I've been very impressed with Gimp lately - there was a time that it was clunky and crashy, Windows builds were difficult to find, and usually out of date, and I often felt like I was only persevering with it on principle. In recent years though, it's been wholly solid. Was there a change in project leadership, or something - maybe just a new development workflow? I've known plenty of seemingly-moribund projects spring to life just from someone spending a few days knocking up better build scripts...
I've been using Gimp for ages (15 to 20 years) and it was always solid for me. Maybe I was just using the more stable features? But I've mostly used it on Linux. My major gripe was the Save / Export fiasco [0] but even that is OK now thanks to Saver plugin [1].
Can GIMP load psd files correctly? I seem to remember that there was some trouble loading psd files, but I don't remember exactly what.
Edit to add: I ask because if GIMP cannot handle the de facto standard image file type without too much fiddling, people won't touch it. It is the same problem LibreOffice has, actually.
You can't expect a non-proprietary tool to handle a proprietary file format 100% correctly. People who have no need for file formats that only work with Adobe software can use GIMP just fine.
The notes OP linked to indicate that there are more fixes included in this version. It is likely what importing a .doc in open office was 10 years ago. It proably works 99% of the time but that 1% will be right before an important deadline or something.
"Better PSD Support
The PSD plug-in now supports a wider range of blending modes for layers, at both importing and exporting: Linear Burn, Linear Light, Vivid Light, Pin Light, and Hard Mix blending modes. It also finally supports exporting layer groups and reads/writes the Pass Through mode in those. Additionally, GIMP now imports and exports color tags from/to PSD files."
I don't use GIMP to load PSDs, but I don't remember the last time I had a problem with a Word doc in LibreOffice.
Only as long as it's just bitmap layers with masks, and images are in RGB. Text layers will be rasterized. The rest of the features will usually be dropped.
A .psd file is not an end-user asset. I can think of no use case where someone would point a browser at a hosted .psd and expect that binary file to render as an inline image.
A .psd file was, for a good chunk of the past twenty years, the "de facto standard" file format for teams or entire departments of graphic artists who spent all day, every day in Photoshop. I once worked for an online ad agency and Photoshop was used more often, by more people, than MS Word and Excel combined. The Network Effect was in full force. Graphics teams at three different companies cooperating on the same campaign would assume that their counterparts were using Photoshop, and would expect to send and receive .psd files. Man, Adobe must have been printing money in those days.
If you worked in print publishing, digital publishing, advertising, marketing, there was probably a graphics department of people who spent all day in Photoshop... and an IT department that was constantly trying to add new server capacity as fast as those artists were consuming it. Back when we measured server storage in GB, not TB, fifteen different versions of the same massive PSD file could cause real heartburn.
Anybody in graphics design for more than 5 minutes any time in the last 25 years knows what a PSD file is. Because you are not familiar with a (defacto) industry standard doesn't make it non-standard.
The format is binary and extremely convoluted, in part because it attempts to maintain compatibility with 20 years of versions of Photoshop. Because of this complexity, I am unaware of any program that can read or write a PSD file that supports all features of Photoshop. I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp).
> Anybody in graphics design for more than 5 minutes any time in the last 25 years knows what a PSD file is. Because you are not familiar with a (defacto) industry standard doesn't make it non-standard.
True. I haven't used any program for image editing other than GIMP since 1996 (which I first installed on a GNU/Linux system running on a Sun Sparcstation 20!)
> I am in fact aware of no non-Adobe program that will read and write a Photoshop file with editable text layers (including Gimp).
That's just a consequence of being so incredibly standard.
It's only a 'standard' for those closed-minded industrial drones who won't ever contemplate using something different. This is the attitude that causes awesome, innovative software to disappear beneath a morass of "But it's not industry standard!".
I create graphics. I don't use any Adobe software. Adobe isn't the only graphics software company out there.
Not merely a single application, the entire network of Adobe applications, and the interoperability between them, which doesn't just mean still images, but audio and visual effects in commercials, film, video games, physical print, professional photography. Almost any visual media outside of the browser at some point interacts with Adobe and PSD files.
