...GIMP is actually good.


I often get Linux advocates trying to convert me to use it instead of Windows. It’s free they say, it’s actually better than Windows they say. As explained earlier, there is a certain trend among promoters of FOSS to be creative with the truth, and who reality warps around to fit their worldview. Included in this list is the insistance that Gimp is not only on par with Photoshop, but is actually superior.

Of course this isn’t true, and to be perfectly honest Gimp is one of the worst pieces of software I have ever had the misfortune to use. It’s clunky, badly thought out and, considering the excessive complexity, surprisingly lacking in useful features.

Of course it’s perfectly fine for someone to be of the opinion that it’s better than Photoshop. But it is also possible for someone to be of the opinion that MS-DOS is better than Bash, that Basic is better than C and that Windows ME was a good OS. People’s opinions just happen to be wrong a lot of the time. You have to ask yourself this – If Gimp was commercial and Photoshop was FOSS, would the Gimp supporters still be using it?

So why does it suck?

1: Layer size vs Canvas size.

The biggest wtf is the strange fact you can have a smaller layer size than canvas size. Try this: Create a new document (400×400), then go Image->Canvas size (500×500). Now for some reason you cannot actually paint outside the original 400×400 area. You need to then increase the layer size before you can use it. The more recent version of Gimp lets you automatically set all layers to the canvas size when you increase it – remember an older version where you had to do it one by one – but the question still stands: why on earth do I have to do this in the first place?

The only possible utility for this ‘feature’ I can think of is to limit the drawing area when painting, but since there are at least half a dozen other ways of doing this that do not require constant attention, and also let you create a boundry area that isn’t a rectangle, that can’t be it. I suppose there may be a technical reason for it, but I’ve yet to see a single other graphics program require this so that can’t be it either. It’s annoying micromanagement for the sake of annoying micromanagement, it serves no purpose, yet it is a major feature of the program.

2: Layer groups

Imagine a non-heirarchical file system. That is you can only store files in / and nowhere else. It would be a nightmare, wouldn’t it? That’s what Gimp is like. In Photoshop you can create groups that layers can be placed in. If you create a button made out of half a dozen layers you put them in a group called ‘button’, and can treat all layers like one – moving them, hiding them etc. Want another button – just copy the group, change the title layer and you’re done. Doing any of the above with Gimp takes an order of magnitude more time in finding and copying the mass of unsorted layers. Fun.

3: Non-destructive effects & layers

Possibly the biggest feature missing from Gimp is non-destructive effects. For example if I want to add a drop shadow to something in Photoshop you just click the effects button and select ‘drop shadow’. Any future changes to the layer automatically update the effect, with the added bonus that it is on the layer itself, and does not require a new layer for the effect. To achieve the same action in Gimp you’d need to go the throught the bother of copying your original layer, filling it with black, offsetting it and then blurring it. Any change to the layer or if you want to tweak the effect require redoing the whole lot, rather than just changing the settings or layer. The same also applies to the other effects such as strokes, glows, bevels, gradients etc. What takes seconds in Photoshop can take hours to achieve in Gimp.

4: User interface

It is widely accepted that Gimp has one of the worst user interfaces in known history. It has got a little better recently, that is the ergegiously bad UI problems have been tamed, but while each revision of Photoshop has seen gradual improvements and refinements to the UI, Gimp has pretty much stayed static.

5: Last but not least – the name

Even if it didn’t have a complete lack of features people still wouldn’t use it simply because of the name. I could create the best, easiest to use distro, but if I called it Penix virtually nobody would use it. Sure it’s funny, but it’s horribly unprofessional and having a name that most people would be embarassed to say to a client is certainly not going to help your cause!

Now, I admit that I am being a bit harsh – and that if you had not had experience with Photoshop – then there would be nothing significantly wrong with Gimp. However when comparing the two Gimp simply cannot compete with Photoshop on a professional level and the points I have made are just the tip of the iceberg. If I felt it was necessary I could fairly easily write up at least a dozen more points (such as type handling, exporting, colour management, actions, plugins, workflow etc etc etc).

Sure, having a graphics package that could only really referred to as a, at best, toy is fine – but stop trying to pretend it has even the slightest glimmer of a chance at being considered pro app simply because it’s FOSS as it isn’t. The first version of Photshop I remember using was 5.0, and it still has more features and is better than Gimp and it was released over a decade ago, leaving Gimp as, at least, ten years behind the competition.

Again, the complete and utter failure of the FOSS community to rate software on it’s merits (as opposed to its release license) is at fault here. It seems to me the free software community is far more interested in pushing a bizarre software ideology rather than concentrating on making good software. And it really shows.


It SUCKS! So debate, drawers, on:

1. Which software is better, photoshop, gimp or something else entirely
2. Whether or not this belonged here or in the graphics section (i'm not sure either ._.)