I have to run to work, so I just donated $20.
In reality, if everyone in this thread tried to contribute to gimp for an hour, I expect we'd get two patches of any value out of it, and about 100 hours of time that did nothing but negatively impacted existing gimp developers.
There are two realistic outcomes from a "1 hour to contribute something" thing:
1. A trivial patch which causes more lost time ($) for the existing gimp developers than it creates value
2. A developer jumping into irc and trying to ramp up, which for about the first 6 hours of time will likely be a drain on the existing developers with no positive value return until at least 15 work-hours of the developer ramping up (and that's assuming a developer who is already quite experienced and can ramp up pretty efficiently. For some developers, the numbers would be vastly worse).
I would go so far as to argue that part of gimp's less intuitive UI is because of having more developers, and if there were fewer developers total the UI would be more cohesive.
If $20 sounds too low, feel free to pitch in more. I'm a physics postdoc, not a software dev.
Granted, it's not my only source of income, but what is the average pay/hour for most devs?
If you ask people to give $50, fewer people will than if you ask them $20 so overall they will get more money.
So the broad decisions about what will be done and in what way have already been made at the team- and individual-psychology level, assuming this money doesn't radically change the core team composition. While the objective manifestation of the spending is yet to come, this money was already spent by the team psychology, and the further we depart from GIMP's past in wishing for changes, the less likely our wishes will match with the actual outcome of the expenditures.
And let's take the polar opposite into consideration--even if the idea of becoming more like Blender and gathering people and putting a big project together makes the GIMP team members recoil in horror, the most well-founded hope would be that the GIMP team builds on past successes and learns from past failures, or gains more momentum in the direction that will likely bring it the most success _given the team's psychological makeup & personal resources_. That would probably bring about a really good outcome even if it doesn't result in a highly-visible project.
Thats what GIMP needs. After 9 years of using GIMP I switched to photoshop because I was doing many photos and couldnt hand the inconsistency of what each button does.
We would greatly benefit from a good artistic/photo image editing tool that does not belong to the Adobe's subscription license racket. Unfortunately, Gimp is not nearly in the same class as Photoshop, so most artists grumble about Adobe but still pay subscription because its UI is SO much better. Photoshop is the main reason I still run Windows at home; I would gladly donate this money to Gimp instead if it provides the same functionality: good slider and visual coordination to find the right levels and color balances, good color support (no, 8-bit color is not enough), decent printing (at least to 17"x40") and raw camera images.
Also, Photoshop is just as buggy as (if not more than) Krita she finds. People just live with it because they don't have a choice.
I understand that open source means you can do whatever you want yourself, but both conversations started when they heard I got photoshop and said "no no no, do not waste your money, let us show you how gimp is the better tool".
From the announcment:
> [...] and will use the money to do much overdue hardware
> upgrade for the core team members and organize the next
> hackfest to bring the team together, as well as sponsor the
> next instance of Libre Graphics Meeting.
To me (and I am just an occasional hobbyist), it is mostly the UI: the interface, flow and visual appearance is just right. As a simple example, moving levels slider ( https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/levels-adjustment.ht... ) with mouse and having a single-click option to see clipped areas is a killer feature. You can see it in other ways, but having this on/off before/after without moving a mouse is super powerful. Someone mentioned adjustment levels (and masks) that, to me, are done just right.
Gimp is the right tool for thinking about images in numbers: average the area, find maximum channel intensity, stretch to full range. But it is lacking for folks who want to drag sliders around and see the changes to find out what looks good.
I've gotten quite a bit of use out of Affinity Designer. There's a few features I've wished for but I can't justify paying for Illustrator and so have made do and been pretty satisfied.
But, ... recently I started doing some game development again and the workflows in Affinity Photo just didn't work for me. I found myself very frustrated because of poor or un-thoughtout design issues. So I caved and paid for the Photography Photoshop/Lightroom subscription ($120/yr). That's probably 1-4 hours of salary to buy depending on your job but it totally paid for itself in having a much better workflow so I could actually get stuff done.
$120 a year is about 4x what I paid before Adobe went subscription (used to upgrade every other version which was about once every 4 years) so in that sense it sounds expensive but, compared to what I get paid or what I charge it's a tiny amount of money and AFAICT totally worth it, at least for me.
For example, currently, many Filters don't have previews (Or the preview window is too small), which make apply them become a slow try and error game.
Also, the Text in the picture can be hard to select, as sometime you mistakenly select the underlying layer instead of the text.
Also again, Filters cannot be directly applied to editable text. Sure, GIMP will convert the rasterized text back to editable text, but doing so will discard all the applied Filters.
"An enhancement request should never be filed without prior discussion on the gimp-developer mailing list[0]. This is to make sure that the enhancement requests that are filed are well-specified and aligned with the overall goals the developers have for GIMP."
But please don't let that stop you! The more feedback that the developers get, the better GIMP will be for everyone.
Please!
Been waiting for this for years.
On every new Gimp release I look through the new features and ... no. No adjustment layers.
