ZarlinGIMP 3.0 Released
gon [he]I’ve been seeing quite a few posts about this, pretty funny that it all happened so fast.
Showroom7561Man, after decades, why does GIMP still have a marketing problem?
Just visit www.gimp.org and compare it to www.adobe.com/ca/products/photoshop.html
Just assume both did exactly the same thing and cost the exact same amount (free or otherwise). Which would you choose based on their website?
Why does GIMP (and pretty much all FOSS) have to be so secretive about their product? Why no screenshots? Why not showcase the software on their website?
It’s so damn frustrating that every FOSS app appears to be command line software, or assumed that the user knows everything about it already.
Devs, you might have a killer piece of software, but screenshots go a long way to help with gaining interest and adoption.
You’re welcome to contribute your experties.
I wish I could, but this is a systemic problem, not a problem with one individual project.
Is the mindset that anyone looking for open source, FOSS, or Linux stuff is already tech-savvy enough to know exactly what they are looking for based solely on a text description?
Basically, yes.
I think it’s more so that the kind of people contributing to these projects are on balance not that interested in doing the marketing work.
Do the operating systems the contributors use not have a screenshot function?
I mean, seriously, simply highlighting a few features would make a massive difference.
I speak for all projects, not just GIMP.
PeachManThese projects are run by volunteers, they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does. And to be honest, it kinda seems like you’re just criticizing them for no good reason. Have you personally designed and built a website that doesn’t suck?
These projects are run by volunteers, they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does.
A few screenshots would be nice. Not asking them to make a high-production video intro shot on a cruise ship with RED cameras and featuring an A-list celeb.
And to be honest, it kinda seems like you’re just criticizing them for no good reason.
On the contrary. I want to see them reach a wider audience. I want to see FOSS, Linux, and other open-source projects become more accessible and widely available. For me, the way many of these projects present themselves is like gatekeeping to keep people away.
Have you personally designed and built a website that doesn’t suck?
Yes, but I won’t doxx myself, so there’s no proof I can give you.
Regardless, as a user and someone who wants to see open-source projects succeed, my comment should only be taken as constructive criticism.
On the contrary. I want to see them reach a wider audience. I want to see FOSS, Linux, and other open-source projects become more accessible and widely available
then contribute, it’s called “open source” for a reason or at least raise an issue where the maintainers can see? Not on some random link aggregation platform about an announcement?
野麦さんHow do you contribute when there’s the Wikipedia effect?
Contributing is exactly what he is doing. You dont have to make a PR to contribute to a project, he is trying to bring awareness to an issue he is passionate about. Him sparking the conversation can make waves much larger than he can manage by doing the screenshot marketing for projects himself one at a time. There are way too many projects for one person acting alone to make a real dent.
Contributing doesn’t happen on Lemmy lol
idk, he got those words into atleast 200 peoples heads from here, and probably many more that didn’t vote on it. I would say getting that many people to think about it is pretty good for the couple minutes it took to write that comment down.
200 people that aren’t contributing. They actually have a page on their site encouraging people to get involved in the site design: developer.gimp.org/core/wgo/
IF YOU HAVE EXPERTISE, THEN CONTRIBUTE, DAMMIT: developer.gimp.org/core/wgo/
They don’t need somebody to tell them their site sucks. They need somebody to HELP them make it better, to DO the work that you seem to be implying is very easy! They’re literally begging for it on their website.
It’s like you need high-level programming training to even understand how to contribute to their project. Where’s the “Edit” button, for example?
I’ve contributed dozens of hours to other projects (namely OpenStreetMap), but it’s DEAD SIMPLE to contribute there.
