this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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    [–] [email protected] 265 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    It's that phenomenon where people who endured trauma to attain something expect others to also endure the trauma.

    I've tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I'm not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it's hard to learn.

    [–] Xeroxchasechase 80 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Not vonly hard to learn, it lacks some really basic stuff like undestructive ediring (adjusment layers) and such.

    [–] alyth 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I am using 2.99.18 (non release, unstable build). Non destructive editing has landed. You can make adjustments through the usual menus and then enable/disable the adjustment under layer effects.

    [–] Xeroxchasechase 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)
    [–] alyth 4 points 6 months ago

    OHH it even works with text layers!!! you can finally add drop shadow to a text without discarding the text information! ;A:

    [–] grue 11 points 6 months ago

    I thought GEGL was supposed to fix that. Does it not, or are we still waiting on it, or what?

    [–] AppleMango 0 points 6 months ago

    The sudden South Indian accent surprised me (vonly)

    [–] alyth 73 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    I’ve tried learning GIMP, and it sucks. I’m not saying GIMP sucks, but you have to be crazy to not see that it’s hard to learn.

    I use GIMP for memes and here's my two favorite tips

    • Hit the forward slash key / to open a command palette and jump to any action

    • To remove backgrounds, use a layer mask. select around the object and paint a white/black section on the layer mask. Here comes the trick: use a Gaussian filter on the layer mask to create a transition from black to white and the crop job looks a lot less choppy.

    My anti-tip

    • Adding text and shapes sucks and I never found a way to make it better. Export your image and finish the job in Krita, Pinta, Photopea, ...
    [–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    fuck, i neverthought of the gaussian blur thing, i always just traced over the edge with a soft edged brush...

    [–] KISSmyOSFeddit 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I used the Blur Border (or whatever it's called) option that's right there in every selection tool's settings.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)
    [–] werefreeatlast 1 points 5 months ago

    Smart people use terms like gaussian blur to refer to a blur distribution rather than a non technical term such as feather. Feathers are what helps birds fly for example. Let's try:

    "You can feather the pedals on your car to make it drift."

    "You can feather the pedals on your Ford to make it do the Tokyo style turns."

    Which sentence was better 😂?

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    select around the object

    Any tricks on getting the fuzzy select tool to work? Even after adjusting the threshold, it is just garbage in my experience. Nothing close to Affinity/Photoshop. Unless I am selecting something that is in front of a very solid background, I just use a paint brush on a layer mask in order to "cut out" an object.

    [–] alyth 6 points 6 months ago

    I have no tips and agree with you 100% - never managed to get the fuzzy select or smart scissors going.

    [–] dual_sport_dork 53 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    No, GIMP does suck.

    It has the same problem as most FOSS packages that are too wide in breadth and have multiple contributors with their own hobby horses pulling in all different directions, and to this day does not actually provide a feature-complete whole, nor an interface that actually makes sense. And it's not a matter of the workflow just being different -- it categorically fails to replicate functionality that is core to its commercial competitors. Numerous other "big" productivity packages have the same problem including FreeCAD (boy does it ever), LibreOffice, etc. I say this as a staunch supporter of FreeCAD, by the way. It's the only CAD software I use even though it's a pain in my ass.

    The shining exception to this I see is Inkscape, but it is still significantly less powerful than even early versions of CorelDraw.

    For 2D graphics work these days, I hold my nose and just use Corel. I use it for work. Like, actual commercial work. That I get paid for. It is at least a lesser evil than doing business with Adobe.

    And if you want to stick it to the man, it is easily pirated.

    [–] Schmeckinger 35 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    In FOSS most people can program, but only a hand full of people can design a decent UI.

    [–] Drummyralf 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    I always wondered if I could contribute/volunteer to a FOSS somehow with some UIX stuff, but I don't even know where to start. Would you just draw a concept ui for the team to work out or something?

    Not that I'm great at it, but man, we gotta start somewhere, right?

    [–] Schmeckinger 15 points 6 months ago

    This is probably common. The people that work on UI often aren't the people who do pull requests. But I think if you want to contribute it would be best to get in touch with a maintainer on the chat of the project. Projects often have a matrix/irc/discord on the git page.

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

    I think you can start a figma or other collaborative UI/UX as an idea first. If a developer is interested in implementing it, then you move on to the next feature

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    This never ceases to amaze me.

    My old best friend and I used to be a programming tag team that worked pretty well; he'd slap together w semi-functional version of the idea we had and then id go in and make the UI make sense and fix all the logic bugs and typos.

    I'm not saying I'm some perfect UI guru or anything but the way he (and other people I've met) seem to have no internal base knowledge of shit like "similar settings probably shouldn't go on completely opposite sides of the screen under different menus" or "5-deep nested drop-down menus hurt people's souls"

    [–] Theharpyeagle 1 points 6 months ago

    Honestly I still struggle a lot with this. I can click around a UI and feel what might confuse a user, but building a UI from scratch feels like such a shot in the dark.

    [–] ZILtoid1991 6 points 6 months ago

    There's also two main plus one lesser issue that are less commonly discussed:

    1. Lack of manpower. FOSS devs often doing it as a side project on top of some other and/or a full-time job, so that even lowers one's ability of concentrate on stuff like the UI, when you're already working hard on fixing bugs, looking up things (which is getting harder and harder thanks to AI slop - I once managed to destroy a Linux on my Raspberry Pi while trying to adjust the path variables).
    2. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable parts of your application. There are many times I haven't noticed a a very uncomfortable part of my GUI after months of use, then I had to refactor things, which obviously took time away from other things. This also affects the users already in the userbase.

