Why is GIMP still so crappy?

Yes, it’s the question on everybody’s mind: Why does Gimp suck so bad?

In the old days I used Windows almost exclusively. I had a nice Windows machine set up; it worked for me. I used cmd.exe and Powershell and WSH for scripting. I used Outlook and Word and Powerpoint for office documents.

I used freeware and open source stuff for some things: I used emacs for editing files. DotNetZip for manipulating ZIP files. ReloadIt for reloading web pages automatically as I saved files. Cropper for capturing screenshots and posting them to cloud photo share services. Lots of other tools. One notable tool: Paint.NET for manipulating images.

It worked. It all worked!

I have since moved to a Mac, not because I didn’t like Windows, but because everyone around me in my new job uses Mac. Being different just means being left out and being unable to share stuff with people. So I converted to Mac.

I am thankful to still have emacs. Obviously I can no longer use WSH and Javascript for scripting basic stuff, but I do have Node.js, which is just fine. (I don’t miss Powershell. Truth be told I never did fully realize the benefits of the object pipeline. It sounded good in theory but it was too darned hard to figure everything out. I use bash for shell scripting now, and it feels simpler to me.)

And Now, when I want to manipulate image files, I often slip up, and try to use gimp. I try. Yoda might say, after trying Gimp, With Gimp there is no do. There is only try, and do not. Generally I give up before accomplishing my goal, which is usually really really simple, something like “remove part of this image and replace it with white fill.” Gimp sucks. I have never opened Gimp and tried to use it without swearing. That I keep opening it is a testament to my ongoing descent into lunacy.

The UI is so infuriating; at the very start it opens windows on the Mac which obscure other applications. When I activate the other applications the GIMP windows stay on top. Why? Because that’s the most infuriating thing it could possibly do, that’s why.

When I highlight part of an image and click ctrl-C top copy that portion, I get – and I’m not making this up – everything EXCEPT the part I highlighted. You would think that would be a simple thing to correct, right? There’s even a “Select” menu with an “Invert” menu item in GIMP. You’d think if a COPY action was copying everything EXCEPT the thing I wanted, then inverting the selection and retrying the COPY action would do what I wanted. But no. Why? Because it’s the most infuriating thing possible.

GIMP always does the most infuriating, frustrating, and ridiculous thing possible.

Handily, when you open an image file that is kinda small, GIMP opens the window beneath one of it’s own “floats above all other windows” windows. So you can’t see the thing, and you need to move Windows around to try to find it. Why? You know why.

There are people who say, “I’ve been using Gimp for 2 years. Sure, at first it’s a bit hard to learn, but after that it’s awesome.” That’s stupid. Absolutely idiotic. Software shouldn’t be this hard, sorry. Just because you invested your valuable time in compensating for a software designer’s madness, does not mean the software is good. It means you don’t value your own time as much as you should.

For an example of an image manipulation app that works, is easy for novices to pick up but also supports advanced features, look at Paint.NET. Only available on Windows! For an example of how to create endless user frustration, try Gimp.

49 thoughts on “Why is GIMP still so crappy?

  1. thomson Reply

    Hm yes the windows are annoying but that’s why they implemented a one-window-mode as alternative (look in the Window menu). Seriously to the most part I think you just suck at Gimp, maybe because you learnt another program like Photoshop first. Yes Gimp is different but it works great.

    1. Ed Reply

      I’ve been using GIMP on and off for years and it’s never made sense. No matter how many times I have to reference their poorly written online docs as I am trying to do something simple. Something as simple as making a selection never works as one would expect. I don’t think it’s just that the author learned Photoshop first; something as intuitive as making a selection and manipulating it easily should be just that…intuitive and easy, and Photoshop gets that simple UX mechanism while Gimp seems to fail.

    2. Philip Reply

      HAHA no it doesnt. This article is spot on. Software shouldn’t be hard to learn. First thing you learn at UIX Development, that you suck, when the user doesn’t know how to use something, not that the user is too stupid. Get around it developers, users are not a dumb neanderthal and you are not the unrecognized genius – just try to listen.
      Gimp sucks and could be fixed so easy. The hard part of listening to the users was already done by photoshop. Just copy the usage and you are good to go.

