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’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, …
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 😂?
select around the object
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 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.
“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.
Just run photoshop on linux.
I don’t understand why nobody ever mentions that it just works.
Linux just needs more competition in the image manipulation space.
There isn’t even a real photoshop competitor in the broader market, but you want to further split the hobbyist devs effort on linux as well?
I think instead it would be better to focus all the effort on a single solution that strives to cover all of photoshops features, with at least equal or better usability. Like has been done with Blender and godot for example. (And GIMP is sadly faaar from it still)
Affinity Photo
Can run on Linux via Bottles! I do not have much experience with it, but I got it running with this guide from 2022:
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First google search result
if you agree with the opinion that’s fine, but why would you admit to posting SEO spam? XD
This person still uses Google too haha.
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Is anything I quoted untrue?
You basically quoted thin air: “more features […] for a wide range of advanced editing tasks”. You probably know more than what’s written there, but from my perspective I haven’t learned one concrete feature that PS offers over Affinity. It’s typical SEO spam, which rewards swaths of text with little to zero information density.
I use affinity photo and it’s an acceptable replacement.
Is there an equivalent for lightroom?
Darktable
Sorry not looking for a replacement, just how to run it :)
I am pretty sure it would run in the same wine setup, but nobody bothered to set it up as an install script yet, so you’d need to do some manual dirtywork.
Tried a few times to run it but with no avail, however il try to give this a go.
I feel like it would be helpful to include the text of their post rather than just the title:
TL;DR Sorry if this is wrong group. GIMP = Epic POS. Do not use. Please recommend a decent alternative. Don’t waste your time with GIMP help because I am done.
I hope the mods or the bots don’t kill this post right away. It’s a serious and legitimate question from a UX designer with several decades of experience, who doesn’t want anyone else to suffer what I have. I didn’t know where else to post it, so I’m trying here as a first-timer. I apologize if this is not in the spirit of the group.
I quit Adobe, can’t afford the price any more (long story). I thought GIMP could replace Photoshop. But the user interface is horrible, and the app is full o’ bugs.
Here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I tried to make a meme. The font selection overlay was a tiny, pathetic, hard to read joke. Not even a font selection dropdown, let alone one that provided previews with every line item like PS does. Deep breath, continue. I type “Impact”. Red text. I backspaced and typed “Im”. All I got was Impact Condensed. (Yes, I have Impact, and have used it in PS). So I picked it anyway. Then I tried to find the outline font feature. In Photoshop, it’s a simple “choose stroke” feature. GIMP? Hello?
I want to the Web to find a tutorial where it pointed out the feature. No luck. Searched again to find a workaround / hack. Mostly crap. Found one that was current and seemed decent. Followed it carefully. GIMP crashed.
While I appreciate the thoughts of anyone who may be compelled to point out a simple workaround or feature that I missed, don’t bother. This is the last of many dozens of problems I have wasted my time working around while suffering many crashes, and I already uninstalled it.
So. Recommendations?
I think it’s also worth giving the correction that there is a font selection dropdown with previews in GIMP. It’s to the left of the font input box.
I use gimp but OP isn’t wrong. Doing a stroke on text is mindless in Photoshop and very convoluted in gimp.
GIMP needs the Blender treatment honestly. Inkscape too. That would cover the vast majority of what I do art-wise.
Inkscape has been a lifesaver many times, but it’s packed like a shit in a bag.
I can’t believe they still use the old file selection on windows without a path input box. I literally can not open a file from my network drive. It doesn’t even remember the last path!
The easiest workflow I found is to just copy projects to downloads for editing.Besides other things.
many such cases. good to call it out, and needs to happen more often and consistently as toxicity is the #1 barrier to the “year of the Linux desktop” in my experience
edit: also https://krita.org/
Krita is really good for digital drawing and painting, but photoshop does cover a lot of other things, which krita can not do. In that sense Krita is more of a Corel PaintShop Pro alternative. While GIMP is the best, but still very bad, alternative to photoshop.
To be fair
- GIMP is really good
- GIMP is hella complex to use
For example there was a (now enshittified) tool on Android called “image attacher” or something, for making a long image from 2.
This is probably also pretty easy with some CLI tool.
I actually took the time to learn “how do I attach 2 images together” in GIMP.
Or “how do I create a textmarker”.
