Re: [Gimp-gui] UI also for nonexperts would be helpful

[Jehan <jehan girinstud io>]

Hi Nick!

On 2017-02-18 21:45, Nick Levinson via gimp-gui-list wrote:
> Occasional users, not just newbies, are probably a large part of your
> user base. I'm an occasional user and it's frustrating to use GIMP
> 2.8.16 on openSuse 13.2 Linux (kept evergreen) for an hour and still
> get nothing done. Yet, I propose preserving all of the expert-level
> capabilities GIMP now offers.

GIMP is indeed designed for advanced users, and this won't change. Now 
obviously if we find better GUI to make things simpler while still 
keeping high-end capabilities, we will follow such path (obviously the 
goal is not to make stuff difficult just for the sake of it). That's not 
always possible, and when it is not, we will choose to support advanced 
usage over one-time usage.

On the other end, we are perfectly aware that things are far from 
perfect, and a lot of stuff could definitely get improved! :-)

> --- I try to get a one-pixel brush or pencil but find out from
> Googling that you disabled that because only scripts should have
> single-pixel control, so that means I'd have to write a script and for
> that I'd have to learn a scripting language just to use GIMP, and that
> round of single-purpose learning probably means hours before I'm
> productive again.

I don't understand at-all what you mean. I just opened GIMP and tested. 
You can get a 1-pixel brush without any problem. The brush size is one 
of the top settings available in any of the paint tools (like the 
paintbrush or the pencil tools indeed) options.

What is this reference you are saying you found on the web which says 
it's not possible anymore and only available for scripts (which is not 
the case, I repeat)?
You should not believe references unless they are official (i.e. said on 
gimp.org or by an official GIMP account on third-party websites).

> --- There's no color picker (the kind that shows all of the colors so
> I can click on a colored pixel for exactly the color I want and maybe
> also see a numerical description of its components for future use)
> obvious in the user interface and I have to find and use some color
> feature that achieves the same thing but without seeing all of the
> colors even if the dialog offers a preview and the preview option is
> checkmarked on, and most color features apparently don't support
> choosing a color from anything like a fully-visual display. If I find
> it, the next time I need it I don't remember where it was and relying
> on the menus to tell me is hopeless. (The kind that shows only 3-6
> solid patches and tells me to enter numbers for my desired shade is
> not much use unless I'm online using someone else's website to find
> possible choices.)

You have a whole bunch of color selection GUI. Open the "FG/BG Color" 
dock and you'll find exactly what you are describing. You can also 
access a similar GUI by single-clicking the foreground or the background 
colors.
From your description, I'd say you would be mostly interested by the 
"GIMP" or the "Wheel" tab. They both have a UI where you can just "click 
on a colored pixel for exactly the color I want".

> --- The color picker tool (the kind that looks like an eye-dipper)
> was, I thought, supposed to work from anywhere on the screen, but it
> doesn't work outside of the possible canvas/layer area, so I can't
> pick a gray from the GIMP icon on a visible desktop panel.

Indeed the color picker tool is on-canvas only (as are any tools).
But you get exactly the kind of color picker you are looking for from 
the "FG/BG Color" dock (the same one I advised as answer to your 
previous comment), and this works anywhere on your screen.

The downside of this is that color-picking anywhere on screen is not 
color-managed. It just picks what is displayed on screen.

> --- I wanted to change a background around black text from white to
> gray but the bucket and the pencil refused except within a selection,
> so I created a new layer, selected all of it, made it gray, and merged
> the layers, a kludgy workaround.

I don't understand what you were trying to do.
The bucket and the pencil work perfectly fine without selection. *If* 
you have a selection, it will work only inside the selection. Yet having 
no selection is the same as having all selected. This is the same 
behavior for every tool.

> --- One of the commands for layers is in some menu other than the
> Layer menu, so anytime I want some kind of command that I don't see in
> the obvious place I probably search most of the menus for commands in
> unexpected menus. Many menu items are duplicated in a couple of menus,
> so that could be done with the unexpected layer command, if the
> non-layer menu is also appropriate for some reason.

You will have to be more accurate than "One of the commands". There may 
be room for improvements, but if you don't say what, we can't really 
guess. ;-)
Same for "Many menu items are duplicated in a couple of menus", what 
items are duplicated? Obviously we should not have the same items in 
several menus.

> --- Some features are available only through toolboxes and GIMP I
> think has several, but apparently no command opens all of them and
> they don't open by default.

Here again, could you be more accurate? I don't understand what you are 
talking about.

> --- I've given up on using the built-in help to refresh myself on
> basic concepts that would lead to menu items and instead have to
> Google, which means I likely can't use GIMP if I can't go online from
> some building or outside. I make kludges but don't always get the

Yes the help could be better, definitely. Like having a search feature 
(there is a bug report about this on our bug tracker). This is 
definitely something I want to work on.
Maybe you could tell us exactly what was your problem with the built-in 
help so that we can think of ways to improve GIMP?

> designs I want, only compromises. I wanted to make a picture frame as
> if lit from an angle, but settled on an unlit frame instead.

If you want help, you should definitely ask on the gimp-user mailing 
list. It is made for users discussing together, and some very talented 
individuals are reading the list. So if you make a detailed email 
explaining what you are attempting to do, I'm sure you could get a 
useful answer.

There are also a few communities and forums with people discussing of 
GIMP where you could find useful answers to your questions, for 
instance:
http://gimp-forum.net/
http://gimpchat.com/
(and more! Forums about GIMP are many)
…

And some more generalist forums about image creation/editing with Free 
Software (not only GIMP), like Pixls.us: https://discuss.pixls.us/

> Granted that the user interface is going to be designed for efficiency
> for expert users and schools may have classes, but even most of the
> people who have reasons to eventually become experts are first either
> newbies or occasional users. The UI can be designed for both groups of
> users. This would expand the user base and that, in turn, would expand
> the developer base. While I have not attempted using GIMP's main
> proprietary competitor in years and that was version 3, what I see in
> operating systems is that the market dominator, despite its various
> problems, tends to be relatively friendlier to users and that probably
> helps with market share. I looked at Inkscape but, based on a brief
> time, it wasn't easier to learn and I installed Karbon but it didn't
> launch or appear when it should have, suggesting a technical problem.
> That means there's room for GIMP to be developed for nonexperts
> without sacrificing growth for highly skilled users. While some expert
> users would be annoyed to have the riff-raff or rabble able to use
> GIMP alongside experts (I've run into this with other software), GIMP
> need not be crippled by adding user-friendliness to its technical
> capacity.

We want to be "artist-friendly" as much as possible. And if we can 
improve efficiency for occasional creators, we definitely will, though 
it should not be at the expense of the advanced creators which are the 
main targets.

This being said, there is definitely room for improvements, no need to 
deny it. Feature discoverability is indeed a real issue in GIMP IMO, and 
not only for the occasional artists, also for the advanced ones.
Therefore we welcome inputs.
Thanks!

Jehan

P.S.: by the way, we are not a company and therefore don't reason in 
terms of "market share" or "competitor". We just want to make a good 
software. That's all that counts.

> --
>
> Nick
>
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> gimp-gui-list gnome org
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