At the same time, GIMP is remarkably not-geared at serious designers/non-codey folk.
A simple fix would be to ask professionals using the Adobe suite what they would like in an open source tool that could get them to switch. Viewed at from outside, Adobe may appear like a multi-billion dollar moat of focus on prosumer products.
Viewer from as a user, Adobe's software has bugs and inefficiencies that would get the average open source product shredded in the comments. It is ludicrous that Adobe still charges for such bad Ux.
Of the top of my head, I'd say GIMP could get a headstart on Adobe if its builders added:
- n00b user Ux option
- Single panel modes for color correction with all settings in the form of a list of sliders (like lightroom)
- Seamless vector/PDF editing so you don't need to bounce between 3 different softwares
- Good UI for an InDesign competitor (this is a moat that Canva could easily crush if it added a few more options - but it's still worth building). Automatic layout (would really only need to follow a few simple rules - don't overhang text, match formatting, worship whitespace so the user doesn't have to break everything to add it back in).
As tradition, the developers see themselves as gods on earth who cannot be given any sort of feedback without hurting their ego.
Many other open source tools are beloved and used despite their flaws. Gimp is not built for anyone who isn't truly invested in it, making it a niche piece of software.
And the direction of 20 years of a software can tell what kind of contributions would be acceptable for people. I don't think anyone coming in a redoing the whole UI would well accepted, given how little care is given to the same old feedback.
As is tradition, all threads about open source talk about how great alternatives to commercial tools they happen to be, and how we should all shame ourselves only by thinking in using commercial software, without any consideration why we use them in first place.
Effectively what I was going to say. People are way too hung up on making open source software into a moral crusade that they completely blind themselves to the legitimate complaints about gaps between the open source and commercial options. They will say something like "well I don't need that feature" or "I never noticed a problem with that" and just overall get very defensive instead of simply acknowledging that the use cases of others may be different or that they have different tolerances for quirks in the software.
Fact of life: those who never do a thing, so never do something wrong, easily criticize those who actually do things, because of course, they don’t do all perfectly, and do make mistakes.
I don't know... it seems to me that most of the complaints about Gimp come from people who actually use it, because people who never use it wouldn't have anything to complain about.
It also seems odd to assert that non-contributors have no right to complain on a forum where most people, most of the time, complain about things they have no direct knowledge of nor a hand in making.
>> most people, most of the time, complain about things they have no direct knowledge of nor a hand in making
I certainly see it very differently, or I would not lose time here. Indeed here is full of makers and doers. People that did things, open source, or founded a company, or something else. Also lots of knowledgeable people. Of course, is some share of charlatans, specially in medical topics, is a show… but in general I do learn here.
I think you can “criticize” if you are not contributing, but form is important. One thing is to say “I don’t like it, you shouldn’t use it” another is “I use it, and I would love feature XY”
I actually use it. I don't mind the keybindings, they make more sense than Photoshop's or Krita's to me.
The complains are from people that want Photoshop for free and Gimp is not that.
I use it almost daily in website content creation. Sure there are quirks, but it's a completely free image editor that can do nearly everything I need. No complaints from me.
I made gimp tutorials in spanish, courses for teachers and demos, twenty years ago. Also Sodipodi an Audacity. I have been downvoted, but there are not enough downvoted that make me change the comments I heard and read for this year's: keybindings and CMYK and pantone, these two last from people who will never paper printed their designs.
This software has been around for almost 30 years now and is always sold as this photoshop killer and praised by open-source zealots. It's become like a religion, they can't take constructive criticism, they don't listen to feedback and if you say anything bad, oh it's easy to criticize. But sometimes a piece of software is just bad in many different ways, and over promising and trying to gaslight users into believing it's a suitable commercial software replacement is dishonest and results in a frustrating experience for newcomers.
I don't see how saying "I wish GIMP had X" is "putting shit on it unconstructively". It's a feature suggestion, whether it's one that's doable given the project's resources or not.
I'd say that "if you don't like it just fork it" approach has dealt way more damage to the reputation of OSS outside of programmer circles than people repeatedly asking for features or improvements.
