Related to that, Jacob Boerema has implemented PSD Descriptor import support. Most of our current PSD support has been based on the the public Adobe specification. This document was last updated in 2019 however, and modern PSDs use a relatively undocumented text format called Descriptors to store many features.
The battle tested strategy of only providing old standards to others, like MS does.
Don’t use PSDs? I know people will say, “it’s not as simple as that, they’re industry standard”, but if you say you’ll only accept professional work in an open format, and you’re the client, you have the control to change things.
It’s not about not using PSD.
GIMP is all about letting people to open and edit any image files. Whether it is a medical images format (DICOM), bitmap image only used on smart message, (Nokia’s Over The Air Bitmap), to open experimental niche format (Jeff’s Image Format).
Maybe that’s what it was. It doesn’t necessarily need to be that going forward, as project putlooks anf goals change with time.
Also editing is quite a lot of more work to support than mere viewing. As all tools and actions need to behave correctly - not jusbt the renderer.
And something proprietary can hadly be a “industry standard”. It can be “most common” or a “de facto standard”. But all “industry standards” are by definition open as any industry worth its weight doesn’t rely on or include a single point of failure anywhere within itself.
“It doesn’t necessarily need to be that going forward”
This part does not make any sense. Making GIMP to be able to support any image format is a good thing. Especially for future file preservation.
If it was merely industry standard, if a software already good, people will just use the default format. It already happen with various industries, like comic making in Asia using .CLIP (Clip Studio Paint) instead of .PSD
Especially for future file preservation.
Case in point, the best office suite for both the old .doc file format and the previous (from 2013 and before) .docx file format is LibreOffice.
That’s nice to have. For both GIMP and the industry’s sake, priorities should be:
- good UX
- feature-wise competitiveness
- in any (sensible) format
GIMP is an alternative to Photoshop. It isn’t a psd reader.
Being the format jack of all trades yet master of none isn’t too great of an idea. It’ll just exacerbate GIMP’s main current problem: an ancient UI Photoshop enthusiasts dread. A lot might consider switching if the bad GIMP UX was better than the also-bad Photoshop UX.
If I had to say what my main design gripe with gimp is, that’d be modularity. Seperate the ui (skins) from the tools, effects and rendering (formats). The UI is especially egregious in its hard-codedness while effects are pretty well-supported.
A few more apis would go a long way. Hell, even the closed Photoshop has open(ish) apis, since even Adobe know the value of an ecosystem and not just their internal r&d department!
If you actually follow the dev, they don’t seem to prioritize PSD or even trying to be a Photoshop clone at all :)
It’s just that when a feature get introduced, a new feature from other format get supported. Such as upcoming vector layer and shape tool.
I believe jack-of-all-trades of images is actually a good thing. All newer image editor, whether FOSS or proprietary are jack-of-all trades, like Graphite or Affinity You just can’t confined people just to use raster layer, and not vector layer. Or using multiple app just to do some image editing.
The problem is not jack-of-all-trades itself, but finding a good UI/UX to make it not complex for all user.
I’ve recently tried using GIMP again and, as a past detractor, I’ve gotta say it’s improved significantly.
Honestly so much better when they moved away from the “everything is a floating window” interface. I can find stuff now.
I really liked the floating window approach. I don’t mind the new way, but I enjoyed the floaties when they were the default.
There’s a toggle to go back
Funnily enough, back when it was floating by default, I always looked for the toggle to make it one window. But when they made it a single window by default, I found myself toggling it back to floating.
I kinda like having both options. Floating could still make some sense, and it can do cool things that a single window can’t.
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Not to down on them too much but this comment is kind of funny in the context of a 30 year old program.
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To be fair, Photoshop peaked about 10 years ago and has been steadily getting worse. It’s only a matter of time before they’re neck and neck.
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It was in the ballpark of 2014-15ish IIRC, so a little over ten years
I used to work in schools IT and I managed to get a lot of FOSS tools into regular use amongst both staff and students; Audacity, Libre Office, Firefox, even Debian in a few IT labs… but the one that never stuck was GIMP because no teacher is going to tell their class they’ll be using GIMP today.
I know this is a tired point and will probably never be fixed, but that name causes more problems than anything else.
I only learned about this “negative connotation” from people yelling about how GIMP name is bad.
I work in municipal government, and I just renamed the shortcuts on my work computer to avoid having to explain it to another mayor or councilmember. I think they’re adding Photoshop to the bufget anyway next year. GIMP is good for free, but I have to admit Photoshop really is the king of photo editors.
