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Comment by avhon1 | Hacker News Reader

> For example in Krita you can't resize a crop rectangle with the mouse that holds its aspect ratio

I've never used Krita, but I was skeptical that it can't do this, so I just now installed it and gave it a try. It does have this feature! I made a crop rectangle, then right-clicked on it. A little menu popped up, titled "Crop Tool Actions". One of the things in the menu is a checkbox labeled "Lock Ratio", which was unchecked by default. I clicked the checkbox, and then I could resize the crop rectangle with the mouse without changing its aspect ratio.

Took me under a minute to figure out, having never used the software before or read any documentation. I'd say that's one sign of a decent UI.

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NO RIGHT CLICKING! Nobody does a right click on a crop rectangle. Modifier key. Like you keep shift pressed and it preserves the aspect ratio. Nobody will do another click, then select a menu, then whatever. That's the issue. If you have to edit 100s of images these extra you go the menu, then the submenu, then click, then blablabla, then powpowpow, takes a lot of time. Streamline the user experience. You can only make it better if you use it daily and change the things that frustrate you. If these things doesn't frustate you, and do these over and over and over, then you are a robot and not fit for UI/UX design, so easy.

Modifier keys were the first thing I tried (because that's how I learned to do it in GIMP and Inkscape when I was in high school). When that didn't work, right-clicking on the crop box was the next thing I thought to try. It's a total of 2 clicks: right click to open the menu, then move the mouse down 6 entries, then left-click on the checkbox.

But also, it's my understanding that Krita is not a photo editor, but rather a digital painting program; that any ability it has to edit photos is just because digital paintings are stored in the same file formats as digital photographs. Saying that Krita is unsuited for editing hundreds of photographs is analogous to saying that Visual Studio is unsuitable for creating ASCII art. There are other tools that you're supposed to use for those tasks. For editing hundreds of photographs, I understand Adobe's Lightroom or Bridge to be the intended tools, not Photoshop, nor any tools which are highly similar to Photoshop (GIMP, Krita, or otherwise).

> It's a total of 2 clicks: right click to open the menu, then move the mouse down 6 entries, then left-click on the checkbox.

Ok “2 clicks” is a misleading summary for moving down 6 menu items, and in the end this is an eternity compared to a modifier key.

> NO RIGHT CLICKING! Nobody does a right click on a crop rectangle.

Well, previous commenter just did it. So that just mean that your peremptory decrees are just that. Peremptory and not really universal.

And this is why you will never reach a decent audience for that program

Alternatively it might be the fast that its budget is literally millions of times smaller and with a reasonable budget one would actually hire people instead of hoping random forum talk found its way to implementation via diffusion.

Photopea was developed by a single programmer, runs on the web and it’s leagues more usable than GIMP

I have used both and don't find the difference so huge. Besides photopea doesn't have a quarter of the functionaliti as Gimp, is afaik not controlable from the cli in batch mode. The scope is completely different.

This isn't a good indication that gimp can do as well

It actually is. In fact it mighty be the proof that throwing everything away and writing a new version from scratch might even be preferable

An analysis of a particular project includes its scope, existing code, existing developer resources, the time they have available, the things they themselves are familiar with/good at. Any analysis that involves purely looking at a competing project is probably not even wrong.

The gimp project has provided a decent and useful tool for about 28 years whereas most new projects started from scratch die shortly. A from scratch rewrite would be a massive undertaking which might exceed the available resources/skills and might simply kill a useful project rather than producing a better one.

A glib well this guy did it is not an analysis.

The comment you’re replying to is pretty explanatory and insightful. Do you have anything worthwhile to add here?

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