Paint.NET: The Anti-GIMP?

Arno contributes a link to Paint.NET, a free-of-charge raster-graphics program for Windows XP machines. "Quote: 'Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP. Paint.NET is jointly developed at Washington State University with additional help from Microsoft, and is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with GDI+ extensions.' It really seems like a nice tool. I definitely prefer its UI to GIMP's."

Here it comes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we all do the obligatory "GIMP r0xx0rz, .NET sux", please try downloading this... after it's Slashdotted. Very nice product, it doesn't have the advanced image conversion GIMP does, but very useful indeed.

I wonder if they used P/Invoke so I can run this on Mono?

A replacement for MS Paint

[Pacifix]

If it's meant to be a replacement for MS Paint as the blurb states, I don't think the Gimp should feel threatened. The chasm between Paint and Gimp is lightyears wide. It's unlikely this program could attract the OSS devotion necessary to become really big, especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.

sad to say, but GIMP does lack

[hsmith]

I do a bit of graphics stuff and i would never put my Photoshop to the side. it is by FAR the best graphics program out there. GIMP is nice for little things at work, but for personal use i would never use it.

A few questions about it..

[suso]

• Is it open source?
  
• Does it work on anything besides windows?
  
• How is this program different from the 100 other free paint programs for windows?
  
• Why is this on slashdot and why are they saying this is the anti-gimp?
  

Re:Interesting

[a_karbon_devel_005]

You should care because one of the nicest features of GIMP, and indeed all cross platform OSS is that it DOES work on Windows. It's a major help to development to have that user base. If GIMP gets dropped for Paint.NET on windows ( which I'm not saying/seeing it will, but it DOES apparently have MS's interest ) then GIMP will lose "hands at the wheel" for development/testing and that will contribute to it losing a bit of steam, even if YOUR only concernt is linux. Ask not for who the bell tolls, sir, it tolls for thee.

Re:MONO?

[frostfreek]

I doubt that GDI+ is available in Mono. GDI+ is a 'free' download from Microsoft, but it's a DLL.

Re:Free of charge is not open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that it IS open source, your post looks rather moronic. FYI, RTFM before putting virtual foot in mouth.

Re:A few questions about it..

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why is this on slashdot and why are they saying this is the anti-gimp?

No idea. We need a Photoshop-killer, not a Gimp-killer.

Gimp's interface sucks, plain and simple.

WHY does it sucks? (since I need to be constructive in my critic)

Gimp sucks because the interface is WAY too different compared to Photoshop.

Windows XP?

[ThePyro]

Why write something using Microsoft's .NET Framework and then say it's for Windows XP? I thought one of the advantages of .NET was that it works the same on all the supported operating systems.

('Course, having developed stuff in .NET myself, I can vouch for the fact that stuff doesn't always work the same on different OSes, but it's close enough to release a functional product)

Re:A few questions about it..

[suso]

4) See #3 and because all /. headlines have to have inflamitory and misleading headlines to attract attention for some reason.

Yes exactly, I think it would have been better and more helpful to have a headline like "Paint.NET, an open source alternative to MS-Paint". I suppose slashdot has fallen into the same pit that all other mainstream media is trapped in where it must scare its audience into submission.

OSS

[fozzmeister]

"In the spirit of all this freedom, we welcome any suggestions, as well as provide the source code free of charge for anyone who wishes to tinker with it. Please explore this website, download the software and try out many of the things you would do on those expensive commercial applications."

and the license
" Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
"

Well fuck me, MS is sponsoring not just free software but Free software, Very interesting! Oh and can we take this and shove it on Linux?

Re:A few questions about it..

[agraupe]

It only sucks for those who use photoshop extensively before switching to the GIMP. I remained free of Photoshop long enough that now I am completely used to the GIMP's interface, and I don't see why it is any better/worse than Photoshop's. I agree, it doesn't have some of Photoshop's features, but we need to stop complaining about the UI. Just because it is different doesn't mean it is bad. As I see it, we shouldn't try to convert the professional full-time users of Photoshop, but rather the people who pirate it. Piracy is a bigger threat to Free Software than it is to entrenched industry standard software, IMO.

Re:Interesting

[roca]

The fact is that the GIMP UI sucks and the developers don't care. Therefore it's inevitable that GIMP will eventually be replaced by something whose UI doesn't suck. It might be some evolution of Inkscape, or it might be a port of Paint.NET, but it must happen, and the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.

Re:You would think..