☂️-is taking a screenshot that hard?
they don’t have the unlimited budget for designers that Adobe does.
presses screenshot button
Ah yes, it’s a good thing that the only skill required to make a nice website is taking a screenshot
Not criticizing the website design. I don’t expect them to have an expensive flashy website. I am criticizing you for equating the snipping tool with having an unlimited budget for designers like adobe does. It does not take a team of designers to add a screenshot to your website showcasing a feature.
makingStuffForFunYou can if you wish. You just choose not to. Like so many of us. If more did volunteer, the problem would disappear. It’s that simple.
What? There are hundreds of thousands of FOSS projects with great presentation. GIMP is the exception these days, not the rule.
For sure, I don’t mean to blanket all FOSS projects under the same observation. But I’ve seen some projects where the idea is brilliant, and it fills a gap that no other software can, but they have piss-poor instructions (or none at all) and hardly describe what the project is or does. You only learn about them by chance, which is a real shame.
Here’s another example: Navidrome (www.navidrome.org) is an awesome, self-hosted music streaming software.
But their homepage doesn’t have a screenshot, so you have no idea if the UI is just command prompt, ugly, unintuitive, or the best thing ever. Even the “learn more” page has no screenshots unless you really go digging.
Compare that to another FOSS self-hosted music streamer: ampache.org
Simple website, but at least you can see exactly what to expect from the UI. Huge advantage even if they two apps do the exact same thing (both based on the Subsonic backend).
Navidrome
Welcome to Navidrome! Learn More Download Your Personal Streaming Service Navidrome allows you to enjoy your music collection from anywhere, by making it available through a modern Web UI and through a wide range of third-party compatible mobile apps, for both iOS and Android devices.
Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
The devs making Gimp gain literally nothing from you downloading and using it.
Stop applying capitalist logic to one of the few aspects of life that haven’t been monetized yet.
The devs making Gimp gain literally nothing from you downloading and using it.
Stop applying capitalist logic to one of the few aspects of life that haven’t been monetized yet.
Open Source software is not a product that needs marketing.
That’s highly debatable.
Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there’s no incentive to keep making it.
Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.
Even from a purely practical standpoint, why not be clear and avoid wasting people’s time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?
I’m not suggesting that GIMP take out Facebook ads. But my god, would a few screenshots kill the project?
garretbleYou are right. I just checked out gimp.org, and…IS there a single image of the software on that site?
If they want new users, asking them to blindly download software without even a look or maybe a video of new features is not it.
Surely, if nobody is using the software, then there’s no incentive to keep making it.
Making a tool you or the company you work for need yourself, fun, learning, community, doing good, showing off, status, being remembered, (even if it’s just in a circle of 10 people)…
Marketing generates interest. Interest gets users. Users (hopefully) get donations and/or contributions to the project.
Irrelevant for the vast majority of open source projects, which will never be financially profitable.
why not be clear and avoid wasting people’s time as they try to figure out what exactly a project is about?
Maybe because the volunteers working on the project in their free time are programmers, not marketers or good communicators?
Also, they aren’t wasting anybody’s time by creating useful software and giving it away for free.
I realize I’m being confrontational towards you, but this mindset of demanding things from people who literally give away free stuff with no strings attached rubs me the wrong way, every single time. And this mindset is much too prevalent, even to the point of harassing, insulting and threatening open source devs for choices they make in their projects.
The devs owe you nothing. If you don’t like what they do, simply don’t use it.
There are other options out there, but they may come with a $23/month price tag.
Other programs like Photoshop lose money though. FOSS devs should just quit as they’re their own competition.
FizzGimp doesn’t have a marketing problem. Its well known its just that not many people like it. It is not a nice program to use. I think gimp3 fixes a lot of the janky ui but I’ll have to try it out again
Yeah, every time I have ever tried Gimp, attempting to do anything felt like someone had purposefully been contrarian and made every operation work in the hardest and most confusing way.
And someone may say, “well, you just have to learn it!” OK, sure. Or I can use something that makes much more sense from the jump like Affinity Photo. (Yes, I know you have to pay for it, but it’s worth it. Yes, I know not everyone has the money to do so.)
dadarobotthis is exactly my opinion on it. one of my main gripes was the text rendering. if i needed to change some text i basically had to redo all of the work on any shadow or stroke as well, not just correct a spelling mistake or whatever. very excited to check out the new version.