I do really like Inkscape though.
The FOSS software I find to be the most impressive, however, is QGIS. I have ArcGIS and QGIS both installed on my machine and use them both heavily. For data processing, I usually go with QGIS, but then I make most of my deliverables in ArcGIS because it has a way better layout editor and lots of other software and angencies require me to use ESRI REST services.
But I can go with the cheapest ESRI licenses because I don’t have to pay an extra 4 grand a year for the “Erase” tool when I can punch a hole in a shapefile in QGIS for free. And I openly said as much in my last meeting with ESRI when they were trying to get me to upgrade.
This is always interesting to hear because as someone who went school in a non English speaking country, GIMP was obviously never an issue. In most of the world the name isn’t an issue.
I only learned about that alternative meaning years later.
But for millions of people it is… the fact that it isn’t for some cultures does not negate the influence for those where it is. Companies like Apple will skip numbers and names if it’s a problem in one place (like say China) because they realize more adoption is useful. Old Gimp heads though just whine about America or some shit and wonder why nobody fucking uses it after 30 years.
Everything about this project is always saying they’re looking for input and design ideas but their old-ass users shoot down every person that has anything to say, many of whom have ideas from working as actual professionals for those same thirty years.
monkey paw curls, we keep it gimp but pronounce it gimp
gimp
G I M P
G(ee) I (A)M P(ee)
…
How dare you make me sound that out in my head.
Well shit, I never cared about the name but this convinced me because adoption and teaching about FOSS matters more.
Could you eli5 why gimp doesn’t work as a name, i genuenly don’t know…
It’s a derogatory term as well as a BDSM term.
Is it derogatory?
Definitely thought it was a humiliation thing
Some consider it an ableist term
Ahhh ok noted
Genuine question, how did you know BDSM but not gimp?
One can know about a general topic and not know the details of the topic.
proffessors could say “we’ll be using Gnu Image processing” or “Gnu Imp” if they wanted to get lame about it. The real big knoggin move is to just call it GIMP and silently dare your students to act like children
Tell me you’ve never tried to control a class of teenagers without telling me you’ve never tried to control a class of teenagers.
Kids would eat you alive.
What puritanism does to a mf
We should rename it the Gnu Image Leveraging Framework.
Yep, always felt the same way. Can’t be seriously suggested in a professional environment simply because of its name. Whole project been shooting itself in the foot with a machine gun since day 1.
There’s a meme floating about somewhere that goes:
Windows Tool: Producix Pro for Business 2024
MacOS Tool: Sweesh
Linux Tool: klitoris
and this kinda feels like that.
I tried Debian for two hours and said fuck this and I went straight back to Ubuntu. I might try it again when I know more about it. For now I’m still very much a noob. Debian’s still Ubuntu’s boring cousin to me and I’m working on making it the fun one I want to invite over.
GIMP is shaping up to be (and actually already is IMO) the best editor out there for nondestructive work.
I stopped using GIMP for Krita, but it looks like GIMP’s nondestructive has come a long way.
I’ve been using GIMP for over a decade. It’s slowly starting to become one of the leading sources of frustration in my computing life. The more I learn about it the less it makes any sense.
Not trying to be negative here. Just saying that a modernization is much needed and I’m really excited for this.
Try FreeCAD if you really want to suffer.
FreeCAD had improved massively since the recent 1.0 release, unlike GIMP…
Honestly I switched to Inkscape more and more. Especially for logos.
I love GIMP and no amount of tedious naysaying will ever change my mind
I did a few tutorials years ago. I realized that the way it did things was different from Photoshop and, in some ways, better. I could appreciate some of the design choices.
The problem is that most people learn PS first and then don’t learn Gimp at all, and then when they find out Gimp doesn’t work like Photoshop, they decide that it sucks.
I’ve been using it for decades.
If they’d make the macroing system idiot proof, maybe talk to some portrait photographers about how they use Photoshop and help them achieve their workflows, they could seriously shut down some Adobe.
Same! It’s great! And weird. But mostly great!
I keep discovering new capabilities
Yo same!
The UI needs a global overhaul since the day one and still nobody talks about it
I can do loads of stuff despite GIMP’s efforts to stop me.
I’ve been using Photo Gimp plugin with it for years. Otherwise the interface would be an absolute mess.