      1. Antikapitalista Reply


        And it is not just that…! It feels like GIMP is made by malicious sadists who derive immense pleasure from driving users crazy.

        While it is true that GIMP is being developed by 2.5 people (or so), yet is it is no excuse for the utterly brain-damaged interface!

        GIMP feels like an elaborate watch with tens of complications; however, the average onlooker cannot even tell the time by looking at it.

    3. ppp Reply

      2019 – still wtf is this

      1. randouserface Reply

        2020 checking in. GIMP UI is still rubbish.

  2. Paul Rafferty Reply

    My wife is an illustrator. She uses Photoshop. I’m a Linux evangelist, and a few years ago I asked her if she’d give GIMP a go. She lasted about a minute before starting to say things like, “What the f**k is this? Seriously? If I copy a selection and then try to move it, the whole image moves? What have I selected? Who would ever use any of those horrible patterns, apart from a 10 year old? Who the F is this aimed at?”

    I just opened Gimp and tried to do some very simple image editing – the type you could easily do in Microsoft Paint. I simply gave up after cursing spittle at my screen. The interface makes no sense. The way that the tools work makes no sense. I completely agree with the author of this post – just because some people have damaged their brains in order to understand this dreadful UI, doesn’t mean this is a decent program. I have no doubt that a brain damaged GIMP user can create wonderful images though.

    1. Boogajig Reply


    2. Kristi Reply

      Sorry to dig this up: GIMP is how I imagine hell. When I select (create a box) copy that box, paste that box, where the HOLY FORKING SHIRT BALLS does it disappear to??? I was trying to make a kitten bed for my DD sims 4 game. I have about 100 other custom content items via photoshop. I thought I’d save some money and try GIMP. No amount of savings will every be worth wasting my time. I was on one child’s bed for TWO GD hours. This endeavor should have been an 5 minute project if I get really anal about it. I know the app is free, but what is the point when it’s so horrid?
      2018 !

  3. anon Reply

    Gimp is a great program it can be upgraded to read scripts and iv never had any issues with it.. i think its just as much of a pro program as Photoshop. As with all software there are limitations and boundaries. Gimp is capable of processes like HDR and other popular effects like tone mapping. The only thing in need of improvement is the Text Tool which for gimp users usually means exporting your image and then working on the top in a program like Inkscape and once again Inkscape is very much a powerful vector tool that provides pro results to people who don’t buy into Adobe’s consumerist cycle of you have to upgrade and we take your money then upgrade 12 months later and we take your money again.

    1. robert Reply

      Dude it is garbage stop trying to defend garbage. I’ve used Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks and GIMP… GIMP IS THE WORST POS ON THE PLANET for all the reasons this author pointed out. No matter what, you never have selected what you intend to select. And WTF is up with the locking of layers and objects? Does that even work? From what i can tell it is spastic at best. Gimp sucks even for what should be the most simple fucking tasks, it just sucks stop, please stop trying to defend it.

      Until you use Adobe’s software you can’t say it is a consumerist cycle. Their software JUST WORKS, people in the real business world need shit that JUST WORKS, they don’t have time to learn the gotchas, the quirks, the FUCKING BS, they need software that JUST WORKS.

      The whole layer system and selecting is purely fucked in GIMP. It sucks I use Linux to write my software and I have to keep a copy of Windows installed on a separate partition so I can boot into it to do my graphics and image work for my website, but that is what I have to do to use quality software that JUST WORKS.

      I have my Linux for all my programming and my Windows for Games and software i need that JUST WORKS. In the working world, people need software that works, time is money, fucking around with a half assed POS program is a waste of time, which is why I really do not like Linux much at all.
      Printers, video cards etc. all are questionable as to if they will work and for how long. Right now My HP Printer is on the spazz it was working perfect, and update came, now no matter what I do the printer only prints on half a page with a tiny font in landscape. Not a single setting anywhere fixes it, same printer on Windows works flawlessly.

      GIMP SUCKS. I am going to go get some beer now (because this shit is boring ), reformat a partition on this HD and reinstall windows 7 then upgrade to Windows 10 and install all my Consumerist Adobe Software so I can work on my images.

