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.
There are web-based photoshop clones that offer better usability than GIMP. I shiver in disgust saying this out loud but it's true at this point. They're slow, more minimalist in terms of features but they don't have buttons that overlap or scroll bars popping up out of nowhere. The GIMP UI is an unusable mess. It's the UI equivalent of "programmer art".
Having just woken up, deprived of my morning caffeine, this sentence sent my brain for a real loop :)
It's not aesthetics. You make it sound trivial. People aren't talking about things like how the icons are designed. They mean the workflow.
I think the issues are getting confused. Yes, Lightroom saves a separate file from your photos of the changes so in that sense it's non destructive, the original files are not changed.
Photoshop is non-destructive in that you can load an image into a layer and apply tons of layers above that layer each of which edits the layers below it in some way. The pixels in the image layer are never changed so it's also "non-destructive". But saving the file does overwrite the old photoshop file with your changes, unlike lightroom.
This is the fatal error. Humans are the ones using that tool. What you call aesthetics is functionality.
We’re not talking about making it prettier we’re talking about making it more usable.
On top of that, it’s an image editing tool. It’s a tool that people use for the purpose of creating visual, often-times “aesthetic” works, and yet the UI is not important? Well then more humans making the decision to use it is not important.
In my opinion, GIMP is the evidence that these efforts are misplaced, and focus should be the UI (at least after core functionality exists). No point is a fancy pants program that nobody actually wants to use.