It is not a nice program to use.
Holy hell. I felt like that 20+ years ago when I started using it… I’m surprised that it never got better, from the sound of it.
Progress just has been painfully slow. It just now got the update it should’ve had back then
I think it’s because marketing is expensive and marketing people know that corporations have money to throw at them, and the moment they lower their prices for a FOSS project, they might not get their old revenue when working for a company that can definitely pay what they ask.
We need some sort of FOSM (Free and Open Source Marketing) that helps FOSS projects based on some sort of queue and whoever has recent changes that needs marketing.
I think it’s because marketing is expensive
Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by “marketing”. I’m not talking about spending tens of thousands of Facebook ads, or any ads, really.
A few screenshots on a product page would be more than enough for some projects. Highlight some key features. Generate interest.
It’s really low effort stuff that makes a huge difference.
These are all excellent ways someone can contribute to a project. Our project website has a repo anything can contribute to to make changes, even the blog entries are statically generated pages.
I fully agree, as someone who isn’t a programmer or super tech savvy but who enjoys foss and cool apps. The gatekeeping is tough, and chatgpt has actually helped a lot because I can ask it “stupid” tech questions that wouldn’t get a response on reddit or other forums. The descriptions, overviews, readmes, etc are lacking. Websites are often super minimal to where I have to read about their product from a 3rd party website. My guess is that communication/marketing is like a foreign language to many in tech, and they assume you’re gonna be tech savvy like them. Often they’re not concerned about widespread use so they don’t try to appeal to normies.
FischIdk if GIMP has a marketing problem but I definitely agree that FOSS projects should add screenshots and a description of what the program does to their website and repo. It really annoys me when someone links a piece of software and it just doesn’t say what it does and there’s no screenshots that would make it easy for me to see what it looks like and how the UI is structured. When there’s no screenshots I’m rarely even interested in trying it out because, even with a description, I don’t really know what it is. Like, I wouldn’t be interested in a car based on only a description, I’d have to see a picture of it too.
swelter_sparkThis is a frequent source of frustration for me, too. Can’t even tell if it’s cli or gui a lot of the time, based on the documentation. If I could just see what it looks like, I’d have a good idea right away of whether it might meet my needs.
I actually like the GIMP website homepage more than the one for photoshop.
Its simple and efficient. If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
The photoshop site just looks like a random squarespace template with a bunch of stock photos.
Yeah… I was expecting a much larger contrast. Give me the one that doesn’t start off with several popups.
If I want to know more I would go to documentation or tutorials.
See, that’s not normal, though. You shouldn’t need to “dig deeper” to find out what a product is or what it does.
The well-designed homepage should simply tell you that within seconds of visiting. Any additional clicks should only be to “learn more”, but not to learn about.
If this was an analogy, imagine a street lined with restaurants.
On one side you’ve got “Vinny’s Italian Pizzeria”, “Joe’s Burgers and Fries”, and “Mary’s Bakery and Treats”. Each has posters of what they sell posted on the windows, and a QR code to their online menu.
On the other you have “Sal’s Food”, “Frank’s More Food”, “Sal’s”. The windows are either covered in brown paper, or have stock images of “food”, but nothing specific about what they actually make. To learn more, you have to go inside, ask someone for a menu, wait for that menu, then have a look. But the menu lacks photos! You either have to know what they are describing to you in the menu, or you would have to have already dined there before.
Does the latter experience sound good? Because that’s how too many open-source projects present themselves, and it’s to the loss of the volunteer devs and their potential user base.
Dig deeper ?
Homepage text :
The Free & Open Source Image Editor
This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
Man, that text does the app no favours. “Image editor” could mean that it crops photos. But GIMP does a hell of a lot more. It’s been “the open-source photoshop” for decades, and they’re really selling themselves short. Screenshots would have made it so much easier to see what the software does.