I'm confused how this is not the #1 priority. It has been what I am missing for years and years. And every time I talk to someone about Gimp vs Photoshop, they ask me 'Do you still have to cope with destructive adjustment curves and filters etc? OMG, that is archaic!'.
It's pretty high on the list. Most of the major work in the last decade is to rearchitect the code base to use GEGL. GEGL is a prerequisite to adjustment layers in Gimp.
Progress is very slow, but it is moving along.
While the roadmap has been stating for years that it's planned for v3.2 :)
> I'm confused how this is not the #1 priority.
Before 2.10 the top priority was completing the switch to the new image processing backend that makes non-destructive editing possible.
For 3.0 the top priority is switching to a newer, actually maintained version of the UI toolkit.
For 3.2 the top priority is, at last, the non-destructive editing.
It all makes sense.
It's a newer open source photo editor (though not pixel editor) that allows you to compose your own non-destructive processing pipeline from individual operations.
While I'm not someone who needs image editing professionally or who makes amazing things with it, I did take my time to learn GIMP properly for my use-cases, and the things I find lacking do not include "non-destructive adjustment layers".
The gist of it is that all your filters, color corrections are just additional layers, w/o manipulating the image in the layer under them. It lets you very quickly toggle between different settings, revise settings, and even very easily only filter parts of an image. (ie, you can have a unfiltered layer above a stack of filters, and the original image)
GIMP's UI is alright for me, what I need are more features that are sorely lacking:
1) ability to work with images having an arbitrary number of spectral bands
2) floating-point pixel values
3) complex-valued pixels and their natural operations
4) images of arbitrary size, without need to open the whole image at once (which may not actually fit in memory)
5) save the processing graph and apply it to other images with a command line tool
I don’t know, but I’ll throw out my theory. Note I’m very much a fan of open source even though this might sound negative. I would also love to see GIMPs UI get an overhaul.
In short, I think it’s harder to prioritize open source features for multiple reasons.
When you don’t have paying customers, it’s very hard to prioritize the feedback you get. When you do have paying customers, you tend to prioritize in proportion to the account size, for better or worse. As a blanket general statement that is not always true, but more true than not, paying customers are trying to get something specific done for their job, while free customers are exploring. I say this from the point of view of owning a web startup with a freemium model, so I’ve had a lot of first hand requests from both paying and free customers. I haven’t had an OSS project with as much success, so there might be some different trends when all users are free users.
The other aspect is that developers of OSS projects have fewer deadlines and can choose what they work on. UI coding is usually less fun than writing filters or architecting an image cache. I know that personally, when I’m left to my own devices, I’m not usually working on the hard or boring things that would have the biggest impact for others, I’m working on the fun things that are most fun for me.
There’s also the issue that OSS projects are created by programmers for programming reasons, and they aren’t often able to hire designers and artists like a for-profit shop.
For what I need to do Krita is much better. I haven’t used photoshop for over a decade.
There are just too many special-use-case tools to make a "good" UI. Learn it and forget about what it looks like, it's the only way you'll ever be happy.
I wonder if maybe they shouldn't go with a XUL like system where the UI can be greatly customized by third parties. Someone would undoubtedly create the Photoshop clone UI and make a bunch of people happy.
GIMP is a highly featureful project with powerful scripting capabilities. I wouldn’t say it isn’t already on par or more powerful than Photoshop.
I have a feeling that in many ways it's just a lack of resources to move things faster.
Firefox has a lot more commercial support than something like Gimp, which is supported primarily through contributions in various forms. What this means is that it's harder to turn down contributions and harder to implement the kind of process that'd be required for a more coherent UI. As simple as it might seem at first, it really is a whole 'nother ball game.
Open source is usually built with consensus and that is why it’s hard to follow “one vision”. Also hard to chuck out contributed code / features, specially when its voluntary since it’s not welcoming for new contributors.
But maybe that's because I started out on Blender and only had a cursory look at Maya. Same with GIMP. I have years of experience working with GIMP so if you sat me in front of photoshop I'd probably be a lot less productive with it. Maybe when people say "improve the UI" they just mean "Make it more like the program I'm already used to".
Blender is pretty much the only program I use of the 100s I have that doesn't follow this UI pattern so I can't take all the knowledge of the other 100s of apps I use and apply that knowledge to blender. Even limiting to just 3D programs I can figure out Maya, 3DSMax, Cinema 3D, DAZ etc just by doing what I do in all other software. Select stuff and then see what my options are. Blender though doesn't follow these rules. You can't just explore. You absolutely have to read the manual to even just load, select, move, and save. Something I can do in all other software without a manual.
Which is exactly the complaint :D
Blender has a very efficient UI that is great for power users, but it has a much bigger learning curve than the competition with their point&click UIs. Add to that that most people are trained on Maya/3ds Max/Cinema 4d, learning Blender is a big investment with uncertain payoff.
Basically the same reason why very few people use Emacs or Vim nowadays.
GIMP, however... makes me (every so slightly) annoyed every time I use it. I have to google so many task that should just be intuitive.