[harlows_monkeys]

You would think Microsoft wouldn't let people mirror their software - after all, they always tell people that you can't trust software on mirrors. Huge security risk, you know

The mirrored copy will still be signed.

Re:Here it comes.

[elmegil]

has an interface that doesn't take hours of struggle to learn to the point that it can actually be useful?

Re:A replacement for MS Paint

[Anonymous Coward]

If I ran the The Gimp project, I'd be running down the e-halls screaming "fix the interface! fix the interface!" right now.

Yes. YES! Please for god's sake, fix it.

No, I don't care that it's conceptually "better", I just want something that lets me transition smoothly from the industry standard (PS) to the open source alternative.

Thank you.

Re:Uh - wow

[bob beta]

Yes, but warez-kid-in-basement isn't the Photoshop market.

This thing looks like people can install it on their computer at work and not get in trouble.

Re:here here

[LEgregius]

I guess photoshop sucks too. Except for some rather erudite features needed for color printing and certain effects, the gimp has just every feature in photoshop that I've ever needed. I actually miss features in the gimp when using photoshop. But if you think Photoshop also sucks, I don't see how you could say the gimp does too.

Re:A replacement for MS Paint

[letxa2000]

If I ran the The Gimp project, I'd be running down the e-halls screaming "fix the interface! fix the interface!" right now.

I really wish they would fix it. That Gimp's interface sucks is one of the few reasons I still need to open Win4Lin from time to time: To run Paint Shop Pro. PSP 4.3 used to run under Wine but it no longer ran on the version that came with RH9 so I have to run Win4Lin to get PSP to work.

Heck, I'd buy the latest version of PSP if it ran natively under Linux.

I'm sure Gimp has lots of nice features but the interface is a joke. And to those that tell me that I should just learn the interface, no thanks. All my other Linux applications make sense and have an interface that is easy to sit down and use. Gimp is a major exception even within the Linux application area. I really don't know what they were smoking when they came up with that interface but I wish they'd stop inhaling and get a more standardized interface in there so I could stop needing to go into Win4Lin to do graphical work.

See the trap?

[jmorris42]

I see several interesting things here. Note how they had to use a GDI+ 'extension'? And someone is reporting sluggishness anyway, even on hardware that is fairly new. Tells me .net suffers from Java's Disease along with any other emulated environment and that the move to add in native hooks is already well underway. And of course it is in Microsoft's interest to make sure that .NET is 'multiplatform' in the hype but Windows only in practice.

Let this be an object lesson for all you Mono fetishists, .net and all it's works are nothing but a trap for the unwary. And will never live up to the hype anymore than Java did, although there is now hope for Java to become useful by jetisoning the emulation and making it just another object oriented language that GCC will grind down to ELF executables.

Re:I have to clear this up!

[IdntUnknwn]

The UI is fine if you make an effort to learn to use it.

I believe thats exactly what everyone is complaining about. I'm sure the GUI is certainly usable once you learn it, the problem is that there is an enormously steep learning curve involved that turns the majority of potential users away.

If I replaced your car's steering wheel with joysticks, I'm sure that once you learn it you'll drive just fine. But you'll still curse me for forcing you to learn to drive that way. Most people will probably just give up. At the same time, I'm sure that there will be someone out there who will indeed be willing to learn it and say to everyone else "put some effort in, you whiny idiots."

Re:Windows 2000 port?

[GlassHeart]

Photoshop is too fancy and the gimp is too slow and unusable on Windows.

You may want to consider Photoshop Elements [adobe.com], which costs about $100 or less if you wait for a rebate. It's a surprisingly big subset of Photoshop, missing mainly the pre-press tools that are useful to professionals. It's also a useful training tool if you plan to move up to Photoshop one day.

Re:Interesting

[Hast]

It sucks if you are on Windows and don't have a program which gives you virtual desktops. Install that and you can use GIMP a lot better. (And FYI I hate programs with MDI style interfaces since I typically work with multiple monitors.)

Re:A replacement for MS Paint

[alarch]

what is wrong with the gimp interface? I really like it. The only thing I hate is it does not have CMYK - in those very rare cases I need it (prepress work), I have to use Photoshop, which has really bad interface. Moral: its onlu matter of the point of view. There is no interface that fits everybody.

Re:Here it comes.

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Why are we comparing a simple painting program to the GIMP? It's like comparing an apple to an orange tree...

This is just a simple painting program, it works great for simple quick tasks. The GIMP is designed for more complex graphical tasks...

Compare GIMP to Photoshop. That's a legit conversation.