And someone whose employability is probably tied to a specific OS, toolchain or software stack really shouldn't throw stones.
In this case standard meant industry standard. If you are working in the graphics industry (and web industry in agency world) people will send you psd files ALL the time. If you cannot open it accurately then you work off inaccurate designs and deliver a poor product.
de facto and standard are basically opposites. Except when standard is used as a synonym for "the way things are due to some hegemony or similar situation".
My complaint is basically: fuck off with the Adobe in a thread about Gimp. If you think the Adobe program is better or must work with every possible instance of its files, or you just feel good to use a de facto standard, go use the Adobe program.
Gimp is its own thing; it is not an open source clone of Adobe Photoshop. Never has been.
So they're opposites, except in this exact situation? Cool.
> My complaint is basically: fuck off with the Adobe in a thread about Gimp
OK, sure, but maybe you should have A) said something resembling that in the first place instead of attempting some inane linguistic argument, and B) replied to the person who introduced the comparison rather than the one who had a pretty salient response to that.
It's not a matter of "career stability." It's a matter of the printer you send work to only being willing to work with PSD or PDF. If no one uses Gimp, and none of your tools integrate with Gimp's native format, and no one else's tools do either, and no one can open the files in their email, making them less portable than Adobe files, then Gimp is a technical liability, regardless of its quality.
The issues with finding builds for Microsoft Windows platforms was what got me into GIMP development. Not for the releases, because those usually came about in a matter of days, but daily builds (or sometimes hourly) which tracked development exactly.
> In recent years though, it's been wholly solid. Was there a change in project leadership, or something - maybe just a new development workflow?
Not really, no.
There are a few new contributors like Jehan Pages, Thomas Manni, and Ell. But the majority of the work is still done by Michael Natterer, same as 5+ years ago.
Probably sounds silly, but I absolutely love Gimp and Inkscape, and use them both everyday. Their poor support on Mac was one of the reason I switched back to Windows.
It's odd, because I've read all the arguments about how OSX is a unix, etc., but in the real world I've found better success running user facing open source application on Windows.
It's true for anything with a GUI using GTK or similar. For cmdline, macOS is generally a lot better. WSL is getting really good as well, so cmdline on Windows (well, it's actually Linux, but running on Windows) is getting really good. Other open source things (like Emacs) has macOS and Windows native GUI support built in and mostly works great on all platforms.
I don't understand, GNU is not Unix, Unix is not open source, OSX is a +/- closed source of a fork of BSD. How using a Mac supports Free sowtware or even open source?
I curious as to who is using GIMP for serious work. I have tried it numerous time in the past but always end up going back to PS. As of late I been making a switch to Affinity Photo but have always been pulling for GIMP.
I'm not the most advanced Photoshop user but after 12 years I've made the switch to Gimp for all of my personal and professional use. Unfortunately most designers are still on Adobe so I am stuck with Photoshop and Illustrator when working with others.
Would you say that switching to Gimp added to your professional toolset, or enabled you to do anything that you weren't able to before? Does it make you more competitive professionally?
I used it quite a bit, but I don't recommend it for everybody.
- +90% of my work is on linux. While gimp has progressed to the point of being marginally useful on windows, it's terrible on MacOS. The difference between using it on Linux and another OS is quite dramatic.
- It is not a 100% replacement for Photoshop. There are significant differences in functionality, both in scope and workflow. That said, in conjunction with Krita, DarkTable, Inkscape, and Scribus I've had all the functionality I've ever needed that would otherwise require the Adobe Suite (and differnt OS)
- I don't really have to collaborate with 3rd parties using Adobe Suite. If that were the case it would be difficult, if not impossible to make it work.
I have used GIMP and only GIMP for all my raster work for the last 12 years. Including photos for several cases of book publication. Nothing all that fancy. Cleaning, color corrections, repair, etc. I have yet to encounter a job it isn't up to.
This is the first I've heard of Affinity Photo. The feature list looks very complete, for what I use on a regular basis. Are you a long-time Photoshop user? How does it compare?
