I think the UI and lack of non-destructive editing is holding it back more than the name, but IDK
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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the UI for GIMP is so horrifically bad that I basically refuse to use it. Not like, on principal or anything, if it improves i'd be happy to give it a shot, but because every experience I've had with it has been pretty immediately negative, and finding solutions to problems I have seems more effort than its worth. I want gimp to be good, it's a mature piece of software with a lot going for it, but it also feels like its design is kind of up its own ass, in a sense? It's weird.
I know what you mean — it's like a 90s design paradigm that doesn't take current conventions or best practices into account at all.
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Normally I wouldn’t take comments like this to heart. But I tried the latest beta recently after maybe 15y and wow. You’re totally bang on. I was stunned how bad the UI was. How bad the app was. Upon reading this, it all just sort of makes sense.
I’m sad things are so bad on the Linux front that this is the most highly rated design tool. Linux community deserves better.
The sad thing is like, it's an INCREDIBLY mature piece of software. It's well regarded for a reason. But if a piece of software requires that I fight with it to get it to behave how I want, that maturity has zero value at all. It kind of feels like a microcosm of Linux itself like 10-15 years ago, when I was tinkering with it in middle and high school. It's functional, but it asks you as a user to change how you think about using something like it in the first place while also forcing you to make concessions that seldom seem worthwhile.
And if Linux at large can get there, with things like proton and flatpak and Wayland and mature desktop environments and whatever else, gimp can too. But it seems like it's got a contributor base of people that like it's weird eccentricities, and take the UX development companies like Adobe and affinity (now canva) have invested and just shirked it on principal. And like, I get having an aversion to those sorts of companies/projects/developments, there's a lot of dark patterns there that are concerning. But I also feel like the kind of Linux user that defends and possibly enjoys GIMP in its current state is content fighting with their machine and the software on it, and forgets that there's value in taking joy in interacting with your computer. Good UI and good UX are implicitly valuable (not to mention the accessibility benefits, but that's a whole different conversation), and I feel the FOSS space forgets all of that completely. It's a shame.
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There's always been a real stick in the mud attitude with GIMP. No matter how many people cry out about it's confusing UX it's always tried to serve the existing userbase rather than design to expand its usefulness to more people. I think this is a shame and is why GIMP never achieved what Blender has.
I remember trying to use it the best part of 20 years ago when I wanted to make animated gifs. It was so hard to use it was easier to pirate photoshop/imageready. Then a year or so back I tried to use it as I had moved to being a Linux user and was kind of astonished that the UX was still so bloody hostile.
I don't think I'm a moron (though how many morons do... so take this with a pinch of salt) but trying to figure out how to do basic things like cut and paste, cropping etc. without reading documentation just goes hellishly wrong. Any time I take the time to follow a guide on how to use it I'm taken aback by how unintuitive it is and once I'm done I forget it's idiosyncrasies immediately.
I remember "gimpshop" being a thing at one point, which I never got to use but heard it used the processing of GIMP with a more photoshop like UX. Though I believe that project lapsed.
Anyway, yeah it'd be nice in a world where things like GNOME have become such beautiful UXes that projects like GIMP have the courage to revolutionise themselves.
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Having spent ages trying to adopt it and failing like 20+ years ago it's just crazy to me that every time I give it another chance, it still doesn't have non destructive editing and is still a non-intuitive UI from hell. It feels like they want it to be like this.
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Yeah, the destructive editing and lack of a content aware fill is made me stop using it and go back to Photoshop. Krita also seems more usable these days in the FOSS world. The name is a lot easier to fix than those missing features, though.
NDE available in the next version https://daviesmediadesign.com/gimp-3-0-update-non-destructive-editing-complete/?noamp=available
I absolutely love the UI. It's literally a major part of why I prefer it.
which is great for you, but not for anyone who has even briefly used more mainstream options
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This really isn't the article it wishes it were :-\ It kinda reeks of "I've picked a thing I want to argue and now I'm going to make up an argument for it" down to admitting that good sources aren't available (which makes me wonder whether there are no good sources at all or just no good sources that support the author's argument).
Bonus unpoints for the BDSM reference, just because I hate seeing that term held up as a negative or scary kind of thing and I feel like and/or choose to believe that's the point in such an unprofessional article, rather than simply meaning "Look, it means sex stuff and that's unprofessional." So there. Nyeh! 😝
Also, I don't think I've ever heard anyone who actually used or contributed to the GIMP (or intended to) complain about the name. I'm interested in seeing some actual data on that, if there is any. Personally I wouldn't particularly mind a name change but I can't say whether it'd get more attention and interest than it'd lose to irritating people accustomed to the current one.
To add to this, I've been using GIMP on and off for a decade and I've never given any thought to the name. It's all capitalized. I didn't think it was a backronym, I thought it was just an acronym.
I've used this in professional settings (I used to work in academic molecular bio), and I was very evangelical about it. Especially because we're not doing high-level artistic work, we just sometimes need something for processing microscope images or making graphics for scientific publications.
I'd say to any and everyone, "You know, you don't have to pay an annual subscription fee for Photoshop: there's this free, open-source program called GIMP that does most of what you need and you don't have to pay a thing! Want me to install it for you?"
I didn't even think to be embarrassed about the name, and no one ever seemed to care in conversation. As others have said, the bigger impediments are people's attachment to commercial software and interface challenges. This is just an absolutely silly complaint to make.
