BuT I CaNT MaKE cIrCLeS in GiMp!

I haven't used photoshop or any other "industry standard" in more than a decade.
Still, everytime I open Gimp I have to look up for the "increase/decrease brush size" shortcut, because it's so dawn counter intuitive.

You can make circles in Krita
- It's possible in Ligma, too.
  
  what is ligma

dude if your ui is unusable you're gonna hear about it.
you can't make an open source car that has two joysticks instead of a steering wheel and talk about industry standards and vendor lock ins when people say it sucks.
I mean it's cool that it exists for non drivers who sometimes want to jump on an open source car for a quick trip but if driving is your job then the joysticks being technically functional won't cut it.
that doesn't mean you have to copy everything 1:1, if people are looking for alternatives one reason might be that not everything about the standard car is great. affinity has some great differences in tools but they're designed in a way that makes sense to pro users.
I've said this before but there's a severe lack of designers in the open source space. there should be a platform that enables designers to relatively easily contribute to open source projects without learning git or whatever the fuck.
- Legendary comment, my friend!
- The problem is even if a designer contributes (say they open an issue with design feedback or even wireframes and such) developers seldom see as much value in a redesign as there is in working on features they care about, because open source is driven by developers making apps that they would use firstly.
  
  that's fine but there should be less defensiveness about people criticizing the design then
- Honestly just copying everything from 10 years ago 1:1 would be an improvement on most big applications.
  
  I think there's been lots of improvements to various small things to make that accurate. but adobe does love to regress in lots of different little ways as well.
  I need to muster the energy to make a video about the affinity lineup. they have a number of new tools and features that didn't exist before but are certainly improvements.
- a platform that enables designers to relatively easily contribute to open source projects without learning git
  Reading this made me a bit sad.
  On the one hand, I understand how tools like this could be a hurdle for someone who isn't heavily invested in their use. And on the other, as someone who has tinkered with open source projects, I know that as hurdles go, git is the first of very many hurdles that must be cleared when contributing to a large, mature GUI program like this, and it's a pretty low one at that.
  It would be great if more people could contribute to and help develop open-source versions of tools they themselves use, but I can certainly see how tough it can be starting out
  
  Not low at all. After you contribute the maintainer be like "can you rebase it all to one commit"
  And then you end up force pushing and ping 4000 people
  Or you accidentally close your pull request
- I loved my Ricochet RC car that drove with twin sticks...
  I would totally drive an actual car that handled that way!
  
  I knew someone would make this comment but that's kind of the point. rc cars are toys after all, and it's fine as a hobby but if professional driving would be better with twin sticks I feel like motorsports would have already adopted it.
  
  Have I got a D9 Cat waiting for you! Drive with those twin brake levers 10 to 14 hours a day! You will get to dig ditches and level whole mountains!
  Edit to add: And drink Red Bull and eat Honey Buns while doing it too!
- Open source software design sucks because they don't have desginers (who know git) because they can't attract designers (who know git) because they don't have money (free and open source) because they don't have big userbase (which can lead to more people donating) because oss software design sucks.
  
  Downsides for sure, but it does work.
- here should be a platform that enables designers to relatively easily contribute to open source projects without learning git or whatever the fuck.
  Make it then.
  Do you know how difficult it is to make software that runs, let alone runs well? Do you know how difficult it is to stay on top of the constant messages, issues, PRs, and just churn that comes alone when that particular software gets popular? And on top of that devs are supposed to be design gods too?
  If you think you have the solution: build it. Be a part of the solution. The developers of GIMP can't do everything.
  Anti Commercial-AI license
  
  that's not what they were saying.
  They were saying there wish there was a way for designers to contribute. Git is a pain in the ass. lets be real. Important, but a pain. Its a bad UI.
  Design isn't the same as code, so the same process and repos aren't necessarily going to help. that's all they didn't say anything insulting. Only that they wish there was a away for designers to contribute. Why is that hurting peoples feelings?
  
  genius reply. i love that in the same comment where you say devs can't be design gods you say designers should make an entire software platform.
  and no, they're not supposed to be design gods, which is why I said there should be a platform that enables designers to contribute, which would take the burden off the devs. words must be hard.
  
