this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
591 points (100.0% liked)

Open Source

836 readers
9 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 138 points 1 week ago (18 children)

Man, after decades, why does GIMP still have a marketing problem?

Just visit https://www.gimp.org/ and compare it to https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html

Just assume both did exactly the same thing and cost the exact same amount (free or otherwise). Which would you choose based on their website?

Why does GIMP (and pretty much all FOSS) have to be so secretive about their product? Why no screenshots? Why not showcase the software on their website?

It's so damn frustrating that every FOSS app appears to be command line software, or assumed that the user knows everything about it already.

Devs, you might have a killer piece of software, but screenshots go a long way to help with gaining interest and adoption.

[–] Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Idk if GIMP has a marketing problem but I definitely agree that FOSS projects should add screenshots and a description of what the program does to their website and repo. It really annoys me when someone links a piece of software and it just doesn't say what it does and there's no screenshots that would make it easy for me to see what it looks like and how the UI is structured. When there's no screenshots I'm rarely even interested in trying it out because, even with a description, I don't really know what it is. Like, I wouldn't be interested in a car based on only a description, I'd have to see a picture of it too.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago

This is a frequent source of frustration for me, too. Can't even tell if it's cli or gui a lot of the time, based on the documentation. If I could just see what it looks like, I'd have a good idea right away of whether it might meet my needs.

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

Actually I would pick GIMP.

  1. Says what it is, an image editor.
  2. No popups and random interruptions.
  3. Not only AI editing examples which makes me thing the tool is AI only.
  4. An overview of the variety of major features it has rather than just AI editing.
  5. Links to helpful documentation rather than endless marketing pages that say nothing.

Really think only thing I would like to see is some screenshots and examples of using the tool, rather than just info on what it does. But the Photoshop page barely has this, just a few examples of the AI tools.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
The devs making Gimp gain literally nothing from you downloading and using it.
Stop applying capitalist logic to one of the few aspects of life that haven't been monetized yet.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.

That's highly debatable.

Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there's no incentive to keep making it.

Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.

Even from a purely practical standpoint, why not be clear and avoid wasting people's time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?

I'm not suggesting that GIMP take out Facebook ads. But my god, would a few screenshots kill the project?

[–] superkret@feddit.org 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there’s no incentive to keep making it.

Making a tool you or the company you work for need yourself, fun, learning, community, doing good, showing off, status, being remembered, (even if it's just in a circle of 10 people)...

Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.

Irrelevant for the vast majority of open source projects, which will never be financially profitable.

why not be clear and avoid wasting people’s time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?

Maybe because the volunteers working on the project in their free time are programmers, not marketers or good communicators?
Also, they aren't wasting anybody's time by creating useful software and giving it away for free.

I realize I'm being confrontational towards you, but this mindset of demanding things from people who literally give away free stuff with no strings attached rubs me the wrong way, every single time. And this mindset is much too prevalent, even to the point of harassing, insulting and threatening open source devs for choices they make in their projects.

The devs owe you nothing. If you don't like what they do, simply don't use it.
There are other options out there, but they may come with a $23/month price tag.

[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 week ago

FOSS projects are often labors of love.

Nobody who isn't completely deranged loves marketing.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I would have to choose GIMP (in spite of this awful name) because that page loaded without javascript and the photoshop page requires me to enable javascript.

I know I'm being a bit facetious, here, but... Adobe can afford to hire full time front end devs and designers. FOSS projects can't really compete with Adobe's investors.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

LOL. Brother, I get what you're saying, but I think you missed the point. If Random User X is just looking for an image editor, and they are presented with a few options they know nothing about. Do you think they're going to even bother with the one image editor that doesn't have any screenshots?

Just another comparison, a little more relevant: https://www.rawtherapee.com/

You know EXACTLY what it is and what it does within about 2 seconds. That would be more than enough information for someone to at least make the effort to download the software.

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If I recommend some software to someone, most normies I know would directly go on to youtube and check some guy using and reviewing a software. The "official website" wouldn't even cross their mind.

In this day and age if a random user really wants something, they have a miriad of options to see what they're about to use. Forums, Youtube, blog posts and so on.

If a user doesn't even bother a bare , they're better off not downloading random executables from the internet.

The website isn't end all, be all of how users find a software demos. You seem to think a single website is enough for users to make their choices these days. It isn't the 90s.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Leeuk@feddit.uk 10 points 1 week ago

Agree, however on clicking the photoshop link was first hit with 2 popups before I could see the page.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 7 points 1 week ago

I couldn't agree more and I see it everywhere as well. It's systemic.

Which would you choose based on their website?

Problem is, people on Lemmy are techies who might actually prefer the Gimp site. But any "normal" person would not.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't know man, I think the Photoshop homepage reeks of corpo crap, whereas the Gimp homepage does a good job at cleanly presenting the program in a quick way. Maybe I'm just used to FOSS, or already too allergic to corporate software, but going by the homepage design, my preference is obvious, there's not even a contest

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

dont forget how they expect you to compile it. some projects offer a nice .msi for windows, a .whatever for mac, and then linux users just get a link to their github. i mean cmon.

edit: i'm not talking specifically about gimp, my dudes.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

this can be solved by using a package manager. because thats what they expect.