Can you turn it on and off easily? I know my way around photoshop but still want to learn vanilla gimp.
No it’s not just an on/off toggle. You’d have to uninstall the plugin. Install/Uninstall instructions are on the repo page. https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
I’ve never understood the purpose of PhotoGimp. I get why it exists. But it doesn’t do anything magical that GIMP isn’t already designed to let you do in the first place…which is move around, open, close and organize any window or dock into any place you want.
Anyone who has used GIMP for more than a few days has long since organized it to their own personal workflow; even some that look like photoshop.
The same goes for keyboard shortcuts. You can change literally everything about how GIMP looks anytime you want. So why lock yourself into some script that makes it look like a clone of some corporate crap, and worse…donate to the guy who designed said script as though he made something significant that no one else could achieve.
It’s very existence is a lie. Users aren’t locked into anything and he didn’t do some magic to change that. It’s literally how GIMP is designed to be customized.
Play with it. Have fun with it. That’s the entire point.
I give exactly zero fucks about tinkering with my image editing software, I just want to edit images without UX which invariably leaves me foaming with volcanic rage inside of 90 seconds.
It’s basically just a drop in configuration to make it look and feel more like the Photoshop interface. Can you accomplish the same with tinkering? Sure. Do I want the spend all day trying to make it look pretty when I need to actually be working in the software? Hell no. Just drop in the plugin and get to work. It has it’s place. It would be less necessary if GIMP default layout didn’t suck right out of the box.
Leaving this here for Photoshop converts
https://github.com/Diolinux/Photogimp
I use Affinity full time at the moment, but if they ever go paid, I’m running straight to GIMP.
i completely switched to Affinity suit some 3 years ago at work. I was so excited when the affinity4linux install script dropped. but performance makes it near useless. slow and stuttering.
here is for hoping gimp and inkscape can one day match.
My thing is that I use the iPad app with the pencil. The last time I tried GIMP it was great.
It is shocking how well-designed the Affinity apps feel on the iPad. I’m not entirely fond of everything being stuffed away in menus, but I see why they did it, and overall I’ve rarely felt so positively surprised about pleasant UX.
Now if only they hadn’t been bought by Canva… well, at least I still have my old Affinity 2 Suite.
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Use Krita instead. It has a big tiddy anime waifu right on the splash screen.
Different project scope tho.
Krita does not support random niche format like GIMP.
Yes but the UI is 💯 easier to use.
The number 1 problem with GIMP is poor UI in my experience.
Easier interface AND anime aesthetics? Sign me up.
If they add the feature to set white point in the level tool I’m there. Last I checked they had some bullshit brush-off about how it wasn’t relevant because it’s designed for drawing or some bollocks.
Sorry that my sketches were on paper that wasn’t pure white, I guess?
Now you got me.
Are they going to upgrade the name as well?
Yeah I think they’re going for something more straightforward that describes exactly what it’s about
Brushes, Design, Shapes & Multimedia
To avoid confusion: BDSM, the FOSS formerly known as GIMP
I would not feel comfortable looking this up on a work computer.
Did you feel comfortable searching to learn how to use GIMP?
Not at work. Certainly not.
yes
Or: Graphics, Images, Media & Print
Or else it will be a sub-module.
This would really mess up search results
nice one
Don’t be silly. There’s no better name than GIMP.
Green Is My Pepper!
That’s a US defaultism issue
It was created in the US and named in specific reference to the offensive meaning of the word, so I would say that makes it pretty relevant.
Why is a sexual term automatically offensive?
Being sexual doesn’t automatically make it offensive, it just makes it unprofessional. As software that is seeking widespread adoption, its acceptance in professional environments matters. I could make a program called Skrotum if I thought it was funny, but I wouldn’t be surprised when people are hesitant to recommend it to others because of the name I chose.
What makes it offensive is that it’s a slur for handicapped people. That’s the origin of the BDSM term and the use that was popularized by the character in Pulp Fiction that was specifically referenced by the creators of GIMP.
I get the second part, but I think the first part is just an US thing. While I feel that we are still terribly repressed over here, something being sexual (especially when it’s just a double entendre) doesn’t always and immediately make it unprofessional in Germany, which I feel applies more so in other parts of Europe.
Because he lives in a fucked up puritan place.
That means shit for FOSS. AND the Evil Empire is dying.
Why should they change the name just for the vanity of Americans who have a dual meaning for the word, and make it difficult for the whole rest of the world to find tutorials and documentation going back decades?