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It seems like the consensus of this thread is that the name isn't holding it back. That was my thinking going into it, but the article makes some very valid points such as the name (being related to a sexual and sometimes derogatory word) making it a non-starter in some organizations.
I have it installed on all our computers at work for basic image editing, but we're a small business and never gave it much thought. I can absolutely see it being problematic in a school setting, however. More to the point, Adobe has ably demonstrated: get them hooked on your software in school and you'll dominate the market. Imagine if kids had been learning GIMP instead of Photoshop all these years.
Anyway, I've got no dog in this fight. Just pointing out what I see as a valid point in the article.
Also, I like their original name possibility of IMP much better. The mascot could have been a cute little imp instead of ... whatever it is now.
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The name holds it back more than you know. No EP or AD wants to put "The GIMP" on their software list for a project. I have to have a conversation with someone ensuring we're good on all our licenses, and they ask, "What is this GIMP thing?" Answering it makes me sound like an unprofessional jackass. The company would rather just pay Adobe.
It should be renamed to GLIMPSE. Gnu/Linux Image Manipulation Program Special Edition
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I don’t even want to tell people I use it because of its name. I would never bring it up in a work setting in this day and age when I look at Slack and see everyone list their pronouns.
The fact they haven’t clued into this is just wild to me. A shame it throws the work of so many people under the bus.
Also, to call it after the Pulp Fiction character is insane to me. Let alone that everyone on the team signed off on it. What were the second choices? Diarrhea? Herpes? Like dafuq.
It reeks of 12 year old boy saying “FART” to make his friends laugh
Or some edgelord trying to get people to watch 2 girls 1 cup back in the day. The scene in the movie was deeply disturbing. It actually made my partner at the time cry because she had been SAed before. Even for me, I did not enjoy and while the movie was amazing, the scene only took away from the film (I know the entire thing was hyper violent and disturbing).
I can’t even imagine referring to it let alone thinking back on it fondly. I always thought GIMP was an acronym. This news shook me because I’m actually on the contributor list.
Also, I would never admit its origin in this day and age. I’m still in shock learning this!
This. No amount of excuses or lengthy explanations. It's childish and unprofessional.
Most of the world does not have English as a first language and thus the meaning of the word "gimp" is not widely known. Personally I do agree that the name is dumb, but it's a very English as a first language issue. My daughter is learning to do basic stuff with GIMP in school because it's free. The name is not an issue because nobody knows what a gimp is.
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Surely anyone who feels that it’s an urgent problem can make a fork which is fully identical in every way except for the logo and name and branding
Since the amount of effort that would be required for that would be infinitesimal compared to what was already done to make the software
And then produce all these good things which you say are being held back
Or, wait, did you mean you wanted someone else to do that because you feel that it’s super important enough to insist that someone else should do it but not important enough to do yourself?
As I recall someone made the same lame argument about the name being divisive, a fork was created called Glimpse and it fell on its face not long after it was formed. Things like this are a waste of energy, nobody cares that it's called gimp.
Yeah, I mean glimpse seems fine; in general it seems completely fine if someone says "hey I think this is a problem for some percent of people who have weird priorities in life because they are corporate or weird thinking, I support the idea to solve it and make a friendly name for them"
It's just that if the response is "yeah that percent of people are not our problem, we just want to make this project and we did, thank you and good day", then you need to be able to say "ok I will make the fork to fix it then" instead of writing up a big blog post demanding that they need to obey you on what your opinion of the priorities for their own project should be.
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The problem is considerably smaller if you consider that the software is used by a lot more people than English speakers (both L1 and L2+). For these, "gimp" is not some sex stuff, but rather that critter chewing on a brush. And even for L2+, the word "gimp" is often missing from our vocabs.
As others said in this thread, the actual problem holding GIMP back is called user interface. It has improved, but it's still awful.
Agree with this
I am not a native speaker and I never associated gimp with a sex meaning, even if my vocabulary is pretty expanded.
It could be called "DesirePix 2.0" or "SeductionStudio 4.0" but the main problem is that it gives a worse user experience than using Adobe Photoshop 5.0 on windows 95, on every single aspect. Features, speed, UI, ease of use, and so on
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I have no stake in this, but maybe just drop the 'p'?
GIM avoids the slur but is still very close to the current name.
Plus as an added bonus we can have the 'gif' pronunciation disagreement!
easy enough to resolve, since the G stands for GNU just pronounce it the same as that, and since GNU stands for GNU'S not UNIX, it pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU, which pronounces G the same as GNU
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Plus they could announce the rebrand by replacing the weird dog chewing on a brush with the same weird dog lifting weights
Hitting the GIM.
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The simple solution is to change it to a BSD license and call it BLIMP
Krita has mostly left GIMP in the dust, as far as UI and basic tools. The brush engine and ability to handle large files is so much better. It's vector and text tools need work, and so do the image filters and such. Even so, Krita destroys GIMP. Even the name, which isn't great, is leagues better.
The word gimp in disability circles once upon a time meant "generally impaired."
I never knew the word was used as a slur or had sexual connotations. I thought it was a verb akin to "nerf" or "cripple", as in "Windows 11 gimped the taskbar functionality." I guess this word is still bad, as I want to enhance, not "gimp," my pictures.
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