  4. Gimpsucks Reply

    I just spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to edit 10 pixels in an icon I have.

    First I couldn’t find the Brushes palette. Had to google how to manage that. Then, the smallest brush I could find was 3×3 pixels. Googled that. Lots of groaning online about this, mentioning something called “sliders” in the “brush editor”. Found the brush editor, there were no sliders. Finally gave up.

    1. Antikapitalista Reply

      Well, GIMP seemed to me fine some time ago.
      In fact, for some time, I found it to be a very effective tool for image retouching.

      I loaded up an image, performed a wavelet decomposition, brushed the layers… and then composed it back again.

      I have tried to do it recently. Loading an image, wavelet decomposition, so far so good.

      Now, I would like to brush the layers. So… I need a brush. Oh, GIMP is so awesome, there are so many options to choose from…
      I just need a brush. A simple brush, preferably with some softness… and a large one.
      Fine, I have a brush. And it even paints. Everything seems fine… except the brush size is ridiculously small and I cannot its size… Grrr… There are some sliders, they can be changed very easily and everything is so intuitive… except that my freaking brush is completely immune to the controls. No matter what I do, no matter what I push or drag, it stays the same. No right-clicking brings up anything meaningful, context-relevant, just a garbage list of irrelevant sub-menus. Oh, why the frigging hell the right-click pop-up menu is a copy of the main menu?! Is that a revenge of the Macs, or what?!
      Wheel-scrolling is of no help, too.
      I give up. I try to google the answer to such an essential thing and presumably ridiculously simple thing.
      The answers are rather scarce. The complaints are quite numerous.
      I try to follow an answer… it does not work. Double clicking the brush does open a dialog box to edit the brush, but the dialog box is read-only. No, the square brackets as hotkeys do not work either.
      I try to follow another answer that describes a setting, which is even praised that this ought to be the default.
      It seems to bind the scrolling the wheel up to increasing the brush size and scrolling the wheel down to decreasing the brush size.

      No, it did not seem work.

      Worse yet, now when I left-click on the image, some colour-balancing dialog box always pops up. How obnoxiously obtrusive!
      I do not know why it happens, I do not know what got changed or how…

      I am desperately trying to reset the settings… to no avail. I assume only the good ones were reset.

      Oh, I quit GIMP and start it again, bearing in mind the adage that if it does not work, try getting off and then getting on…

      Now, there is some crap tool. No, sorry, I meant to write crop tool. Although on closer examination and some anxiously long fuddling, I must say that the difference in spelling is far bigger than the difference in functionality. In other words, it is still crappy… and no matter what I do, the cropping tool stays there, despite my selecting various brushes…
      Oh, GIMP is like EU politicians: pretending to do one thing in presentation, doing quite another in actual fact.

      Fortunately, there are 2 things that still work reliably: “Undo” (heavily used) and “Throw away changes”.

      Thanks Devil I only lost about a third of an hour of my life with this Potemkin village of a graphics program.

      Oh, if only cars were like GIMP, the world would be so much safer! I mean, everybody except professional race car drivers would crash their car already in the safety of their garage!

  5. Sev Reply

    Some people, whatever they use, always manage to provide a positive answer. I admire that, to some extent when it comes to GIMP… as it is hard to believe the (few) hagiographic posts here and there. So I searched a place to post my rant and this place seems appropriate.

    While being an experienced Photoshop user, I always use Linux for personal projects. I’ve been using Linux for many years, and, along with it, the GIMP.

    And yes, Gimp 2.8 represents a tremendous progress compared to earlier versions! (the file saving/export management in older Gimps…)

    But… GIMP is still counter intuitive. Even simple operations require a Google search. It doesn’t always work as intended – as intended by the user at least (move text layer while having the mouse in the center of the layer, and between letters?). Macros? The script-fu language, seriously? (and I love the way Emacs implemented E-lisp, but everything is harder in GIMP).

    So you tell me: learn it!

    The problem is that GIMP is not consistent. Learning a few tips is not the key to some general rules based on logic that would help using the software. In other words, common sense is of no help. Learning GIMP, while doable, requires a lot of personal involvement, along with a ton of irritation.

