Cue the 20-minute alley fight!
Wait, you can’t make circles in GIMP? This has to be false. If my memory serves me well, I remember using GIMP for a school project back in the day and I’m pretty sure it could make circle.
Good meme. Thank you for your service
I enjoyed that movie way more than I should have 😂.
Under the hood I actually really like GIMP. I’m also not too bothered by there being no circle tool. My problem with GIMP is that if there were a circle tool in it, its a little too difficult to find it if it does exist.
If they had some front end re-write eventually where they just moved some stuff around and better organized the front end of the application, I think a lot more people would use it. UX/UI is really important, and I’m sure the contributors of GIMP know this as they seem to have done well to try to make the interface feel straightforward by putting stuff under menu’s and whatnot, but the location of things just seems unintuitive/non-standard compared to what every other application does.
The other issue I have with GIMP is just that its development cycle takes forever compared to most every other open source application I have seen.
Not to say there is a great answer to any of this, image manipulation/animation software is not an easy thing to program by any means so I understand why it can take forever, but I just wish there was a real answer.
In the mean time, I’ve just been trying to get by with krita, though krita really seems geared toward digital painting specifically.
People who complain about GIMP have never had to use Inkscape. Now THAT is one horribly unintuitive UI.
I have used inkscape though it has been some time. I felt as though it was not super featureful at the time so the UI felt slightly barren compared to something like Adobe Illustrator, but I don’t recall having the same kind of trouble with it that I do with GIMP honestly.
A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key
/to open a command paletteThat is interesting and I did not know that. Thanks.
You can replace GIMP with Blendee or Freecad and it works just as well
Don’t even get us started on Blender’s UX/UI design.
Haha, yes the feeling is similar there, though I think I personally still had an easier time learning blenders current workflow.
I’m assuming my downvotes are people who have never used blender, lol
I only see one on your previous comment, but it could be because blender has recently started getting a better reputation for usability/learnability.
6 years ago I touched it and I was horrified, but I touched it a few times this year and found they had made some good improvements.
Hi, this complaint sounds vaguely familiar and I know it’s just indicative of that type of problem, but can you elaborate on what you mean by no circle tool?
I haven’t used GIMP in a long time but if I remember correctly there’s an ellipse tool and I think there’s a modifier that can constrain the aspect ratio so you can make circles. I might be wrong though.
I think what you are thinking of is the ellipse selection tool, and yes this exists and can be used - however I am referring to the tool class of geometric shapes which is quite common among other software. Basically it creates a vector (In most cases I think) shape with options for stroke and fill, and controls the same way that the ellipse selection tool does (constraints etc.).
GIMP does not have this, instead you have to go through a decent amount of trouble to get simple geometric shapes drawn to the screen, and at that I believe they are always raster.
Take these procedures as an example for GIMP.
https://www.alphr.com/make-shapes-gimp/
This makes GIMP difficult if you want to use it for some niche uses such as making a quick flow diagram, or a quick vector mask which can be changed later.
Not saying GIMP’s UI is great (I only use it occasionally), but efficient UI isn’t necessarily an “intuitive” UI. I.E. an intuitive UI may not be efficient for a professional that takes the time to learn it and works with the UI ~40 hours/week.
True, but I prefer intuition over efficiency when I pick something up for the first time, second time, and third time, until I eventually have a good enough understanding to begin worrying about efficiency.
There are use cases for Libre office writer, just as there are for vim, even though they are both capable of producing text documents. One is arguably more intuitive while one is arguably more efficient, but if I didn’t know anything about word processing/text editing and had to pick between the two, I would pick writer.
Same goes for anything else, and it’s also why a decent number of text editors/software support emacs/vim bindings - so that you can use the software intuitively, and then once you understand it, you can become more efficient by using modal bindings. Same goes for GIMP versus other software. The thing about other softwares in the same genre is that they can be learned relatively easily and can also be used efficiently. GIMP I find harder to learn, even if it is efficient later.
For anyone who is new who has to make a choice as well - very few people would pick vim to start out with.
Furthermore, in this instance, I do have a decent amount of photo editing experience and have used multiple softwares to do it, but even after that, the problem I have with GIMP is that a lot of this knowledge does not transfer to GIMP like it does for other software. If I learn photoshop, I can get away with using affinity, krita, corel draw, clip studio, and other software - but not nearly as easily GIMP.
I would also argue that efficiency is equally dependent upon the software as it is the task. The workflow for digital painting, animation, and photo editing are all quite different, and no one UX/UI is the most efficient at all of them. This is why most of these softwares have modular interfaces, which is good, but I simply find the modular interface of GIMP harder to use or understand versus the rest.
