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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Photo Pea is where it's at. Browser based Photoshop clone. Unless you're doing art, then go with Krita.
Gimp is needlessly unintuitive. I've used a ton of programs since I was 10 - I've ran Paint Shop Pro (JASC days), Corel Painter, Photoshop (all versions since 7), Krita, Inkscape, a tiny program called Paintstorm Studio, various Oekakis when those were a thing, paint tool SAI, and now Procreate. I have NEVER seen a program weirder than GIMP. People defend GIMP with the old "just because it's not Photoshop doesn't mean it's bad". My dude I've used programs that were entirely in Japanese and they made more sense than GIMP. The way the tools function and where they're located makes no sense.
And now Krita does 99% of everything you'd need GIMP for as the average person (cropping, filters, a bit of editing). There's not a good reason to get GIMP. I'm genuinely confused because the features are there, I'm not sure why they don't reskin the damn thing already.
Thing is.
I've used GIMP for the better part of the last 15 years...
Now everything else makes no sense. I tried Kita multiple times already and it never works out and I go back to GIMP.
GIMP broke me, rebuilt me and made into one of their own.
Gimp's brushes leave a lot to be desired. Photoshop has had vector like brushes for years, Krita has them as well these days, but it still feels like Gimp has rastery pixels on the edge of brushes.
Given that I typically used GIMP for pixel art when I got started, that was never really a problem for my use case. These days I try to use Aseprite for that purpose but GIMP was able to do what I needed it to easily enough while being free and easy to download. It's got its limits but it's what I know. These days I mostly use it for its relatively unique (and charmingly janky) filters as well as regular contrast/hue/etc adjustments
Pixel art might be an exception, you're right. But to be fair, people can make pixel art in Paint. I mean, I'm sure it's not fun to do it in Paint, but it's very much the "ballpoint pen on notebook paper" of digital art.
Oh don't get me wrong, I do know that GIMP is not the best, but I rarely ever use it anyways and then never have the time to really dig into something else.
If it works for you, I'm happy. I'm just frustrated when GIMP is recommended to newbies looking into FOSS art programs. I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about FOSS art programs because thier first introduction was GIMP. As a result I feel like we have a lot more people who are in the apple ecosystem, when in reality being artistic shouldn't necessarily come paired with really expensive products. I mean most artists are broke and creative, and a lot of them have very left leaning ideals. FOSS art programs and cheaper hardware should be a natural fit, IMO.
Don't you worry then, I will never ever recommended GIMP. When asked today, I recommended Krita and Inkscape (for Vectors)
Hugs to you. Honestly I just want the hardware support for drawing tablets to get better (on Linux), and I want Krita to work well on Android eventually. I bought an iPad even though I own nothing in the Apple ecosystem because it's just the wiser choice when it comes to drawing tablets with screens. But it's so much better than the days people told me to "just get GIMP, it's like Photoshop but free" - also the nightmare of trying to make my Wacom tablet work in Ubuntu... Dark days. We've come so far.
I see again, I appear to be one of the few since I have an old Wacom Tablet with good support on Linux. It's admittedly one of those without a screen, though.
This was years ago (2010 I think) before the good Linux driver for Wacom was made. Or maybe during the infancy days of it. I had a Bamboo Fun. It's funny to me that I've been fiddling with Linux since 2010 - growing up during the recession made me pretty receptive to making free solutions work, even if it meant troubleshooting things I didn't understand and crying at 2am because it's not working. I went back to Linux last year and it's been insane how easy it all is.
Word.
My daily driver including for gaming with my friends is PopOS for like a year now. Never looked back through all the Win11 stuff and multiple vulnerabilities including the recent one with Minecraft that didn't affect me since Linux figure out containers like a century ago.
How do you like PopOS? I've been on Ubuntu for about a year and I like it but... It's Ubuntu. I don't necessarily love how the file system is set up, and snaps... Just... Snaps. I've been considering either Mint or Pop.
I like it for a lot of reason, but it's certainly not perfect. (but they're working on it...)
But Mint and Pop are both Ubuntu-based, so I don't know if that will be better.
I like that Pop has Flatpaks and steam included but it and Linux are still missing quote a few features to make them great.
For example: I have 1 4k and 1 HD monitor but cannot use them with their respective resolution.
Also Flatpaks are installed in home and I hatte that and the only workaround (I found) is not using the Pop-Shop but CLI and creating a custom install directory.
I'm not very worried about the monitor thing, right now I have some basic 1080p monitors and I may just eventually get one big great monitor. Hopefully just one monitor will not give me issues? How was gaming on Pop? I had a bit of a time getting Nvidia to work - kept getting some error. I needed to get the reinforcements (aka software dev boyfriend) to help. I heard Pop comes preinstalled with a lot of drivers.
Oh right, Pop ships with the non-FOSS Nvidia drivers and the only thing you should look out for is not updating those first thing in the morning because you will need to restart the PC right after.
I dont really play AAA-games, so your mileage may vary.
Gaming is great. I mainly use Steam with Proton which gives me most games (see protondb) and otherwise Look out if the games are available on Linux in any way, which a lot are. The exception being some restrictive multiplayer titles using BattleEye or EasyAnticheat or stuff.
A little overview of what I am playing/played recently:
Thanks for sharing this! I also play Steam with Proton and the only games I play are Minecraft, Stardrew, and the Sims 4 (modded). I want to switch distros but I don't want to have to deal with the Nvidia thing again so if POP ships with drivers outta the box, I'll be happy.
I need to try some of those other games. I'm not big on any major AAA titles myself.
Okay, if you like Steam and Proton, try the Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris.
Both allow you to play non-Linux games via Wine.
Lutris already has user-built configs and a lot of built-in shops which is great.
And Heroic allows you to install games from gog and Epic with Wine or Proton. There you have to do a little bit of trial and error but can get games you otherwise wouldn't easily be able to play.
I've had a pretty bad time time to get Heroic to work, but I'm very slow with this stuff. I think I'm a very non-tech person that constantly attempts techy things... And the results are all over the place!
I'll try it again soon, but I'm garbage at getting anything Wine related to work. Why I put myself through this, I'll never know.
If I remember correctly, that unintuitiveness is by design. From what I saw they seem really perturbed by the notion that it should function how most people use similar programs.
Gimpshop was a thing (where they moved the tools to make it look more like Photoshop) but the Gimp people got upset.
You can still set up PhotoGIMP but it's not good IMO. Making something unintuitive on purpose is strange and oddly elitist. Procreate is totally different than Photoshop but both programs have designs that make sense. Hell, I prefer Inkscapes interface to Illustrator. Nobody says you have to copy the paid product as long as your interface actually makes sense.