And the stuff works, but its just very complex.
attach 2 images
- Open 1 image
- “open” “open as another layer” the second image
- your canvas is as big as the first image. Guess how big it has to be when fitting them next to each other
- know that there is a difference between “layer surface” and “canvas” for whatever reason
- in the menubar, find the canvas options
- find where to resize the canvas and make it bigger
- click on the surface layer of the other image and move it so it fits where you want it
- use “merge downwards” to make the 2 layer one. BE CAREFUL TO NOT USE ANY IMAGE PARTS
- use the crop tool
- crop the new combined images to the wanted size
This is sooo manual and seems very hacky. The difference between canvas and layer make no sense to me. The enlargement is “eyeballing”. The cropping too. There is no snapping when placing next to each other. There is no “dynamically increase canvas size” option afafaik.
text marker / highlighter
Something with brush, make it bigger, yellow, reduce the opaqueness, change the paint mode to “only make darker”
GIMP is like using
catawkandtailto write an office document lol. It works but it is damn technical.But if you know how to do it, you know how to do it.
it’s also damn slow and destructive if you’re trying to fit it into a true professional workflow with deadlines. i work with programs like it professionally and I only use gimp when i find myself on a random computer that doesn’t have anything else. it’ll get the job done, pretty much any job, but it might be very slow and painful. as someone who DEFINITELY knows how to use gimp, i understand the op they’re clowning more than i understand the 1 peer i know that’s actually managing to make money with a fully foss workflow. I also happen to know he largely doesn’t sleep to accomplish it.
gimp and darktable and similar projects are great, but workflow efficiency is what they do after they finish adding features. that just never happens. it’s not the exciting work.
This is probably also pretty easy with some CLI tool.
This is one of the few image tasks I do on the CLI xD
Stack two images horizontally (left and right)
convert a.jpg b.jpg +append horizontal.jpgStack two images vertically (top and bottom)
convert a.jpg b.jpg -append vertical.jpgImages are not the same dimensions? Use gravity to align them at the center and make the unused space transparent
convert a.jpg b.jpg -background transparent -gravity center +append horizontal.pngI will make a dolphin context menu from that!
See, this is exactly my point in my other comment above. I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.
- Make a new document that’s arbitrarily large.
- Import both (or all 3, or all 10, or however many) images. (Images can be batch imported.)
- Snap the first one to the top left corner.
- Snap the others below it. Their corners and edges will click together if you have alignment guides enabled. 4a. Optionally resize any of the images by just typing in the value you need in pixels, in the toolbar when it’s selected. If you need to know the size of any other image, just click it and it’ll tell you. It’s not even in a menu.
- Crop tool (D) to knock the oversized canvas down to whatever size you need. Again, you can just type this in, in pixels, and it’s not even buried in a menu.
- Export, post, accumulate lulz.
Export to a flat format (.jpeg, .png, .gif, whatever) and your output will be flattened. You don’t need to think about layers or merging or layers being bigger than the canvas or not. There is no, “Be careful not to XYZ.” What you see in the preview is what the output will look like. Period. You can even apply your monitor’s color calibration to it or the color profile of any other output device (printer, a different monitor, etc.) on the fly if you are a big enough nerd.
You can do this in an even simpler dumber way in CorelDRAW!
- Import the images. Images can still be batch imported.
- Arrange them however you want, snap them together, whatever.
- Lasso them all and export.
That’s… literally it. You don’t have to crop, you don’t have to trim, or layer, or anything. You can specify the dimensions of the output file in the export window before you hit save if you want it to be different than the original. Your arrangement doesn’t even have to be rectangular and it will still work.
I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.
that is because you are familiar with corel photopaint. i could do that faster than you in gimp, because i am familiar with gimp.
and yes, using tool capable of doing lot of complex tasks takes more time to learn than some single-purpose tool that is optimized to do one task (and even then you have to learn how to use it). that is like wondering that learning to pilot aircraft takes longer than learning to ride on a bicycle.
Yea, bit gimp is particularly difficult to learn. A few years ago, when I first needed something more complex than paint.net, I of course first downloaded gimp because it’s free. It was difficult to use, to say the least. But sure, I didn’t have any experience with more complex image editors. However, just to see what the difference is, I also downloaded Photoshop and didn’t have any trouble at all. Everything I needed to do was easily understandable and the UI was very easy to use. I haven’t used any once of them before and I haven’t used Gimp since. (Also tried krita btw, only found it mildly easier to use than gimp, still miles behind Adobe).
That isn’t to say, that professional OpenSource software can’t be intuitive and well designed. Today I used kdenlive for the first time because premiere didn’t support the codec+container combo I need and it was a very pleasant experience. A very familiar interface, if you’ve used any video editor before. I didn’t go in-depth but it didn’t immediately alienate me like gimp did.
I absolutely want to learn GIMP. And as it is extensible, you could literally just implement feature-by-feature stuff like Photoshop, a finally working autoselect of objects etc.
Actually, I will open a feature reques to change the UI to the one of Photoshop. I looked at PhotoGIMP and this looks tooo much easier and more usable.
I also likely did too many steps. You dont need to merge layers on GIMP. It will also just get flat but I dont know if the cut feature would work.
It VERY likely does.
But having guides everywhere, snapping, is really important.