We have ISO standards. Fuck every single company that ignores those (Microsoft, Apple, …).
And fuck ISO for charging so much for access to them.
As an engineer: 1000% agree.
Seriously, why do I have to pay a value somewhere close to £1000 for a set of FUCKING PDFs?!?
This is ridiculous. Make money from audits, certifications, training, and conferences. You can still make absolute stacks from those. Why the fuck do I or my company need to shell out thousands just so we know what to certify against to be able to sell stuff?!
It’s a fucking racquet and they know it. But it’s either one of 3 options:
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Find someone who’s willing to send you the PDF or log in credentials for a library service that has access to these standards.
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Take the risk downloading PDFs from dodgy sites you found on the 5th page of duckduckgo.
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Bend over and spread open your wallet. Because good luck getting anything delivered to a customer without it.
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Vendor lock in is the reason I went to a fully open source workflow like fifteen years ago. When you rely on these companies for tools, they own your work. They can jack up prices, change TOS whenever they want, paywall features, train AIs on your work, and jerk you around on a chain at their whim. I don’t mind a little jank or having to do some workarounds for a certain result to keep my freedom. And also, when a new release comes out that fixes an issue ive been having, I feel grateful! In the closed ecosystem you feel entitled and resentful and powerless. It’s not worth it.
I’m most of the way there except jet brains… I just don’t have it in me to spend the years it’ll take to become as familiar with a different tool.
BUT I CAN
Is it possible to learn this power??
I was going to make a gif tutorial but I screwed up the recording and I’ve lost all motivation.
File, New, set resolution multiple of 1000, like 2000x2000
View, Show Grid
View, Snap to Grid
Image, Configure Grid, set pixels under Spacing to desired height, if aspect ratio is checked it will automatically adjust the width to match, like 50x50 for example
Zoom in towards center, click and drag vertical and horizontal ruler to the center using the location value on the bottom left
Create first transparent layer
Select brush tool, the big circle brush, and set size to 1000 and click at the center
Select eraser tool, set size to 960 and click center
New layer
Brush to 700, center
eraser to 670, center
New layer
brush to 60, between rings
eraser to 40, on new dot
New layer
Using brush at size 20px, click and shift click to create lines, draw a square and a right triangle in the top-left quadrant in the centermost circle by connecting points on the rim.
Select every layer, copy and paste
With new layers selected, select all
Transform, Rotate, ensure that the centerpoint is the actual center with the on screen reticle, and rotate the circle 90 degrees. Repeat process but rotate 180 degress.
Export image, you’re done.
EDIT: I guess I didn’t really explain Whitespace Utilization, you can use a white brush instead of eraser to cover the layer beneath.
Once you’re ready to export, flatten image to a single layer and then under color, color to alpha, white should already be selected
Add a new layer, white layer, move the layer to the bottom of the stack
If you’re a crazy person who wants to come back and edit individual layers later, then you can color to alpha individual layers instead.
Done
Stick a pin in your mouse cable and whizz it round like a compass. Easy.
Yeeh gimme a bit
Cool design.
USB-C…
Hey, I was a GIMP convert even during the long dark ages of GIMP where you couldn’t do any kind of bulk layer selection or moving or lots of maddening things… and you know what I kept fucking using it because it was always there for me, ready to help me make a shitty meme.
GIMP has recently gotten MUCH better though, it is a straight up beast now.
I agree.
Just recently, I used GIMP 3.0 to create what will become a sticker on the side of a dozen hockey helmets.
It was a small project but it probably went back and forth a dozen times as each version delivered sparked new ideas or new questions on what was possible. Layers, filters, alpha channel, Smart Selection, and working with text and font outlines were all essential.
I don’t do all this stuff all the time. There is no way I would ever pay for Photoshop. Yet, my standard Linux install had everything I needed to get it done. And it was not that hard.
Truly amazing when you think about it. We are all so entitled.
We are all so entitled.
That’s exactly my issue with GIMP. We are all so entitled, even GIMP devs.
You don’t want to include a feature to draw an editable circle/square/polygon? Fine, but then don’t get superdefensive nor “counterattack” when people ask you about this feature. All in all, pretty much every other image manipulation program has it, so it’s understandable people wonder why GIMP doesn’t have it. I for one still can’t wrap my head around why this is a no-no for some people. It doesn’t make any sense.
When I was majoring as graphic designer I used to use GIMP for a bunch of stuff, even played with python-fu and saved me some time I never would have saved with Photoshop or some shit like that, but even back then they always answered to everything some variation of “we are short on resources”. Well at that time Krita (which was even called Kpaint) had even less resources than GIMP and look at them now.
Truly amazing when you think about it. We are all so entitled.