    As an example to make my point: Apple. iOS (especially) is incredibly light in terms of customization because Apple did the right choices. They present a (complex) software that needs little customization. Most people do not need to read a manual – iOS shows an intuitive interface which functioning is based on common sense.

    I spent the whole afternoon with GIMP 2.8.2 today to perform something a bit more complex than usual. I could do it! But it was a lot of trial and no-exactly-what-I-want, where-is-that-feature, not-possible, this-is-buggy, what-the-hell-were-the-devs-thinking etc… Irritation I told you.

    Giving up was not an option! Fortunately, I had time to waste (Photoshop would have saved me 80% of the time, but I keep my promise to Linux!). Now is time to eliminate that stress, and this post does it.

    All in all, GIMP is the best thing that could happen to Photoshop.

    Many users attempt to escape that ridiculously overpriced software.
    Thanks to GIMP, sooner or later, they’re happily back to Photoshop.

    And unfortunately, some of them feel resentful about Open Source Software, and leave GIMP whispering “OSS, never again”.

    1. ws Reply

      Every time I find myself hating on some annoying Photoshop bug, or hating on my Windows photo editing box (I’m an Ubuntu guy for *everything* else), I try GIMP.

      I then am immediately glad that I invested a trivial amount in Photoshop, because it was worth it. I don’t have or need the latest Photohop, I only upgrade every 5 years or so – but that repeated few hundred every few years is what allows me to focus on *taking pictures* not editing them. My workflow with Photoshop is like 15 minutes from inserting the SD card to selling pro level photos.

      1. robert Reply

        LMFAO I am going through this right now. I use Linux on my main computer for programming and web development because it is easier since my server runs Linux I can have matching settings etc on my development PC. BUT GOD DOES LINUX SUCK FOR LACK OF GREAT WORKING SOFTWARE.

        I rarely have to work with images, icons etc. but now is one of those times and GIMP is a pile of utter time wasting nonsensical shit. So I am going to get some beer, then I have to reinstall windows 7 on a partition, then upgrade to 10, then install my WONDERFUL WORKING ADOBE SOFTWARE, then I can work on my graphics for a day or so then switch back to Linux for programming.

  6. anonon Reply

    GIMP is garbage.

    1. Ornot Bitwise Reply

      Inelegantly yet aptly put. GIMP is, indeed, pretty much cyber-garbage. Don’t waste your time unless you can’t afford anything better.

  7. Meh Reply

    Adobe never had an original idea for a decade, they enveloped Macromedia and copy pasted functionality over to Photoshop. Owning Photoshop is like owning an obese child, you have to constantly babysit what your kid does. Autodesk is also not far from that stretch, Autodesk more like owning a handicap granny parked in a doubles lane looking for its false teeth.

  8. __DB Reply

    I used to love GIMP, when I used a Linux Laptop.

    Still, for some things, I used Photoshop on my desktop.

    Like: the text editor…

    If you check “use the editor”, the editor that GIMP opens doesn’t have a selector for the font type – that and the actual choice of the font size remains in the tool properties tab, even though there the editor has a spinner that seem to change the font sizeb

    But GIMP lose the change as soon as you touch the text area, and it resets it to whatever is in the aforementioned property tab.

    Then just to mud things a bit, the color picker in the same editor instead does work, really.

    In PS, Corel Photopaint, Illustrator etc. , when you grab a layer/object, you can move, scale and rotate it – the interface figures what you want to do from the position of the cursor, relative to the object, or from the marker on its boundaries that you picked, when you click the cursor.

    Gimp asks you to know what to do beforehand, and chose one of n transformation (each one needs an icon on the tool bar, too).

    A pity that, when you are trying to fix a composition of hand drawn sketches imported through a scanner, the most natural is alternating between scaling and rotating the various pieces.

    Brush increment is linear… in most cases, artists look for something exponential (every tick, the brush scales up-down, say, 10%… 0,1 on a brush size of 1, 50 on a brush size of 500).

    Nothing too hard to do, one can learn scheme and implement a function that does it, but… still, one has to learn scheme and write it, and sometimes, the stupid thing crashes the script engine (I had it hooked to a mouse wheel, sometimes the input overwhelmed the poor thingy )… a-hem…

    To be honest, after a while , by adding a script here and there, I managed to get it to do all I wanted.