Nothing irrational at all

[FreeUser]

especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.

Based on Microsoft's behavior past and present, its effect on the industry and emergence of technology in general (quite negative), and their publicly stated intentions with respect to Linux, software freedon in general, and freedom to innovate vis-a-vis software patents and ligitagion in general (of which their funding of the SCO debacle is but a precursor), I'd say there is absolutely nothing whatsoever "irrational" about the dislike an association with Microsoft inspires in any of us.

Now, the expression of that dislike can sometimes take irrational forms, just as the expression of anger can on any subject, but that by no means belies the entirely rational, indeed very justified, anger and dislike being felt.

Finally, given Microsoft's long history and ongoing policy of customer lock-in, and their stated strategy of leveraging .net towards those ends, avoiding any .net project like the proverbial plague is not only wise, it is critical to the self-preservation of any software developer wishing to work in an environment free of Microsoft's coercive control, be it Apple OS X, FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Palm OS, Solaris, or anything else.

I do agree that this program is no threat to the GIMP. Its licensing is more restrictive, it requires .NET, and, as you say, it addresses a different niche of users.

Pricing, has a lot to do with that...

[cnelzie]

...more expensive software and 'niche' software aren't typically going to be carried at Big Bix retail stores, since most of the people that are going to shop with them aren't interested in plopping down $600 on a photo editing software package.

At most, they may plink down $250, but most likely will go home with the "Ph0t0 M4st3r 2.3" software for $9.99 in the 'Value Software' bin.

Re:here here

[arose]

Features are objective, what interfaces you like or don't like on the other hand seems to be very subjective. So how does Paint.NET compare to Gimp in terms of features (-10 points for beeing windows only ;-).

Re:here here

[jellomizer]

It is not the features it is the interface. Example: Both Photoshop and GIMP support layers, It is easy to add a new layer and Minipulate it in photoshop. In GIMP I really need to look for it and moving between layers gets more difficult. It is an issue of making the more usefull features where people can access them the most and the more cryptic ones a little further Back.

The basic rule is that 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So it is not matching feature per feature with photoshop it is matching how well people can access the feature.

Re:here here

[phasm42]

Features are objective, what interfaces you like or don't like on the other hand seems to be very subjective.

There has been a lot written on this subject lately, and a strong case has been made that interface isn't as subjective as you think. Apple's design of the iPod is a common example. There is such a thing as a truely good interface. Paul Graham has written about it here [paulgraham.com] and here [paulgraham.com].

Re:Here it comes.

[rynoski]

Comparing the GIMP to photoshop is like comparing an apple to an orange tree...

You are better off comparing the GIMP to PaintShop Pro.

Re:Here it comes.

[MrEntropy]

You're joking, right? Gimp's interface is a fast track to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It is so despised at the Linux based VFX facility I work at (300-500 people depending on current project load) that people have taken to either bringing in their own laptops with Photoshop to paint with or they run Photoshop under Wine. Seriously, are people actually still trying to compare Gimp to Photoshop from a usability standpoint? The performance difference alone should be enough to convince anyone to Photoshop comes out ahead.

Re:Here it comes.

[Malc]

"I love Gimp's interface"

Good Lord man! Are you some sort of masochist? Or perhaps you don't use Windows on a regular basis. It has one of the worst UIs I've had the misfortune of encountering. The best thing they could do is dump that dreadful toolkit and build a native Win32 UI on to it. Then it would be usable.

"GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop"

[SimHacker]

Comparing GIMP to Photoshop is TABOO!

According to one of the GIMP developers, BigSven:

"GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop and we aren't trying to win PS users over. We are creating a tool that gets the job done. Some approaches of PS are worth to copy, others aren't. GIMP is not a Photoshop clone and it was never meant to be one." -BigSven

"Gimp was not written as a competitor to Photoshop." -mac[LAG]

Please do not compare GIMP with Photoshop, because that's a very sensitive point with GIMP fanatics, who go out of their way to ignore Photoshop, and wear their ignorance as a badge of pride.

-Don

Re:here here

[ibbey]

True, you can never please all of the people all of the time, but there are good interfaces and bad interfaces. While you may not like the iPod, most people love it. Gimp is the opposite--a few people love it (mostly the developers), everyone else finds it completely unusable. I have never heard of a program that is as universally criticized as having a bad interface, but the developers completly ignore the critiques. Gimp is powerful, but it is needlessly hard to use.

