+1 for Inkscape. I have no experience with the commercial competition but I’ve found Inkscape awesome, and used it for things it was probably never intended for.
Comment on What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?
janus2@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I certainly like GIMP and Inkscape better than Photoshop and Illustrator, though any professional photo editor or graphic artist would probably fight me on that lol
But Krita is the best drawing/painting program of all time and I stand by that.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
VeryVito@lemmy.ml 19 hours ago
Krita is very, very good indeed. It deserves all the praise it gets.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I used lots of FOSS software, and GIMP is by far the worst I’ve come across when compared against its paid competition.
I hate Adobe the company, but Photoshop really is the gold standard.
janus2@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
GIMP certainly has a lot of UI problems that seem to have persisted for no other reason than “nobody got around to fixing it”
Also, it’s 2025 and you STILL can’t just draw a circle lmfao
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
That’s funny. I have no problem drawing circles in GIMP.
alansuspect@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Its not FOSS but if you need a work alterative to GIMP I use Photopea a lot. Works as a PWA too.
I’ve been using design software for over 25 years; Photoshop has been there for the majority but I’ve often tried coming back to GIMP here and there, but it’s never grabbed me in a useable way.
scheep@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Krita seems great. Unfortunately I am not of the artistic type so I can’t really comment on its functionality, but I would say my experience moving from Illustrator to Inkscape has been awesome! (I still can’t figure out how to make lines with inkscape though…the making lines button makes stretched out ovals instead…maybe it thinks I’m making a polygon?)
janus2@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Are you referring to the ends of the lines being rounded? You can change the “cap” type of a stroke path to rounded, square, or sharply pointed using the attribute menu on the right (would provide screenshot but am on mobile, apologies)
scheep@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
no, when I make a line it makes a weird elipse shape instead of a line. Having no fill makes it go invisible, so I think inkscape thinks I’m making a polygon
janus2@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Are you using the calligraphy tool? IIRC the calligraphy tool does create filled polygons instead of stroked paths
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Krita was by far the best when I had a Wacom.
janus2@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
It works out of box with my obscure Samsung S-pen touchscreen laptop from 2016, on Debian with no driver preconfig. I am thoroughly impressed
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why shouldn’t it? As long as your system detects the pen and sensitivity (and Linux is excellent at peripheral support) any program should be able to use it properly.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I like GIMP but find Inkscape impossible to use
Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 day ago
For me, it is the other way round. Probably depends on what you are doing.
janus2@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I’ll admit Inkscape’s UI and menus are a disorganized mess. I’m fortunate I learned it while still a high schooler with too much time on her hands
Krudler@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah gimp is atrocious in terms of UI/UX
Nobody with a clue about graphics would ever recommend gimp
It has always been a piece of sh… going back 20 years already
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
People learned on Photoshop, and then they’re upset because GIMP does things differently. I guarantee you if somebody had learned on GIMP first, it would be the other way around.
There’s nothing intuitive about Photoshop. If you pick it up with zero knowledge and try to do anything, you can’t. You have to take a class to learn how to use it, same as GIMP.
rodneylives@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I think you’re overstating things a bit, but it’s true that I keep getting caught up by weird behaviors.
I paste image data into a layer. I drag the layer a bit to get it where I want it. I try drawing on that layer: nothing happens. Turns out, when I pasted the image, it created a layer the size of the current image with all the extra space filled with transparent pixels. When I dragged it, the transparent part of the layer that had been off the image’s borders was actually dead space, and it won’t accept drawing into it until I go under layers and choose to expand the layer to the dimensions of the image. Once you realize what’s happening it’s not so bad, but until that point it’s the software working how you don’t expect it, and some people are going to drive themselves batty trying to figure it out.
And just now in 3.0 I’ve discovered, if I copy a rectangular part of an image using the Rectangle Select tool, then paste that data into another program, what gets pasted is a transparent box the size of the original image full of transparent pixels, with the copied part opaque in the middle of it in its former position inside the image.
It seems like it’s purposely trying to come up with an unintuitive way to implement my actions. I don’t remember it being like this in the past. What happened?
Krudler@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I really don’t think I’m overstating things, I go back to the early 90s, I started with Harvard graphics and stuff like that… I have used so many damn image editing softwares, and I’ve even made a few of my own.
I’m honestly going to just plant my foot and say gimp is a misbegotten atrocious lump of shit from a UI perspective - a complete embarrassment, and a complete failure from any perspective of usability science
It is absolutely at the bottom of the pack of any piece of software I have ever used, it’s hard to pick up various heaps bunch of shit and decide what smells the worst, so I’m not going to say it’s the worst, but it’s floating at the bottom of the septic tank
I cannot believe that people continue to step up and defend it, it’s garbage.
varjen@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
When was the last time you tried gimp? It inproved a lot when they made it a single window instead of the original insane multiwindow model. It’s probably not as well organized as PS but it’s really not as bad as you say IMO.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Or, is it your hesitation to adopt Gimp’s UI standards?
Hugin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gimp doesn’t have UI standards. That’s part of the problem.
Krudler@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Gimp is what happens when programmers think that they can design things