For what i heard, a lot of people on the Linux community use Krita for image manipulation, even though, it’s intended for digital painting, and GIMP is the one intended for image manipulation, because people don’t like the GIMP’s UI.
My issue is, i never understood why they don’t like the GIMP’s UI, since i never have issues with it,(Although it’s probably because i’m used to the UI) so i need to adress this problem and ask you What does the GIMP UI has that you don’t like or hate so much and why you like Krita’s UI over GIMP’s?
Before you event comment your answer i need to ask you to do the following:
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Address each specific issue along with an concise and direct explanation of why you don’t like it
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Answers such as “I just don’t like it”, “I don’t like where it’s placed” or anything alike doesn’t count as “Concise and Direct”, we are adults, not 4 year old children.
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If you can provide a suggestion of how GIMP’s UI can be improved, it would help a lot, and maybe this issue can be solved.
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If someone else commented something you were about to comment, upvote them, this way we can address the most common issues effectively.
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I need you to watch the screenshots of both UI’s, because something that most people don’t know, it’s how similar Krita and GIMP’s UIs are.
Krita’s UI
GIMP’s UI
(Credits to a friend of mine for lettig me use the screenshots.)
My ideas on how GIMP can improve it’s UI
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Adding the option of the new UI selected by default, but with the possibility to switch to the new UI.
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Possibly addding “work spaces” like Krita would help too, along with the possibility of exporting and importing them, this way people can have custom arrangements of the UI according to the kind of work they will do.
Thanks for reading and hopefully we can address this issue effectively.
You seem to have a pretty big monitor. Try it on a 13” laptop and you’ll see why it’s harder to use.
You can press the TAB button to temporarily hide all menus. It helps when working on small screens.
You can click the tool, configure it, then hit tab to work on the image. Then tab again to click on the new tool, tab, work on the image. It’s a nice and simple workflow. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s not rocket surgery. I mean, you’re the one trying to do image work on a tiny ass screen. I’m giving you a neat trick that worked perfectly for me. Sorry it is not good enough for you, I guess.
Does GIMP even scale with monitor ratios? That was a huge problem last time I tried it. It’s a 4k world out there.
I cannot answer you that, i don’t have a 4k monitor and i’m not filthy rich to get one, this is latin america my dude.
Now admittedly I’m not someone who often uses drawing programs, but my biggest issue in GIMP is that I never seem to be able to find what I’m looking for.
In the two images you posted you can actually see an example of such a case. In Krita all the tools (or whatever you’d call them) in the bar on the left are ordered in a logical way, and separate types of tools are also visually separated by separator lines. The bar with tools is also only 2 icons wide, which makes scanning for the right tool a bit easier, since you can mostly just scan along the vertical axis. In GIMP it’s just a pile of low contrast icons in seemingly random order. Unless you’ve used it enough to know the order, you’re gonna have to do a lot more searching. And searching will be way harder since you’ll have to search horizontally and vertically.
It’s like reading a website where the text is taking the whole with of the screen and without paragraphs (GIMP) vs reading a website where the line length is constrained, the text is horizontally centered, and there are proper paragraphs.
I feel like this example reflects my personal experience with both. I’ve used quite a few different types of image editing programs, and with most of them I can fairly easily find the stuff I need. Using GIMP however, I used to be quite lost. Nowadays it’s gotten better because the windows are not all floating around and I’ve used it more. But still, I only found Krita after using a fair bit of GIMP, and yet I felt instantly more at home because the UI was easier to navigate.
Edit: That being said, GIMP is a very cool program. I don’t want to hate on it too much. It’s helped me countless times. The UI has already improved a lot since the floaty window days, and I hope that continues.
For me all the things you said about GIMP, but my biggest issue is how layers work in it. It is totally unintuitive to me. Last week I tried to edit some simple image in GIMP, basically pasting some small objects and touching them up. I couldn’t get it to work properly, and would probably have redone it in Photoshop if it was to be used by more than three people for a short period.
you can
That’s the key. can. It needs to not suck by default. If people have to tweak the program to be usable first then nobody’s going to want to use your program.
The deal is, it’s not mine, it’s a Libre Software, so it belongs to everyone, not just me.
Can, but not by default. The default setup is what leaves an impression on most users. Most users opening GIMP for the first time expect to be able to find stuff that they need, not have to first spend a lot of time getting familiar with all of its options. It shouldn’t be needed to first spend time opening all the sane default windows and re-aliging stuff every time you boot it for the first time. At least, that shouldn’t be the case of GIMP wants to be as popular with non-technical users like Krita is.
Also, the tool bar still doesn’t have the nice separations between tool functions, and it still feel a bit more chaotic. Not sure of it’s the icons or the order.
I have not used either, but I can say that Krita’s UI is closer to Photoshop than GIMP’s appears to be. That might be why people are opting for that application, for the sense of familiarity if they were trained on Photoshop.
I will say that any application which is used for digital painting should also be good at image manipulation, so if Krita does both well, I can see why it would be preferred over GIMP if the painting tools are lacking.
Looking over the screenshots, for GIMP, I am hoping that is not the default layout of tools. Having a jumbled block of icons is a lot harder to visually parse than a stack of pairs. I also find myself wondering why they use up so much space on the left to include a weird cutout of their mascot above the tools.
On the right, I am also not sure why the layer thumbnails are pushed so far to the right when they could be immediately adjacent to the visibility toggle.
It doesn’t look terrible to me, but I am not surprised that people using an app for visual design might be more critical of design flaws in the app itself.
Krita lacks a lot of tools to work with photography. It’s OK with general image manipulation but you have to really struggle to do anything that’s not digital painting.
That said. The left side of GIMP is wide because the tool options are under the tool’s icons. While Krita has them on the top as a bar.
Both programs let you move and change the layout to whatever you want, though. No one serious about using either program uses the default. There’s a bunch of stuff you don’t need to use that only takes up space when you’re just doing one particular task. Hence why saving and reloading layouts is such a powerful feature.
EDIT: Here is, for example, my layout.
Also, the little logo on the corner has a purpose. It’s a small area where you can drag and drop any image file from your file explorer and it will automatically open the file for editing, instead of pasting it on the current open project as a new layer. It’s super useful.
That does look better.
For the drag and drop space, however, would a simple “Right Click > Open In” not be easier? Or just dragging the file over the application on the taskbar?
It’s there for convenience. Easy is a very subjective term in this context. Everyone has a different concept of what is easy on a computer. The fact that drag and drop has two, completely differentiated but equally instantly available verbs, is already above and beyond the amount of options other software packages offer.
This sounds a lot like how people would use windows paint for simple things over photoshop. Many folks just want a simplified tool. I was estatic to find out firefox now gives simple pdf editing capabilities instead of me importing it into libre office draw.
I guess i am so used to the layout i barely have a problem, but finding things in GIMP, isn’t it the same as Photoshop? I mean, maybe not for Krita, but in GIMP you can change the settings so the tools are all visible instead of being on little boxes.
Im not sure but im guessing most people complain because they want something intuitive and easy although my wife uses photoshop and I could not get her to use gimp so the layout must be different to some degree.
You can modify the UI to make it look like Photoshop, there are two ways for this:
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Making GIMP look like Photoshop CC 2020 by Davis Media Design https://youtu.be/dY7g2JGyJeQ?si=AQ3uYQxHb7uG0xd3
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Installing the PhotoGIMP addon for GIMP, also by Davis Media Design https://youtu.be/57DNUsf4A-0?si=XSCZhf_6rf4k25qx
I would personally recommend the first one, but it’s up to you.
