Re: [Gimp-gui] truly astonished by gimp

[Jehan <jehan girinstud io>]

Hi!

On 2019-02-20 00:25, martin_amor uk2 net wrote:
> people, i really want to be polite but....
>
> maybe this is an age thing - i am quite old!! - but....
>
> does nobody out there realise how unbelievably unfriendly this program
> (GIMP) is??
>
> the basic screen is as cluttered as the great Pacific garbage patch.
>
> Messages pop up all the time; none of them is in anything close to
> English.
>
> Please don't tell me to read faqs help files, whatever. It's too
> COMPLICATED.

To what Elle already answered, I would like to add: yes, GIMP is 
complicated. It is a full-featured program, which can do so many things. 
And yes we discover features everyday, even after using it daily for 
years.

There are other programs which are meant to just apply a list of filters 
on images with barely no (or none at all) options, or to do very basic 
edits. If that is what you are looking for, GIMP is not the program you 
want. GIMP have so many filters with many many options (and more can be 
added as third-party plug-ins and scripts), tools which can work on 
individual pixels if needed, color logics meant to be as 
accurately-scientific as possible, and so on.

Now this is not to say we cannot improve things to make features (or the 
whole GUI) easier while still allowing all this. We encourage such UX 
improvements and thus are welcoming contributions.
There are always ways to improve interactions and first time usage (I 
would love for us to find how to), though it won't ever change the fact 
that GIMP is a complex program in the end, because that's just what is 
any such program for advanced usage.

> Is there such a thing as an idiot's guide to using this nightmare
> program. It is recommended by lots of people! Maybe it is really
> great, but do you have be a total utter code-chomping geek to even
> start to use this?

First you have the docs: https://www.gimp.org/docs/
Not sure if it is perfectly up-to-date yet with all new features, though 
as Elle said, many things are similar enough between 2.8 and 2.10.
Also if you find imperfections there, documentation can also be 
contributed to!

Other than this, there are books about GIMP available in every library I 
know (though arguably a lot are bad! I even found books which were 
basically just copy-pasting the official docs!). And there are a lot of 
tutorials on the web (text or video ones).

> Really sorry, don't want to offend anybody, just utterly bewildered
> and disappointed.

No problem. It is also possible that GIMP was not what you were 
expecting. It is indeed complex, just as any other software for 
professionals or advanced graphics artists is.
Of course, it is also very good for the basic and occasional image 
edits, but I completely understand that one can be overwhelmed the first 
time it is opened.

Jehan

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