I appreciate the annotated screenshot! I'll compare with our default view and see what's applicable and fixable. We also have a pending merge request to do a more thorough redesign of the Text tool options if you're interested in looking at that: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/merge_requests/2374
> It's not the "default" view, it's just a screenshot I grabbed from my own development build.
Prooobably best to avoid that in release notes. It is official communication, so people expect that the final release will also look like that. I know the default UI is now the Dark Mode (as it is on my machine), but besides the colors it isn't immediately obvious to a casual reader what else is theming versus UI design.
We're normally more selective with screenshots in actual release notes, but since this was a (even more) informal development update post, I used what photos were available (for instance, the spectral blending video and native file chooser dialogue picture use a different theme).
Thanks again, and I'll see what we can do about both of your design feedback!
As we've seen with Blender: all it takes is a few handful of people who really care about the UX to turn a project from a developer-focused "I guess it technically has all the parts?" into a user-focused "It is actually a pleasure to use and it is free - why haven't you switched yet?".