Re: GIMP and Photoshop user interfaces (was: Re: Distros specifically designed for children)

On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 23:14:33 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

*Yawn* Or more likely, you took one look at an early version of GIMP
27 years ago, dismissed it, and have been complaining about it
without actually trying it again ever since.

That would be a convenient narrative for you, but no - I first picked it
up with v.2 when I was looking for a *nix-native Photoshop alternative,
and it was certainly the case then. I've been using it ever since (as
the version of Photoshop I had was clunky under WINE,) but I gave up on
getting any kind of comparable workflow going for digital art.

That became irrelevant as I moved to more traditional media, which
worked out for me, but it's illustrative of the GIMP team's overall
approach to UI matters: blindly copy what better designers do in a
surface approximation, without bothering to understand *why* or study
the details to get things really *right.* Same can be seen with single-
window mode, which came about as a response to Photoshop for Windows
offering a multiple-document interface, but took a less-useful-but-
easier-to-implement approach. "Minimum viable product to approximate
feature parity" is just how they *do* things...which is why working
professionals just trying to Get Shit Done are still willing to put up
with Adobe's draconian bullshit.