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To be fair
- GIMP is really good
- GIMP is hella complex to use
For example there was a (now enshittified) tool on Android called "image attacher" or something, for making a long image from 2.
This is probably also pretty easy with some CLI tool.
I actually took the time to learn "how do I attach 2 images together" in GIMP.
Or "how do I create a textmarker".
And the stuff works, but its just very complex.
attach 2 images
- Open 1 image
- "open" "open as another layer" the second image
- your canvas is as big as the first image. Guess how big it has to be when fitting them next to each other
- know that there is a difference between "layer surface" and "canvas" for whatever reason
- in the menubar, find the canvas options
- find where to resize the canvas and make it bigger
- click on the surface layer of the other image and move it so it fits where you want it
- use "merge downwards" to make the 2 layer one. BE CAREFUL TO NOT USE ANY IMAGE PARTS
- use the crop tool
- crop the new combined images to the wanted size
This is sooo manual and seems very hacky. The difference between canvas and layer make no sense to me. The enlargement is "eyeballing". The cropping too. There is no snapping when placing next to each other. There is no "dynamically increase canvas size" option afafaik.
text marker / highlighter
Something with brush, make it bigger, yellow, reduce the opaqueness, change the paint mode to "only make darker"
GIMP is like using
catawkandtailto write an office document lol. It works but it is damn technical.But if you know how to do it, you know how to do it.
it's also damn slow and destructive if you're trying to fit it into a true professional workflow with deadlines. i work with programs like it professionally and I only use gimp when i find myself on a random computer that doesn't have anything else. it'll get the job done, pretty much any job, but it might be very slow and painful. as someone who DEFINITELY knows how to use gimp, i understand the op they're clowning more than i understand the 1 peer i know that's actually managing to make money with a fully foss workflow. I also happen to know he largely doesn't sleep to accomplish it.
gimp and darktable and similar projects are great, but workflow efficiency is what they do after they finish adding features. that just never happens. it's not the exciting work.
This is probably also pretty easy with some CLI tool.
This is one of the few image tasks I do on the CLI xD
Stack two images horizontally (left and right)
convert a.jpg b.jpg +append horizontal.jpgStack two images vertically (top and bottom)
convert a.jpg b.jpg -append vertical.jpgImages are not the same dimensions? Use gravity to align them at the center and make the unused space transparent
convert a.jpg b.jpg -background transparent -gravity center +append horizontal.pngI will make a dolphin context menu from that!
See, this is exactly my point in my other comment above. I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.
- Make a new document that's arbitrarily large.
- Import both (or all 3, or all 10, or however many) images. (Images can be batch imported.)
- Snap the first one to the top left corner.
- Snap the others below it. Their corners and edges will click together if you have alignment guides enabled. 4a. Optionally resize any of the images by just typing in the value you need in pixels, in the toolbar when it's selected. If you need to know the size of any other image, just click it and it'll tell you. It's not even in a menu.
- Crop tool (D) to knock the oversized canvas down to whatever size you need. Again, you can just type this in, in pixels, and it's not even buried in a menu.
- Export, post, accumulate lulz.
Export to a flat format (.jpeg, .png, .gif, whatever) and your output will be flattened. You don't need to think about layers or merging or layers being bigger than the canvas or not. There is no, "Be careful not to XYZ." What you see in the preview is what the output will look like. Period. You can even apply your monitor's color calibration to it or the color profile of any other output device (printer, a different monitor, etc.) on the fly if you are a big enough nerd.
You can do this in an even simpler dumber way in CorelDRAW!
- Import the images. Images can still be batch imported.
- Arrange them however you want, snap them together, whatever.
- Lasso them all and export.
That's... literally it. You don't have to crop, you don't have to trim, or layer, or anything. You can specify the dimensions of the output file in the export window before you hit save if you want it to be different than the original. Your arrangement doesn't even have to be rectangular and it will still work.
I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.
that is because you are familiar with corel photopaint. i could do that faster than you in gimp, because i am familiar with gimp.
and yes, using tool capable of doing lot of complex tasks takes more time to learn than some single-purpose tool that is optimized to do one task (and even then you have to learn how to use it). that is like wondering that learning to pilot aircraft takes longer than learning to ride on a bicycle.
Yea, bit gimp is particularly difficult to learn. A few years ago, when I first needed something more complex than paint.net, I of course first downloaded gimp because it's free. It was difficult to use, to say the least. But sure, I didn’t have any experience with more complex image editors. However, just to see what the difference is, I also downloaded Photoshop and didn’t have any trouble at all. Everything I needed to do was easily understandable and the UI was very easy to use. I haven’t used any once of them before and I haven’t used Gimp since. (Also tried krita btw, only found it mildly easier to use than gimp, still miles behind Adobe).
That isn’t to say, that professional OpenSource software can’t be intuitive and well designed. Today I used kdenlive for the first time because premiere didn’t support the codec+container combo I need and it was a very pleasant experience. A very familiar interface, if you’ve used any video editor before. I didn’t go in-depth but it didn’t immediately alienate me like gimp did.
I absolutely want to learn GIMP. And as it is extensible, you could literally just implement feature-by-feature stuff like Photoshop, a finally working autoselect of objects etc.
Actually, I will open a feature reques to change the UI to the one of Photoshop. I looked at PhotoGIMP and this looks tooo much easier and more usable.
I also likely did too many steps. You dont need to merge layers on GIMP. It will also just get flat but I dont know if the cut feature would work.
It VERY likely does.
But having guides everywhere, snapping, is really important.
Attach two images? That's concatenation! Use cat!
This is a joke, is it? Can you literally just cat the image files next to each other?
It's a joke (afaik), cat only works for stuff like tar archives. Can't figure out what to use for text files though.
You can also use cat to append some video file formats together, but honestly use ffmpeg.
You use cat. It literally just appends the bytes of the two files to each other. It just so happens that the tar format can work with that