[Gimp-user] Gimp 2.8 + Brushes

[Alex Stegmann <alex stegmann gmail com>]

Hello, my name is Alex Stegmann, and I've been using Gimp for sometime now. It's a fantastic program, but I thought the area where it lacked the most was the brushes. It only came with a few basic brushes, and you often had to download extra packs for that something extra. This in itself wasn't a huge deal, although if you had brush sets more like those of PaintTool SAI or MyPaint, that would be really great. Those program don't have as much as Gimp, but they have some really great brushes, which makes them fun to draw in.

My bigger concerns is adding your own brushes to Gimp via imported brush packs. While you say you integrate all files, the brush manager is lacking. If I wish to add a few brush packs to see what they do, the brush list quickly becomes clogged. You can't seem to delete brushes without going back into the brushes folder which you first put them in, and then delete the files. This also means if you like a few brushes in a pack, but the rest of it is useless to you, then you have to have everything, or nothing.

There is a lot to be desired in terms of the brushes, and I hope you can improve these soon. I stand by Gimp, even though people often call it a watered down version of Photoshop, but Gimp 2.8  has been a huge disappointment for me.

On a final note, when choosing a new brush, especially for the animated texture brushes you include, I think it would be useful if you automatically went to the brushes native size. This saves time and energy, especially if you are testing out new brushes. MyPaint has this feature, and I have found it incredibly useful. This also means I can just click the brush a second time to reset it to the default settings.

I would very much like to see Gimp become an essential piece of software on every digital artists computer, but for now it seems to be trailing behind.