I am using 2.99.18 (non release, unstable build). Non destructive editing has landed. You can make adjustments through the usual menus and then enable/disable the adjustment under layer effects.
I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.
I use GIMP for memes and here’s my two favorite tips
Hit the forward slash key / to open a command palette and jump to any action
To remove backgrounds, use a layer mask. select around the object and paint a white/black section on the layer mask. Here comes the trick: use a Gaussian filter on the layer mask to create a transition from black to white and the crop job looks a lot less choppy.
My anti-tip
Adding text and shapes sucks and I never found a way to make it better. Export your image and finish the job in Krita, Pinta, Photopea, …
Smart people use terms like gaussian blur to refer to a blur distribution rather than a non technical term such as feather. Feathers are what helps birds fly for example.
Let’s try:
“You can feather the pedals on your car to make it drift.”
“You can feather the pedals on your Ford to make it do the Tokyo style turns.”
Any tricks on getting the fuzzy select tool to work? Even after adjusting the threshold, it is just garbage in my experience. Nothing close to Affinity/Photoshop. Unless I am selecting something that is in front of a very solid background, I just use a paint brush on a layer mask in order to “cut out” an object.
The Autodesk forums are 40% this, 20% “just learn to program, spend a few years getting good at it, then write yourself a custom script to do what you are struggling with”, 20% “you are wrong for wanting that in the first place” or “you are wrong for having this issue”, 15% “this has been brought up once at some point in the past two decades, try searching”, 4% “OMG yes I have this issue too!”…
…and 1% split between actual helpful answers, and confirmation that it’s a known issue.
Yeah, I recently found a post there where a person wanted to modify a downloaded mesh. The first comment was telling them they would need years of experience to do it well. The OP responded that they had figured out a solution that they were happy with, to which someone told him that his results were shitty and then explained a way to do it better. When the OP got upset at this back to back dismissal, everyone unanimously decided they were an asshole.
It’s infuriating trying to find solutions to issues with Autodesk.
But you did forget a classic one: “Hello I’m X from Autodesk support, you should open a support ticket so we can discuss this issue in a more one on one manner.” And then the thread is closed without a solution.
It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.
The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.
For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.
And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.
I always wondered if I could contribute/volunteer to a FOSS somehow with some UIX stuff, but I don’t even know where to start. Would you just draw a concept ui for the team to work out or something?
Not that I’m great at it, but man, we gotta start somewhere, right?
This is probably common. The people that work on UI often aren’t the people who do pull requests. But I think if you want to contribute it would be best to get in touch with a maintainer on the chat of the project. Projects often have a matrix/irc/discord on the git page.
KiCAD has also improved greatly over the last few years. It still has an opinion on how the work flow should be, but that work flow moves pretty well. It’s gotten easier to find pre-made footprints, too.
I stuggled with GIMP at first, it was super frustrating because it does UI things differently than other image tools.
i.e. in other tools your active layer masks your drag selection, and in GIMP I would constantly be grabbing lmages from another layer, till I realized the pixel under pointer determines what image is moved. That function can make you highly productive since you don’t need to preset layer, but god was it enraging at first
Photoshop is also hard to learn. What’s your point? Just because it’s different to what you used to does not means it’s more or less difficult to learn.
I’ve been using Gimp for years. It’s the only way I know. If I tried to use photoshop I would have a hard time getting anything done too. I’m really good with gimp though.
I’ve used Gimp all through my teenage years. And I used it a LOT. It was quite a difficult transition to Photoshop (which my workplace uses). But once I got the hang of photoshop, I realized how convoluted Gimp really is.
Half the time spent in Gimp is making backups before making an edit. A third of your layers will be backup layers in case you change your mind about a design decision. The whole design process is super inflexible and therefor kills creativity.
Want to use an effect like gaussian blur or drop shadow? Make sure you backup your layer!
Want to edit text after you stretched it all out? I hope you made a backup of that layer!
Want to work with large files with many layers? You better hit ctrl S after every edit, because the program just might crash on you if you make a difficult selection!
To be fair, I haven’t used much Gimp since 2.8, so if stuff is different now: awesome!
And I admire all volunteers that work to make stuff better. But for now, I’ll stay away from it if I need to do heavy editing.
It’s that phenomenon where people who endured trauma to attain something expect others to also endure the trauma.
I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.
Not vonly hard to learn, it lacks some really basic stuff like undestructive ediring (adjusment layers) and such.
I thought GEGL was supposed to fix that. Does it not, or are we still waiting on it, or what?
I am using 2.99.18 (non release, unstable build). Non destructive editing has landed. You can make adjustments through the usual menus and then enable/disable the adjustment under layer effects.
Wow, that’s greate!
OHH it even works with text layers!!! you can finally add drop shadow to a text without discarding the text information! ;A:
I use GIMP for memes and here’s my two favorite tips
Hit the forward slash key
/to open a command palette and jump to any actionTo remove backgrounds, use a layer mask. select around the object and paint a white/black section on the layer mask. Here comes the trick: use a Gaussian filter on the layer mask to create a transition from black to white and the crop job looks a lot less choppy.
My anti-tip
fuck, i neverthought of the gaussian blur thing, i always just traced over the edge with a soft edged brush…
I used the Blur Border (or whatever it’s called) option that’s right there in every selection tool’s settings.
Feather?
Smart people use terms like gaussian blur to refer to a blur distribution rather than a non technical term such as feather. Feathers are what helps birds fly for example. Let’s try:
“You can feather the pedals on your car to make it drift.”