  If we can't criticize because we can't make it, might as well shut up for life.
- Not only a lack of designers, but the very concept of them is held in contempt among way too many in the open-source world (like this thread even).

Under the hood I actually really like GIMP. I'm also not too bothered by there being no circle tool. My problem with GIMP is that if there were a circle tool in it, its a little too difficult to find it if it does exist.
If they had some front end re-write eventually where they just moved some stuff around and better organized the front end of the application, I think a lot more people would use it. UX/UI is really important, and I'm sure the contributors of GIMP know this as they seem to have done well to try to make the interface feel straightforward by putting stuff under menu's and whatnot, but the location of things just seems unintuitive/non-standard compared to what every other application does.
The other issue I have with GIMP is just that its development cycle takes forever compared to most every other open source application I have seen.
Not to say there is a great answer to any of this, image manipulation/animation software is not an easy thing to program by any means so I understand why it can take forever, but I just wish there was a real answer.
In the mean time, I've just been trying to get by with krita, though krita really seems geared toward digital painting specifically.
- I love krita and it is the best digital art software i've used for painting and i've used them all proffessionally. I had to tweak it the least out of all of them.
  
  How does it compare to Procreate on iPad?
- A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key / to open a command palette
  
  That is a bandaid though, it's an abstract way of interacting with an application and you can't really build muscle memory around it
  
  That is interesting and I did not know that. Thanks.
- Not saying GIMP's UI is great (I only use it occasionally), but efficient UI isn't necessarily an "intuitive" UI. I.E. an intuitive UI may not be efficient for a professional that takes the time to learn it and works with the UI ~40 hours/week.
  
  Intuitively finding basics everybody starting out needs in the ui takes a backseat to the pro who is using all the shortcuts and custom workspace layouts going to adapt to the changes anyway. Especially as basically no one uses gimp professionally all day and the people who would use it are not using gimp cause it's not intuitive.
  I can't wait for freecad to stop being just an poweful near peer and actually become an usable near peer.
  
  True, but I prefer intuition over efficiency when I pick something up for the first time, second time, and third time, until I eventually have a good enough understanding to begin worrying about efficiency.
  There are use cases for Libre office writer, just as there are for vim, even though they are both capable of producing text documents. One is arguably more intuitive while one is arguably more efficient, but if I didn't know anything about word processing/text editing and had to pick between the two, I would pick writer.
  Same goes for anything else, and it's also why a decent number of text editors/software support emacs/vim bindings - so that you can use the software intuitively, and then once you understand it, you can become more efficient by using modal bindings. Same goes for GIMP versus other software. The thing about other softwares in the same genre is that they can be learned relatively easily and can also be used efficiently. GIMP I find harder to learn, even if it is efficient later.
  For anyone who is new who has to make a choice as well - very few people would pick vim to start out with.
  Furthermore, in this instance, I do have a decent amount of photo editing experience and have used multiple softwares to do it, but even after that, the problem I have with GIMP is that a lot of this knowledge does not transfer to GIMP like it does for other software. If I learn photoshop, I can get away with using affinity, krita, corel draw, clip studio, and other software - but not nearly as easily GIMP.
  I would also argue that efficiency is equally dependent upon the software as it is the task. The workflow for digital painting, animation, and photo editing are all quite different, and no one UX/UI is the most efficient at all of them. This is why most of these softwares have modular interfaces, which is good, but I simply find the modular interface of GIMP harder to use or understand versus the rest.
- Don't even get us started on Blender's UX/UI design.
  
  Coming from maya where everything is on modifier key and a sub second flick of your mouse and having to use something as disgusting and alow as "hotkeys" is an adjustment. Everything but the ui is geat. Except for 3d cursor, fuck that stupid thing. I have a 3d cursor, it's my cursor.
  And lack of the x y z coordinate setter. Getting something to 000 is impossible and setting prescise pivots is a nightmare.
  