    Elitism is also a factor. A lot of people like the feeling of being part of a special group, and for them, the steep learning curve is a feature, not a bug. I've seen Blender users being angry at the devs for "spoonfeeding" the normies, and letting in all kinds of people. Also just look at OP's image.

    [–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    So, why do UI people not use and contribute to FOSS then? Are they all on Mac? Then go complain to them or contribute your desired UI improvements. FOSS isn't an all you can eat buffet.

    Personally, I think UI people are less idealistic and I do look down on them for that.

    [–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

    It's super hard to get involved as a UI person. If you're a developer, you can just rock up to a project and fix bugs, and if you follow the coding style they'll probably get accepted.

    If you want to successfully contribute as a UI person you have to convince a bunch of developers that you know what they should be doing better than they do. It basically never happens.

    [–] AdrianTheFrog 8 points 6 months ago

    Blender is also great, probably because it has organized teams, meetings, ongoing large projects, deadlines, etc

    [–] grue 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    I've worked professionally both using and developing (proprietary) CAD software, but even I have trouble getting FreeCAD to do what I want.

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

    Same. I have used SolidWorks, SolidEdge, CATIA and Unigraphics/NX...freecad just frustrated me

    [–] pennomi 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    Oh god FreeCAD is a nightmare to learn. But it does get work done. I wish Blender could move more into that space.

    Inkscape is lovely but imo it could use some interface cleanup. (And really it has been getting better each major update.)

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

    KiCAD has also improved greatly over the last few years. It still has an opinion on how the work flow should be, but that work flow moves pretty well. It's gotten easier to find pre-made footprints, too.

    If only library management didn't suck.

    [–] hydrospanner 31 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    The Autodesk forums are 40% this, 20% "just learn to program, spend a few years getting good at it, then write yourself a custom script to do what you are struggling with", 20% "you are wrong for wanting that in the first place" or "you are wrong for having this issue", 15% "this has been brought up once at some point in the past two decades, try searching", 4% "OMG yes I have this issue too!"...

    ...and 1% split between actual helpful answers, and confirmation that it's a known issue.

    [–] TheTetrapod 17 points 6 months ago

    Yeah, I recently found a post there where a person wanted to modify a downloaded mesh. The first comment was telling them they would need years of experience to do it well. The OP responded that they had figured out a solution that they were happy with, to which someone told him that his results were shitty and then explained a way to do it better. When the OP got upset at this back to back dismissal, everyone unanimously decided they were an asshole.

    [–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    So much this

    It's infuriating trying to find solutions to issues with Autodesk.

    But you did forget a classic one: "Hello I'm X from Autodesk support, you should open a support ticket so we can discuss this issue in a more one on one manner." And then the thread is closed without a solution.

    [–] hydrospanner 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Oh yeah that's a good one too.

    The old "you embarrassed the company, report to the principal's office".

    [–] dual_sport_dork 9 points 6 months ago

    "And if I do give you a solution, we'll be sure not to share it with anyone else."

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

    I've been happier worth with Bricscad, but I mostly just need it for designing stuff to 3d print, so your mileage may vary.

    It's also not FOSS, of course, but I haven't yet found FOSS cad software that works for me.

    [–] hydrospanner 2 points 6 months ago

    I'm only drafting for career not hobby at this point, so it's all industry standard software.

    One of these days, when I have a house, I might get into 3D printing, but not for the foreseeable future.

    For 3D stuff, I'm good with Inventor, but it certainly has it's quirks.

    [–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

    I'm saying GIMP sucks (it sucks)

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

    I stuggled with GIMP at first, it was super frustrating because it does UI things differently than other image tools. i.e. in other tools your active layer masks your drag selection, and in GIMP I would constantly be grabbing lmages from another layer, till I realized the pixel under pointer determines what image is moved. That function can make you highly productive since you don't need to preset layer, but god was it enraging at first

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

    I've been using Gimp for years. It's the only way I know. If I tried to use photoshop I would have a hard time getting anything done too. I'm really good with gimp though.

    [–] Drummyralf 13 points 6 months ago

    I've used Gimp all through my teenage years. And I used it a LOT. It was quite a difficult transition to Photoshop (which my workplace uses). But once I got the hang of photoshop, I realized how convoluted Gimp really is.

    Half the time spent in Gimp is making backups before making an edit. A third of your layers will be backup layers in case you change your mind about a design decision. The whole design process is super inflexible and therefor kills creativity.

    Want to use an effect like gaussian blur or drop shadow? Make sure you backup your layer! Want to edit text after you stretched it all out? I hope you made a backup of that layer! Want to work with large files with many layers? You better hit ctrl S after every edit, because the program just might crash on you if you make a difficult selection!

    To be fair, I haven't used much Gimp since 2.8, so if stuff is different now: awesome! And I admire all volunteers that work to make stuff better. But for now, I'll stay away from it if I need to do heavy editing.

    [–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Photoshop is also hard to learn. What's your point? Just because it's different to what you used to does not means it's more or less difficult to learn.

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I'm not used to photoshop so I can't say anything about that.

    I was a big fan of paint.NET but now that I stopped using Windows, it's the only software that I really miss.

    It had fewer features than GIMP, but it was so intuitive yet surprisingly powerful.

    Have not found a similarly amazing alrernative, I wish Wine could make it work...

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    Not having Paint.NET sucked when I switched to Linux. I got very used to it and that was the one I missed most... it took a few years bouncing between programs but I'm happy with Krita now. GIMP just never clicked for me unfortunately.

    I sometimes think about making a Paint.NET clone for linux but i have too many other projects and hobbies i wanna do instead yk

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

    You could contribute to Pinta, which I'm pretty sure has the same vision

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

    Ooo cool, thanks for sharing!

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

    Does it run with WINE? iirc it was used a lot as an example for wine on android because it supported windows-on-arm