Attach two images? That’s concatenation! Use cat!
This is a joke, is it? Can you literally just cat the image files next to each other?
It’s a joke (afaik), cat only works for stuff like tar archives. Can’t figure out what to use for text files though.
You can also use cat to append some video file formats together, but honestly use ffmpeg.
Linux users try not to be Apple fanboys but replace popular Apple product with popular Linux product challenge (impossible)
I use Pinta. It’s kinda like the Linux paint.net. Not too many features it’s overwhelming, but just enough to do basic stuff.
I’m sure they didn’t deserve it but OP’s comments are notably missing from this screenshot.
To be fair, you can’t exactly ask for a GIMP replacement on r/GIMP and not expect that reaction
Sure you can.
It looks like this was asked in a GIMP forum, so I’m not really surprised at the backlash. It’s super rude to ask that in that forum. Like, they shouldn’t be rude back, but I understand why they were.
It looks like this was asked in a GIMP forum, […] It’s super rude to ask that in that forum.
Why? Just because you’re using a forum for a piece of software, presumably because you want to receive or offer help on using the software for the most part, doesn’t mean you’re obsessed with it and hate all other alternatives that exist.
It’s software, not a religion. These people need some perspective.
Imagine being in a community where being asked about alternatives is considered extremely rude. What a weird group of cult-like obsessives that would be. Creepy o.O
Also regarding why one would ask GIMP users about alternatives, theoretically these would be the best people to ask for GIMP alternatives. They presumably know the software well, and have probably tried alternatives (because they’re not obsessive weirdos that worship a single brand image their whole lives), and can give good answers on what alternatives exist and how they compare to GIMP in its current feature set.
They may even actively use multiple softwares on a regular basis. There’s no law against using GIMP and one or two similar pieces of software that perhaps have slightly different features or are better at one thing vs another.
It’s not rude to put a reasonable question about a piece of software and how it exists in the ecosystem to a group that knows a lot about that software. It isn’t a sacred holy cult object of worship. It’s just a program.
Because those people are there (presumably) to help people use GIMP. If you read the guy’s full comment, they were obviously there to take a shit on GIMP. And that’s fine, but maybe don’t do it to a whole bunch of people who have volunteered their time to help other people with it.
I disagree that this is the best group to ask about alternatives. These are GIMP people. If you want them to recommend something, they’re clearly going to recommend GIMP. A much better place to ask this question (assuming they weren’t just trying to shit on GIMP) would be a general digital photography forum, or an open source forum. A place where people use a wide variety of programs.
Is it? It’s just a forum it’s not like he’s asking the devs
It would be like going into a Microsoft forum and asking about alternatives to Windows. That’s obviously not the right place to do it. They should ask this in a general digital photography forum, or a general open source forum.
They also called GIMP an “epic POS” in their comment.
Hey, you guys know any good alternatives to Lemmy? Lol.
Mbin. Compatible with both Lemmy and Mastodon. Con: Mbin is even more beta software than Lemmy is. Lots of missing QoL.
Sublinks looks like it could be interesting.
For you, I’d suggest xitter, filth casual
Touch grass. It’s the best replacement for social media of any kind!
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Well, at least you don’t have to suck dicks or whatever to vote and post comments like in ShitStackOverflow
Uh huh, uh huh. And how many dicks do I
gethave to suck per vote? Can you provide a link and very detailed instructions on the process? You know, so I can make sure I never go there before my wife comes home from work.Duplicate question: 10-year-old-link-to-a-thread-that-doesn’t-contain-an-answer-either
Photopea dot Com is pretty solid and it’s a website not a download. Has good complexities for the non profesional that wants to do more but doesn’t need or want photoshop.
Photopea. It’s photoshop but on your browser.
Pixlr-E is in that same category.
A person shows up in a room full of random people. Punches one in the face and starts swinging at everyone else. People instinctively start to defend themselves and, as they are more numerous, overwhelm and badly wound the instigator. OP walks into the room, “everyone in this room is so violent, look everyone, they are so violent”. People outside the room hearing OP, “yeah, I bet anyone like them is just as violent”.
Also it’s funny that there is a dropdown with font previews in GIMP, despite this guy’s statement. Admittedly, it’s in an odd place (on the left of the font input box, rather than on the right, and doesn’t have a dropdown icon, but a font preview), but it’s there. It took me three clicks to find it.
I just tried it out. Picked a font I liked, right clicked the text, selected Filters -> Light and Shadow -> Drop Shadow, set offsets and blur to zero, grow to 10, opacity to 1, and boom, I had text with a stroke effect. I’m not sure why this guy had so much trouble. Maybe it’s cause I come from a CSS background, and that’s exactly how you would add a stroke effect in CSS.
Took me all of two minutes to make that, and I’m not a GIMP wizard.
Oh, vim community became gimp community.