  Blender is so versatile, and has so many applications that you have to end up with a cluttered interface. Since the alternatives have licenses that have a steep cost, I would say that putting up with a clunky interface is well worth it.
  
  Haha, yes the feeling is similar there, though I think I personally still had an easier time learning blenders current workflow.
- People who complain about GIMP have never had to use Inkscape. Now THAT is one horribly unintuitive UI.
  
  I find Inkscape easier
  
  I like inkscape but ive used AI minimally and found AI more unintuitive.
  I guess it's based on your previous experience
  
  I've never been into vector graphics, but I had reason to use Inkscape recently, and I was actually surprised by how easy to use it was and how much the UI made sense.
  
  I have used inkscape though it has been some time. I felt as though it was not super featureful at the time so the UI felt slightly barren compared to something like Adobe Illustrator, but I don't recall having the same kind of trouble with it that I do with GIMP honestly.
- Hi, this complaint sounds vaguely familiar and I know it's just indicative of that type of problem, but can you elaborate on what you mean by no circle tool?
  I haven't used GIMP in a long time but if I remember correctly there's an ellipse tool and I think there's a modifier that can constrain the aspect ratio so you can make circles. I might be wrong though.
  
  I think what you are thinking of is the ellipse selection tool, and yes this exists and can be used - however I am referring to the tool class of geometric shapes which is quite common among other software. Basically it creates a vector (In most cases I think) shape with options for stroke and fill, and controls the same way that the ellipse selection tool does (constraints etc.).
  GIMP does not have this, instead you have to go through a decent amount of trouble to get simple geometric shapes drawn to the screen, and at that I believe they are always raster.
  Take these procedures as an example for GIMP.
  https://www.alphr.com/make-shapes-gimp/
  This makes GIMP difficult if you want to use it for some niche uses such as making a quick flow diagram, or a quick vector mask which can be changed later.
- You can replace GIMP with Blendee or Freecad and it works just as well

We have ISO standards. Fuck every single company that ignores those (Microsoft, Apple, ...).
- And fuck ISO for charging so much for access to them.
  
  As an engineer: 1000% agree.
  Seriously, why do I have to pay a value somewhere close to £1000 for a set of FUCKING PDFs?!?
  This is ridiculous. Make money from audits, certifications, training, and conferences. You can still make absolute stacks from those. Why the fuck do I or my company need to shell out thousands just so we know what to certify against to be able to sell stuff?!
  It's a fucking racquet and they know it. But it's either one of 3 options:
  Find someone who's willing to send you the PDF or log in credentials for a library service that has access to these standards.
  Take the risk downloading PDFs from dodgy sites you found on the 5th page of duckduckgo.
  Bend over and spread open your wallet. Because good luck getting anything delivered to a customer without it.

Vendor lock in is the reason I went to a fully open source workflow like fifteen years ago. When you rely on these companies for tools, they own your work. They can jack up prices, change TOS whenever they want, paywall features, train AIs on your work, and jerk you around on a chain at their whim. I don't mind a little jank or having to do some workarounds for a certain result to keep my freedom. And also, when a new release comes out that fixes an issue ive been having, I feel grateful! In the closed ecosystem you feel entitled and resentful and powerless. It's not worth it.
- I'm most of the way there except jet brains... I just don't have it in me to spend the years it'll take to become as familiar with a different tool.
  
  My experience with Jetbrains was that they did not rely on vendor lock-in, but on actually making a product worth paying for. I could move my projects away from their suite easily, the build tools and scripts where all third-party open-source. I just didn't want to.
  But perhaps things are different in other spaces. I can imagine using Kotlin might lock you in more.

Downplaying the importance of UX is one of the reasons the year of the Linux desktop still has not arrived.
- Its close but when gnome is still saying "lmao bro you're supposed to know how to use terminal to make empty files bro" and "nonono you are too stupid for mmb paste toggle" in the same breath, it will be a while.
  