    But I have a degree in IT, as well as a god-send drawing hand, and damn, so I am not exactly the average drawing joe… and the artist part of my brain wanted to sodo…ize the people that designed GIMP’s GUI, anyway.

  9. cpmac Reply

    I agree with the post. I’ve seen glowing reports of gimp but every time I use it I give up . Nothing is what you’d expect it to be.

  10. Lif Reply

    I agree with you.
    I suggest you to just buy Pixelmator, it is cheap (I paid 13€, now is 30€ but still cheap), and it just work.
    I think the worst thing about Gimp is the text editor… when you resize the text box the test does not change at all (you cannot make a small text box to make a new line).
    Also there is no way to move the textbox after you finish the editing of the text….

    1. FoaRyan Reply

      Dealt with that last night, it was one of a few issues I faced (I can’t even remember what they were, lol). Evidently, although GIMP has a “justify” text option, it’s not in the text editing menu. It’s in the other, also-can’t-remember-what-it’s-called menu to the right where Photoshop & GIMP have the layer selection. It’s one of those tabs… okay, so it has more text options there. (couldn’t I just right click the other menu, or couldn’t there be another button for the full panel there?)

      Great! The justify option! *click* Oh, what happened? It ALMOST justified the text. As in, it got close, but only the longest lines fully justified. It turns out you can adjust what I’m going to call “kerning” (since I can’t remember the names of anything today), but what I’m talking about is the horizontal text spacing. I had to do that manually, line-by-line, to get a block of text to look justified.

      It took me an hour in all to paste an image, extend the canvas, make a layer mask & gradient, type 2 text boxes, and add another picture, size-adjusted as a logo. I’m slow, and that should have taken me 10 minutes, but I had to google search for things like “why can’t I select another layer?” (it was the not-highlighted tiny text that indicates your pasted layer either needs to be anchored or to create a new layer. who knew.)

      1. dushko_b Reply

        FoaRyan: Always use the right tool for the right job. What you describe sounds like a job for Inkscape (similar focus as Illustrator). I could understand people not buying Illustrator, but Inkscape is free.
        It’s just Adobe teaching people not to do things properly.
        1. touch up your source images in GIMP/Photoshop
        2. do that damn flyer in Inkscape/Illustrator
        3. if it’s multipage, consider a DTP

        Why would anyone draw in PS/GIMP is also beyond me. Yes, flames and stuff, also sketches, but people who create logos in Photoshop should question themselves foremost, not the software.

        Adding text to an image is NOT image manipulation, that’s graphic design, which is not the purpose of GIMP/PS (even though Adobe gave up and tries to make PS to be a bit of everything for anyone “Lr-to-Illustrator, we’ve got you covered!”.

        Even though I agree GIMP is terribly illogical in everything but to me PS is even worse.

  11. mbava Reply

    My favorite gimp task was always “draw a rectangle”: Select an area, fill it, shrink the selection, delete it. Right.

  12. Jim Bob Way Reply

    I am glad I found this, because I thought I was just dumb. I mastered all the other areas of Linux, but The Gimp, escapes me. I found this rant by searching for: “Gimp – Where is the _ucking move tool.” These are the days of fast food, so why can’t I just “grab and go” with something I just copied and pasted? I started out with Micrographic Designer, and did a lot of nice work without consulting the manual. Also used Photoshop and many of the community supplied additions. I very rarely use computer games, but when I do the rule is: “If I need a book to play this, It is no fun.” So maybe I am lazy, but maybe I have better things to do than to figure out how someone(s) else thinks. I will never stop thanking the Devs. for their countless hours of labor, but I would remind them that the payback is in the number of people that use the software, and the accolades heaped on them for a job well done (and maybe more monetary sponsorship).

  13. Joel Reply

    Yes, I got hear Googling about the terrible user experience for GIMP, hoping for an explanation. It seems to go out of it’s way to be terribly designed. Basic editing like a cut and fill is very difficult. Even just saving an image is an ordeal. Why not just use the exact same process every other piece of software uses? Why make life so difficult.

