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[–] 206 points 2 years ago (105 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.

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  • [–] 73 points 2 years ago* (11 children)

    Krita.org does a nice job of showing off their work and so does Blender

    They're not flashy, but they definitely make me want to download them and check them out.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (21 children)

    You're welcome to contribute your experties.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (20 children)

    I wish I could, but this is a systemic problem, not a problem with one individual project.

    Is the mindset that anyone looking for open source, FOSS, or Linux stuff is already tech-savvy enough to know exactly what they are looking for based solely on a text description?

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I actually like the GIMP website homepage more than the one for photoshop.

    Its simple and efficient. If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.

    The photoshop site just looks like a random squarespace template with a bunch of stock photos.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.

    See, that's not normal, though. You shouldn't need to "dig deeper" to find out what a product is or what it does.

    The well-designed homepage should simply tell you that within seconds of visiting. Any additional clicks should only be to "learn more", but not to learn about.

    If this was an analogy, imagine a street lined with restaurants.

    On one side you've got "Vinny's Italian Pizzeria", "Joe's Burgers and Fries", and "Mary's Bakery and Treats". Each has posters of what they sell posted on the windows, and a QR code to their online menu.

    On the other you have "Sal's Food", "Frank's More Food", "Sal's". The windows are either covered in brown paper, or have stock images of "food", but nothing specific about what they actually make. To learn more, you have to go inside, ask someone for a menu, wait for that menu, then have a look. But the menu lacks photos! You either have to know what they are describing to you in the menu, or you would have to have already dined there before.

    Does the latter experience sound good? Because that's how too many open-source projects present themselves, and it's to the loss of the volunteer devs and their potential user base.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Gimp doesn't have a marketing problem. Its well known its just that not many people like it. It is not a nice program to use. I think gimp3 fixes a lot of the janky ui but I'll have to try it out again

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, every time I have ever tried Gimp, attempting to do anything felt like someone had purposefully been contrarian and made every operation work in the hardest and most confusing way.

    And someone may say, "well, you just have to learn it!" OK, sure. Or I can use something that makes much more sense from the jump like Affinity Photo. (Yes, I know you have to pay for it, but it's worth it. Yes, I know not everyone has the money to do so.)

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Unless 3.0 has solved it, the gimp has a steep UI problem and a learning curve such that mass appeal on the website would be inappropriate anyway. I love it but I love it because I've been using it my whole life and know it very well. Foss in general struggles with useability due to a lot of hard to overcome problems - mainly, that by the time someone is ready to contribute to any given foss project, they're already intimately familiar with its foibles and probably have strong opinions about what UX elements are sacred cows and should not be fixed.

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    [–] 118 points 2 years ago (5 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.

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    [–] 111 points 2 years ago (15 children)

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

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    The UI looks the same lol

    The layers are the big thing, but its hard to show because the final result looks the same anyways

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  • [–] 53 points 2 years ago* (13 children)

    Aw man i was hoping for a big ui upgrade like when blender released version 2.8 that now even cinema4d is copying.

    I fear gimp truly doesnt care about its ui/ux because technically everything you want to do is possible as long as you learn the ways ans they dont care to attract an audience thats not die hard FOSS people. For example schools havent been able to use it because theyre so deadset on their nsfw name and schools cant have kids googling gimp with the pictures that will show up

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  • [–] 67 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    I opened it, changed brush, got a segmentation fault crash lmao

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    [–] 57 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    So in the end we got gimp 3 before GTA 6

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    To all of the authors below who have disparaging opinions on the UX/UI experience and or the download ability. It’s a volunteer project for a reason. If you have such grand ideas and abilities put your money where your fingers are and fucking sign up.

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    [–] 46 points 2 years ago
    [–] 40 points 2 years ago (22 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.

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  • [–] 26 points 2 years ago

    To be honest, nothing is intuitive in any complex software. Every time I open Photoshop I want to cry in pain. But it isn't because Photoshop is bad (that I don't know actually), but because I am not familiar with it at all

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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    No, no, no. It's the end of times. I can hear the trumpets of the apocalypse.

    Now Valve needs to release half life 3 and the world as we know it will truly perish.

    Jokes aside. I hope this means work on a UI overhaul can seriously begin.

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    [–] 36 points 2 years ago

    GTK 3 support just in time for GTK 4 & 5

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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

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    [–] 25 points 2 years ago

    Now do VLC 4.0 :D

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years 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?

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago

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

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  • [+] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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