It does the job, and I still use it as my primary editor - but it's not something I look forward to opening... but it could be! I'm hoping it'll get there eventually!
If none of these are your cup of tea, please make a PR - It’s open source. :)
That said, Krita and Blender are very very nice.
Windows > Single Window Mode.
Windows > New Toolbox
Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Tool Options
It is hard to convey how much more comfortable I feel with the program with these tiny settings changes. I wonder how many other people are in the same boat as I.
I spend a lot of time in a grid style interface, so it is great to see:
* View > Show Grid
* View > Snap to Grid
Click once somewhere. Hold shift to draw a point to point line. Hold shift and control to have wider snapping of angles and click again, hold control and shift to get 15 Degree increment angles.
I will use Gimp a lot more now. Previously I was trying to use Pinta, but it would crash regularly on me making it almost unusable.
If you don't, it's barely usable, with very bad UX defaults.
Tldr; (from handshake.org) Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol compatible with DNS where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities.
$100k is a sizable donation. I would have hoped that it could do more for the project than update some hardware and organize a hackfest. That's not to say donations in general shouldn't be used for those things. I just would have assumed that a donation of this size would have been best utilised as salary/salaries, allowing contributors to focus a more significant portion of their time on GIMP, and be compensated accordingly.
2) This team has proven their dedication by sacrificing immense time & opportunity - some of them, for years - to work on this fantastic gift to the world. Not that it's your call, or mine - the $ was given to them, not you or me - but I say let 'em spend it however they see fit.
I don't disagree with this one bit.
> Not that it's your call, or mine - the $ was given to them, not you or me - but I say let 'em spend it however they see fit.
I'm just postulating, not complaining. Surely that's acceptable.
You're also assuming that all the developers absolutely want to spend the money this way. There may well be a core contributor willing to do more, but uncomfortable with idea of suggesting they take the money, and is too scared to speak up. If there is such a person, I say "go for it".
but well, Gimp as served me well, has been there so long that the only thing I can say is kudo's to the devs. they could even pay themselves a bit, that'd well be deserved.
I'm not sure what you'd propose to do with it exactly?
> allowing contributors to focus a more significant portion of their time on GIMP
I never said anything about hiring full-time engineers.
Also, there are plenty of people willing to be paid a little less to work on something open-source, and something that they take great pride in. We have to be careful not to take advantage of such people, but some people are in a position where they can afford to earn a little less to do something they love.
I haven't heard anything from e.g. Google or Facebook's open source funding endeavours. IMO every successful company should do their part and set aside a sizeable percentage of their revenue to paying and supporting open source projects and developers. It's wrong that e.g. the developer of cURL is (was?) struggling to make ends meet, when he (and the people behind gimp, etc) develops software used billions of times a day. That should make him hundreds of thousands a year.
We all love and benefit from free and open software, but if you're in a position where you're considering working for free, you should make sure you're squared away financially. Obviously, some people plan to use the reputation gained from creating a popular project to propel their success, which is fine too.
Supposedly he's worth $150m, but even if that's accurate it would still mean he's only captured a very small % of the value he created.
But yes, I think some grants would go a long, long way.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/02/gpg_financial...
> Werner Koch, who has been maintaining the GPG e-mail encryption program since 1997, is going broke and considering quitting.
HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791
You owe it to yourself to spend at least 10 minutes researching google and facebooks contributions to open source. The fact that you don’t know about it only speaks to you limited knowledge.
Also, Photoshop is usually paid for by people's employees anyway, so the user doesn't really care about the price.
Why? You already have to pay for these things, except you need to go look for them everywhere and find out how to import them and restore them from somewhere if you change machine. A marketplace for tooling is uber-valuable, and it's also an insane opportunity for creators who want to sell on these marketplaces.
The only thing I'm talking about is:
1. make the software free
2. incorporate a marketplace to find free or paid add-ons, brushes, effects, etc...
3. take a cut
I have never been to such occasions, that's why I ask.
However i havent worked with Photoshop for 10+ years, so i dont actually have a direct comparison. Having worked with other Adobe products (mostly Illustrator) i am glad however.
Although you can do vectors and photo editing in Photoshop, the main purpose of PS is raster painting, which neither Affinity Photo nor Designer are remotely good at.
As such, neither of them could replace GIMP or Photoshop.
I've used GIMP a lot and finally switched to Affinity Photo+Designer. It is, I must admit, much better for almost everything, the only thing GIMP still handles the best is selection and cropping.
Affinity Photo even supports Photoshop plugins (although I have not tried that).
I find it better than both for doing web design and game graphics.
Affinity designer is illustrator first + photoshop pixel support
I prefer using AffinityDesigner and AffinityPhoto, fast development, loads quicker, the export tool is way better than adobe products, just all around easier to use.
I don't like this. The money should be used for paying a developer or a couple to develop full time a central feature, like the UI, not to buy new hardware or organize hackfests.
Using a semi-broken computer definitely makes hacking more fun, doesn't it?
Well, it's a good thing that you are not part of the project then.