  14. Robert Alexander Reply

    Over the years, The Gimp is the only piece of software I’ve come to loathe every time I give it another shot. I’ve used Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photo-Paint pretty much interchangeably because they’re professionally designed. But while The Gimp can do perhaps 90% of what PS and PP can do, it’s so unintuitive as to make one wonder if it was designed to be as difficult as possible. It’s like an inside joke, where The Gimp’s authors say, sure you can have PS functionality for free, but it’s going to cost you in time and frustration. That’s what you get for being cheap.

    Most open-source software isn’t like this. Inkscape is a fine alternative to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw, and LibreOffice can replace MS Office for most users. It’s only The Gimp that I warn others against. I guess this is what can be expected from a program with such a name.

    1. XYZ Reply

      Inkscape has it’s “moments” too…

  15. dushko_b Reply

    The thing with Adobe software (not only PS) is this:

    with GIMP you learn photo manipulation,

    with Photoshop you learn………… Photoshop.

    I hate Lightroom users talking about “clarity” instead of microcontrast and all the stupid BS names Adobe gives to their UI. Learn the proper terms, like a proper photographer. Learn typography. Learn design. Learn the proper terms and don’t be a company shill.

    Yes GIMP is clunky, but there’s maybe a reason (which I myself tend to miss – then I start typing curse-words into google). It could really just handle stuff like grabbing and moving layers and images like an object…but still works for its main aim.

    There is other soft: Cinepaint (essentially a more “pro” GIMP fork), Karbon, Krita, even Libreoffice Draw, Corel, Xara – to each their own.

  16. hbridge Reply

    Trying to do some simple thing in GIMP and totally frustrated.
    I had to google to find a site where I could add my opinion that GIMP is indeed a POS.
    I have seen other software developers with equally deluded ideas about their work. I can not emphasize how far these developers must have their h_____ up their b____.

    GIMP is trying to compete against one of the world’s most beautiful, fluid, and intuitive interface of Photoshop with The Worst Choices possible. The interface is truly abominable. Grow up software developers and make something that people actually want to use. You are building drek.

  17. Jon Harald Søby Reply

    Why on earth is this post still as relevant five years later??

  18. Alex Finch Reply

    Totally agree with you. It is a pile of c**p. Whenever I am forced back to using gimp (because I use linux at work) it drives me crazy and the air turns blue with profanity – lucky I don’t share my office with any one. Every few seconds it is back to my favourite search engine to find the answer to doing what would be easy with any other image manipulation program and is baffling with gimp. Even repeating the same procedure on the same image a couple of minutes later can fail for no discernible reason.

  19. Antikapitalista Reply

    Although GIMP is being developed by 2.5 people (or so)… while Adobe has tens of people doing only the quality checking… the net result gives me the impression that GIMP is just an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a panel of distinguished experts in user-hostile interfaces.

  20. Jardel Reply

    I also completely agree with the author of this post.

  21. Ivan Reply

    Why don’t devs do anything about that? Every GIMP forum is full of hate and devs just don’t give a heck. While it is open source, noone even tries to improve it

  22. flowwolf Reply

    GIMP is one of the worst thing I’ve seen in Linux. Still can’t use it.
    Exactly, despite being simple, Paint.net was great! Pinta in Linux is also OK, but has the habit of crashing.

  23. Anders Reply

    I fucking hate GIMP. Nothing make sense. Worst editor ever. But it´s free and I guess it´s free for a reason. It´s crap!

  24. Ryan Reply

    We use it at school and I absolutely hate it……..

  25. Don Sutton Reply

    I write programs for a living. Human-Machine Interfaces, for million dollar industrial processes in hazardous locations (like steel mills). I shadow the operators, hold meetings, ask questions, until I understand exactly what the operators must do. Then I start coding, and run the processes in my head as I write. One question I repeatedly ask the operators is: “When you do this (on the HMI) what do you expect to happen (in the process)?” The point is, I do not expect the operators to learn my program. I learn how they work, and make a program as familiar to them as any of the body parts they were born with. GIMP is written by aliens, ego-trippers, or wolves.