  The average user doesn’t need empty files
  Also
  mmb paste toggle
  What’s the issue with this
- I'm sure having all computers in existence come by default with window and offering free stuff to students has nothing to do with it.
  /s
- If by importance of UX you mean "your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I've learned that one already".
  In reality The Year Of The Linux might never arrive, it doesn't have a multibillion corporation spending multi billions in order to make Linux a default software on every computer you buy. (to pedants: Android doesn't count)
  
  Not necessarily, but humans are creatures of habit. If your app doesn't follow existing patterns, you better have a good reason for it.
  It is true however that UX research is pretty poor on Linux, outside of say Gnome, but I think Linux apps could also take notes from market leaders and see what works from them and why.
  It's not always just a spreadsheet comparison of features, it's considering the UX for different screens and user journeys and comparing them to one another.
  
  That is NOT at all what people are saying. They're saying that glueing together 15 different UX paradigms into a program is not as intuitive as something designed before it was coded by people with expertise in exactly that. Design is real no matter how much you don't want it to be. This attitude is directly hurting open source software.
  
  No. Importance of UX simply means advance users can customize their workflow while making it easy to use for casual users.
  Kinda like Krita or Blender. Both are not perfect, but the dev are working on it, together with the community.
  Even GIMP dev also working on that, they have GIMP UX issue tracker here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/
  "your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I've learned that one already"
  Oftentimes established workflow is already simple. There's no need to reinvent this from scratch. Example: Npainter and AzPainter are heavily inspired by PaintToolSAI. Inochi Creator is a clone (with unique feature) of Live2D Cubism.
  
  I think the difference is with their software you can play around the UI and figure out things by intuition and trial and error
  The same thing is not enough in FOSS in many cases. Like for ex, drawing solid shapes in GIMP
  
  no, we want the tried and tested workflow that works well for pros to use.
  take it as someone who used photoshop professionally in the past.
  
  Valve sells all of its computers with Linux on it, no?
  
  The year of of the Linux happened long ago. However we fail to recognize it, because wasn't exactly what we were expecting. Most super computer is TOP500 as well as servers and majority of portable devices in the world are powered by the Linux kernel.
  If the definition of Year of Linux was based on having astonishing UX then, this is probably something that will never happen.
- Nonesense. There is no easier to use and more functional desktop with great user experience than Linux. Been that way a long time. People are just used to poor UX and want more of it.
  Edit: I would love to hear from the downvoters how windows, with its constantly changing interface, ads, poor file manager and poorly thought out workflow design is somehow better than linux. And stick with win 11 as that is the standard now.
  As for Mac, talk about confusing. Where are your files? What is happening at full screen, what menu is doing what? I will say macs are great when you get used it, especially if you use keyboard shortcuts.
  More downvotes for the truth. I have taken people who have barely used a computer before and tried them on Linux or windows. Windows is always a mess and does things in unsuspected ways or is missing a basic feature.
  Linux works just fine, and out of the box from any current distro the environments are pretty much ready to go. That is just the truth.
  
  I've used MacOS for about 20 years, and it's a shit show. But...
  Where are your files?
  They are in my user folder, same as every other OS. I can see them all in Finder. Root is hidden, but that's options "tick box to display disks".
  What is happening at full screen
  So what you would consider maximise is "move to new dedicated virtual desktop", but you can also cmd+click maximise, drag to the top to traditional maximise or left/right for half screen.
  I will say macs are great when you get used it, especially if you use keyboard shortcuts.
  I'd say the opposite. How do I move this window to the next desktop using shortcut keys? You have to display desktops and then drag or to the desktop you want. No real shortcut for a basic feature.
  Emoji picker also seems to be broken, so when adding something on a chat I have to navigate with keyboard because clicking on the emoji I want works about 50% of the time, they rest of the time it just closes the window.
  
  There is no easier to use and more functional desktop with great user experience than Linux.
  Ignoring the fact that you make it sound like Linux has a single unified desktop experience...
  I'd love to hear your reason for thinking that. I'm a Linux fanboy and even I'm smelling the bullshit.
- Naaah, it's just companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft shitting on Linux users each time they can.
- Lol

BUT I CAN
- That's beautiful. Card backs?
  