Sure there's something to be said for coming up with a new, more powerful interface-- but only if it's usable. The argument that "people just aren't used to it yet" doesn't fly. The users of Gimp are by definition, some of the most advanced computer users around. If they can't figure it out, normal users never will.

Until the usability problems are fixed, it will never be used by more then a few geeks.

Re:RTFA + Try The F Program

[Cid Highwind]

1. It requires .NET. Why? I don't have a clue.

Because Microsoft's goal for the project was "get more users to install the .NET framework", not "make a better paintbrush.exe".

I can't comment on the UI since the site is so slashdotted that I can't get the screenshots or the installer...

Re:Here it comes.

[shokk]

Any reason why I have to reboot after installing a friggin Paint program? This is an app and has nothing to do with the core of the OS. There should be no rebooting for something like this!!

Re:Here it comes.

[jtshaw]

Dump the native toolkit and build a native Win32 UI on it? What about those of us that don't use Win32? Gimp runs on unix flavors, bsd, linux, mac, and Windows. Why would we ever want to dump support for all those other OS's many of the gimp developers themselves use.

Better suggestion is to keep improving the toolkit and the GIMP interface.

I've been using Gimp and Photoshop interchangably for a long time now and find both to be very powerful tools. As has been stated before, many of the key bindings are the same. Sure, the mouse stuff is different... but that is obvious given my Mac mouse only has one button.

This Paint.Net looks to be a lot better quality then Paint was for sure. However, it lacks the support for many image types Gimp and Photoshop support, as well as a lot of the advanced tools.

I haven't been playing with it for long... but where the hell is the plugin interface?!?

Re:here here

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's what I've been doing,
*dl GIMP
*Install GIMP
- ohh the UI still sucks
- doing anything is an unberable pain
- the damned thing crashes so often I never finish ANYTHING (yes I'm on windows)
- swearing at it,(note: it doesn't work)
- it's clunky, slow, and looks disgusting
* uninstall GIMP
* deleting all the crap it lefts in user profile
* promise never to try again
* see slashdot article about it, try again

guess I'm a lil' masochistic after all...

The UI of the GIMP

[O2dude]

Why o why o why do soooo many people whine about the UI of the GIMP? I dont get it at all.

What's so hard to understand about the GIMP?

There's a toolbox - double click the tool for options - a colour picker and a brush selector. Easy. It does reasonable AA text, albeit a little clunkily and it has a whole lot of load/save options per supported filetype. Easy. There are options per image under the right mouse button and there are options per session of the gimp application in the menu at the top of the toolbar. Easy. It allows for any number of views of the image you're working on and it has configurable shortkeys for lots of stuff. Easy. It has most of the image manipulation filters you's expect from a heavy duty gfx app and a kick-arse animation plugin. Easy.

The only thing about recent versions of the GIMP that really annoys me is the Gtk+ 2.x/Pango/atk/glib complex. This has become so slow that it's almost unbearable. Gtk+ is now a dog of a behomoth of a bitch of a toolkit. Die Gtk+ die.

Finally, the fact that there is very minimal (non-existant really) support for the CMYK colourspace is an annoyance too. Other than that the GIMP is simply great value and a lot of fun to use.

Oh, one thing though - the GIMP really needs to be run on a Unix. Win32 versions of the GIMP suck _really_ badly.

Re:here here

[jusdisgi]

Both Photoshop and GIMP support layers, It is easy to add a new layer and Minipulate it in photoshop.

That's funny...I find it easy to add a layer in the GIMP, yet have to look around for the functionality in photoshop.

Imagine that...the program you spend a whole lot of time with ends up feeling more familiar to you. Who ever would have thunk it?

Re:here here

[incom]

That is a completely subjective and unverified argument you make. I myself can't use photoshop, but have no problems with the gimp, and that is because I'm used to it, whether you beleive it's possible or not. Anybody who started out on gimp is better with gimp and prefers gimp, the same thing with those who started out with photoshop(thanks to piracy, that is most people). People use your exact arguments against OSX, and for XP everyday, doesn't make them valid or informed.

Re:Here it comes.

[Malc]

"have you ever considered that is a limitation of Windows, not of GIMP (of course not)"

You've got it the wrong way around. The app is supposed to follow the platform's UI standards, not vice versa. IIRC, the GIMP used to use crazy dumb things like pinnable tear-off menus (which would unfailingly get lost behind the window of some other app). Don't talk about the limitations of Windows, but rather what the GIMP is doing wrong.

Personally I think the GIMP's UI is abysmal under Linux too. It just gets worse on other platforms.