  26. Capitán Reply

    ¡Dios mio!, que panda de ignorantes en diseño gráfico, espeluznante la falta e adaptación de los que se suponen son profesionales. Con GIMP puedes hacer lo que con Photoshop y similares siempre y cuando tengáis una base mínima. No saber crear una capa a partir de una selección ya lo dice todo. Eso sí, la versión 2.10 deja mucho que desear con respecto a la 2.8.

  27. Derek Duban Reply

    I’ve used GIMP for 20+ years and it can be frustrating regarding updates. Sometimes there too much change in an update and then to read that the changes are to get more in line with Photoshop is doubly frustrating. I guess this decade, they are no longer trying to duplicate Photoshop but the changes are still shocking at times. Just a couple days ago I updated from 2.8 to 2.10 and everything went dark and the icons were unfamiliar and I immediately had to google to find out how to change the look. So despite some menu re-labels, and changes to how some dialogs work, I’m back on track.

    On the whole though, the world is better with GIMP than without. I used it daily.

    1. Nick Reply

      The world is better with Gimo than without, thats true but does not solve anything. Gimp and other software of the “Free” kind are more or less a playground and looking at the countless problems especially with Gimp 2.10 I really doubt that the Players are using Gimp in an productive way… Otherwise they would know.

      Lets also remember the late 90, with Paint Shop Pro, Ulead Photo Impact which came Free as Bundle with a lot of stuff etc. All that Software was developed in a small amount of tine and was very productive. Not like Gimp which after countless decades is still crappy.

  28. Rafael Reply

    Yes, in 2020 Gimp still sucks. I have been using it since 2008 when I switched from Windows to Linux and there was no Photoshop version. I can also tell you that since 2008 absolutely nothing improved in Gimp. Only a dreamer might think that it some day will and that it just needs “some time”. In Debian, they now tried to be “modern” and changed something fundamental: icons are all-grey. Now even the icons are meaningless and you’re looking through them trying to find the “crop” tool, or something like that.
    Those windows floating all over the place is a pain, and if by accident you close one of them, they won’t show up on the next start and you will hopelessly browse all menus trying to get something basic show up again.
    The “brush” tool is a terrible pain, try to burn/dodge some areas of your picture, you will go crazy. Who on earth thinks that it is wise that a tool is 5 pixels big per default when nowadays cameras shoot at least 10MP?
    And even in max setting it is still ridiculously small, you can only make it bigger by making your own customized brush, wow, so painful.
    That is just an example, the whole software does all it can to be the less intuitive, less predictable and useful.

    And the worst: on linux there is nothing else.

  29. Matt Bourne Reply

    GIMP gave me cancer.

  30. bob dobs Reply

    My google search “does gimp suck any less these day?” returned this as the first result. I guess I’ve gotten my answer, haha. Thank you so much for saving me the trouble of even installing it.

  31. JimD Reply

    2020 checking in here.. tried to show my daughter how to draw a red rectangle on a photo using GIMP. Now i’m swearing and drinking. I use EMACs. and GIMP is too confusing for me.

  32. guest273 Reply

    It’s so hard to make proper YouTube thumnails with gimp.

    It’s made to make problems that aren’t there.

    What other normal photo editing program has a shit called “canvas size” when you crop the middle of the image and fill the sides with alpha layer ??? It took me even 15 minutes of googling “gimp image size” to understand this fake concept of “canvas” that shouldn’t even be there. You can never find online helps also, so I was like: let’s be 300 IQ and write that I need help on gimp official forums. Went ot official forums, web site design like 1920, if they’d have computers then. Why can’t the image just ‘understand’ I don’t want it’s size to extend in all directions because I’ve put alpha layer (transparency) there?

    Gimp is still trash as of 2020. Even f u k e n MS PAINT is better at video editing. USE gimp only for ROTATING an image. NOTHING ELSE.

  33. J Reply

    Good thing I still have a Windows machine. This software is absolute trash.

    Whoever built this should stay working on it, and not receive or accept any job offers. That way the rest of the world of software isn’t infected with their piss poor work.

    I’ve literally never considered switching my machines back to Windows until today. Glad I’ve got a Windows gaming machine so I can edit one single photo for a job.

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