It’s not just awkward for Americans, but for the entire English speaking world - at least 470 million people. How can anyone seriously recommend a business use a program called GIMP? It is a massive hurdle to adoption in the corporate world. They should change the name, or at least create a business-oriented alias.
So in order to make it less awkward for ~500M people, we should make it more awkward for the rest of the 7.8B people.
How would changing the name make it more awkward? Giving up a huge market for no reason other than old nerds crying about a change.
Everyone knows it by that name, even in non english speaking countries.
They themselves gave a good explanation. They’d lose brand recognition, they’d expose the name to scammers using it to sell or distribute their own software, and years of tutorials, guides and books would instantly be harder to find and outdated.
It makes no sense to give up all that, and to force such a change on the whole world, just because some speakers of a single language don’t like it.
English is diverse language and each regional English have their own offensive world that have different meaning in different English speaking area.
Maybe you should meet more Indian English speaker and Singaporean English speaker. Heck, Australian English invent various offensive word.
Yes but we don’t use them in professional contexts.
There is no Dickheadsoft, no Drongo Ware. We haven’t call any software C.U.N.T.
GIMP means the same thing here and it’s just as unprofessional.
My point is that due to British colonialization, English is now a diverse language that have diverse new word and regional meaning.
GIMP in English Asia doesn’t have bad connotation. Not in Singaporean English, not in Indian English.
Making one standard of English is just reeks language colonialism.
No it’s just regular PR.
We avoid 4 in products due to negative connotations in Asia, even though it means nothing here.
I mean my business has no problem using it here in the motherland of the English language…?
Any time we talk to a client about it they are just happy to hear that we’re using software that doesn’t ingest their work into AI, crash in the middle of consultations, and produces working files that will be usable forever.
I do wonder how much of this is the seeming aversion to context that a subset of Americans seem to have. The meaning of words varies by context, that’s like, a normal thing in English. If I said in a meeting that I’d been “pissing about the office whilst waiting for John to be done in his other meeting”, that doesn’t mean I’d been urinating on the carpets!
Edit: another funny piss example - if I’d spent my holiday learning to jetski should I avoid telling colleagues how I’ve discovered I enjoy watersports?
A gimp is a sex thing in one context but that’s clearly not the context one would be discussing in terms of software, so why does it matter?
I’m in the UK. I use it as my primary image editor on my work computers. Should we be avoiding using LaTeX too because in a different context it’s a kink thing?
It just seems such a weird thing to be prudish about in this day and age. English words are regularly contextual and in a business environment why would one go to the NSFW context as default?
have you not met many Americans ?
they’re also big into CBT with their GIMP, or their therapist. i can never remember which one
Why? It describes succinctly what the app does.
gimp /gĭmp/
noun
A narrow flat braid or rounded cord of fabric used for trimming.
A limp or a limping gait.
A person who limps.I suppose the association with limping is a bit unfortunate. Although GIMP is an acronym.
The fact that a particular sub-culture has its own slang meaning for the word is irrelevant.
No it’s not. It’s very relevant - it’s the reason I’ve never recommended the software to anyone outside of close friends.
Wouldn’t it be easier to recommend it and if they give you a look about the name you act like you’ve no idea what they’re talking about?
GYMP? 💪✨🤭
Very interesting, thanks for the update.
edit: I also love how the article credits every individual contributor for the new features they made, a very nice way to celebrate the group effort
no it isnt. we keep hearing this and no, they never have a massive upgrade. that project doesnt do massive. that’s not how it’s ever be run. its stable, predictable, sane, but ugly things we have all hated forever will never be massively revamped in a single update.
ugly things will never be massively revamped teamspeak
I’ve always wanted to see gimp on the same level of blender.
Blender is astounding at how much it can do, but boy does it feel like a project that suffered major scope creep. There seems to be years worth of “but what if it could also do this?” attached to it. As a novice Blender user I still find the UI incredibly difficult to work with.
I’m hundreds of hours in and I still sometimes accidentally hit the wrong hotkey and spend 39 minutes figuring out why edit mode doesn’t edit anymore, or why I can’t weight paint in weight mode.
Feature discovery has become more organic and less “unfuck blender” though, so that’s nice.
The grass is uh, slightly less brown on the other side I guess?
Phenomenal program though.
Krita for the win if you just need the drawing part. Left Gimp long time ago for Krita and never looked back.
they better add a fucking draw circle tool istg