  Yeeh
- Is it possible to learn this power??
  
  Stick a pin in your mouse cable and whizz it round like a compass. Easy.
  
  I was going to make a gif tutorial but I screwed up the recording and I've lost all motivation.
  File, New, set resolution multiple of 1000, like 2000x2000
  View, Show Grid
  View, Snap to Grid
  Image, Configure Grid, set pixels under Spacing to desired height, if aspect ratio is checked it will automatically adjust the width to match, like 50x50 for example
  Zoom in towards center, click and drag vertical and horizontal ruler to the center using the location value on the bottom left
  Create first transparent layer
  Select brush tool, the big circle brush, and set size to 1000 and click at the center
  Select eraser tool, set size to 960 and click center
  New layer
  Brush to 700, center
  eraser to 670, center
  New layer
  brush to 60, between rings
  eraser to 40, on new dot
  New layer
  Using brush at size 20px, click and shift click to create lines, draw a square and a right triangle in the top-left quadrant in the centermost circle by connecting points on the rim.
  Select every layer, copy and paste
  With new layers selected, select all
  Transform, Rotate, ensure that the centerpoint is the actual center with the on screen reticle, and rotate the circle 90 degrees. Repeat process but rotate 180 degress.
  Export image, you're done.
  EDIT: I guess I didn't really explain Whitespace Utilization, you can use a white brush instead of eraser to cover the layer beneath.
  Once you're ready to export, flatten image to a single layer and then under color, color to alpha, white should already be selected
  Add a new layer, white layer, move the layer to the bottom of the stack
  Done
  
  Yeeh gimme a bit
- Cool design.

Yall just use Krita if you want a photoshop replacement on Linux and then stop complaining about gimp please. Krita draws circles exactly like photoshop please just use Krita and leave the gimp people alone
- I use both.
  Krita is for drawing. GIMP is for making memes.
- Yeah this is a reasonable take. GIMP has its core set of users, and, even though I could be wrong about this, I suspect that they like the UI as it is. They're not beholden to making the most generalized image editing software for Linux.
- I'm a huge Krita fan! But like others I mostly use it for the drawing and painting.
  How is it as an alternative to GIMP? (Which I use for simple cut and pastes and that kinda thing.) I haven't actually been able to figure out where the wall is that says "No, use GIMP for this."
  Does GIMP maybe have better filters and layer operations and that kinda thing maybe...?
  
  Pretty much every filter I need from PS like levels, curves, unsharp mask, blurs, etc are there and I even get all of my layer styles. If you were familiar with photoshop circa cs3 era I honestly think it's just better, but I'm a Linux user and software engineer, not a professional graphic designer or photo manipulator
  I avoided it for so long and just used photopea online instead because I thought krita was just for drawing and I don't do that. I'm sure it's fantastic for that but I don't draw and was so used to photoshop I didn't imagine it'd be basically a better version of it and written in QT, but I was pretty surprised at how it's just that

I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.
Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.
The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.
- Blender is great after a decade of pro maya use. Ux is nowhere near as good but man, its like stepping into the contemporary times from the middle ages.
  
  I haven’t used Maya since the early 2000s when they had the Personal Learning Edition. I remember being put off by the 3 mouse button requirement and the weirdness of the UI at the time, but found C4D drastically more intuitive. Maybe the Maya UX has improved a lot since then, but I found Blender 2.8 slightly less intuitive than C4d when I first started, but not bad overall, compared to being completely put off by earlier versions of Blender’s UI as I had been with Maya. The expensive subscriptions for both Maya and C4D are definitely more off-putting than anything else, though.
- No everything in Linux has to be used through the terminal, how else will I feel elite. If there has to be a gui let's make sure it looks like it was designed in 1995, so everyone hates it and just uses the terminal instead
  
  Just use the terminal to send keyboard and mouse events, you hopeless noob!
  