“You can feather the pedals on your Ford to make it do the Tokyo style turns.”
Which sentence was better 😂?
Any tricks on getting the fuzzy select tool to work? Even after adjusting the threshold, it is just garbage in my experience. Nothing close to Affinity/Photoshop. Unless I am selecting something that is in front of a very solid background, I just use a paint brush on a layer mask in order to “cut out” an object.
I have no tips and agree with you 100% - never managed to get the fuzzy select or smart scissors going.
The Autodesk forums are 40% this, 20% “just learn to program, spend a few years getting good at it, then write yourself a custom script to do what you are struggling with”, 20% “you are wrong for wanting that in the first place” or “you are wrong for having this issue”, 15% “this has been brought up once at some point in the past two decades, try searching”, 4% “OMG yes I have this issue too!”…
…and 1% split between actual helpful answers, and confirmation that it’s a known issue.
Yeah, I recently found a post there where a person wanted to modify a downloaded mesh. The first comment was telling them they would need years of experience to do it well. The OP responded that they had figured out a solution that they were happy with, to which someone told him that his results were shitty and then explained a way to do it better. When the OP got upset at this back to back dismissal, everyone unanimously decided they were an asshole.
So much this
It’s infuriating trying to find solutions to issues with Autodesk.
But you did forget a classic one: “Hello I’m X from Autodesk support, you should open a support ticket so we can discuss this issue in a more one on one manner.” And then the thread is closed without a solution.
Oh yeah that’s a good one too.
The old “you embarrassed the company, report to the principal’s office”.
“And if I do give you a solution, we’ll be sure not to share it with anyone else.”
I’ve been happier worth with Bricscad, but I mostly just need it for designing stuff to 3d print, so your mileage may vary.
It’s also not FOSS, of course, but I haven’t yet found FOSS cad software that works for me.
I’m only drafting for career not hobby at this point, so it’s all industry standard software.
One of these days, when I have a house, I might get into 3D printing, but not for the foreseeable future.
For 3D stuff, I’m good with Inventor, but it certainly has it’s quirks.
No, GIMP does suck.
It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it’s not a matter of the workflow just being different – it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other “big” productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It’s the only CAD software I use even though it’s a pain in my ass.
The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.
For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.
And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.
In FOSS most people can program, but only a hand full of people can design a decent UI.
I always wondered if I could contribute/volunteer to a FOSS somehow with some UIX stuff, but I don’t even know where to start. Would you just draw a concept ui for the team to work out or something?
Not that I’m great at it, but man, we gotta start somewhere, right?
This is probably common. The people that work on UI often aren’t the people who do pull requests. But I think if you want to contribute it would be best to get in touch with a maintainer on the chat of the project. Projects often have a matrix/irc/discord on the git page.
I’ve worked professionally both using and developing (proprietary) CAD software, but even I have trouble getting FreeCAD to do what I want.
Same. I have used SolidWorks, SolidEdge, CATIA and Unigraphics/NX…freecad just frustrated me
Oh god FreeCAD is a nightmare to learn. But it does get work done. I wish Blender could move more into that space.
Inkscape is lovely but imo it could use some interface cleanup. (And really it has been getting better each major update.)
KiCAD has also improved greatly over the last few years. It still has an opinion on how the work flow should be, but that work flow moves pretty well. It’s gotten easier to find pre-made footprints, too.
If only library management didn’t suck.
Blender is also great, probably because it has organized teams, meetings, ongoing large projects, deadlines, etc
I’m saying GIMP sucks (it sucks)
I stuggled with GIMP at first, it was super frustrating because it does UI things differently than other image tools. i.e. in other tools your active layer masks your drag selection, and in GIMP I would constantly be grabbing lmages from another layer, till I realized the pixel under pointer determines what image is moved. That function can make you highly productive since you don’t need to preset layer, but god was it enraging at first
Photoshop is also hard to learn. What’s your point? Just because it’s different to what you used to does not means it’s more or less difficult to learn.
I’m not used to photoshop so I can’t say anything about that.
I was a big fan of paint.NET but now that I stopped using Windows, it’s the only software that I really miss.
It had fewer features than GIMP, but it was so intuitive yet surprisingly powerful.
Have not found a similarly amazing alrernative, I wish Wine could make it work…
Does it run with WINE? iirc it was used a lot as an example for wine on android because it supported windows-on-arm
I’ve been using Gimp for years. It’s the only way I know. If I tried to use photoshop I would have a hard time getting anything done too. I’m really good with gimp though.
I’ve used Gimp all through my teenage years. And I used it a LOT. It was quite a difficult transition to Photoshop (which my workplace uses). But once I got the hang of photoshop, I realized how convoluted Gimp really is.
Half the time spent in Gimp is making backups before making an edit. A third of your layers will be backup layers in case you change your mind about a design decision. The whole design process is super inflexible and therefor kills creativity.
Want to use an effect like gaussian blur or drop shadow? Make sure you backup your layer! Want to edit text after you stretched it all out? I hope you made a backup of that layer! Want to work with large files with many layers? You better hit ctrl S after every edit, because the program just might crash on you if you make a difficult selection!
To be fair, I haven’t used much Gimp since 2.8, so if stuff is different now: awesome! And I admire all volunteers that work to make stuff better. But for now, I’ll stay away from it if I need to do heavy editing.
“Im not saying it sucks but it does” How do you want us to take you seriously when you don’t even agree with yourself ?
They didn’t say GIMP itself sucks, they said leaning to use it sucks. Those are two different things.