"The toolkit has nothing to do with it. GTK runs on windows just fine and has a special theme that causes it to match whatever Windows theme you are using."

I think I've seen this in Ethereal. It's not very good. It still looks out of place and doesn't behave properly. Furthermore, it's sluggish on my 1.7GHz Pentium-M!!!!

The toolkit *is* a problem. There are some really really simple things they could do in that like delegating to Win32's ::GetOpenFileName method instead of using that dreadful dialog of their own. I still have nightmares over previous revisions of it - what kind numbskull dreamed it up let alone thought it would be acceptable on *any* platform?

Re:Here it comes.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that they didn't want to learn howto do a non-mdi interface in Windows.

It's that you CAN'T do it anyother way in Windows.

Why?

Because Window's Window handling is crap compared to a good Unix desktop/WM and OS X/OS 9/OS 8/ et al

Why?

Becuase in Mac OS each application opens up in it's own virtual desktop, when you click on part of the photoshop application, any window, the entire application comes forward. This is because each application has it's own "layer".

You can't do that in Windows effectively. In fact it just plain sucks.

Unix desktops use a different sort of virtual desktop were each window can mix up applications, but you can have dozens of virtual desktop and send your applications to different desktops.

Personally I use about 10 or so of them on my desktop.

That's why Linux apps and OS X apps don't use MDI stuff. Because it's not needed to create such a clunky hack to get things to work properly.

Which is also why Linux users don't understand why people bitch and moan about Gimp's user interface. Because it's the limitations of Windows that is causing the problems.

For instance you have one program that uses a MDI interface in Linux that I use. It's called blender, and it's very inflexible and primitive way of doing it.

First time I used Photoshop on Windows, I had to laugh. It was such crap, I thought I had some ancient version, but it was new (photoshop 8 at the time, I beleive)

And I don't understand how people think that Photoshop is the pinnicle of photo editing tools. The program is great for what it is designed to do, which is be a fairly low-to-mid-end photo editor, but there are some things about it that aren't great.

Re:Here it comes.

[lawpoop]

I don't know, but did you have everything with c# and .net ready to go before you installed this program? There might be a simple explanation.

Re:GIMP UI not the best I've ever seen

[TheMESMERIC]

I agree that a lot of Linux apps sucks
but i really really don't get it when people says GIMP sucks
are you talking about GIMP 2.0 ???

For me the UI surpasses in ease-of-use and functionality compared to many competitors.

1. You hardly get stuck with modal windows .. ie you still can do stuff on lower windows, while some dialog is open.

2. If all fails and you panic- just right click. Right click gives you a pop-up menu that let you navigate to any operation you want performed.

I agree GIMP 1.x sucked horrid.

But GIMP 2.x ??
I use it a lot - its very user friendly.
If it was horrid I would agree you - believe me.

I can be a Linux zealot but I am not into praising any software that is downright crap (independant of vendor or OS)
Microsoft Excel for example - still (imho) unsurpassed.
While Inkscape is no way as near as good as Corel Draw 12 (if you don't count stability of course)

GIMP 2.x = brilliant powerful intuitive app.

Re:"GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop"

[IamTheRealMike]

I've not read such a load of bollocks in a very long time.

Do you really think the developers of the Gimp, who are in my experience universally reasonable and smart, have a "macho" attitude where they don't want the Gimp to be easy to use? You do? I guess you ignored all the usability improvements they made in each version released in the last few years then.

But it doesn't surprise me. I suspect you are not really a Gimp user, I suspect you are simply one of many Slashdotters who downloaded a Windows build, and went "eww no MDI" and then went back to using a warezd Photoshop copy you got from Kazaa.

Strangely, the Gimps interface works perfectly well on Linux which has decent window management.

There are hacks available to make the Gimp windows appear in one big container MDI-style on Windows, but they don't work very well. MDI itself doesn't work very well, actually, and GTK+ on Linux has never supported it and never will (because it's not needed).

I can tell you straight off that the reason the Gimp has the UI it does, is because this is the best UI for the job. It's developers are almost all Linux users, and the UI there is a good one. The reason they "reject" the standard crap that's thrown about in any story that mentions the Gimp is because it's just that - crap, which doesn't apply to the version of the Gimp they use, so why should they care? It's not like they get paid to take market share from Photoshop. I'd say that Gimp on Linux is for 90% of Photoshop users (I say users including all the random kiddies who downloaded it because they want to be "pros") an absolutely solid replacement. I know that in all the years I've used it for commercial web design, photo manipulation and UI development it has never yet left me wanting.

