GIMP 3.0 is over 96% complete! The GIMP team got sick at the Libre Arts conference over the summer, hence the setback to the release schedule but they are now back making good progress.
Along with non-destructive editing and a colour overhaul we’ve all been waiting for, longstanding critics of the UI/UX will be pleased to hear that GIMP are setting up a UX repository and are looking to build a dedicated team of designers to develop this.
All of these things look set to make the GIMP project feel a lot more current and dynamic. I can’t wait!
And if anyone wants to help out it looks like testing/reporting, donations and updating the help manual are all welcomed by the project at the moment.
Stop teasing! Every week they are this close.
I wanted to comment the same thing.
They have been “closing in” on this release since forever.
I will take a look on it when release. As a graphic designer, try to use gimp is a real pain, but I’m desperate of stop using adobe right now.
How about Krita? I am not a graphic designer but I thought it’s easier to adopt for adobe users. And I use it sometimes.
I understanded krita more like a artist tool for draw than a photo editor.
I’m not a graphics designer, I just occasionally dabble in GIMP. Is it really that bad or is it just different from Adobe? I’ve had some issues at first because the GUI is not intuitive in the slightest but I kind of enjoy the workflow now.
Although the most complicated thing I’ve ever done was recreating an AI generated logo with actual symmetry, logic and around 20 layers.
As a 10+ year GIMP user, yes it’s that bad.
I still use it because it’s the only relatively full featured photo editor that works on all my platforms, but… Yea.
Well, i feel like gimp only have like the 40% of the funcitons and some of the dont work so well. Just starting with no CMYK mode, so I can’t work with printables.
Fair enough, I’m far from an expert when it comes to working with these tools.
For professionals used to Photoshop, yes it is that bad. They want what’s familiar because they’re used to it and they’re busy. They don’t want to learn something new.
If GIMP wanted to increase their userbase by a million overnight, they would make it look more like Photoshop.
To me Adobe has very bad UI, I did try to use it, and first time was awful. Freehand was a lot more intuitive, but when Macromedia was bought, was killed.
I get it, that a lot of people did learn to use Adobe UI, and of course they want the same because they’re used to, but doesn’t make it better.
Affinity is more friendlier than PS to me.
I’m not saying that GIMP UI is perfect or good, but right now, to my casual use case, is not bad. Obviously can be better, and get some ideas from other UIs.
The UI is such a shame. Inkscape and Krita’s UI are so intuitive too
Sure. Sure. They’ve been close or getting closer for 10 years now.
I’ll believe it when it actually releases and not a moment sooner. Otherwise I would be the opposite of shocked if July 2025 rolls around and it’s still not out but still “close”. As I would be if December 2025 rolls around and “there are only a few more issues, very soon!” is the statement. It’s become a joke at this point and likely will remain the butt of jokes and rightfully so for years, perhaps decades to come in the open source and graphics design communities.
Ooh, neat
For those of you looking for adobe alternatives the affinity suite is quite good too, I don’t think it is open source and it is not free but you can make a lifetime license purchase that is not really all that expensive, I think it is one of the best adobe alternatives at the moment because it is so similar both in tools and the ecosystem.
At the moment the rest are all ones that compete with specific adobe apps like darktable being better than lightroom as an example.
I like gimp but all of these software alternatives will just land in a similar spot where the only cohesiveness is that the files can be exported/impirted between eachother.
Affinity really is a great alternative and it’s relatively cheap. There was a concern that when Canvas bought the company they would force a subscription model on it but apparently that’s not the case (yet).
Affinity is really great. The only problem is that i can’t install it on my OS of choice.
true but fear not it can be ran on wine by compiling a custom version and installing .net and everything it needs, but its quite buggy and there is no opencl hardware acceleration on wine from my testing.
and why they dont wanna make a linux build can additionally be found here:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/98932-faq-affinity-on-linux/There’s Winapps, too. It isn’t very easy to install the first time and requires a bit of group policy tweaking on the VM to remove compression, though. Other than that, it works well on my end.
I seen smth like this but ngl the preformance might be worse due to vms overhead there is also wine overhead yes but the vm overhead is worse.
It uses the KVM hypervisor, so it’s not too bad, at least on my computer (Ryzen 7 5700X3D, RX 5700 XT). It might be worth your while.
ohhh
Can someone tell me what the worst UI issues are in GIMP? I only ever used GIMP for casual, easy editing and idk, I don’t really get the hate. I’m not saying there aren’t UI issues, just that I don’t use photo editing software enough to understand them.
It used to be way worse. I first tried gimp 10ish years ago and instead of the program running from a single window it was like the canvas, the hierarchy tree, and every other toolbox had its own separate window. I think they updated that a while ago now.