Indeed
I feel like the Adobe marketing is somewhat pointless. Anyone that has been in the target industries for any amount of time already know the deal.
GIMP is not Photoshop. They are not competitors. It’s a difficult transition. I’m not sure we should even bother drawing a comparison.
I’ve used Photoshop since 1992. I know, I’m old. I started using GIMP about four years ago. I recently got to the point where I can function.
Money and momentum is a motherfucker. Adobe has fuck you money. GIMP has volunteers. If you don’t like their site, volunteer your time or money.
I totally agree
Idk I like the gimp page. Two clicks, and you’re into the tutorial on how to edit pictures. The first page gives you all you need to know: Image manipulation program.
adobe’s page otoh… Well after the first two popups, I gave up.
…
Alright, Second try and four popups later, I’m in. gotta admit the funny animations and the tools they show off are pretty nice
GnuLinuxDudeI would have to choose GIMP (in spite of this awful name) because that page loaded without javascript and the photoshop page requires me to enable javascript
LOL. Brother, I get what you’re saying, but I think you missed the point. If Random User X is just looking for an image editor, and they are presented with a few options they know nothing about. Do you think they’re going to even bother with the one image editor that doesn’t have any screenshots?
Just another comparison, a little more relevant: www.rawtherapee.com
You know EXACTLY what it is and what it does within about 2 seconds. That would be more than enough information for someone to at least make the effort to download the software.
Home
About RawTherapee is a powerful, cross-platform raw photo processing system, released as Free Software (GPLv3). It is designed for developing raw files from a broad range of digital cameras and targeted at users ranging from enthusiast newcomers who wish to broaden their understanding of how digital imaging works to professional photographers. RawTherapee provides a powerful suite of tools for you to produce amazing photos and showcase your creativity.
If I recommend some software to someone, most normies I know would directly go on to youtube and check some guy using and reviewing a software. The “official website” wouldn’t even cross their mind.
In this day and age if a random user really wants something, they have a miriad of options to see what they’re about to use. Forums, Youtube, blog posts and so on.
If a user doesn’t even bother a bare , they’re better off not downloading random executables from the internet.
The website isn’t end all, be all of how users find a software demos. You seem to think a single website is enough for users to make their choices these days. It isn’t the 90s.
An informed user goes through that much effort. Most users are not informed and will do a quick search, download something that looks remotely what they think they need, and they’re done.
This is why it’s frustrating that some really good open-source software end up being lost in a sea of other stuff that was easier for someone to download, without doing a ton of research.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a website, but a website should be “home base” for a software, company, etc. If not the official website, then the developer has less control over the presentation of their product, which would suck.
App stores are successful for a reason: they offer a quick, accessible means to find 1000s of apps or desktop software. And if an app has a poor description or piss poor screenshots, they are skipped very quickly.
The same applies to the UX and UI of an app or website. A poor experience can cause someone to uninstall it (or exit the page), even if it offers them the features they want/need.
You’re right. I wasn’t familiar with rawtherapee but just seeing that home page immediately clued me into the fact that it was some kind of image program. Didn’t even need to read a single word.
Come to think of it, there have been a number of times where I’ve wondered about what a foss project does/looks like and I think a single screenshot would’ve just been a big help in understanding how it behaves.
Come to think of it, there have been a number of times where I’ve wondered about what a foss project does/looks like and I think a single screenshot would’ve just been a big help in understanding how it behaves.
Yes!! I’m glad I was able to illustrate my point better.
pelespiritYeah, I never got into illustration or 3d art/animation, but I sure as hell know what Blender is!
It’s quite the testament that the Blender name is known to the masses (hope you don’t mind me calling you the masses)
The whole skateboard community thrives on it where I’m from, especially in this age of everyone wanting their own skate vid.
Wow. For editing purposes ?