  wtype -M shift "A" -m shift wtype -k enter swaymsg seat seat0 cursor set_position 100 200 ydotool mousemove -100 50 ydotool click 0`
  In fact it's even more efficient!
- To give a specific example of how powerful Blender is, in geology there are very very very very expensive 3d modelling programs and then there is like... Sketchup which I guess Google hasn't abandoned? idk... even the basic GIS software for geologic mapping from ESRI is expensive AF, especially if you want to do any fancy 3d rendering or map making.
  Enter this guy
  You already know this guy is cool as fuck just from that photo, but let me tell you how exactly how lowkey cool Marcus Schwander is.
  (btw I have zero connection to this guy, I know next to nothing about him, I literally just found his videos from searching "Blender Geology" on youtube randomly)
  His video series shows quite clearly and exhaustively how to do extremely complicated geologic mapping of complex fold belts with lots of faults using Blender. What I can't stress enough is that the workflow he is detailing in the proprietary software world would be EXTREMELY niche, require exhaustive licensing and setting up payment and getting software keys.... blah blah blah and ultimately it would be a very expensive workflow, possibly requiring software licenses that cost thousands of dollars or more (I am not kidding). On top of the prohibitive cost, any kind of documentation, additional plugin development, or content creators who make tutorials about how to use the tools is an order of magnitude rarer for those tools because access to the tools in the first place is so prohibitive (and is usually only along narrow circumstances, not the kind of situation someone would organically decide to make a youtube tutorial channel about a software that costs $30,000 a license necessarily). In contrast, try searching for "Blender tutorial" in youtube and just take a cursory glance and the absurdly exhaustive amount of resources out there about learning Blender.
  I have been teaching myself Blender because I want to make similar tutorial videos because it is ridiculous to me idea that in 2025 geologists don't have an open format to visualize geologic structures and map them in a natural 3d environment that can be then shared with other geologists, in a established non-proprietary format that a geologist can ensure that any other geologist can open and view the model/data themselves, because again if you have a computer you can get Blender....
  I am firmly of the belief that Blender should be taught as a basic part of a Geology curriculum along with a GIS class, not a primary focus or anything, but the tool is so general and so broadly useful that I think we owe it to future scientists to teach everybody we can how to use Blender.
  As a last point, I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting using Blender to make cool fancy cinematic visualizations of Geology because it looks cool, or suggesting trying to do lots of complex modelling and computation in Blender instead of a GIS software, those are both awesome uses of Blender but what I am suggesting is that by simply teaching the next generation of Geologists how to use a 3d modelling software just for the simple purposes of giving them a tool to sketch out ideas or explore a geologic map from a 3d perspective (which can be useful ESPECIALLY when talking to other people about specific geologic structures that are difficult to explain without a 3d perspective to point to) Blender is going to forever change how Geologists use computers to do Geology.
  It is a cool moment because on the flip side... there is a LOT of money in Geology and I think the Blender community could and will absolutely find serious, sustainable long term funding from Geology companies and academia associated entities that could massively bolster development capability and funding security.

Hey, I was a GIMP convert even during the long dark ages of GIMP where you couldn't do any kind of bulk layer selection or moving or lots of maddening things... and you know what I kept fucking using it because it was always there for me, ready to help me make a shitty meme.
GIMP has recently gotten MUCH better though, it is a straight up beast now.
- I agree.
  Just recently, I used GIMP 3.0 to create what will become a sticker on the side of a dozen hockey helmets.
  It was a small project but it probably went back and forth a dozen times as each version delivered sparked new ideas or new questions on what was possible. Layers, filters, alpha channel, Smart Selection, and working with text and font outlines were all essential.
  I don’t do all this stuff all the time. There is no way I would ever pay for Photoshop. Yet, my standard Linux install had everything I needed to get it done. And it was not that hard.
  Truly amazing when you think about it. We are all so entitled.
  