[–] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"They" most of the times is solo devs and you can't blame them for that. GIMP does have flatpak, appimages, etc.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

That's false, not sure why you would say that. Literally just visit the download page

https://krita.org/en/download/

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] oyo@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean, the name is a bigger problem than anyone seems to want to admit...

[–] nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

Majority of area in the world does not recognize it as negative thing.

Even for English, English itself is diverse language. Singaporean English, Indian English, Asian English, definitely not negative in all of them.

Forcing one standard of language as a universal is a bad precedent for language diversity.

[–] haerrii@feddit.org 4 points 1 week ago

Idk I like the gimp page. Two clicks, and you're into the tutorial on how to edit pictures. The first page gives you all you need to know: Image manipulation program.

adobe's page otoh... Well after the first two popups, I gave up.

...

Alright, Second try and four popups later, I'm in. gotta admit the funny animations and the tools they show off are pretty nice

[–] AuroraB@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

the gimp one displays normally, while the adobe one shows a blank white page.

the choice is obvious

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 75 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Incredible. This is one of those hard to believe moments.

It's been 21 years since the release of GIMP 2.0.

It's been more than 10 years since work on a majorly overhauled GIMP 3.0 was announced and initiated.

And it's been 7 years since the last major release (2.10).

I can't wait for the non-destructive text effects. After all these years of dealing with the fact applying drop shadows meant the text couldn't be edited, at last it's no longer an issue.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] xnx@slrpnk.net 71 points 1 week ago

zero screenshots on the announcement page and zero screenshots on the homepage. Exactly what i expect from gimp lol

[–] DioEgizio@lemm.ee 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago

We got gimp 3 before half life 3.

[–] mtchristo@lemm.ee 37 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Next. They should drop everything and solely focus on improving ux & ui . Every time I open gimp to try and get acclimated to it, I close it back out of frustration. Nothing is intuitive in that software. Not even the naming of the tools settings.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i mean its pretty good if you get used to it.. i remember the shortcuts for all the major tools i use and it's very quick and easy to use for me.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Don't touch my workflow. Just because you couldn't get acclimated to it, doesn't mean no one did.

[–] prototype_g2@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Nothing is intuitive in that software.

UI/UX is a very very difficult job. I've only ever known a few UI/UX artists that were any good, and OMFG, are they expensive.

You can't just drop everything and focus on something where you don't have domain experts. Not to presume too much about you, but that would be like saying you need to drop everything you're doing and focus on brain surgery next year. UI/UX is art. It's a very specific type of art that, unfortunately, doesn't come easy for people. There are companies for hire that work professionally on UX/UI, but they're not cheap either. Anyone can spot bad UX, but knowing how to fix it in a way that works for everyone, that's nearly a unicorn.

I've been using gimp since it was released for daily driver projects.

I've been using Photoshop for about a decade when required for gigs.

I can get around either app pretty decently at this point.

If you drop any new user into either, they'll be absolutely lost.

If you drop a seasoned Photoshop user into GIMP, they'll not only be lost but be unable to use their vast array of plugins and macros and aren't quite (but non-technically are) impossible for the average user to work on.

We can't make Gimp Photoshop-like. We can make strides to improve Gimp, but it's beyond reach for the current team. Maybe we can start a crowdfund to get a UX company to take a stab at it, but even at that we'd need buy in from the developers and it would likely be an incredibly large rework, not unlike the current one that took quite a long time.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago

It is essential that you explain exactly what you find unintuitive, otherwise -forgive me, but- this feedback is worthless. Make a bullet list, with captures, show how you would rename or rearrange things. Do your part !

[–] graphene@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

I followed some YouTube tutorial to rearrange all the stuff that can be to make it more like photoshop, which did make things somewhat better

[–] arc@lemm.ee 21 points 1 week ago

GTK 3 support just in time for GTK 4 & 5

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Off-Canvas Editing Paint tools can now automatically expand the width and height of a layer as you draw! You can select “Expand Layers” in the tool options to enable drawing past the current boundaries of layers.

More features such as guides and auto-expanding layers can be used to work in the off-canvas space!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mogoh@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

Already on flathub. Nice modern packaging world. https://github.com/flathub/org.gimp.GIMP

[–] Leeuk@feddit.uk 15 points 1 week ago

Brilliant and huge congrats to the amazing people who worked on it. One silly question though, is the "new" Gimp logo supposed to look out of focus or are my eyes getting old?

[–] sfu@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago

Not having non-destructive editing has kept me from using gimp. I tried but just couldn't use it. I'll have to try again.

[–] Octagon9561@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

Now do VLC 4.0 :D

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago

FUCK YES!!!!!

I’ve been waiting for this for years! Omg, what awesome news!!

[–] gon@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago

I've been seeing quite a few posts about this, pretty funny that it all happened so fast.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

It finally happened!?!

[–] OneRedFox 6 points 1 week ago

Hot damn! Never thought that I'd see the day.

[–] LemmyGo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've only used GIMP a handful of times, so please forgive my ignorance -- how does 3.0 compare to Krita or IbisPaint?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago

GIMP is generally geared towards photo-editing, so if you have an existing image, you can use GIMP quite well to e.g. cut out parts of it or to apply effects.
It's not really geared towards digital painting or creating new images from scratch, like Krita and presumably IbisPaint are.

load more comments
view more: next ›