I have used PS for 15+ years mostly for photography work. I would not describe myself as a power user but so far I like it. The biggest advantage PS has over anything else (including GIMP) is training, the Adobe ecosystem has so much rich training out there. Most of what I need I have found in Affinity Photo and it even does some things better. The interface is similar to PS that a transition is not too difficult. The app is still at 1.5 so I'm sure there are features I will find missing at some point.
I'm not a designer, but a web developer (professionally for about 10 years) and I've done very serious work with it. It's been pretty much enough for my needs so far.
Occasionally using it on a Mac. Most of the time I force quit it, though, because it loads fonts forever. It's not a "quickly open and edit a file" tool for me.
That's not really likely to help. The main issue appears to be that since fontconfig (a lib used by GIMP) is only "native" to Linux, for it to know about the TTF files, it has to scan them all and build it's cache at startup. For people with hundreds of fonts installed it can be a real PITA.
I avoid it by being careful to not exit GIMP entirely (simply closing all the editing windows) until I am sure I won't need it again for awhile.
The fontconfig cache is created on all platforms - it's just that this step is usually done when installing the system or adding new fonts from the package manager for your average Linux distro. Granted, it also works much faster there in general.
Adding a few new fonts for a specific project does not cause long delays on any platform.
A compounding issue was that file locking issues prevented successful cache updates on the Windows platforms until recent versions of fontconfig, this lead to a long startup time on every start.
Yeah, you most likely got rid of an existing cache, which couldn't be updated due to file locking. That issue is fixed in recent versions of the fontconfig library.
A fairly current one is shipped with the 2.9.6 installer, so many of the infamous issues should be gone.
Good to know is that odd minor releases by GIMP are, like GNOME's, considered unstable. In other words, 2.9.x could be seen as beta releases for 2.10 (which is why things like the parallel stuff might explode in your face).
GIMP doesn't support Smart Objects. This alone makes it not usable for professional work, when compared to Photoshop. The cost of the latter is nothing if you are getting paid for your work.
Non-destructive is where GIMP is heading as a whole. The GEGL port needs to be completed first for many of the sub-features to be reasonably implemented.
That makes me feel old; I remember quite well the time when PS didn't have smart objects either. Was about to make a comment along the lines of "it isn't that old feature in PS either" and then checked the timeline and oh, smart objects were introduced a decade ago. Although I do think that they weren't all that popular (or good) from the get-go.
The worst part is that it used to allow panning outside the canvas. At some point, they broke it in fullscreen (or non-fullscreen, I don't remember). Then they broke it in the other mode. They also removed the option to hide all windows with the tab key, which was extremely useful when working on a small screen. And they also moved all their color filters into another large window you have to open, obscuring your canvas. It's clear that they develop this app on a massive screen, and give no thoughts to the people who might want to use it on a 13'' MacBook.
I recently installed a fresh version of GIMP (for the purpose of running the exporter script so I can import the layers from photoshop files into the Spine animation tool). I'm only using it as an elaborate runtime for that script, but my impressions are that the UI is basically the same as I remember it from 15 years ago. So, while it's features may have improved, the UI does not seem like it's improved at all.
> So, while it's features may have improved, the UI does not seem like it's improved at all.
That's actually a bonus point in my book. If it ain't broke don't fix it. I like that when I start Gimp anywhere I can just start using it. I am not a designer though.
Many people would argue that it is broken and needs fixing ;-)
I used to love GIMP and didn't have any huge problems with it (although, at the time, I liked the multi window layout because I was using a tiling window manager), but then I tried photoshop and the photoshop UI was simply much easier for me to navigate. Now I use GIMP only because its free.
I've always disliked the large widgets (very tall buttons, sliders, etc.). Every now and then I look at some screenshots from the newest GIMP version and there's no indication they're going to change.
But make sure that they don't make sliders too small - you'll lose the ability to do either fine relative or coarse absolute adjustments by dragging their lower or upper half.
More info on how to participate (including not only development of GIMP itself but also filing bug reports or creating web content): [2]
[1] - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRME...
[2] - https://www.gimp.org/develop/