this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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As someone who uses GIMP very effectively for commercial work, I am increasingly feeling like people who say that GIMP isn't a capable alternative are simply ignorant of it's capabilities. Yeah, it doesn't work like Photoshop. Yeah, it doesn't work like Affinity Photo. Yeah, it doesn't work like Photopea.
But yeah, it does work, and works well. If you apply a bit of patience to learn how it works, then it's also very easy to use, eventually. Maybe it doesn't cover all the use-cases, but it's ignorant to say that it categorically isn't capable for commercial use.
I have never used any of those other softwares in more than a decade.
I still only use GIMP for image editing out of principle.
Still have to check every time for GIMP shortcuts because they are so counter intuitive. And there are so many counter intuitive things about it.
IMHO it have the same issue that Libreoffice. It was really made decades ago and never really updated. It's like that meme about workflows. In their efforts not to break workflows they have gotten behind in UX compared to other software.
Also development seems to be stopping to a halt with each release compared to other more modern foss projects. I suppose it's due an ancient codebase that's probably really hard to work with.
I use it. It can do a lot. But UX and development speed in GIMP is not up to par with projects like Krita, Inkscape or Blender (to name a few).
Great software still. But I get why people complain about it.
https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
For a free app, you need to support it, to have it being worked on. A lot of people just say "yeah, it's free!" and they don't support it. I find that supporting free apps is a good investment. I give some, to NOT have to pay a lot to greedy companies who want me to sign up and pay monthly to use their apps.
I economically support other foss projects. Not just gimp really, as I have not probe whatsoever, but I have this feeling that there's some development issues with it. It's not normal that people have been asking for a dedicated shape tool for decades and they refuse to add it.
Godot is one of the ones I think is going to grow bigger than commercial alternatives (like Blender) for instance.