it, but it’s worth it. Yes, I know not everyone has the money to do so.)
this is exactly my opinion on it. one of my main gripes was the text rendering. if i needed to change some text i basically had to redo all of the work on any shadow or stroke as well, not just correct a spelling mistake or whatever. very excited to check out the new version.
It is not a nice program to use.
Holy hell. I felt like that 20+ years ago when I started using it… I’m surprised that it never got better, from the sound of it.
Progress just has been painfully slow. It just now got the update it should’ve had back then
I mean, the Adobe website flashed me pop-ups about not being in the right location, about cookies - I would choose GIMP based on this.
I choose FOSS 90% of the time because they are not beholden to the same conventions that compel most for-profit products. A lot of the concerns I’m reading about readability, marketability, etc ring absolutely true for life-or-death for-profit ventures, but there are definitely people who don’t mind missing all of that stuff in exchange for good and decent software.
The goal, after all, is to be image editing software, not an advertisement.
Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
The devs making Gimp gain literally nothing from you downloading and using it.
Stop applying capitalist logic to one of the few aspects of life that haven’t been monetized yet.Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
That’s highly debatable.
Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there’s no incentive to keep making it.
Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.
Even from a purely practical standpoint, why not be clear and avoid wasting people’s time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?
I’m not suggesting that GIMP take out Facebook ads. But my god, would a few screenshots kill the project?
Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there’s no incentive to keep making it.
Making a tool you or the company you work for need yourself, fun, learning, community, doing good, showing off, status, being remembered, (even if it’s just in a circle of 10 people)…
Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.
Irrelevant for the vast majority of open source projects, which will never be financially profitable.
why not be clear and avoid wasting people’s time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?
Maybe because the volunteers working on the project in their free time are programmers, not marketers or good communicators?
Also, they aren’t wasting anybody’s time by creating useful software and giving it away for free.I realize I’m being confrontational towards you, but this mindset of demanding things from people who literally give away free stuff with no strings attached rubs me the wrong way, every single time. And this mindset is much too prevalent, even to the point of harassing, insulting and threatening open source devs for choices they make in their projects.
The devs owe you nothing. If you don’t like what they do, simply don’t use it.
There are other options out there, but they may come with a $23/month price tag.You are right. I just checked out gimp.org, and…IS there a single image of the software on that site?
If they want new users, asking them to blindly download software without even a look or maybe a video of new features is not it.
Other programs like Photoshop lose money though. FOSS devs should just quit as they’re their own competition.
Idk I like the gimp page. Two clicks, and you’re into the tutorial on how to edit pictures. The first page gives you all you need to know: Image manipulation program.
adobe’s page otoh… Well after the first two popups, I gave up.
…
Alright, Second try and four popups later, I’m in. gotta admit the funny animations and the tools they show off are pretty nice
I think it’s because marketing is expensive and marketing people know that corporations have money to throw at them, and the moment they lower their prices for a FOSS project, they might not get their old revenue when working for a company that can definitely pay what they ask.
We need some sort of FOSM (Free and Open Source Marketing) that helps FOSS projects based on some sort of queue and whoever has recent changes that needs marketing.
I think it’s because marketing is expensive
Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by “marketing”. I’m not talking about spending tens of thousands of Facebook ads, or any ads, really.
A few screenshots on a product page would be more than enough for some projects. Highlight some key features. Generate interest.
It’s really low effort stuff that makes a huge difference.
These are all excellent ways someone can contribute to a project. Our project website has a repo anything can contribute to to make changes, even the blog entries are statically generated pages.
dont forget how they expect you to compile it. some projects offer a nice .msi for windows, a .whatever for mac, and then linux users just get a link to their github. i mean cmon.
edit: i’m not talking specifically about gimp, my dudes.
That’s false, not sure why you would say that. Literally just visit the download page
i see what you did there
The fuck are you talking about. It’s available in all the repositories
not all software.
“They” most of the times is solo devs and you can’t blame them for that. GIMP does have flatpak, appimages, etc.
solo devs can spin windows executables and mac installer but not linux…?
I switched to Linux because there were almost no good open source apps on Windows. The comparison is not fair considering how drastically the parameters are changing.
Also a lot of solo devs do try to maintain some community repos.
I’m not trying to disagree but I haven’t come across any projects that only wanted the Linux users to build. You can correct me.
i have found a couple before but havent bothered with them, i don’t remember which they are but it sure peeved me off to be the only one told to “build it yourself”
compiling a program takes like 2 clicks dude
Is it because in Linux the UI is so customisable that there’s no definitive ‘look’ to sell?
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So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6
We got gimp 3 before half life 3.
We got Gimp 3 before The Winds of Winter.