  We are all so entitled.
  That's exactly my issue with GIMP. We are all so entitled, even GIMP devs.
  You don't want to include a feature to draw an editable circle/square/polygon? Fine, but then don't get superdefensive nor "counterattack" when people ask you about this feature. All in all, pretty much every other image manipulation program has it, so it's understandable people wonder why GIMP doesn't have it. I for one still can't wrap my head around why this is a no-no for some people. It doesn't make any sense.
  When I was majoring as graphic designer I used to use GIMP for a bunch of stuff, even played with python-fu and saved me some time I never would have saved with Photoshop or some shit like that, but even back then they always answered to everything some variation of "we are short on resources". Well at that time Krita (which was even called Kpaint) had even less resources than GIMP and look at them now.
  
  Truly amazing when you think about it. We are all so entitled.
  Almost as entitled as the corporations who want to charge us rent to do something relatively simple like this on a modern computer, and have actively attempted to undermine general accessibility to tools like this in order to profit more.

Wait, you can't make circles in GIMP? This has to be false. If my memory serves me well, I remember using GIMP for a school project back in the day and I'm pretty sure it could make circle.
- You can, it's just not as simple as click on circle shape maker. You have to make a circle with the circle selection tool than turn it into a path. It's only difficult when you're first figuring it out. Once you do, it's not a big deal.
  
  It’s only difficult when you’re first figuring it out. Once you do, it’s not a big deal.
  I've been using Photoshop and Gimp a lot over the last decade. There are a few things I like better in Photoshop and nothing I really like more in Gimp, but they're both absolutely serviceable.
  I wish content-aware patch came by default in Gimp and I wish Gimp had more user-friendly macroing, but if I'm drawing circles in my photo editor, my first thought is why the hell am I not using a vector editor.
- It doesn't have basic shape tools. You have to fill a selection

Krita, motherfuckers. Do you use it?
- I use Krita, Aseprite, and Gimp. I must say, though, I'm loving Gimp 3. Now if we could just push past the proprietary docx plugins bullshit and make odf industry standard...
  Edit: Ah, shoot. I forgot Inkscape for vector art. Shame on me... I love Inkscape.
  
  I found Inkscape when I needed to make some diagrams, and even though that's not really what it's for, it blows dedicated diagram tools out of the water.
  Inkscape is actually fun to use because it strikes a nice balance between easy and powerful.
  My only problem with GIMP lately has been that by default it's used monochrome tool icons which are really hard to tell apart. Which seems like a real form-over-function decision (likely made by the distribution though).
- yes, actually. but i want to see gimp succeed as a professional tool.
- I’ve used krita at an amateur level, pretty good would recommend

Cue the 20-minute alley fight!

This applies across the industry
MySQL, VMware...

Good meme. Thank you for your service
- Thanks! 🤗

It's not a standard until there's an ISO, RFC, IEEE or IEC number to go with it.
- It feels like your making a semantic argument to downplay how tight grip these softwares have on their respective industry markets.
  If you are only ever considered for a job if you have Photoshop experience, and that is the normal treatment across the majority of the industry, that's a standard that the industry is now holding you to - an industry standard if you will. It does not need to be backed by a governing body for it to still count.
  My current understanding is that you will not get a job at a major CGI company by knowing Blender (though the film 'Flow' shows that might change going forward). You have to know softwares like Houdini, 3ds Max, Maya, etc..., if you want to be treated seriously.
- W3C
- Or ABNT or DIN or (...)
  
  We should make just one more standards agency! To include all the standards for everything!

- Vendor lock-in is bad and Adobe's business practices are bad, no matter how you cook it. There are so many viable alternatives to Adobe stuff.
  Problem is, Photoshop power users don't often want to hear about any alternatives. GIMP is just one of the most popular culprits in this regard. That's exactly the kind of mindset that the vendor lock-in creates.
  I'm kind of happy that I stuck with GIMP when I was younger. Now, I have absolutely no fear of trying out any software that comes my way. I do most of my photo work in Affinity Photo. Don't have problems with GIMP either, use it for some other stuff.
  The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers. Some time ago there was a huge movement for people to switch from Premiere to DaVinci Resolve because Premiere really is pretty horrible these days.
  
