Post

eevee
@eev.ee

gimp is kinda jank yeah but when people have Serious Takes about how it needs to improve all i can read is "here is how these four guys working intermittently for free have FAILED to live up to the international company making twenty billion dollars a year"

Chris Person@papapishu.bsky.social

GIMP is objectively unintuitive and also can’t parse text layers of PSDs properly, it’s designed by FOSS people that have never created tools for professionals. Telling someone to use it for their job is like saying you can make a feature on iMovie. Technically true but not serious.

eevee
@eev.ee

"personally i would just make it be good" great, stop fucking posting about it and get to work then

eevee
@eev.ee

this is frustrating in a way that's hard to fit in a bleat but it boils down to people not appreciating the outright miracle that open source software is in the first place and then wanting to be treated like a customer when it's not an exact replica of something that costs $700

eevee
@eev.ee

the thing krita and blender have in common is that PEOPLE GAVE THEM A LOT OF MONEY

Lufty@lufty-luft.bsky.social

But still... blender actually got some traction once they decided to make things more user friendly. Krita's newer than the GIMP, and much more popular. UX is something that does matter, even making allowances for 'free and volunteer made' open source software.

eevee
@eev.ee

the developers of other foss software aren't idiots waiting for someone to tweet "have you tried making good ux?" at them — they just don't have the resources to hire ux designers and do user studies and whatever else because they are giving their fucking work to you for free

eevee
@eev.ee

ok i think there are a couple particular factors here ① sometimes people treat FOSS as though the thing it's /supposed to be/ is "software i already use, but free, and without any of the stuff i dislike". but that rarely happens — it's creative work made by different people with different ideas

4 reposts42 likes

eevee
@eev.ee

② "why not just copy photoshop" is really the same genre of Idea Guy post as "why not just make a pokémon game with every region in it", but software isn't often recognized as a creative endeavor so a lot of serious professionals nod along (and then i look like a lunatic for finding it grating)

eevee
@eev.ee

③ when google is free and photoshop is """free""" (on the pirate bay) and programming is basically regarded as some sort of wizard activity anyway, it's very easy to go "well why isn't this free thing as powerful as this other free thing"

eevee
@eev.ee

④ similarly when all software is interchangeable the blame gets reversed. case in point, OP complaining that an open source project doesn't read some detail of psds correctly, rather than "oops we all standardized on adobe's file format and that's a form of lock-in"

eevee
@eev.ee

(i know the open file format situation here is not amazing and that's a shame, though even if it /were/ amazing, how would you convince adobe to add support for openraster?)

Gyro
@gyro.tech

I mean, if they dont have the resources to hire a UX designer and to run studies, then it would make sense to use the design off of some other company that does right? I mean, its basically getting UX design and studies for free.

eevee
@eev.ee

at best you become a shoddy knockoff with no identity of your own, and i cannot imagine anything more joyless to work on and then what do you do with all your existing features that don't map to the ui you're just copying

Gyro
@gyro.tech

I mean I feel like pretty much all the art programs have largely moved towards photoshop ui and hot keys, and no ones features map 1-1 with any of them. Part of UX is conforming with user expectations, specifically to lower the switching barrier.