Almost as entitled as the corporations who want to charge us rent to do something relatively simple like this on a modern computer, and have actively attempted to undermine general accessibility to tools like this in order to profit more.
This applies across the industry
MySQL, VMware…
I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.
Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.
The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.
To give a specific example of how powerful Blender is, in geology there are very very very very expensive 3d modelling programs and then there is like… Sketchup which I guess Google hasn’t abandoned? idk… even the basic GIS software for geologic mapping from ESRI is expensive AF, especially if you want to do any fancy 3d rendering or map making.
Enter this guy
You already know this guy is cool as fuck just from that photo, but let me tell you how exactly how lowkey cool Marcus Schwander is.
(btw I have zero connection to this guy, I know next to nothing about him, I literally just found his videos from searching “Blender Geology” on youtube randomly)
His video series shows quite clearly and exhaustively how to do extremely complicated geologic mapping of complex fold belts with lots of faults using Blender. What I can’t stress enough is that the workflow he is detailing in the proprietary software world would be EXTREMELY niche, require exhaustive licensing and setting up payment and getting software keys… blah blah blah and ultimately it would be a very expensive workflow, possibly requiring software licenses that cost thousands of dollars or more (I am not kidding). On top of the prohibitive cost, any kind of documentation, additional plugin development, or content creators who make tutorials about how to use the tools is an order of magnitude rarer for those tools because access to the tools in the first place is so prohibitive (and is usually only along narrow circumstances, not the kind of situation someone would organically decide to make a youtube tutorial channel about a software that costs $30,000 a license necessarily). In contrast, try searching for “Blender tutorial” in youtube and just take a cursory glance and the absurdly exhaustive amount of resources out there about learning Blender.
I have been teaching myself Blender because I want to make similar tutorial videos because it is ridiculous to me idea that in 2025 geologists don’t have an open format to visualize geologic structures and map them in a natural 3d environment that can be then shared with other geologists, in a established non-proprietary format that a geologist can ensure that any other geologist can open and view the model/data themselves, because again if you have a computer you can get Blender…
I am firmly of the belief that Blender should be taught as a basic part of a Geology curriculum along with a GIS class, not a primary focus or anything, but the tool is so general and so broadly useful that I think we owe it to future scientists to teach everybody we can how to use Blender.
As a last point, I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting using Blender to make cool fancy cinematic visualizations of Geology because it looks cool, or suggesting trying to do lots of complex modelling and computation in Blender instead of a GIS software, those are both awesome uses of Blender but what I am suggesting is that by simply teaching the next generation of Geologists how to use a 3d modelling software just for the simple purposes of giving them a tool to sketch out ideas or explore a geologic map from a 3d perspective (which can be useful ESPECIALLY when talking to other people about specific geologic structures that are difficult to explain without a 3d perspective to point to) Blender is going to forever change how Geologists use computers to do Geology.
It is a cool moment because on the flip side… there is a LOT of money in Geology and I think the Blender community could and will absolutely find serious, sustainable long term funding from Geology companies and academia associated entities that could massively bolster development capability and funding security.
No everything in Linux has to be used through the terminal, how else will I feel elite. If there has to be a gui let’s make sure it looks like it was designed in 1995, so everyone hates it and just uses the terminal instead
Just use the terminal to send keyboard and mouse events, you hopeless noob!
wtype -M shift "A" -m shift wtype -k enter swaymsg seat seat0 cursor set_position 100 200 ydotool mousemove -100 50 ydotool click 0`In fact it’s even more efficient!
The power of Linux, in the palm of my hand
Industry standard or monopoly.
Yall just use Krita if you want a photoshop replacement on Linux and then stop complaining about gimp please. Krita draws circles exactly like photoshop please just use Krita and leave the gimp people alone
I’m a huge Krita fan! But like others I mostly use it for the drawing and painting.
How is it as an alternative to GIMP? (Which I use for simple cut and pastes and that kinda thing.) I haven’t actually been able to figure out where the wall is that says “No, use GIMP for this.”
Does GIMP maybe have better filters and layer operations and that kinda thing maybe…?
Pretty much every filter I need from PS like levels, curves, unsharp mask, blurs, etc are there and I even get all of my layer styles. If you were familiar with photoshop circa cs3 era I honestly think it’s just better, but I’m a Linux user and software engineer, not a professional graphic designer or photo manipulator
I avoided it for so long and just used photopea online instead because I thought krita was just for drawing and I don’t do that. I’m sure it’s fantastic for that but I don’t draw and was so used to photoshop I didn’t imagine it’d be basically a better version of it and written in QT, but I was pretty surprised at how it’s just that
I use both.
Krita is for drawing. GIMP is for making memes.
Wait they took the ellipse tool?
What?
