162 karma · joined November 29, 2024
GIMP's maintainer has half-seriously said that he's not even thinking about another GUI library change/port until after GIMP 3.6. I think we want to get more features available for users first, so we don't fall into same trap of 2.10 -> 3.0 where we mixed doing both at once.
The challenge of new GTK versions is that they keep simplifying things, because it's aimed at software that's much less complex than GIMP. For instance, the tree views that GIMP relies on for so many things like layer docks are deprecated in GTK4. To deal with that, we'll have to do some redesigns of core features.
There's no intermediate layer in-between GIMP and GTK. It wouldn't be impossible to code, but with the current number of volunteer developers, it would mean further delaying features that most users care more about.
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!
To your first point, it's difficult to know people's frame of reference online. I've listened to many complaints on forums, only to find out the person was thinking of older versions of GIMP and it no longer applied (like multi-window mode being default, outlining text being an ordeal, etc). We also see plenty of feedback like https://lemmy.world/post/50729195/25325527, so it's not always easy to figure what's universally illogical.
I'm not deflecting or saying that GIMP's UI is perfect the way it is - there's a lot of improvements I want to make to the non-destructive filter UI alone. But we can see that real people use the software for real work, so we try to keep existing users in mind when making UI improvements since it impacts them and what they do. There's been some well intentioned UI/UX requests I've implemented that ended up breaking a lot of people's workflows, and those still weigh on my soul. :)
(Obligatory plug for our UX tracker if you feel like providing specifics on UI problems you've encountered: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it...)
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
1) When you apply a filter, there's a "Merge filter" checkbox. If you check it, filters will be merged down immediately like in 2.10. The setting is remembered, though currently the unique Color filters are remembered separately from the generic ones.
2) If you go to Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts and search for "Paste as Floating Selection", you can bind Ctrl + V to it so that you get the 2.10 floating selection behavior.
For instance, we were repeatedly told that copy+paste creating a floating selection instead of a new layer was confusing and aggravating for users. So we changed it in 3.0 to make a new layer like other software. While we got praise from some people, we started getting new complaints that we'd broken people's workflow (see https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/1vmrza2/it_is_not_str... for a wide range of user feedback as one example)
That doesn't mean we don't try to improve things (obligatory link to our user design feedback site: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work_it...), but making big changes is difficult when you have an existing user base who are using your software successfully as-is.
It's still in-progress, so we'll have more technical details in the 3.3.2 release news.
However, if you see an older issue that could use some UX design discussion, feel free to suggest it be moved.
Then people can easily download and install it directly in GIMP, hopefully making everyone happy.
(Also, currently our OpenRaster support is a plug-in that calls our PNG plug-in to do the rendering, so we'd have to rewrite it to be a core process if we wanted to use it as our main project file).
I share this link a lot in the hopes that more people take us up on it, and provide specifics on where problem areas are for their workflow. So many people use GIMP in so many different ways, even something that seems "obviously bad" to one group might not be encountered by others.
For instance, we had one person submit a merge request to convert the entire GIMP codebase into Python, and it was just tons of files with stubcode implementations. Another person submitted a fix for our OpenEXR plug-in to load YCbCr images, and when I reviewed it, they'd "imported" a non-existent version of the library that had an imaginary "OpenYCbCrOpenEXR ()" function. :)
If you're willing to test, is that comment correct - do the blending modes for filters work for you like Fade use to? If not, I'd be interested in learning more about what is lacking in the current version. Thanks!
I'll say that I got a lot of encouragement and help when I started working on non-destructive editing - there was definitely no one on the team dismissing it (except for some users, oddly enough)
That seems clear enough to me about our focus, though one thing I've learned since I've started contributing is that whatever you think is clear enough, probably isn't! (Hopefully that doesn't come across as sarcastic - I mean it sincerely. I've helped out with writing news posts and been amazed at seeing how people interpret sections I thought were perfectly clear. It's been a learning experience!)
The "more like MS Paint" group tends to be longtime users who often prefer the destructive editing approach of GIMP 2. We try to respect people who currently use the software, while also trying to implement new features as intended on the roadmap.
Given the number of great open source art programs today, I don't think we're keeping anyone from doing anything. :)
GIMP is meets a lot of people's needs though (though we can always do that better). I'm in the process of transcribing interviews by GIMP's maintainer from professional artists who use GIMP and other free/libre software in their workflows, and it's really interesting to see what they're able to do.
More seriously, we're trying to attract more designers and design feedback, just like we do for coding. We're also trying to document UX standards (see https://developer.gimp.org/core/ for early work) so there'll be a consistent experience as new developers join and features are added.
I've gotten equal parts praise and complaints for working on that - some people think it makes GIMP much more intuitive, while others find it interfers with their workflow of quickly copying, editing, and merging back down pieces of a layer.
Non-destructive resize works on vector layers and link layers (essentially "smart objects" in GIMP). We have the capability to do this for regular layers too - just need to connect some things and change some internal assumptions about transform filters.