  The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers
  Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe's side.
  We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the "obvious" place to switch to.
  As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.
  And that's fine - the fediverse is it's own thing and many people (myself included) don't want "adoption at all costs" - but I think it's worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.
  I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.
  What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits "real" to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.
- I don't do graphic design and only use GIMP for making memes. Could you give a few pointers, why GIMP is not usable compared to photoshop?
  
  there was a case to be made in the past [nondestructive editing, cmyk etc], but as of 3.0(.2) the divide is steadily narrowing
- Docker Engine, without the Docker Desktop licensing and VM overhead
  
  Docker is a great example because podman basically is a drop in replacement.

Keycloak is a industry standard and is very much not vendor locked. Same with Auth0. As far as oauth goes.
- Yeah I feel like "industry standard" and "vendor locked" are kinda opposites?
  
  Not really. "Industry standard" just means it's commonly used in the industry. "Open specification" is the opposite of "vendor locked", e.g. OAuth for authentication.

USB-C...

I enjoyed that movie way more than I should have 😂.

Eli5?
- There is a practice where software companies will either provide their software to schools and colleges for free or will pay schools and colleges to use their software. This leads to the students using this software, learning that software's sole paradigm, and essentially forces them to use that software going forward because of how difficult it is to shift to another software with a different paradigm. This is Vendor Lock-In. The vendor locks you into their software.
  This leads to all future workers being trained in that software, so of course businesses opt to use that software instead of retraining the employee in another. This contrasts with the idea of what an 'industry standard' is. The name suggests that it's used in the industry because it's better than other software, but in reality it's just standard because of lock-in.
  This is how Windows cornered the operating system market - by partnering with vendors to ship their systems with Windows pre-installed.
  
  My kids use Chromebooks at school. What I call "Word" they call "Docs". It's very clear why Google gives this operating system away for free.
  
  For decades Apple paid schools to teach on their computers. In the 80s and much of the 90s, all you'd find in computer labs was Macs.
  It didn't work because PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
  
  Your description of vendor lock-in is obviously solvable by developers making a competing UI and workflow similar to the most popular software, and enabling new features under another menu. That said, there is obviously minimal interest in doing so.
  This is UI. UI is not vendor lock-in. Lock-in costs users money to break out of, not developers.
- It's an thing people used to say when they wanted to justify not using the software gimp
  
  You mean a common user experience that leaves many new users frustrated.

Circle select + Shift-PaintBucket
People really love making storms out of water glasses.
- For anyone thinking this is the solution, it's not. This technique produces a rasterized circle in a destructive editing workflow. What people that are complaining actually want, is a non-destructive tool, like the planned shape tool that will let everyone easily make vector shapes, like circles. It is part of the ongoing plan to add non-destructive workflows to GIMP, it's a game changer and the gimp team is doing great progress, so kudos to them.
  
  Agreed. They have a lot of the required plumbing now. There are some non-destructive editing workflows in GIMP.
  I think holding back 3.0 for so long was a mistake. It no longer matters though. It is out now and it can be improved dramatically without such a long break between the dev version and stable.
  We will see what the next couple of years brings.
- and GIMP dev actually planning to add shape tool.
  Gimp's first version released in 1998. Do you find it surprising that people aren't impressed by plans to add basic tools after nearly 30 years when the competition has stuff like content-aware filling and automatic layer separation?
  There are many valid arguments against using Adobe products, or for using open source editing software. Productivity and ease of use are not one of them.
- With this logic, why have a rectangular selection tool, when the grid and freehand selection achieve the same result?

Industry standard or monopoly.

Wait they took the ellipse tool?
What?

Have you tried squares, mate?

photoshop has got problems, but gimp and krita have the sort of problems that i never had using PS. like, completely missing functions and tools that are standard in PS. maybe there's an extension, maybe there isn't, and troubleshooting is time and energy spent when i have little to spare on making art or whatever
- Tried Serif Affinity? Photoshop is great mate but it's not worth that cash.
  
  Does it work in Linux?
  
  I'm not paying for it, my boss is

Click brush, move mouse in a circle