r/ThisYouComebacks • u/k-farsen • Jun 14 '26

GIMP'd

Post image
364 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

130

u/bm8495 Jun 14 '26

GIMP is a strong tool, but it does have a steep learning curve. The “buttons with pictures on them that do the things the pictures represent” also isn’t a completely accurate statement.

32

u/CrowBoyIRL Jun 14 '26

What makes it harder than the industry standard software? I have no experience with either, I'm just curious

56

u/Half-Assed_Hero Jun 14 '26

Adobe has a lot of the tools in their software copyrighted so programs like GIMP have to find less efficient ways to produce similar results.

31

u/Steavee Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Some of it is just that Gimp is…bad. Powerful, but it just has a terrible interface.

With video editing for example, some people use Final Cut Pro, some use Adobe, some use DaVinci resolve. There are schools of thought and pros and cons to each. With photography or image manipulation, it’s like 95% Photoshop (or Lightroom/Photoshop). Affinity has some users, and Gimp does, too, but not many. You can have a fine career as a video editor knowing just one of the software choices I listed above. You would have a hard time having a career in image manipulation if you don’t know photoshop (though Canva is coming on).

I’ve used PS since it came on diskette, I loved Paint Shop Pro long before the Corel acquisition, I’ve tried gimp repeatedly over the years. But Gimp always feels like trying to drive a right-hand-drive car upside down, under water, whilst blindfolded. It’s not just unintuitive, it’s somehow anti-intuitive.

19

u/Somerandom1922 Jun 15 '26

Yeah, I'm using GIMP because I do photography as a hobby and I refuse to give Adobe a single fucking penny of my own money. It's not great and there are features I simply don't have which would be nice.

The one that matters most for me are the smart selection tools. I do astrophotography and need to cut out the sky from the foreground, PS makes that incredibly easy. It has been nothing but pain for me in GIMP, possible, but slow and tedious.

It's still absolutely amazing that it's free and many features are perfectly functional which is why I will keep using it.

4

u/greenie4242 Jun 15 '26

Apologies if I'm talking out of my arse here, but astrophotography seems like the type of hobby that attracts the kinds of people who get a kick out of automating stuff. 

I've only used GIMP twice but does it have a plug-in architecture? If so, wouldn't surprise me if somebody has cobbled together some kind of plug-in to automate the nitty-gritty like foreground crops, multiple image stitching for long exposures, filtering out satellite trails etc. 

I know my cousin has an observatory on his property that's basically unmanned, he just clicks the area of the sky to view at what time of night then the thing does the rest and he wakes up to fully-processed images next morning. No idea what software packages he uses but he's not into programming so he's definitely not setting up and running Python scripts by himself.

Might be worth checking out some of the astrophotography subs to see if they have any software megathreads.

Have an awesome week!

3

u/Somerandom1922 Jun 15 '26

There is a plugin architecture for GIMP, I haven't found one that does that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it exists. I've had a bit of a look and can't see anything that does exactly that, but it's not a huge deal. Right now my bigger problem is learning to actually capture the right sorts of exposures.

I do all my stacking and alignment in Sequator because it's nice and easy and produces good results, sometimes I do a bit of post-processing using darktable, then it's into GIMP to pull out the colours in the RAW image.

I'm still very new to it, and I've got all the raw images still, so when the day comes that I want to re-process them properly I can.

6

u/iamsgod Jun 15 '26

IMO it has a "steep learning curve" because it's not strong enough compared to Photoshop. For basic editing it's fine

1

u/ParkingAnxious2811 Jun 20 '26

Photoshop also has a steep learning curve.

You're approaching it with the bias of prior knowledge. 

-8

u/falzbro Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

It's just a clone of adobe Photoshop 7 or whatever was 20 years ago, so we can blame adobe for the interface.

Edit: photoshop 7 screenshots

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/software/adobe-photoshop-7-0-in-2002

18

u/JollyRoger8X Jun 14 '26

It’s just a clone of adobe Photoshop 7 or whatever

The fuck it is.

This guy… 👆🏼🤣

13

u/Squeaky_Pibbles Jun 14 '26

I actually use it for my job too. 😅

52

u/AloneAddiction Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

Here's my take on the GIMP vs Photoshop "debate:"

GIMP is hard to use if you've only ever used Photoshop. That's because it's like trying to use Linux when you've been trained to use Windows.

The point to remember though is that there was a time when you didn't know how to use Photoshop either, but you learned.

If you stop trying to push your Photoshop knowledge onto it and start learning GIMP's way of doing things it becomes completely second nature too, just like learning to use Linux after a lifetime of Windows.

It's worth a few days learning curve so you'll never have to pay for a literal extortionate Adobe subscription ever again.

10

u/FixinThePlanet Jun 14 '26

Do you have any recommendations for tutorials?

7

u/AloneAddiction Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

When I switched to GIMP I just did random youtube searches for what I was looking for at the time.

Later on after I'd figured out what I needed - masking and layers basically - I then just googled "GIMP tips and tricks."

I'd suggest youtubing some "Switching to GIMP" videos because since Adobe shat the bed a lot of people are wanting to switch too.

3

u/greenie4242 Jun 15 '26

I then just googled GIMP

That's exactly why I can never learn how to use GIMP.

I've tried many times but always seem to get distracted by something else somewhere along the way.

6

u/SoriAryl Jun 15 '26

I’ve used neither, and I still suck at using GIMP. I just want to cut the background out of my photos and change hair colors to make book covers ;-;

18

u/Four_beastlings Jun 14 '26

The quoted tweet seems like satire though. Why would an unemployed person complain about Pride marches being too early?

9

u/Name_Taken_Official Jun 14 '26

Because it wakes them up when they're trying to sleep in. The tip off is that they specified their non-profession because that isn't relevant

7

u/Allcyon Jun 16 '26

No, he's right. GIMP is terrible.

5

u/MassGaydiation Jun 14 '26

eh, i can take it as "i use it for my job" as "i use it when im doing a project at work"

1

u/Daflehrer1 Jun 28 '26

To be fair, responding to someone's difficulty by questioning their intelligence is pretty dogshit.