Mon, 11 Aug 2008
What's Wrong With GIMP?
I have recently came across this discussion under the article at Root.CZ. More than half of the discussion is centered around GIMP and its (un)usability.
Every now and then I read those complaints: the GIMP user interface is bad, user-unfriendly, unintuitive, etc. As a casual GIMP user, I do not get it: for me, GIMP is easy to work with. As far as I can remember, when learning to work with it (and having previously used only simple bitmap editors like XPaint), the most mentally difficult feature for me were layers. Once I got used to what layer means and what can I do with it, I found it quite natural and intuitive.
Do you also find the GIMP unintuitive and hard to use? What part exactly you do not like?
11 replies for this story:
Vasek Stodulka wrote:
Yes - I am allways looking forward to work with GIMP, because it is something else then my other work. I have installed GIMP to our (blonde :-) secretary, beacuse she asked me to buy "Photoshop". I expected some chat about "the horrorible GUI" or so, but she came a week later and said, that she likes the program very much and asked me, if I can provide her a CD with some cracked version, so she can install it at home. She looked really confused, when I provided her only a web link and talking about free software...
Abraxis wrote: What I hate about GIMP
Things I personally hate about GIMP: - lot of separate windows appearing in task manager (IIRC - in Windows), no option to switch it to MDI-style - non-standard look'n'feel (at least in Windows and probably also in KDE) - no simple painting tools (draw circle/box/...) - some effects don't have "Preview" function I haven't used GIMP in quite a time, so maybe some issues are fixed now. Somehow using GIMP leaves me a bad taste in mounth (heh)... really very subjective feeling ;-)
otakar wrote: Co mi vadí na GIMPu?
Nechápu, co lidé vidí neintuitivního na GIMPu. GIMP je podle mne mnohem intuitivnější než Photoshop, se kterým jsem se naučil slušně pracovat již dříve. Když jsem pak zkusil GIMP, okamžitě jsem se zorientoval. Všechno je totiž přesně tam, kde se to dá předpokládat. Abraxis v příspěvku výše má pravdu, že chybí kreslicí nástroje, ale to jako velký problém nevidím - je to jen otázka jednoho kroku navíc. Mně chybí hlavně podpora více než 8bitových barev, vrstvy úprav, a v neposlední řadě také efekty vrstev. I přesto ale pracuji s GIMPem moc rád.
Yenya wrote: Re: Abraxis
Well, circle can be drawn by selecting it and then Select->Stroke. Look & feel is perfectly OK in GNOME (after all, it is GTK+ app). I did not like MDI-style apps, and I welcome GIMP letting window manager do its work. Otakar mentions some GIMP drawbacks (which I agree with), but they are definitely not an UI issue.
Milan Zamazal wrote:
I stopped using GIMP completely several years ago, exactly for its horrible GUI. It's important to say that I don't paint bitmap pictures, I just do photo editing. And for photo editing GIMP was so horrible that I started to write (and use) my own photo editor. I later abandoned that project when digiKam appeared, providing civilized photo editing GUI in its showfoto editor. GIMP might got improved during the years, I don't know, I haven't run it for long time and I'm satisfied with showfoto + Krita enough not to care about GIMP anymore. So, what was exactly wrong with GIMP? One *functional* problem was that it was able to work only with 8-bit colors (it would be a fatal problem for me now, making any GUI problems insignificant). GUI problems started with its "numerous windows" approach, especially in a tiling window manager. The most annoying thing was the cropping tool, not providing comfortable way to make ratio crops and being prone to mouse misclicks. Opening a file dialog on directories with many files took ages to start. Everything looked cumbersome and requiring more mouse clicks than needed. Limited preview facilities. I can't recall all the details but the basic GUI problem for me was that for the few typical photo editing operations I needed the GUI wasn't fast enough to operate. Showfoto is great tool and pleasing to use, although not everything is perfect for me. I use Krita for operations which showfoto can't do. It's hard to learn how to use it (well, I should probably read its manual sometimes), but it's a single window application at least (and it can work with 16-bit colors, of course) so it's usable for me.
Vasek Stodulka wrote:
May I ask a question - what are more then 8-bit colors good for? The most of displays are nowadays 6-bit (sad, but true), better are 8-bit (so we can say our 8-bit pictures are for theese hi-tech guys) and even if I use good old CRT with possibility of displaying practically unlimited number of colors, then I need some graphics card capable of working with more colors and AFAIK only some Matroxes were able to show 40bit colours. When it comes to printing, then - I do not understand it well - but the printer basically uses 4 or 6 colors and even if the milions-to-six-colors algorithm was able to recognize and dither more then 8-bit colors, then you can use different type of paper or different ink and finally the colors will not fit anyway. So you can't see it, you can't print it and if you don't look at the data in some hex editor, you don't have any proof, that you have more then 8-bit color picture. (And even if you look at the data in hex editor, how can you proof, that the last bits are not some random mess?)
Yenya wrote: Re: Vasek Stodulka
In fact, most people can see about 7 bits of greyscale depth. However, you need more for editing. Things like white balance, gamma correction, contrast stretch, etc. can generate visible artifacts when done on an 8-bit image. You can open your photo in GIMP, open the Colors->Levels, look at the histogram, do some modification (say change gamma to 0.9 or 1.1), apply, and then open the same dialog again. When you look at the histogram, it is striped, so not all levels of gray are now present in the image.
otakar wrote: Re: Milan Zamazal
Krita je hezká, ale také má do dokonalosti daleko. Především jí chybí naprosto nejzákladnější nástroj, a to úprava jasových křivek (nebo jsem magor a neumím hledat - trochu omezenou možnost jsem našel ve vrstvách úprav). Také má jen velmi primitivní možnosti například u rotace nebo perspektivy, nemá editovatelné výběry... Pokud jde o ořez v GIMPu, má velmi bohaté možnosti nastavení, včetně poměru stran, a rozhodně náchylný na chybné kliknutí není ;-)
Milan Zamazal wrote: Re: otakar
Já Krita používám pouze na věci, které neumí showfoto a přitom je potřebuji, tzn. klonování a jasové gradienty. V bitmapové grafice dělám pouze úpravy fotek, takže nemohu posoudit jiné rysy. Ohledně ořezu v GIMPu, může na tom být dnes už lépe a taky jsou věci, které někomu vadí a někomu ne, ale tenkrát jsem při jeho používání nadával jak špaček :-).
otakar wrote: Re: Milan Zamazal
Ohledně toho ořezu - patrně jsi pracoval s ořezem, který je například ještě v CinePaintu - tam je opravdu potřeba přesně mířit :-) Již dlouhou dobu (nevím přesně od které verze) má ořez (i výběr) široké okraje pro editaci. Dělá se s tím nádherně. Také používám GIMP jen na úpravy fotek (hlavně pro webovou fotogalerii) a právě ořez, jasové křivky a rotace jsou nejpoužívanější nástroje. Jinak si fotky nechávám v originále, protože protáhnout je 8bitovým editorem by nebyl nejlepší způsob archivace. Nadějně pro 16bit vypadá použití GEGL (i když je to s ním nepříjemně pomalé i na 2jádru).
Lukas wrote:
Moje posledni zkusenost s GIMPem: 1. zapnul jsem to 2. udelal novy obrazek 3. skryl jsem pravitka 4. zavrel a otevrel jsem GIMP 5. zjistil, ze si to nepamatuje nastaveni pravitek (nebyla skryta, jak jsem je mel predtim) 6. zavrel sem GIMP