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GIMP is gearing up for a massive upgrade
(www.gimp.org)
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this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Does the UX still suck though?
Personally, I struggled somewhat until I've found the
Search and Run a Commandaction. It's bound to/on the keyboard by default I think. Otherwise accessible viaMenu > Help > Search and Run a Command.So if I'm clueless where a certain action is in the menu, I just press
/, then type my action as I think it could be named, then try it out. This, together with simply my memory of how to do things, covers 97% of my needs. One time out of 20 or 50 I encounter something that I don't know, at which point I duckduckgo, and the experience can be much worse.Would you say this flow sucks? Or actually, it's fine? It's up to you to decide that.
Nope. You just made the mistake of learning something else first and expecting other tools to match it
There's a name for this phenomenon: the Software Imprinting Dilemma.
This is me with all CAD software 😭
I started with FreeCAD. Never changed 😉
Expecting it to be the exact same and working in an expected way are different. Blender used to select with RMB instead of LMB like every other program in existence, is it really the users fault for finding that stupid?
Following expectations and having a "smooth" workflow is something to aim for unless the standard is really bad. No need to fix what ain't broken
This is true of pretty much all software. So many people expect to be able to pick up LibreOffice office and use it like they use MS office and then get immediately irritated the button doesn’t look exactly the same and give up.
Yeah butlike, I am using Calc, and I use the arrows, and it just, moves the view instead of which cell is selected, which feels really backwards.
I don't recall that to be normal.
I had to check because that sounded crazy. So maybe your scroll lock key is on? If so Excel does the same thing.
I got irritated by the differences, but I was more irritated by Microslop, so it was the lesser of two irritants. I mostly figured it out eventually. Finding H2 is always at the bottom of the entire style list though for some fucking reason like there's no excuse for that kind of mild irritation
You could always move it and submit a pull request. That is one of the beauties of open source!
Y'know what maybe I will. Fuelled by the power of irritation I'll try and fix it. If anyone's reading this in a few months and the header tags are in a logical order; you're welcome
you're right, but i need people to understand that this is simply not a workable solution for most people. the simple fact is if we want the average person to adopt more open source alternatives, it needs to improve usability even without their help. it's not really enough to only cater to us power user nerds with "good enough," and it doesn't win hearts and minds to handwave complaints and tell people to come back with a patch.
We are talking about software built by, in many cases, volunteers. The only way it will get better, or good enough for the average person, is if those who can help do so. The only real alternative in practice is open source the way IBM, Google, and Oracle do it, and they wouldn’t do that anyway if the volunteers didn’t exist.
I remember a guy telling me back in 2015 or so that Gimp was designed for having 2 monitors. At first I tought it made no sense but some yers after I got the chance to try and it way more comfortable to put all toollboxes in a separate monitor.
That explains a lot of stuff actually
I mean, sort of? I picked up Affinity Photo from Photoshop pretty quick because the UX isn't crap.
Again, no, because Affinity is more similar to photoshop.
What exactly, is the "crap" part of gimps UX? I never had an issue with it.
Then again I really liked it when all the elements are not in the same space, it is very similar to high production work using multi monitors and having the actual canvas the focus.
i disagree. i started out on paint shop pro. moved to adobe. and then to affinity.
i have given gimp several chances through the years and it just can't compete.
First thing I always do is set icon scheme to have colors. I don't know who thought monochrome for the tools was a good idea, but it takes me twice as long to find anything.
which part do you dislike? maybe because it fits my mental model very well, but i find the ui to be very intuitive overall. keyboard shortcuts are also pretty simple..
and there's some user made config that makes its ui and keybinds work like adobe photoshop if thats what youre used to
Finding things just feels unintuitive. Like I can never find how to do a basic task like cropping. Or resizing a layer, it does shit like grabs the layer under sometimes, ir just resizes the selection box instead of the selection.