Re:Here it comes.

[Spy der Mann]

Gimp runs on unix flavors, bsd, linux, mac, and Windows. Why would we ever want to dump support for all those other OS's many of the gimp developers themselves use.

Ever heard of MONO, the software that lets you run .NET apps for Linux? Anyway, what use is having a software that runs everywhere, if its clumsy interface reduces productivity to a mere 20 or 10%?

And if you like the GIMP so much, why not make a "photoshop-like UI plugin" for it?

Re:"GIMP is also not meant to be like Photoshop"

[Ogerman]

I'd say that Gimp on Linux is for 90% of Photoshop users (I say users including all the random kiddies who downloaded it because they want to be "pros") an absolutely solid replacement. I know that in all the years I've used it for commercial web design, photo manipulation and UI development it has never yet left me wanting.

Exactly.. This is what most people seem to ignore.. Gimp is not Photoshop. But it does happen to meet the needs of probably 80-90% of Photoshop's target market. You would not believe how many wasteful copies of Photoshop are licensed in the corporate world because Joe Idiot says, "Hey, we need a photo editor.. go buy the best thing out there." And $699 later, there's the latest version of Photoshop. (And oops.. it's hard for newbies to use (just like Gimp), so go buy a copy of Photoshop for Dummies too) Sure, Photoshop is still the best thing out there (today at least), but most of the people using it would have been fine with PSP or Gimp.

And here's the real kicker: how fast would Gimp improve if those 80-90% that don't really need Photoshop contributed a few bucks each to the project? Granted that won't happen, but there are other ways to harvest this market. The Gimp folks need to take a look at how they can capitalize on what they've developed.

After five minutes playing with Paint.NET

[tdhillman]

Trying to draw any comparison between Paint.NET and The Gimp is just plain silly. It will not, and cannot do any of the myriad tasks that I have been able to use the Gimp for.

Warts and all, the Gimp is a fully developed application with a history of growth.

Paint.NET is exactly what it purports to be- an application developed by a number of students to be a replacement/upgrade for the MSPaint application. It performs that function extremely well. MSPaint is a notoriously limited application that has little or no purpose.

On the other hand, I can see users who need relatively simple answers using PAint.NET for simple needs.

As built, the Gimp will not challenge beyond a discrete community of users who have both the technical ability to use its power and the imagination needed to take advantage of everything that happens to be in there.

Just try using the animation abilities to make shorts that resemble Terry Gilliam's animation work. The Gimp makes it wholly possible. It's dissolve function makes the impossible seem simple- seamless transition from frame to frame in animations.

Paint.NET? Good work students, and I'm sure that MS will enjoy putting you to work for them for long hours with little pay when you are ready.

Re:Here it comes.

[elmegil]

You sound like someone who really doesn't understand how to use The Gimp. It's sad that you're so incapable.

And this is what makes Gimp Zealots so loveable. An utter incomprehension of the idea that user interface should be intuitive, rather than requiring vast study that you can then lord over all the "posers".

Re:Here it comes.

[Malc]

"It's sad that you're so incapable."

I hope you won't mind if I read your ad hominems and draw some inferences about your maturity level. Especially considering other things like: "micros~1's" and "windows sucks ass". It makes for a very compelling case!

"[...] micros~1's window manager is a serious problem and given the multiplatform nature of Gimp it shouldn't have to be "fixed" just because windows sucks ass.

Out of curiosity, how many years have you been writing cross-platform software in order to put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family?

One golden rule of good software is to write it so that it works for the users. If it's cross-platform you go the extra mile and make it work properly on each platform, whether or not you agree with that platform's UI guidelines.

This is not about people's competency nor about whether they're intellectual enough to figure it out. This is about usability, quality of workmanship and making a product tailored for its environment. I'm perfectly capable of using GIMP, and I have in the past. I refuse to do so now because its UI is so poor. I will not put up with. There's plenty of competition, and I'm happy to pay for something that's usable and meets my needs. Nor will I use Photoshop, but that's mostly because I can't justify its price. Its UI is poor too, especially under Windows.

Up there on your high horse, you sound awfully defensive and insecure. The GIMP might have great functionality, but that's all irrelevant to me and most people due its poor UI.

Re:here here

[jusdisgi]

Am I missing something? There's that Layer menu in Photoshop. or shift+ctrl+n. How hard is it to see?

Am I missing something? There's that Layer menu in the GIMP. Or ctrl-l, n. How hard is it to see?