this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (12 children)

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 cat awk and tail to 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (4 children)

See, this is exactly my point in my other comment above. I could do this in about five seconds with Corel PhotoPaint.

  1. Make a new document that's arbitrarily large.
  2. Import both (or all 3, or all 10, or however many) images. (Images can be batch imported.)
  3. Snap the first one to the top left corner.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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!

  1. Import the images. Images can still be batch imported.
  2. Arrange them however you want, snap them together, whatever.
  3. 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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.

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